Chapter 48
MIA
The observation room is small and cold, humming with the low drone of equipment.
Through the reinforced glass, I can see Nate lying in the scanner—a massive cylindrical machine that looks like an MRI machine on steroids.
He’s completely still, eyes closed, and if I didn’t know better I’d think he was sleeping.
But I can see the tension in his jaw, the way his hands are curled into loose fists at his sides.
I can tell he hates this. Being examined. Being studied. Being treated like a specimen instead of a person.
The door opens behind me and my father slips in, two mugs of tea in hand he’s brought in from his office. He offers one to me and I take it, more for the warmth than any desire to drink.
“The initial scans are running,” he says, settling into the chair beside mine. “Should have preliminary results in about an hour.”
“What do you think you’ll find?” I ask.
He gives me a quick smile. “A scientific breakthrough is all a scientist can really hope for.”
We sit in silence for a moment, watching Nate through the glass. The scanner hums. The monitors flicker with data I can’t interpret, but they seem to be measuring him in every which way.
“He cares about you,” my father says quietly. “It’s obvious, the way he looks at you. All you’ve gone through.”
I don’t answer. I’m not sure what to say, because I know he does care about me. Just anything beyond that is where it gets murky.
“And you?” He turns slightly, studying my profile the way he used to when I was a teenager and he was trying to figure out what I was hiding. “Do you care about him?”
“It’s complicated.” Just fucking stamp that shit on my forehead.
“Isn’t it always, though?”
I take a sip of tea. It’s too hot and it burns my tongue, but I welcome the distraction.
“He’s not what I expected,” I finally say. “When I took the mission, I thought—I thought he’d be like any other target.” I watch Nate’s chest rise and fall, steady and slow. “But he’s not. He’s broken. Like me. And somehow that just made everything worse.”
“Because you understand each other.”
“Yeah, I guess so. So few people do.”
My father is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is softer, more hesitant.
“Do you love him?”
The question hits me hard. I’ve been avoiding it for weeks, dancing around the edges, telling myself that whatever I feel for Nate is just proximity and trauma and the strange intimacy of two people who’ve seen each other at their worst. What are we if not two monsters, two killers, two dark souls looking for the light.
But sitting here now, watching him lie vulnerable in that machine, trusting my father to help him when he has every reason not to trust anyone—
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I thought I knew. I thought I had it figured out. And then he…and everything I thought I knew just…” I make a gesture, helpless. “Shattered.”
“Love has a way of doing that.”
I shake my head. “Hell, I don’t even know what love is. It doesn’t feel like I thought it would. It feels like drowning. Like willingly drowning.”
He chuckles. “That’s exactly what it feels like.
” His voice is gentle now, almost wistful.
“Your mother and I—when we first met, I thought I’d never survive her.
She was so fierce, so brilliant. Being near her felt like standing too close to a fire.
Or being held underwater.” He pauses. “And then I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. ”
I don’t want to talk about my mother. The grief is too old and too deep, buried under years of scar tissue that I’m not ready to pick at.
I’m not really ready to talk to him about anything.
It feels so odd to sit here with him, sipping tea, when there’s so much between us that we haven’t really faced, so much time that has passed and increased the distance.
“Erasmia.” My father reaches over and touches my hand, just briefly. “Whatever happens, whatever you decide about him—I want you to know that I’m proud of you.”
I look at him sharply. “Proud? For what, exactly? Falling for my target? Compromising my mission? Getting captured and tortured?”
“Proud of you for surviving. For becoming the woman you are.” His eyes are bright behind his glasses, and I realize with a terrible start that he’s close to tears.
“I know I wasn’t—I know I failed you in so many ways.
After your mother died, after we came here, I buried myself in work and left you to raise yourself.
I told myself I was protecting you, but really I was just hiding.
From the grief. From the guilt. From everything I’d done. ”
“Dad—”
“Let me finish, please.” He takes a breath, steadying himself.
“You had every right to hate me. To cut me out of your life the way you did. But you didn’t let it destroy you.
You took all that pain and you made something of yourself.
SOE, the missions, the work you do—you’re making a difference, Mia.
A real difference. And I’m so bloody proud of you I can barely stand it. ”
I don’t know what to say. This is more vulnerability than my father has shown me in years—maybe ever. The man I grew up with was all clinical detachment and careful distance, emotions locked away behind a wall of British reserve.
“Mank told me you used to work together,” I say, steering us toward safer ground. “Back in the MI6 days.”
My father nods, raising his glasses off his face and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Roger and I were partners for a while. Good man. Stubborn as a mule, but good.”
