by Kristin Cast
Maxine opened her mouth and Blair lifted her hand, catching the go-getter before she spoke. There was blood in the water, and Major Rhett Owens had no idea he was the one hemorrhaging.
Blair wet her lips and continued. “I believe, with your immeasurable skill set, the fact that you are in command of your own squadron, and the superb way you perform under pressure, that you, Major, should have no trouble getting my brother a position in your ranks.”
Rhett swiped the back of his hand down his cheek. “I don’t think—”
“I need you, Major.” The words stained Blair’s tongue, tacky and bitter. “You’ll be doing me a personal favor. And, more importantly, you’ll be directly responsible for the betterment of the Key. Isn’t that what you want?”
His temples pulsed. “Yes, of course—”
“Then it’s settled,” Blair said with a clap. “Major Owens, you and I . . .” She inhaled slowly, letting the lilting words further ensnare the brute. “We’re going to be the best of friends.”
“A powerhouse.” Maxine added silk to the web.
Blair glanced at the sharp lead points jutting out from the vase on her desk. “Rule makers, Major. And wouldn’t you like to make the rules?”
The bright amber of Rhett’s eyes thinned as his pupils dilated.
Blair’s stomach fluttered and her breath hitched as the air around her seemed to tremble. Rhett had stumbled into her web.
XXIX
Stars wiggled overhead as Elodie walked toward the river. Each inch, block, mile that the MAX put between her and Gwen had taken a piece of her with it. Not a bad piece. Not a piece of her foundation. Not a piece that left pain in its absence. The walk had smoothed away the hard edges left behind by her mother’s chisel-tipped words. Elodie had even decided to text an apology to Rhett for leaving him at her house—but not just yet.
A group of girls laughed as they crossed the street in front of her. Their Violet Shields bobbed as the trio hurried to beat the orange light flashing at them from the crosswalk sign. Elodie finally activated her own shield. She wanted to blend, be invisible.
She didn’t wait for the crosswalk sign to illuminate white. Instead, she darted across the nearly empty street, stopping only when she reached Salmon Springs fountain. The way the spray swayed in the breeze, each spout reaching for the next until they were one, until they were touching. How many times had she seen the arching waters and not noticed their beauty?
Sure she was alone, Elodie clicked the button on her cuff and the purple haze around her dissipated.
Elodie was blind to the real world around her. Aiden had been right.
Aiden.
Her heart clenched.
Boots pressed heavy against the pavement behind her. “What are you doing here?”
Elodie stiffened as the familiar footsteps, familiar voice, familiar pine scent, splashed against her back. She had escaped her house, fled to the MAX, to the core of the city, to find freedom and space and—
“Aiden.” Her breath trembled as she turned to face him. The roaring fountain did nothing to drown out the heartbeat thrumming between her ears. “I needed to be alone.” She blinked rapidly but couldn’t keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks. Her numbness faded, and her armor fell in a battered heap around her feet.
Aiden took a step forward, stiffened, and retreated. “I’m sorry, Elodie. I—” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I should have . . .” He sagged. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“Don’t.” The word flew from her lips in a sudden burst.
Aiden’s gaze rested against hers. “I don’t know what to say.”
Elodie brushed the tears from her cheeks as she dropped onto one of the wide stone benches ringing the fountain. “The truth.”
He took a seat next to her. A gust of pine caressed her as the warm breeze picked up and his jacket fluttered by his sides. “I only know pieces.”
“How can you believe in Eos if you don’t know the truth behind it?” She didn’t try to keep her voice from trembling.
Aiden turned to face her, straddling the bench. “How much of what you think you know comes directly from the Key?”
“Facts are facts,” she said too quickly.
“But whose facts?” He pressed his hands against the stone slab and leaned forward. “Who benefits?”
Silence pawed the air between them.
Aiden was a good person. Elodie knew that. She felt it in the way he spoke to her. The way he looked at her. The way he interacted with the world and the people around him. Kindness clung to him like skin. Not like Rhett and his pretentious, self-important ramblings, or the way he looked at her when she wasn’t wearing the exact right outfit, or how he spoke at her instead of with her.
And then there was the way Rhett did nothing at all. Nothing at all when she needed him the most. Nothing at all when she needed a shield against the storm that was her mother. Rhett kept his career safe, his image safe, himself safe, but he’d never kept her safe.
No, Aiden was nothing like her fiancé.
But how could she place her trust in Aiden if he blindly placed his in Eos?
Elodie rubbed the collar of her shirt between her thumb and forefinger. “You said that words matter, they have meaning.”
Of all the things you’ve done, and you’ve done plenty, becoming a sympathizer is the one thing that will make me regret turning those natal programmers down!
Elodie’s throat burned with the memory of her mother’s words. “What you don’t say is just as important, Aiden.” She forced back more tears as the image of Rhett standing silently, complacently at her mother’s side flashed behind her eyes.
Aiden zipped and unzipped his jacket. “You’re right.” He stopped zipping and dragged his fingertips along the metal teeth. “I wanted to keep you safe.”
