by Sophie Davis
I eyed her suspiciously. “Are you the real Cadence? Or a pod-person Cadence?”
Her jaw dropped. She looked at me like I’d finally lost my last threads of sanity.
I put one hand on my hip. “Seriously. How do I know you’re not like Gracia?”
She stared so hard that two deep grooves appeared between her eyebrows. “Did you hit your head? We don’t have time for this. Someone will be by to check on you soon. We have to go.”
“Tell me something first.” I studied her face. She looked like Cadence. Well, she looked like a filthy, bloodied version of Cadence. She also felt like the snippy Light Manipulator I’d come to know. Still, I had to be sure.
“What?” she demanded.
“Why don’t we like each other?” I asked.
She didn’t miss a beat. “Because you’re an entitled brat. Will you please put on the damn clothes, so we can get Alex and leave?”
“Pod-person Cadence would probably say the same thing,” I muttered, sliding my legs into the scrub pants.
“I will slap you again. Happily,” she warned.
While I slipped the scrub top over my head, she hurried over to Alex’s tank. Gently, she pulled him from the vat of weird blue gel. Cradling him in her arms, Cadence rushed over to the shower and placed his small body beneath the running water.
He shot up like dart, clinging to Cadence’s arm with both hands.
“Talia,” he wheezed my name and reached in my direction.
I plucked him from her arms and squeezed him. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
Alex shook his head, and then buried his face in my shoulder. Cadence returned to the supply cabinet and grabbed the smallest pair of scrubs inside. I finished wiping the gel from his body with towel and dressed him quickly.
“Ready?” Cadence asked, one hand on the door.
“Not quite yet.” I held Alex tighter. “I need answers first.”
She rolled her dark eyes. “Don’t make me sorry I risked my life to save you.” Shifting uncomfortable from one foot to the other, she tapped the side of her head. “We should probably, you know, talk up here.”
“What are you doing here?” I shouted inside her mind.
Cadence winced and grabbed hold of my wrist. As soon as her fingers touched my skin, all three of us turned invisible. Easing the door open a crack, we slipped into the hallway.
“I was part of the team sent to investigate the location where Anya dropped off a rental hover,” Cadence answered. “We decided to do a little recon, since this is a pretty remote area of the French countryside. My team was ambushed. Next thing I know, I’ve got a hood over my head and Gretchen McDonough wants me to pledge allegiance to her cult.”
The corridor was brightly lit and felt sterile, like the medical building at school. Cadence kept a firm grip on my wrist, and I kept a firm grip on Alex. He sat on my hip with his legs wrapped around my waist. My bare feet were silent, but Cadence’s boots made a soft tapping noise as we hurried to a set of doors at the end of the hall.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.
“Sort of. This place has a maze of tunnels and secret passages with hidden entrances,” Cadence responded. She pushed on one of the doors, inching it open just enough to peer through the slit.
“How did you get free?” My curiosity was piqued. I was about ninety-nine percent sure she was the real Cadence; she just didn’t feel like the other clones I’d encountered. Still, I wanted to make sure this wasn’t some elaborate ruse.
The door opened wider. Cadence pulled me through. A reception area was to the left, and elevators were on the right. After a moment of hesitation, we headed toward the latter.
“I’m a Light Manipulator,” she finally answered, like it was a silly question.
“Okay, well then what? Have you just been living here invisibly for the past…week?”
Though I couldn’t see it, I felt her eyeroll. “It’s not like I haven’t been looking for a way out.” We halted in front of a set of steel doors. “Open them,” she insisted.
“Um, okay.” When I reached for the sensor, Cadence swatted my hand away.
“With your telekinesis. There’s a ladder. We can climb down the shaft into the tunnels.”
“You must be joking,” I shot back. Even as I sent it, I forced the doors apart with my powers.
“What? Did a month on Vault make you soft?” she quipped.
Alex’s arms tightened around my neck like he had me in a chokehold.
