“What?”
“I have to kill anyone from Vortech who comes here. I have no choice but to kill you, too.”
He slammed the door and dragged me into the parlor, then shoved me on the ground. I fell, landing hard on my back. He kicked the skull away from me, knocking it out of my reach, then he knelt over me, pinning my arms above my head, pressing my fists into the ground.
“Cade, stop!”
“No! You brought this on yourself. You’ve been lying to me this whole time. I knew something was off when you said you’d gone to a cave with the prince. I thought surely it couldn’t be the wormhole cave. Vortech hasn’t sent anyone for ten years. They’d lost all their past agents. They wouldn’t dare send another one. But I knew if you were Vortech, you’d take the white cerecite. So, I tested you. Look what I found. You. With the white cerecite, attempting to steal it from me.”
“Cade, no,” I pleaded. “It’s not like that.”
He struck me across the face so hard I felt my teeth reopening the cut in my lip. Warm blood swirled in my mouth. “I should’ve killed you when you first arrived here. I’d grown lax.”
“Why did you kill them?” I asked, gasping through the pain. If I kept him talking, it would buy me some time. At least, that was my hope.
“I had no choice. I couldn’t allow them to open the wormhole.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I was a miner.” He nodded to the skull. “So was Isaac.”
“You know of Isaac?” Panic squeezed my lungs. How had this spun out of control so quickly? “How?” I demanded. “Who are you?”
“Why should I tell you?” he barked. “You’re with Vortech. Do you have any idea what your people want to do to this world? How they want to exploit it? They’ll take all our cerecite and leave us to die.” Tears brimmed in his eyes. He choked on his words. “Do you think they care about us? Our lives? The families here? They don’t. They want power—the kind cerecite can give them.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know. I promise I had no idea.”
He laughed, a mirthless sound, devoid of humor. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. They sent me here. They said they wanted the cerecite as a power source.” I spoke quickly, my words tumbling out all at once. “That’s all I knew. I promise. Cade, who are you?”
His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to decide if I told the truth. A knot I couldn’t swallow formed in my throat. If I died, what happened to Dad?
“Tell me,” I whispered. “I want to know the truth.”
Not speaking, he studied me, then he released my hands and sat back. He wiped the tears from his face with his shirttail.
I sat up and scooted back.
“Stop,” he seethed. “Don’t move another muscle.” With a flick of his wrist, he pulled a knife with a crystal yellow blade from his pocket. He grabbed my wrist and slid the blade under my leather bracelet. The band severed with a snap. Tossing it aside, he stood, stomping on the metal disc. Crunching came from beneath the sole of his boot as he crushed it to pieces. My heart fell. He’d taken away my communications.
“Do not try to escape.” He held the knife for me to see.
I only nodded, sitting up and scooting away from him until my back hit the bookshelf. Without my bracelet, emptiness settled inside me.
He knelt over me, the knife in my face. I reached out and placed my hand over his.
“Cade, please,” I said softly. “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me who you are.”
His gaze lingered on my hand covering his, as if that one gesture had reminded him of our friendship.
“Okay,” he breathed. “I’ll tell you what I know. I was born in the future...”
Chapter 26
“I was born in the future,” Cade repeated, his voice hollow as we sat in his home, eerily silent compared to the destruction raging outside. He hesitated, as if unsure he wanted to say more.
“When?” I asked, keeping my hand on his, managing to keep from shaking.
His gaze wandered. “Four hundred years. The year 2437.”
His words forced me to take a deep breath. “Four hundred years? How is that possible?”
He shrugged. “It’s not so complicated. We opened a time rift. It sent us back in time to the year 1887.”
“Where are you from?”
“Earth. Montana, actually.”
Montana. The word sounded so familiar.
“Growing up, all I ever wanted to do was to leave,” he said, gaze distant. He shook his head. “I’ve never told this to anyone.”
“But you can tell me,” I encouraged him.
He bit his lip, then continued. “I never got along with my parents, so I signed up for NASA’s Cerecite Project to become a miner. It sounded adventurous. Maybe I just wanted to explore. When I got here, it wasn’t what I expected. The place was a nightmare. It didn’t look like the world it is now. It was a barren rock. The living conditions were miserable. We ate freeze dried food, never anything fresh. We never saw sunlight except to adjust the pyramid panels—spent all our time underground. Our only task was mining cerecite, day in and day out.”
His gaze wandered, his tone wistful, as if he were there again. “But once we started learning more about the mineral, we got better at using it. We created plants and food. Water. Before long, we made the dome, and recreated a world like Earth. Sun and clouds. Thunderstorms. All the things you think you’ll never miss but you do.”
He shook his head. “Things changed, though. We weren’t getting the shipments of cerecite back to Earth fast enough. People were hungry for money. They demanded we speed up the process or they would only pay half price.” His words turned sharp. “That’s when the scientists created the wormhole. What had taken years and millions of dollars to ship cerecite back to Earth would now only take seconds. But they’d rushed the building of the wormhole, cut corners, never properly tested things.
