He clenched his right hand. Roman looked crushed, absolutely obliterated.
“You saved my life,” I said softly.
“She wasn’t going to stop,” he croaked out. “I saw it in her eyes. She wasn’t going to stop.”
My hand reached for one of his, closing around the warm, calloused skin. “She’ll understand when she’s herself again.”
“All I can do is hope,” he said. “That’s all I have left.”
“That’s not all,” I assured him.
Roman looked up at me, his fingers squeezing mine. “The reason we didn’t tell you about ourselves, about Mercer, is because he is still experimenting on kids.” I opened my mouth but he pressed on. “And I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t report it to the government. Can you honestly tell me that they wouldn’t do even more experimentation on them? That they wouldn’t send them to live with foster families, or in one of those privatized training institutes that Moore keeps talking about? They would never be allowed to return to their families.”
“You didn’t trust me,” I said, letting my hand slip out of his.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t want to put you in the position of feeling you had to withhold information from the government. And the truth is, you’re exposed to a real risk now that Mercer knows you’re with us. He keeps such a tight lid on his business dealings, he will do just about anything to keep you from talking to someone with enough power to stop him. You wouldn’t even see him coming.”
A little shudder worked through me. After a moment Roman added, “But I am sorry. I’m sorry about the lies and the partial truths. I can’t say it enough.”
I tilted my head back to look at the sky. The headlights didn’t dim the blanket of stars. “Limit, Hacker, Mirror…I can’t believe I thought you were part of the Psion Ring.”
“That’s another thing,” he said. “The Psion Ring doesn’t exist.”
My gaze shot back over to him.
He shook his head. “There’s no proof of them anywhere. Logic dictates two options: they are incredibly good at covering their trail, or they don’t exist. Believe me, Mercer investigated. He sent me out on a thousand dead ends looking for them. He put real resources behind it, and each time, he came up with nothing.”
“I saw reports, though,” I said. “The Psi Council reviewed information about them at their monthly meetings.”
“Who were those reports created and compiled by?” Roman asked.
“A lot of agencies,” I said. “The UN, the FBI, intelligence services…they all have people who could have been monitoring them and feeding the information back to someone in Cruz’s administration.”
“Even if a ring managed to form in the months since Priya and I left Mercer, there’s no way they could pull off a job like the airplane bombing. The planning alone would take months. The way they’re using your name has me more convinced than ever that it’s a cover for something else.”
Something worse.
“How do I fit in? You were going to approach me at the speech, weren’t you?”
“Yes. The plan was to separate you and force you to take us to Daly, where we’d plead our case.”
“Kidnap me, you mean?” I clarified, almost amused.
He looked a little sheepish. “Kidnapping is a strong word for it. We were hoping you’d just agree to help us. All of my research made it seem like—”
“Like what?” I asked. I raised a brow.
“The reports I accessed, the newspaper stories, the documentaries, it all made you seem so…docile. Vulnerable. Compliant,” he said. “Within moments after the explosion, I knew that wasn’t who you are at all. They had crafted an image of you that erased all of your strength and capabilities.”
My stomach churned.
“I couldn’t appear dangerous,” I said softly. “I couldn’t be a threat to anyone. Mel used to say that people would use me as a token to represent all Psi kids. My actions, the way I conducted myself, would shape the public’s opinion of us.”
So I’d nodded, accepting the things they’d told me were important. I subdued the parts of me that focus groups felt were “too bubbly.” Too “erratic.” I molded myself to be calm and composed. Reasonable.
“I was stupid enough to underestimate you because of all that I’d read and seen. But, to be honest, I think the men who took us did as well. You were able to save our lives because of it.”
“It was Priyanka who sent the message on the teleprompter, wasn’t it?” I asked, slowly putting it together.
“To try to disturb your usual procedure,” he said. “We studied your security protocols for a full month, and thought that an emergency would be the best time to try to get you alone.”
“That would have been the best time to get yourselves killed,” I corrected. “I don’t know that I would have helped you find Haven, even if you’d been up front at the start. It’s not just about protecting Ruby’s location. After what she went through, I feel the need to protect her. She will always help others. But her ability hurts her more than she lets on. Not physically. She sees the trauma, the pain, the ugliness everyone keeps locked away.”
Putting it that way, it reminded me of Roman. Someone who said yes, who never failed to help, and suffered all the inward consequences of it.
“Is that why you believed she willingly left Haven?” Roman asked.
“That’s part of it,” I said. “Everyone has a breaking point, and she’s been storing up so much pain over the years, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d finally reached hers. But now I’m sure she didn’t leave—that she didn’t walk away from this of her own volition. Something happened.”
“I agree,” he said. “Blue Star set the explosion at Penn State. It might have been so that they could take in me and Priya, and they only framed you to take any suspicion off themselves. But you said one of the Defenders was going to fire on you, right?”
“Right,” I said. “It had to be a setup from the jump. Blue Star causes the explosion…frames me to avoid suspicion…and someone else decides to pile on with the attack on Moore’s campaign plane?”
Roman hesitated.