“I can keep myself safe.” Elodie bit out the words more harshly than she’d meant to.
The streetlight haloed him in brittle white as his chin dipped toward his chest.
Elodie had a hundred questions, a million questions, but they stuck in her throat, bitter and barbed. Maybe she didn’t want to know the answers.
She picked at her fingernails.
That wasn’t true. She wanted to know everything.
Aiden broke the stillness, charging up from the bench. “Go somewhere with me.”
Anywhere. Each fiber within her quaked.
She shook her head. “I’m not an Eos sympathizer.” She winced. There Gwen was again like a bruise Elodie couldn’t keep from pressing. Her throat tightened. “I can’t be,” she whispered.
Aiden stood in front of her, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “You can be whoever you want.”
He made it sound so simple.
Elodie chewed her bottom lip, the very fabric of her identity fraying, unraveling as she yanked herself in different directions.
Explore. Conform.
Explore. Conform.
Moonlight glinted in the shallow pools of Aiden’s eyes as he waited expectantly.
To health. To life. To the future. We are the Key.
And the corporation had kept Elodie on the right path since they’d intertwined her mother and father’s DNA and grown her in the lab nearly eighteen years ago. But Elodie wanted so much more out of life than a predetermined path. She wanted to, needed to, let herself loose.
The endless black of the star-speckled sky pressed down on top of her.
Were Aiden’s truths like Gwen’s, thin and unstable and treacherous? Were they worth dying to uncover?
Elodie swallowed past the tightness in her throat.
Cool droplets dusted her cheek as the wind twisted and played between the spray of the fountain. “Eos kills people, Aiden,” she said as she stood.
He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Eos is protecting peop
le—children. The Key is hurting kids.”
She threw her hands into the air before stepping away, packing more empty space between them. “And I’m just supposed to believe that?” His deep scent faded as she neared the street.
He walked closer. “What do you think happened to Patient Ninety-Two?”
A swarm of partially realized questions buzzed between her ears.
“The Key did something to her,” he continued. “They used her . . .” He twirled the air as if trying to generate an explanation. “Ran tests on her.”
Elodie’s thoughts began to fall into place like tumblers in a lock.
Aiden shoved his hands into his pockets. “I only just found out, and don’t really know anymore, but she’s why Eos breached the ELU. They needed Aubrey’s body to find out what the Key did to her so they can stop it from happening again.”
Click.
Elodie sucked in a breath. “That’s why no one would tell me where Aubrey was transferred, and why Holly said I didn’t have access to her file.”
Aiden’s brow lifted with a nod. “Elodie, I’ll understand if you still feel like you have to turn me into the Council.” His soft tone was almost swallowed by the steady clank of the MAX as it lumbered down the street.
“I could never do that.” She would never do that, sentence someone to death. Not for what she’d seen. Eos hadn’t hurt anyone. And what Aiden said made too much sense. Aubrey’s was the one case that didn’t fit. That felt wrong. Elodie needed answers.
Aiden’s jacket wheezed as he shifted. “Then let me show you what you’re protecting.”
With a shake of her head, Elodie jerked back. “I’m not protecting anything.”
He shrugged. “By not telling, you’re protecting me.”
The air thickened around her. Doing nothing was never as simple as it seemed. The absence of an action, a decision, was a choice in itself. Rhett had taught her that.
She wished she had her jacket to hide in. “I don’t want to do anything scary.”
Aiden chuckled, a glorious fizzy pop against the stiffness of the night air. “You’re braver than you think.”
It was the second time he’d said that, and it still pressed against Elodie with the weight of a lie.
He brushed his hand through the air, motioning for her to follow. “It won’t be scary. Promise.”
Elodie hesitated. She wanted to follow. Desperately wanted . . .
But her mother’s sentiment burned within her.
Aiden disappeared into the black curtain of shadows stretching between the trees, the light squish of his boots against the moist grass the only sign of him.
Elodie chewed the inside of her cheek, listening to him go. She was doing it again. Making a life-altering choice by simply doing nothing.
Aiden’s footsteps faded, swallowed whole by the dark.
She took a deep breath.
Life continued, dragging her around in its wake, shredding her like an unwanted doll. Elodie was tired of life happening to her.
“Aiden!” She charged forward, her eyes adjusting as she plunged into the darkness.
XXX
Elodie had followed. Aiden had been positive that she wouldn’t. That he’d feel the last bits of their relationship, however it was categorized and shelved within each of them, evaporate with the evening mist as the space between them grew.
But she was following.
Aiden had thought he’d come to say goodbye to the river, the murky artery that pulsed through the city, bisecting east from west. He thought he’d sit on a cool fountain bench for one last time and toss a whispered I’m sorry into the water. For what? He wasn’t sure. But remorse seeped into the hollow of his bones. Maybe it was because he’d dragged Elodie into a world she didn’t want to or have to exist in. Aiden knew all too well that stepping into the light of Eos would bleach out the shadows from the rest of the world. Was Elodie ready to leave the darkness?
