“Not Danish. Canadian. Heidi worked for us—worked with me—until she quit about a year before the Danish firm sent two researchers up here. Apparently, she got a better offer. Funny that she wouldn’t just say so. Our firms were working together. Or so I thought. She obviously knew better.”
“So you came to Rockton,” I say to Heidi. “You and your new colleague joined the Second Settlement and quietly developed the stronger version of Hendricks’s teas. Then you took settlers into the wilderness to create your own cult.”
Her entire face contorts in a sneer. I knew it would. That’s the point. Make up something so insulting that she’ll rise to the bait.
“Cult? We were professionals. We were conducting research. Then the firm decided they were done with us. Time to come home, they said. Home? Yes, in a casket.”
Heidi turns to Émilie. “They did headhunt me away from you, but I thought I was just changing jobs. A new challenge. A new chance to make a name for myself. Then Georg told me the truth. If we failed, we lost our value as assets and became liabilities. They’d kill us. Kill us.” Her voice rises.
“And you believed him?” I say.
“No, I did not. I agreed, however, to run. To be careful. Our employers came after us. Tried to kill us. There was no doubt, then.”
“Georg was the other researcher,” I say. “Your partner. The man who died last year.”
A bitter laugh. “No, that was not Georg. We parted ways long ago. We divided our people.”
“He leads the other group.”
“Did. He died years ago. He was a fool. I should have known that. Only a fool would have taken that job knowing how it could end. A greedy fool.”
“When your research failed, you became a threat to—”
“We did not fail. We did as they asked. We created what they asked, and I perfected its use. You’ve seen my people. Soldiers who follow my orders without question. I gave that company what it wanted, and then I was stuck living with these … these creatures.”
It takes everything in me not to grab my gun and pistol-whip her. She created these “creatures,” and then she kept creating them long after the study ended. Kept them as her own private cult.
She might hate that word, but it’s true. She created a cult of half zombies who did her bidding, and at any time she could have stopped providing the narcotics and freed their minds. But she didn’t. She may not have been drinking as much as the others, but she’d become an addict in her own way. Addicted to the power of controlling lives.
“It’s all over now,” Émilie says. “I had nothing to do with what happened to you, and now that I know the truth, I can help you out of this. I’ll protect you. I’ll take you home.”
“Home?” Heidi’s voice rises with that fresh edge of hysteria, and as I look into her eyes, a shiver runs through me.
Here is the full answer for what I’m seeing. Yes, Heidi had been trapped in the wilderness, unable to go home. Yes, the power she discovered was addictive. But that doesn’t explain all of this. Madness does, and that is what I see in her eyes. Madness.
For years, the sheriffs of Rockton presumed the hostiles were simply people who’d reverted to a more primitive form. I’d dismissed that, but it is part of the answer. Heidi is not sane. She likely hasn’t met the legal definition of that word in a very long time.
She lost something out here. Lost or surrendered it. Dr. Moreau on her island, creating creatures to serve her, descending into madness.
“You think I can go home?” she says. “After all this? Pick up where I left off? My friends and family have long forgotten me. And look at me. Look. There is no going home.”
“Yes, there is. I can—”
Heidi lunges at Émilie, and I pull my gun, but Heidi’s rush is only a feint, cut short before Émilie can even stagger back. Heidi looks at my gun and instead of snarling at me to put it away, she smiles.
She smiles.
That wasn’t a feint. She wanted me to pull my gun. She wanted her people to see that and think she is under attack.
Dalton scrambles from the plane, shouting, “Get the hell over here, Casey!”
But nothing moves in the forest, and barely a heartbeat passes before Anders shouts, “Clear!”
“All of them?” I yell back.
“The three archers are in cuffs. There was another woman with a knife. She bolted.”
Heidi snarls, spinning on the forest. “Liar!”