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  “Huh uh, hold on.” I spun her around. “How’d you know I was here?”

  Gail wrenched her arm back. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t sidestep my question.”

  “We do have a security system, you know.” She straightened her collar in a huff.

  I opened my mouth to retort, but she beat me to it.

  “I know, I know. You’re too fast for motion detection on our surveillance cameras. That’s why we installed sensors that react to abrupt changes in temperature. If a warm-bodied individual stirs the air in a climate-controlled hallway, we know someone’s here. If said individual doesn’t appear on the film, we know who.” She smirked. “Your days of coming and going at will are over.”

  My face burned. If there was one thing I hated, it was being made to look a fool—especially by these asshats—but I couldn’t let it show. I shoved past her with my hands fisted in my pockets. “Whatever.”

  The panels groaned as they sealed behind me, dimming the cramped room.

  “You’ll have fifteen minutes,” she told me, tapping something into a touch screen on the wall. “Ask if he knows anything about a rebel movement, involving his daughter. We’ve had a few breaches, recently.”

  A rebel movement besides our own?

  “And of course, I’ll be monitoring the exchange remotely in case he’s able to break my hold.”

  “Your hold?” Last time I checked, Gail could project sights and sounds from afar, but her manipulation abilities were too much of a strain. Hell, even in person, they were pretty shaky. Was she screwing with me, or had she been practicing?

  There went that cocky smirk again.

  “Oh, didn’t I mention it before?” She sauntered over to a utility cabinet and opened it to reveal a rack of rubber suits. “I’ve developed a new technique over the past few months.”

  I waited for her to continue, unwilling to express the interest I knew she so craved—and it killed her. Her fingers twitched over the hanger, suspended in wait as the situation grew deliciously awkward.

  Nope. Not going to bite.

  Finally, she ripped the suit down and chucked it at me. “Put that on.”

  I could’ve snorted. “You gonna watch?”

  “Ugh, like I would want to.” She turned her back to me. “You’re a disgusting waste of carbon. I hope Vladimir calls our bluff and fries you.”

  “Love you, too, Cuz.” I grinned and ditched my clothes in favor of ERA’s dominatrix get-up. Apparently, they were keeping up the whole gas charade in hopes that he wouldn’t go Human Torch and raze the place. I tugged on my mask and fixed what felt like an empty tank to my back.

  Gail shifted her weight. “I’ve spent time near him, with him, becoming attuned to his body and mind.”

  Oh, to have human hearing and miss this spiel…

  “Like I’ve said before, it’s like tuning into a radio frequency. There are adjustments to be made so other stations don’t bleed in.”

  “Sounds thrilling,” I remarked, penguin-walking to the second door.

  She looked back at the sound of my muffled voice, dead serious. “I commandeer sight from his left eye, Cole. Through that, I am able to manipulate his detention from afar.”

  Well, shit.

  I gave her a thumbs-up so as not to arouse suspicion, and she entered the code for me to get in.

  “Remember, fifteen minutes.”

  “Got it.” Kind of. How the hell was I supposed to concentrate on soothing Sparky now? Gail had more or less bragged about the fact that she could keep an eye on us—even make us turn on each other. This kind of development was the last thing we needed. We weren’t just up the shit creek anymore; we were knee-deep in it.

  The doors slid apart, revealing ERA’s detainee. I stole a deep breath and fogged the glass covering my face on exhale.

  “Vladimir, my friend,” I greeted, arms open, ready to enter the world of negotiat—

  “Odjebi.”

  I edged into his narrow dwelling as the doors sealed behind me, ERA’s stupid, anti-static suit creeping up my ass. “Uh…thanks.”

  “I told them before; I have no words to say.”

  “Of course not.” I eyed the murky blue water contained behind a wall of glass on my right. “So, they gave you an aquarium?”

  He snorted and a cloud formed on his mask. “They say, I try things, I spend rest of my days in this tank.”

  Well, that made sense. Douse the fire-starter.

