Chapter 2
The last time I saw Uncle Jim, he was on an execution platform, bullet holes tearing into his chest, blood spilling all over the wooden floor. I heard his voice in my head. Goodbye, little bird. I felt his energy leave me as he drew his last breath. As he died.
He fucking died.
Now he’s standing in front of me. No bullet wounds. No blood. His shoulders are held high. He looks unharmed and unchanged, except that his dirty-blond hair is shorter, and grayer around the temples, as if he’s aged a decade in the six months since he was shot.
To my utter humiliation, tears obscure my vision. I blink rapidly, trying to stave them off, but it’s too late. Two rivulets course down my cheeks, and suddenly I’m stumbling toward him like one of the wobbly calves on our ranch learning to walk for the first time.
I’m three feet from him when our gazes lock, and a chill sweeps through me, freezing me in my tracks.
“You’re not Jim,” I accuse.
While his brown eyes are identical to Uncle Jim’s, down to the gold flecks around the pupils, this isn’t the man who loved and protected me for the past fifteen years.
“No,” he says gruffly, and damned if his voice isn’t the same, too. How is this possible? “I’m Julian’s brother. Kallister.”
My breath remains stuck in my throat, lungs screaming for the oxygen I’m depriving them of. I force myself to suck in a deep breath, trying to regulate my heartbeat.
I knew Uncle Jim had a brother, but he spoke of him so infrequently, basically never, and he sure as hellfuck hadn’t told me they were twins. Identical twins. If they were standing side by side with their eyes closed, I genuinely wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
The eyes, though. This man has hard, calculating eyes. Jim was a hard man, yes, but when he looked at me, his eyes were always soft.
“You look exactly like him.” My voice shakes, so I clear my throat before speaking again. “Sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“Kallister.” He extends his hand.
I stare at it for a moment. There’s no dirt under his fingernails. No little nicks and cuts from mending fences and herding cattle. Uncle Jim had rancher’s hands. These ones are neat and tidy, as if he hasn’t performed much manual labor in his life.
Remembering my manners, I lean in to grasp his wrist in greeting. “You’re part of this council?”
I glance around the room. Adrienne and the other woman are observing us without trying to hide it. Gray, meanwhile, has joined the younger man and they’re chuckling about something.
“I serve on the Authority, yes.” He’s studying me as intently as I’m studying him. “The five of us are responsible for making every operational decision at the Dagger.”
I know I’m being rude, but I simply cannot stop staring. His resemblance to Uncle Jim is so unsettling, and I have a thousand questions I want to ask him.
Then I feel it—the tugging sensation at the back of my neck. I suspect it’s Kallister. I don’t recognize his energy signature, but it’s definitely not Jim’s, which tells me that although twins share identical DNA, it doesn’t extend to the Modified energy coursing through their veins.
“I know you have questions,” Kallister says after we establish a mental connection. “We can talk after the briefing, keen?”
I nod weakly. He pats my arm, then turns and pulls out a chair for me.
As everyone takes their seats, Adrienne leans forward with her hands clasped, arching a brow at me.
“I’m impressed,” she says. “Nobody survives the Blacklands on foot.”
“It wasn’t easy,” I answer, keeping it vague. These people are strangers to me. I can’t tell them that Uncle Jim and I lived in that nightmare forest for three years.
Unless they already know?
The notion gives me pause. I just assumed Uncle Jim would’ve kept my true background a secret from them, but Kallister is his twin. Maybe they were in constant contact all these years and not estranged like Jim led me to believe.
It suddenly occurs to me that I’ve walked into this room completely blind, and for the first time since I arrived at the Dagger, I feel genuine fear. Just a flicker of it, like the trickle from a leaky faucet, stinging my flesh each time it drips on me.
“How did you manage it?” the short-haired woman asks, her tone clipped.
I ignore the question. “Is this an interrogation?” I ask warily.
Kallister chuckles. “Not at all. It’s more of an…open forum.”
Adrienne gestures to the woman beside her. “Wren, this is Fiona.” She nods at the man beside Gray. “That’s Teriq. And you already know Gray and Kallister. We’re the reason you’re at the Dagger. Your entry was brought to a vote, and just so you know, it was unanimous.”
“Which isn’t always the case,” Gray says with a wry smile.
My gaze shifts among the five of them as I attempt to figure out the power dynamics. It doesn’t seem like there’s one leader among this group, though Adrienne and Kallister have done the most talking so far.
