by Anna Vera
Apollo’s lips purse tightly. “What Jac is trying to say is that specimens weren’t created by the government—that specimens, in fact, never worked for the United Governments in any way.”
“Where do you think your skillsets came from?” Jac chimes in suddenly, jaw flexed. “Humankind doesn’t have that kind of technology—and if it did, why wouldn’t we apply it to ourselves?”
Apollo’s eyes drop to the ground. “The supernatural abilities possessed by specimens aren’t the result of modified genes—but the result of implanted ones.”
“Implanted?” I echo breathlessly.
“Specimens aren’t just human,” Rion says, eyes still as glassy as the still surface of a pond, eyeing me alone. “You’re a blend of genetics, creating a human-alien hybrid.”
“You’re insane,” Cyb exclaims, nearly dropping the bottle of vodka in all her sudden—and swaying—fury.
Merope grabs it before it falls, drinking it herself. I hold her gaze as she sips, violet eyes cut wide.
Does she believe any of this?
Cyb obviously doesn’t . . . but why would the boys lie? And not just that—why would Apollo lie? Does he not realize he’s spouting off claims so treasonous, it could get him terminated?
Hasn’t he always been unwaveringly on Onyx’s side?
I feel too shocked to do anything except listen to the voice haunting my thoughts: Everyone has an aura . . . Everyone except the mentors . . . Nobody can know they don’t have souls like us, that they are different in ways—
“They refer to themselves as the Borealians,” Jac proceeds in spite of Cyb’s disbelief. “Aside from that, nobody knows much about them—including why they’re here.”
“Or why they created us in the first place,” I add quietly.
“You believe this!?” Cyb seethes. “You believe we’ve all been tricked into helping an alien species invade the planet? That we aren’t human? That Onyx is a Borealian?”
“None of this make sense,” Merope says, agreeing. “If they wanted to take over Earth, why would they create a plague to kill off the world’s population and then, subsequently, create us to help save their lives?”
At this, nobody can forge a feasible answer.
Cyb straightens up, eyeing Rion and Jac fiercely—every bit of her posture a threat. “Where are the other leagues?” she asks venomously. “I am going to kill all of you right now if you don’t tell me exactly where—”
“Sit down, Cyb,” Merope warns. “Think of Lios!”
“We need to find the others! What if they were so stupid as to believe all this?”
“Cyb, you’ve had too much to drink—”
“Quite the contrary,” Cyb snaps, putting a finger knowingly to her temple, Persuading Merope to give her the bottle of vodka she’s currently holding.
Merope looks like she’s been slapped. “Stop now, Cyb!”
But Cyb doesn’t stop—taking the jug of vodka yet again and raising it to her lips, sipping a deep swig of the alcohol. Her face is red and her eyes wild, every part of her visibly shattered by the presented accusations we can’t confirm or deny.
Apollo, Jac, and Rion exchange worried glances.
I bridge the gap between us with a single stride, taking the vodka away from Cyb with a hard yank. “You’ve had enough.”
“Ha!” Cyb waves a hand dismissively before placing a finger knowingly to her temple. An open threat.
“Don’t you dar—”
But it’s too late, and I feel the pull of her Persuasive skillset ability tug at my muscles, forcing me to walk up to Apollo and extract the pistol from the waistband of his pants.
The cold bite of steel bleeds into my palm, as I raise it up to my own temple, and feel my finger stroke the gun’s trigger like an itch it’s eager to scratch.
Everybody gets very quiet. I see Rion subtly pull out his own gun, readying it. But Apollo sniffs loudly, giving him a stern glance that tells him to stand down.
Apollo’s eyes find mine next, giving me a strange look.
A look of knowing.
A look of you can do it.
But what is it you’re expecting me to do, Apollo?
Cyb stomps forward, boots breaking twigs and icy snow as she approaches. “Traitor,” she breathes.
I feel my finger tighten around the trigger.
