Page 155 of Blue Arrow Island
He uses his spindly arms to pick up his chair by the back, turning it so he’s facing me and then sitting back down. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m sure there’s a lot, and I’d love to know everything at some point when we aren’t on a tight schedule, but for now, I need to know more about how aromium is affecting me.” I shake my head. “I still can’t believe this, but somehow aromium has connected me to vines.”
A crease appears between his brows, his glasses perched low on his nose. “Vines? Can you tell me more?”
“At first, I didn’t even know I was doing it. When I felt strong emotions, like when someone was about to kill me, vines ... responded, I guess? They flew out of the jungle and wrapped themselves around the person trying to kill me, so she couldn’t do it. They saved me.”
Awareness dawns on his face. “You’re the first I know of to link with a plant. I wondered how that would work.”
I have so many questions; it seems impossible to narrow them down and keep this conversation succinct. “How many people have gotten the same strain I did? Marcus said he can call wolves and I can call vines because of the strains we were given.”
McClain looks at Marcus, whose expression is completely closed off.
“Well...” McClain shifts in his chair, frowning. “Are you sure you want to go into this right now, Briar? You may find it ... disturbing.”
“I want to know. Ideserveto know.”
He nods, his eyes meeting mine. “Tell me your full name.”
“Briar Hollis. Juniper, if you need my middle name.”
His eyes widen, what little color his cheeks have draining away.
“Hollis?” It’s almost a whisper. “Are you Lucy Hollis’s daughter?”
My heart thunders in my chest, pounding so hard and fast I’m a little lightheaded. “Yes.”
McClain’s shock unsettles me. I can’t even wait a few seconds to let him process it.
“Did you know her?” My voice breaks.
He pushes his glasses up on his nose, his expression turning sympathetic. “Yes. Lucy was an expert in her field. No one knew more about plant biology and pathology.”
“How did you know her?”
It’s all I can do not to jump out of my chair and shake him—I want to make him tell me everything he knows about her, right now.
“Soren Whitman hired me to assemble a team of the world’s greatest minds to figure out how to engineer a compound that improved upon human DNA. Your mother was one of those people.”
I stare at him, not breathing. It’s not true. My mother was a good person. She never would have been part of the experiments on this island.
“No.” Tears fill my eyes.
“You have to understand,” McClain says softly, “that we didn’t know what aromium would become. None of us had any idea. There were two teams, and I led the aromium one. We were told our work was for the betterment of humanity. We were in the dark, as was the other team. Most of the scientists on the other team had no idea they were actually creating the virus that would wipe out billions of people.”
My jaw drops, and I look at Marcus. His expression is stoic, unreadable. But his eyes swim with sympathy.
“The virus?” I can hardly even take a full breath. “You guys created it?”
“The other team did. But we all worked under the same roof. The team I assembled thought we were working for a billionaire who wanted to use his vast resources to genetically engineer cures for diseases.”
“But then ... how am I able to control vines just because my mother worked on the project?”
A second passes before he responds. “Because the team I assembled used their own DNA to create aromium. They, and their blood relatives, can do things no one else can with aromium.”
I have to put my feelings about this in an invisible box for now. I can’t break. After a deep breath, I steel myself.
“It’s started happening even when the aromium is off.”
