Fury flashed over her, scalding hot, and Jenna’s face burned beneath the stream of tears. He’d stolen so much from her—husband, children, family, home—the most precious things in any woman’s life, including years that could never be retrieved. And why?

Simply because he could.

She stood, not caring about her tears, the way her hands were shaking, or the way her voice broke when she vowed, “Someday I’m going to end your life, Sebastian Thorne. For every year you’ve taken from me, for everything you’ve done, one day I’ll watch the light go out of your eyes and then I’ll spit on your corpse. I will never cooperate with you.”

He slid the photos back into the envelope. He placed the envelope back into his coat pocket. He turned to the Oracle. “Bring up subject four-nine-eight-six.”

The wall of glass flashed black, then showed the interior of a cell exactly like the one she’d just left. A man reclined on the folding cot, his back against the wall, a leg folded beneath him, the other stretched out to the floor. Bare-chested and barefoot, lean and leonine, he was reading a book. Thick black hair brushed his broad shoulders, a week’s worth of beard shaded his jaw. The image appeared to be static, the man held so still, but then he turned a page of his book and Jenna fell to her knees on the plush ivory carpet and let out a scream of anguish so primal and raw Sebastian Thorne took a few steps back in alarm.

She sobbed, “Oh God—Leander!”

“You can put your family back together, Jenna,” said Thorne urgently. “Just tell me what I want to know and he’ll be transferred here immediately. As soon as we have your daughters, they’ll be brought here as well.”

Violent sobs wracked her body. She hugged herself, rocking, crying, unable to look away from the image on the screen.

Alive. He was alive! The love of her life and the father of her children was alive!

Or was he? Could this be another trick?

“How do I know that’s even him? This video could be years old! He could be dead by now!”

Thorne nodded. “Fair enough.” To the Oracle he directed, “Bidirectional audio on.” There was a short burst of static, then he said to the screen, “Good morning, Leander,” and the man in the video jerked up his head.

He carefully laid aside his book. “Thorne.”

The tone, pitched low and commanding, the British accent evident even in the single word he’d spoken; she’d know that voice anywhere.

Jenna couldn’t breathe. Her lungs refused to do their work. She only stared at the screen, her mouth open, her face wet, her body frozen in place.

Thorne said, “I have someone here who’d like to speak with you,” and looked at Jenna.

She tried to form a sentence. She tried to think of the words that could convey the depths of her agony and wretchedness and longing, but in the end she came up with only one.

“Love.”

It was a hoarse whisper, but it was enough.

Leander leapt from the bed, his face transformed from wary to tormented, craving, disbelieving. “Jenna! Jenna!”

Thorne said, “Bidirectional audio off,” and Leander’s voice went silent, though she could see he was still calling out her name. She closed her eyes and bowed her head to block out the image of him stalking wildly around the cell, mutely shouting at the ceiling and walls.

“Why now?” she whispered. “After all this time . . . why now?”

She heard Thorne move to the other side of the room. He sat in a chair, crossed his legs. “Because now the Phoenix Corporation is approximately fifteen days away from replicating the specific aspects of your DNA that we’ve so successfully used in our patented medicines.”

When she raised her head and looked at him, he was smiling blandly at her, hands folded in his lap.

“Now, my dear lady, we don’t really need you at all. This entire facility can be shut down. And all four thousand nine hundred eighty-seven subjects in it can be terminated.”

Her lips parted, but no sound came out. On the screen behind Thorne, Leander upended a table, shredded the book, tore the thin mattress from the folding cot and ripped it to pieces in his bare hands.

“You can’t save them, but you can save yourself, and your daughters. And,” he glanced at the Oracle, watched for a moment as Leander took the single metal chair in the room and began slamming it against a wall, over and over, until it crumpled in his hands, “you can save him.” He turned his gaze to her again. “But if you don’t tell me where the rest of your kind are hiding, I will kill your entire family, and I’ll make you watch while I do. Then, of course, I’ll kill you.”

I thought you said you weren’t violent.

She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until he answered her, explaining as one would to a child. “It’s a figure of speech. When I say ‘I’ll kill you,’ I’m referring to one of my minions, of course.”

He actually calls them minions, she thought, stupefied. But he was still talking.

“I prefer to leave such distasteful things to hired specialists. Like another associate of mine you might recall: a certain legless, one-armed zealot named Two? You’re right; you wouldn’t know him by that name. He was promoted from Thirteen when he successfully captured you. Everyone in the Corporation has a number indicating his status in the hierarchy; I find that much more straightforward than titles. He’s also known in the Corporation as Agent Doe, or simply the Doctor, but the general public know him as the Grand Minister. He’s a former German special forces soldier whose mother was mauled to death in front of his face when he was a child by a tiger at the circus.” He shuddered. “Can you imagine? Well, it certainly explains his pathological hatred of cats. His loss, my gain. And so it goes with life.”

This didn’t make sense. What was she missing? She knelt before him silently, awaiting the explanation she knew would be forthcoming. And because he was carefully watching every emotion that played over her face, it was.

“You can’t imagine the cost and effort I’ve invested over the years into capturing your people, Jenna. If you give me the location of the remaining free Aberrants, I’ll no longer have to expend energy chasing them down. My ultimate goal will be complete.”

“Ultimate goal,” she repeated, trying not to look at the screen, her heart flayed open inside her chest.

His trustworthy newscaster face broke into a grin. “The extermination of your entire species.” He let that sink in a moment, then added, “But in exchange for pointing me in the direction of the rest of your wayward kin, I’m willing to let you and your immediate family live out the rest of your natural lives together, here. I think it’s the least I can do for your helping me achieve my goal.”

Her mind was splitting apart. The earth was lurching to and fro beneath her. Everything in the room was on the brink of exploding into pieces. “How would you know I was telling you the truth? How would you know I wasn’t holding something back, letting a few of them go, pretending to give you what you want?”

“Oh, that.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Rest assured the Phoenix Corporation has the technology for making sure a subject is telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Your friend Alejandro can attest to that.” He paused. “If he were still alive, that is.”

Jenna whispered, “And how do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain? That you’ll bring my family to me if I do tell you what you want to know . . . that you’ll keep us alive longer than even a day?”

His smile faded. He gazed at her in contemplative silence for a moment. “I wasn’t always a businessman, Jenna. I didn’t always want to rule the world. I had a family once upon a time. A wife, a daughter, both of whom I loved very much.” His face clouded. “They were taken from me by a simple fault of human biology. A rare neurological disorder my daughter inherited from my wife. We’re so frail, humanity. So many things can go wrong with a body. So many diseases can rob us of our lives. Even a wrong step off a curb can spell disaster; the tiniest jolt to the head, applied in just the right spot, can end us altogether!”