Merope ignores Apollo, getting up. “You’re not thinking straight, Cyb—this is our little sister—”
“She’s a traitor!”
“She isn’t!”
“She’s a traitor, and they will thank me for—”
“Onyx,” Apollo interjects, expression so grave as to make him unrecognizable. He holds Cyb’s stare. “Onyx would never forgive you.”
“You’re a traitor too,” Cyb snarls, fingertip still pressed to her temple as she Persuades me to take the gun off myself and aim it at Apollo. “You both believe—you actually think—it’s just impossible, because they wouldn’t lie to us!”
Apollo gets up, positioning himself directly before the barrel of the gun I’m holding—holding, but not wielding.
“Traitor or not, Onyx would never forgive you for—well, to hell with forgiveness, actually—she might kill you herself if she discoverers you’re the one responsible for ending the life of her one and only daughter.”
Silence.
Cyb’s composure slips. “Her daughter?”
What is he . . .
Is he really saying I’m . . . ?
But Onyx hasn’t ever believed in me. She tried holding me back from deploying because she thought I wasn’t good enough, that I’d be dead weight, or a liability, or . . .
No, there is no way—
My skillset ability whispers for me to regain focus, revealing a break in Cyb’s composure, like a fissure snaking through a thick slab of stone. I can practically feel it with my fingers—the edged sensation of it as I pull, dragging it wider.
Exploiting it.
The power I acquired from the Haunt flares to life inside my veins like an electrical current. I use it to my advantage. Not only do I shield myself to Cyb’s skillset ability, but I decide to use it against her—Persuading her in turn.
I use my ability to rip Cyb’s finger from her temple, leaving her gaping and stunned—just like everybody else.
Sit down, I think, and just as the thought crosses my mind she drops down on a log by the fire and stays still. So this is what it feels like to be powerful like you, Cyb?
“What the—” she gasps, eyes flashing. “What is going on? How did—how did she—?”
Apollo’s lips itch to smile, gazing proudly at me.
Proudly. Like Lios would’ve.
Like a brother.
Jac flicks ash off the butt of his cigarette, smiling wickedly at both Apollo and Rion—then Cyb. “You haven’t let us finish our story, Cyb.”
Cyb’s face blanches white.
I exhale, handing Apollo his pistol. “We haven’t even gotten to the best part yet, have we?”
Merope looks ill. “Best part?”
“Yeah.” Rion’s lips smile crookedly, dark hair dipping into his eyes as he looks up at me. “We never got to the ending.”
21
“Onyx is the spy.”
If it weren’t Apollo speaking, I might not believe it.
It looks as though confessing as much is physically painful for him—a sheen of sweat masks his face, making it look sallow and waxy, unwell.
I keep Cyb pinned to her seat, though I don’t know how.
“My genes are an anomaly. I’m not only immune to the plague itself, but the Muted don’t even see me.” Apollo’s eyes rest on each of ours in turn. “Naturally, if native-borns discovered the way my genes work, if they could replicate it . . .”
“It’d be a hell of a game cha
nger,” Jac grunts.
“Ever since she found out, Onyx has been deploying me in secret to Earth for Mabel to conduct tests. She’d meet me at the closest hospital, conduct exams. They have a second spy working at the CORE,” Apollo adds, subconsciously looking at the crooks of his elbows, scarred from the needles. “That spy was the one who authorized my podcraft usage.”
For a long while, we don’t say anything—too shocked by how utterly blind we’ve been. All along, a member of our own league was deploying to Earth regularly . . . and we never noticed.
“By now, you realize Eos has a skillset ability,” Apollo goes on with the eerie poise of a graveyard. “And not only that, but a rare and powerful one—one Onyx asked I try to keep secret from her for as long as possible. I didn’t think it would work,” he adds with a subtle shake of his head. “Guess I was right.”
“Skillset ability?” I inquire shakily.
