“Shutting up is an impossible request,” the Addo says cheerfully. “This is a miracle! Look, kids, Addo Chad’s not so dead after all!”
Although Garrett’s stance relaxes in front of me, I swear I can feel a shock wave rumble through him. Addo Chad died in his sleep months ago. There were conspiracy rumors that it was foul play, but even the rumors hadn’t guessed that it was this foul.
But that’s not my concern. My brain spins with the other possibilities. I know we can get Sean out of here for sure. Probably the Addo.
Iris.
I’m closest to Chad. That means Garrett’s got to get Sean and the Addo out and that leaves me to take care of Iris. I won’t leave her, but I don’t know if I can handle Chad by myself.
“I’d love to hear the story of how you faked your death sometime,” Addo burbles conversationally. He leans back, taking his mug from the table. But that’s not all. I’m so focused, I see the tiny movement as he plucks a Manga leaf from the wall, using just his finger and the rim of the mug as he does it. He slips the leaf over the mug’s lip before turning back to Chad. “Does your Cura also know you’ve risen from the dead, Addo Chad?”
“Don’t call me that,” Chad rasps. “I’m not a useless Addo anymore. Does your own Cura even realize that you spent the Indiciums screwing Addo Gita?” He sneers. “What an honorable Addo.”
“Touché,” Addo says with a little salute and swish of his mug. “I was an idiot. So tell me about your uprising. What are you doing these days?”
“You condescending moron!” Chad shouts. Nok droops a little more against Chad’s chest. “I’ve reached heights you could never even dream of! I am the Fury’s Dimittere!”
“Oh,” the Addo pauses as if he’s waiting for something more.
Dimittere. The name clicks with me and I project a panicky message to the Addo: He’s Dimitri! He’s the Mastermind Milo’s aunt was talking about! She said the Mastermind made a deal with Roger for The Key!
I don’t know if Addo gets the message or not, but the pause stretches too long. The Addo finally says, “Dimittere. Well, that sounds just lovely for you.”
Chad squeezes his forearm across Nok’s neck even tighter. Even though he still looks bored, Nok’s also turning a little blue.
“You really want this Veritas dead, don’t you,” Chad growls. The sizzle inside me, the dangerous current, concentrates in the soles of my shoes. My body drops lower in a crouch, ready to spring. But the Addo just looks down into his tea mug, thoughtfully swishing its contents.
“Oh, you aren’t going to kill him,” Addo says lightly. He even chuckles. My entire body hums as if a bolt of lightening is caught inside. “Even he knows that. You want him to find the Core for you.”
“You’re so sure you have all the answers,” Chad says. “Wrong! I could care less about a lousy Veritas…I could slit his throat right now…”
But before Chad can go on, Nok passes out. But instead of hitting the floor, the tiny Veritas twists as he falls, twirling right out of the evil Addo’s grasp. Chad makes a grab for him. Nok sinks his teeth into Chad’s skeletal hand. The man lets out a furious shriek as Nok darts away.
Garrett and I don’t even have the chance to move before Nok shoots through the bathroom door, slamming it behind him. Chad whirls back to face us and the Addo waves his teacup at the bathroom door.
“Didn’t you want to go get him? Ring his neck again?” he asks. Chad shakes the sting from his bitten hand as his expression morphs from pained to grizzly amusement.
“Again,” he sneers, “you think you know it all. Let me tell you where your Veritas went, because I’ve mapped out all his tunnels. He’s gone through the laundry chute…as if some idiot would put a chute in an underground house! What a stupid escape route! And you know I’m telling the truth, don’t you, Great Addo Larry? You’re looking a little dead now yourself. Doesn’t he look pale, kids? But don’t any of you worry about your Veritas. I have Contego,” Chad pauses to smirk at Garrett and I. “Real ones…waiting in every tunnel, at every turn, to snag your pet. I hope he enjoys his one last terrifying trip through his rat maze.”
“Huh.” Addo seems to mull it over. “Did you know that rats learn faster than most humans? Just a bit of fascinating trivia.”
“Did you know that the Ianua, on a whole, aren’t as smart as rats?” A thin smile leaks across Chad’s lips. “That’s why we’ve killed so many of them.”
