Chapter 65
SIXTY-FIVE
JAMES
Excuse me, what now?
“He is not my brother,” Cara muttered under her breath, but there was something in her tone… Layered. Like the words meant more than she was willing to say out loud.
“I don’t have any family,” I added flatly, in case anyone was confused about where I stood on this circus act.
Though, clearly, we’d been completely wrong about who was in bed with whom.
My mind drifted back to the first time I’d met Cara—when she’d offered us that deal, tried to convince us to hunt down the creator of the bubble.
Maurice.
I frowned. “Why make us think the Radicals believed Colt was the one with untraceable translation?”
Cara only shrugged, like it was obvious. “Because if I’d told you I knew about Emma, you would’ve killed me before I could even make the offer. This way…” She gestured between Colt and myself. “You at least heard me out before deciding whether to kill me for knowing her secret.”
Caden snorted. “She’s not wrong…”
I turned my focus on the man I’d once believed to be a capable Leader, disbelief giving way to fury.
“Since when are you in bed with the Radicals?” I demanded. “You realize these people attacked our fucking Collective with a nuclear weapon?”
Stephen snorted. “Who do you think opened the gates for them?”
I blinked. Once. “You let them attack us?”
Maurice shrugged, gaze sliding away. “Part of a deal,” he muttered, like he couldn’t be bothered to elaborate.
Oh, but I’d fucking make him.
“They killed seven of our children,” I snarled, every muscle in my body locking as I fought to keep my rage haze from detonating. “They attacked us with an Amplifier. Your daughter almost died.”
That finally got a reaction.
Something twisted across Maurice’s face. Irritation, maybe. Disgust, even.
“Right. Well,” he said, flicking his hand dismissively, “I didn’t know they were going to use the Amplifier. And even if I had, I assumed my daughter wouldn’t be stupid enough to jump in front of you and link her energy to it, only to save a man she stopped loving a few months later.”
His mouth curled, contempt dry and absolute. “As far as parental disappointment goes, that one definitely took the crown.”
Behind me, Caden shifted his weight.
For half a second, I wondered if he’d known about that part of Emma’s past, about ours.
If not... That was going to make for one hell of a conversation between them later.
“Why?” I hissed, the word torn straight from my chest. “Why the hell would you ever agree to something like that?”
“To avenge his daughter, of course.” Cara’s voice cut cleanly through the room.
“What?” I snapped.
Emma’s deep frown returned, her own confusion as clear as day.
“At least they had the means to avenge all of your actions against my daughter,” Maurice said coldly. “I may be rooting to unleash her power through her love for Caden, but don’t mistake me for grieving Colt’s early demise.”
“I’m touched. Now, what was the fucking deal?” Even mister I’m-always-calm-Colt was losing his patience.
Maurice straightened his spine but didn’t reply. And from the look of it, he wasn’t planning to either.
“I think,” I said quietly, turning to Emma, every shred of patience burned to ash, “it’s time to set us free.”
I met her eyes.
“And then,” I added, my tone flat with intent, “we leak your father.”
EMMA
Maurice groaned, exasperated. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Shut up,” the three of us snapped in perfect harmony, as Cara stared at us with simply an eyebrow raised.
She clearly had little interest in saving her ‘colleague’ from whatever we had planned.
I swallowed hard, while my pulse was pounding in my ears. “You really think we should?”
James nodded once. “Only way we’ll get the whole truth.”
“Where do I even begin to leak him?” I asked, more to myself than anyone else.
Caden’s voice cut straight through the fog in my head. “Don’t focus on a date. Focus on a subject. Focus on what you want to know.”
“Which is?” I muttered, as I released James and Caden from their chains.
“Try to retrieve all his memories linked to the Radicals,” James demanded, as he massaged his wrists. “I want to know why the hell this traitor thought he was in any way helping you by letting our Collective be attacked by these savages.”
Cara flinched, barely, but I caught it.
“And focus on yourself,” Caden added with that familiar charm that grounded me even as it flooded my system with raw adrenaline. “Focus on anything you want to know.”
I nodded once before I stepped toward Maurice, then lifted my hands, ready to place them on his head, exactly like Caden had shown me what felt like a lifetime ago in the woods of Kanata C.
“Don’t look for intel,” Caden said quietly behind me. “It’s all subjective, shaped by his perception. You’re not hunting objective truth. You’re stepping into a story only he can tell.”
I nodded once, my throat tight. Then I closed my eyes and laid my hands on either side of Maurice’s head, fingers splayed, bracing, like I was about to dive somewhere I might not come back from.
