by Rebecca Rode
“And Millian?” I asked the woman in a shaky voice. “Where is she?”
“Physician Redd said her injuries needed special attention, so he ordered her transported to the unit caring for His Honor Hawking.” She bowed again, this time so deeply she practically kissed her heat-singed shoes.
That meant Millian would be on her way to the safe house. Kole and I shared a look of dread. “Injuries?” I repeated.
“Yes, Your Honor. Director Comondor tried to stand up to the arsonists. Shot a few of them before they stunned her. The rest of us ran. I—I don’t know how to fight.” She seemed ashamed. “The ones she hit haven’t woken up yet.” She pointed toward another building across the street.
Prisoners. We needed to interrogate them, see what we could learn about Alex’s orders.
I started to move, but Kole grabbed my hand tighter. “I’ll handle them. You wait here with your guards. I’ll meet you at the transport in twenty minutes.”
I blinked at him, puzzled, but he strode away without another word. The only reason he’d agree to leave my side was because he worried about my safety. Clearly, he thought the Firebrand prisoners dangerous, bound or not. I considered going after him and insisting he stop issuing orders and let me do what needed to be done. But as I stared at the wreckage before me, the fight drained away.
Fire. It was always fire. First Mom’s destroyed lab, then my failed attempt to stop Virgil. Now the Firebrands’ vicious echo of the past, like a constant reminder of my personal shortcomings.
“Did they take anything?” I asked the lab assistant, who had turned to watch the billowing white smoke rise into the sky. She had flakes of gray ash in her hair, much like the glass I’d brushed free in my hair earlier. Had that really been just this morning?
“They stole a few boxes from the lab,” she said, “but I don’t know what was inside. They didn’t save a single piece of medical equipment. We lost it all. That’s what made Director Comondor really angry. She chased them down and nearly got those boxes back before they set that cannon up.”
I stiffened. “What cannon?”
She looked alarmed at my sudden interest. “Pardon, Your Honor. I shouldn’t call it a cannon, exactly. More like a huge stunner, but I’ve never seen the likes of it. Four medical assistants ran inside after the evacuation to try and save the medical equipment, but they didn’t reach the doors before those Firebrands blasted them.”
Another stun cannon. Not good. “Where are the medical assistants now?”
She shifted and pointed a few meters away where a clump of what I’d assumed was wreckage finally became clear. All I could make out was a charred boot.
First my attack, and now the murders of innocent medical professionals. Alex’s obsession with winning had reached a new low. If they’d made a stun cannon by increasing the size of a stunner, what else could they be working on? How far would my brother go to hold on to his power?
Who else would we lose before the end?
My eyes watered, and not just from the smoke. I turned to Foster, who had arrived with the two council members. They slowly climbed out of the transport and somberly inspected the wreckage.
“We need a safer place for the patients and the homeless,” I told Foster. “See what you can find.”
He nodded and lowered his voice. “The island? The specialists have cleared the tunnel for passage and the hotel for lodging. I believe they were testing the water there when this happened.” He gestured to the lab’s remains.
Just thinking about the massive effort of transporting everyone there made my head ache. “Not yet. Let’s buy the specialists a little more time to complete their investigation. We’ll need a temporary solution in the meantime. We also need more medical equipment. Find a medical assistant to help identify what we need and where we can get it.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He eyed the four bodies on the ground. “And them?”
“Notify their families. We’ll let them come for them.” I didn’t like it, but bringing the bodies to their loved ones would be too dangerous with Firebrands roaming the city. We’d stayed too long already. “Please give them my thanks. These assistants likely saved lives in their work.”
Foster nodded, looking a little sick.
I turned to Travers. “Please tell Kole when he returns that I’m going to visit the patients and make sure they’re situated. Then we’ll go home. I need to check on Millian right away.”
Physican Redd was leaving as we arrived home. He assured me Millian would be fine. She’d probably suffered a concussion, but the scans showed no broken bones. She would soon be awake.
Kole helped me move her to an empty bedroom, then excused himself and disappeared into his own room. It was then I realized he hadn’t said much on the way home. Exhaustion, perhaps? Or maybe frustration at how little information he’d gleaned from the Firebrand prisoners?
Guilt flooded my chest as the answer struck me. Those Firebrands had likely once been his friends. I hadn’t even considered how it would feel to suddenly be on the other side, demanding answers, inflicting pain. I thought about Alex and imagined torturing him for information. It was unthinkable. No matter how stupid my Alex acted, he would always be my brother.
Once Millian was situated, I made my way down the quiet hall to Dad’s room and sat on the stool next to his bed. He looked exactly as he had this morning, pale and still, his mouth in a gentle frown. Tubes ran into his nose from an oxygen tank at my side. Two other machines beeped gently, monitoring his functions. Until a couple of hours ago, dozens of the patients in our hospital looked exactly like this. Now, without the equipment we needed, most lay unplugged and were completely on their own. I hadn’t had time to ask Physician Redd what that meant for them.
