Chapter 4
“Are you ready to begin?” Adrienne says the next morning. I sit at the head of the war room table, five sets of eyes trained on me.
I gulp, wiping my damp palms on the front of my pants.
I feel like I’m back in school. I hated school.
I was the worst student, the one who could never sit still.
From the moment the first class started until the second we were dismissed, I’d fix my gaze out the window, desperate to be outside riding my horse or shooting my rifle.
“Should I be treating this like a test?” I ask, feeling uneasy.
“There’s no passing or failing here. We’re simply gauging your skills,” Kallister reassures me, and I’m reminded of my first day in Silver Block when they surprised us with a random observation quiz.
That morning, I wasn’t sure if I should stand out, blend with the group, or outright fail. Now I’m cycling through those same options, considering how much to reveal. Until it dawns on me that I can’t afford to hide anything from these people.
Before Cross and Xavier broke me out of the city, I was scheduled for execution.
If I’m not honest with the Uprising about my abilities, they might send me back to the wards, where I risk being stopped by a Command patrol, or triggering a facial recognition camera, or catching the attention of a surveillance drone.
Anywhere I go, I’ll be in danger of getting caught and being sent directly to South Plaza to face the firing squad, just like Uncle Jim.
I need to convince the Uprising to let me stay here.
I spent so many years begging for Jim’s permission to run missions with the network—supply runs, handoffs, anything to prove that I could be an asset.
Now I finally have a real shot to help dismantle the Company, and I refuse to squander the opportunity.
Adrienne folds her hands on the table. “All right, let’s begin with telepathy.”
Across the table, Kallister and Teriq each hold a tablet, poised to record whatever it is they’re recording.
“Open a path and link with Fiona.” Adrienne gestures to the short-haired woman who hasn’t once smiled at me since I got to the Dagger.
I glance at Fiona, trying to ignore my nerves.
When he first started training me as a child, Uncle Jim explained that Mods are fueled by energy, and that our brains, because they’re incapable of truly seeing that energy, create images to represent it.
He told me to picture my mind as a vast, dark space.
To empty it, strip it down to nothing but blackness, and then visualize a silver rope stretching out in front of me, leading to a silver light far in the distance.
Bend down and pick up the rope, he’d urged. That’s your path, keen? From the rope to the light. You’re going to follow the path.
Opening a path came easy for me, even when confronted with what happens once you enter someone else’s head.
The pressure can be stifling, suffocating, because every mind possesses either a natural barrier or, if it’s been strengthened through training, a fortified shield.
There’s a primal instinct in every human being to protect the mind from mental infiltration.
Uncle Jim explained that Modified minds have two frequencies.
He likened them to waves, one set giving off positive energy, the other negative.
Mind reading relies on the latter; he told me to picture that frequency as a door.
Beyond that door, black waves try to repel you, push you out.
I remember how proud I was the first time I successfully squeezed through those waves and heard Jim’s thoughts.
Telepathy is the welcoming hallway off the door. The positive frequency allows you to recognize a person’s unique energy signature and link with it, and once that connection is made, you can use it to speak to each other or to project images into the other mind.
That’s what I tap into now as I slip into Fiona’s mind, following that familiar pathway until I feel her telepathic energy. Her eyes widen a split second later, her voice filling my head as we link. Her sleeveless shirt leaves her arms bare, revealing the flash of silver in her veins.
“Well done.” It’s grudging praise, as if she’s reluctant to offer it.
Fiona nods at Teriq, who scribbles something on his tablet.
Adrienne raises a brow at me. “Have you always been able to open a path with such speed, or is it something you honed over the years?”
“I’m not sure. Jim’s the one who taught me how to use telepathy. I don’t remember how fast it took me at the beginning.”
“At what age did he start training you?”
“Eight.” I was five, but I stick to the story I’ve recited my whole life.
“Were you able to link with him on the first attempt?”
“Yes.”
“And when did your bloodmark appear?”
“When I was seven.”
