Chapter 11 #2
They introduce themselves as Vikka and Darlie and proceed to tell me all about life at the Dagger.
Despite their friendliness, I feel out of place, a sensation that always causes me to become guarded, more aloof.
Too nervous to engage, I eat quietly and quickly, then bid them goodbye and hurry off.
Sometimes I really wish Uncle Jim had encouraged me to socialize with human beings rather than horses and cattle. But the man was as antisocial as I am.
Leaving the mess hall, I reach out to Kallister telepathically.
“I’d like to see Xavier. Gray said to check with you.”
There’s a brief pause. “All right. I’ll let the guard know.”
“Great. Thanks.” I expected a lot more resistance.
“Maybe when you’re there you can convince your friend to be more cooperative. A show of good faith, if you will.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Ignoring a twinge of guilt about betraying Kallister’s trust, I stop at my quarters to retrieve the signal jammer Gray was kind enough to let me steal, then take the elevator to the Operations floor.
I enter the holding area to find Neema behind the desk. Evlynne’s best friend.
I stifle a sigh. “Hey. I’m here to see Lieutenant Ford. Kallister granted me clearance.”
She offers a haughty smirk. “There are no lieutenants on this base.”
“You know who I mean, Neema,” I say, fighting my impatience. “Can I please see him?”
We stare each other down for a moment. Her jaw is tight. The rest of my patience is waning. Then, without another word, she swipes the holoscreen on her desk, and the door behind her slides open.
“Thank you,” I mutter.
When I reach his cell, I find Xavier lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He groans the second he spots me.
“I changed my mind, Darlington. I need you to try to get me a tablet or something. I’m so bored.”
I approach the bars. “I’ll see what I can do.” As my gaze rests on the keypad, I quickly link with Kallister again. “Can I go into the cell with him?”
I assume he contacts Neema, because a moment later, the lock releases with a buzz.
“Be careful,” Kallister warns.
“He won’t hurt me.”
I step into the cell, the door locking behind me. “Move over,” I tell Xavier.
“Don’t you have better things to do?” he cracks, sliding up into a sitting position. He runs a hand through his dark hair, then scratches the side of his neck.
“Not really. I’m awful at making friends.”
He laughs. “Why does that not surprise me?”
I slip my hand into my back pocket and activate the jammer. I’m only blocking the audio signal. Hopefully Neema is satisfied with seeing us on her holoscreen and doesn’t try to access the sound feed.
I join Xavier on the cot, leaning my head against the cold stone wall and pulling my knees up. He mimics my pose, bringing his knees up, too.
After a beat, I shock myself by resting my head on his shoulder.
It doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Are you leaning on me?” he demands.
“Yes. And I’m not happy about it, so please just shut up.”
“Wow, it must really be bad up there.”
“It’s not terrible. Most of the people are friendly.”
As I straighten up, Xavier suddenly grips my chin and pulls my face toward him.
For one outrage-laced moment, I think he’s going to kiss me, but all he does is bring his lips to my ear and whisper, “Have you spoken to him?”
I shove his hand away, leaning back with a grin. “Yes, and you don’t need to sexy-whisper in my ear. I’m jamming their audio.”
He looks impressed. “How’d you manage that?”
“I have my ways. You need to stop doubting my covert abilities.” I frown at him. “I hear you’re not cooperating.”
“With the ’fect assholes? Why would I?”
I reach over and smack him on the cheek. Lightly, but hard enough to mean business.
“Hey,” he protests. “What was that for?”
“For calling me a ’fect.”
“I wasn’t calling you that. I was referring to your friends.”
“I have the same abilities as them. So if you don’t think I’m defective, then you need to stop calling them that, too.”
“I’ll take it into consideration,” he says in that mocking voice of his.
“Are they interrogating you in here or taking you somewhere else?”
“They bring me into a command room.” Xavier grimaces. “It’s usually the bitchy redhead questioning me.”
“Adrienne,” I say with a snicker.
“Yeah, her. Other times it’s Julian Ash’s brother, or this other asshole who sits there sulking and whining that they’re wasting their time and should just vote to execute me.”
“That would be Teriq.” I hesitate. “Look, you’re not going to like hearing this, but…I think it’s time you start talking. Try to strike some sort of deal.”
His jaw snaps open. “Fuck that.”
