Standing before me was a girl I had met before. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I recognized her immediately. Her blond hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, revealing a pretty face offset by bruises and scratches.
“Mo,” I said, taking a step forward.
The girl who had been in the cage next to mine when Will had held me captive stared back at me. I’d wondered many times what had happened to her, and I guessed now I knew. A heartbeat passed, I said her name again, and then it hit me with startling clarity. She was showing the same vast emptiness that Carissa had when she’d been in my bedroom.
My heart sank. I doubted there was anything I could do that would remind the girl of me.
She stepped into the room and waited. A moment later, the intercom buzzed and Sergeant Dasher’s voice came through. “Mo will assist in the first round of the stress tests.”
First round? There was more than one? “What is she—?”
Mo flung her hand out, and the Source crackled over her knuckles. Shock held me immobile until the last possible moment. I darted to the side, but the blast of whitish light tinged in blue smacked into my shoulder. Pain burst and rushed down my arm. The impact spun me around, and I barely kept my balance.
Confusion swirled as I clutched my shoulder, not surprised to find the material singed. “What the hell?” I demanded. “Why—?”
Another blast sent me dropping to my knees as it whizzed by right where I’d been standing. It hit the wall behind me, fizzling out. In the blink of an eye, Mo was right in front of me. I started to stand, but her knee came up, catching me in the chin and snapping my head back. Starbursts blinded me as I fell back on my butt, stunned.
Reaching down, Mo grabbed ahold of my ponytail and lifted me to my feet with surprising ease. Her hand swung out, the blow catching me right below the eye. That burst of pain caused my ears to ring, and it did something else.
It knocked the stupor right out of me.
Suddenly I understood this stress test, and it sickened and horrified me. I had to believe that if Daedalus knew everything, then they had to have known that I’d met Mo. That seeing her here, in better physical shape than she had been in that cage, would not only knock me off guard but would confirm the futility of fighting against them.
But they did want me to fight—they wanted me to fight Mo, using the Source. Because what else, other than getting your ass handed to you on a silver platter, would cause such major stress?
Another punch caught me right under the eye. She put a hell of a lot of oomph behind it. A metallic taste sprang into my mouth as I called on the Source, just like the sergeant wanted.
But Mo…she was so much faster than me, so much better.
As the ass-kicking of a lifetime picked up, I held on to the small sliver of hope I had: Daemon wouldn’t be subjected to this.
…
DAEMON
Stashing Matthew’s SUV several miles from the access road leading to Mount Weather, I hoped whoever found his car got it back to him in one piece. It was a pretty sweet ride. Not as good as Dolly, but not many cars were.
I traveled the last couple of miles in my true form, rushing through the heavy thicket. I reached the access road within minutes, and seconds later I was at the cusp of the forest, staring at the all-too-familiar fence that surrounded the grounds.
There were definitely more guards on duty—at least three of them by the gate, and I bet there were more inside. Cameras and security systems weren’t going to go down this time. I didn’t want them to.
I wanted to get caught.
Dawson probably thought I hadn’t given this much consideration. A lot was on the line—not only my future but my family’s and Kat’s. Once the DOD realized I was here, things were going to get rough. Getting in wouldn’t be the problem, and if I got whatever it was that Luc wanted, he would get us out—if he wasn’t lying. And if he was, I would find another way.
Part of me hoped that Kat was still here, that Daedalus hadn’t moved her to another location. Probably foolish to hope for that, because I had a feeling a big ol’ dose of disappointment was heading my way.
So, yeah, I wanted to get caught, but I wasn’t going to make this easy for them.
Stepping out from under the cover of the trees, I let my human form take hold under a strong beam of sunlight. The guards were oblivious to my presence at first, and as I took another step forward, the conversation I had with Kat the night she finally admitted her feelings for me came to mind.
I’d told her that we made the good kind of crazy together, and I hadn’t known how true that really was until this very moment, because what I was about to do was really, truly, 100 percent certifiable.
The first guard, who was pulling something—a cell phone?—out of his black cargo pants, turned, his eyes drifting through the trees. His gaze moved over me and then darted back. The cell phone fell from his fingers, and he shouted, one hand going for the gun on his thigh and the other for the microphone on his shoulder. The two guards behind him whipped around, drawing their weapons.
Time to get this show on the road.
Summoning the Source, I stayed in my human form, but I knew the moment they became sure of what I was. It was probably my eyes. The world was tinted in a brilliant sheen.
A series of popping sounds followed, telling me that the guards weren’t messing around.
I raised my hand, and the bullets appeared to hit an invisible wall. In reality, it was the energy reflecting the bullets. I could’ve sent them back at the guards, but all I did was stop them. They fell to the ground harmlessly.
“I wouldn’t suggest you try that again,” I said, lowering my hand.
Of course they didn’t listen. Why? That would be too easy.
The guard in the front unloaded his weapon, and I repelled all the bullets. After a few seconds, I was so done with this. Turning around, I extended an arm back toward the trees. They began to tremble. Branches shook, sending a waterfall of green needles whirling into the air. Pulling them forward, I spun around.