I took Dad’s hand in mine. It felt limp and cold. I placed my other hand on top of it and tried to warm it, but it was a lost cause. My dad, larger than life, the man who had all the answers, lay still in bed with his eyes closed. Today, Sleeping Beauty wasn’t a princess but the king. It wasn’t a prince he waited upon but his princess daughter—and it wasn’t a kiss that would awaken him but a cure.
A cure that may as well be buried in miles of Antarctic ice because I would never find it now.
For the first time, the very real possibility of losing him hit me square in the face. Mom’s death had carved a hollow section from my chest where my heart once resided. Alex’s betrayal had dug a knife into my chest. What would losing Dad feel like? Could I bear any more pain without breaking completely?
My hand gripped his so tightly it would have hurt him had he been awake. As if taunting me, his fingers remained white and cold. Meanwhile, my own had turned a bright, angry red and purple.
“I’m a terrible leader,” I told Dad. “If I’d placed more guards like I said I would, maybe the warehouse would still be standing.”
My words were met only by silence, just like always. The same silence that filled our home during the past year with Mom gone. The silence of a dinner table filled with food only Alex and I would eat because Dad had locked himself in his room, companion only to his own grief. The silence he demanded from me whenever the topic of my future came up and the silence of keeping secrets about my past. And now the silence of distance, because although he lay right here next to me, he felt as unreachable as Mom.
A wave of new anger flung me to my feet, shocking me with its intensity. I dropped his hand and stood over him. “You don’t get to lie there and sleep through all of this. It isn’t fair. You’re supposed to be leading them. You, not me. Thanks for thinking I could do this, but I can’t, and I know that now, and I . . . I want you here.” My voice wavered, and I swallowed the pain back. “We need you. I need you. Please wake up.”
There was no acknowledgment of my desperation, no assurance that everything would be okay. Nothing that a parent would give to a suffering child.
“Please,” I whispered, but it wasn’t my dad I spoke to now. It was the empty, quiet walls. It was
Grandpa Vance and Mom and everyone else who’d gone into the darkness and never returned.
I was so, so tired of the darkness that never answered back.
The thought made my anger return. I picked up one of Dad’s shoes off the floor and threw it at the wall. It hit it with a thud, leaving a tiny black mark. I didn’t feel a single ounce better than before.
I listened for a minute to see if anyone would come and lecture me like I was a noisy child, but, to my disappointment, nobody did. Even if they had, they would’ve bowed and left the room in silence because of who I was supposed to be. A thousand supporters depended on me, and half the city opposed Alex right along with me, yet I’d never felt more alone.
Did Alex feel alone too? Did he feel the loss of our family as keenly as I did? Did he even realize the damage he’d done to both of us today?
I took Dad’s cold hand again, a hardened resolve filling me now. I loved my brother, and I didn’t want to hurt him, but he had gone too far today.
I would never again allow him to hurt the people I loved.
Never.
Thirteen
Kole
The pain felt like an electric current searing through my body one cell at a time. I was cold and hot, sharp blades and disintegrating and melting all at once. Deep in the back of my mind, I knew the pain only existed in my head, but that didn’t matter. The sensations tearing me apart piece by excruciating piece were very real.
But the emotions were far worse.
“Don’t,” my mother said, cowering against the wall. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow when you’re feeling better. Please.”
“I’m feeling fine, and we’ll talk about it now.” The deep voice coming from my lips, distant and ice-cold, was my father’s. The belt’s leather felt rough beneath my fingers. My throat burned worse than the rest of me, whether from his drinking or my desperation to escape, I couldn’t tell.
My arm raised the belt as if on its own. Then it came down sharp, hard. A cry tore from my mother’s mouth, but she didn’t scream. Not yet. That part would come later.
The familiarity of it all tickled something in my mind. How many times had I seen this, lived this, before?
Wake up. It’s a dream.
Wake.
Up.
A yelp and a streak of blood on my mother’s face. She turned her shoulder to me, folding herself to protect her face—a face that gazed on me with tenderness from my very first days. But now . . . I struggled against the other thoughts, the bad ones, as they overcame my mind.
Disgusting creature. She was beautiful once, strong even. But now she whimpers like a child when she doesn’t get her way and lies and hides my credits around the house. I’ve been patient enough. Time to show her that kind of behavior will never be tolerated here.
With a roar, I swung the belt again. It hit her on the shoulder this time, making her flinch, but her head and face were still protected. She turned to look at me as I pulled the belt back for another strike, the fear in her eyes fading as something else—a flash of anger—replaced it.
She may as well have lit a match. Rage burned through my veins again, sending a sharp pain through my head in the form of a migraine. The belt obviously wasn’t enough. It would take far too long to make my point.
Somewhere deep inside, I cringed, knowing exactly what came next. I was powerless to stop it.
Wake up!
It wouldn’t work, I lamented from somewhere deep inside my head. It never did.
My fingers closed around the drawer pull on my nightstand. They knew exactly where to find the knife.
Mom, run!
The words didn’t leave my lips, but to my surprise, she met my gaze for a moment. There was understanding along with the anger, as if she knew what lay beneath my—rather, my father’s—demeanor. Then she sprang for the doorway.