“When they opened it, the wormhole worked fine for a time. But not for long. One day we tried to open it. Something went wrong. The explosion killed everyone except two of us. It was so powerful it ripped a hole in the fabric of time, from here to an island north of Russia. It blasted stones from our project through the gateway, covering Champ Island.
“That’s where the stones came from?” I asked. “The wormhole?”
He nodded.
“Yes, the explosion was so massive, it sent me and the other miners back in time. That’s how it seems we arrived in the past. When really, we come from the future.” He pulled the pyramid pendant from under his shirt. The bands of gold sparkled against the black, mesmerizing, and now I knew why. It was made in another time completely. In the future. To me, it might as well have been magic.
“Wow.” I rested my head against the shelves, my world turned upside down.
“After the settlers arrived, they wanted to find a way back home. But the portal was damaged. Only seven pieces of cerecite could make it function again. By then, the pieces had been lost. They forgot trying to get home when they started helping us clear out the rubble from the explosion. We helped them create a new home, one patterned after Scotland, down to the stars in the dome. We used cerecite to create everything. It was perfect. A paradise.
“Nearly two centuries later, a traveler arrived. He said he was an explorer. He’d built a cavern that brought him through a wormhole portal to here—the same cave you must’ve entered to get here.
“The explorer was welcomed for a time, until he started stealing white cerecite. When he brought the objects to the larger cavern, I knew his true purpose. He was attempting to open the main gateway. I found out he was an agent for a corporation called Vortech. Just like you. After I killed him, more came. I didn’t want to kill them all. I destroyed the machine in the smaller cavern, trying to stop them from coming through, but they still managed to enter our world because I couldn’t destroy the machine on their side.
“I knew what they wanted, and I coul
dn’t allow them to have it. Everything we’d worked for would be destroyed. They’d mine our cerecite, take every last bit of it for themselves. We’d have nothing left. Cerecite isn’t a renewable material. It works fine here, sure. But for an entire planet the size of Earth? No. You know what the people on Earth are like. They use every resource until nothing is left. They’d do the same here. Take everything and leave nothing for us. So, my only choice was to kill them. Every single one who came through.”
“And now their bodies are discarded in a cave,” I said. “Their families never knew. Rosa’s family never knew.”
“Rose, yes. She came before you. I tracked her into the cavern. She never found the seventh piece of cerecite, but she was desperate to go home. She tried opening the gateway with only six pieces. It didn’t work. I slit her throat with this.” He glanced at the knife.
My fear turned to revulsion. “You’re a murderer.”
He clenched his jaw. “No,” he snapped. “I’m a soldier. I protect our world. If there was any other way, I would’ve taken it. I tried to stop them. But protecting Ithical and the tens of thousands of lives here is more important than one single person.”
The room wouldn’t stop spinning. “Where’s your mother?”
He heaved a deep sigh. “She’s not real. I lied about her. This is my home. Has been for more than a hundred years.”
Of course, it was. That’s how things worked in this place.
“Where’s Morven?” I asked with heat in my voice. “Did you kill him?”
“No.” He locked his jaw. “Unfortunately, I can’t kill him.”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”
“I stabbed him when he was in his first body. Isaac. But the cerecite reprocessed his DNA. He became the wolf, then the prince. If I killed him, he would be recycled again. My only choice was to erase the memories of his last life by giving him yellow cerecite.”
His words brought me back to the first day I’d entered the palace. “You led me to the kitchens the first day I was at the palace. You told me you were on your way there, but what business did you have there?” I laughed at my own stupidity. Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? “You were there to slip the poison into his food. You must’ve been handing it off to Justine and making her do your dirty work for you.”
“It was the only way to make him forget.”
“Forget what?” I demanded. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because...” His eyes darkened. “He was the other miner who survived. He wanted to repair the wormhole, so we could travel between our worlds, but I knew what would happen if it was opened. They would take everything and leave this world a wasteland. Don’t you understand, Sabine?” he pleaded. “My only choice was to mask his mind from his former life. I didn’t want to kill him. I never did.”
I rubbed my temples, his words overwhelming me. “How are you still alive?”
“The cerecite, of course. When I survived the explosion, it changed me. The cerecite became part of me. Something similar happened to Morven, but instead of never aging, like me, he was changed to a spirit wolf, and then he was reborn with all his former knowledge.” His eyes darkened. “But it seems he started to remember his past if he traveled to the cave with you. What did you do there?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Nothing, really?” he asked skeptically.
“We were exploring,” I explained. “Trying to find out the nature of this world. We didn’t know what was going on.”
Suspicion riddled his face. “You didn’t try to open the gateway?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I couldn’t have anyway.”
He nodded. “Because you don’t have the seventh piece of cerecite. And you never will. No one has found it. Not any of the other agents. Not you. And it will stay that way.” His eyes shifted to his knife. Yellow cerecite glittered in the reflection of his pupils. “Still,” he continued. “If I were smart, I would kill you myself, but...” He hesitated, his chest heaving as he took a looked from me to the knife. “Of all the people, why you, Sabine? We were friends!”
“Then don’t kill me,” I spoke with slow, measured words, fearing anything I said would provoke him. “Please. There’s been enough bloodshed. We can find another solution.”