The Addo shuts his mouth.
“So, if you aren’t looking for a Veritas, then why are you here?” I ask. Chad’s neck swivels. His smile makes my fingers curl into fists.
“Because I’m the one who’s got your daddy’s Holy Grail, Nalena,” he says. I resist the cold shiver that slithers down my spine. “That’s why I was sent. I’ve got a bargaining chip the size of Vegas and I’m no fool.”
“I agree,” Addo nods.
“Agree with what?”
“The Mastermind’s a fool.”
Chad falters, stumbles on the Addo’s words and nothing comes out except a stutter of sounds that never completely form one question. I feel the same way, even though nothing shows on my face. If the Addo’s right, he’s saying that Dimitri and the Mastermind are not the same person. That means we’ve got two enemies to look out for, not just one.
“Doesn’t matter how I got the name.” Addo shrugs. “I understand that your Big Cheese is trying to take down the Ianua faster than a Christmas tree in July. But you’re his greatest mistake, Chad…because you are a clever one. You’ve figured out that you can get whatever this Mastermind has promised you, all on your own.”
“If you help me,” Chad says, “I’ll get him off your back.”
“Him who, again?” Addo asks with a grin. Chad’s mouth opens and snaps shut. He frowns. Addo’s grin remains friendly. “Helping will simply make you the next him, won’t it? I suppose it’d be refreshing to know who the Mastermind truly is, so let’s get down to it. What do you want from us?”
Chad’s eyes go beady as he considers what the Addo just said. He finally lets the word out from between his tight lips.
“Vision,” he says. “I want the little girl who has the Vision.”
My spine turns to iron. Addo never even glances at me, but his eyebrows peek.
“Oh?” he says to Chad. “This Mastermind told you we have a Tralate?”
“Let’s think this over,” Sean interrupts from the stairs. “Your Master sent you into a Veritas bunker, crawling with Contego, to retrieve a Tralate? How were you going to get her out?”
“Good point,” Addo agrees, raising his mug to Sean before looking back to Chad.
“HE is not my master,” Chad growls. “But I am yours.”
Chad pulls a gun from his waistband and the room explodes in all directions. The Addo charges for the steps, hurling his Manga tea at Chad. The liquid splatters, but misses Chad entirely and the mug bounces across the kitchen floor. Sean races up the stairs and the Addo goes after him. I face Chad and Garrett shields the escape, sticking close to the Addo.
I want to throw myself at Chad, I try to will my bones to move, but my field shatters. Garrett gets the upstairs door closed and the locks grit in place. The Addo is safe now, Garrett’s made sure of it, but I’m on my own.
Chad breaks out in laughter. He holds up the gun, opens its chamber and shakes it the empty round.
“No bullets,” he says. “You’re Cura’s nothing but cowards.”
“Wrong,” I say. My field explodes around me again and I stand rooted. “You’re just trapped.”
Chad’s eyes sweep over me and I shudder. I throw up both hands too late, whisking my Cavis across my chest. In my hurry, I almost push it into my pelvis, but swoosh it down my opposite leg at the last second. It doesn’t matter. Chad’s sharp cheekbones rise in the fullest, most gruesome smile I’ve ever seen.
“I was Contego once, you know.” His voice is as slippery and deep as a damp grave. “I trained for years to be Lead Procella. And when
the time came, my Cura’s Lead was happy to see me take the Addoship, instead of her job. She said she was excited to have an Addo who could protect himself. I knew it was because she was lazy, just like her other Contego. She had no idea of how to guard herself, let alone an Addo.”
His eyes narrow on my Cavis, bobbing at my knee, before tracing the invisible path back up my leg. His gaze drifts slowly across my pelvis, and up the center of my stomach. He stops at my sternum and his eyes drag over my chest to the bottom tip of my heart.
“Ah yes,” Chad says, his eyes pulsing between the usual root of my Cavis and my eyes. “There it is. You can stop playing games now, Nalena. I know you’re not Contego. You forget, I know who your daddy was. I’m sorry your own Cura forced you to be a decoy, just to make it look like you weren’t all sitting ducks. But, just so we’re clear, you should know that Alo or not, I don’t have a speck of the Ianua left in me and I’ll spear you straight through that heart Cavis, without a second thought, if you plan to interfere here.”
