Chapter 2
TWO
CADEN
James’s creepy green eyes met mine, and for a moment, the room seemed to close in. My pulse hammered in my ears, while my mind caught up to the sight of him.
"Walker." The name rumbled from my throat, low and threatening, as shock rippled through me, locking me in place for the briefest moment.
He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, looking at me with a certain threatening edge to his stare.
Rachel’s gaze flicked between us, before her lips pressed into a thin line.
I moved, each step methodical, my gaze fixed on him like a predator closing in on its prey. James slowly pushed himself to his feet, as I closed the distance in a few swift strides.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I snarled, my words jarring against the quiet like a slammed door.
James didn’t flinch, didn’t even seem all that surprised by my harsh tone. “Jackson and I got out just in time. My Leader’s tour allowed me to leave right before they bubbled in the country.”
“What about Emma?” I asked, every word a godsdamn warning he’d be wise to answer.
His jaw tightened, right before he averted his gaze for the briefest second.
No. He wouldn’t have…
“You left her there?” I hissed, grounding my heels. “By herself? Beneath a bloody bubble?!”
James didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. Guilt was written all over him.
The sight of it made everything in me go very still. My pulse didn’t race, it slowed. The rage didn’t boil, it sharpened, sliced through the fog in my head until all that was left was purpose.
Hurt him.
Before he could react, my fist connected with his face in a clean strike, sending him stumbling back.
“I fucking trusted you with her!”
Rachel’s hands were on me in an instant, and I let her pull me back, though every muscle screamed to move, to finish it, to make him bleed. “I trusted you to keep her safe!”
“She wasn’t at Cyclos when I left!” James shouted back, blood trickling from his split lip, as his own anger burned through every muscle in him. “I couldn’t take her with me.”
Rachel’s grip locked even firmer around my arm.
“Then where the hell was she?”
“She went to visit her parents two weeks after the Great Exposure. Jackson and I portaled out around the same time to Argentina to destroy their LiaPrism, and then the bubble happened.”
Cyclos’s new Leader was breathing heavy. “I’ve been trying to find her from here ever since, but walking into that hellhole without our powers wouldn’t have helped anyone! Not you, not my Collective, definitely not her.”
I bared my teeth, rage still simmering like molten steel. “So you just left her there by herself? While magi all around the world are being tortured in human labs? Do you even know what’s happening out there?”
James’s expression flashed with anger. “Don’t you dare act like I don’t. And she’s not ‘by herself.’ She’s with her parents, and she’s smart enough to lay low until I can reach her.”
“You don’t know that, James.” I stepped in, until Rachel moved to block me, her hand still clamped around my arm. “You don’t fucking know that. When’s the last time you even heard from her?”
He stilled for a second, before a muscle in his jaw jumped.
Don’t kill him. Control yourself. Control is survival.
But the longer he hesitated, the harder it became to keep myself from breaking my resolution.
“How long?” I demanded, louder as I shrugged off Rachel.
“Four days ago,” he ground out, tightly, as if the admission cost him.
Four days. Not fourteen, like Sean.
The words scraped against the inside of my skull, producing a thin sliver of relief. Four days meant she could still be alive. It also meant she’d been alone—trapped, maybe hunted—for nearly a hundred hours while he walked away.
“They bubbled the country eight days ago. How did she contact you those first four days?”
“Human phone,” James muttered. “We’ve tried to contact her again since, but all of them are disconnected. Hers. Her parents’. Every line is dead.”
My pulse spiked. Which meant something had happened.
Captured. Injured. Or worse…
The possibilities spiraled, each one darker than the last, but I forced them into order. I couldn’t afford to lose it. Couldn’t afford feeling. Every instinct screamed to move, to do something—tear through borders, bodies, whatever it took—but I locked it down.
Focus first. Act second.
Because if she was still out there, I wasn’t going to lose her to panic. I was going to find her. And if anyone had touched her, I’d make sure they didn’t breathe long enough to regret it.
“We need to find her. Now,” I commanded, my voice flat, stripped of noise.
“You think I don’t know that?” James snapped, as he slammed his hand against the table hard enough to rattle the glasses. “I sent Offensives into Massachusetts when the bubble hit, but they couldn’t get past the state borders since human military had locked down the whole fucking country!”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Probably because your guys are stumbling around without magic like spoiled little rich kids in IKEA without a manual. If you’d trained your Offensives to function without translation, they wouldn’t be so fucking useless.”