“You did an excellent job with the Jubilee mission,” Adrienne tells me, nodding her approval. “Planting those charges.”
“I don’t want to talk about the charges. I want to talk about what you did to General Redden.”
She doesn’t even blink. “In time. Right now, this is about you. If you’re to stay here—”
“If?” I interrupt. “I didn’t realize my invitation was conditional.”
“There are always conditions in life. And these apply to every Mod who lives on the base. If you decide you’re not willing to abide by them, we’ll return you to the wards once we’re running regular transports again.”
“So you really are going dark?” When I was being held in the Command stockade, that was the reason she provided for why the network couldn’t rescue me.
“For the time being,” she confirms.
“I don’t get it. Why strike them only to immediately retreat?”
Kallister fields that. “It’s not a retreat. We took the first shot. Our declaration of war, if you will. But there’re a lot more battles to be fought.”
I lace my fingers, feeling ill at ease again. “What are these conditions I need to agree to?”
“Disclosure, for one,” Adrienne says. “We’ll do that tomorrow morning.”
I wrinkle my forehead. “Disclosure of what?”
“Your abilities.”
The guy they called Teriq fixes his serious gaze on me. “Ellis reported that you have a bloodmark. Is this true?”
I falter. Ellis is a Command healer who I only recently found out is working undercover for the Uprising. He healed the scar tissue on my left hip and upper thigh, which for years had hidden the red mark beneath it, the mark that broadcasts to everyone that I’m more powerful than I’ve let on.
“Um. Yes,” I finally admit. “I do.”
Adrienne shakes her head at me. “Care to explain why you made the decision to ask Ellis to heal your scars? A bloodmark is never something to advertise.”
The rebuke stings, even though I’m well aware of what a stupid move that was.
Truth be told, I wasn’t thinking. Simple as that.
I removed my scars to show Cross that I was willing to be completely open and vulnerable with him.
That he could trust me. But the impulsive decision also undid all the layers of protective scar tissue that Uncle Jim attempted to bury my bloodmark under when he burned my flesh.
On the bright side, I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. I won’t be running any undercover missions within the Command anytime soon. I’m at the Dagger now, surrounded by people like me. People who won’t shoot me on sight for bearing a bloodmark.
“I was tired of hiding,” I lie, feigning confidence I’m not feeling at the moment. “It made me sick pretending to be one of them, the Primes in Silver Block. I didn’t belong there, and I guess I needed to remind myself of that.”
“You’re saying you were going to desert the Command?” Teriq asks skeptically.
I nod.
“And to hell with our recruitment?” Gray sounds amused.
“Hey, I lost my only ally after you died,” I counter. “And with Jayde Valence watching me like a hawk, it was only a matter of time before I was compromised.”
“You neglected to mention how powerful you were when we recruited you,” Adrienne says in a dry voice.
I shrug. “I promised Jim I’d never reveal it.”
“Fuckin’ Julian,” she mutters. “That man has been nothing but a headache from the day I met him.”
“I was a child when the mark appeared. He didn’t want anyone using me as a pawn.”
“Is that why he took you in?” Gray asks. “He saw the mark and wanted to protect you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Fiona gives a slight frown. “Our records indicate that Julian found you on the side of the road when you were eight?”
Relief flutters through me. Good. Uncle Jim never revealed my background to these people. They don’t know that I was five, not eight, when he took me in, which means they don’t know about our time in the Blacklands.
And most important, they don’t know about my parents.
My traitor parents.
Fuck. How am I supposed to navigate this storm I’ve found myself in? I feel like I’m swimming against an ocean current. If I lose focus for even a second, I’ll drown in all the secrets I’m trying to keep track of.
“Yes, I was eight,” I say, repeating the lie. “We don’t know where I came from, but Jim suspected my family was killed by the Command while I managed to run away. And he’s the one who burned my bloodmark off.”
Teriq pulls out a tablet, swiping his finger across the screen. As his brow furrows in concentration, a sense of familiarity washes over me. I feel like I know him from somewhere, but I can’t place where.
“We keep a file on nearly every Mod on the Continent,” he says, scanning the screen. “Ash reported your abilities as mind reading and telepathy.”
Fiona speaks again, her tone growing icier by the second. “We’ve never known anyone with a bloodmark to manifest less than three abilities. Are those the only two you possess?”
“I have more than two,” I confess after a beat of hesitation.
Intrigue dances across their faces.