The Seers

  “Transparent…” Charlotte bit out as she started to pace. “You know what’s transparent? His grandstanding! If he thinks he can bend the entire council to his will just because he’s the longest-serving member, he is mistaken.”

  Tobin rolled his eyes. “Hawthorne’s a hothead, and everyone knows it. He makes a lot of threats he could never deliver on. This will blow over.”

  Charlotte lurched to a halt. “It’s the worst-kept secret in Nios that he plans to run for minister next year. He’s using Nora to increase his profile and telling other council members that their leadership positions could be at stake unless they fall in line.” She flailed her arms. “I don’t think he really even cares whether Nora stays or goes. This is about his career.”

  Nora stared blankly ahead, a political pawn again.

  Charlotte’s heels clicked loudly as she paced. “This is far from over, and if he thinks he’s getting an endorsement from me next year, he’s wrong.”

  “Charlotte,” Tobin said quietly, his gaze fixed intently on Nora.

  “If a fight is what he wants, then a fight is what he’s going to get.” Charlotte’s voice became hoarse and even more adamant.

  “Charlotte,” Tobin repeated in an even voice.

  “I’m about to head down to the historical archives with Henry to gather more evidence,” she said, pointing out the window. “I’ll stay there all night if I have to, and Hawthorne will be sorry he picked this fight.”

  “Charlotte, when is the emergency session?” Tobin asked loudly.

  She stopped and stared at him. “Pardon?”

  “When is the session?”

  “Oh.” She frowned at the floor. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Tobin nodded. “We’ll need some rest before then.”

  Charlotte jolted upright. “Oh! Of course. I must run anyway. Don’t worry about a thing, Nora. We will win this.”

  Nora nodded, but she didn’t believe it. Her whole body felt heavy and tired.

  Charlotte strode from the room, and Nora stared at her fingers in her lap. What would happen from here? Would they erase her memories again? Her pulse quickened. She could not forget Tobin. Maybe if she left before the hearing, they’d leave her alone. That’s what they wanted, right? She was a blemish in their perfect world. They couldn’t have that.

  “Hey.” Tobin’s fingers laced with hers. “This changes nothing.”

  She shook her head. “This changes everything. If I can’t stay here—”

  “Then we leave. Together.”

  She nodded to the bandage on his shoulder. “You can’t leave. You need to stay here for treatment.”

  “I don’t care. We stay, or we go—together.”

  “I care,” she said, meeting his eyes. “You didn’t see yourself. You were really hurt. What happens if the Tavians find me again? You’re not ready to fight.”

  “As long as they’re after you, I’ll be ready to fight,” he replied, his tone sharpening. A moment later, he sighed and slid an arm behind her back. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, and you’re exhausted.”

  “I doubt I could sleep right now.” But she snuggled into his warm chest anyway.

  He shifted in the bed, laying her down and wrapping both arms around her before whispering in her ear, “It’s still worth a try.”

  She shut her eyes, but there was too much to think about. What if they tried to punish Tobin for what he’d done? What if Charlotte took Hawthorne on and lost? The people she cared about would pay a dear price simply because they’d been associated with her.

  “Did I ever tell you about my tattoo?” he asked.

  Her eyes flew open and immediately fixed on the magnolia just inches from her face. “No.”

  “We have them here—the red magnolias. They were your favorite. I liked them too, but for a different reason. They were actually made by accident. The genetic engineers were attempting to reproduce a cancer-fighting compound found in magnolia extract. Instead, they created a vining, red magnolia. It’s like you.”

  “You mean they thought I was going to be really useful, and instead I did nothing?”

  He let out a short humorless laugh. “No. I’m sure Henry told you that you weren’t supposed to be a Seer. You had already started school to be an engineer just like the rest of your family, but you surprised everyone.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Instead of an engineer, you became a Seer, and for some unknown reason, you fell in love with a guard.”

