Chapter 20 #3
Nature has tried to take back this place from the horrors of what happened here, but the evidence still juts out of the grass and weeds.
They could be rocks. If you had no experience with violence and passed by quickly, I’m sure you could convince yourself it’s a rubble pit.
The nightmares would come later, after your brain processes the fleeting images and tries to file them away.
I don’t have the luxury of ignorance, so the longer I stare, the more I see and the worse it gets.
A pit of bones.
Stacked in piles, very obviously done while there was still flesh attached, and by the way the bones have scattered some, I’d guess they were once very orderly rows of corpses.
Though bones are far less offensive than fresh bodies, or decomposing ones, the longer I look at the mounds of white, the more horrifying it becomes.
I’m no expert in archaeological recovery, but there are very obvious markers for a general gauge on the body count I’m looking at.
There are hundreds of skulls.
I was expecting bodies—with Nox’s reaction, I was dreading the inevitability that it was children.
In the short amount of time I had to speculate, a slideshow of the nightmares I’ve seen while working against the Resistance flicked through my mind and I’d steeled myself against the worst of it, but this is something else entirely.
“They all died at the same time.”
I can’t pry my eyes away from the field of jagged white remains as I reply, “How can you be sure? Is there… something I’m missing? We’d know if this many Gifted disappeared at once.”
His eyes flash to black, but the nightmare creature that pops out from behind his ear sits obediently at his feet, as though even it is reluctant to touch anything in that pit.
I’ve seen those beasts carve their way through people, their own and the Resistance’s offerings, and they’ve never faltered before.
It sits as still as death.
“Gabe.”
I scowl down at the bones, thrown by the sudden change in topic. “What?”
Nox continues in that same blank voice, “It was the numbers his cousin gave him that led me here. I figured out they were coordinates, dates, and times. I have no idea how the kid got a hold of them, we need to question him immediately, but they corresponded with the Magnifier attacks… all but one.”
He crouches down at the edge, getting a closer look at one of the piles stacked high, his head tilting like he’s seeing something I’m clearly not.
“I trust Black, but not enough to risk Gabe. This is something bigger than anything else we’ve seen so far.
This is… what the Resistance are planning for us all. ”
I don’t know how he’s so certain of that despite my own reaction to it, but he refuses to say anything else.
I walk the perimeter of the ditch, finding pockets among the white stacks that only add to the death count.
It is very quickly apparent that there’s no point trying to make a count as the bones are stacked, nature reclaiming them and obscuring how far down the piles go.
It takes an hour for Black to get back, North appearing along with him still dressed in his suit but with a Tac vest strapped over top and a helmet flattening his perfectly coiffed Councilman hair.
There’s a sour look on his face, like there’s a stink in the air he can’t ignore, but he thanks my Second with a nod before he stalks over.
I meet him in the middle.
He gives me a look I know well enough, and I reach out to him with my Gift, only to find his words already waiting irately for me there.
We agreed to ground all scouting missions.
Black is the only person here outside of our Bond Group to overhear us and this doesn’t pose a risk to any of us, so I reply out loud, “Nox found something else hidden in the intel around the Gifted and I agreed it was worth looking into. This doesn’t compromise any of the safety concerns that called off the TacTeams.”
Nox’s lip curls for the first time in my presence today and he snaps at his brother, “This has nothing to do with your precious little Bond. The entire world doesn’t revolve around her—just yours. Pathetic.”
He stalks off back toward the overgrown pit. North watches him for a minute before he shoots me a look. I was trying to avoid setting him off.
I give him one back. “And I’m not. Either change your approach with him or deal with the consequences of me doing it instead, because I’m done tiptoeing around just so my Bond can bear the brunt of his trauma. Fuck. Just—come and look at this, North, before all hell breaks loose.”
Without waiting for a response, I follow Nox’s path down to the pit to look over the fragments of bones jutting up out of the earth.
I’m not the scholar either of the Dravens are, but I’ve seen enough dead bodies in the Wastelands over the years to know that we’re looking at a mass burial like we’ve never encountered before.