  I crossed my arms and circled him. Was Gail using this guy as her eyepiece now, or was she relying on the dome camera in the corner? The latter, most likely. He didn’t have that possessed glow gaze going on, and she hadn’t appeared exhausted. So, for now, we could get privacy with a quick little—

  Crunch!

  —accident.

  Vlad startled at the sound, whipping his head back to see the broken camera.

  “Easy, man, I just want…” My view fogged up again. “Oh, screw it.”

  He quirked an eyebrow.

  I removed my helmet and threw it in the corner. “I just want to talk.”

  “What of the gas?”

  “Part of my abil—”

  “Cole,” Gail’s sharp tone crackled through a speaker, “what did you do to my feed?”

  I backed toward the panel at the door. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t try that innocent act with me. You’re up to something, and when I…”

  Blah, blah, blah. I forced myself to concentrate and began entering every override code I’d memorized over the past however many months. One of them had to still be valid. If I could keep this door locked and her out of the way for a few minutes, there was a chance I could scrape together some useful intel.

  “—visit is over,” Gail snipped, a fraction of a second before the keypad went red.

  My knees nearly buckled with relief. Until she figured out whatever the hell my button mashing had done, I had a captive audience.

  “What is cause for this?” Vladimir tilted his chin toward the door I’d just locked. “You wish to kill me without witnesses?”

  I scoffed. “Please, if I wanted to kill you, I could do it in the open with no witnesses. I’m faster than you are, remember?”

  “I remember melting your flesh.”

  “Close enough. Now, as nostalgic as this little trip down memory lane makes me, I need you to concentrate. Frizzhead is going to take over your sight in a second, and I don’t want her reading my lips, so we’re going to have to get friendly.” I crossed the room in two long strides, sweating buckets in my idiotic suit. “Promise to keep that heat to yourself?”

  He jutted his chin out. “I promise no such thing.”

  I’d ax this clown in the head for a cigarette right now.

  “Fine. Do you promise not to burn me unless I give you a reason?” I cast a quick glance back at the panel, half expecting it to have changed colors or triggered an alarm.

  “I suppose.”

  I knelt beside the chair where he’d been restrained with rubber chains and angled my mouth just behind his ear. “You understand what’s happening here, right?”

  Vlad shuddered and straightened with a jerk, indicating that Gail had assumed partial sight. “Y-Yes.”

  “These people have plans to use you—to force other Dynari into aligning with their vision. They’ve given you the speech, right? Utopia, everything and everyone rendered the same, blah blah blah.”

  He shook his head with great effort.

  “Then we’ll fill you in later. Just know we’re trying to stop them. You remember my brother and sis—his fiancée, right? The only reason we went on that mission to recruit you was to keep tabs on them. You know, infiltrate their ranks. We had no clue they were going to do this shit to you, and we’re sorry, but there’s no time for apologies now. To stop these whackjobs, we’re going to need your help.”

  “I am in no position to help anyone.”

  “Is your daughter part
of a rebel movement?” I asked, trying Gail’s angle. Maybe ERA had burned a few more bridges than we’d realized. They could’ve tried to recruit Vlad’s daughter prior to this and failed. Had she gone into hiding?

  Vladimir swung out a shaky arm and tried to turn his chin.

  “Huh uh.” I grabbed the other side of his head, preventing him—and Gail—from seeing me. “C’mon, if we want to swap information, it needs to be done before they bust in here.”

  “You miss more than pieces; you miss whole other puzzle!”

  I tensed my jaw and implored the universe for patience. “Tell me fast. I can process it.”

  “They came to my home, filled my daughter’s head with nonsense, and took her away.”

  “Who? The rebel movement?”

  “These people made no mention of rebellion. They claimed to be representatives from a sub-society of the gifted. Dynari, Augari, Nullari…even those who bear the mark.”

  A supernatural sub-society? Dizziness washed over me so fast, I nearly lost my bearings. We weren’t on the frontlines of this war; we’d come in from the side. Did this other group know about us? About ERA? Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  How were we supposed to factor in unknowns at this point?

