Chapter 16
Cold light. White noise. The smell of ozone.
Flashes of color burst through the dark, violent streaks of blue and gold tearing across the sky like the world itself is splitting open.
Static electricity crawls along my skin, raising every hair on my arms. The air hums with power.
Too many Ascended in one place. Too many abilities colliding at once.
Someone screams.
Ash’s hand is in mine, and we’re running through a ruined street, concrete dust choking the air, her dark hair whipping behind her as another pulse of light detonates somewhere to our left.
Windows explode outward. Someone is throwing heat.
Someone else is bending gravity. The sky flickers like a broken screen.
“Reese!”
It’s Ash, and I turn just in time to see the flash, white and blinding.
Then she’s gone from beside me.
The force hurls me back. My shadows surge instinctively, catching my fall, swallowing the blast like water swallowing a stone. When the light fades, the street is half gone.
Ash is on the ground.
I’m beside her before I even realize I’ve moved. Her body feels wrong in my arms. Too cold, too still. Her eyes find mine through the smoke and sparks drifting through the air like dying fireflies.
“Hey,” she breathes.
Blood fills her mouth when she smiles.
My shadows curl around us like claws, like they can fight the world itself if they just hold tight enough.
They can’t.
Her fingers slip from mine.
And the last thing I feel is the embers in the air dying with her.
I wake up choking.
The room is dark except for the faint glow of the clock in the safehouse bedroom.
4:11 a.m.
My sheets are twisted around my legs. Sweat chills against my skin, cold and clammy, as though I’ve been dragged out of a lake instead of a dream.
For a moment, I just lie there, staring at the ceiling.
It’s always the same—the nightmare or the memory. I don’t think there’s any distinction between them anymore. But the nightmare doesn’t fade the way normal dreams do. It never has.
Three years later, and I can still feel the weight of Ash’s body in my arms, still hear the power crackling through the air, still see the light when it hits her.
My shadows stir along the walls, restless. They always react when I wake up like this.
I sit up slowly and drag a hand down my face.
“Enough.”
The shadows settle, though they don’t disappear completely. They never do anymore. When you die and return, parts of you don’t come back the same.
Seven years ago, I was a weapon owned by Bellrose Institute—their first successful Pulse Zero Event, at least the first successful one they deemed worthy enough to keep.
Proof that death could be weaponized. Malcolm Bellrose called it a breakthrough, a controlled resurrection. A new stage of human evolution.
I called it slavery.
The Institute called me their soldier, and for two years, I did everything they wanted of me—track Ascended who slipped through the cracks, kill the ones who wouldn’t cooperate, recruit the ones who could be controlled.
Ash was one of those recruits.
Twenty-one years old, fire manipulation, temper like a lit match. She tried to burn down half the facility the first week they captured her.
Malcolm loved that about her.
So did I.
They paired us on missions because we were efficient together. Shadows and fire worked well in the field. Fear and destruction tend to compliment each other.
Somewhere between the blood and the orders and the things we were forced to do, we became friends. More than that. She was like my little sister. We were the closest thing either of us had to family.
Long jobs turned into late nights, and late nights turned into deep conversations. We learned a lot about each other during those first two years, like what our lives were like before Bellrose. For both of us, those lives felt so far away. We were completely different people.
Technically, we weren’t people. We were dead.
Malcolm needed legally dead Ascended operatives, tools that could act for the Institute as ghosts. They gave us resources and missions and purpose, but never freedom. We were deniable enforcers, fixers for Ascended-related messes, weapons used to suppress independent Ascension.
He started with me because I already had skills he coveted.
He engineered Cason’s kidnapping because the abduction of a Bellrose heir would trigger public attention and draw eyes to him instead of me.
It also garnered plenty of sympathy for the Institute.
My death may have been made public, but it became nothing more than a footnote, collateral, something no one looked twice at.
Cason wasn’t bait. He was the distraction.
When I awoke, I was legally dead. I had no legal protections, and Malcolm owned my existence completely. No rights, no identity, no recourse. Any exposure would mean he’d make sure I disappeared for real.
