Johnny, though, still wasn’t having it. He put a hand to my chest, indicating I should stay put. “On whose authority?” He asked again, speaking slowly and with an edge that was flirting with the line of insubordination.
“It’s okay, Johnny,” I said, stepping forward and nodding to Silvers before he could get any ideas about flexing his authority.
Johnny looked at me like I’d sprouted an extra eye, but I paid it little mind as something passed through me—a fleeting glimpse of subconscious intuition that told me now wasn’t the time to fight. Not yet.
At a gesture from Ordo Silvers, a legionnaire cautiously stepped forward to clamp a fresh set of shackles on me.
“Yeah, good thinking,” Johnny said. “That should definitely work this time. Did any of you happen to notice his gropping wrist is injured?”
The legionnaire paused, looking back to Silvers, who rolled his eyes and gestured for him to continue. So maybe he was a little sadistic.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly to Talia, trying not to wince as the legionnaire fastened the shackles. “About your squad. About everything.”
After the initial fitting, the legionnaire at least refrained from clamping the restraints down too tight.
Talia was studying me in a way that made me think she’d been wondering if I’d say something like that. “You didn’t ask to be targeted by those things.”
I shook my head. “No. But I…”
I trailed off, not wanting to contradict her statement to Silvers with an apology for having forced the Wolves into following me to Therese’s lab. She seemed to understand what I meant anyway. Emotions warred on her face—so many I didn’t know what to expect. Finally, though, she just gave me a stiff nod and stepped back into the crowd.
“Good luck, Raish.”
I nodded in silent thanks.
“Great,” Johnny muttered under his breath, watching her go and looking around at the 323rd Hagas like he was sizing up our chances. “We have to help him, she says. They can’t just haul him away like that. Thanks a lot, lady.”
“Johnny. It’s okay.”
“Like scud it is,” he growled, swiping furiously at his palmlight. “Not until we know why… Oh gropping scud buckets.”
I didn’t need to ask what it was he’d just discovered on his palmlight. Because that’s what had been bouncing around in the back of my head, I realized now. The pieces were all there. The attempt on my life. The last thing Siren had said to me before she’d climbed out my window. Her unexpected arrival and unsurprising betrayal tonight. The shackles on my wrist, and the squad itching to get me to the brig even as half of Haven burned around them.
I wasn’t sure how deep the treachery went, only that it all seemed to trace back to the name on the ID line of the detainment order Johnny held out for my inspection.
General Gregor Aucuks – Haven High Command.
36
Reciprocity
“We don’t have any proof,” Johnny said, glancing surreptitiously at the closed cell door and then suspiciously at the cameras in the corners.
“Which is why I need to talk to Glenbark,” I said for the third time, knowing full well it wasn’t Johnny I needed to convince. I shook my head and sank down to the hard floor beside the cell’s single cot. “I should just go rip the answers out of his head.”
Johnny cringed, glancing at the cameras again, but I hardly cared if anyone was listening.
If it hadn’t been for my battered body, the fractured wrist, the squad of trigger happy Hagas, and the generous hit of sedative I could still feel my body confusedly trying to burn off, I might’ve done the sensible thing before Ordo Silvers’ squad had brought me here. The sensible thing being, of course, to have escaped them, stormed central command, tore General Auckus bodily from whatever hole the wormy bastard called an office, and ripped every thought and secret from his sad old mind until I’d had the full truth of what he’d done.
But I hadn’t. I’d done what I’d thought had been right. And now I was sitting in a feeble Legion cell, playing prisoner and starting to wonder why I’d ever thought this was the smart choice.
“He could be behind all of it, Johnny. He could be…”
I didn’t finish the sentence, could be one of them, but Johnny winced as if I had. He came and sat beside me before saying in a low, low voice, “He could be listening right now.”
