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Chapter Twenty-Four

Trace

A meet up involving everyone might be risky, but it’s time our brothers knew the truth. All these lies and half-truths are not helping anyone. They think this was all Mr Z’s idea, and of course, he would want everyone to believe that.

Brennan, Kai, Creed, Chester, and I had a plan, albeit not a great one. It was all going as we had arranged until Mr Z found the location of Zircon—or Jolie, as she is now known. Damn facial recognition. Thankfully, Brennan convinced him he should wait until she finished high school to bring her back in, as her presence would cause a stir with the boys. I guess his impatience got the better of him; regardless, Brennan was ordered to bring her to the Myers sooner than we had planned.

“How do you think they will take the news?” Chester asks.

“My brother will probably lose it, and I am prepared for that, but it’s time we were all on the same page. Mr Z needs to go. This whole organisation could be so much better in the right hands.”

“Even in different hands, it will still be corrupt,” Chester remarks.

“You’re implying that we have a moral compass. I don’t give a shit what our jobs entail—I just don’t want our girl to be a damn pin cushion.”

I snort. “That’s rich, calling her our girl, Kai. She doesn’t remember any of you.”

“That may be true, but she is going to be super pissed. We also need to consider giving her back her memories...”

“And how do you propose we do that, Brennan? That shit is locked up tighter than a nun’s cunt, and only Mr Z can authorise such a thing,” Creed snarks.

“Not exactly.” I smirk. “Chester, care to explain?”

“Care to explain what?” Boston asks, walking into the room with our brothers following behind him, looking super pissed.

“Take a seat, boys. We have things to discuss.”

They all reluctantly do as they’re told, and my brother glares at me across the table, clearly still angry that I left and never contacted him. But the reality is we had to wait for the perfect time.

“It’s time you all knew the truth.”

Brennan has always been the one to talk, just like Boston. They have the gift of dealing with people. “We haven’t been honest with you.”

“No shit, Sherlock. You think we’re all fucking stupid?” Case snaps.

“I’m hurt that you think my skills are lacking. You forget that I’m the best at what I do, and Brennan sucks at lying,” Davis adds.

“We figured you would tell us soon enough or we would have tortured it out of you,” Boston remarks, and Laughn cracks up laughing. I can tell he is mentally picturing us tied up and being tortured.

“Can we get to the point?” Marlow interjects. “Jolie is busy trying on dresses, but she has tracking devices on our cars, so we don’t have much time.”

“Fine. I want you all to forget what you know or what Mr Z wants you to believe,” Brennan starts. “This was no test. Honestly, I’m surprised Trace wasn’t shot dead on sight.” He pauses, taking a moment to make eye contact with every member of Team Hades before continuing. “As you’re all aware, Team Zeus was the original team, except our female died at birth. Something went wrong with the genetic combination. What you don’t know is we are all from the same embryos, or each family is. Boston and I, while brothers, would technically be twins if we were implanted at the same time. Jolie and our female were essentially the same.”

Laughn stands and starts pacing the room like a lion caged at a zoo; he knows he isn’t going to like what is coming next.

“So, you what—took her for yourselves?” Case snaps.

“Not completely,” I admit. “While technically yes, we are all programmed to love her, something went wrong. But that isn’t why I ran with her.” I hand the floor back to Brennan before they all lose it, focusing on their dicks.

“Fuck,” Brennan swears—and he isn’t one to swear often. “I wanted to explain it better, but Chester found out that Mr Z wanted to continue to create more of us. He had no issues with continuing our lines, since our biological parents are all still alive. They have created enough embryos to make more of us and have enough research to recreate versions of us using these other embryos. The issue is that Jolie was the last remaining embryo, and as you probably suspect, Mr Z is her biological father. His wife died when she gave birth to Jolie.”

“So what? Why would you take her away from us?” Davis asks, looking straight at me.

“Mr Z plans to use her to create a new line. His wife was the reason behind him and his brother starting what Olympia is today. When his wife chose him over his brother, he cut his brother out of the business, and his wife soon found out she was pregnant with Mr Z’s first child. A daughter who also died at birth. Chester made friends with a young scientist who knew more than she should, and she even helped create the weed you all love to smoke. But when she let slip that Jolie was going to start some kind of new super drug, Chester came straight to us.”

“Why have we never been poked and prodded?” Laughn asks.

“That’s beside the point. Mr Z planned to remove her from you guys, anyway. He wanted her to vanish so you would become these monsters. Meanwhile, he was trying to find out why she survived and what went right so he could try to recreate that. All he had to do was wait for her to get her period. They have enough research on us, with two successful lines, and our breeding works just fine.”

“You’re telling us you all knew about this?” Boston spits out furiously, but Brennan simply nods and continues.

