Chapter Two #2
She hadn't been idle these three weeks. While the world outside debated whether she should be imprisoned or simply exiled, she'd been digging. Because the timing of her exposure bothered her, an itch at the back of her mind that wouldn't go away.
The rescue had been classified. The Gemini Initiative didn't release names of extracted prisoners; operational security demanded anonymity. So how had the media known exactly who she was within twelve hours of her return to the surface world?
She pulled up the folder she'd compiled over the past three weeks. Five files, each one another piece of a puzzle that made her skin crawl.
File one: The anonymous tip. Three major networks had received identical emails containing her name, address, workplace, and photo. All sent from the same IP address, all within a fifteen-minute window.
File two: The IP trace. It had taken her four days of digging through proxy servers and shell companies, but she'd followed the breadcrumbs back to a corporation called Genova Holdings.
A little more research revealed that Genova Holdings was a subsidiary of a subsidiary of an investment firm with documented ties to Protogenus.
File three: The pattern. She wasn't the only one.
At least seven other rescued supes had been outed in the past month, all in the same way, all with the same media blitz that followed.
The timing was too consistent to be coincidence, each exposure calculated to land during a slow news cycle for maximum coverage.
File four: The funding trail. Protogenus money flowing into "norm safety" advocacy groups, into political action committees pushing for registration laws, into the pockets of talking heads who went on television to warn about the supe threat lurking in every neighborhood.
File five: The staged attacks. Three "supe incidents" in the past two months that had turned out to be false flags.
A fire blamed on a pyrokinetic that was actually arson.
A bridge collapse attributed to a telekinetic that was actually structural failure covered up by Protogenus-funded investigators.
A string of robberies pinned on a speedster who, according to Gemini Initiative records, had been dead for six months.
They weren't just fighting a war. They were running a propaganda campaign, manufacturing fear one carefully orchestrated incident at a time, turning public opinion against variants with the same cold calculation they'd used to drain her powers in that basement lab.
And Hannah had been outed deliberately. A test case.
Proof of concept for a narrative they wanted to push: that supes were hiding among ordinary people, deceiving their neighbors, lying to their friends.
That no one could be trusted. That registration and surveillance and control were the only ways to stay safe.
The fury that rose in her chest was incandescent. Electricity ran through her veins, making the lamp on the nightstand flicker and the television screen go briefly to static.
She hadn't chosen any of this. Hadn't chosen the Aethor Institute serum that some nameless scientist had injected into her arm ten years ago.
Hadn't chosen to be kidnapped by Protogenus and used as a human battery.
Hadn't chosen to be rescued and exposed and turned into a symbol of everything the norms were supposed to fear.
But she could choose what happened next.
Three sharp knocks sounded at the door.
Hannah was on her feet before the sound finished echoing, electricity crackling around her hands, the lamp beside the bed throwing wild shadows as the bulb surged with power.
Nobody knew she was here. She'd paid cash, used a fake name, picked a motel far enough from New Athens City that she wouldn't run into anyone she knew.
"It's Evie Danger." The voice on the other side of the door was female, calm, a little tired. "Rick sent me. I'm alone."
Evie Danger. Mercury variant. Mind controller. One of the most powerful telepaths on the planet, bonded to Rick Charming of the Pollux Legion. If she wanted to hurt Hannah, she wouldn't need to knock first.
Hannah pulled the door open, keeping her hands charged and visible. Evie stood on the concrete walkway, backlit by the buzzing neon of the motel sign, looking like she hadn't slept in days. There were circles under her eyes, and her usually immaculate hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail.
"Can I come in?"
Hannah stepped aside.
Evie took in the room with a single glance: the sagging bed, the cracked phone on the charger, the laptop open on the covers with its damning files still visible on the screen. If she was surprised by what she saw, she didn't show it.
"Gray sent you," Hannah said. It wasn't a question.
"No." Evie turned to face her. "Gray doesn't know I'm here. He'd probably be furious if he found out. Rick thought you should know what's happening, and I agreed."
"So tell me."
Evie sat on the edge of the bed, the same spot Hannah had occupied an hour ago.
"Gray is losing control. The Pollux nature that he's spent ten years suppressing is starting to break through.
He nearly killed a Protogenus prisoner during an interrogation yesterday.
Rick had to physically pull him off the man. "
Hannah remembered Gray's face during the rescue, the way lightning had wreathed his body like a second skin, the barely contained violence in every line of him.
She remembered thinking that he looked like a storm given human form.
She remembered the way her body had reacted to him, immediate and overwhelming and completely unwanted. "What does that have to do with me?"