I said nothing. I didn’t particularly care anymore if General Auckus or anyone else heard me out there. I was sure now that he’d helped Siren into the medica the night she’d tried to kill me. Or pretended to try. Before she’d stunned me in the back tonight, I’d actually been half-inclined to believe her when she’d said she’d spared me on purpose. Now, I couldn’t even pretend to fathom her motivations. But whatever they were, I was pretty sure Auckus was somehow involved.
How had the hybrids even known where to find my quarters? I couldn’t help but keep wondering. Why take Elise at all? They’d spoken of a master. Originally, I’d assumed that meant Alton Parker, or maybe even Frosty. But why not the man who’d quite possibly released a telepathic assassin to steal my cloaking pendant tonight? Why not the man who’d been more worried about drafting up detainment orders for me than tending to his base when it was literally burning around him?
Why couldn’t Gregor Auckus be a raknoth?
I didn’t have a compelling answer to that troubling question—only a long stream of self-directed curses for not having checked his mind the first time we’d ever met.
Of course, it might not be quite that sinister. Auckus might simply be working for the Sanctum. But either way, I was sure he needed to be stopped.
I looked at Johnny. “Where’s Glenbark?”
He checked his palmlight for what must’ve been the thousandth time and came away disappointed. “She’ll come through soon. There’re a lot of fires that need her attention right now, and as much of a beardsplitter as he may be”—Johnny cringed up at the cameras, remembering himself—“I’m sure she’s not in any rush to throw fuel on Auckus’ whole down with Glenbark fire by blindly dismissing potentially legitimate charges against her pet demon.”
I stared at him.
“What?” He shrugged. “I said potentially, broto. Hey, who’s sitting here in the brig with you right now?”
I just shook my head and turned my attention to the bland permacrete wall. “It was a mistake, coming here, trusting any of them.”
I felt more than saw Johnny’s stare.
“You think you could’ve done better on your own?”
I shrugged.
“They have thousands of hybrids Hal,” he said, his gaze shifting pointedly to the hard splint on my wrist. “And you’re not exactly unbreakable.”
I scowled at the splint, my mind drifting momentarily to Melanie, who’d made a special trip just to come treat me in the brig’s rudimentary medical room when she’d seen my name enter the system, pending medical care.
I hadn’t been good company, and certainly not deserving of her care. I hadn’t even bothered to ask why she’d wept silently as she worked. Probably wouldn’t have even noticed that she was if she hadn’t stopped at one point to dab the tears away. Dazed and devastated as I’d been, I’d half-thought she’d already left when she’d come to my side, laid a gentle hand on my head, and planted a warm kiss on my forehead.
“Don’t give up,” she’d whispered.
Then she’d been gone too.
Don’t give up, her voice whispered to me again as I sat staring at the splint, only to followed by Carlisle’s, You are the best I have to offer this world, Haldin.
Over and over, the two circled in my head, taunting me with their vague directives to fix this, solve this, make it better. But I didn’t know where to start. Didn’t even know where Elise was. Oasis was the obvious answer, but the scaly bastards had been clever enough to cover their tracks. From what little Johnny had been able to gather on the channels, once the hybrids had cleared the wall, they’d sca
ttered every which way and ran like demons, some reportedly for miles, before the transports had swept in to collect them. The scouts were working through a scudstorm, trying to track it all in the dark out there with half of Haven’s skimmer fleet lying in cinders.
Oasis might’ve been the likely choice, but by now, the hybrids could’ve been halfway across the world in any direction. Maybe farther.
The only thing that gave me any hope at all was that Franco was looking too. He and James had both sustained a few bruises and breaks in the fight, but neither was as bad off as Phineas, who’d nearly had his heart torn out by a hybrid. I was half-surprised the bear of a man had let even that slow him down, but for Franco, there was no question—he’d work his info until he found his daughter, broken bones or no, and he and the scouts would do a better job than I ever could.
Which left only two things in my arena: getting to the bottom of Gregor Auckus’ treachery, and making damn well sure we were ready to open the doors to demons’ depths right beneath the raknoth’s clawed feet when we found Elise.
