Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy

by DelSheree Gladden

  “How’s your dinner?” Milo asks.

  I lick the grease off my fingers and don’t answer.

  “Not in a talkative mood? Fine.” Milo reaches for a second glass of water, the one that will knock me out as soon as it hits my stomach. A little flutter of panic hits me. I’m not ready to sink back into my dreamless hell. I can’t let him see that, though.

  I lick one more finger, and say, “Can’t I at least finish eating before you start badgering me?”

  Gesturing as if he has all the time in the world, Milo leans back against the cell wall. He lets me eat without saying another word. His blasé attitude about this whole experience irks me more than anything else. I want to slap the calm expression off his face. Instead, I force myself to mirror his unconcern as I pop green peas into my mouth and crunch my way through a thick slice of garlic toast. Whoever does the cooking around here is quite talented. Way better than anything I can come up with. The food has been the only perk of being locked up.

  The plate goes back to Milo when I’ve gotten every little scrap possible. He smirks at my thoroughness, knowing I do it purely to stretch out the talk-free time. The Kevlar shackle around my wrist is chained to the wall. It’s too strong to break through, but it is long enough to let me walk around a little. Standing up shows weakness. It would be better if I could bear staying curled up on my bed like a plastic Barbie, not bothered by cramped muscles. That’s a little too much to ask of me, though. I stand up and pace back and forth well out of reach of Milo.

  Milo usually starts off our conversations with questions about what I may not have told him about my plan for the Guardians. I guess I can’t blame him for thinking I was hiding things from him, but really, my plans for taking out the Guardians were pretty slim. I still hadn’t figured out what to do about the Cipher Zombies or how to give Braden back his talents. Without those two puzzles being completed, it was hard to plan anything concrete. Tired of repeating myself on that front, I figure I might as well take the lead this time.

  “I was wrong,” I say, “about what the prophecy meant.”

  Startled, Milo watches me warily for a moment before biting. “What part?”

  “The part that said one of my own would be my downfall.” I turn and face him. “I thought Idris meant the Cipher Zombies the Guardians are making, but I was wrong. Idris was talking about you, Milo.”

  His face screws up angrily. “That’s not true. I did everything I could to help you, Libby. You’re the one who ruined your chances of wiping out the Guardians.”

  “Go ahead and keep telling yourself that,” I say. “The prophecy never mentions me doing anything to jeopardize my chances, just one of my own. You’d think that since the prophecy came from a Seeker, someone who wanted me to fail more than anything, wouldn’t he slip it in if I was going to blow my own destiny before I even tried to start a war?”

  Milo clenches his fist together, but doesn’t respond to my taunting.

  “Think about it, Milo. Everything you say I did to mess things up also had some pretty big benefits, too. Braden was the only reason we got the Ciphers out in the first place. They’d still be locked in the spirit world without him. Not just because of him giving us the schematics for the compounds, but because his power was the only thing that made it possible for me to perform an Inquest on so many people at once. You think trusting Mr. Walters was a mistake, too, but he told me I needed more of the prophecy and warned us about the Cipher zombies. Do I need to go on? The only decisions I’ve made that have turned out badly have been the ones I listened to you on.”

  “Name one,” he says, his anger punching through his shield and filling the little room.

  “Only one? I can do better than that. I’ll double it, though I’m sure I can come up with even more if I really try,” I say. Leaning against the wall, I stare down at him. “It was your opinion that Braden shouldn’t go with us on the raid to grab Drake. If I had listened to you, I would be dead right now, because Braden was the only one who wasn’t affected by the talent interference. He saved all of our lives. Not to mention you making Celia stay behind. Did you know she repaired a broken bone and a nicked femoral artery when one of the Ciphers broke their leg before you took me? She saved him from bleeding out in a matter of seconds. She could have saved Hammond. And last, but certainly not least, you kept me from going after Braden when he was taken by the Guardians. If you hadn’t stopped me, I could have gotten him back before Drake ever twisted Braden’s Oath. Braden never would have tried to kill me, and he’d still have his talents and be ready to help me take these monsters down.”

  In all reality, Lance was just as big of a factor in keeping me from going after Braden, but as worked up as Milo is right now, he doesn’t bother to think that hard about it. “That’s a bunch of crap, Libby, but even if it wasn’t, you’re still in the same position. You can’t win this fight.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He throws his hands up at me. “You just admitted that you couldn’t even get all the Ciphers out of the spirit world without Braden! How are you going to defeat a whole army of Guardians without him? You can’t have it both ways, Libby. Either you need Braden to win or you don’t.”

  “Fine,” I snap, “I need him.”

  “Then you’re going to lose.”

  I walk back to my bed and sit down. For several long minutes, I don’t say anything. When I do speak, I don’t bother looking up at him. “You realize you’re the only one who believes that, right? The Guardians wouldn’t be going to all this trouble to hold me if they weren’t convinced I could beat them.”

  “You have no idea what the Guardians think,” Milo says darkly.

  I look up, facing his blazing anger and ask, “Do you?”

  “I’ve had enough for today,” he says. He stands up and picks the drugged water off the tray.

