“Hey.” I cut him off. “I’m not here to evaluate your girls. That’s your problem. They’re not on my list. What I’m here to tell you is—and you already know this—they’re not fine, Merc. They’re not fine because they are part Untouchable. They are me, Merc. They are Harper, they are James, they are Vincent, they are Santos, they are Adam. They are us. Well, half us. Who knows who the mothers were. The point is, Donovan—I mean, Carter. Fuck. Even I get confused about that shit. Carter, he’s got a crew, Merc. He’s been breeding little girls for his own personal Zero program for fifteen years now. They’re everywhere. But that’s not the point, either. The point is… the point is, Merc… girls like them, they don’t live long lives.”
Merc goes silent but Harrison is still with me. “But Sasha,” he says. “And Lauren.”
“And Harper.” Merc is nothing but predictable right now. I got him off his game because he falls right into the trap.
“Sasha isn’t from the Zero bloodline. Lauren isn’t either, because I’m not actually from the Zero bloodline either.” I point to my eyes. “Brown. They’re brown, not blue. My father wasn’t my father.” Merc looks completely confused. “I’m not the Admiral’s real son. None of us are the Admiral’s real children. He did this on purpose. Everyone knew this.”
“Not everyone,” Harrison says.
“He doesn’t count,” I tell Harrison, nodding my head to Merc. “What Merc knows never mattered. He was hired help. You think you know things, Merc, because you’ve got three little Company girls living in your house and tamed a Company girl once upon a time? But you don’t know shit about how my world works.”
Now he’s back. Pissed. “So fill me in. You’re what? Some kind of lesser evil because you’ve got brown eyes instead of blue?”
The laugh comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly what? Spell it out for me, Nick. I’m tired of this game you’re playing. And what does eye color have to do with anything, anyway?”
“Eye color has everything to do with it. Because those blue eyes, they come with a certain gene that helps control them. The girls?” I say. Because Merc already looks confused.
“Right. I get that part. But what about James? He doesn’t have blue eyes either.”
I point at Merc. “Good observation. No. James and Vincent do not have blue eyes. Same way I don’t. Or Harper and Santos. They did experiments on this in the Seventies. I don’t understand the science, so don’t ask me how they know this shit, but certain behaviors can be tied to the gene that expresses eye color. They did all the combinations. Blue, green, brown and… hazel.”
Merc shrugs. “OK. So? What happened?”
“Not much, actually. The blue eyes were desirable, obviously. Because in girls, at least, it toned down the insanity. Didn’t work that way for the men, that’s why the Company stopped breeding boys for the Zero program. What we have now, with these blue-eyed Zero girls, that’s as controllable as they come. With either careful or sloppy breeding they come out like Sasha. See, Sasha wasn’t a real Zero. She was a mix. Sloppy breeding saved Sasha. She and Lauren, they’re the only sloppy examples that I know of though.”
Merc doesn’t say anything, but I can hear all the questions in his mind. What about my girls? Were they carefully bred?
It’s Harrison who asks the question. “What’s this got to do with Daphne, Avery, and Lily?”
“Don’t forget baby Hannah,” I add. Because I need Merc to understand that he’s not alone in this. We’re on the same side.
Merc isn’t looking at me. He’s staring blankly at the curtains covering the hotel window. “Hannah, huh.” He looks at me. “What about Angelica?”
“She’s a real Zero. That’s why we were hunting her that year. She was very carefully bred. Like this Indie girl that Adam has. Like Wendy too.”
Merc’s eyes narrow down into slits. “Spit it out, Nick. What are you not saying?”
“I already told you. Your girls came from Carter Couture’s program. They were carefully bred, but not in the same way. Carter was looking for a more… pliable… version, I guess you’d call it.”
“Pliable, as in—”
“Easily manipulated.”
Merc lets out a breath. “OK. So that’s good, right? They’ve got the blue eyes and they’ve conformed. They don’t act out, Nick. They’re not like that. They’re good kids.”
I put up my hands again. “I’m not hunting your girls, Merc.”
“Then why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I think you and Carter Couture need to have a conversation about it. Or one day you might wake up to something very unexpected. You and I both know you’re gonna help Adam save Donovan. But just in case you get cold feet, I want you to know you’ve got something to lose if he dies as well. Now.” I pause to suck in a deep breath. “Where the fuck is Wendy?”