“Just like you believed the Daedalus was truly gone?” the general countered, facing us. He was an older man, maybe in his sixties, with silver hair cropped close to his skull and a face lined with experience. A man who’d spent his life serving his country and should be enjoying his days in blissful retirement in someplace like Arizona or Florida. Instead, he was here, in what was now referred to as Zone 3, hidden among humans the government had decided weren’t worth the stress of evacuating, unregistered Luxen, humans that Luxen had mutated—known as hybrids—and other Origins who’d escape the Daedalus.
“That with the destruction of the Origin Project, the Daedalus was simply no more?” Eaton said, referencing the program responsible for the creation of the Origins.
Luc went utterly still, and my skin pebbled in response. “Do you think I’m foolish?”
General Eaton’s jaw flexed.
“Or naïve?” Luc’s voice was soft now, scarily so, and when he spoke again, I really hoped that Eaton answered and did so wisely. “Well, do you?”
“No,” Eaton clipped out. “I don’t think that.”
“Good to hear that. I’d hate to have to change your mind.” Luc had moved forward a foot or two or three, and I hadn’t even seen him move. “I never believed they were completely eradicated, nor did I think their goals would end with them. Humans will always want to be on the top of the food chain, and they will never stop seeking power.”
The way Luc said humans made it clear that even though the mother he’d never met was human, he didn’t view himself as one, and a last name hadn’t changed that.
The gnawing ache in my stomach pulsed as he said, “But every facility I could find is nothing but ash now, along with a vast number of those who ran the Daedalus. I knew the Daedalus was still alive and well the moment that girl that Evie went to school with did the impossible and we found those serums at her house.”
He was talking about April Collins, a frenemy who’d hated on the Luxen so much she’d rallied together like-minded classmates and held daily protests. The irony of it all was that April wasn’t even human.
She was like me.
A Trojan.
Her hatefulness was engineered by the Daedalus and had the sole purpose of sowing fear and distrust of the Luxen into the human populace.
When Heidi and I had somewhat accidentally exposed her as something other, April nearly killed Heidi by putting her entire hand through my friend’s body.
Luc and I had found a stash of serums at her place, but we’d had no idea what they were for and we’d lost them when Luc’s club was raided. The serums weren’t the only thing we’d discovered at her place. We’d also found her handler, who I’d … shot … in the head like it was something I’d done before.
For all I knew, it could be something I’d done countless times before, and I just had no memory of it.
“And the Daedalus survived only to grow stronger, to grow smarter,” Eaton said.
“That doesn’t explain how a dead man is supposedly alive,” Luc shot back.
That was a damn good point, one I couldn’t wait to hear explained, but I suddenly felt … weird. Wired, almost. Like I’d downed three of those espresso shots Zoe liked to drink. Had to be the fact that I was hungry and unused to not having at least several tablespoons’ worth of sugary snacks by this point in the day. I pushed the odd jittery feeling aside and focused.
“Did you see Dasher die, Luc?” Eaton asked, shoulders sunken and weathered face tired. “No. All you saw was that he was shot and that he bled.”
“He was shot in the damn chest, man.” Luc’s hands curled into fists. “He went down and didn’t get back up. It was a mortal wound.”
“Did you hang around afterward?” The worn leather couch shuddered when Eaton sat, his long legs stretched and boneless as he met Luc’s stare fearlessly.
Luc didn’t answer for a long moment, and a ripple of power flared around him, causing the air to thicken.
“I wanted to destroy everything that he was, erase him from this earth, but I couldn’t.” His chin dipped, head tilting to the side. “Jason had contacted members of the damn alien task force when I arrived. Officers were on their way. I feared my presence would…” He trailed off as the veins under his skin began to glow as white as his pupils.
“You feared if you lingered, your presence would jeopardize her.” Eaton jerked his head in my direction.
We were made for each other.
That was what Eaton had told us. That the Daedalus had a hand in us meeting the first time, when I’d been Nadia. That they were counting on him to form some kind of bond with her—with me—and through that bond, they thought to control him.
Like they’d tried with Dawson and Beth, Daemon and Kat, and most likely, countless others.
If that were true, it made sense they’d anticipate Luc doing anything to make sure I was safe. Even if that meant taking the risk to leave before being a hundred percent sure Jason Dasher was truly dead.
He wouldn’t do anything that would ever hurt me. That was the one thing in this world I knew for certain. He would rip himself apart cell by cell before he harmed a single hair on my head.
But I …
Oh God.
Sudden clarity sliced through me like an icy wind. My next breath threatened to choke me. I could hurt Luc. Badly. In fact, I already had. If he hadn’t gotten through to me, reached through to me, when I went all psycho Trojan, taking out the Sons of Liberty, a group that had been activated to take out the Trojans before it was too late, I would’ve killed Daemon.
I would’ve killed Luc, who I loved with every fiber of my being.
But in those woods, he was not the boy I loved before and the man I loved now. In those moments, Luc had become nothing more than a challenge to me—a threat this alien part of me saw and had been trained to take out. I …
I had peeled his flesh from his bones with just a thought.
Sickened, I squeezed my eyes shut, but that did nothing to stop the images of Luc going down on his knees as his skin tore, as he begged me to remember who he was.
I had believed in my heart of hearts that if I became what I had in those woods outside the safe house, Luc would be able to stop me. He’d find a way to get to me before I hurt anyone. But we’d been missing an important piece of information.
That I was coded to answer to Jason Dasher.
I had an idea of what that meant thanks to April’s reaction to me after she’d used the Cassio Wave, a device that had awoken whatever training I’d had. She’d expected me to go with her without question, to return to him, a man nameless at the time but I now knew to be Jason Dasher.
My heart pounded against my ribs as panic seeded like a noxious weed. What if he or another Trojan used the Cassio Wave again? Or what if what happened in those woods occurred again?
What if Luc couldn’t reach me the next time?
Then I’d turn into a mindless minion, and not even one of the cute yellow ones.
A laugh bubbled up, but it got stuck in my throat, where I felt like I was being choked, and it was probably a good thing, because it was the scary kind of laughter that ended in tears or blood.
Jason Dasher could take it all away from me again. Memories. Sense of self. Free will. Autonomy. My friends. Luc.