Page 50 of From the Noblest Motives
That made Damien look up, and his sudden movement caused the ladybug to fly away. They both watched her flight to the nearest honeysuckle vine. Safe. The parameters were universal, and the bitterness in Maia's tone was all too familiar to him, so he took a different route. "Do you like it here?"
She raised her chin, a defiant spark in her eyes. "I do."
This is not a frightened, coerced child. But if her home life is a nightmare, she's not a reliable witness, either. Damien would've been grateful to anyone who had taken him away from his uncle, regardless of their motives. "Thank you, Maia. If you could send up one of your friends next."
Because teenagers were teenagers, Maia skipped back down the stairs, then Danilo and Deshaun came up together. When they plunked down on the grass in front of Damien, he understood. Side by side, their features screamed that they were twins.
"You can ask us anything you want," Deshaun blurted out, as if he had to speak first or be unable to say what he needed to. "But we're not leaving."
Danilo nodded. "Cyril needs us here."
For a few moments, Damien let those words rest between them.Cyril needs us. Asking why Cyril needed them was the obvious opener, but not how he wanted to begin. "I find people. I don't coerce them into leaving."
"Really?" Deshaun blinked at him in obvious surprise. "Cyril said you worked for the government."
Danilo smacked his arm. "No, dumbass. He said Damien took contracts. It's not the same."
"It is if it's a contract for the feds!" Deshaun punched him back. "Dumbass."
"This was a Guild contract," Damien offered, hoping to head off a brawl. "You were the last four missing students. Everyone else had been found. Some went home. Some found places that were better for them."
"But you told people where they were, right? The Guild, their guardians, or whatever?" Deshaun's eyebrows scrunched.
"Not unless that's what they wanted."
The twins exchanged a look that in twin-speak most likely held paragraphs of information. Danilo finally said, "Okay. We're good, then."
Their story matched Maia's—though with a good deal more dramatic narration and gesticulation—of running from the train station instead of going to school after break, the black van, and Cyril coming to the rescue. They provided better details, though, confirming that the kidnappers had been from the Fredamine Project and that Cyril's skimmer was untraceable by any means. Apparently, the mu-metal coating had been the key to their trails becoming invisible to Damien's talent.
Damien took it all in, letting the pieces fit into place. "Don't feel obligated to answer, but what do you do?"
"We're locators." Danilo pointed back and forth between them. "Not like you, which would be so hype. But for things. Mine need some kind of emotional attachment. Deshaun finds machines."
"So no random lost buttons, then." Damien said it flatly, but both boys laughed. At some point, every locator had been asked to find a lost button to prove they were locators. "Maia?"
Deshaun's frown returned. "Maia's talent makes her jumpy. She's a current analyst."
Many years ago, the term had replaced empath, which was too vague. Damien realized his father must have renamed it in his revised variant-classification listing. They felt patterns of emotions and thoughts from people rather than being able to sift or pinpoint specific ones.
"And Hillary?"
"She's an illusionist." Danilo squirmed and bounced his leg. "She doesn't like using it. And it's hard."
Damien nodded, understanding quite well how difficult some talents could be. Though it didn't escape him that all four kids were psychoactive variants—that last classification group of extremely rare talents Cyril had identified in his revised taxonomy. "Thank you both. Please send Hillary up."
They scrambled away with the avian-awkward clumsiness of teenage boys. Hillary came up the stairs with considerably more grace, her expression serene as she settled on the grass. He didn't need her to repeat the story of how they got here, but he wasn't close to satisfied yet.
"Hillary," Damien hesitated, not certain what questions would cause her to shut down. "The first room in the basement—what happens there?"
"Oh, the experiment room?" Hillary laughed, mischief in her smile. "You don't need to be so careful about asking. No deep, dark secrets."
"It's very similar to the labs at the Fredamine project."
Her smile vanished and she nodded. "I heard about that. Glad we didn't get dragged there. But no, Cyril's not interested in how to harness variant genetics or powers or whatever horrible thing they were doing there. He wants to know how it works. How all of us work, including him. Brainwave scans. Blood draws. That's all we do in there, and it's all volunteer."
Cyril needs us. "Is it the only thing you do here?"
"No, oh no." The smile and the sparkle in her eyes returned. "Most of the time, we're busy being secret cyber agents. Messing with the Human Firsters."