God only knows how deep it goes down, how many layers there are, how wide it stretches out.
My chest tightens.
North walks up to join us, leaving Black at the top of the hill to keep watch. There’s no one nearby that my Gift can detect, and none of Nox’s nightmare creatures have flagged anything, so my Second is no doubt giving us some space to argue without an audience. He’s good like that.
After a moment of silence, Nox finally speaks, “My bond reacted to this.”
There’s nothing about those words that should send chills down my spine, but the way Nox says them in that carefully blank tone sure does.
I glance over to find his eyes have voided out again, and it hits me that it’s his Gift that’s telling him all of the information I can’t see; a Death Dealer viewing carnage and recognizing something within it.
My gut churns, but I don’t know if it’s fear, uncertainty, or disgust that the Resistance has stooped this low.
I’ve never looked inside Nox’s head before. I’ve prised my way into North’s head, but only with his permission—or urging, more like, because he was determined to help me gain full control of my Gift and wield it to its full potential against our enemies.
What horrors I’ve seen of Nox’s past came from moments when his trauma was so overwhelming to him that not only was he drowning internally, but those images leaked out and into my mind without my participation. It changed the way I saw Nox, but not in the way either of the Dravens thought it would.
Memories can be misleading but reactions aren’t, especially to my Gift.
The real advantage I have over most Neuros is the fact that my ability covers the entire brain, meaning I can see what parts are in use at any time.
I can decipher trauma from nature, a physical limitation from a conscious decision, or a severed pathway from a bridge purposefully built.
All of this means that in that moment of extreme distress, the snapshot of Nox Draven that was slammed into my mind was an absolute truth, on par with the laws of physics.
Selfish whims or desires don’t drive his actions at all—it’s preservation, the type that comes from trauma endured from birth.
The world through Nox Draven’s eyes is a twisted and sick thing.
He can learn to decipher what’s real and what’s fabricated, and learn how to function ‘normally’, but it’ll never change what his eyes will always see.
In moments of extreme stress and fear, his instincts will override his training ten times out of ten.
That was the moment North stepped fully into our friendship and began to trust me, no exceptions.
The fact that I know he was the one to kill that disgusting excuse of a woman, that he had the same ‘slip’ that his father had, and I never breathed a word to anyone, that was the true beginning of our Bond Group.
We can argue among ourselves, disagree, play petty games, and hold grudges until the end, but everything stays with us.
When the blood tests came back and confirmed what we’d already guessed, we closed ranks.
The only difference was that Gabe was slowly integrated into those conversations.
We filter and manage the worst of the bullshit to keep it from hitting his radar, but that’s about his age, not his standing or trust. Our Bond Group was unshakable, unmatched; a testament to the work and sacrifice we all put in.
Then we found our Bond.
North’s eyes widen a fraction, the only reaction he gives his brother’s words. “By ‘this’, do you mean the grave or the bones themselves? Or is it the entire area? What, specifically, is it reacting to?”
Nox ignores North’s question, stepping forward before he crouches down over a pile of bones. Enough of the pieces are clumped together for me to say it’s a skull and jaw bone, but Nox examines it intensely for a minute before he carefully plucks a piece out.
North has two incidental Gifts, a duality Death Touch that isn’t just rare, it’s unheard of. He has the ability to take the life of another with only a touch and the ability to decipher the cause of death the same way. Nox has called him here to confirm what his own Gift is telling him.
He stands and hands it to North, all without a word. He starts to turn back away only to stop with a scowl, and I glance at North to see what’s gotten his attention.
North’s eyes are black, voided out in that eerie way the Dravens’ eyes do, but all color has leeched from his face. He’s usually more restrained with his reactions, but he looks like he’s about to pass out.
“What is it, North? How did they die?”
He swallows. “I don’t… know.”
I glance at Nox, but he’s scowling at the bone still clutched in North’s hands. “You always know.”
North shakes his head, still rattled. “They just dropped dead, but for no reason. Nothing happened to them; no attack, no injury, no poison, nothing. They just… ceased to live.”