“There is no other solution.” He glanced away. “Except...”
“Except what?”
“No.” He hung his head. “There’s no other way. You’ve left me with no other choice. I don’t deserve your forgiveness for this. I’m so sorry, Sabine.”
He took a step toward me, the knife glinting.
“Stop!” Adrenaline flooding my blood, I bounded to my feet and drove my knee into his groin.
He cursed, falling back, and I sprinted for the door. I grabbed the handle when he tackled me from behind. I pitched forward, Cade on top of me, the wind knocked from my lungs as I hit the floor.
He rolled me over. I grabbed for the knife when the blade sliced down my palm. Sharp pain stabbed through my flesh. Screaming, I pushed away from him, shocked at how much blood pooled in my hand and ran down my arm, staining the floor.
The pain fueled my adrenaline. Vortech’s training hit me with sharp clarity.
I was there again.
Fighting for survival.
Rising to my feet, I faced Cade.
“Sabine, please,” he pleaded. “Stop fighting me. You’re making this harder than it has to be.”
His words meant nothing to me. I thrust a sharp kick at his hand. My boot connected with his fingers. Bones snapped. He screamed, the knife flying from his grasp.
His weapon landed with a clatter at my feet. The yellow blade spun on the tiles, creating a shimmering pattern, like a kaleidoscope.
Yellow cerecite. Poison. The clue to the seventh lie.
Warm blood seeped from my cut palm. I didn’t feel the pain. I grabbed the knife as he staggered toward me. He cradled his broken hand to his chest.
“Give me the knife,” he demanded.
“Why?” I answered with equal sharpness. “Because it’s the seventh lie?”
“Give it to me now!” He rushed at me.
Fist clenched around the knife’s hilt, I let him come. I sidestepped his attack, spun around, and drove the blade into his stomach.
Screaming, Cade fell, his knees hitting the ground. He clamped his hands around the hilt, dark blood seeping from the wound.
A moment of panicked desperation hit me, as if time had slowed, and my actions replayed in vivid clarity.
Had I killed him? Swallowing the fear rising in my chest, I knelt by him.
He gasped shallow ragged breaths. His face drained of color. “Sabine... I...” He ground his teeth, then grasped the blade in his abdomen. With a muffled scream, he yanked on the handle, pulling it out with a sickening, sucking sound.
The knife fell, hitting the floor with a ringing echo. Bloody fingers fell limply beside the weapon. Cade’s breathing turned to quiet gasps.
I reached for him. “Cade...?”
“Sabine,” he pleaded, grasping my hand. “Please. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” I almost laughed. “You tried to kill me. If you had another chance, you’d try to do it again.”
“No,” he groaned. “No, you’re right. There’s another way. I should have told you. But... please. Don’t let me die...”
“I thought you couldn’t die.”
His eyes flicked to the weapon. “The knife. Cerecite... it’s the only thing that can kill me.” Sweat created a clammy sheen on his overheated skin. Pain etched his face. He grabbed my hands in a death grip, his fingers cold. Icy blue eyes set with firmness locked on me. “If you swear to protect... my world, I can help you... but...”
“But, what?” Desperation bled through my words.
“I broke your bracelet.” His voice turned to a whisper. “He’ll be here soon.”
“What do you mean? Who will be here soon?”
His eyes closed, and he shook his h
ead.
“Cade,” I repeated. “Who will be here soon?”
“I—I’m sorry...”
I shook his shoulder. “Cade.”
“Sorry...” his voice faded.
“Cade.” I shook him again, then cupped his cheek, his skin shockingly cold. “Can you hear me?”
He didn’t respond.
“Cade!”
He remained motionless, eyes closed. I sat back on my heels, my mind reeling, the cut on my hand throbbing, Cade’s last words replaying. He’ll be here soon.
I picked up the knife. Yellow facets refracted around the room. Cade’s blood dripped from the blade to the floor.
Behind me, the door boomed open.
Ivan stood inside the entry, his bulky frame blocking most of the doorway.
He glanced past me where Cade had fallen.
“Ivan?” I asked, shocked. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw your communications get cut off.” He held up his bracelet. “I thought you must be in trouble, so I followed you to the bracelet’s last known signal.” He cleared his throat as his gaze snagged on the gardener. “Got him, did you?”
“Yes,” I answered, casting him a sidelong glance, suspicion clawing at me. Fear trickled down my spine as Cade’s revelation made sense.
Ivan would be here soon. That’s who he meant.
But what did Ivan have to do to with Cade? How had Cade known he would come?
I clutched my bloody hand to my chest.
Bushy eyebrows narrowed over his eyes. “You’re hurt?”
“Just a scratch.”
He pulled a length of rope from his belt and entered the room.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
He nodded at Cade. “He’s coming with us. We’re going to the wormhole. Going home. Assuming you’ve found the seventh object?”
I nodded. “I found it, at least...” I glanced at the knife. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Good.” Ivan nodded, then stalked to Cade, his furs billowing in the wind gusting from the open doorway, his bootsteps heavy on the wooden planks.
“Ivan, wait,” I said. “He’s dying. He needs green cerecite.”
The 7th Lie Page 25