Chapter 6 #2
“It appeared when I was eleven,” she says.
“But I didn’t discover I had the power to corrupt until a couple years later.
Hell, I didn’t know how to use any of my powers until my father and I connected with the Uprising.
He was a Prime, worked as a coal miner at the Spearhead facility in D.
When my bloodmark appeared, he found a way to contact the network and gave me up to them. ”
I frown. “He gave you away?”
“Happens all the time. Prime parents of Mod children only have three options, Darlington. They report their child to the Company and let the Primes use them as pawns or slaves. They hide their child’s abilities and risk being executed for treason and concealment if it ever comes out.
Or they ask the Uprising to protect them.
My father chose the third option. He loved me, and if he’d known how to handle my abilities, I think he would’ve kept me with him and concealed my powers from the Company.
But he was out of his element. He knew the network would be able to help me more than he could. ”
That’s what my mother did, too, or at least I used to think that. Before I read Jim’s letter, I believed she gave me to Julian Ash in order to protect me, not only from the Company but from the Uprising. Afraid both sides would want to use me to further their own agendas.
But none of her motivations make sense to me anymore.
If she was working against her own people, why wouldn’t she just report me to the Company and let them use me?
Maybe she feared the Company would deem me too big a risk and kill me instead?
Incitement typically means a death sentence, but I was only a child.
I don’t know if General Redden would’ve been barbaric enough to execute a child.
“I started training when I got to the Dagger.” Adrienne’s voice pulls me back to the present. “Until that point, I didn’t even know how to use telepathy, let alone corruption. And it was only during my training that I realized not everyone can see the thought strands.”
“Thought strands?”
“When you read a mind, how do you absorb the person’s thoughts?”
Confusion puckers my brow. “What do you mean, absorb? I just…hear them. Their thoughts are like voices that I can hear in my own head.”
“You don’t see them?”
“No. Do you?”
She nods. “When I’m in someone’s mind, their thoughts appear as individual threads. Hundreds and thousands of them, swirling like a kaleidoscope of gold. I can see and hear them at the same time.”
“The night of the Jubilee,” I say slowly, “after you corrupted the General’s mind, you called it rewiring. So those gold strands are like wires?”
“Precisely. The first time I did it, it was an accident. I assume the same way it happened to you with incitement. I was twelve. Khem and I were training in mind reading—Khem was on the Authority. A powerful mind reader.” Regret flickers through her expression.
“We lost him a few years back. Teriq was given his seat.”
I’m fascinated by all this. I hadn’t realized there was a whole Modified political system operating right under the Company’s nose.
“I was surrounded by all these gold threads in Khem’s head, and I suddenly visualized myself running my fingers over them.
I don’t know why. A random instinct, I suppose.
But when I did it, I realized I could actually touch them.
Which got me even more curious.” She releases a heavy breath. “I pulled one of the threads.”
There’s a sharp hitch in my breath. “And what happened?”
“Nothing at first. I was tugging on a thought about Khem’s wife—Milla.
I twisted it a little, then got a bit creative, wrapping it around another thought of needing to see Fiona later for a wellness check.
Nothing happened, the session ended, and then…
” Adrienne averts her gaze. “Later, everyone was at the mess hall for dinner. Khem waltzed in, planted a kiss square on Fiona’s lips, and sat beside her instead of at his usual table with Milla.
” She stops, guilt flashing in her eyes. “He thought Fiona was his wife.”
“Whoa.”
“Gets worse. He genuinely couldn’t remember he was married to Milla.
He recalled who she was, that they’d met in upper school, the ward they lived in, joining the Uprising together, but anything to do with their marriage, their entire marriage—gone.
Luckily, the confusion about Fiona didn’t last. He had enough wiring left about her that he was able to piece together that no, she was not his wife, but a fellow Authority member.
But not Milla.” Adrienne rubs her face with both hands. “I erased his wife from his head.”
I can’t fathom what she’s saying. I stare at her in shock, trying to process it. “Corruption erases people’s memories?”
“Sometimes. Other times it just scrambles everything. Khem knew he had a wife, but somehow that wife became Fiona. I can’t fully explain what corruption does.
From what we’ve gleaned, those thought strands are more than just fragments that someone is thinking in the moment—they’re connected to both short-term and long-term memory storage.
Pull and twist enough strands, and you create pure chaos.
Eventually the wiring is totally fried. The brain can’t function. ”
“Did Khem know what you did?”
“Yes. I confessed to pulling the strands. He claimed he forgave me, but he never looked at me the same way. And Milla never spoke a word to me again. She left the Dagger and went to live at Bramble Base. She’s a civilian now. Refuses to run ops. I think she resents taking orders from me.”
I can’t mask my disbelief. “And you continued to use the ability? Why would you ever corrupt again after that?” There aren’t enough Luxury credits on this Continent you could pay me to use a power like corruption.
“I didn’t, not for a few years. But when I was fourteen, I wanted to try again.
