Nemesis Boxset Page 18

“Heard what?”

  His chair squeaks as he rolls back to prop his feet on the desk. “There’s a couple wannabe rebels out there trying to mount a movement against IA. It happens every few years, and we generally contain the outbursts before anything insane happens, but they’ve been causing more trouble this time around. We’ve already expelled a few students for buying into the rumors.” He purses his lips in clear disapproval. “This is pretty normal stuff for us, O. Someone’s always claiming they can do a better job than the actual government. I’d like to see them try.”

  “You don’t think Veritas is a threat?”

  “There is no Veritas,” he insists. “It’s stupid people hiding behind an old name. Quite frankly, the punishment for hiding behind the Veritas label should be far more severe. It’s disgraceful, petty, and hurtful. These people are bringing back terrible memories of the Second War. Look at Dad. He is the way he is because of Veritas.”

  That, more than Laertes’s rambling, gets my attention. “What do you mean? Dad didn’t have contact with Veritas, did he?”

  “Of course he did,” Laertes answers. “Didn’t you know? Dad was taken as a prisoner of war. Veritas tortured him for ten months before IA rescued him.”

  7

  “Where have you been?” I demand of Vega when I finally find her in the hallways of the Intelligence building off-limits to students. “I’ve been looking for you for over an hour. We need to get home. Now.”

  She pulls her arm out of my grip. “I’ve been digging, Fee. Don’t you think it’s weird no one chided us for leaving Harmonia? What if Orion was right?”

  “Orion was right,” I said, linking my arm in hers instead. I guide her out of the Intelligence building, back to the training bay where the motorbike is. “I just spoke to Laertes.”

  “He admitted it?”

  “No, he denied it.”

  “I’m confused.”

  I hand her one of the helmets. She doesn’t argue when I get on the motorbike first. “He started talking about how kids get behind the Veritas name just because it’s a way to rebel against the government. Teenage anarchy or whatever. It was all a bunch of bullshit. He was trying to cover up the fact that IA is actually worried about Veritas building another attack.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Ophelia.”

  “Yes, it does.” I rev the engine as Vega gets on the bike behind me and wraps her arms around my waist. We take off down the Academy’s driveway. I holler over the sound of the wind. “If Veritas wasn’t a threat, he wouldn’t have said any of that stuff. He wouldn’t have had to make excuses about why Veritas wasn’t important.”

  “You know you’re supposed to take another class today?” Vega shouts in my ear. “Claudia teaches a tactical theory class at two.”

  “This is more important.”

  Even with the wind, I hear her exhausted sigh.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “To see my father.”

  At the house, I excuse the nurse from my father’s study. Wendy hurries out with a wide grin on her face, ecstatic to be escaping my father’s stodgy presence in the darkened room. Like last time, he’s frozen in his armchair as if he’s been cast out of bronze, a memorial of a war hero instead of a living, breathing human. I pull the curtains open, and sunlight pours into the room for the first time in years. Dust flies from the fabric like gray snowflakes. My father lifts a hand to cover his eyes. Movement. That’s good.

  “Dad?” I pull the ottoman up to the side of his armchair and straddle it. Moisture builds in my father’s eyes, but I’m not sure if it’s from the light or my presence. From my back pocket, I take Orion’s gloves and lay them out on the arm of my father’s chair. “What do you know about Veritas? Can you tell me?”

  He looks so much older than my mother. She’s been thriving with IA while my father sits in his study and deteriorates. It’s like she’s been sapping his energy and using it to further her own agenda. Something in my expression must resonate with him, because he lifts a hand and cups my cheek, his skin leathery against mine.

  “Ophelia.”

  “Hi, Dad. I hear you’ve been in here a while.” I try a smile with him. “You always told me books were more interesting than real life, but I never thought you’d go and live with them.”

  “You left me,” he says. His voice, rusty from disuse, is so soft that I have to lean in to hear him. “Why did you go?”

