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She frowned. That was the second time she'd thought
about the day her mother died. It felt like she'd lost both
parents.
She couldn't look at Kai. It was too hard to see his closed
expression, to be separated from him by something she had
no control over. She couldn't change how Kai felt any more
than she could change the man her father really was. He
wouldn't be interested in why that was significant and she
didn't want to talk about it. Not yet.
"What is the information you have?"
Kai sounded impatient and she couldn't blame him. She
was making this whole thing more difficult than it needed to
be. "His plan. What's already been enacted. What is in the
process of happening. What he plans next."
"What do you mean 'his plan'?"
She turned to face him and looked up at him. If he couldn't
stand her, so what? She hadn't changed. She still had
something she had to do, she was going to do it, and now he
was part of it.
"President Galaran's plan to commit genocide. Not once or
twice but millions of times. He wants every non-human
species in the universe destroyed." She watched his
expression closely but he gave nothing away, damn him.
"He wrote this information down?"
Her teeth clenched at his disbelieving tone. "Yes. He wrote
it down."
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"And he left it where you could find it?"
Her hands clenched into fists and she glared at him. "No.
He didn't just leave it lying around where I could find it. It
was in his most secure safe in the most secure building in the
command city on Blainon."
"How did you get to it?"
She consciously uncurled her fingers. Of course he would
have questions. Who wouldn't? It was only making her
stomach burn to get upset about it.
"With a lot of help and my father's trust."
"And he would kill you to get it back?"
She smiled, the expression bitter. Would Galaran kill her?
"Without hesitation."
"Your father would murder his own child?"
She wrapped her arms around her middle again. "Why
not? He's killed his children before." Every time she thought
about it she felt cold and she didn't like it.
Kai's eyes narrowed. "Explain that."
"My mother wasn't his first wife. His first wife was Novian.
He married her to gain her father's vote to help get himself
elected to the president's inter-planetary council. Once he
was a firmly established member of the council he had his
wife and newborn son killed and cast the blame on the Caln."
She shuddered. It was still almost impossible to believe. He'd
killed his perfect baby boy. How could he do that? Even if the
boy had been half-Novian he had still been Galaran's son.
She swallowed hard against the bile that rose in her
throat.
"Where is this information?"
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"I have it."
"Give it to me."
She shook her head.
Kai grabbed her arms. "The information you have, if it's
real, is what we've been waiting for. With that information we
can unify the resistance against Galaran."
"That's what I want. It's why I stole the information and
risked my life to get it out. Now, I have to get to the Mriln."
"You don't need to go to the Mriln. Give me the
information."
"You think I'm just carrying around a nanochip? Galaran,"
she couldn't call him father, "doesn't trust anyone. He trusted
me in his office but that was it. No one enters or leaves his
office or even his presence without being scanned to their
bones. There is no way to sneak physical evidence past him."
Kai's grip loosened on her arms. "How did you do it?"
"The Mriln are ingenious. They can code information into a
virus and attach it to your very DNA." A shiver chased down
her spine. It sounded so easy.
Kai's hands tightened again. "How is this coding done?"
All the blood drained from her head. She felt dizzy and
disoriented as time seemed to reverse. Suddenly she was
back in her private suite, awake and watching her heart beat
in her chest as a Mriln doctor injected a virus into the cells of
her heart. Each individual virus held information from her
father's files encoded on its DNA.
"Explain."
She told him exactly what had happened. "It was the only
way to get the information out."
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"Someone else could "
"No," she shook her head, "they couldn't. My father trusts
no one. It took me months to gain access to his files."
"The Mriln inserted the virus. They can take it out?"
She nodded but couldn't keep eye contact with him.
He shook her and not gently. "What aren't you telling me?"
"I've told you everything I know." She tried to pull away
but he wouldn't let her go.
"This extraction process. How difficult is it?"
"I don't know." There had never been a successful live
extraction, but she wasn't going to tell him that. Not that he
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