They ask me to link with Teriq next. But not Gray. It’s still so wild to me. I’ve never met a Mod who can’t do telepathy.
Which only raises the question—what can he do?
“There’s no silver in her veins,” Fiona remarks with a deep frown. A moment later, she nudges my mind. “Why do your veins remain dormant when you use your gifts?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s never happened to you?” She speaks aloud now. “Not even once?”
“Never,” I say.
“Fascinating,” Kallister murmurs. “That makes…three?” He turns to Teriq for confirmation, and the younger man nods.
“Three what?” I demand.
“Until you, we only knew of two other Mods whose veins don’t react to their abilities,” he explains. “Now it’s three.”
Four, I want to correct, but I’d never betray Cross.
“Have you figured out why?” I ask curiously. “Why some people’s veins are, um, dormant, I mean?”
He shakes his head. “Just another mystery. None of the research has ever produced any concrete answers.”
“How proficient are you in mind reading?” Fiona asks in a clinical voice. She reminds me of the doctor in the village where I grew up, running through a list of symptoms when I went in there with a fever.
“If the mind is unshielded, it comes easily to me.”
“And filtering?” inquires Kallister. “Also easy?”
“Yes.”
Guilt pricks my stomach at the reminder that some Mods can’t filter at all, making mind reading next to impossible for them.
But at least those people can shield themselves from the noise, whereas fragmented Mods are incapable of maintaining a shield or severing links correctly.
Once they’ve been in another mind, it opens a floodgate.
Outside thoughts are constantly rushing back into their heads, drowning out all sense and order, until their brains become a cacophony of voices. A pure, chaotic racket.
It’s enough to drive someone insane, and eventually, it does, completely robbing you of sanity. Like the woman I saw in Ward C. Rocking on the hospital bed, whimpering, covering her ears with her hands as she repeated the same phrase over and over and over again.
Shut up shut up shut up shut up.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to never have silence in your own mind.
“If the mind is shielded, how long does it take you to break through the shield?” Kallister asks.
I think it over. “It depends. That’s not always easy.”
“Have you ever encountered a shield you couldn’t break?”
“No.”
Surprise creases his forehead. “Including my brother’s? You were able to penetrate Julian’s shield?”
I nod.
“At what age?”
“Nine.”
Adrienne laughs softly. When I frown at her, she says, “It’s impressive. I never tested Julian’s shield, but if it’s anything like Kallister’s…”
“It happened after countless hours of training, though,” I protest, because I don’t love all the fanfare around my abilities. We haven’t even gotten to my incitement yet. It never occurred to me they’d be so impressed with my mind reading and knack for opening fast paths.
Kallister makes a note in his tablet. “I’d like to train with you. Try you against my shield.”
“Now?”
“No. But it’ll be part of your mandatory training.”
“Let’s move on to your next ability,” Fiona snaps. “You mentioned there’s more than two?”
“I have four,” I say sheepishly.
Adrienne narrows her eyes. “What else can you do?”
“I can project.”
Teriq touches his tablet and brings up a digital image on the holoscreen in the middle of the table. It’s a map of the Continent. He instructs me to project it to Adrienne.
“Is that all you can project?” she says when I’m done.
The question confuses me. “What do you mean? Should I try to project something else?”
“No, I’m asking if you can project only what you see in front of you.”
“As opposed to what?”
“What about something you have seen?”
The groove in my forehead digs deeper. “Is that even possible?”
I’ve never met anyone who could project something they’d seen in the past. I was taught that projection is tied directly to your optic nerve, meaning you can only transmit what you’re viewing in the moment.
Rather than elaborate, Adrienne moves on. “And your fourth ability?”
My gaze finds Gray’s across the table. His head dips in a subtle nod.
Don’t give them a reason to send you back.
I can practically hear his voice in my head, urging me to be honest, but I promised Uncle Jim a long time ago that I would never reveal this power.
I let out a breath. “I can incite.”