Seeing as I couldn’t really do much about Auckus without either speaking to Glenbark or causing a base-wide incident, that left me right back where I’d been stuck since coming to Haven.
The damned cloaking runes. The one thing I could do to help was the only thing I was absolutely positive I had no gropping idea how to do.
If there was an Alpha, he was unquestionably a sadist.
“Want me to see if I can get some of your practice pendants brought here?”
I looked at Johnny, surprised by his apparent mind-reading only to realize he was watching my fingers, which were absentmindedly tracing the pattern of one of the runes from my pendant. My stolen pendant.
I sighed, not sure what to say. Not sure how I could possibly hope to suddenly solve the problem that’d been haunting my dreams. The runework itself would probably be doable enough. It relied on Expression, which relied on the power and conviction of a Shaper’s will. To say my will was galvanized with Elise’s life hanging in the balance would’ve been a gross understatement. I burned with the need to find her.
But I was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. I knew I was. And no amount of brute willpower was going to change that.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Johnny was saying as he stood, brushing himself off. “It’ll be good.”
“Johnny…”
“Good to have something to keep your mind busy until Glenbark—”
“Johnny.”
He hung there for a second, as if hoping he’d imagined the raw plea in my tone. The second passed, and he let out a long breath and turned to meet my eyes.
I made no attempt to mask the helplessness I felt inside.
“I can’t do it, man.” I shook my head. “I don’t know if I’m even close. I don’t know what the scud I’m doing. I never did. And she’s out there, Johnny.”
I gnashed my teeth, my hands curling into fists, unable to shut out the flood of images—Elise carried away on a writhing sea of eager hybrids. Crying for help, eyes wide, hands outstretched toward me. Bound and bloodied, surrounded by a horde of hungry hybrids, growling and harrying her from the dark. Rage flashed red behind my eyelids.
She needed me.
Elise needed me, and minute by minute, I was failing her. I was on the verge of lashing out when Johnny’s hand found my shoulder and pulled me back down from the imminent explosion. He was watching me, waiting.
The rage bled out of me, sagging my shoulders. I was so tired. So tired of all of it.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I heard myself say. “Can’t keep skirting by while the people I love take the fall for me. Carlisle, Elise. My mom and dad. All those legionnaires who came to pull me out of the White Tower. All the ones who’ve died next to me since. The Hounds. The Wolves.” I looked up at him, more exhausted and empty than I’d ever felt. “Why do I keep going? Why me?”
He studied me for a while, his expression grave. Finally, he turned and sat back down beside me on the floor.
“I think this stuff has really gone to your head, man. Not that I blame you,” he added quickly. “I mean, I get it, broto. Carlisle. Your parents. That scud can’t be easy. But that doesn’t mean it’s your fault. It sure as scud doesn’t mean you should’ve been the one to ‘take the fall,’ like you seem to think. And those legionnaires? I hate to break it to you, buddy, but they weren’t fighting for you. You know that as much as I do. They were fighting for Enochia, and for duty, and their families, and just for what’s gropping good and right in the world, man. And you’re not what’s threatening that. That’s the raknoth. It’s all the raknoth.”
He turned to me, frustration in his eyes. “And the worst part is that I know you already know all this. Just like I know there’s a bunch of scuddy little brain fairies flying around in there telling you that everything I’m saying is bullscud and that you’re actually the Great Demon reborn.”
I looked down at the floor, not wanting him to see in my eyes just how right he was.
“I love you, buddy,” he said after a while, “so I’m gonna tell you something I feel like I should’ve said a long time ago. Here it is.” He spread his hands in a grandiose manner. “This isn’t all about you, you self-important beardsplitter.”
I turned with an indignant scowl, but he silenced me with a raised finger.
“I said I love you, broto, so just shut up for a second. You need to see that this isn’t all just Hal’s World. You’re not the only one who’s lost people.”
