By the time they reached the California coast, Ivy and Victoria had thrown their snow gear in a pile on the floor of the jetchopper. Spencer landed on the deck of the Fortuna, and Ivy slid open the door, grateful for the warmth of the sun.
She knew it had been a bad idea for them to get their hopes up, but she'd really expected they would find Claire at Capricorn. Or at least something that would lead them to her.
The four of them crossed the deck where Supers were training. Tyler spotted them and gave a wave. Victoria half-heartedly returned the gesture, while Ivy looked away. She was still struggling with trusting Tyler. After all, Tyler hadn't trusted them with the fact Ash was her brother. And while Ivy couldn't entirely blame her for that—it was understandable—it made her wonder if Tyler had other secrets.
Dr. Newman was waiting for them in the labs. Spencer gave a brief report of the mission and handed him the piece of metal Ivy had pulled from the robot.
"I'm sorry Claire wasn't there," Dr. Newman said. "Though it is strange that the place was abandoned. I wonder what the robot was being kept there for." He examined the metal.
"Our powers didn't work on it," Ivy said. "My fire and Spencer's ice didn't affect it at all."
"It felt like it was repelling us," Spencer added. "I had less control over my ice the closer it got."
Dr. Newman reached into his pocket and pulled something out: the hunk of metal Ivy had taken from John when they ran into him at Scorpion headquarters. "That confirms the theory our chemists had."
"It's the same thing?" Ivy asked.
Dr. Newman nodded. "It's alterium."
"You mean the stuff they tried to make at Tyche Labs twelve years ago?" Spencer asked.
"The stuff they did make at Tyche Labs. But when they synthesized it, it caused the explosion that killed most people in the area."
"Wait," Victoria piped up. "I thought we weren't sure if they made it or not."
"Claudia mentioned something in that log we found when we went to the labs," Ivy said. "She was pretty sure they were successful."
"Yes, but she wasn't positive," Dr. Newman said. "I wasn't either, until we found this in the information taken from Scorpion." He opened up a laptop sitting on the table next to him. "We're still combing through a lot of the data, but the techs found some journal entries. It looks like they were written by Claudia after she arrived at Scorpion. She details how she met a man named Andrew Hale, the leader of both Zodiac and Scorpion at the time. The organization was much smaller back then.
"After arriving, she was assigned to work with John, the Overseer of Cancer. She spoke with him about the Cladis Point incident. Although none of the surviving scientists worked with alterium—they were all on the Serum-P project—John said he had a few contacts who were also trying to create alterium. They'd done similar experiments and come to the conclusion that the metal couldn't exist in our atmosphere in its pure state. It would cause an explosive reaction."
"Why did serum keep us from dying?" Spencer asked. "And why was the damage so...random?"
Dr. Newman sighed. "I can't say for sure. We still don't know what was in the serum, but it must have also had some kind of unique chemical relationship with alterium. I think they might repel each other in some sort of way, which is why the metal is resistant to your abilities. A Super's presence could have had an effect on the damage the blast from alterium caused."
Ivy reached out to pick up the smaller chunk of alterium. Holding it made her slightly uncomfortable, like her body was trying to push it away. "If it's too unstable to synthesize, how did they get this?" she asked.
"I had a friend at a lab in California analyze it. It's not in its pure form. It looks like they added other elements during the synthesization process to make it stable. But it's still mostly alterium.
"A few members of my team do have an interesting theory, though," Dr. Newman continued. "They think another metal, with similar properties to Serum-P, could exist that negates alterium's effects on you. They're calling it anti-alterium."
"Was there anything else interesting in Claudia's journal?" Ivy asked.
"Maybe something about where they might be keeping Claire?" Victoria added.
Dr. Newman shook his head. "Unfortunately, most of it is encoded. We haven't even begun to figure out how to decipher it. But, I do have an idea of where we should look for Claire next." His expression was grim as he pulled something up on the laptop and turned it to face them. A diagram, similar to the one they'd seen at Scorpion, filled the screen.
