Present

I was trying to think of what else I hadn't told her yet, but I was far too distracted by the icy glare she gave me whenever she accidentally met my eyes. I knew it wasn't on purpose. She wouldn't want to look at me. In the last two hours, she found out three things I had kept from her, all major and all impacted what we were doing.

I was working with Micah, had been since I got that video and found out Queen killed Jake.

I possibly knew the origin of the virus.

And MI6 was likely corrupt.

But there was still more. She didn't know Ciara worked at MI6, that I had been working with her for years. She didn't know that Ciara may have created the virus, theorised it at the very least. And she didn't know I was attempting to get Ciara and myself out of MI6.

We walked into the MI6 building; I got witness passes for Max and Jacques and we moved in, reaching my office before I messaged Ciara to meet me there, too.

"You can use my computer. Just be careful." I told Jacques, who sat down to do so. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket so I pulled it out and saw a message from Ciara.

I can't be bothered moving, paperwork.

"Max, you can stay with Jacques or you can come with me to get Dusk tested." I gave Max the option. I knew better than to tell her what to do.

"Beau, you are going to get on my nerves if you stay because you will talk." Jacques said. Max looked at me.

"I guess I'm going with you then." She said, her voice showing her annoyance while there was barely an expression on her face. I nodded and left the room, not completely focused on if she followed. I didn't know how she would react when she saw Ciara. It was either going to be okay and she would calm down when she realised why I hadn't told her who may have created the virus, or she would get even angrier at me because I had kept that from her as well.

I knocked on the door to the lab and it buzzed open. I pushed it open to walk in, Max following before the door shut and locked behind us.

"Jesus." Max said under her breath, looking around the expanse that was the general lab area. Six personnel worked in the main area, all specialising in different areas but all important to the work we did. Smaller labs came off the main area. Ciara had the biggest, since she was the head of the department. Ironically, coming up with the theorised viruses got her that promotion.

I walked straight to Ciara's lab and opened the door. There was nothing out of place in the clinically white room. There were scientists that created genius through mess, and then there was Ciara. Everything had a place, and it needed to be there for her to think clearly. Even when she was working, there were specific places for beakers and swabs and anything else she needed. She followed a system to get everything done, and it was fascinating to watch. But right now, she was at her computer, reading over reports and making sure there weren't any mistakes before she'd send them off.

"You better have brought me something useful, Esmond." Ciara said before she even turned around. When she did, she seemed to freeze on her chair. Her honey-brown eyes weren't locked on me. She focused on Max, who was standing next to me. I looked at Max, seeing her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Si?" Ciara asked as she stood up, and Max walked over to her and embraced her in a hug.

"Ci." I heard Max's voice whisper as Ciara hugged her back. Ciara's eyes were then on me.

"I would introduce you, but it seems you already know each other." I said, my voice showing no surprise at that fact.

"This isn't... this isn't good, is it?" Ciara asked as Max pulled away and I ended up having them both stare at me.

"You said I better have brought something useful. You didn't say it had to be good." Ciara's shoulders sagged as she put everything together.

"You have the drug, don't you?" She asked, and Max pulled the two tabs of Dusk out of her pocket.

"How long will it take to test?" Max asked. Ciara let out a slow breath as she took the baggie.

"Am I working out exactly what it is or just comparing it to..." Ciara couldn't even finish the sentence. Fuck, I hated seeing her like this.

"Compare, we need to work out if..." I trailed off as well. She knew what I was talking about and that there were most likely recording devices in this room.

"Right, give me a few minutes." She walked to her benches and pulled out what she needed to take the sample.

"When were you going to tell me about Ciara?" Max asked, her voice just above a whisper.

"Well, I didn't realise who she was until Queen killed Jake. She legally changed her last name before she started working here, so I didn't know, not until I showed her the video and she went into hysterics." I said also in a whisper. I didn't want to distract Ciara.

"She's so big now."

"Well, she is twenty-seven, and her family has the tall gene."

"Last time I saw her was when she was thirteen. She went off to university on her scholarship and she didn't look back."

"It's paid off. She started working here after getting her PhD at eighteen. She only became head of the department after I started targeting you."

"This is why you didn't tell me who made the virus."

"She only theorised it, only she and the Director ever saw it. They ordered her to theorise viruses that could destroy humankind because there were 'rumours' that a criminal was attempting to use a bio-weapon for something and we 'needed to prepare for the worst-case scenario'. Ciara is our best bio-chemist, so she theorised a synthetic virus that works like ophiocordyceps unilateralis."

"The zombie fungus that attacks ants, right?" Max asked.

"Yeah, the fungus takes over the body of the ant. It forces it to leave the nest, to attach itself to a leaf and spread spores over it's own colony to reproduce."

"I thought it attacked the brain..." Max trailed off.

"It doesn't. Essentially, it holds the ant hostage in it's own body. It's still in there, but it can't do anything to save itself as the fungus kills the neurons that control the ant's muscles and taken control for itself." I looked at Ciara, who was looking through her microscope.

"So Jake..."

"He might have been in there, just not in control of his body." I looked at Max, who had tears in her eyes. She didn't say anything else. She was thinking about what to do with the information I gave her. I also didn't know what to say, so I looked back at Ciara, who was hunched over the bench. Her forearms were flat on the surface, her head resting on top of her hands.

Fuck.

Shit.

No.

Ciara slowly stood up and turned around to look at us, walked over slowly with tears in her eyes as she tried to hold herself together.

"I..." She trailed off, looking at her hands. "I killed my brother."