James narrowed his eyes at me.
“What?” I asked dryly, while my mind worked through my next move to find his fucking girlfriend. “You disagree? Or you don’t know what IKEA is?”
James leaned in close, his anger sparking. “You’ve got some brilliant plan then, Colt? Because standing here bitching about my men isn’t exactly helping her.”
“Actually, I do.” I turned to Rachel as I asked, “What’s the closest entry point from the States?”
She blinked, caught off guard. “Coming from where?”
“Boston.”
Rachel hesitated, her gaze flickering as if weighing her words. “Vermont to Quebec, definitely, but there are fifteen potential crossing points.”
Knowing Emma, she’d rather cross at a known location than stumble through some less surveilled no-man’s-land. She might act all tough, but she was still a city girl. Bushwhacking through Vermont’s rugged, forested border wasn’t exactly her thing.
I had to slim down the options. “Which one has the least visibility?”
“Norton, for sure. It connects Vermont with Stanhope. The crossing is in a rural area, surrounded by dense forests. It’s outside the Metasphere, but Quebec’s been friendly to magi-crossers. She won’t have trouble getting through, once she’s past US military.”
I nodded. “Good.”
James stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “And what, you’re just going to sit there and wait? Hope she wanders into your arms?”
I shot him a withering look. “No. I’m portaling out there and crossing it myself into the US.
Emma’s brilliant, she won’t stay stuck in the Human World without translation.
She’ll figure out the fastest route from Boston to Canada, and I’m betting my life she’s already on it.
I’m retracing that path—straight to Boston—and I will fucking find her. ”
“You’ll be bubbled in,” James countered, jaw locked tight enough to grind. “No magic, no backup, no way back into Canada if the bubble seals you in. You think I haven’t thought of this? You think I haven’t wanted to tear down the whole damn line and go get her myself?”
My upper lip curled in quiet disgust. “Then why haven’t you?”
He stepped closer, chest to chest, his fury as sharp as mine. “Because one of us has to think past the first suicidal move. You go in alone; you don’t just risk yourself, you risk her.”
“The hell happened to you?” The pressure in my chest burned hotter every second. “That’s your girl out there. The James Walker I knew would’ve annihilated the whole border before letting her fend for herself.”
James bristled. “She means more to me than my own life. But if you storm into the US blind, you’ll get yourself killed before you ever find her.”
My patience was gone. “Me standing here and listening to you underestimating my basic capabilities, isn’t exactly worth my time.” My words sank to a growl. “I’m going after her, and I’m making sure she’s safe. You can help me, or you can get in my way, but either way, you’re not stopping me.”
James’s mouth twisted, something bitter flashing through before he finally snapped, “Fine. Whatever. We’ll cross it together. But if she’s sitting safe in her parents’ house sipping coffee when we find her, and we get trapped for this stunt? I’ll kill you for it.”
I almost smiled while I opened a green portal. “Can’t wait to see you try.”
His glare was molten, but the edge had shifted. Still sharp, just aimed at everything else as much as me. “Let’s move.”
I gave him a mock salute, letting my grin needle him. “After you, princess.”
He stepped into the portal with a muttered curse, throwing me one last warning look over his shoulder. “You’ll regret that.”
“Already do,” I mumbled as I followed him through a second later, barely acknowledging Rachel, who stood there watching us like we’d completely gone off the rails.
Maybe we had.
While it didn’t deter me, I hated to admit: the border crossing at Stanhope was a godsdamn fortress.
Armed US soldiers lined the perimeter on their side of it, their green uniforms almost blending into the thick fog that rolled in from the forest, creating a wall of shadows.
James and I moved fast to hide out of view, the cold biting into my bones as our breaths misted in the air.
Radios hummed. Weapons clicked. No gaps, no weak points, only a wall of military precision ready to crush anything that came through.
“We’re not making it through there without a fight,” I muttered, as I crouched behind a rock formation.
James squatted beside me. “No shit. You must’ve been elected First Offensive for your exceptional observations.”
I ignored his jab while I scanned the line of soldiers.
“We could lure them to our side,” James continued, tracking my line of sight, “kill them with translation, but if we get too close to the bubble, it could get dangerous fast.”
“As opposed to fighting them one by one on their own side, which will be a walk in the park,” I replied dryly.