  “IA wasn’t right for me,” I reply, trembling. “Even then, I knew I couldn’t do it. I’m so sorry for disappointing you. I feel like I ruined your legacy as a war hero.”

  My father’s cheeks look like they might crack as his dry lips turn upward in a smile. “That’s my girl.”

  A little shock goes through me. “You mean… you didn’t want me in IA? I thought I was supposed to carry the Holmes’ family legacy through Defense.”

  He smooths my hair. “Oh, my little girl.”

  In his current state, he can’t seem to say much else, but I get the idea. All these years, I’d mistaken my father’s passivity for indifference. Now I get the feeling something else has been going on under his mask of illness.

  “The gloves, Dad.” I put them in his lap with the Veritas insignia facing up. “Do these look familiar to you?”

  He traces the Veritas logo with the tip of his index finger then points to the corner bookshelf behind him. The placement of his chair—the back facing the shelves, front toward the door—makes it look like he’s guarding the books behind him. I squeeze past his chair and examine the shelf.

  “What am I looking for?” I ask, browsing through the titles. My father is already considered an oddball for keeping a collection of real books. His library must be worth a fortune since no one in the galaxy, except IA, has ever printed anything on paper. My father’s books traveled on the way here from Earth, thousands upon thousands of miles away from their original home.

  “1984,” my father mumbles. “By George Orwell.”

  I locate the crumbling novel. It’s a hardback, printed in the 2010s. The first twenty pages or so have been marked up and highlighted, as if a literature student gave up after the first few chapters. Illegible notes are scribbled in the margins.

  “What’s this about?” I ask.

  “Pavo,” he replies solemnly. “Check the middle.”

  I flip to the center of the book, where the pages have been carefully cut out to provide a small hidden compartment. A half-sized leather journal rests there, its yellowing pages and musty scent indicative of the passage of time since the journal’s last journey out in the world. I tip 1984 on its side, and the journal falls out along with a pair of worn gloves. They’re almost identical to Orion’s, except the Veritas insignia is embroidered with crude haste instead of impeccable detail.

  “Come here, Ophelia,” my father says in reply to my gasp of surprise.

  I round his armchair with the illegal paraphernalia. Just having the gloves in his possession could be a death sentence for my father. He gestures for me to unwrap the leather tie that binds the journal together. When I do so, I discover the Veritas logo is also watermarked on each page of the journal. I recognize my father’s impeccable handwriting, but the words themselves don’t make any sense.

  “‘The twelfth moon set tonight,’” I read aloud from a random page. “‘Bear and I swept the river and the bridge, but there was no sign of Falcon. We fear she has met the sea.’ Dad, what does this mean?”

  He points to the door of the study. “Vega.”

  “Vega? What does she know about this?”

  “Ask. Show her.”

  When I try to leave with the journal in hand, he grabs my wrist. His grip is awfully strong for a man who’s spent the last several years confined to a chair.

  “Not in the house,” he hisses. “Not near the nurse. Go outside. By the sea.”

  Vega sits on the white leather sofa in the living room, reading a novel on her tablet. I lean over her shoulder as casually as possible.
>
  “I’m going for a walk,” I announce loudly. My father’s nurse bustles around in the kitchen under the pretense of making him lunch, but I have a feeling she’s here for more than just my father’s care.

  “Okay?” Vega, confused, glances up at me. “So what?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to accompany me everywhere?” I give her a pointed stare then jerk my head toward the back door. “You know, in case I decide I no longer feel my life is worth living and throw myself off a cliff?”

  “You are so dramatic,” she says, but she sets down her tablet and gets up from the sofa. “Let’s go then, Holmes. You better not be trying to pull one over on me. Grab my jacket. The sea spray is chilly.”

  I pull both our jackets off the hooks near the door and lead the way out. Once beyond the pool deck, near the sea, Vega slips her arms into her jacket. The wind coming off the water ruffles her dark curls. They undulate atop her head like waves during a storm. Clouds gather on the horizon. A real storm is brewing out there, soon to hit the shore.

