Chapter 24
Finn
“That fucking fool!”
I’m sitting on the couch and staring at the floor, my body heavy and numb. I can’t unsee the horrors; they play in my mind on repeat. Whoever it was who brutally murdered their rival after Isaac surrendered, it couldn’t have been Caden. Not my Caden, at least.
I look up at Hector. “You created a monster. What did you expect?”
He raises his hand to strike me, but I don’t flinch, and he stops midair.
“Don’t push me, Finn. Not now.” He slumps onto the couch next to me, rubbing his face.
His glorious day has turned into a fiasco, and at least there’s some comfort in that.
“They need to follow Caden out of admiration, not out of fear. Right now, no one admires that thing.”
I clench my fists. “He’s not a thing, and if you don’t like what you created, then change him back!”
He shakes his head. “This isn’t a game I can rewind. Years of trial and error brought me to this moment.”
And I hope you live to regret each and every year.
“Why couldn’t you have given him all that power without messing up his mind?”
“I can’t give so much of myself without altering the brain. He would have gone crazy—I learned that the hard way.”
I take in his words. “Were there other champions before Caden?”
“Of course there were, but I didn’t call them that back then. I always knew I’d need someone to lead my human army, a better soldier than I could ever be. So yes, there were others, but they never survived. Caden is the result of more than six different candidates, going back over a decade.”
“Is he… even still in there?”
“What do you mean?”
“My Caden. Is he still in there somewhere?” I’m not going to cry in front of this man, but I feel like a raw nerve, mourning someone who is still alive.
Hector rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. He is what he is. Start accepting it.”
Never. But I need to find out more if I’m to make it better, even though it seems impossible right now. Like River said—I must have faith.
Hector leans closer, his mouth next to my ear. “What you should be more concerned about is what will happen to you now that Caden no longer cares if you live or die.”
I tense, my breath quickening. I was so focused on Caden that I didn’t stop to think about my fate in all of this. “Are you going to kill me now?”
He puts his arm around my shoulders. “With how much I’ve been enjoying your company? Unlikely. But we will need to make some changes once I get my full strength back. My final gift to Caden was more demanding than I expected.”
“What… changes?”
He strokes my cheek, as close as a lover. I stop breathing when I see his tail rising. The last time I saw it, it was deep in Caden’s guts.
Hector whispers, “I can smell your fear. It’s oozing from your pores.”
“I don’t want your gift.”
“For me to keep you close, I must be here.” He taps on my temple.
I don’t want to beg, nor do I believe that begging will affect him.
He said he needed more time, and I’m going to use every minute I have to find a way out of this place.
If Caden is no longer within my power to save, I need to escape this city and share what I know with the others.
They must learn of Hector’s plan—from the monsters in the sewers to how Caden is going to lead Denver’s human army into battle.
There is no one who knows how Defenders fight and think better than he.
And if all else fails and I find myself forced to accept Hector’s gift, I’ll end this under my own terms. I will not let him turn me into a shell that exists solely to serve.
I’ll remain myself or nothing at all.
“Aren’t you going to ask me not to give you my gift?”
I shake my head as the tail sways in front of my face. “You’ll do it anyway. I’m just asking for a few more days to digest this.”
“Digest?” He snorts. “I’m not going to remove your limbs, Finn, but I’m also not in a hurry.
There are more urgent things I need to take care of.
” He withdraws his tail. “Remember, you can go up and down the building if you want to use the gym or the pool, but my guards will take you down if you try to leave. Don’t abuse my hospitality. ”
“I won’t.”
He pats my knee. “Good boy. We’ll make something special out of you soon enough.”
He exits the apartment, leaving me alone to boil in anger.
I go to my room and punch the mattress again and again.
I wish to unsee the vacant gaze in Caden’s yellowish eyes and how he brutally murdered Isaac after he surrendered.
I couldn’t care less about one less New-Human, but I can’t handle the notion that Caden’s mind—his soul—no longer exists.
No living thing should have the power to do that to somebody else.
“Finn.”
I stop punching the mattress and freeze. There’s nobody in the room but me, and the door is closed. I listen closely until I hear it again.
“Finn.”
I jump down from the bed. “Who is this?”
“Open the door.”