“Just say it.”
“You’re not going to like this theory, but it could be someone in the government who has a grudge against you, the Council, or Cruz—or all of you. If that Defender uniform was real, it points to some greater conspiracy.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Is it…is it possible that Mercer’s the reason Ruby’s vanished? That he has her?”
“I think it’s more likely that she caught on to his interest and went into hiding,” Roman said.
“She would have found a way to communicate with us,” I told him. “We have a few different systems she could have used. I think someone has her. And it has to be Mercer.”
“I really don’t know,” he said, running a hand back over his hair. “I hope like hell he doesn’t.”
I pressed my hands to my face, drawing in a deep breath. “Where is Ruby?” I whispered. “Where is she?”
There was a knock on the windshield. Priyanka stared back at us. When she spoke, her voice was muffled. “I think I know.”
THE CAR ROCKED AS I climbed back into the driver’s seat and shut the door. A moment later, Roman moved to the passenger side and did the same. The only sound that came from him was the hard click of his seat belt as he strapped himself in.
I glanced back at Priyanka as she stretched her long legs across the backseat, but she didn’t, or couldn’t, meet my gaze.
“You tell her?” Priyanka asked. Without the usual warmth in her voice, the lightness of her tone felt artificial. Put on for our benefit.
Roman nodded, not looking at her.
My hand hovered over the ignition, not sure if I should be driving, or if we needed a moment to find whatever little center we’d had before.
“Man, you missed out,” Priyanka told me, in that same painfully airy tone. “I tell the tragic tale with a lot more flour
ish—or, at least, a lot more sound effects and shadow puppets.”
“Priya…” I began, taking in the sight of her. Her whole body was covered in a sheen of sweat. It turned her thick head of hair into a tight cap on her skull, black curls sticking to her collarbone and shoulders like vines. She slipped her hands beneath her legs, but I could see the rest of her was trembling. “Maybe not right now.”
She cleared her throat, sitting up a little straighter. “There was an address. On the server. It matched one of the address searches on Ruby’s phone, but they—Blue Star—deleted the archive before I could get a good look at it.”
“Do you actually see the files?” I asked, curious. “How does it work?”
“It’s more like…” Priyanka began, “everything gets downloaded into my mind. Sometimes I can’t access it right away and it’ll pop up in my thoughts days later, randomly. My mind is like a net when I’m plugged in. Sometimes I can catch everything, sometimes pieces of it slip away. It just feels like…connection. A hot, bright flow of snapshots.”
“Did you see anything else in the files?” I asked.
“It was a veritable potpourri of blackmail, and it stank to high heaven of corruption and secrets. Lots of good stuff on senators, and even a little on a sketchy real estate deal President Cruz made a while back.”
I resisted the urge to press my forehead to the steering wheel. “Great. Anything particularly interesting?”
“There’s one thing you should know,” Priyanka said. “There were files on you and your friends. Actually, okay, two things—after destroying the archives, the very last thing their system did was to issue a GO command and money transfer.”
“That’s the deal done, then,” I said. “Clancy’s in the wind now.” I filled them in on what Lana had revealed about Clancy’s deal. Roman shook his head, disgusted.
Ruby, what did you need from him that was so important you were willing to risk unleashing him back into the world?
Priyanka dissolved into a fit of coughing, pounding against her chest.
“Are you all right?” I asked, handing her a bottle of water. Unable to speak, she nodded, gulping it down. She was sweating hard enough to turn her purple blouse into a second skin, but her color was already improving.
“Coming down from Super Priya Mode is never as enjoyable as the ride, which is why it can be tempting to stay on,” Priyanka said, winking at me.
Roman slammed his hand against the dash. I jumped. “It’s not funny. I don’t understand what you were thinking jumping into the server and chasing whoever was on the other end.”
“I was handling it,” Priyanka said. “The high was useful, like I knew it would be—”
“You don’t need it, Priya.” If the harrowing expression on his face was enough to grip my heart, I could only imagine what it was doing to Priyanka’s. “I don’t understand how you can’t see that you’re enough.”
“I wish that were actually the case,” Priyanka said. “There was no other way past the firewall Blue Star put up. It was that, or let them get the material without us ever seeing any of it.”
“We could have unplugged the servers and taken them with us to analyze later,” Roman said, his voice ragged. “I could have—”
“Made yourself sick with a cracking migraine, like you did? Risk it being the one you might not wake up from again?” Priyanka shook her head. “That high is the only way I have of keeping up with you.”
“I was always having to run to keep pace with you,” Roman said. “It wasn’t just about that.”
“No,” Priyanka said. “It was about reclaiming some power after what Mercer did to me. To all of his kids.”
“We’re not his kids!” Roman interrupted angrily.
Priyanka only shook her head. “You never understood. Lana and I wanted to use our abilities to help other vulnerable children—to burn out corruption, but you just wanted to run.”
He jerked around in his seat. “I don’t want to run from this, I just want us to be safe. You want to talk about useless? Powerless? Look at me. Look at me, Priya.” She did. “The only thing Mercer ever saw me as good for was my loyalty and a steady hand. The only reason he didn’t put me down like a dog is because I was willing to do whatever it took to protect you and Lana.”
