Page 91 of Siege of Shadows

“Seven days. Giving a timeline only ramps up global hysteria, fear, and anger. Anger at the Sect.” He looked at me with worried eyes. “At you.”

Belle clicked off her phone. “The top officials from the Sect are already planning on conferencing with the world’s leaders. But many of them are refusing to meet. They’re furious.”

“We should have done something.” Chae Rin gripped her knees, her chin pressed against them. Then, lifting her head, she glared at Belle. “We should havedonesomething.”

“Done what?” Belle shot back. “We couldn’t do anything from where we were.”

“Exactly!” Chae Rin jumped to her feet, staying rooted to the spot only because her sister had climbed up after her and grabbed her arm to calm her. “We’reEffigies, damn it. We’re supposed to be out therefighting, not playing dress-up like clowns on TV. We’re not supposed to be looking pretty. We’re supposed to be making people feelsafe. That’s what I...” She looked back at her sister before lowering her head. “Saul told the world he was an Effigy. I can’t even imagine what my parents think right now. What must be going through their heads.”

“I’m sure they’re all right,” Ha Rin said. “Well...” She paused.

Chae Rin became anxious, her lips parting as she looked back at her sister. “Well, what?”

“No,” Ha Rin said. “It’s nothing. I—”

“They’re slaughtering us out there and there’s barely anything my agent and my marketing team can even do about it.” Lake groaned, pressing her phone against her head as she walked over to the table. “What the hell are we supposed to do? How do we get Saul?”

“Brendan wants us to return to the London facility immediately,” said Belle.

“No!” Uncle Nathan stepped forward, waving his hand in protest. “No, no, no. Don’t do that. Trust me.”

“Why?” I asked.

He answered by pulling up a chair, plunking himself down, and lifting up his laptop screen. “Uh,” he said, turning to peek over at Ha Rin. “This is kind of sensitive.”

Chae Rin sat up quickly and tapped her sister’s shoulder, taking the hint. “Unnie, I’m glad you’re here, but, uh, I hope you don’t mind.” And she pressed her hands over her sister’s ears. “It’s for your own protection.”

“Okay.” Ha Rin let out an incredulous laugh as her sister kept her head facing forward. “This isn’t weird at all.”

I came around Uncle Nathan’s shoulder as he plugged in the flash drive. “Did you find something?” Belle and Lake gathered around me.

“I’ve only been able to get through the first few layers of defense on this thing,” Uncle Nathan said. A series ofclicks on his keyboard brought up a black screen, but soon several dark, metallic-green letters appeared at the top left-hand corner.

Project X19.

Four large square icons materialized in a line, filling up the entire screen. Computer files. And each icon came with a label underneath.

Phase I: Research

Phase II: Silent Children Program

Phase III: Minerva

Phase IV: Consolidation

“?‘Project X19.’?” I stared at the cursor blinking next to the last number.

“What is that?” Lake asked, leaning over my shoulder. “What are those files?”

“I don’t know.” Uncle Nathan clicked on the first icon, an error screen appeared, and the screen blinked off. “That keeps happening.”

“The Silent Children Program.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember Jessie’s frenzied babbling as we rushed through Blackwell’s courtyard. “Silent... yeah. That’s what she called herself back then. Jessie. She said Grunewald put devices in all the ‘silent kids.’?”

“I told you before about firms that have been trying to reproduce Effigy-like abilities. And you told me about the nanotechnology detected in that dead soldier, Philip. Creating empowered soldiers.” Uncle Nathan tapped his fingers on the surface of his laptop, his expression grim. “Looks like Phase II was successful.”

“But there’s more,” I said, my pulse quickening at the thought. “More phases. What’s Phase III? What’s Minerva? Do I even want to know?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I do know that X19 was part of a code of communications between city defense control centers, like the one I work at, and the Sect. The APD technology was originally developed and fronted by Sect research, and if there were any issues, the communication between the two bodies would usually be encrypted to protect sensitive information. X19 is like a kind of Sect signature.”

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