“We had to make it believable, and we wanted her safe until we were all strong enough to take down Mr Z. We have been working with his brother and we are so close. That’s why we now need your help.”

“And why is that?” Boston asks.

“Because we plan to give Jolie back her memories.” Their attention switches to me at my admission. “Chester’s friend had some new drug that could wipe someone’s memory. It was only in the testing phase back then, but she swore it was safe—and reversible.”

“What are we waiting for?” Case snaps. “Give her the antidote and everything will be okay.”

“We hit a roadblock just over a year ago. The scientist we had on our side died, and while Chester thinks he has recreated the serum, her replacement hasn’t been our biggest fan. With nobody to test it on, we don’t think it’s safe enough.” Brennan faces the white screen on the wall and a man tied to a chair fills the screen. “Let’s just say it wasn’t easy... but we think we have what we need.”

“I get it now. You had to tell us because you can’t risk this guy giving you false information, and the only way to know for sure is me.”

Me and my team all nod to Davis, affirming his thoughts. While truth serum is a possibility, it is only in the early days of production, and most of the kids, even without our superior genetics, can withstand it with training. Especially since they managed to create an antidote against truth serum, and all Olympia students and staff received booster shots.

“How the fuck do we tell her any of this? If we were decent people, we would kill Mr Z and make her leave,” Case says.

“That’s the problem, brother. We were not created to be decent people. Our only issue with all of this is what they plan to do with her. Use your brains—she is part of the DNA he needs, but where will the rest come from? How far do we let this go? Allow incest to create a line he perceives as perfect? He is one banana short of a bunch. If she is to be subjected to even a fraction of what we have been, then we decided she doesn’t deserve that.”

“Fuck,” Laughn booms, punching the wall behind him.

“Well, it looks like our time is up,” Chester laughs.

“You drugged them, didn’t you?” Brennan asks Chester, who just laughs again.

Boston, Case, Marlow, and Davis jump to their feet.

“Calm down, boys. It was just a little something to take the edge off. I know you would have caused a damn scene and not heard us out.”

“So where have you been for the last few years?” Davis asks me.

“I have been here. Once child services took Jolie, I got word that I was being followed. Brennan managed to find this old place, and I have been stuck inside these four walls until the day came that I had to be ‘found.’ Mr Z believes this was all his brother’s doing—the kidnapping, the fake death, and holding me captive until I managed to escape and call Brennan.”

“This just sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. Mr Z isn’t that stupid. Why not break her free from child services and run?”

“I can see why you’d think that, Marlow, but for the most part, Mr Z presumed his brother had me and Jolie. She went under the radar, and we planned to get her back as soon as all of this was over, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. Her being back is going to make it harder to keep him away. All he needs is a new damn scientist until Chester is trained to take over. He is waiting for her memories to come back, which he can’t synthetically achieve since the last scientist he could trust has vanished, along with his research.”

“Let’s get this straight because I’m so damn confused. You all love her like us. There are no more embryos left, and they want to use her to create more. Mr Z is obsessed with his dead wife’s DNA. You decided to fake her death and run away with her until you could find a way to kill the man who runs our entire organisation. Somehow, child services took her, and you went into hiding. You kidnap a scientist before getting yourself magically kidnapped and brought back here. Now you need Davis to interrogate said scientist. You plan for us to work alongside Mr Z’s mysterious brother, whom none of us have ever heard about. You can understand why we are a little thrown... it just sounds like you’re feeding us some bullshit story. If this is all above board, how about you answer some questions for Davis? Alone.”

“I’ll go first,” I say with no hesitation. We have tried to explain it the best we can. We never expected it would take this long to bring her back.

Ziyon, a.k.a. Mr Z’s brother, had promised he had the evidence to bring his brother down. What we didn’t expect is that every time he tried, he found another layer of corruption. In the end, we agreed that Mr Z has to die. Ziyon isn’t interested in recreating the DNA of his dead lover; he is happy to use the research and new DNA. He agrees it is weird wanting an army of soldiers using the same DNA.

We are in the final stages of our plan. Kai has been gathering intel on Mr Z’s movements for the last two years. He is always heavily guarded and never seems to go to the same places at the same times. No one knows his whereabouts until he arrives—the gala dinner being the exception. His wife started the funding to make the organisation what it is today, and her foundation still finances Olympia. Besides, people will believe whatever you tell them; they see a few kids do some fancy tricks, and they sign over their money like it’s chump change. All you need is a few corrupt assholes to throw some cash around and the rest will follow like sheep.

We wondered at first why Mr Z wouldn’t just kill off his brother, but Ziyon says it’s because he doesn’t see him as a threat. He just banished him from the woman he loved, then the business he helped create, and finally turned everyone against him.