Chapter 61
My head is killing me.
I blink a few times as my senses return, my eyes adjusting to the dark…cabin? I’m in the cabin of a…hovercraft.
Why am I in a hovercraft?
I try to rub my face and discover my hands are bound at the wrists. My body feels heavy, my limbs weak. I’m so groggy.
I fight off the disoriented feeling, peering into the cockpit. I see the back of his head. Dirty blond streaked with gray. Kallister. I have no idea how long I was unconscious for, but it’s still dark beyond the windshield.
He drugged me.
Without delay, I open a path to Saint’s mind and—
Nothing happens.
I can’t open a path. Telepathy isn’t working.
Why isn’t telepathy working?
“I know you’re awake, Wren.” His amused voice floats out of the cockpit.
I attempt to sit up, and a shooting pain stabs my temples. “What did you do to me? Why can’t I use my powers?”
He doesn’t answer.
“What is this?” My voice sounds rusty. I clear my throat. “Where are you taking me?”
He just looks at me, his gaze cold and calculating. I can’t believe I ever thought he reminded me of Jim. Uncle Jim would never look at me like that.
“What. Is. This.”
Kallister chuckles. “Always so demanding. Just like your mother.”
“I’m not like my mother, and I’m not in the mood to play games.”
“Patience is a virtue. We’ll be there soon.”
Screw patience. If telepathy won’t work, incitement has to. It uses a different frequency. I take a breath and try to harness the gold dust in my mind…but there is no gold dust in my mind.
What the hell is happening?
As I start to feel more alert, it registers that he’s wearing tactical gear.
Body armor. A gun holstered at the hip. I struggle to think through the fog in my mind.
The effects of the drug linger, but the adrenaline in my blood is slowly burning it away, replacing the lethargy with a sharp, thumping need to get out of this.
“I know you’re angry with me,” he starts.
“No shit, Kallister.” The fucking nerve of him. “Forget that I’ve been drugged and tied up. You just murdered a woman.”
“No, I delivered a sentence. Just like many an executioner before me.”
“Those executioners’ victims were sentenced by a court of law.”
“I am the law now,” he says. “And while I know you disagree, I believe disbanding the Authority is what’s best for all the Mods fighting in the Uprising.
They deserve one leader who’s looking out for their best interests.
One vision to guide them.” Kallister shakes his head in annoyance.
“Adrienne was pushing a vision on our people that they didn’t want. I wish you’d recognize that.”
“Maybe,” I say, venom spitting from my tone, “but killing her wasn’t the solution, you fucking asshole.”
He sighs. “We could sit here and antagonize each other, if you’d like. But that’s not why I—”
“Drugged me?” I supply bitterly.
“—wanted to speak to you alone,” he finishes. “Away from the prying eyes at the Dagger. I’d like for us to try to understand each other.”
I can’t stop a harsh laugh. “You want me to understand you? Well, I understand that you tried to create some kind of bond between us by pretending you had a bond with Jim. A bond that never existed. I heard the way you spoke about him in the Temple this morning. You hated him.”
“Hate? No. That’s too strong a word. He was my twin brother.
Hating him would be like hating myself. He disappointed me.
Disgusted me at times. But never hate. Your mother, on the other hand…
Marina, I can say I hated. I told Julian she would drag him down, that she would destroy everything around her.
But he didn’t listen. He chose her over his own blood, over the network, and I never forgave him for it. ”
“You were jealous of her,” I accuse. “Of the connection they had.”
I’m surprised when he doesn’t deny it.
“Yes. I was jealous of her. Sometimes.” His eyes drift back to the dark sky.
“Where are we going?” I ask, my frustration spilling over.
He doesn’t answer, which only triggers another burst of anger.
Kallister is more like Travis Redden than he thinks.
Driven by his own self-interests. I don’t know why I didn’t see that until now.
He used Hawkins to corrupt Primes in the wards, for fuck’s sake.
If he’s willing to destroy the minds of children, what else is he willing to do?
All I know is, even setting aside that he fucking drugged me, there’s no way I can trust him again.
I inhale a slow, steadying breath. “Take me back to the Dagger, Kallister. Please.”
He turns, studying me with those brown eyes, so much like Uncle Jim’s and yet not at all similar.
I think about all those evenings we spent in his quarters.
Me on the sofa, Kallister on the armchair, quietly sharing the same space as I pored over my mother’s file.
The file he so freely offered, as if he were doing me a beautiful favor.
Now I suspect he was just trying to keep me close.
“We’re here,” is his response.
With a loud hum, the craft begins a fast descent. There aren’t any windows back here, and I can’t see much through the windshield other than darkness. My gaze darts around the cabin in search of anything I can use as a weapon, anything that could help me escape. Nothing.
The hovercraft lands with a soft thud. The hum of the engine dies off and then goes entirely silent.
Kallister hops out and walks around to slide open the cabin door. Rough hands pull me out. I resist, but I still feel loopy from the drug. It takes a moment for my body to remember how to remain upright. By then, his gun is trained firmly on the center of my chest.
I smell salt. Wet stone. A cold gust of wind hits me in the face.
“Is this Valterra Ridge?” I ask in confusion.
“Seemed fitting.”
I still can’t use telepathy, and the frustration of that squeezes tight around my throat. “Why aren’t my powers working?”
Kallister reaches under his body armor and pulls out a silver chain. A long white pendant dangles from it, gnarled like an icicle.
White daggerstone.
Fuck.
As long as he stays in my vicinity, my Mod abilities aren’t going to work. On the mountain, I couldn’t use telepathy until Hawkins and I were well out of the cave’s distance.