“I won’t.” My vocal cords whisper on their own, the cowardly words jumping out before I can stop them. I suppose even my body has given in now, and is operating out of sheer terror, but I don’t understand why I also feel my bravery as if it’s trying to boil in my veins.
“Good,” Chad says, pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket. The paper is as soft and gray as ancient bed sheets. “Do you know what this is?”
I shake my head, but of course I do. My mind swirls. I tried to bless my mother’s storage sheds and it nearly killed me, but this is only one Memory. My grandfather’s. Some kind of faith builds up in my head; something that says that maybe it doesn’t matter if I’m not an Addo, that maybe my own grandfather’s Memory won’t overpower me.
“I see…” I begin and Chad lunges at me. His swipe is lightening fast, but my Cavis doesn’t quite align before Chad stabs a finger into it. The explosion of pain still buckles me. I fall. My head hits the ground. My entire nervous system goes off like a raging siren, blaring from my toenails to my hair, that I might die as I lie at the Evil Addo’s feet. The world gushes in, and overloaded, all my senses go fuzzy.
“Want to see now? We have all day, you know. We’re locked in and there isn’t a Veritas tunnel in that little girl’s bedroom, so she’s not going anywhere either,” Chad says. He drops down next to me. “I don’t know why I bothered to hurt you, actually. Look, do you want to bless it? Go ahead. Bless it all you want. It’s the least I can do, since I didn’t do a damn thing I promised your father. I’ll let you bless it but it doesn’t matter if you do. It’s encrypted.”
He knocks on my head with his knuckles and it’s like hitting the edge of a computer screen. All my thoughts scramble for a second.
“Well, do you even know what that means, Nalena? No, you probably don’t.” Chad giggles. “Of course you don’t! You’re not a useless Addo; you’re a useless Alo! Let me tell you a little Addo secret: you can bless an encryption, but you’ll still need the encryption key if you want to reveal what it says. Your grandfather thought he was sooo smart, didn’t he? Well, he wasn’t, in case you’re wondering. You know who is smart though? Me. The code he used was genetic! It was the genetic code for the Contego bloodline! I’ll tell you what…he wasn’t an absolute moron, but he wasn’t as smart as I am by a long shot. At least he didn’t use the genetic code for the Alo, or else you would be dead, dead, dead right now. Well…after you read it for me, of course.”
He has no idea who or what I am. The pieces of what he’s saying begin to pull together. Whoever the Mastermind is, he is smarter than Chad. If the Mastermind knows that I’m Contego, he would expect me to kill Chad. It would help too, if I removed the middleman and brought the Memory to light, because a blessed Memory becomes knowledge available to the entire world. Maybe the Mastermind already has his own Tralate. And there’s something else. If the Memory is the key to ending the Fury, then knowing what that Memory holds, would be exactly what the Fury needs to change their lock. The Fury probably doesn’t even care about destroying the Memory, they just want to find out what my grandfather’s solution was for destroying their community, so they can change the equation.
Chad flicks open the paper with a snap of his wrist and the letters explode off the page like fireworks thrown at my face. POP POP POP, the letters burst so fast that they don’t make sense.
R-pop-E-pop-S-pop-E-pop-T-pop.
I say it the wrong way in my head and then the right way. Reset. Reset. Reset what?
“See what I mean?” Chad says, getting to his feet. “The code’s unreadable. Time to find out from the Tralate. You think I should use candy? Little kids will do anything for candy, right?” He giggles. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Little kids will do anything not to have another fingers broken, too.”
He shrugs and gets to his feet. I grab for Chad’s ankle and his field erupts like a burst of smog. He just shakes me off and I watch his dusty shoes walk across the room and open the door to Iris’s bedroom.
Please, I close my eyes in prayer. I don’t even know if the universe can hear me anymore. Please help me to stop him from hurting her. Please.
What that comes roaring toward me is not God.
Chapter 19
I RECOGNIZE HIM IMMEDIATELY, BY the darkness and the feeling of sludge that gushes through me.