  She traced the petals on his chest. “Why did I have to be so different? Why did I have to say anything at all? Maybe they would have left us alone if I had just stayed quiet.”

  “That’s not you. You knew what was right. More importantly, you knew they were wrong, and it was putting people in danger. I used to wish that even a handful of my guards were as brave as you.”

  Brave? Hardly. She’d give anything for a good place to hide right about now.

  “Go to sleep,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “It’s just you and me, right now. The rest of the world will wait. You’re safe.”

  Her eyelids drooped, then finally shut.

  Nora lifted her head from Tobin’s chest. Everything was dark and quiet. Had she really slept for the rest of the day?

  Tobin tapped her arm. Every muscle in his chest was rigid.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you need more pain medicine?”

  “Shh.” He glared at the door.

  Nora blinked and brushed some hair out of her face. Nothing seemed out of place.

  “What’s wrong?”

  A long and silent moment passed.

  “I’m not sure. Stay here.” He slipped silently from the bed, moving as if none of his injuries had ever happened, and sidled to the door. He peered down the hall in one direction, then the other.

  She sat up, watching him.

  He took a step into the hallway before he tilted his head and rushed down the hall.

  She hopped from the bed and hurried after him. It was a hospital. They were always noisy at night. He should be resting.

  She had just reached the doorway when it hit her—there weren’t any sounds at all. No hospital staff. No machines. There weren’t even any lights.

  Tobin had already disappeared around a corner. She squinted at the empty nurse’s station. A dark shadow lay on the floor in front of it—a body.

  Something heavy echoed down the hall, followed by the sounds of a scuffle.

  “Tobin!” she screamed, taking off after him.

  Five hooded figures were closing in around him. He threw a punch and leveled one of them, but two more hopped onto his back. Another shoved a sack over his head.

  “Somebody, help!” She spun, searching for anyone or anything that could help her.

  A dark figure stepped out of one of the rooms and grabbed her.

  Hood, mask, black eyes.

  Tavians.

  Something sharp pricked her neck, and her vision instantly blurred. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. She was helpless as Tobin stumbled to the ground under the weight of his assailants.

  A single figure stood over her and pointed at her lifeless body. “What do we do with her?”

  “Our orders are to take him and get out,” another answered.

  “But I think this is the Seer. We could easily—”

  “He’s the mission. Commander Moret made it clear we accomplish our mission—nothing more, nothing less.”

  The figure standing above her shrugged. “Yes, sir.” He pulled her into the nearest hospital room and shut the door.

  The muffled sounds moved farther and farther away. She needed to follow them. She needed to get help. She tried to get up, but her muscles never even twitched.

  A single tear trailed down her cheek to the floor. Before she lost consciousness, the eerie silence returned.

  Chapter 31

  Quick footsteps hurried all around her. Hushed voices whispered.

  Nora’s eyes fluttered open. Yellow sunli
ght filled the room. She shifted in the smooth sheets. Electrodes pulled at her skin.

  Why would she have electrodes?

  The last thing she remembered was being with Tobin, and—

  She jolted upright. “Tobin?”

  Instead of one bed in the room like before, there were five others. A patient lay in every bed. All were bandaged, bloody, and attached to machines that looked like they were from a tech show.

  Tobin wasn’t among them.

  Her head bobbed with a wave of dizziness, and she blinked hard as sweat beaded on her face.

  Tobin was gone.

  The Tavians had taken him.

  The room spun, sending her stomach into heaves, and she pawed at the blankets. She needed to get to a restroom.

  “That’s not a good idea,” a familiar voice murmured next to her.

  Flat tone. British accent. Henry.

  He slowly came into focus, sitting in a chair beside her bed, staring out the window.

  “Henry! Oh, thank God. They took Tobin!”

  “Yes, they did.”

  She frowned. “No. I mean the Tavians. The Tavians came, and—”

  “Yes, I know,” he replied flatly.