Thousands of needles shot through the air, speeding forward. They split around me, heading straight for the dumbstruck guards.
The needles slammed into the men, turning them into human pincushions. Not killing them, but if their grunts of pain and surprise were any indication, it had to sting like a bitch. The guards were on their knees, guns forgotten on the ground beside them. Waving my hand, I sent their weapons flying into the woods, never to be seen again.
I prowled forward, passing them with a smirk. Summoning the Source once more, I let the energy crackle down my arm. A bolt of light hit the gate on the electric fence. A burst of white exploded, dancing across the chain-link, frying out the power to the fence and leaving a nice, comfy hole to walk right through.
Stalking over the neatly trimmed landscape that we had previously run across, I took a deep breath as the doors to Mount Weather slid open.
A freaking army of officers emptied out, dressed like they were ready for Armageddon or a guest spot on a SWAT team. Their faces were covered with shields, like that would help them. Going down on one knee, they leveled a dozen or so semiautomatic rifles on me. Stopping so many bullets would prove tricky.
People were going to die.
That sucked, but it wouldn’t stop me.
Then a tall, slender form came into view, walking out of the dimly lit tunnel. The men donned in black uniforms parted, never taking their rifles off me while allowing the primly dressed woman to easily navigate her way to the front.
“Nancy Husher,” I snarled, my hands curling into fists. I’d known the woman for years. Never liked her, which was compounded by the fact that I knew she worked within Daedalus and had known what really happened to Dawson.
Her mouth spread into the tight-lipped smile she was famous for, the one that said she was about to shove a wicked dagger into your back while kissing your cheek. She was just who I was hoping to find.
“Daemon Black,” she said, clas
ping her hands together. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Chapter 8
KATY
After the disastrous training session, I knew the taste of true fear each time someone neared my door. My heart hammered painfully until the sound of footsteps faded, and when the door finally opened, revealing Archer with my evening meal, I almost vomited.
I had no appetite.
I couldn’t sleep that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, all I could picture was Mo standing before me, more than ready to kick my ass every which way from Sunday. The vast emptiness that had clouded her eyes had quickly blossomed into determination. My beating may not have been as severe if I had fought back, but I hadn’t. Fighting her would have been wrong.
When the door opened the following morning, I was only running on a few hours of sleep. It was Archer, and in his quiet way, he motioned me to follow him.
Sick to my stomach, I had no other choice but to go wherever he was leading me. The nausea grew as we rode the elevator to the floor that housed the training rooms. It took everything in me to step off the elevator and not grab onto one of the bars for dear life.
But he led me behind the room we’d gone to before, through double doors, and then farther down a hall, where we passed through another set of doors.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t respond until we stopped outside a steel door that glinted from an overabundance of onyx and diamonds. “There is something Sergeant Dasher wants you to see.”
I could only imagine what rested beyond the door.
He placed his forefinger against the security pad, and the light flipped from red to green. Mechanical clicks followed. I held my breath as he opened the door.
The room inside was lit only by one dim bulb in the ceiling. There were no chairs or tables. To the right was a large mirror that ran the length of the wall.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Something you must see,” Sergeant Dasher said from behind us, causing me to jump and spin around. Where in the hell had he come from? “Something I hope will ensure that we won’t have a repeat of our last training session.”
I crossed my arms and lifted my chin. “There’s nothing you can show me that will change that. I am not going to fight other hybrids.”
Dasher’s expression remained the same. “As I explained, we must make sure you are stable. That is the purpose of these training sessions. And the reason why we must make sure you are strong and able to harness the Source lies beyond this mirror.”
Confused, I glanced back at Archer. He stood near the door, face shadowed by the beret. “What’s on the other side?”
“The truth,” responded Dasher.
I coughed out a laugh that caused the scraped skin on my face to sting. “Then you have a room full of delusional military officers on the other side?”
His look was as dry as sand as he reached over, flipping a switch along the wall.
Sudden light exploded, but it came from behind the mirror. It was a one-way mirror, like in police stations, and the room was not empty.
My heart kicked in my chest as I stepped forward. “What…?”
There was a man on the other side sitting in a chair, and not willingly. Onyx bands covered his wrists and ankles, locking him down. A shock of white-blond hair covered his forehead, but he slowly lifted his head.
He was a Luxen.
The angular beauty gave him away, and so did the vibrant green eyes—eyes that reminded me so much of Daemon that an ache pierced my chest and sent a ball of emotion straight into my throat.
“Can…can he see us?” I asked. It seemed that way. The Luxen’s eyes were fixed on where I stood.
“No.” Dasher moved forward, leaning against the mirror. A small intercom box was within arm’s reach.
Pain etched the man’s beautiful face. Veins bulged along his neck as his chest rose on a ragged breath. “I know you’re there.”
I looked at Dasher sharply. “You sure he can’t see us?”
He nodded.