  “How long have I been here?” I ask as he approaches me.

  “Six weeks.”

  His answer stuns me. “I didn’t realize it had been so long.”

  “Time flies when you sleep twenty-three hours a day,” Milo grumbles.

  “I was right, then, wasn’t I? President Howe is holding me until my birthday. He’s planning some big spectacular execution for me as soon as my talents are unlocked, right?”

  For the first time in as many of these chats as I can actually recall, regret lines Milo’s features. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Libby. Give up. Convince Howe you aren’t a threat and he’ll let you live.”

  “Why would he do that?” I ask.

  “Because he knows the people are turning on him. Granting you mercy would placate them and keep him in power a little longer. At least until I can take it from him. I can change things. Just promise Howe you won’t stand in his way and he’ll let you live,” Milo says.

  “If you believe that, you really are delusional. Nothing I could ever say or do will keep Howe from killing me.”

  Milo shakes his head, maybe because he thinks I’m foolish for not believing him, maybe because he knows how wrong he is. Either way, he settles the glass against my lips and tips it up. I let just a few drops slip into my mouth before pulling back. Milo looks surprised and hesitates for a second. All I need is a few more. I tap the smallest amount of Naturalism I can that will still do the job I need it to do, working furiously as I try to distract Milo.

  “Do you remember when I asked you about the reason you became my friend,” I ask him.

  Suspicious, Milo says, “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what you told me?”

  He nods, but doesn’t repeat what he said so long ago. My Naturalism courses through my body, gathering up the drug and memorizing its makeup. I need a little more time.

  “I asked you if you sought me out because you honestly liked me, or because you saw me as a way to get back at the Guardians.” I pause, lending my concentration to my talent for just a second. I’m almost there. “You told me you were with me only because you wanted to be with me.”


  “Yeah,” Milo says slowly. “What’s your question?”

  “My question is …” I say, wrapping up my work and storing the information. My Naturalism hovers nearby waiting for when I will need it next. “… did you mean it? Was that really the only reason you were with me back then, because you loved me?”

  His answer hurts more than I expect.

  “No,” he says. “I did love you, but I also needed you. I would have made you believe I loved if I’d had to in order to get what I wanted from you. I needed a way to hit the Guardians, and you were it.”

  He brings the glass back to my lips and spills the water into my mouth. Before my eyes close again, I say, “I only loved you for one reason, Milo. Because you were the first person in my life who made me feel like it was okay to be who I really was. You made me believe in myself for the first time. Thank you for that.”

  Chapter 30

  Gateway

  My eyes stay closed as I listen to Milo lock the door behind him when he leaves. I still don’t open my eyes. The soft echo of Milo’s voice whispering, “I’m sorry,” drifts through the bars. The desire to cry for him builds in my chest until it feels ready to burst. I hold on until the sound of footsteps disappears entirely. Only then, do tears slip down my face and soak into the pillow. It takes me another few minutes to open my eyes. Even longer to lift my head. Rolling far enough to the side for my head to hang over the edge of the bed makes me nauseous. I spit out a clump of white powder. It splatters on the floor unceremoniously.

  I know I’ll have to find a way to hide that before Milo comes back, but I’ll worry about that later. The quarter-sized blob of toxin is probably only half of what was inside the glass. I’ll do better next time. For a first attempt, and having no clue what I was doing, using my Naturalism to isolate the chemical structure of the poison and trap even half of it was better than I was expecting. I can hardly move right now, but getting half the dose out of my system means the drugs will wear off twice as fast as usual. Given that Milo visits me once a day, I’ll still be barely mobile for about twelve hours. That gives me close to twelve hours to get in contact with Celia.

  Having only an hour a day to think about her last words to me, it took a lot longer to figure it out than it should have. Well, I still didn’t figure it out completely. I get that she wants me to meet her in the spirit world, but I still don’t understand what she meant by being wrong about that place. The day she asked me to try and perform an Inquest on her, she left saying that the spirit world was just an empty place now that the Ciphers weren’t trapped there anymore. She said she was wrong, but what does that mean? If it’s not an empty place, what is it filled with?

  There’s only one way to find out.

  Every hour or so, I test my Spiritualism. Whatever this crap is Milo keeps making me drink dulls my mental capacity. It takes just as much mental power as it does spiritual power to use my Spiritualism. And since this has always been the talent I’ve struggled to master despite my added power, I need to be at the top of my game. The minutes tick by painfully slow. At first, all I can manage is to get into a trance. Eventually, I’m able to contact my spirit and send out a few feelers. It’s hard to tell time alone in my cell, but I think it’s been about ten hours when I am able to push my spirit away from my body and into the subconscious waiting area that leads to the spirit world.

  It’s only my spirit body. Even still, the ability to move around freely feels so good. No chains around my ankle, no tiny little room to suffocate me. For a moment, I simply move each muscle in my body, walk, run, spread my arms and breathe. Then I take off at a sprint toward the barrier. Time is a tricky thing in the spirit world. You never really know how long you’ve been here in physical-world time. The ratio is fluid and unstable. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay. I have to be back in my body, faking being drugged, before Milo comes back to see me. I crash through the barrier and skid to a stop on the other side.

