At the Jejune blacksite, days came and went, which was significant for a few reasons.

  For one, it gave the construction teams enough time to set up their supplies and begin work on permanent structures.

  The encampment of tents had only ever been a temporary measure. The Republic being spared the effort of having to take them down would have actually been commendable if it hadn’t come at the cost of a battalion’s disappearance.

  On that front, the investigation into their fate was still ongoing, which had also progressed over the passage of days. This was no mere murder investigation after all. For those looking into the fate of over a thousand members of the Republic’s military, it would take far more than forty-eight hours for them to give up.

  The final event of significance that had come with the flow of time was the situation around the Herald’s study. For many, their roles had been changed completely.

  Just as The Professor had ordered, more hands had been called onto the deck, and they were set to arrive sometime later in the day.

  Meanwhile Odette was using the few minutes of break after lunch, typically reserved for most to smoke, to withdraw to the camp’s communication scaffolding.

  The tent the battalion had used for radio transmissions had been one of the few left untouched by the fires, and the construction crews had kept it standing while they built the framing around it for the same purpose.

  Odette’s entrance was at once blocked by a figure wearing a pointed cap. He was a high-ranking official from the Republic’s intelligence agency, who quickly looked her over before nodding her along. Odette lingered before the entrance just a little longer than she needed to, however, staring at the two dark orbs under the man’s cap.

  “Is my call going through today?”

  “...”

  The official’s expression barely changed, instead repeating his motion for Odette to enter. She shook her head and entered.

  In the tent, she came up behind one of the communication stations and tapped the operator sitting there on the shoulder, who looked back and gave a wordless nod.

  Odette had come here every day since it had been set up by logistics. Despite having received no response so far, she kept trying anyway. By now the operators all knew well who she was.

  Bringing the auditory receiver to her ear, she spoke into the radio’s transmitter.

  “Lukas…?”

  “...bzrt…wait one second…”

  Odette frowned as she heard the familiar voice of a radio-line operator on the other end instead of her brother, but there was nothing she could do but wait to be connected as they said.

  Maybe this time…

  After a few moments her prayer was finally answered.

  “Od—older sister?”

  “Yes! Lukas, can you hear me?”

  Odette practically burst into tears at the sound of a young boy’s voice over the line. How long had it been since she last heard that childish rasp? How long since they had last spoken?

  “Yes sister, I can hear you.”

  Odette’s eyes moistened as she cradled the transmitter in her lap.

  “That’s wonderful. How are you feeling, Lukas? How have the treatments been going?”

  She heard a few coughs on the other line, but that in itself was actually a good sign. If he was able to cough, that meant his body was possibly recognizing the illness properly.

  “They’re going okay. The Doctor said that the sickness has moved to my chest, but they keep giving me pills anyway! They were for my tummy, but that doesn’t hurt anymore! Sister please talk to them, the pills they make me take are so bitter!”

  Odette’s face softened. Glancing around the room she turned away from the radio operators.

  “Is that Doctor Drue you’re talking about?”

  “Mmm, yeah.”

  “If that’s the case you better listen instead of complaining! He was a good friend of mom’s, you know! If there’s a way for you to get better, I know he’ll find it. But for now just be a good boy and listen to him. Can you do that for me, Lukas?”

  There was silence over the line, Lukas was probably making a cheeky face as Odette knew from experience, but he responded before long.

  “Okay. I’ll do it for you, big sister.”

  “Thank you Lukas, you’re very strong, you know that? Now…oh, I’m being told that’s all the time I have, but I promise I’ll try to reach you tomorrow, okay?”

  “...”

  “Okay? Lukas?”

  Odette pressed the receiver closer against her ear, but the buzzing sound followed by a click let her know they had been disconnected.

  Despite her disappointment, she kept it in check as she handed the device back to the operator. Looking back to the tent’s entrance, she walked over to the man standing there who had cut her call short.

  “Professor? Is there something wrong?”

  “Smoke breaks over. I came to collect you so we can prepare things for our arriving colleagues.”

  Odette nodded despite her frustration.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She was still reliant on Caleb’s recommendation to advance her career, after all. Even then, far more things than just her ambitions were counting on her to keep earning money. She had long been responsible for the care of her brother, nearly half a world away now in the best hospital she could find.

  A center for care outside of the Republic, which had incurred its own numerous lists of debts she was working to pay for.

  That was why she wanted to be here, though she hadn’t said as much to Caleb. As far she knew, only Sam knew of her deal.

  “I understand. Shall we check on the eleventh round biopsy results, then?”

  “No, I have a better idea. New equipment arrived yesterday for further tests. I took the liberty of setting it up ahead of time.”

  That made Odette crook a brow. The Professor had set something up in advance? Since when?

  Not once since they had first seen the specimen had he taken charge in a matter like this. In fact he had almost exclusively been shoveling off the work onto Odette.

  That was confusing in itself, but their close proximity brought up another matter to Odette that she happened to find a good time to verbalize.

  “I see. But in regards to another matter Professor, I actually had a question given our preparations for the arriving experts.”

  “Oh? Shoot.”

  He seemed to be in a good mood this morning. Odd.