It’s coming from the bathroom. I have nothing to use as a weapon, but my gut tells me I’m not in danger. I close my shaky palm on the handle and begin to open the door, breathing in relief at the sight of the faint yellowish glow.
“Hello, Finn.”
I drop to my knees. The small, dark figure inside the yellow substance sounds like a man. “Are you one of the three who came with us from Pueblo?”
“I am. I was asked to find you. We waited until people were occupied at the arena to sneak into the building.”
“Who’s we?”
“River is waiting for you underground.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Where underground?”
“You need to take the elevator to the lowest floor, then take one flight of stairs down to the utility room. Don’t get confused by the door to the emergency stairwell. Can you do that?”
“Yes. How are you going to get there?”
“Through the pipes. Please don’t take long.”
Take long? I run out of the room as if it’s on fire.
*
With every exit from the building well-guarded, Hector doesn’t bother with placing guards between floors.
In the two weeks I’ve been here, I've explored every possible floor, searching for a way out.
But between the barred windows, the patrolling guards outside, and the hovering drones, it seemed hopeless.
I reach the lowest floor, where no car is currently parked, likely because they use one of the higher floors.
I walk toward the staircase sign, but it leads to the emergency stairwell, so I continue searching until I find the other door all the way at the back.
The sign says, Authorized Personnel Only.
I open the creaking door, relieved to see a faint yellowish glow at the bottom of the narrow staircase.
I climb down carefully, praying this isn’t a trap or a cruel hallucination.
There is more light coming from the old lamps in the room I step into.
Rusty machines and boilers fill the space, and the dust in the air makes my nose itch.
“River?”
A figure rises from behind one of the boilers, but I immediately notice dark hair, which can’t be River’s.
I take a step back. “Who are you?”
“It’s me!” River walks into the light, his hair dyed black.
I grab him in a strong hug. “I can’t believe you came.”
“I would never abandon my Finn. Do you hate my hair? I look ugly now.”
I pull back. “You can never look ugly.”
“I still don’t like it, but Goo and I needed to blend in until we found you.”
“Goo?”
The small yellowish figure on the ground says, “River has named all of us Goo since we don’t recall our own names.”
“The… Goo that came with me to Denver remembered her name. It was Rose.”
The figure glows brighter. “I knew a Rose once.”
“She was brave.” I turn to River. “Is there anyone else with you?”
“No, but I can communicate through Goo. Let’s sit—you’re shaking.”
I didn’t even notice, but I feel immediate relief when I sit on the cold floor with my back against an old cabinet.
“Are you okay?” River asks.
I want to tell him everything, but I don’t want to relive my failure right now; not with everything we still have to deal with. “I’m okay.”
“I was very concerned when you were caught, and Nanny Spider and Josh were too. Dino came to Florence, and now he’s also concerned.”
“Dino came?”
“Yes, for the war.”
I move to face River, feeling the need to know everything. “Is the war really close?”
“Yes, and now we have the support of High Hope because Lyla is their queen. There have been more attacks by lizard men on small settlements, so now everyone knows they exist.”
“River, those lizard men used to be people. Hector is using his blood to transform them down in the sewers. He has hundreds of lizard men down there.”
River turns pale in the dim light. “That’s horrible. Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them down there. They also keep prisoners in cells.”
“Do you know how to get there?”
“Yes, but it’s heavily guarded, so you can’t go in there alone.” I explain to him how to reach the area with all the warehouses and where to find the one from which we climbed down into the sewers.
“How did you get here?” I ask.
“I snuck into the city with Goo, and we’ve been staying in a small apartment. I would have found you sooner if I had Mother’s help, but she’s blind here.”
I remember the guarded compound with all the antennas I saw when I first got here. I tell River about it and add, “I know for a fact that place didn’t exist a couple of years ago. Hector must have built it once he became governor.”
“Then I’ll sabotage it.”
“You can’t do it alone.”
“If I wait, we’ll be risking Hector finding out about the attack. We’re spread out around the city in small groups to not attract attention, but we can’t stay hidden for long.”
“Then try to observe the compound before attacking it. Maybe I’m wrong about it.”
“Okay, but I came here to rescue you. I dug a way out. It’s hard to reach, but I can throw you a rope to climb.”