“Do you miss it? Being a spy?” Something I’ve always wondered but never wanted to ask, never wanted to look like I cared.
He considers the question. “Sometimes. The work, the purpose, the feeling that what you’re doing actually matters.
I think I live vicariously through you now, reading your mission reports, imagining myself back in the field.
” He gives me a small smile. “But I’m happy here.
The research, the quiet, the distance from all the politics and backstabbing. It suits me.”
“Even though the Madrona Foundation that you work for is corrupt?” The words come out sharp. “Even though they’re unethical, have done all sort of shady deals? I know they’ve been at the forefront of biological research for decades, but they don’t have a great track record.”
My father doesn’t flinch. “If you think MI6 is above corruption, you have no idea how the world actually works.”
“SOE isn’t—”
“SOE is idealistic. Even their motto is: Reap What You SOE. You and your friends, you believe in the mission, in doing what’s right.
And that’s admirable.” He meets my eyes.
“But the people above you aren’t idealists, Mia.
They’re politicians and bureaucrats and intelligence officers who’ve made compromises you can’t bloody imagine. I wouldn’t put too much trust in them.”
I narrow my eyes, my gut feeling like ice. “What do you mean?”
“Call it instinct. Call it experience. Never trust the government, even a British one.”
The warning settles over me like a chill. I think about Bayo, about Kat, about the missions I’ve run and the orders I’ve followed without question. I think about Cal. Have I been naive? Have I been a pawn in someone else’s game this whole time?
But the thought leads somewhere else. Somewhere darker.
“Dad.” I set down my tea, turning to face him fully. “Were Oliver and Mum killed on purpose? Were they targeted by someone?”
He goes very still.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve asked me that,” he eventually says.
“Because I never believed your answer.”
The silence stretches between us. Through the glass, the scanner continues its work, and Nate is oblivious to the weight of what’s being said in this little room.
“Oliver was like you,” my father finally says. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Enhanced. Modified. We did it to him first, before we really understood what we were doing.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. I suspected—I always suspected—but hearing it confirmed is something else entirely.
“Did what?” I ask, my voice rising. “What did you do to him?”
My father stops. Takes off his glasses. Presses the heels of his hands against his eyes.
“Dad?” I say, voice trembling.
When he looks up again, there are tears streaming down his face, the kind of tears that break my heart while making me angry, because I know he’s the cause for them.
“I think…I worry…I know that he was killed because of me,” he says, his voice cracking.
“Because of what I made him. Someone found out what he could do, what he was, and decided he was too valuable to leave alone.” He swallows hard.
“It’s why we moved here. I thought—I thought if they’d come for him, they might come for you next. I had to keep you safe. I had to—”
“Dad.” I reach out, taking his hand. His fingers are cold and trembling. “What did you do?”
He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. Licks his lips.
A series of beeps cuts through the room, sharp and insistent. My father’s head snaps up toward the monitors, and I watch his face transform—confusion, then concentration, then something that looks almost like shock.
“What the dickens,” he breathes.
“What is it?”
He’s on his feet, moving toward the glass, staring at the readouts with an intensity that makes my stomach drop.
“Dad, what is it? What’s wrong with Nate?”
He turns to look at me, and he looks amazed, like a scientist who’s just had a notion confirmed in the most impossible way.
“I think my theory about Vanguard might be right.”
And then he’s gone, rushing out of the observation room, the door swinging shut behind him.
“What theory?” I say but he can’t hear me.
I’m on my feet before I can think, following him, my heart pounding against my ribs. Through the door, down the short corridor, into the imaging suite where Nate is still lying in the scanner, eyes now open, looking confused.
“What’s going on?” he asks, sitting up. “The machine started making noises—”
My father is already at the main console, pulling up screens, his fingers flying over the keyboard. The images that appear make no sense to me—cross-sections, neural maps, something that looks like a skeletal structure but not quite right.
“Dr. Reeves,” Nate says, his voice harder now. “What did you find?”
My father doesn’t answer. He just stares at the screen, at whatever impossible thing it’s showing him, and I watch his face cycle through emotions too quickly to name.
“Dad,” I say. “Tell us. What’s wrong with him?”
He turns slowly, looking at Nate like he’s seeing him for the first time. Like really seeing him.
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he says quietly. “At least, not in my eyes.”
“Then what—”
“We need to do a more invasive test.” My father’s voice is clinical now, all business, but I can see his hands shaking. “I need to see what’s underneath.”
Nate’s eyes go wide. “Underneath what?”
My father doesn’t answer.
“Underneath what?” I repeat, my voice rising.
He looks at Nate. “How is your pain tolerance?”