“Do you want to climb down a ladder holding a child?” I shot back. “What if he falls? It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s our only play. He won’t fall. You won’t let him, I know you won’t.” She hesitated. “I can’t keep you invisible, though. Not unless we’re touching.”
“Yeah, I know how this works,” I grumbled.
“You go first. I’ll cover you.” Cadence’s hand slid up my arm to rest on my shoulder, and I swung Alex from my hip to my back.
“Hold on tight, okay?” I whispered.
His chin bobbed against the back of my neck. Saying a silent prayer to whoever was listening, I took a deep breath and leapt across the empty elevator shaft to the ladder on the back wall. Cadence’s touch slipped away, and my hands materialized in the darkness. My fingers curled around a metal rung.
Alex’s body slammed against my back, his knees digging into my kidneys.
“You okay?” I asked him softly.
“Uh huh,” he mumbled in my ear.
With my bare feet, climbing down was easier than I’d anticipated. After I’d descended a bit, the ladder shook as Cadence made the leap herself. I looked up to make sure she was okay, and rust shavings floated into my eyes.
“Go already,” she hissed.
“You’re awfully cranky,” I sent.
“You would be too if you’d been living here for the past week,” she snapped. “I’m freaking starving.”
“I spent a month in a maximum-security prison,” I countered. “Don’t talk to me about malnourishment.”
The ladder ended five feet above the ground. In one motion, I released the last rung and grabbed Alex’s legs. Landing on the balls of my feet, I quickly moved aside for Cadence to follow.
“They might serve gruel on Vault, but it’s at least full of nutrients,” she sent back.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, I looked left and right. To the left was a dead-end. To the right, a long, sloping passage descended into blackness.
Cadence crossed her arms over her chest. “Want to tell me how you ended up here?”
Alex shimmied down my back. He stood on his own but still clung to my hand. Pulling him close, I stroked his damp hair.
“It is a long, complicated story,” I told her, gazing pointedly down at Alex.
Cadence started walking, and she gestured for me to follow. The ground was smooth beneath my feet. I wanted to save my strength in case I needed to run with Alex in my arms, so I let him walk beside me.
“I’m guessing there aren’t cameras down here?” I kept my voice low, figuring mental communication wasn’t necessary.
Cadence shook her head. “Not in this passage. Other areas are under surveillance, though. I’ll need every ounce of energy I have to keep all three of us invisible when necessary, just taking a quick break.”
“Hey.” I reached out and grabbed her shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“I am so glad to see you. Honestly.” Surprising us both, I hugged her. Cadence patted my back awkwardly, but she did hold on longer than necessary.
“You, too.” Her lips curved into a half smile that grew wider when she looked down at Alex. “And I am definitely happy to see you.”
“I saw you down here,” he told her. “In the shadows. ‘Member, Talia? I showed you.”
The drawing. I’d almost forgotten.
“Yeah, baby. I remember,” I promised.
Cadence started walking aga
in, and we fell in step beside her.
“Guess there’s not much news down here, huh?” I asked tentatively.
“Is that your coy way of asking if I’m aware that the world in basically on fire?” she replied dryly.
I smiled. “Yeah, guess so.”
“Being inside the world’s least fun funhouse does have its advantages. If you want to call them that.”
The sloped ground became steeper and the air grew colder. Alex shivered, so I rubbed his arm to warm his skin.
“Have you been spying on Gretchen?” I asked Cadence.
“Not on purpose. Well, not at first.” She sighed, clearly exhausted. “Really, I just wanted to find a way out of this place. It’s built like a giant maze that’s meant to trap people inside. That’s the way it seems, anyway. I still haven’t found an exit, but I did find Gretchen’s secret lair.”
I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice. “Secret lair? That’s sort of…intense.”
“She keeps a bald man in a corner and forces him to future gaze. All day, every day. That’s intense,” Cadence countered.