“What’s your endgame here, Ford? That Cross will extract you? Because he won’t. He can’t.” My anger comes rushing back. “He spent the last week shackled in a cell and didn’t think it necessary to tell me until today.”
Xavier snorts under his breath. “Does that really surprise you?”
“Yes,” I shoot back. “He’s been lying by omission for days. Acting like he’s on the base when he’s in the stockade.”
“Technically the stockade is on the base.”
“Don’t defend him.”
He just chuckles. “What did you expect, Darlington? It’s Cross Redden. He’s an impenetrable fortress. He’d rather keep everything locked up inside, even if it means pushing away the people who care about him. It’s how he’s always been. You just gotta accept it.”
Cross Redden might be an impenetrable fortress, but I knew him long before I ever met him. I knew him as Wolf, and Wolf was capable of being vulnerable with me. Wolf told me about his nightmares. His hopes. His darkest fears. Sometimes it feels like Cross has forgotten I know those parts of him.
“He said they only ‘knocked him around.’ ” I lean into Xavier again, groaning softly against his shoulder. “I hope he’s not downplaying it. I want him to be okay.”
“Downplaying is this asshole’s middle name,” Cross’s best friend says, ruffling my hair.
“There was this one summer when we were kids, maybe twelve, thirteen years old? We went on a hike in Ward E, just outside the Point. Well, first we broke into the General’s liquor cabinet and stole some grange—”
“Nope. There’s no way you can convince me that General Redden drank grange.”
Grange is mostly found in the less prosperous wards.
It’s the liquor of choice of the miners in D, the factory workers in B, the laborers in K.
I’ve only had it once—Uncle Jim couldn’t stand the stuff—and I remember it tasting like a mixture of burnt caramel and sour pine, which I suppose makes sense since it’s a synthetic offshoot of whiskey and gin, a horrible-tasting combination of two much tastier liquors.
But it’s cheap to make and costs hardly any Lux credits to buy, so I get why it’s popular.
A man in General Redden’s position, however, could afford a lot better.
“I’m serious. The General always kept a bottle in the house,” Xavier insists. “Anyway, we were out in the woods, boozed off our asses, when we suddenly decided to climb what was basically a vertical cliff wall. In the dark.”
“Why?”
“Because we were stupid.” He chuckles, amused by the memory.
“Cross gets halfway up the wall, can’t find a foothold, and slips.
This asswit plummets fifteen feet and breaks the fall with his left arm.
But according to him, he’s just fine. He says, Let’s try again, and we scale the wall and make it all the way to the top this time.
And it isn’t until we get back to the Point that he says, Oh, by the way, we should probably stop at the hospital. ”
I sigh. “How bad was it?”
“Arm was broken in four places. He climbed a cliff with a broken arm and hiked for two hours afterward without so much as a grunt of pain. He had to spend more than an hour in the regen chamber. Usually it takes ten minutes, tops, to regen a fracture.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t say a word.”
“I can. That’s how Cross is. He doesn’t want anyone to see him as weak. He’ll never ask for help, and he sure as shit won’t let anyone worry about him.”
My heart squeezes. I relate to that, more than anyone can ever know. I don’t want anyone worrying about me, either.
Before I can respond, I feel Kallister poking the back of my mind.
“Time’s up,” he says, and the cell door buzzes open. “I’m waiting for you in the corridor. There’s something I need to show you.”
“I have to go.” As I stand, I reach into my pocket and disable the signal jammer. “I’ll come see you tomorrow, if they’ll let me.”
Xavier pouts. “Get me that tablet if you can. Load some books on it.”
“When did you learn how to read?”
“Fuck off.”
I return to the holding area where I receive another glare from Neema. I don’t bother bidding her goodbye.
In the hall, I find Kallister typing on his comm. His head raises at the sound of my footsteps.
“How’s our prisoner doing?” he asks dryly.
“Bored and demanding something to read.”
“Those arrogant Command fucks never change. Come on. Let’s go.”
He takes off walking. I fall into step with him, curious about where we’re going. When we reach the air lock and I realize we’re leaving the base, wariness climbs up my throat.
Outside the Dagger, the sun has long set, but the moon sits high above us, lighting our path. The topography of this mountain base is truly something else. I follow Kallister up a staircase that’s carved directly into the stone, winding its way upward.