Had he given her a choice?
They’d been walking for nearly ten minutes when Elodie cleared the silence. “Where are we going?”
Aiden’s boots scraped against the pavement as they crossed another street on their trek away from the river. It was a simple enough question, a fair enough question, but the answer was too big for mere words.
Each breath stuffed him full of anticipation. “You just have to see it.”
At the next intersection they waited for the MAX to clank past.
“I don’t like surprises.” The crisp white light of the streetlamp glimmered in Elodie’s dark eyes and illuminated the smirk pinning the corners of her lips.
Man, she was beautiful. What was it that they said? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
But that was only partially correct. There was a silently agreed-upon standard. There had been forever. There would be until the end of time. Participation wasn’t mandatory, but categorization happened nonetheless.
Elodie was striking, noticeable. But her true beauty surfaced as her layers of protection flaked away and she unfurled, bloomed into herself.
Aiden hopped off the curb and continued their nighttime adventure to the disregarded industrial outskirts of Westfall. “You don’t like surprises?” Aiden scratched his stubbled cheek. “You sure about that?”
The corners of her eyes creased as her smirk deepened and her shoulders hiked to her ears.
Elodie pinned her arms to her sides, her cheerfulness draining with the motion. “I’m not sure about anything right now.” Honesty thickened her voice as she focused on the empty, warehouse-lined street ahead.
Aiden understood her uncertainty. He harbored his own. He’d thought that the next time he saw Elodie would be at trial when the Key Council called her as a witness to his dealings with Eos. Even then, he wouldn’t have blamed her.
Her shoes scraped against the sudden rises and falls of the cracked and weathered street. “I do have a question—questions, actually,” she said.
He knew she would. He also knew he didn’t have the answers. “About Aubrey?”
She was silent for a moment before releasing the floodgates. “You said the Key was using her. For what? What kind of tests were they performing? Where is she now? Did Eos get her complete patient care chart? I’ll need to see it and whatever Eos’s doctors discovered. Do they have doctors, anyway?”
Aiden guided them into the dark alley between two unremarkable boxlike buildings. “Our doctors are Key doctors. Our people are Key people. Eos is kind of like Holly in that way—everywhere and nowhere.” He took a right at the end of the narrow strip of battered asphalt and headed toward a glinting metal stair rail. “As for everything else . . .” He slowed before reaching the stairs and kicked a rock with the toe of his boot. “I don’t have the answers, but I know someone who does. You aren’t ready to meet her, but I’ll get all the answers I can.”
The nondescript three-story gray building Aiden stopped in front of looked the same as the last, the same as the next, and the same as the row of buildings across the street. At first, he’d thought Eos had chosen it for that reason, but had come to realize the location was a matter of convenience, not stealth. Eos needed somewhere centrally located for all of its Westfall members.
Elodie crossed her arms over her chest. “We’ll get them together.”
Aiden’s lips quirked as he took the concrete steps two at a time before glancing up at the building stretched out like a cloud above him. “Might not look like much, but this is one of my favorite places.”
Elodie remained at the bottom of the stairs, the toe of her sneaker grinding against the pavement with each twist of her ankle. “It’s—” Her teeth grazed her bottom lip. “Nice?”
He looked up again at the front of the concrete square that spanned the city block and shrugged. “It looks like shit from the outside.”
Elodie snorted as she
ascended the stairs. “And very loomy. All big and sinister and foreboding.”
Aiden considered this as he shuffled to the entryway and keyed his personal code on the panel outside the solid metal door. The first time he’d come here, he’d been so excited that there had been no space for nerves or second-guessing. And now that he knew what treasures grew within the warehouse walls, there was no way he could ever see the building as anything other than a beacon within the swirling red sea of the Key.
The deadbolt released. Aiden held open the door and motioned for Elodie to enter.
“Does your favorite place hold any of the answers we’re looking—” Her hands clapped over her ears as she crossed the threshold. “Ah! ” Pain folded her at the waist. An instant later she relaxed and looked up at him. She rubbed the spot behind her ear as she shook herself free of the sudden blitz. “What was that?”
Aiden winced. “I completely forgot about the tech shield. It neutralizes the implant in your head while you’re within its boundaries.” He grimaced. “Stings a little.”
“Stings a little ?” She twisted her neck and shook her head again. “Terrible thing to get used to.”
Aiden pressed his fingertips against the star of scarred flesh behind his ear. He did have a few more secrets.
Aiden guided her down an empty corridor that ran between the front door and another set of locked double doors, where he entered a different access code.
“That’s it for the sudden blasts of mind-numbing pain, right?” she asked.
“That was it.” Aiden’s heartbeat ticked up as his fingers curled around the knob, and he hefted the door open.
Heady sweet scents hit him before anything else. They lapped against his skin with playful newness before giving way to the spicy and intense waves of something deeper, something richer.
“That smell—” Elodie took a deep breath, her lids closing slightly as her chest filled. Her long lashes dusted her cheeks. “What is it?”