  “You understand my fears now,” he went on, void of emotion. “No such organization can remain untainted. I begged Zvonimira to understand this, but she always had a thirst for knowledge—information they twisted like hook in her mouth. We had an argument. She left with them.”

  “Where did they take her?”

  “North.” He continued to struggle against my hold, possessed by Gail’s movements. It was a miracle she hadn’t figured out how to manipulate his ability yet. “On the lake. I took off so many days to search for her, to get her to speak to me, that I lost my job. I lost everything. When you showed up, I could only assume they had returned, unwilling to take no for answer.”

  “So, you went on the offensive.”

  “I have no regrets.”

  “That makes two of us.” I blew out a breath. “Do you remember where on the lake?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited. “Would you mind telling me?”

  “What will you do for me in return? Can you get me out of here?”

  “Not yet.” I didn’t want to blow our cover. “But I can get Zvonimira out.”

  “You promise?”

  “‘Course.”

  “If you are lying, you realize I will rip out your tongue and feed it to the goat that has sex with your father.”

  I pulled him in tighter, slamming his skull against mine. “Don’t speak ill of the dead, pal.”

  Vlad stiffened. “My apologies, but the threat remains. You’re sure she can’t hear us?”

  “Positive.” Mostly. If Gail was busy trying to get the door open, she wouldn’t have brain mojo to spare on his speech or hearing.

  “It is, uh, forty-one, point, six, five…”

  I zoned out as he rattled off the latitude and longitude, pulling each number from the recesses of his mind—or his ass. I had no way of knowing. “How the hell did you remember all of that?”

  “Minor gift.”

  “Okay. How the hell am I supposed to remember it?”

  He sighed. “Sanctuary Island. Look it up.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “I acted as though I changed my mind, made the journey there. Someone came to meet me. He doubted my sincerity. I woke up at home.”

  Well, that’s creepy.

  “We’ve been made,” Wallace’s voice crackled in my ear. “Heading out. You coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  Vladimir pulled against my hand. “What?”

  “Nothing. Thanks, Vlad.”

  “It wasn’t for you. Just go find my Zvoni.”

  “Sure thing.” I crossed the room and tapped in the same code that had let me override before, returning the system to business as usual. One by one, red lights switched to green.

  I pressed a button on my earpiece and ducked my head to whisper. “Gotta make this quick, before the door unlocks. There’s a tri-supernatural faction up north—they’ve got a place on Sanctuary Island. They recruited Vlad’s daughter, and I kinda told him we’d bring her back.”

  Wallace huffed. “Well, gee, as long as you haven’t made any big promises.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Who got us our next lead?”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “Meet up in ten, out back?”

  “On my way.”

  The doors groaned as they started to part, and I glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, and Vlad? One more thing…”

  He raised his brows through the little window in his mask.

  “There’s no gas in here.”

  CHAPTER 6

  « WALLACE »

  As it turned out, getting to Aiden’s room wasn’t the hard part—the hard part, after we hid and bluffed our way there, was coming face to face with the guy. Conscious. Lucid.

  Rena hadn’t made it two steps past his bed before her panic kicked in. It surged through the Nexus and knotted in my chest, a volatile mix of pent-up anxiety and post-traumatic stress. So much for Faye’s ten weeks of therapy.

  I took careful hold of her arm and whispered, “We don’t have to do this now.”

  “It’s fine¸” she assured me, equally quiet.

  Aiden stared ahead with an expression so blank, I couldn’t tell whether or not he recognized us. His emotions were flat. Inhumanly so. ERA’s procedure to neutralize his aggression must have worked, assuming vegetable was their desired outcome.

  “I hurt you,” he said out of nowhere. “I think…that should make me feel bad.”

  Rena’s brows knit and she blindly felt for my hand. “But?”

  “It’s not there.” Aiden let out a deep breath. “It’s like I’m…disconnected or something.”