  “I was wondering why the camp’s infrastructure is continuing to be used despite the specimen’s apparent size and weight. It occurred to me that the Republic could have swiftly extricated its forces from the desert and moved the project to one of the secure laboratory sites, but instead we’ve continued to invest resources into building a new site in the desert. Given the inherent hazards of the Jejune with several mutant territories running through it, and our exposure to the elements, it doesn’t seem efficient to continue operating here. Am I missing something?”

  Odette finished just as they arrived in front of an unfamiliar tent. Looking at the clean, untouched canvas of it, Odette knew for certain it hadn’t been here originally. In fact she didn’t even remember it being here the day prior.

  Her senior scratched his chin while they entered. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the floodlights in the tent, but when they did Odette realized there was something familiar about the equipment, however she hadn’t seen any of it at IDS.

  That was when the Professor, and a Senior Researcher of their department, spoke.

  “It's a question that has been circulating around the site quite a bit lately. But the answer boils down to one word. Acknowledgement.”

  “Acknowledgement? As in policy or diplomacy?”

  Finally, the Professor’s derisive smirk that Odette had grown used to in the past few days returned.

  “Neither. As in the willingness of the act itself. The Silver Republic is a large state, a goliath on the global scale. Were it not for the emergence of a critical technological resource, this status would have remained unchallenged for another hundred years. Yet as you, and every citizen knows, our hegemony is currently being challenged by the Ambers.”

  Odette nodded. So far this was all common knowledge.

  “And as I’ve been informed of recently, those very Ambers have just learned of our little situation here. In time, they will share it with the rest of the world like they often do, and we will be faced with a storm of inquiry.”

  That took Odette aback. They had already been exposed? No, what was more important was the implication of that statement.

  Had the professor been informed recently, or had it been last night?

  Suddenly, certain things began to make sense to Odette. The new equipment setup, the professor’s new attitude, the mystique of the incoming research team. These were undercurrents of subterfuge, not scientific progress as she had thought.

  “So I speak of acknowledgement, for that is our chief power among powers here. As an influential man once said to me, ‘The basis of our power is the perception of our power.’”

  The Professor spared a glance during his lecture like he expected her to know the quote. She didn’t.

  “We cannot afford to scram from the desert like a scavenger dog dragging a kill back to its lair. No! Does the tiger leave the mountaintop for the sake of the mouse? Does the shape of an antler frighten the leopard? Does a shark seek refuge from a school of fish, no matter if its ten or ten thousand? No. The Republic too, is an apex predator, and we do our business in the open. Let the Principality and its laboring minions be the ones to peer through the shutters of their windows, cowing at each and every one of our movements.”

  The Professor finished in a series of militant gestures, with zeal unlike anything he had displayed before Odette so far.

  In truth, Odette was starting to feel sickened. The Professor’s spontaneous performative speech might have been seen as rousing to some, but with a speculative mind she could understand its insinuations.

  Odette had thought this to be a research mission, but perhaps the reason why she, a relatively inexperienced biological analyst and engineer had been chosen, was for her assumed naivete.

  If she hadn’t guessed before, the Professor’s speech made it clear now, this mission wasn’t a step forward in their nation’s understanding of science, but a political masquerade.

  “I understand. Thank you for explaining this to me, Professor.”

  “Good, now wait here while I welcome our friends from the SCR.”

  Odette had been told a team would arrive today, and apparently that time had come now. But that last bit caught her off guard.

  “I’m sorry Professor, did you say the SCR, as in the Special Creature Research Department? I was under the assumption our support would be from IDS’s internal research staff?”

  Caleb, who was already more than half a step outside the tent, quickly shot back an uncaring response before leaving.

  “Ah no, you made the call to IDS, but I later figured that it was in the best interest of the project that SCR be involved instead.”

  “Did the Director believe so as well?”

  Caleb made a dangerous face. However due to the context, Odette couldn’t be faulted for anything like insubordination, as it was an odd change in policy.

  “That’s right, she did. Now, I need you to put aside any judgements you may have of SCR, even if they’re from a different department I don’t want to hear later that my assistant is on bad terms with them, alright?”

  Odette hesitantly nodded before watching the Professor leave.

  That’s when she realized why the equipment around her hadn’t looked familiar at first.

  She had only seen it once in her time in the advisory program, before she had joined IDS.

  In those days she had been exposed to equipment from many different fields, though since she had only limited interaction with much of it, it had taken some time to remember.

  She recognized it now though. Blood distillers, a cellular condenser, tissue igniters.

  This was equipment from another field of science, the very one SCR specialized in. None of it was suited to what their mission was supposed to be here, the presence of SCR most concerning of all. Their department may have had some overlap with IDS on paper, but their focuses were entirely different in reality.

  Whereas IDS searched for civilian-life applications in mutant beast biology, SCR was a privately-funded organization that had only merged into the Republic’s bureaucracy a few years ago.

  They were entirely focused on producing marketable applications of mutant-beast technology, and the market that was the most profitable to sell such tech to was the military.

  In other words, they made weapons from the worst abominations of muscle and bone the world had to offer, and they had recently gained a level of political clout very few organizations had.

  They weren’t supposed to be at this site. At least not according to the briefing Odette had been given. Yet Caleb said that Sam had agreed to it, which meant that someone higher had as well.

  Something was happening behind the scenes. The burning feeling in Odette’s chest returned.

  “This is a fucking circus.”