  How could he be so calm?

  “We need to do something!” she shouted. “We need to get him back!”

  Henry leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “That will be difficult.”

  Nora clenched her jaw. Difficult? What was the alternative? She stopped her mind from thinking about it. “I’m sure it will be difficult, but—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said, his voice turning harsh. “It will be hard to mount any kind of defense when Tobin is missing, the current Head of the Guard has been critically injured, and half the Guard is dead as is the minister and most of the council!”

  She stared at him, afraid to breathe. Dead? She glanced around the room at the other patients. This wasn’t just a pointed act of retaliation against Tobin. This was war.

  Henry nodded to the other beds. “The surgeons are working as fast as they can, but they have yet to address even half of the injured. You were lucky. Other than an incredibly high amount of sedative in your system, you were unharmed.”

  She stared at the swollen faces around her. The Guard. The minister. The council.

  Charlotte.

  Her hands trembled. “Henry, where’s Charlotte?”

  Henry leaned back in his chair. “Fortunately, she was with me all night in the archives formulating your defense. It seems the Tavians didn’t think to look there, but her home had been ransacked. She was the only survivor, so she’s busy with… government things.”

  She’d survived. Nora shut her eyes and released a breath. “What will the response be?”

  “Response?” Henry laughed tensely. “The Guard can’t figure out who’s still alive, let alone who is in command. Those who are still fit for service are roaming the streets, not because they think they’ll find Tavians; they keep finding bodies. And with the council and minister gone, the government has been gutted. People are teleporting out to hide in the civilian world—the civilian world! There will be no response.”

  His pale face was grave, and there wasn’t any note of exaggeration in his tone.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Someone has to help. We can’t just leave Tobin in Octavius!”

  “And how would you recommend we do that?” he shouted, attracting wide-eyed stares from around the room. “The Tavians have overthrown our entire society in one night!” He propelled himself from the chair and kicked it, sending it skipping across the floor into the wall. “We might as well begin preparations for the Tavian welcoming ceremony.”

  She shut her eyes. There had to be someone who could help. Anyone. Maybe Tobin’s dad?

  Her shoulders sank. His dad probably had an implant, which meant he couldn’t travel to Octavius. In fact, she only knew of one person in all of Nios who could safely travel there.

  Me.

  But she wasn’t a guard. She avoided conflict. She ran from danger. She survived by disappearing and falling into line.

  But surviving wasn’t good enough anymore.

  She rubbed her neck, Tobin’s brown eyes in her mind. If she wanted a new life with him, she’d have to fight for it.

  “I think it’s best I go,” Henry muttered before turning to the door.

  Nora lunged for his arm. “I have to go to Octavius, and I need you to help me.”

  He eyed her hand on his arm before meeting her glare. “That sedative must be playing with your mind.”

  “I’m the only one who can go.”

  “You wouldn’t last five minutes,” he said as if it should have been obvious.

  “You were going to help Tobin sneak in. Help me instead.”

  “I want Tobin back, too, but they’d kill you if they found you.”

  “So, help me.” She meant to sound confident, but it came out as a desperate plea.

  Henry’s shoulders sank. “I lost a lot of friends last night—good people. I tried to stop this from happening, but it’s time to accept it. We failed. We can’t get Tobin back.”

  “No,” she bit out. “I’ve spent the last five years thinking I never had a choice. I ran, I hid, I fell in line. No more.”

  His eyes widened at her.

  “The Head of the Guard is still alive. Charlotte is still alive. You and I are still alive and ready to defend what’s left of Nios.” She paused, wanting her next words to come across clearly. “And most importantly, Tobin is missing, and until I know he’s dead, I will not accept that it’s over.”

  His eyebrows were still raised skeptically, but he grabbed his chair and sat down. “You’re my cousin, and I promised myself a long time ago that I’d help you in any way I could. We can at least talk about it, I guess.”

