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There’d always be video out there, written materials, audio files, even a few organic machines. That didn’t even get into thebiological remnants of the seer and vampire dead, which were likely scattered in unmarked graves across every continent of the world.

Not everyone would forget, either.

But Charles had laid the groundwork already, mostly be destroying or cutting off any human labs that had begun looking into either vampires or seers or both. He’d done a lot of the work erasing top scientists working on such projects, destroying bio-matter and collecting and hoarding technology related to suppressing seer or vampire powers.

Enough was gone now that they could contain it.

They’d already spun all the highly-publicized stories as a massive global hoax.

Itsoundedcrazy.

To the average human, the truth sounded completely nuts.

Black and his people were definitely using that, and would continue to use it.

Making people feel foolish for even asking the question was a surprisingly powerful tool, and shut ninety percent of the inquiries down. It was also the path of least resistance. They went with the most obvious, believable spin in their (very expensive) media and online blitzkrieg to suppress the damage the last few years had done: a highly-elaborate and well-coordinated hoax by hostile foreign powers trying to destabilize the U.S.A.

It worked beyond Black’s wildest hopes. For the first time, he truly understood how easy it was to fool people who desperatelywantedto be fooled.

No one wanted to believe that crazy, terrifying shit.

No one wanted to hear that human beings might not be the smartest, strongest, most aw-inspiring, and most dangerous species on Earth.

Black used a good chunk of his accumulated wealth to give the human race a compelling reason to breathe a big, collective sigh of relief that none of it had been true after all. He had his seers work overtime to erase prominent media personages, and, perhaps more importantly, to give them a new story to tell… an easier, more digestible story.

A much more comforting story.

He had his people do the same with important people in the military, government, and scientific communities. He even tweaked the story of some conspiracy theorists, online influencers, and podcasters with big followings.

All of them had been singing some variation of the same tune for months now.

As they did, the rest of the human world gradually calmed the fuck down.

Important people were telling them everything was all right. Important people assured them everything they’d feared was all bullshit.

The sheer weight of that consensus made it far, far easier for the vast majority of them to ignore evidence that might have a bit more heft to it.

Luckily, every big, public incident with the dragons and Charles and the vampires occurred in the United States. The ground they’d had to cover in terms of actual, in-person witnesses was smaller than it might have been, as a result.

Black had been questioned, of course.

He still had enough contacts at the Pentagon that he’d been able to spin himself as a kind of innocent bystander of the whole thing––the focus of a conspiracy theory that got completely out of hand once foreign agents began intentionally amplifying the hysteria. He cooperated fully, erased and modified memories the whole time he was under interrogation, and walked out of there with a whistle on his lips and a spring in his step.

The biggest hurdle had been hunting down all of Charles’ genetics labs.

Charles had been much better at hiding things than his human counterparts.

Last time Black talked to Manny, he got an estimate of four to six months to complete their sweep. They’d been all over the world, tracking down those sites. Most recently, the team had been in Hawaii, making sure they’d removed all trace of everything that went down there. From what Manny said, they’d be heading to the Mexican desert next, then a potential lab site in Ukraine.

It wasn’t a small job.

It might never be finished entirely.

So maybe that explained it, Black thought.

Maybe that’s why he still didn’t feel quite relaxed and at peace in his new digs. Maybe that’s why he didn’t feel wholly at ease about returning to work.

He was waiting for it all to be finished.