"This is what we know about Zodiac," Dr. Newman said. "The organization itself is run by a man named Andrew Hale. We've pulled information on him from every database we could access. It looks like a lot of it was removed from public record, but we were able to find a few files. He grew up in southern California, and was expelled from high school for starting a secret organization."
Spencer frowned. "That doesn't sound too terrible."
"He used the organization to gain power over his fellow students, teachers, and eventually people working for his local government. Most of the information has been scrubbed, but we were able to track down a few news stories. Apparently drugs and blackmail were involved, and a city official was even murdered around the time of the incident. They were never able to find the killer, but they think there was a connection."
"So then what?" Victoria asked. "He went and did a similar thing, but on a much bigger scale?"
"Sort of. He started taking business courses at a college, befriended some kids in the science department, then dropped out of school and off the face of the earth. The only thing on his record after that is a marriage. His wife, Catherine Hale, is now locked up at a mental facility."
Ivy swallowed. "Malcolm's doing," she muttered.
An uneasy silence fell over everyone. Malcolm had told them himself what he was capable of, and Newman said there had been terrible rumors for years.
But, Malcolm knew more about Zodiac than anyone else they could talk to, giving them no choice but to work with him.
"Knock, knock," came a familiar voice from the doorway.
Ivy's blood ran cold. Had he been eavesdropping?
"Expelled from high school?" Malcolm asked as he sauntered in and took a seat at the table. "Fascinating."
Dr. Newman stiffened. "You here to give us some useful information, Malcolm? A lot of what you told us is in the files we obtained from Scorpion."
"And I only told you a little of what I know." Malcolm examined his fingernails. "So go on. I'll correct you or fill in information where needed."
A few seconds dragged by. Spencer cleared his throat and nodded at Dr. Newman. "What else did you find?"
"Right, well, that seems to be about it for Andrew."
"Actually, Andrew did dabble a bit in the sciences himself. He's very intelligent, but didn't get far in school. He does give Cancer projects a bit of guidance from time to time." Malcolm leaned back in his seat.
"That takes us to Claudia, then. Sometime in the eleven years since she arrived at Scorpion, she was promoted to Overseer. Know anything about that?"
"It happened sometime in the past five years. That's when I left, so I can't say much about what's happened since. But I'd guess that the organization got so big Andrew needed help running things. I'm sure he's assigned Overseers to most, if not all, of the other organizations, if they didn't already have one."
Victoria tapped her fingers against the table. Ivy could sense her impatience. She wanted information on Claire, wanted to do something other than sit around and listen to Malcolm give them information, all smug that he knew more than them and got to walk around free when he deserved to be locked up. But this was information they needed if they wanted a chance at fighting Zodiac.
"Well, Claudia's highly intelligent too," Dr. Newman said. "Since she was young she's been at the top of her class. Good grades, high test scores. She's got pHDs in biology and chemistry."
"And despite all that, she managed to be outshined by her siblings," Malcolm said. "Her sister, Ash and Tyler's mother, was a retired, world-renowned soccer player." He sighed. "Too bad their father took a job at Cladis Point, of all places."
"How many siblings did she have?" Spencer asked. "Are the rest still alive?"
"Yes, they're alive, as far as I can tell," Dr. Newman said. "I think there's a lawyer, a surgeon...another athlete, maybe?" he glanced at Malcolm, who shrugged.
"Something like that," Malcolm said. "If I remember correctly, the youngest plays tennis."
"Anyway, the last person I looked into was John Smith," Dr. Newman continued. "Very difficult to search for, as you can imagine. I found a home near Los Angeles that I believe is his, but other than that I've got nothing. There's evidence that any record of him was deleted around eleven years ago."
"Around the time of the Cladis Point incident?" Ivy asked. "I thought he was with Zodiac, and they didn't have anything to do with that."
"Me too. It's a mystery, I guess."
Ivy glanced at Malcolm in time to see a flicker of...something cross his face. Then he was back to looking bored. "I'm afraid I don't know much about him, either," he said. Ivy narrowed her eyes. Was he hiding something?
Stupid question. He was probably hiding a lot.
But there was a difference between withholding information, and lying.