I look around us, taking a ragged breath. The desolate cliffs stretch out, the sheer wall covered in blue daggerstone, but it seems like the white is more powerful, because even though this daggerstone is supposed to amplify, it’s doing absolutely nothing for me right now.
Kallister shoves me forward, and I stagger. My legs are too wobbly. That tranquilizer really did a number on me.
“Keep walking.” He motions with the barrel of the gun. “Stop. That’s far enough.”
“You realize Gray is going to kill you for this, right?”
“No, he won’t. Gray always sees reason in the end.”
“Not about this. Not about me.”
“Which is exactly why it’s time for us to part ways,” Kallister says, a chord of regret in his voice. “I was hoping we would be able to work together. I gave you that shot tonight.”
“What shot? You drugged me.”
“Before that. I was waiting to see what you would do after you overheard us in the cave.”
My breath hitches. “You knew I was there?”
That gets me a chuckle. “I knew everything that was going to happen tonight, Wren.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I saw it all. I saw that you would follow me to the cave. I saw that you would confront Hawkins. I saw that you would watch Adrienne die. What I didn’t know was what you would do afterward.
Whether you’d accept Adrienne’s fate and the corruption missions as necessary steps in our future.
Or if you’d recruit Gray and make a move against me. You chose the latter.”
I stare at him, struggling to process what he’s saying, until my brain, still trying to flush out the drug, finally makes the connection.
He’s a precog.
When he’s talking about seeing things, he means in a vision.
“You had a vision about tonight…” I say slowly. “You knew I would be out there, listening to you and Hawkins. And you knew what would happen afterward?” My heart starts racing. “You saw him incite Mako to his death?”
Kallister remains detached, as if Mako’s death was no big deal. “I did, yes.”
“You saw Hawkins get his throat ripped out by a ridgehowler? You saw all of that and still allowed it to happen?”
“I also saw that Hawkins would survive. No harm done.”
“No harm done?” I echo angrily. “Mako is dead!”
Kallister shrugs, and the dismissive gesture sends another jolt of anger through me.
“There’s no guarantee I could have even stopped it if I intervened.
Visions are tricky things. Sometimes every word, every moment, is set in stone.
No matter what you do, those events are going to unfold exactly the way you saw them. ”
“But sometimes you can change it,” I say, because I’ve heard of precog visions that were thwarted by someone making a different choice. “You could have tried to change it.”
“Mako’s death was another necessary step in the grand scheme of things,” he says, though now he does sound regretful. “Mako was a nice kid. He just got in the way.”
I clench my fists to my sides. “So, what, you brought me here to kill me?”
“Yes. But for what it’s worth, I get no enjoyment out of it.”
A disbelieving laugh flies out.
“You stir the pot too much, Wren. You have too much influence on Gray, even on Saint. And although I can’t prove it, my gut tells me you had something to do with Evlynne deserting us.
” His gaze locks with mine. “I have plans for this Continent, and unfortunately, I think you’re going to be a hindrance to them. ”
My pulse is shrieking in my ears now. I look around again, unable to combat my rising fear. The landscape is barren and unforgiving, with the black sky above us and the black water below us. The entire ridge bearing the blood-soaked history of the Mods my mother killed.
I’ll die here, surrounded by the ghosts of the past.
My eyes dart to the gun, then back to Kallister’s face. I see his finger suspended over the trigger.
“I really am sorry,” he says, his voice gruff.
I swallow hard.
The reality of the situation sinks in just as the distant sound of a helicopter’s rotors pierces the silence.
We both freeze. Kallister’s attention shifts to the sky, but his gun remains trained on me. Steady.
The noise grows louder, echoing off the cliffs, and then I see it.
My heart speeds up. “We have to go,” I tell him. “That’s a Command bird.”
Kallister hesitates.
The lights from the chopper flood the cliffside, momentarily blinding us, and that’s all I need.
I rush him, slamming my shoulder into his chest. He stumbles backward but doesn’t lose the grip on his gun. Just the opposite, in fact.
He fires.
The crack of the gunshot is deafening. Searing pain explodes in my arm, and I reel from the shock. I’ve never been shot before. That hurts. Blood pours from the wound, dripping down my arm and onto the dark earth. I grit my teeth, trying to stay upright, but the pain is nearly unbearable.
Another shot rings through the air. For a terrifying second I brace myself, expecting my entire world to disappear as I die from a bullet in the head, but he’s shooting at the approaching helicopter.
He fires several times. Bullets ricochet off metal, pinging through the air, but it doesn’t stop the chopper’s descent.
Cursing under his breath, Kallister turns back to me, but I’m already lunging again. We collide, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs and sending another burst of agony through my arm. I lose my footing, and Kallister takes advantage.
He slams me backward.
I try to catch myself and fail.
I cry out as the ground disappears beneath my feet, and I’m falling over the side of the cliff. I’m in the air, weightless for several terrifying seconds before gravity takes hold of me.
With the wind howling past my ears, a surge of adrenaline snaps me into action.
My fingers scrape the rocks, catching the edge of the cliff, and my entire body jolts as I slam into the ledge.
My arm screams with pain as I dangle there, gripping a protruding piece of blue daggerstone with all my might.
My pulse thumps violently in my ears. Blood trickles down my arm. When I hear the eerie whoosh of a hovercraft humming past my head, I realize Kallister is flying away. Coward.
I twist my head, watching the craft rise in the night air before it disappears into the misty horizon.
I’m panting, struggling to hang on.
Don’t look down.
My muscles burn, begging for relief. I hold on for dear life. My mind is racing.
And then I hear it.
Footsteps.
Terror pummels into me as a shadow looms above me. A moment later, a hand appears.
“Give me your hand.”
I freeze.
It can’t be.
“Give me your hand, Dove.”
My heart leaps into my throat.
It’s Cross.