  I knew Faye and Co. couldn’t screw around with a guy’s brain, twice, and leave him unscathed. He’d gone from raging monster to pacified zombie. “We can discuss this later. Right now, you need to come with us.”

  “Fine.”

  Rena scrunched her brows together. “You’re not going to ask any questions?”

  “Nah.” Aiden hefted his shoulders. “It’s not like it makes a difference. I die in here, I die out there—they own me, either way.”

  Her anxiety evaporated into indignation. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re trying to stop that.”

  He shrugged.

  “We can put an end to this, Aiden,” she insisted, raising her voice.

  I let go of her hand and ducked into the hallway. Sure enough, a patrolling guard had heard her—or at least, he was about to. We made eye contact.

  “Can I help you?” He pulled his shoulders back as he marched over, all business. “No one has authorization to be in this area right now.”

  “We, uh…” I stole a glance back at Rena, and her eyes widened.

  “Hey, baby?” She addressed me like a threat hadn’t just shown up in the doorway. “Before we go to the dress shop, can we hit the store? I need you to take something back for me.”

  I blinked.

  “That thing you gave me,” she over-emphasized, grasping onto the pole that used to hold Aiden’s IV bag for support. “It’s blue…”

  The guard tried to shove his way around me. “I’m going to need to see some identifica—”

  “It glows.” She wiggled her fingers between us, and I finally caught her meaning. The Nexus. My strength.

  I pulled it all back, but it felt wrong to leave her vulnerable. Especially here of all places. Did she think he could see our connec—

  Crack!

  In the space of a breath, she’d wrenched around and knocked the guard out with the pole. No warning. No remorse. I realized something at that moment…

  I was marrying my brother.

  “Let’s make this quick,” she told me, revving back up to her typical spaz mode, chest heaving. “I’m thinking we can have Aiden swap clo
thes with the guard. They do it all the time in movies to get out of places.”

  “I’m not the only one who’s changed,” Aiden remarked, unbothered by the man crumpled on his floor.

  I rubbed my neck. How the hell did we get into these situations?

  “Code gray,” the guard’s walkie-talkie squawked. “Repeat, code gray.”

  Rena snapped to attention. “Does that mean trespassers? Are more guards coming?”

  Shit.

  “I don’t know.” I bent down and snatched the guard’s receiver, doing my best to impersonate his tone. “Didn’t copy. Repeat?”

  “Code gray.”

  I blanked. “What?”

  Static.

  Muffled under the guard’s body, a cell phone started ringing. I looked to Rena, and she frantically mouthed, ‘Answer it!’

  Reach into another dude’s pocket? I made a face.

  She had a face for me in return, and it was not a happy one. Dropping to her knees, she kept her gaze glued to mine and fished around. A second later, she produced a black cell and tapped the screen before tossing it to me.

  “H-Hello?”

  “Are you trying to get us both fired, O’Brien?” The same shrill voice threatened to pop an eardrum. “Stop dicking around on the channel!”

  I cleared my throat. “Sorry. What was that code, again?”

  “Oh, for piss sake. You weren’t paying attention last week, were you? Tobler finally kicked the bucket.”

  Rena’s mouth dropped open.

  “Faye?” I asked, feeling all of the warmth drain from my face.

  “Gee, wouldn’t that be convenient?” Sarcasm dripped through the speaker. “No, the sick one. Her husband. You know, the guy who owns this joint.”

  Shit. Well, that changed things.

  “Right, right…” I watched in disdain as my fiancée undressed another man. She had the guard’s shirt off and was working on his belt.

  “Gotta go,” I told whoever was working guard dispatch and ended the call without another word. “Give me that, you pervert.”

  “Now you want in this guy’s pants?”

  “More than I want you in them, yes.”

  She cracked a grin.

  I threw the guard’s phone on the floor and knelt beside her. ERA had just lost their benefactor. Naturally, Faye would inherit his company and fortune, but his family ties were what pulled political strings for this vaccine media frenzy. I doubted someone who married into old money would be acknowledged by the scumbags in those circles.