“I know that, you—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” he said, waving his finger. “You say you know that, but you sure as scud don’t act like it. Have you forgotten about Bells?”
His words hit me like a jab straight to the diaphragm. Consumed as I’d been in my own problems, I hadn’t thought about Johnny’s missing sister in days. I fumbled for words, but there was nothing to say. No excuse for what a scuddy friend I suddenly realized I’d been.
But Johnny wasn’t even looking at me.
“Just because your abilities give you more pull than most of us in this fight doesn’t mean the fight belongs to you any more than it belongs to the rest of us. It’s not up to you to carry the weight of every bad thing that’s happened.”
A trace of his usual humor returned as he looked at me. “And as your friend and designated fairy swatter, it’s my solemn duty to inform you that you don’t get to pretend like it’s all your fault anymore.”
I dropped his gaze. “And what about Elise?”
“Elise is alive, Hal. We’re going to get her back.”
“I don’t know how to do it, Johnny.” My fingers drifted to the empty spot where my pendant no longer hung. “I’m missing a piece, here, and I… What if I’m just not capable of finding it?”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Then I’ll bust out of here and storm Oasis right beside you, buddy. We can drop down from the sky, guns-a-blazing. Scud, maybe Freya will even send an army with us, cloaks or no. But I don’t think it’s gonna come to that.”
I met his gaze, waiting for some good explanation as to why he thought that.
He just shrugged. “C’mon, man. She needs you. And you need her. You’ll pull it together. That’s like your guys’ entire thing, isn’t it? One of you”—his finger pointed at me as if it had a life of its own—“falls apart. The other hoists ‘em back up. Maybe there’s touching involved. But, one way or another, you two always hold each other together, like a pair of…”
I’m pretty sure he kept talking, but I barely heard him.
I was frozen dumb, an intangible something crackling through my head in response to his words, racing around in blind, frantic circles. An answer, some deep part of me was suddenly certain. He’d just given me the answer. It hovered there at the very edge of my awareness like a silk fly ready to flutter off at any sudden movement.
“Hal?” Johnny was eyeing me uncertainly.
“Johnny, say that again. Quick.”
<
br /> He frowned. “The touching thing? Or…?”
“No, the… the holding together.”
Johnny looked like he was trying to figure out if I’d just suffered a major brain hemorrhage. “You two always hold each other together?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Wait, that’s it? That’s…” He looked hurriedly around the room. “Whatever’s going through your head right now, hold on to it.” Then he jumped to his feet, went straight to the cell door, and started pounding. “Hey! Hey, scudboots, we need an etcher in here, and we need it yesterday!”
The slit in the door slid open with a rasp, and Johnny began an animated discussion with the guards outside, who were clearly more than a little skeptical about how giving a prisoner a phase etcher was paramount to the survival of Enochia. I barely listened to the exchange. I was too busy staring off into space, trying to test the logic of my blossoming idea.
Without really thinking about it, I stood and turned to the wall, putting my back to Johnny and the guards. I conjured up the image of my cloaking pendant and its five interweaving runes, then changed my mind and went with Johnny’s simpler four rune design instead. It wasn’t hard to recall either in fine detail after the number of hours I’d spent staring.
One by one, I focused on each rune, channeled the requisite energy, and burned its likeness straight into the permacrete. A sharp, dusty odor wafted up on black tendrils of smoke, and I was vaguely aware of the conversation behind me gaining some urgency, but I shut that out and focused on my work, trying my best to push on without overthinking my admittedly abstract plan. Soon enough, I had a perfectly respectable replica of Johnny’s pendant charred into the permacrete wall.
This time, I ignored the runes I’d always tried to empower before—the heat absorber and the actual cloaking field generator—and moved straight to the other two. Those two little etchings that had become the bane of my dreams and waking hours alike. Those magical marks that somehow held it all in place—four runes, operating in synchrony for months, years, Alpha knew how long.
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