“I knew it,” I declared triumphantly. “Not the bald guy in the corner thing. The Visionary thing. She’s been one step ahead of us the entire time. I knew I wasn’t that predictable.”
“Let’s not celebrate yet. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re stuck in a dungeon. Hold up.” Cadence motioned for me to stop walking. Her voice was pitched much lower, when she added, “This tunnel opens into a bigger room up there. Let me go first and make sure it’s clear.”
Nodding, I knelt to Alex’s level and wrapped my arms around him in a tight embrace. “Everything’s going to be okay, I promise. We’re going to get out of here. You believe me, right?”
His face was buried in the crook of my neck, and I felt him nod.
“Are we gonna go to the island?” he asked in a small voice.
“What island?”
“The one where the man and the lady live. The ones who look like you.”
Was he talking about Capri and my parents? Was it possible he’d somehow seen the dreams—no, the memories—I’d experienced while in the weird goo-filled tanks?
“How do you know about the man and the lady on the island?” My tone was light, but I was terrified. Those memories must have been buried so deeply. Even now, they didn’t feel real. They felt like they belonged to someone else, to some other little girl named Natalia.
“I saw them. On the wallscreen. On the flight here, to Granny’s house.”
I was cold all over and it had nothing to do with the temperature in the tunnels. Alex called her Granny. Back at the McDonoughs’ house, he’d also chosen Gretchen over me. How could I protect him if her influence was stronger?
“You were awake in the hover?” I asked him, fighting to keep my voice from shaking.
He nodded.
I held him at arm’s length, staring at his adorable cherubic face that was so much like his father’s. “Was I asleep? Was I in a tank like the ones where Cadence found us?”
Alex nodded again. “She said she wanted you to remember. That your mommy and daddy died when you were little, just like me. She said that you couldn’t remember them, and that’s why she made me a new daddy. Granny doesn’t want me to forget him.”
Sick, twisted, bitch, I thought angrily.
“He’s not really my daddy,” Alex whispered. “I don’t want him to be my daddy. Don’t make me go with him.”
“Oh, no. No, sweetheart.” I hugged him fiercely. “You don’t have to go with that man.”
“Granny scares me,” he whispered. Alex’s mouth was right next to my ear, like he was afraid of being overheard. “She makes me do things I don’t want to do. Maybe if we go to the island where the man and the lady live, Granny won’t find us.”
I squeezed him one last time and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Then maybe that’s where we’ll go.”
It was a promise I had no business making. Capri was the first place Gretchen would look for me. By unlocking my memories, she’d found what Mac and his ancestors had been searching for. With Paradis destroyed, Gretchen would only be able to get the radioactive material that made me so powerful if there was still some left at my family home.
I would just have to kill her before she had the chance.
“Talia.” Cadence’s voice echoed up the passage. “I, um…I think I might’ve found us a way out of here.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Erik
Well into the evening, I sat in Ian’s study and watched the live feeds from the drones in France. They’d located Gretchen’s Institute for the Privileged, though it looked more like a medieval castle.
Complete with a wicked queen and trapped princess, I thought, staring at the turrets.
“Any activity yet?” Penny asked from behind me. She’d been so quiet, I hadn’t heard her enter.
“Not a peep,” I replied without turning around.
“Want company? Or is Uncle Ian’s vodka keeping you entertained?” The derision in her voice was hard to miss.
“It’s rum. And this is my first drink. Don’t judge.”
She flopped beside me on the couch. My head rested on the cushion behind me, and I rolled it to the side to look at Talia’s best friend. “Care for a drink?”
Penny shrugged. “Why not?”
“Wine?” I guessed. “I think he’s got a bottle of that peach crap you like.”
In our month-long peace mission, Penny occasionally drank a glass of wine with dinner. It was always something sweet, fruity, and kind of gross. I poured it without using my hands.
“Thanks,” she said when I sent the glass to her waiting fingertips.