Reluctantly I returned my attention to the other room. The Luxen was sweating and trembling. “He’s…he’s in pain. This is so wrong. It’s a complete—”
“You do not know who sits on the other side of this glass, Miss Swartz.” He flicked a button on the intercom. “Hello, Shawn.”
The Luxen’s lips twisted up on one side. “My name is not Shawn.”
“That has been your given name for many years.” Dasher shook his head. “He prefers to go by his true name. As you know, that is something we cannot speak.”
“Who are you talking to?” Shawn demanded, his gaze unnervingly landing on where I stood. “Another human? Or even better? An abomination—a fucking hybrid?”
I gasped before I could stop myself. It wasn’t what he said but the distaste and hatred that bled into each word.
“Shawn is what you would call a terrorist,” the sergeant said, and the Luxen in the other room sneered. “He belonged to a cell that we’d been monitoring for a couple of years. They planned to take out the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour. Hundreds of lives—”
“Thousands of lives,” Shawn interrupted, his green eyes glowing luminous. “We would’ve killed thousands. And then we would’ve—”
“But you didn’t.” Dasher smiled then, and my stomach dropped. It was probably the first real smile I’d seen from the man. “We stopped you.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “He was the only one we could bring in alive.”
Shawn laughed harshly. “You might have stopped me, but you haven’t accomplished anything, you simpleminded ape. We are superior. Mankind is nothing compared to us. You will see. You have dug your own graves, and you cannot stop what is coming. All of you will—”
Dasher flipped off the intercom, bringing the tirade to a halt. “I have heard this many times over.” He turned to me, head tilted to the side. “This is what we are dealing with. The Luxen in that room wants to kill humans. There are many like him. That is why we are doing what we are doing.”
Wordless, I stared at the Luxen as my brain slowly turned over what I had just witnessed. The intercom was off, but the man’s mouth was still moving, raw hatred seeping from his lips. The kind of blind animosity shown by all terrorists, no matter who or what they were, was carved into his face.
“Do you understand?” the sergeant asked, drawing my attention.
Wrapping my arms around my waist, I shook my head slowly. “You can’t judge an entire race based on a few individuals.” The words sounded empty to me.
“True,” Dasher agreed quietly. “But that would only be the case if we were dealing with humans. We cannot hold these beings to the same moral standard. And believe me when I tell you, they do not hold us to theirs.”
Hours turned into days. Days possibly into weeks, but I really couldn’t be sure. I understood now how Dawson couldn’t keep track of time. Everything blended here, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the sun or the night sky. I wasn’t served breakfast like I had the first day I’d been awake, which threw off the time of day for me, and the only way I knew when a full forty-eight hours had passed was when I was taken to Dr. Roth for blood work. I’d seen him around five times, maybe more.
I’d lost count.
I’d lost a lot of things. Or it felt that way. Weight. The ability to smile or laugh. Tears. The only thing I retained was anger, and each time I squared off with Mo or another hybrid I didn’t know—didn’t even care to get to know because of what we had to do—my anger and frustration went up a notch. It surprised me that I could still feel so much.
But I hadn’t given in yet. I hadn’t fought back during any of the stress tests. It was my only means of control.
I refused to fight them—to beat up on them or potentially kill them if things got out of hand. It was like being in a real, albeit messed-up, version of The Hunger Games.
The Hunger Games for alien hybrids.
I started to grin but
winced as the motion pulled my torn lip. I might have refused to go all Terminator on them, but the other hybrids were so on board. So much so that some of them talked while they kicked my ass. They told me that I needed to fight, that I needed to prepare for the day the other Luxen came and for those who were already here. It was obvious they sincerely believed that the true villains were the Luxen. They may have been drinking the Kool-Aid, but I was not. Even so, there was a tiny part of me that wondered how Daedalus could control so many if there wasn’t some truth in what they were saying?
And then there was Shawn, the Luxen who wanted to kill thousands of humans. If I were to believe Dasher, there were a hell of lot more like him out there—just waiting to take over Earth. But to even think that Daemon or Dee, or even Ash, was a part of something like that…I couldn’t even consider it.
Forcing my eyes open, I saw the same thing I always saw after being hauled out of the training rooms and deposited—mostly unconscious—in my cell. The white ceiling with little black dots—a mixture of onyx and diamond.
God, I hated those dots.
I took a deep breath and cried out, immediately wishing I hadn’t. Sharp pain radiated across my ribs from a Mo-size kick. My entire body throbbed. There wasn’t one part of me that didn’t ache.
Movement from the farthest corner of my cell, by the door, drew my attention. Slowly and quite painfully, I turned my head.
Archer stood there, bundling a cloth in his hand. “I was beginning to worry.”
I cleared my throat and then opened my jaw, wincing. “Why?”
He came forward, the beret forever hiding his eyes. “You were out for a while this time, the longest yet.”
I turned my head back to the ceiling. I hadn’t realized that he was keeping track of my ass-kickings. He hadn’t been here other times when I awoke. Neither had Blake. I hadn’t seen that ass-hat in a while, and I wasn’t sure he was even here anymore.
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