“Where are we going?”
He doesn’t answer, which only heightens my unease. Something doesn’t feel right. And I feel naked without a weapon.
“This way,” he says as the path grows steeper.
I follow without a word. He moves like Uncle Jim. Those sure strides. The impatient set of his shoulders. Anytime Jim moved, it was brisk and decisive, even if he was just rising from his armchair to grab whiskey from the kitchen cupboard. He moved with purpose. Kallister is the same way.
The path ends on a bluff that offers a view of the dark treetops and craggy peaks in the distance. Kallister strides toward a shadowy cavity in the rock.
“In here.”
I hesitate, but my innate curiosity propels me forward until I’m inside a small cave, staring at something from one of those old science-fiction novels in the digital library. Standing out against the pitch black is a jagged glowing slice in the rock, emitting a faint white light.
Although it’s about six feet tall, it’s barely a foot wide. The gap doesn’t look big enough for anyone to walk through, so I’m startled when Kallister suddenly twists his body and steps sideways into the iridescent slit in the rock.
Portals. That’s what the books called them.
“Come on,” he calls over his shoulder. “I want to show you something.”
Okay. That’s promising. He didn’t evaporate in a cloud of blood and molecules, so I guess it’s not a supernatural portal into another dimension. Nonetheless, apprehension tightens my throat as I approach the opening. I run my fingers through the shimmery light, then brace myself.
When nothing happens, I laugh, feeling silly.
I shuffle in sideways, gasping when I find myself in another cave.
Small and circular, with walls covered in white daggerstone and a gurgling natural fountain in the center.
Water spills into it from a crack in the rock, forming a shallow crystalline pool that gently swirls and ripples.
It’s like a magical little sanctuary, evoking a sense of serenity.
Kallister walks to a weathered stone bench at the edge of the fountain and takes a seat, gesturing for me to join him. The glowing white walls guide my way, and as I sit, I marvel at the beauty all around us.
“Is this entire mountain full of daggerstone caves?” I exclaim.
“Pretty incredible, isn’t it? Nature never fails to astound me. None of these things existed before the Last War, before all the bombs and radiation and toxins released into the air. We tried to kill her, but she wouldn’t let us.”
“Her?”
“The old books refer to her as Mother Nature.” He smiles.
“I think it’s fitting. Look at what she’s birthed.
” He gestures at the rare gemstone that didn’t exist until the last century.
“Daggerstone. Horned bears. A black mist that rises from the mountains. It’s like she was trying to tell us something. ”
“Tell us what?”
“That if you attempt to destroy her creations with your bombs and toxins, she’ll just create even more beautiful and mysterious things.”
This cave is beautiful and mysterious, all right.
“Did you bring me here to train?” I ask, remembering how he said daggerstone harnesses your powers.
“No. We can’t train here. White daggerstone mutes your abilities.”
I falter. “But you said…”
“Blue daggerstone amplifies them. Fuels them. White stops them from working entirely.”
Curious to test that theory, I try to link with him.
A frown mars my lips. “I can’t open a path.”
He chuckles. “Told you. Something about the properties of white daggerstone blocks the flow of energy.”
“Why did you bring me here, then?” I rise from the bench, my anxiety returning now that I know I’m telepathically handcuffed. “Are you going to kill me?”
Kallister responds with a deep, full-throated laugh. “Of course not. I just wanted us to speak privately.” Humor fading, he tips his head, studying me. “It’s uncanny,” he says.
Despite his assurance that he’s not here to murder me, my heart is stuck in my throat.
After Roe shot Betima in the head in front of me, I vowed I would never be caught off guard again, but right now I fear I’ve been led into a trap.
My mind’s scrambling for a way out, feet inching away from the fountain.
“What’s uncanny?” I edge backward another inch.
“Your resemblance to your mother. You have her eyes.”
Shock freezes me in place. But I recover fast, clearing my throat before adopting a careless tone. “I never knew my mother.”
“I did. I knew Marina very well.”
My body grows weak. He knows her name.
He fucking knows.
Kallister’s gaze never leaves mine. “Julian tried to feed me a story about finding you orphaned on the side of the road, but my brother really should’ve known better.
I figured out the truth as soon as your photograph was uploaded to the Company database.
I know exactly who you are, Wren.” He cocks a brow. “Or do you prefer Stella?”