“Where’s your lesser half?” I asked. My gaze turned back to the wallscreen and stared at a scene that hadn’t changed in hours.
Penny smiled. “New York. Sons of After torched the UNITED embassy in Manhattan. He went up to help put out the fire.” She sipped her sickeningly sweet wine and sighed with satisfaction. “Have you left this room all day?”
“Briefly, to check on Miles,” I admitted.
“He’s such a baby when he’s injured,” Penny remarked.
“He was harpooned,” I pointed out.
“It’s a flesh wound. I mean, I’m sure he’s had worse.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Have you ever been shot with a spear gun? It looked like it hurt. A lot.”
“Of course, I haven’t. I’m not a dolphin.”
“That’s not what people use spear guns for. I’m pretty sure dolphins are docile,” I told her.
Penny looked at me with mock incredulity. “You’ve clearly never met Tippy. He lives near Uncle Ian’s cottage.” She shook her head. “He’s so mean. He bit me when I tried to ride him.”
I opened my mouth to respond but realized there was nothing I could say to that comment. Instead, I sipped my drink.
“I still have a scar,” Penny continued.
“This is an absurd conversation, and I can’t tell if you’re lying.”
She shrugged. “Does it really matter if I am? You’re like twenty percent less broody than when I walked in. That’s what counts.”
I raised my glass and, Penny toasted me. “Touché,” I said.
“We’re going to get her back. Both of them,” she assured me.
Are we? I wondered. What had Epsilon said? “There is a third whose destiny has been written and will influence both.” The third could only be Alex. If something happened to him, Talia wouldn’t be able to go on. I couldn’t go on.
“Have you talked to your father?” Penny asked tentatively.
My stomach clenched. No, I hadn’t. I was too much of a coward to face him. What would I say? Was I supposed to make him promises that I had no way of keeping?
“It’s not your fault, Erik.” Penny stared at me with her intense lime eyes. “At least Talia and Alex are together. And I know Gretchen has sort of lost it, but she won’t hurt Alex. He�
�s the only family she has left.”
On the wallscreen, lights came on in one of the castle’s towers. I watched the window closely, willing Talia to appear. Hell, I would’ve settled for Gretchen. Or anyone in a Privileged getup, so we’d be certain it was the right place.
“Donavon was her son. She hurt him,” I said flatly.
“Donavon is dead, and Gretchen is alone. She might not have been the world’s best mother, but she loved Donavon. I think she just wants a part of her son back.”
“Her and Talia both.” I hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, so jealous.
“Don’t do that.” Penny shook her head and angled to face me. “You can’t keep blaming Talia for dating Donavon. She isn’t with you because he died. She’s with you because she loves you.”
I knew she was right. Maybe that was why I felt so guilty for getting upset. I wanted to be there for Talia, to help her work through her feelings over Donavon’s death. To deal with the grief she didn’t know how to accept. Yet, just hearing his name made me want to hit something.
“If you let him, Donavon will always be between you. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can choose to get over it. I mean, I’ve been with other people, and Brand doesn’t care.”
“I haven’t had enough to drink to have this conversation with you,” I grumbled. “It’s different, too. Talia was dating Donavon when….”
“When you fell in love with her?” Penny guessed. Batting her lashes, she made some weird puppy face.
I might’ve blushed. Maybe it was the alcohol.
Penny laughed. “Why does that even matter? Actually, it’s not that different from Brand and me. We’ve always sorta been together, but I dated other people while I was undercover.”
“Wait, what?” I held up a hand. “You cheated on Brand?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it cheating,” she said quickly. “We had an understanding. When I left home, we went on a break. When I came back, we’d be together.” Blood rushed to Penny’s cheeks and she hurried gulped her wine.
“Does he know about your ‘understanding’?” I teased.
“Totally,” Penny said, eyes wide. “Not the specifics or anything, though. We agreed not to talk about it.”