Kallister had just joined the Authority.
He was ten years older than me, like a big brother.
We were talking one day, and he offered to help me train again.
We both wanted to see what else I could do with it.
Whether it could be reversed.” Her gaze meets mine.
“So Kallister brought me a test subject. A Prime from the wards who’d been scheduled for execution. ”
A sick feeling flutters in my stomach. “He made you intentionally corrupt someone?”
“He didn’t make me do anything. I wanted to. I was a stupid teenager, and it felt great to possess so much power, especially over a Prime. I spent my entire childhood listening to my dad’s friends talk about Mods like we were vermin. Aberrations.”
“What did you do to that Prime?”
She doesn’t break eye contact. “I went into his mind, and I didn’t pull just one strand. I pulled all of them. I twisted them, knotted them. And then I severed them.”
“Holy hellfuck, Adrienne.” I wrench my gaze away, rubbing my own temples as if it were my mind she’d damaged.
“I know,” she says quietly. “I destroyed that man’s brain.”
“What happened to him?”
“He fell into a vegetative state, and they shot him later that day.”
“How could you do that to him?”
I rise from the sofa, unable to sit still. Her words are stirring up too much agitation. At least for me. Adrienne remains seated in her armchair, unfazed by what she’s telling me.
“He was going to be executed regardless. Kallister and I made the decision to not waste a perfectly good lab rat.”
“You tortured him.”
“Corruption doesn’t cause physical pain. Only confusion.”
“Mental anguish is still fucking torture, Adrienne.”
I feel the heat of anger flushing my cheeks. Or maybe it’s disgust. I can’t believe how nonchalant she sounds about what she did. She’d exhibited genuine remorse over what happened with Khem. But with this Prime, he’s just a lab rat?
“Did you corrupt those people in Ward C?” The question pops out before I can stop it. “The ones in that hospital?”
“No. I wasn’t lying about that. The incidents I’m relating to you happened two decades ago. Corruption is not something I take lightly anymore, especially when it comes to innocent civilians, and it’s not something that should ever be performed on a mass scale.”
She sounds sincere, but then again, this is the Uprising. These people are trained for covert ops, for deception. Adrienne could be telling me what I want to hear.
Either she’s a phenomenal actress or that’s a genuine crack in her voice as she adds, “Every mind I’ve corrupted chips away a little piece of my soul. Believe me when I say it’s not an ability I’d ever choose for myself.”
“Did you corrupt the General’s wife?”
Although the question startles her, her expression doesn’t change.
“I saw her. Vinessa Redden,” I clarify. “When I went to the General’s mansion with Captain Redden.
He tried to convince me she was schizophrenic, but it was clearly something else.
At first, I thought she was a fragmented Mod, but that didn’t feel right, either.
” I lift my chin in challenge. “Was that you?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t even try to deny it.
I feel sick. Cross stayed behind to make sure his mother was taken care of, and now I’m finding out Adrienne is the reason Vinessa is incapacitated?
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says with a harsh laugh. “We’re at war, Darlington. Sacrificing a mind or two is a necessary cost.”
“You literally just said you don’t agree with corrupting innocent civilians.”
She’s unmoved by my reproach. “The General’s wife was targeted because of exactly that: She was the General’s wife. Our objective is to destabilize the current regime. That requires hard decisions. Picking strategic targets.”
“It took many years before she was fully corrupted, though,” I say warily. “Captain Redden told me it started off like symptoms of schizophrenia and lasted years.”
“I was only eighteen. I hadn’t perfected the process yet.” Noting my face, Adrienne rolls her eyes. “You incited a woman to kill herself, Wren. How is that any better than what I did to the General’s wife?”
My throat constricts.
“When you incited Valence, you did what you needed to do to survive. That’s what we’re all doing. That’s our goal: survival. So we can sit here judging each other for our actions, or we can fight a war against the people that want to destroy us.”
“Not all of them want to destroy us,” I protest, but it sounds weak to my ears.
“Most do,” she says. “That was Merrick Redden’s intention. To dehumanize us in the eyes of his Primes. All those soldiers, the pilots, the ground troops who wiped out Valterra Ridge—they didn’t view the Mods there as people.”
I know she’s right. The General’s tactics were always transparent to me. Dehumanize in order to eradicate. Because if you don’t view your enemy as a human being, then why should you care if they die?
But not everyone agreed with Cross’s father.
“A lot of them do see us,” I argue. “People like Griff, my friend Tana’s father. Or the network’s other Prime allies. They don’t want all of us dead.”
“And if we can protect those people, we will. Mitigating casualties and collateral damage is a priority for me. But I also recognize it might not be possible to save everyone. That’s just the way our world works, and we don’t have the luxury of debating what’s right and wrong when our survival is at stake.
If you’re going to stay here, you need to think about what you’re willing to do and how far you’re willing to go.
” Adrienne lifts a brow in challenge. “So tell me, Darlington, are you willing to fight this war with me?”