CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TWO WORDS CHASED ME THROUGH THE SWIRLING GRAY CLOUDS. As the Pod plummeted toward the surface, so did my thoughts.
Forgive me.
They are always a step ahead.
YOUNGEST ILLUM SHOCKS ELITE WITH MINOR MATE.
If someone hurts you, I take it personally.
I used to joke that while I had a twin, I also had a brother.
If you feel you need to run from something, I ask that you run to me.
Forgive me.
Rule Nine: You are an obligation to your Mate. . . . His loyalty is to the Illum, not to you.
Do you still think you’re like the other Minors?
He is their Enforcer. There is no one like you . . . because there is no one like your Mate.
Follow the Illum’s protocol, abide by the rules of the Minor Defect population, and constantly seek self-improvement, and you will rise, fulfilling your use for the Greater Good.
And you wanted to save her, Helen.
Forgive me.
Had Collin known that the kiss would be captured? Had he used me to put on a show for the Elite and released the story today? Had he pulled away so quickly because he had achieved what he wanted? I was a desperate, lonely fool who had thought that moment had meant something.
I entered my office to find a familiar man in blue sitting in a chair, his head in his hands. I placed my MIND beneath the scanner, and the resounding beep sent Hal flying to his feet. “You’re back.”
“I’m back,” I confirmed, walking toward the desk.
“And you’re okay,” he declared, more to himself. His hair was in a state, like he had raked his hands through it nonstop since we parted. Blue smudges marred his handsome face. Had he slept at all last night?
“I’m fine,” I assured him. Shrugging off the brown coat, I took the vacated seat and logged in to the system. Hal flipped the trash can and perched on it as my screens came to life. “How are you? How’d you get out unseen?”
“I’m fine. Better now that you’re here,” Hal confessed unabashedly. “I used the chutes.”
“The chutes?”
“Yeah, all buildings on the surface have chutes that lead to the Underworld so Majors can take care of the trash. Sometimes we use them for other reasons.” Hal rubbed a hand down his tired face. “I’m going to stay for a while,” Hal told me, exhaling deeply.
“Stay.” I didn’t want to be alone. “Who cleaned the office? Did you get in trouble for missing your shift?”
“A friend took it, but that’s not important.” Hal rotated my chair toward him, looking up at me. “Did they hurt you? Did he bring you before all of the Illum for breaking their rules?”
“No, Collin was the only Illum there and he wasn’t angry.”
“Did he question you?” Hal asked, leaning toward me.
“No. They had a picture of me running, though.” Now that I was beneath the ground, I couldn’t silence the questions of how he had done it. “How did you follow me unseen?”
“Their surveillance system is outdated. The surface is motion-based technology; you set it off. All I had to do was run outside the capture window. It’s not hard to do.”
My brows pulled in. “Why do you know so much about them?”
“Who do you think provides maintenance for their cameras?” Hal retorted, running his hand through his hair. “They have forced those they deem beneath them to run their city. They don’t even realize the power they have given the Majors. They are complacent. It’ll be their undoing.”
Another question escaped my lips. “Hal, do you know the Reaper?”
“Did they discuss him with you?” Hal asked, surprised.
I nodded. “He’s responsible for all the trouble, right?”
His starburst eyes gleamed. “More settling the score.”
“They seem worried. They said the Illum will eliminate him when the truth comes out.”
Hal smirked. “I’d like to see them try. Is that why you’re upset? The Reaper?”
“What? I’m not upset.”
“Yes, you are. You have been since you walked in. You wear your feelings for everyone to see. If your Mate didn’t reprimand you, then what is it?”
“It’s nothing,” I told him. I didn’t want to discuss the thing that was bothering me as those two words slithered to the front of my mind again.
“Come on, Moonlight—we’ve slept together.” His knee knocked into mine, and my stomach somersaulted. I didn’t want to think about how close we had come to crossing some unseen line.
“We slept next to each other,” I clarified, biting back a smile at the nickname.
“That’s what I said.” Hal smirked, his dimple appearing. “I assume that remains our secret?”
“It does. Even though I don’t understand how. They have cameras and yet you weren’t captured.”
“I know how to become invisible when I need to be,” Hal assured me. Was he referring to the cuff he had worn? I glanced down to see his wrist bare beneath his sleeve. “Now, quit avoiding my question. What’s wrong?”
“It’s the Press,” I muttered, my hands fidgeting with the sleeve of my dress.
