The Elementalists

Chapter 24

Kass

*Part 2*

'No.'

My brain can't handle it. Nothing makes sense. I don't want it to make sense.

Rai shakes his head, hard. 'So, all the people that have been relocated . . . turn into capsules? For Ra?'

'Not all of them.' Fina hangs her head. 'Some are sent elsewhere, otherwise Jinaka would have become suspicious. But relations with other planets aren't great—Vesta refuse refugees, and Lares only take a handful each year. Other planets take so long to get to, who knows how many survive. We're fed stories of our refugees' wealth and prosperity on Ra—but in reality, I doubt any of them last a year. Ra's atmosphere amplifies corruption; they probably don't even realise what's happening.'

'I don't believe you.' Rai's digging his nails into the back of his hand so hard, he's drawn blood. 'Jinaka wouldn't—be so stupid—surely someone—and anyway, how do you even know all this? Surely this Ares wouldn't have just told you all his secrets.'

'Denial won't help you.' Hayden frowns. 'Fina's telling the truth.'

'It's okay.' Fina puts a conciliatory hand on Hayden's arm. 'It's a lot to take in.' She sighs, hugging her knees to her chest. 'It was Hayden who first got suspicious. When Ares began to experiment on me, he told Jinaka it was just diagnostics, routine checks etc. Hayden got nervous. He knew enough from Zhal'n to recognise a diagnostic, and he could tell what Ares was doing was different.'

'What was Ares doing?' Although I ask, I'm not sure I want to know.

Fina screws up her face. 'Do you know how we were made?'

'Who?'

'Us. The Elementalists.'

'No. Why?'

'Because it's relevant. It's a rather sad story. It all started when a Ra scientist and his wife took in a young refugee from Tellus, giving the boy one of the first vaccines to survive. The boy grew up in the world of visinium, and soon realised he was destined for a fate worse than death. The scientist had begun experimenting to see what would happen if parasitic DNA was inserted into a human embryo. I don't know any more details but I know the facts: the boy stole the embryos. He escaped from Ra. He came back to Tellus and sold them to RESIST.

'Or rather, sold us to RESIST.'

Rai stands sharply, his blood-smeared hands pressed to his cheeks. I stay still, too stunned to even think.

'So, we're contaminated too?'

'No.' Fina purses her lips. 'The visinium is incorporated into our DNA. We're not corrupted, we're immune. That's why the vaccine doesn't affect us. It's not foreign to our systems. Instead we got abilities, our physical or ethereal powers. We use energy to manipulate the matter around us.

'But the scientist did his job too well. Ares needs to reverse a job too well done. When he realised that we can't now be contaminated . . . that left him with a problem. If we're immune, how does he control us?'

Bile rises. I fight the urge to retch. 'And he wants to control us. . ?'

'Of course.' Fina makes a noise of disgust. 'We belong to him. He wants us back. He believes, with some tweaks, he can turn us into gods.'

Liquid drips from the ceiling. With each plop, a second ticks. Each second that ticks hammers her words home.

'Both Hayden and I did a lot of digging. But in the end, when I confronted him, Ares was quite open about the whole thing. Told me I was one of them, and that soon, he'd bring me home.