Power simmered low in my chest. I let it rise and curled it toward my fingertips.
“Focusing on myself…in someone else’s head,” I muttered, more to keep myself grounded than anything else. “Not weird at all.”
And then it happened.
There was no warning. Just a snap.
A jolt of white heat across my spine, and then the world shifted sideways.
I wasn’t in the chamber anymore.
I was inside something else. Inside someone else.
Inside Gordon. Maurice. My father.
Unlike a blue portal, I wasn’t a spectator in this reality.
I was inside Maurice’s head—seeing through his eyes, wearing his body like borrowed skin—and I found myself in a familiar looking office.
Wood-paneled, sleek, with a US flag hung crookedly on the far wall. The hum of political ambition hung in the air like cologne.
A jolt of shock ran through me as I recognized the man Maurice was speaking to.
Bill Ferrars.
My old boss from Boston.
Killed by Radicals during my first year at Cyclos.
Except here, in this memory, he looked younger: less gray at the temples, a little straighter in the spine.
Maurice—I—stood tall, composed—every inch the predator disguised as a diplomat.
“You owe me, Mister Ferrars. Without me, your ancestors would’ve died in the Battle of ’59.
So, when my daughter asks for an internship here,” I said, my tone calm and terrifying, “you will accept her. You will guide her. And she will become the best lawyer this country has ever seen.” I paused long enough for the weight of his words to settle.
“And when the day comes for us to retrieve her,” I added, the warning unmistakable in my voice, “you will let her go without so much as a whisper of resistance.”
Bill nodded without flinching. “Consider it done.”
Out of nowhere, the world tore sideways.
There was no clean break between memories, no fade, no warning. Only a small “whooshing’ sound, one really had to listen for.
One moment snapped out of existence, and the next yanked me forward, like being hauled through someone else’s skull by the spine. Images bled into one another before I could blink.
The air stank of old magic and newer guilt. Maurice’s haze curled along the walls like smoke that refused to fade.
A Nexus blinked to life in front of me before Julian’s face appeared.
Different than I remembered, colder, more detached.
“Stephen’s retrieving Emma as we speak. You need to get here as fast as possible.” Maurice’s voice—my voice— ripped through the air like a command. No pleasantries. Only worry masked as control.
Julian snorted through the connection. “Why? She hasn’t trained in over twenty-three years. She’ll hardly be a threat.”
I gritted my teeth before I spoke. “Stephen’s plan is to have James Walker train her.”
Julian shrugged, unimpressed. “And?”
“You think I want someone with our translation coursing through her veins trained by that hothead?”
“Hardly my problem.”
My hand slammed against the desk. The metal shuddered, and a crack snaked across its surface as my haze flared around my arm, vibrating with fury.
“You will portal into Cyclos in the next few weeks. Settle into the ‘Elder’ role. And you will keep an eye on her. She’s being hunted by Radicals, Julius!”
Julian rolled his eyes. “I checked up on her when she was a kid, like you asked. Once was enough. You don’t get to order me around anymore.”
“No?” I leaned closer, my eyes gleaming. “You either show up here, or I tell the United Chiefs everything about your little experiments.”
That stopped him cold. His smirk dropped. His lips parted slightly. “You wouldn’t.”
“Fucking try me.”
The image shifted again—jerked sideways—before I could even begin to process what an unrepentant, manipulative asshole the man I’d once thought was my best friend really was.
And then I was somewhere else.
Dim moonlight spilled across silk sheets. Maurice lay half-upright in a massive bed, his bare chest rising and falling with short, restless breaths.
Maria, Cyclos’s former Leader, lay beside me, one arm draped over my stomach, her fingers tracing idle patterns across my skin.
“Emma’s struggling,” I said, threaded with tension. “And James is just… He can’t handle it. He’s not ready.”
Maria shifted against the pillows, her tone gentle but firm.
“James is perfectly adequate. You worry too much, like every father does.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s the damper I placed on her translation. He doesn’t know about it, and he’s pushing her too hard. He doesn’t understand what she’s capable of, or what could go wrong. If it activates too fast…”
My voice trailed off. The fear in it didn’t match the control in my body, but it was there.
Maria reached up and cupped my cheek, forcing me to look at her.
“She won’t break. She’s your daughter.”
“Which is exactly why I’m scared,” I murmured.
She sighed and ran a thumb across my knuckles.
“Then take the damn thing out, Maurice. If you’re so scared, remove the block.”