  “You and I will figure something out,” she said. “We can do this, Henry.”

  She pulled herself up in bed—slower this time to avoid the dizziness—and shut her eyes. She needed a spark, but nothing glowed.

  Fine.

  She’d focus on the dark spots. They might be just as telling.

  The drugs had dulled her senses, but her thoughts drifted over the details of the last twenty-four hours.

  She lingered on implants. Niotians couldn’t travel to Octavius with their implants. They’d die.

  “How does it work?” she asked. “How do the Tavians keep the Niotians out of their district?”

  Henry took a deep breath. “It’s written into the treaty. Both sides have security protocols written on the mainframes that control almost everything in Nios and Octavius. There’s basically an overarching rule for implant detection: authorized implants are updated and monitored, unauthorized implants are detected and sent away. If a Niotian implant were to enter Octavius, the Tavian mainframe would send a fatality signal. There’s excruciating pain, and the person will be dead in five minutes if they don’t teleport out.”

  A spark. The Tavians’ mainframe was designed to keep Niotians out with fatality signals. What if it sent fatality signals to all Tavians instead? Everyone would have to teleport out, and she could rescue Tobin.

  “What if you reversed the security protocols on their mainframe to recognize all Tavians as threats?”

  He laughed so hard he doubled over.

  She scowled for a full minute before he stopped laughing. “At the cabin, you agreed to help Tobin swap out my genetic profile on their mainframe. Why is this any different?”

  “A genetic profile is nothing compared to their security protocols. We can’t change those.” He grabbed his stomach as his laughter slowed.

  She folded her arms. “They thought nothing of altering the security protocols for Nios.”

  Henry choked on his laughter. “I tried to stop that.”

  “I know, but they still got in,” she said, leaning toward him. “That doesn’t mean it’s over. It means we have to fight fire with fire. I’m not delusional. I know I can’
t fight my way in like Tobin did, but if we reprogram their mainframe to see Tavian implants as threats, no one could stay to stop me from rescuing him.

  His eyes narrowed infinitesimally. He was intrigued.

  “I know this won’t be easy, but you could do this. You could rewrite the protocols, and I could deliver them.”

  He sighed like he was about to crush her hopes.

  “I wouldn’t have to write it,” he replied. “I could just copy the Niotian overarching protocols that keep Tavians out. But if you’re serious about this, you’d need a lot more than that. I’d have to attach it to a virus.” He glanced up at the ceiling, tilting his head back and forth. “It would have to get around the Tavian firewalls, and then re-encrypt itself so no one could stop it.”

  Nora grimaced. None of that made sense, but it didn’t sound good.

  “And that’s just the program. If you want any chance of getting to the mainframe, I’ll have to create a whole host of anomalies for misdirection. I got into their messaging system once. Maybe I could crash it…”

  His eyes glinted. “It’s possible, but you’d need to actually get to the mainframe.”

  A spark lit up in her mind. “Tobin cloned a Tavian implant for the maps, remember? He told us in the cabin.”

  Henry nodded eagerly.

  “Who would have the clone if it still exists?”

  The smile dropped from his face. He shifted in his chair. “If it still exists, the new Head of the Guard would have inherited it. Her, uh, her name is Josephine.”

  Josephine? The guard who had been paired with Tobin to have children? The one who’d wanted to be paired with him? Nora’s heart leaped into her throat.

  Henry grimaced. “You didn’t share the warmest relationship with her.”

  Nora rubbed her neck. “I’ll talk to her. Tobin’s life depends on it. Where is she?”

  “She was injured, so she’ll be down the hall, but she won’t want to speak with you.”

  Nora glared at him. “We’re fighting back, Henry. How can I hope to take on the Tavians if I’m scared of Josephine?”

  “She’s pretty scary,” he replied, still grimacing. Nora glared daggers, and Henry cringed. “Okay, okay. Do what you have to do. I’ll be here, starting on the files you need.”