A current of shock travels through the war room.
“You’re an inciter?” Adrienne says before casting a dark look at Kallister. “Your godfucking brother, Kal. He never disclosed.”
His voice is calm when he replies, “Julian saw Wren as a daughter. I assume he was trying to protect her.”
“Protect me from what?” I challenge. “From all of you?”
Kallister shrugs. “He must’ve known we’d want to recruit you.”
Want to use me, is more like it.
“You were the inciter in the crowd at Julian’s execution,” Adrienne muses. “Witness reports stated that all eight members of the firing squad responded to the inciter’s command.”
From the corner of my eye, I feel Fiona’s distrustful gaze boring a hole into the side of my face. Teriq and Gray both seem impressed, while Kallister shakes his head in amazement.
“How did you do it?” he asks. “How long have you been able to incite on a mass scale?”
“So, um…I should probably state for the record that I don’t know the first thing about using incitement.
” I hope they can hear my sincerity. “Jim tried to train me, but he had no experience with it. Neither of us knew how to use that ability, and it rarely worked when we practiced. It usually happens spontaneously.”
“You spontaneously incited eight minds?” Teriq sounds dubious.
“I don’t know how I did it. I think it was an emotional response, to be honest. I was consumed with panic and desperation and terror, and I was screaming at them in my mind, screaming for them to put their guns down, and suddenly they were just…obeying me.”
Teriq remains unconvinced. “Have you experienced other instances of spontaneous incitement?”
“When I was a teenager, I incited Jim by accident while he was driving. I was furious at him for embarrassing me in front of my friends. Spitting mad. Like the kind of mad that has you seeing red. I yelled for him to turn the truck around, and he did it.” A pang of shame tugs on my stomach. “We almost died.”
“Do you see red when it happens?” Adrienne asks.
“Huh?”
“I don’t mean figuratively. Do you see the color red?”
A frown puckers my forehead. “No.”
“What about any other colors?” she pushes.
Kallister glances at her. “We can save all this for training. Let’s move on.”
“Wait,” I interject, “am I supposed to see colors when I incite?”
I suddenly flash back to those odd gold flecks that were floating in my mind the morning of Uncle Jim’s execution.
I remember seeing them as a child, too, when we practiced incitement.
I called them the gold sparkles. Jim always brushed my questions off.
I suspect he thought I was just imagining the gold dust.
“Manipulation abilities harness a different energy source—” Adrienne starts to explain, but Fiona cuts her off.
“We’re getting into the weeds,” the older woman says irritably. “We’re not here to train her. This is disclosure.”
“Have you ever consciously incited?” Teriq asks me. “Not spontaneously, I mean.”
“I did it at the Silver Jubilee last week.”
Everyone’s expression sharpens.
“Jayde Valence caught me trying to plant the explosives. She was a precog and had a vision of me, and she confronted me right in the middle of the mission. Getting caught would’ve ruined everything and blown my cover, so I knew I had to stop her.
” I swallow. “It took so much energy. I don’t even know how I did it.
Again, it was driven by sheer emotion, but…
um…I incited her to shoot herself in the head. ”
Silence crashes over the war room.
“I don’t want this ability,” I mutter when nobody speaks. “I really don’t. And I have no intention of using this power, let alone abusing it. So if you’re going to send me away, just know—”
“We’re not sending you away,” Adrienne interrupts.
I feel a flicker of hope. “I can stay?”
She tips her chin toward Kallister, then the others. “Unless someone has an objection, I don’t think we even need to call a vote.”
“No objection here,” Kallister says, and the other men murmur their agreement.
Only Fiona resists, misgiving clouding her expression.
“Fi?” he prompts.
Finally, she offers a tense nod, her jaw clenched.
I can stay.
A thick lump of relief forms in my throat, but it fades when Adrienne speaks again.
“The Dagger will be your new home, Darlington. We can’t have an inciter walking around in the wards.”
And that doesn’t sound like an invitation.
It sounds like a threat.