Eventually, Ash and I came to the conclusion that Malcolm never planned on stopping. Ascended everywhere were being hunted, erased, owned, killed.
We decided to finally fucking do something about it.
We escaped. We disappeared. It took us months to slip the leash and another year to build something that would help us fight back.
A network, a resistance. Shell identities and escape routes and safehouses.
A parallel structure outside law and the Institute’s reach.
We recruited Ascended of our own, near-death survivors and disappearances the Institute failed to clean up.
We were a family of people who refused to belong to Malcolm Bellrose.
For the first time since my death, I believed we might actually survive.
Then three years ago, everything collapsed.
Someone burned through everything we had built like it was made of paper. Accounts disappeared, contacts were exposed, locations were compromised. Ascended started getting picked off one by one by the Institute’s new militia. By the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late.
Malcolm found us.
Ash died in my arms.
I spent the next year in hiding and in mourning while the Institute hunted every survivor of our resistance, every person who had anything to do with it. Those who just wanted to live without fear, to be free.
For a short time, I had given them that.
It took two years to rebuild something resembling a resistance. It’s smaller but harder to find. And we’re a lot more careful about who we trust.
Which is why Cason is currently unconscious in the basement of this safehouse.
My shadows curl along the floor when I think about him. The fact that Cason Bellrose was the one holding the smoking gun will always feel like the world’s biggest betrayal.
Last night, I gave him a glimpse of what I’ve become. Just a taste. After years of anger and grief, my shadows surged harder than I expected, than I intended. Between that and the shock of everything he learned, he couldn’t mentally handle it. He passed out before the real fun started.
I left him on the floor of that room. I want him awake when I break him.
The stitches inside my chest pull, the ones I used to seal that hollow cavity that Cason carved into me seven years ago. It’s uncomfortable, but I haven’t let it hurt in a long time.
I couldn’t go near him. I didn’t go near him for him. To protect him.
And this is what I get in return.
I swing my legs out of bed and get to my feet. Cold air hits my bare skin. The shower helps clear the last of the nightmare from my head as hot water pounds against my shoulders and steam fills the small bathroom.
By the time I step out, my pulse has steadied.
Control is important, especially today.
I dress is black slacks and a black shirt, rolling the sleeves up out of habit. I rarely ever dressed in more formal clothes like this…before. However, I lead a resistance of people who have died and come back with superhuman abilities. I feel like that requires a level of attire above casual.
I reach for the shoulder holster hanging over the back of a chair and slide it on, adjusting the straps across my chest. The weight of the gun settles comfortably beneath my arm once I holster it, familiar and reassuring.
Some habits don’t disappear just because you die and come back with abilities more powerful than a bullet.
When I step into the kitchen, the smell of coffee is already permeating the air. Sebastian Cross leans against the counter scrolling through a tablet. He looks up when I enter.
“Morning, boss.”
Sebastian is in his mid-thirties, former military, and the closest thing this operation has to a second-in-command.
His Ascension left him with what he calls kinetic debt.
Every hit, every impact, every ounce of force that should break his bones instead gets absorbed and stored in his body until he decides to pay it back.
I call it the reason most people learn very quickly not to hit him twice.
It makes him extremely hard to kill and even harder to fight.
He’s also the only other Ascended from the last resistance still alive besides me.
“You have a report for me?” I ask.
He slides a mug of coffee across the counter toward me, and I immediately take a sip, preferring it black.
“Our scouts confirmed movement near the east corridor last night,” he says. “Institute patrols. Nothing close enough to compromise this location.”
Occupying the safehouse closest to Bellrose Institute is always risky, but we’ve taken all the precautions we can. It was easier to transfer Cason somewhere close than to take him to one of our other safehouses farther from here.
If Malcolm knows his nephew has been kidnapped again, he hasn’t made it public.
“Any word from the other safehouses?”
“Usual overnight check-ins. All clear.”
I nod. “Good.”
Sebastian scratches his beard, watching me over the rim of his tablet, and I can feel his eyes on me as I sip my coffee. Before he can say whatever it is that’s on his mind, I set my mug down and meet his gaze.