What does that mean?
I glanced between them, the raw anger and pain on their faces enough to make me wish I had stepped out. Priyanka looked genuinely shocked by his words. Roman faced forward again, pressing his fist against his mouth and staring out the window.
I needed something to do, so I turned on the engine and took us back the way we’d come down the access road. Dust whipped up in clouds behind us as the wheels ground into the dirt.
“Ro…” Priyanka began, softer this time. “You don’t have to worry. It’s not that I want to be in that high, it’s just sometimes it feels like we need it. But I make it a point not to fall into traps I’m not completely sure I can climb out of, and this is one of them. And while we’re talking about traps, I’m sorry I didn’t tell either of you about the tracker. I just thought…one more try….”
I glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. “I understand.”
She shot me a look of gratitude that was still tinged with lingering guilt.
“I don’t mean to lecture you,” Roman said. “You don’t need it, and it’s your right to use your ability the way you want to. But I can’t lose you, too, and I don’t want your hatred of Mercer to play any role in destroying you. You deserve more.”
“I won’t let it destroy me,” Priyanka said, sliding Ruby’s phone out of the backseat. She pulled up an address in Baton Rouge and handed it to Roman to plug into the car’s GPS. It was miles of silence later before she leaned her head against the backseat and let her eyes drift shut.
I barely heard her whisper over the sound of the wheels turning on the road. “Not until I destroy him first.”
The thick, churning heat set in as soon as we crossed the state line into Louisiana. It rose in shimmering waves off the boiling asphalt and slowed my thoughts to a crawl. I’d surrendered the steering wheel to Roman hours before but hadn’t let him coax me into sleep.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about Priya’s ability sooner. We’d still have all that money for food.” I watched in the side mirror as Priyanka poured the gas she’d just acquired—simply by hacking the pump to make it believe it had read a ration card—into the tank. The walk down to the station hadn’t been far, and she hadn’t had to wait long in the ration line, but by the time she’d returned, she looked like she’d swum the distance. When she finished, she threw the empty red can into the trunk again. “Why were you always the one going to get the gas, not her?”
“She did get the gas those few times that you slept. We were able to stretch what cash we had by using her ability. She put in a used ration card and hacked the pump,” Roman said. “But there’s always a risk someone will take a closer look at what she’s doing and report her. I’m trained to be as inconspicuous as possible. It’s the least I can do.”
“I’m trained, too,” Priyanka insisted as she slid into the backseat. “Well, in theory. But why be inconspicuous when your enemies can furiously shout your name at the sky instead?”
I looked at Roman. “Point taken.”
“You didn’t take more than the ration limit, did you?” he asked, glancing up at her in the rearview mirror.
“No, you can relax. Even if I had gotten brave and tried it, there was a cop standing right there, watching the meter. Ugh!” Priyanka fanned herself. “Can you turn the air up before I get a whiff of myself again? I think I somehow absorbed the burned-nacho-cheese smell that was radiating from that place.”
I did as asked. The line of cars waiting for their turn at the station now stretched past us. The symphony of impatient honking had begun. Roman had his hand on the door, and seemed to be talking himself out of it.
“Go,” I told him. “We can wait. You deserve t
o wash up and change.”
“Maybe the gas station attendant will take pity on your sad state and give you the week-old nachos,” Priyanka said. “But if it’s a choice between nachos and hot dogs, take the hot dogs.”
“Yeah. That’ll happen when the lobster whistles on the mountain.” He saw our blank looks. “Really? That’s not an English one, either?”
“More like ‘when pigs fly,’ but we’re keeping yours because it’s absolutely delightful,” Priyanka said. “What is it with Russia and lobsters? What was that other one you used a while back—something about sleeping lobsters?”
“I’ll show him where lobsters spend the winter,” Roman said, a glum note in his voice. “It’s a good threat.”
“Very evocative,” I agreed. “Even more menacing than sleep with the fishes, because you don’t necessarily know where lobsters spend the winter.”
“Deep, freezing water?” Priyanka guessed. “Ice? Someone’s freezer?”
With an exasperated sound, Roman opened the door and stepped out. He stuffed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and kept his head down as he made his way toward the gas station.
Priyanka came to sit in the front passenger seat, coughing as she buckled in. I gave her a worried glance.
“I’m all right,” she said. “The only thing that ever came close to killing me was the sad look in Roman’s eyes. That is some weapons-grade effectiveness.”
We both turned to watch him fade into the distance.
“Thank you,” she said after a while. “For not leaving when you found out the truth. I’m sorry about the lies. You didn’t deserve that. But nothing makes me feel more protective than thinking about those kids trapped with Mercer.”
“Once I had the whole picture, it made sense why you did it,” I said. “But this time I mean it—we have to be honest with each other, or this isn’t going to work.”
“Well, in the interest of full disclosure, did Roman tell you about how I came to Mercer? My parents?” Priyanka asked.
The Darkest Legacy Page 30