"You're his fated mate." Evie's voice was flat, clinical. "Normally, bonding allows both parties to grow stronger.”
"And without it?” Hannah asked, not sure that she really wanted to know.
"You’ll never be whole without him." Evie leaned forward. "But that's not all. Vera Seer had a vision. Protogenus is planning a nightmare. Multiple cities, simultaneous attacks. They want the world watching when they deploy the power-stripping weapons."
Hannah's breath caught. "The weapons are ready?"
"Ready and waiting. Three days. Maybe four." Evie stood, moving toward the door. "Gray won't ask you to come back. He thinks it would be forcing you into something you don't want. He'd rather face this alone than make you feel obligated."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Evie paused with her hand on the doorknob.
"Because I understand wanting a normal life.
I spent years trying to get one after the Mercury serum changed me.
Thought if I just ran far enough, hid well enough, I could pretend none of it had ever happened.
" She glanced back over her shoulder. "But we don't get that choice.
We only get to choose whether we hide or fight. "
The door clicked shut behind her, and Hannah was alone again.
Hannah stared at her laptop screen for a long time after Evie left.
The files were still there. Three weeks of evidence, painstakingly assembled, proving that Protogenus had deliberately destroyed her life as part of a larger campaign to turn humanity against variants.
Proof that the fear gripping the nation wasn't organic, wasn't earned, wasn't based on anything real.
It was manufactured. Weaponized. Deployed with the same cold calculation as any bomb or bullet.
She thought about Gray, standing alone in whatever office or bunker he ran the Gemini Initiative from, watching her face on the news and refusing to ask for help because he was too stubborn or too noble or too stupid to admit he needed it.
She thought about the power-stripping weapons, about what it would mean for every variant on the planet if Protogenus succeeded.
No more hiding. No more choice. Just a world where anyone who'd ever been touched by the Aethor Institute serum was stripped of everything that made them different, everything that made them powerful, everything that made them a threat to the people who wanted to control them.
She thought about three days.
Hannah opened a new document and started typing.
They Want You to Fear Us: A Firsthand Account of Protogenus Manipulation
By Hannah Charge
The words came faster than she expected.
She wrote about being outed, about the anonymous tips and the shell corporations and the media blitz that followed.
She wrote about the pattern of exposures, the staged attacks, the funding flowing from Protogenus coffers into the pockets of anyone willing to spread fear.
She named names. She provided links. She included screenshots and financial records and everything she'd gathered in three weeks of obsessive research.
She wrote about being kidnapped and used as a battery, about the other supes in those cells, about the children.
She wrote about the rescue and the hope that had flickered in her chest when Gray Spark told her she was safe.
She wrote about watching that hope die as the world turned against her for the crime of existing.
When she finished, it was three in the morning. Her eyes burned and her fingers ached and the room was full of the ozone smell of barely contained electricity.
She read it through once, fixed a handful of typos, and then sent it everywhere she could think of.
Every major news outlet. Every social media platform.
Every forum where norms gathered to discuss the "supe problem.
" She uploaded the supporting files to three different cloud services and included the links in the body of the article.
If Protogenus wanted to use her as a weapon against her own people, she was going to make sure the weapon cut both ways.
Then she packed her bag.
It didn't take long. She'd been living out of a suitcase since the motel, hadn't accumulated anything worth keeping. Clothes. Laptop. The cracked phone. A charger and a toothbrush and the running shoes she'd worn to the gym in another life.
She left the key on the nightstand and walked out to the parking lot, where her battered sedan waited under the flickering neon sign. The engine turned over on the second try, and she pulled out onto the empty highway, headlights cutting through the predawn darkness.
Behind her, in the motel room she'd never see again, the television flickered to life on its own, responding to some residue of her power. A news anchor appeared on screen, eyes bright with the kind of excitement that only came with breaking news.
"...explosive allegations tonight against Protogenus, the organization at the center of ongoing controversy regarding supernatural citizens.
A detailed report from Hannah Charge, the bank manager recently outed as a variant, claims that her exposure was deliberately orchestrated as part of a wider propaganda campaign. .."
Hannah didn't hear any of it. She was already miles down the road, the lights of New Athens City glowing on the horizon like a promise or a threat.
Protogenus had destroyed her life to create fear. They'd used her as an example, a warning, proof of everything the norms were supposed to dread about supes living among them.
Now she was going to use that fear against them. For a moment she saw Gray’s face as he’d been before she walked out on him: storm-eyed, fierce, terrifying, unforgettable. And damn it, some traitorous part of her wanted to see that look again.