“The Borealians all have a skillset called Source. I still don’t get how it works, only that it grants access to a plethora of other skillset abilities, making it appear like they have more than one.”
“So that’s my ability?”
“No.” Apollo steeples his fingers, lips white. “Source is only for pureblood Borealians. You have a variation of it that’s found very rarely in specimens—a strain, so to speak.”
I hold perfectly still, feeling my blood harden to ice.
Apollo meets my gaze. “You can Scry.”
“Scry?” I say sharply, lifting my hold on Cyb who’s just as frozen with disbelief as I am. She doesn’t move.
“Like Source. I’m not sure how it works, but I know it has the ability to tap into people’s minds.” Apollo shakes his head a fraction, lips forming a soft smile as he eyes me. “And based on how protective Onyx has been over you, it can probably do a lot more than that.”
“More?”
“That’s why Onyx didn’t want you to deploy. She knows there’s a war going on and she doesn’t want you, her daughter, to be a part of it—for your skillset to be misused.”
“But I failed all on my own—”
“You didn’t, actually,” he interrupts. “Onyx tampered with your test scores, making it look like you did so you wouldn’t be able to deploy.” Apollo’s eyes latch onto mine. “And if Pavo ever found out you’re a Scrier, you’d be as good as enslaved to him.”
I’ve just lost the feeling in my face.
Apollo stands, then, pacing by the fire. “Your DNA is the first to include Europa lineage—it’s known to be powerful, a long living line of Borealians.”
Europa lineage? All this time, I didn’t even know Onyx’s last name was the same as mine—she was always very private, very careful to keep herself as enigmatic as possible.
And she did a great job of it.
I swallow, unable to even think about Onyx as my mother.
“Apollo,” Merope says pleadingly. “How can you honestly expect us to believe all this?”
“We don’t have to,” I say after a moment of silence. I stand in front of Apollo, thrusting forward a hand. “Why settle on just taking his word for it?”
My suggestion appears to sober the whole camp.
“Don’t tell me—show me.” My hand stays forward, reaching for Apollo in an open invitation for him to prove it.
Prove your claims, Apollo.
“Eos, you’ve only just discovered this ability, one which is likely unsafe to employ without practice—”
In a flash, I am inches from him, so close I can feel the heat of his body radiating in waves. I fan open my hand, hovering it just above his chest as it heaves for breath.
I look up at Apollo’s black eyes. “You have just informed us of a war going on—a war which you’re claiming we’re fighting on the wrong side of.”
I step closer, running my fingertips from his loosely hanging hand up his sleeve, to his wrist—where I feel the buzz of energy flare to life, thud, thud, thudding.
Apollo grits his teeth, as though pretending he doesn’t feel it as strongly as I do, like he’s unaware.
“Show me proof,” I say, breathless as the feel of his energy bleeds out of his wrist and into my fingertips, as intoxicating as it is poisonous. As beautiful as it is dangerous.
Apollo’s eyes lower, blinking. “I—I can’t control what you end up seeing, Eos.”
“Do you have anything more to hide from us?”
“No, but—”
“Just do it and get it over with,” I say huskily, hardly able to recognize myself. I run my fingertips upward, resting the whole of my palm splayed on his breathing chest.
It’s as though I can feel every fierce beat of his heart.
The last thing before my eyes are his. I blink and the world before me fades, a mirror shattered, exposing something new and previously disguised behind it.
I feel like I’ve just dove into a river pushed by a violent and deadly current, every ripple in the tide a different memory—one of his to which I’ve gained access, of which I may choose.
I filter through them all—glimpses.
Then I see myself, and I stop. Eos as a toddler, lying in a crib in a locked bedroom. Apollo has snuck inside. He’s only a young boy, stretching a finger through the bars of the crib for the little girl to hold. It’s a memory I’ve had before, but never with such stark clarity.
Flash. I’m holding his finger, laughing.
Flash. He’s screaming. Onyx bursts inside, furious.