Growling, I moved to block her, but she was too fast. I lunged for her arm, which slid through my fingers until I caught her hand. A small, sharp object dug into my palm. Her wedding ring. I pulled her off balance, and she stumbled, throwing herself back toward the door, her eyes wide and desperate and still very much alive and not learning her lesson.
And then her face changed. It was no longer my mother who stood panting before me but Legacy, her long dark hair tumbling down her shoulders. So beautiful. So terrified. Looking utterly, horribly betrayed.
My arm lifted, the blade pointing downward, and her mouth opened in an endless scream.
“You’re scaring me. Kole. Wake up.”
My eyes flung open to find Legacy kneeling above me, a hard wood floor beneath me, my father’s knife nowhere in sight.
The only thing that remained of my nightmare was the fear in Legacy’s eyes.
I looked around the room again, but it did little to calm my nerves. Furniture lay toppled all around me, and a cool breeze wafted in through the window. Strange. I didn’t remember leaving it open.
Then I saw the glass covering the floor. A thousand shards, a million, all glinting in the blue light coming in from the brilliant sky above. The pain hit a second later, and I let my gaze drop to my hand. My right fist was a bloody mess.
“What in the fates?” I murmured.
“Exactly my reaction.” She sounded stern, but her voice wobbled a bit.
If this unnerved her, it was a good thing she couldn’t see inside my head. “Just a nightmare. It happens all the time.”
She looked around the room again. “Does it?” she asked softly.
I rose to my feet without answering, giving the room another quick sweep. It wasn’t just the furniture I’d damaged. One wall had a distinct dent that hadn’t been there last night. My blanket looked even worse, tattered as if a mutt had been locked in here for weeks and tried to eat his way out. Or perhaps someone had taken a shredder to it. I looked around again and found my knife on the floor. I gave it a little kick, sending it under the bed.
“Did this happen before your incident at Neuromen?” she asked, a cautious tone in her voice.
I ignored the question, thinking about yesterday’s arsonist interrogation. It had taken longer than it should have to discover that those Firebrands knew very little about Dane’s plan, and it hadn’t been exactly pleasant. Surely that had triggered this and nothing more.
“I’ll clean this up,” I told her. “Gram will never know it happened. I’ll see you at breakfast, okay? Try to get some sleep.”
She gaped at me now. “You nearly tore the house down, and you’re telling me to go back to bed? Kole, this is not normal. Is this why you wanted your own apartment, for when you do . . . whatever this is?”
The last thing I needed was a therapy session right now. “It’s like I told you. It was just a nightmare.”
“And how many times over the past weeks have you turned into destructo-monster in your sleep? Don’t you dare lie to me.”
I gritted my teeth. “You have nothing to worry about, all right? I’m fine. You’re fine. Nobody else woke up. It’s not a big deal.”
She stared at me incredulously.
I swiped a piece of the blanket off the floor and pressed it to my hand to stop the bleeding. That would be hard to hide in the morning. Same with the broken glass and the dent in the wall. Maybe if I kept people out of here until we switched bases again, nobody else would notice.
“Unbelievable.” Legacy started for the door.
“Wait.”
She turned around and folded her arms. “Why, are you going to tell me the truth?”
I hesitated.
Legacy raised an eyebrow in the moonlight.
“I don’t know when it started,” I admitted. It was all I could give her right now. “But I would never hurt you. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.”
“Good. Then let’s forget about all this and focus on more important things.”
She stared at me for a long moment, shook her head, and left.
That went well. The anger from my nigh
tmare hadn’t dissipated completely nor the ache in my skull it always brought, and I took a few long breaths to clear my head. The cold air from the broken window helped. I took another look around, decided there wasn’t much I could do tonight, and entered the hallway, careful to close the door.
I would never hurt Legacy, at least intentionally. But that didn’t mean I would never lie to her.
There was more than one way to protect someone you loved.
As a child, I’d walked the city at night and looked for the stars far beyond the thick, gray clouds. Occasionally, one would peek through as if taunting me with its distance. It was those stars, the strong ones, I wished upon. I never voiced the wish because Mom said doing so would render the star powerless, and it needed all the power it could get to grant my wish. Never mind that my wishes never came true anyway.
Today, it wasn’t a wish I didn’t dare voice but reality. Some truths couldn’t be spoken. That would grant them power over my life, and I would never, ever relinquish that power.
“I should have slept on the street,” I muttered, heading down the stairs. It wouldn’t be the first time. There were worse things than curling up in the shadows of a quiet street and hearing cats fighting and crickets singing their pulsating tune and feeling one with the city as the cold night air penetrated my skin. Yes, I’d seen much worse things.
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than what I’d seen in Legacy’s eyes tonight.
Fourteen
Legacy
I lay in bed long after Kole’s footsteps faded down the hallway. Any other night, I would have joined him. But tonight I’d watched the guy I loved crack apart and then lie to my face. He was as far from okay as a person could be yet refused to admit it. His health would forever be the shadow in the corner we both denied existed. Except I couldn’t pretend much longer.
