If he had been sighted in Albion—well, Vania was sure there was an explanation. Sometimes Justen got so caught up with his research that he grew absentminded. Maybe he was collecting data at a sanitarium in Albion, thinking he’d only be gone on a day trip. That would explain the lack of messages. Justen would go to the moon if he thought it might help him in his research. And maybe he’d found the trip so fruitful, he’d extended it and neglected to message them. And maybe this aristo was . . .
Well, Vania couldn’t quite imagine what an aristo would have to do with a sanitarium. None of the aristos in Galatea ever got their hands dirty with the reg disease.
And she couldn’t imagine where someone might have gotten the idea that Justen would ever fall for an aristo, no matter how pretty she was. He’d have to be Reduced to be that stupid.
Or maybe Vania was the one acting Reduced. After all, aristos lived to be charming and flattering and seductive. Maybe Justen wasn’t too smart to fall for their ways at all. Maybe, because he’d always been too busy to get involved with anyone before, he was completely blindsided by this Albian aristo’s seduction techniques.
And of course the Albian aristos would want him on their side, if they could get him. He was far too valuable to the revolution to leave in their hands. Even Vania’s father would agree with that. Hadn’t he often said that Justen was one of their best assets?
This took precedence over any silly record combing. Vania needed to find out where Justen was and what he was doing. She’d message him, and if there was no reasonable response to these ridiculous rumors, if he didn’t have a good answer for why he needed to stay on that aristo-infested island of Albion a moment longer than absolutely necessary, well then, she’d just go and bring him home herself.
And she could look for the Wild Poppy on the way.
Fourteen
AS SO OFTEN HAPPENED to him in the labs at home, it was a persistent rumbling in his stomach that finally distracted Justen from his work. He looked up from the latest data stream to find rays of sunlight penetrating the skylights of Noemi’s subterranean office. He exited into the residence room of the facility to discover the patients all gone to lunch and Persis nowhere to be found.
He stretched his back and blinked his dry, itchy eyes, momentarily disoriented. How many hours had he spent working? The patients’ test results had come back by sundown, and it had taken him at least six hours to analyze the first lot of brain scans. Noemi had already started the victims on the current recommended therapeutics for DAR patients, and Justen figured that, to overcome suspicion, he would have to put together a reasonable body of research showing why it wouldn’t help before he could suggest an alternate form of treatment. And he needed to do so quickly, as the longer these poor people remained in this state, the more damage would be done.
His jaw tightened. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was never, ever supposed to be this way. Justen rested his head against his hands, massaging the tension out of his forehead. He’d never actually seen the Reduced in person before, and when he met refugees like the Seris, fully recovered and as loathsome as ever, it was easy to pretend that things weren’t quite as awful as he imagined.
There was no escaping it now.
“Medic Helo?” He looked up to see Noemi waiting with the next round of brain scans. “Do you want me to make you up a cot? I think you should call it a day. You made a lot of progress last night, and we won’t know much more until we can see the results of the new treatments.”
“Because the current treatments are so effective?” he replied, his tone angrier than he’d intended. He knew already from his short stay at the sanitarium that DAR treatments in Albion were not so different from the standard regimens they used in Galatea. They could delay the progression of the disease for maybe six months, but they were incapable of gaining back any brain functionality. Once you began showing symptoms, there was nothing any medic on the islands could do to stop it.
But with the help of his grandmother’s records, Justen had sought to change that. His research attempted to stop the mechanics that triggered DAR before they began. And he’d been on the right track six months ago. He had the mechanics down—it was everything else that was backward.
“You’re not going to invent a new treatment today, Justen,” Noemi said softly. “You may be talented, and you may be a Helo, but you’re still human. An eighteen-year-old human. And you’re no use to me unless you get some sleep.”
He nodded stiffly. “Sleep.” A lack of conscious thought that would rejuvenate him, while it only further damaged the people he’d hurt. He’d come to Albion to get away from what he’d done, and here he saw its full, gruesome effects. He’d asked Princess Isla for asylum, when really he should have turned himself in and begged for mercy. The paltry sabotage of the pills he’d attempted when he was still back in Galatea—the sabotage that had caused the fight between him and his sister—that was hardly enough to atone for the damage he saw before him.
This was his fault, all of it. The queen, the revolution, the suffering of his countrymen. He’d invented the Reduction drug that was tearing his homeland apart. How could he sleep? How could he ever sleep again now that he knew the extent of the damage he’d done?
He looked into Noemi’s kind, intelligent eyes. Here, in Albion, he was all alone. Persis, stupid as she was, had practically torn him to pieces at the mention of having an alternate motivation for leaving Galatea. What would she think if she knew the real depths of his deception? How could he explain to someone like her the complexities of the trap he’d fallen into back home?
Uncle Damos had been his guardian since he was ten years old. He’d encouraged Justen’s scientific mind, his research, his intention to help those with DAR. He’d arranged for Justen to do research before he’d even finished his degree, and had been so enthusiastic about every breakthrough.
Uncle Damos had been especially excited six months back by early test results from a treatment Justen had developed after studying his grandmother’s notes. It showed wholly unexpected side effects when applied to a control brain model—an aristo brain model. The test drug hadn’t halted the process of dementia. Instead, it had caused it. Justen had been distraught, disappointed at how his latest avenue of research had led to a useless dead end, but his uncle Damos had comforted him, reminding him that even Persistence Helo had suffered setbacks in her search for the cure and that no effort was ever truly wasted.
And how right he’d been in the end. His research wasn’t wasted at all. It had been put to wider use than he’d ever dreamed. And it had led the entire revolution down a dark and twisted path.
Justen had been a fool to think escaping Galatea meant escaping his demons. Here he was, standing in a place the Wild Poppy created, viewing the results of his handiwork that the Wild Poppy had rescued. Forget what Persis might do if she learned the truth about Justen. What he really had to concern himself with was that Noemi—and by extension, the brilliant spy she worked for—never learned that Justen had invented the Reduction drug. It was clear the spy was a man of action who wouldn’t rest until he’d righted all the wrongs happening in Galatea. The Poppy must be very clever and resourceful to secretly put all this together while his figurehead of a princess regent fooled around with creating fake romances between Justen and her favorite stylist. If Justen didn’t tread carefully, he might inadvertently reveal the truth and find himself the next target of the Wild Poppy’s activities.
But it was a risk Justen would have to take. He couldn’t abandon the victims he’d created, even if it meant putting himself in as much trouble as he’d been when he’d fled Galatea.