“What lies is it throwing at the Elite now?” Hal asked, rolling his eyes.
“Collin kissed me at the Sphere and there was a photo of it,” I blurted.
Hal went still, watching me. I counted his breaths in his silence. “Did you want the kiss?” Hal finally asked.
“There are rules I have to follow in a contract,” I muttered. I glanced to the painting that waited to be sorted.
It was a striking image of a woman standing naked on a rock jutting from the ocean.
She was seemingly in chains, her hands hidden behind her.
On the other side of the rock was a tall man in black armor, looking at her.
In the background was a city that met water.
Was he freeing her, or did he put her there?
The Rock of Doom was the title. My chest felt heavy. The painting was being destroyed.
“Right,” Hal said. “I know their rules. I asked if you wanted the kiss.”
“Why does it matter?” I fired back.
“Well, the Illum run the Press. Seems opportunistic, doesn’t it? The Reaper is causing problems and suddenly an Illum is Mated to a Minor.”
My chest burned like it had in front of my birth family. I stared at the naked chained woman. Hundreds, if not thousands, of years had passed since this was painted, before the Last War. The Illum said we had evolved from those ancient humans and their brutality.
But the golden glow on my wrist—was my shackle any different from hers?
I knew the cost of trying to break free. I knew what it cost Alice.
“I think it’s bullshit,” Alice, seventeen at the time, had hissed at me as we filed out of the lecture hall. We had sat for hours while the hologram illuminated our options for the future, drilling the rules of the Grooming into us over and over.
Welcome to the Grooming. For the remainder of your time at the Academy we will be instructing you on how to rise and serve the Greater Good.
With our revolutionary advancements combined with the individual information gathered from yearly testing, you can overcome your defects.
It is the Illum’s deepest belief that every life has a role in the Greater Good.
As you have learned from the history of the Last War, choosing oneself over society as a whole is destructive, a threat to our peaceful way of life.
Your Role as a Minor Defect Female is simple yet vital to the Greater Good.
Strive for obedience, and you will enter a Procreation Contract, and you will rise to the clouds.
With fertile blessings, you will produce an Elite offspring and reenter the procreation phase.
Produce a Minor or Major offspring, and your Procreation Abilities will be revoked.
You will be condemned to blue. Follow the Illum’s protocol, abide by the rules of the Minor Defect population, and constantly seek self-improvement, and you will rise, fulfilling your use for the Greater Good.
“Alice, they’ll hear you,” I urged.
“I don’t care anymore. Explain to me how they can magically overcome our defects after telling us for our entire lives that they define us.
It doesn’t make sense, Em,” Alice spat, her pale skin flushed with anger.
Anger that had grown with each moon. Her plans had as well.
Plans to ensure she didn’t become an object.
“And all of a sudden we’re given to an Elite male, like some object, and have to pass their tests and put on a show for the Elite.
Just to carry an offspring, and for what?
” Tears welled in her eyes. “To feed their Elite population or become their damn servants? It doesn’t make sense.
They act like these saviors, telling us to blindly follow them and making us hate ourselves! ”
Girls in gray came to a complete stop around us. I pushed Alice down the hallway.
“Alice, you have to stop. You can’t talk like this,” I had warned quietly. But her words resonated deep within me, in a long-buried, forbidden place.
“Em, I won’t do it,” Alice declared, wiping her face furiously. “I won’t carry an offspring. It’s too much. I’d rather be in blue than be their vessel.”
Soon after that, Alice went to the headmaster’s office and didn’t return, and I never heard what happened to her—whether she had gotten her wish to be in blue and never carry an offspring or had been eliminated entirely.
I hated that no one had ever told me. And I had gone on to be a coward, continuing with the Grooming, never stepping out of line for fear of the consequences.
I couldn’t deny the part of me that responded to Hal’s call for something better—a version of the world in which I had a choice, a version Alice had believed in.
“You still think he’s different?” Hal asked darkly.
I turned in my chair to face Hal. “I don’t know,” I confessed.
He searched my face, his gaze lingering on my lips. “You shouldn’t be someone’s plaything, and he should have asked you.” He leaned in until I could make out the ring of amber around his pupils.
My pulse fluttered wildly. “Asked me what?”
“If you wanted to be kissed.”
Hal’s lips looked so soft, a delicate pink that softened the harsh planes of his face. A distant alarm bell began ringing in the back of my mind. We were skating into very dangerous territory.