And then I get it. They don’t have any idea who trashed the lab or who killed Veronique. Despite Janine’s assurances, they’ve come up empty, and somehow they think that I can help. “You want me to spy on Drew and his friends?”
“ ‘Spy’ seems a little heavy-handed,” Christophe offers. “We prefer to look at it as observing with a goal.”
I stare at him. “Call it whatever you want, I’m not sure I can spy on anyone, or that it’s going to help you at all.”
Janine leans forward. “Griffon says that when you connected with Rayne, you were able to go much deeper than before.” She watches my face, gauging my reaction to her words. “That you were able to actually see images rather than just feel emotions.”
I nod. “I did. For a few seconds. But I have no idea how. And it made me feel really sick.” I can see an exchange of glances around the room.
“Telempathy is a skill that so far exists only in legends and rumors,” Sue says. “To be able to master it would be something immensely valuable to the Sekhem.”
I remember the feeling of weakness and nausea after I made contact with Rayne. “I’m not in a big hurry to try it again.”
Sue holds up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No one is asking you to,” she says. “None of us expect you to go that deeply at the Khered gathering. Just poke around a little, see if you can get any information from casual contact with the other guests. We need to find out who did this, and every minute that goes by puts everyone in more and more danger,” Sue says. Her mouth is set into a grim line, and I can feel the intensity in her gaze. “Anything you can give us is valuable at this point.”
“But they killed Veronique,” I say. “So she won’t be able to do something like this again. The worst of it’s over, right?”
I see wary glances flit across the room. “Not exactly,” Janine says.
Christophe clears his throat. “We have reason to believe that they didn’t go to the lab looking for Veronique. Someone got word of what she had been working on and went to get the formula. Veronique was just collateral damage.”
“When we searched the lab after the break-in,” Sue says, “we found evidence that files and samples had been taken. Which ordinarily wouldn’t be of too much concern; ergot fungus in its standard form isn’t going to do much damage. Even if it were spread as an epidemic, once it’s identified, it’s fairly easily treated, as you’ve been able to see. But Veronique was able to somehow synthesize a totally unknown form of ergot, one that has the capabilities of transforming the very essence of a person. As you’ve discovered, Veronique’s research did what nobody through time has been able to do—to create an Akhet from an ordinary Khem.”
“But how is that a threat?” I ask. “I suppose I get why some people would choose to be Akhet—the kind of immortality it brings. But I don’t see the harm.”
Janine smiles. “And I love that you don’t see it.”
“The harm is that the people who now have this knowledge in their possession aren’t good people,” Sue says. “And if you give the formula to the worst of the worst Khem, you can create a group of Akhet who exist not to help the world, but to destroy it in pursuit of their own fortune and power. A group who will get stronger and smarter with each passing lifetime, who will use that immortality to take risks like the world has never seen before.”
Janine leans forward. “Worse than any single rogue Akhet out to settle a score.” I can tell by the way she’s looking at me that she’s thinking of Veronique. “Imagine a Kim Jong-un or a Charles Manson who was given the formula. Think about what they could do with Akhet abilities and memory.” She’s silent for a moment. “Now think about hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Think about what that could do to the balance of world power in a very short time. Think of how much money that knowledge would be worth.”
I’m silent. In a few sentences, this has gone from being something personal with Rayne to having implications far beyond this lifetime. “So what can I do?”
“We think that there were Akhet involved, either people who knew Veronique or who heard about her work through others,” Janine says. “And we think it’s someone with ties to San Francisco, because they were able to get to the lab quickly and seem to know the area.”
“And you think that Khered are immoral enough to pull off something like this?”
I see glances shift around the room again. “Not all Khered,” Eric volunteers. “But the perpetrators are more likely to be Khered than Sekhem.”
“But what would they be doing at Drew’s party?”
“From what we can tell, it’s going to be one of the largest gatherings of Khered in recent weeks,” Sue says. “Not just local Khered, but Akhet from all over the world. And our intelligence has picked up a lot more activity in and around the city in the past few days.”
“We think that whoever was in charge of the break-in at the lab is still local,” Janine says. “We can only hope that they won’t be able to pass up a chance to make some more widespread connections, maybe make some under-the-table deals.”
“And you already have an introduction into that world,” Sue says.
“All we’re asking is that you go to the party and see if you can use your skills to find out if anyone has some inside knowledge of the break-in at the lab, or if anyone has been talking about it who might have more information than is available to ordinary Akhet,” Christophe says.
“We’re not even asking you to make deep contact with the others,” Janine says. “Griffon told me how much it took out of you when you did it with Rayne, and we don’t want you in any danger.”
“We will have some security for you,” Sue says. “Another Sekhem who has ties to the Khered world will be there to make sure nothing happens. She’s one of our top security people, so you don’t have to worry.”
“Why do I need security?”
“Probably you don’t,” Janine says. “But if the people involved in this are at the party and they figure out you’re reading them . . . they might not be too happy about it. Giselle is just a safety net that hopefully we won’t need.”
“Giselle?”
“She’s part of our security team—I think you met her.” Janine says. “She’s one of Griffon’s colleagues.”
Suddenly I’m a little less confident. “I met her,” I confirm. “If Giselle, Christophe, and Tetsuro are supposed to be working on the fuel cell lab, why are they involved in this?”
“Because they’re local now,” Sue says. “And they’re valuable members of the Sekhem.” She glances toward the window. “And Griffon trusts them, which is no small thing. We need to keep this incident as quiet as possible.”
“So you guys are it?” I ask. I look around the room. I don’t know how to put this, but they don’t seem like they can take down a group of rogue Akhet.
Janine grins like she knows what I’m thinking. “No. We’re just the Sekhem you’re going to deal with directly. There are many more sections in place that you don’t need to worry about.”
Everyone waits for me to say something else, to tell them that I’ll go along with the plan. Despite what they’ve said, I’m not really worried about my safety, although I wish the security detail could be someone else. It’s just that the whole thing feels like a betrayal. As much as I don’t want to be with Drew, not the way that Griffon thinks, I feel like going to his party to serve the Sekhem’s agenda is wrong. I look up at Griffon, who’s staring out the window.
“You’re awfully quiet,” I say to him.