Flash. Onyx is forbidding him from telling anybody about what happened when he touched me—explaining to his little boy self that I, even at such a young age, managed to Scry him.
I’d tapped into his memory . . . I’d scared him . . .
Onyx knew about my skillset . . .
That long ago, she knew.
Because it only works on native-borns, and she just so happened to have one around—a boy who looked at me like a little sister, because he’s for so long perceived Onyx as a mother.
I drift backward, lifting out of the dream the way one might float to the surface of a pool of water, keeping my eyes peeled for anything else—anything better.
Farther off, in a different world entirely, I feel Apollo shift under the weight of my touch.
I dip deeper, flipping through his memories like a book.
And that’s when I see it. A newspaper.
Flash. Mabel hands Apollo the daily newspaper as he waits with a needle in his arm, drawing his blood. His arm throbs as his blood’s siphoned from his body, veins tough and his skin a map of track-marks.
Flash. Mabel’s revealed to me in a blur, her voice clear but her features smudged. “We must act quickly.”
“Why is that?”
“Read,” she says, nodding at the paper she’s just passed him as she turns in a swivel chair, scribbling swirling, geometric notes in a notebook—using red ink.
Mentor’s Language.
The door bursts open, startling them both, and Rion walks in gruffly, shoulders swaying with rage; he’s younger, with less scars and slightly shorter hair. The collar of his shirt is torn open to reveal a smooth chest. Bouncing off it with every step is a pair of silver, glinting tags, reading . . . Pilot.
“You read the paper, I presume, soldier?” Mabel asks.
“My orders?” he asks.
“We’ll discuss them later. My client has yet to be updated on the new developments.” Again, Mabel nods at the newspaper in his hands. “You’re dismissed for now, soldier. Leave us.”
It’s as though I’m lodged in Apollo’s mind, reading every thought that passes. He didn’t know Rion then. Rion didn’t know Apollo, either. They were two ships passing in the night, reunited years later by serendipitous circumstances.
Flash. Apollo reads the newspaper, which I realize is dated only two years ago.
TAKING BACK EARTH
Fighting the Apocalypse
After nearly thirty years, the United Governments are finally taking action. The UFO harboring intelligent alien life, which has occupied the dark-side of the moon, is officially to be targeted in an open act of war should no surrender be made or compromise found.
“We’ve anticipated this recourse for decades,” says Pol Oclust, the multi-billion dollar man responsible for founding and organizing PIO Morse, and thus reviving the world’s chances at redemption. “With the PIO Morse army, and my connections, we are finally ready to strike back in the name of salvaging what’s left of humanity.”
Targeting the UFO attributed to the A-42 pandemic is the “only option now,” a proposition agreed upon globally by all primary government officials.
“The war begins now,” Oclust is documented to have said yesterday, during a press release held privately in his gated community, confirming the fight he intends to lead in the coming years against this alien invasion.
My breath is knocked clean out of my lungs.
I stagger backward, lifting my palm from Apollo’s chest the way one might after touching something scaldingly hot—and like all the times before, despite feeling shocked, I feel . . . healthy.
I feel powerful.
Apollo’s nostrils flare. “Believe us now, Eos?”
Merope and Cyb consult me with eager glances, faces and lips white as chalk. I swallow dryly, giving them each a shaky nod of confirmation, two words jittering in my mind.
Alien. Invasion.
Despite knowing it’s true, I can’t bring myself to accept it for truth—to erase all the lies that for so long I believed, without a shadow of a doubt, to be real.
Who’s the real traitor? Nova had asked, her final words to me before dying. Is it the liar, or the person being lied to?
You’re being lied to, Rion told me, the first information he divulged after I begged him to confirm or deny the legitimacy of my dead friend’s claims.
And little did I know, that’s exactly what he did.
Jac gets up, walks around the fire, and hands Cyb a piece of yellow paper webbed in wrinkles and smudged haphazardly in what appears to be smears of mud.