Accept me, Nalena, Roger’s voice is desperate in my head. Let me help.
No. Get out of here. I say. If you want to help, let my mother come.
She’s with your grandfather. He’s paralyzed from the movement of his Memory. It’s opened, and he is waiting for it to be blessed.
Why are you here?
They don’t need me anymore. They wanted the Memory and it’s been found. But I can help you. When I traded the Memory, I asked Chad to help me reunite with my family. I also asked for him to reveal his weakest Cavis to me. He told me, only because I was Alo and he knew he could kill me before I could ever reach his Cavis. But you can. Please, Nalena. Let me help you. Accept me as your Connection.
I don’t trust you. I’ll do it on my own, I tell him. I open my eyes and see Iris’s open door. I try to push myself to my feet and collapse. I shut my eyes again.
Please, Roger begs. I’ll separate from you afterward. I’ll be written, I swear it. You can know everything. You can hate me. But let me help you now.
Why would I trust you to help?
Because he will kill you after he kills her. His voice breaks in my head. And you are my daughter.
I open my eyes, my tears making everything blurry, and I hear the scream. It’s Iris’s little voice, no words, just the sound of her terror. I no longer have the option of debating whether or not I can trust him. I shut my eyes again.
Help me, I say.
Roger’s field immediately erupts inside mine. The two come together like the clash of steel. They weld to one another, the inside of my field grinding and Roger’s falling into place, until finally, our fields merge into a solid silver orb, strong as Titanium. The minute the bond is complete, my body rises inside my field.
Our Connection will exhaust you when your field disappears, Roger says. He’s a ghostly film inside my field. Go now. Follow your instincts and don’t break your field.
I’m at the door within seconds. Someone else is screaming. It’s Zaneen, howling like an animal, as she beats Chad’s back. He’s holding Iris against the wall, with one hand on her throat, and dangling the Memory in front of her with the other.
“Read!” he shouts at her. Iris cries and he grips her throat tighter, until she stops making noise. Zaneen moves around to yank his arms and while his back is still to me, I throw myself on him. I land on his back and wrap my legs around him.
The blind eye, Roger’s voice instructs me, solid and sure.
The blind eye. I reach around and jab at Chad’s face, but I don’t know which eye Roger means and I can’t see what I’m doing. Chad lets go of Iris and she drops, coughing, to the floor. He ree
ls back, reaching for me and gets my hair. He pulls hard, trying to yank me over the top of him, but I dig in my heels. Zaneen leaps at him, her mouth open and Chad lets go of me. Instead, he backhands Zaneen so hard that her feet leave the floor.
Iris screams and Chad grabs her again. I can’t do anything on his back. I jump off him and as he swings to face me, I remember Rule One. I move my Cavis, because even though he knows where it is, he can’t kill me if it’s not aligned. My body drops into its crouch.
Let yourself do this, Roger instructs. You can do this if you trust your instincts. The blind eye is on the forehead. Between his eyebrows.
My body fires itself at Chad again. Chad lets go of Zaneen and pivots before I can touch him, slamming me down to the ground with one backhand.
“Leave her alone!” Iris screams.
“Read it!” Chad shouts at her.
“I can’t read!” She howls back.
I roll away from him. Chad groans as I jump to my feet again.
“You need to die now?” he says to me. “Is that it? If you pretend to be Contego, expect that I will treat you like one.”
His field orbs around him like a storm cloud. Chad stuffs the Memory into his pocket and motions to me with his other hand, inviting me to fight him.
My body settles back into a crouch again. I pull my Cavis into the palm of my right hand and level my eyes on Chad. Iris scurries over to Zaneen, huddling down beside her, trying to wake her up.
“I am Contego,” I growl. “And I am your Tralate.”
Chad stares for a moment, disbelieving or just putting it all together—I can’t tell. Then he smiles.
“Let’s go then,” he says. “Prove yourself.”
He forms his first three fingers into a spike aimed for the soft spot in the center of my collar bone. I drop out of the way and swing up with the heel of my hand, aiming for his nose. Even with my body on autopilot, I miss.
He scoops across my hand with a massive stroke and my Cavis bobs up my arm and onto my shoulder blade. I push it down my side and into my leg.
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