  “What’s going on?” Vega said. “Why’d you drag me all the way out here?”

  “The house is bugged.”

  “What?”

  “Well, at least my father seems to think it is,” I say, taking a leap from a huge rock into the sand below. For one blissful moment, I feel weightless. “And I’m inclined to believe him. That nurse was listening in on our every word.”

  “Did you ask him about Veritas?”

  “Sure did.” I pull the journal and the gloves from the inside of my shirt. “My father kept this while he was with Veritas, but I don’t think he was with them involuntarily like Laertes said. The problem is it’s all in code. He said to show it to you.”

  Vega takes the journal but doesn’t open it. “I can’t believe he’s speaking to you. Laertes has gone in there every day since you left, but your father never said a word to him.”

  “What about Claudia?” I ask hesitantly. “Did she ever visit my father?”

  “Not that I know of.” Vega lifts the cover of the journal and examines the first page. As soon as she reaches the codenames—Bear, Falcon, and a few other animal-themed monikers—her eyes light up. “I know these stories! My mother used to talk about them.”

  “Stories?” I squint over her shoulder to review my father’s writing. “What stories? It looks like a bunch of gibberish.”

  “These are characters from children’s stories,” Vega explains as she points to the names. “My mother read them to me as a child.”

  “From a tablet?”

  “No, she had them memorized.”

  “Then I’m thinking those weren’t children’s stories,” I say. “I think she was giving you a way to translate Veritas code.”

  “No,” Vega says. She studies the writing. “Maybe?”

  “What do you remember from the stories?” I ask her. “Did your mother ever mention anything specific that seemed important about them?”

  “Shut up for a second.”

  Usually, I’d give her a snarky remark in return, but her concentration is more valuable than my comeback. She sits on the massive rock, pulls her jacket tightly around her, and reads through the entirety of my father’s journal. I say nothing, but I scrutinize her as she delves deep into my father’s past. As minutes pass, salt from the sea settles in her hair like snowflakes. She shivers when a particularly chilly breeze wafts over her. Finally, she closes the journal.

  “Well?” I say. “What did you figure out?”

  “You should go talk to your father again,” she replies. “He wasn’t a prisoner of war. He switched sides. Ophelia, your father works for Veritas.”

  In the study, my father is alert, watching through the open windows. From here, the view of the sea is magnificent, and it’s a pity my father’s been squandering it all these years. Maybe if he’d opened the curtains, he wouldn’t look as though he’s crumbling into ash.

  “Well?” he prompts, echoing my question outside.

  “Where’s your nurse?”

  “I dismissed her,” he says. “No listening ears.”

  “And the house?”

  “My study is safe.”

  I sit on the dark leather sofa opposite him and take the journal from my jacket pocket once again. The gloves, I place side by side with Orion’s. My father’s are well-worn with patchy marks in the material, but Orion’s aren’t in the best shape either. Both of them have experienced many tragedies.

  “Vega’s mother knew these characters,” I say, indicating the journal. “We recently discovered she was a member of Veritas. From the looks of this, so are you.”

  “Was,” my father croaks. “A long time ago. I am of no use to them now.”

  “You were never an IA war hero.”

  “IA thought I was,” my father says. “That journal details my time with Veritas, not how I got there. I was like you, Ophelia. I worked Defense for years, thinking I was doing the right thing. In the back of my mind, I always knew there was something off about the International Armament.” It’s the most sentences he’s strung together since I arrived home. His voice cracks and wobbles, but he’s determined to get through his story. “My team and I were sent on a mission to Phobos. Naturally, you can guess how that turned out. We got too close to the black hole nearby. It nearly destroyed our ship, and we crash-landed on the closest planet. I was the only one who survived, and I was near death myself.”