  The young Asian man sitting in full lotus position blinks and stares at me like I’m a ghost. “You’re here!” he exclaims.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “Alex Takima. Celia recruited me. I go to school with her.”

  “What are you doing here? It’s got to be about four in the morning.”

  “I’m watching for you. We take shifts. Someone is always here waiting just in case you ever showed up,” he says. Then a light seems to come on in his brain. “I’m supposed to get Celia as soon as you show up. She’s been waiting for you for weeks!”

  “Can you get her now?”

  He jumps up excitedly. “Yeah, I’ll be right back. I’m going to jump back and call her. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Not a problem. He disappears, leaving a puff of ethereal mist in his wake. I count the seconds. Not that it matters, given the time anomaly, but it helps keep me from getting too impatient. I reach just over three minutes before Celia bursts through the boundary behind me. I spin around and catch her in a hug. When she finally pulls back, tears are pouring down her elated face.

  “Libby! I can’t believe it’s you. Thank goodness I wasn’t in school or my ballet teacher would probably be wondering what on earth I was doing lying in the middle of the dance floor, but I wouldn’t have cared. I couldn’t believe it when Alex called. I jumped as soon as he gave me the message.” Her hands cover her mouth as she giggles. “Lance kept telling us you were still alive, but after all the pain he felt from you we started getting scared that they were doing something really bad to you. We couldn’t figure out why you hadn’t met me here yet.”

  “Milo’s been drugging me,” I explain. “How long has it been since he took me?”

  “Six weeks.”

  I shake my head in frustration. We sit down in the mists across from each other. “I was hoping he was lying about how long it’s been. I only remember about three weeks of being held. They must have kept me drugged nonstop for the first couple weeks.”

  “Have they really been hurting you? Braden is a mess. All he can think about is whether or not they’re torturing you,” Celia says.

  Like they did him. The scars across his chest have to be a constant reminder to him of how sick the Guardians are.

  “When they first let me wake up, they kicked me around a little, but it wasn’t a big deal. I hope Lance didn’t suffer too much. Nobody has hurt me in a while. I’m okay. Tell Braden I’m fine, now, and tell Lance I’m sorry.”

  “Lance wasn’t hurt that bad. It was knowing that you were in pain and not being able to help you that was the worst part. For him and Braden. Every time Lance started feeling the pain, Braden was right there. He wouldn’t leave him alone for a second. It’s been so hard for him not to come find you,” Celia says.

  Thinking of him melts my bravado. My mouth starts twitching and pulling into frowns I can’t control. Before I can stop myself, I’m crying like a baby. “I miss him so much. Is he okay? I know he must hate himself for not trying to stop me from going. Is he alright?”

  Celia wraps me up in hug and shushes me like I’m a small child who has just skinned her knee. It’s what I need, though. She holds onto me and says, “He’s okay, Libby. It was really hard for him at first, but me and Lance have been keeping him really busy training the new recruits and checking on the Ciphers all over the world. We run him so ragged, he barely even has time to breathe, but that’s the way he wants it right now. He just breaks down if he thinks about where you are for too long.”

  “I hate not being able to feel him around me. Not having him near me is worse than being beaten by that thug, Thomas. I can’t even dream about him because the drugs put me under too deeply.” That has been agony for me. I have so many good memories of Braden sitting around my mind just waiting to be accessed.

  “How are you here now? Did Milo stop drugging you?” Celia asks.

  “No, I figured out how to keep the drugs from getting into my bloodstream using my Naturalism. It worked well enough.”

  Celia ju
st stares at me. “You what?”

  “I gathered the drug back up and spit it out,” I say, unsure of myself now. “I only got about half of it, though, or I would have been here sooner.”

  “I … I can’t believe you were able to do that, Libby. There are people who train for years, decades, to work as Cures. They’re called in when people are poisoned or bitten by something. They try to heal the person by removing the venom or toxin,” Celia says. “Cures are the absolute best at what they do, but they’re success rate is only about ten percent. You did it with no training at all, and got half the drug back out. That’s incredible!”

  “Uh, great, Celia, but I don’t know how long I can stay here. I have to get back before Milo brings me my next meal. Can we discuss the weirdness of what I can do some other time?” I ask.

  “Sure, as long as you show me how to do it later.”

  I nod and she grins. “So, what has been going on at the training house? You said something about new recruits?”

  “Yeah, your friend Jen, she posted the video of Milo storming in and taking you,” Celia says, the corner of her mouth pulling down into a frown at the mention of what her brother did. She struggles to get it under control. “Anyway, it went viral within an hour. After what happened … after Milo …” She has to stop again. Images of Milo slitting that man’s throat color my vision and I cringe. “After seeing what the Guardians were willing to do to innocent people, a lot more recruits have come to us wanting to help. It’s mostly been teens, and people around Braden’s age who get worked up easier than older people, but even the parents and grandparents are getting on board by supporting their family members who want to help. It’s been amazing to see.”

  “What else?” I ask. “Have you gotten any closer to coming up with a plan for my birthday?”