  He shimmies to the edge of his leather recliner and reaches out to bring an automated chair closer to him. The chair chimes to life when my father touches it and rolls over to accommodate him.

  “Need help?” I ask, but his knees and feet are steady as he transfers himself into the automated chair and guides it to the window. I can’t help but think my father isn’t as paralyzed as my mother and siblings assume. “I knew about the crash. Everyone does. They say Veritas found you on that planet and took you hostage.”

  “Veritas did find me,” he confirms. “But all they saw was a dying man in need of help. I was quite the point of contention in their camp. Half of them didn’t dare trust an IA agent.”

  “With good reason.”

  He nods in agreement. “I begged them to help me in exchange for IA intel. They were desperate for information, so they saved my life and I gave them what they needed to plan an attack.”

  “Just like that?” I say. “You found it easy to turn on IA?”

  My father’s expression darkens. “I’m afraid there were extenuating circumstances. I always knew IA was plotting something terrible. Your mother’s secretive missions and strange behavior were indicative of that. For years, IA has been in contact with an alien species beyond Pavo called the Revellae.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “Because it’s the same species of alien we attempted to eradicate from Pavo two hundred years ago when humans settled here,” my father explains. “It turns out the genocide we committed was not complete. There were others who lived beyond the boundaries of our galaxy, and when they heard what IA did, they took it upon themselves to build alien weaponry of extraordinary measures. At first, they were planning to ruin IA with it, but IA found a way to placate them.”

  I can’t sit down anymore, not with all this talk of age-old conspiracies. I join my father at the window. “What did IA use to bargain?”

  “They made the Revellae a promise,” he replies with a sneer of disgust. “After we conquered Pavo, their kind was dying out, close to extinction, and they don’t procreate as quickly as humans. The one thing the Revellae wanted more than our destruction was their own survival, so IA made a deal with them.” His sneer deepens until I hardly recognize the man behind it. “IA developed a serum made of alien bacteria. Once injected, it was meant to alter the DNA of a human to allow a Revellae to mate with them.”

  Acid rises in the back of my throat, and my stomach lurches. “That’s disgusting. How could IA do something like that? It would cause mutations, and I can’t imagine th
ose injected volunteered.”

  “They did not,” my father confirms. “They injected children.”

  The bile in my throat makes a second attempt at breaking free. I swallow it back. “Parents willingly gave their children for this?”

  “Some of them were too brainwashed by IA to protest.” My father yanks the curtain shut, and fireworks of dust explode in the air as the study plunges into darkness again. “IA marketed the serum as a necessary vaccine. For years, they’ve failed to find a successful formula to achieve what the Revellae wanted. So for years, members of IA involved in the production of the serum found ways to experiment with it. Your mother, for instance.”

  “Mom?” I say. “She’s head of Intelligence. She’s an administrator, not a scientist.”

  “She was brought on to the project years ago,” my father replies. “They admired her dedication to the galaxy and her intense interest in the serum, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I discovered all of this during my time with Veritas. I, as you’ve learned, switched sides to help thwart IA’s sick scheme. Ultimately, Veritas succeeded. The information I gave them allowed them to infiltrate IA’s headquarters and destroy the version of the serum they’d developed for mass production at that time. Unfortunately, it was a suicide mission. Almost everyone died, and those who weren’t killed were jailed or murdered by IA in the aftermath of the mission.”

  “You survived,” I remind him. “How?”

  “IA found me pinned beneath the rubble,” he explains. “It was the second time I expected death, though I almost wish I’d died there. There was nothing to mark me as a member of the rebels, so IA assumed Veritas tortured me for information. They healed me, pardoned me, and returned me to my wife. For years, I tried to convince her of IA’s grievances, but she paid no mind. Often, she convinced me I was suffering from the trauma of the war. I began to believe her. As Pavo recovered from the war, so did we. We moved to a bigger house on Proioxis and had four children.”

  “You only have three kids, Dad,” I remind him gently.