Chapter 40 Zion
ZION
Ignoring the deafening clang of the old metal hitting the beat-up vehicle as I slammed the driver’s door shut, I jerked my chin at Greyn coming up to greet us.
The blond man nodded in acknowledgement and paused to talk with a group in front of an apartment building, the mottled specs of paint here and there giving up the fact the dwelling had been dyed in cream and blue color blocks probably a hundred years ago or so.
Damia’s compound occupied a similar territory to ours, with everyone settled in the ruins of some city from the past no one knew anything about.
“I hate these trips. Every time he drives, my bones shatter into pieces,” Sadira groused, stretching her arms above her head and wincing from how the movement pulled the muscle in her upper back she’d sprained during yesterday’s training with me and Ava. “They better have something good.”
“They should. There has to be a reason they called and asked for a visit,” Ryder said as he unloaded the few plastic crates of tech we’d brought with us from the backseat.
“And you drive worse than him. The last time you did, I couldn’t sit for a week straight from how hard I’d hit my tailbone because you ran over a bump at full speed. ”
“For the last time, it was an accident. Like you’re better behind the wheel than me. You literally drove into a ditch a year ago,” Sadira pointed out, watching him stack the white crates on top of each other, pointedly not helping him out.
As fun as it was hearing them bicker, I strode over to greet Nelle as she peeked out of the entrance to the two-story house that she and Samuel had commandeered for their tech team.
“Zion.” Greyn clapped my shoulder as we approached Nelle. “Glad you could come on short notice.
Face-to-face meetings were our preferred option to discuss highly sensitive information.
Though radio communications were encrypted, and the cities couldn’t listen in to what we were up to, we couldn’t decipher their chatter either.
So we remained careful. Your enemy could crack one of your channels at any point and you wouldn’t realize. Or discover it too late.
“Hey!” Nelle looked me up and down. Her examination drew a frown on her tanned face, her low ponytail as messy as the pattern of dirt smudges on the red-brick wall she was leaning against. “Something’s not right with you. It’s making me uncomfortable.”
Samuel popped up out the door. “That’s because he’s not trying to flirt with you or me anymore.” Towering over Nelle, he threw an arm over her narrow shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “His dick is owned now.”
“Jealous?” I lowered my gaze to Samuel’s groin. “Because she will cut yours off if I tell her what you did that week you spent over at ours.”
Nelle ducked out from under Samuel and punched his chest. “You said it was the most boring week of your life. What did you do?” Her fists barreled into him as he retreated with raised hands. “Samuel, what the fuck did you do?”
“Right, Kali got the tattoo,” Greyn said, framed by the busy street swarming with people dressed in colorful clothes behind him. “You know, Damia is out for you for not inviting her. Once she heard the news, she swore she’d make you pay.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I’ll talk to her.
” That might have been my mistake. I’d told Gedeon I would call and invite both Conall with his partners and Damia with her daughter, the exception being the latter would stay away from the hall that night.
She was of age, but it would have been weird as hell to fuck in front of her. We all saw her as our little niece.
Sadira and Ryder approached us with the overflowing crates of electronics propped on their hips, and I held the door to Nelle’s and Samuel’s workshop open for them to pass.
“So what’s the deal?” I asked Greyn as we entered the main workroom, a vast open space with numerous shelves cascading down the walls, full of cardboard and plastic boxes brimming with various pieces of tech.
A large white table occupied the center, with numerous lights shining above it. Smaller desks scattered randomly around gave the illusion that the room was one massive circuit, the furniture serving as its parts and workers rushing back and forth as the signals traveling through the wires.
“Somehow, I have trouble believing you, Samuel.” Nelle plopped down in a seat at the central table with a loud thump.
“Zion wouldn’t have mentioned me cutting your junk off—because believe me, I wouldn’t stop at your dick—for no reason.
” She glared at her chosen partner sitting down beside her and throwing dirty looks my way.
The man hadn’t done anything. At all. Not a sniff of it. But Nelle didn’t know that. And the faithful bastard deserved to taste the foulness that had spilled out of his mouth about my dick. Only two people could have an opinion about it. Not counting myself, of course.
“There.” Greyn motioned to the two unoccupied chairs around a tiny square table under a window.
He rummaged through the drawers and selected a tiny electronic piece sparkling in green, black, and golden flashes from the late autumn sun.
“We figured them out. The microchips. We can program them remotely to give us access to pass Ardaton’s gates.
Nelle thinks it should be possible to modify the software and apply it to Ilasall’s and Coriattus’ security systems, as the chips use similar programming. That’s why we called.”
Finally, some good news I could bring home.
Kali had been spending hours holed up with Gedeon and me in his study, learning about our operations.
Inevitably, the conversation would steer to the auctions, and she’d implore us to get Alora out.
And every time we had to tell her we couldn’t yet, she’d awaken in the night drenched in cold sweat, shivering and nauseous.
But I bet this update would bring her some peace. We only had to find a way to collect more information about her friend. Her appearance, in addition to her name, was not enough to go on. Ilasall was too huge to sweep through the hundreds of residential buildings manually.
“Do you have access to more? Anything regarding the schools or lists of fertile citizens and their residencies?”
Greyn returned the piece of tech back to the third drawer from the top, not a screech from the well-oiled hinges and tracks as he closed it.
“No, we can only program the chips for now. But we’re working on it.
” He tried to smooth out the tangle of his blond hair, as if he was too tired to run a comb through it this morning.
A stark contrast to Gedeon and Kali. Their dark strands were always shiny and smooth. Like silk flowing through your fingers while they slept, oblivious to your presence.
Greyn surrendered to the mess of his locks, and balanced on two legs of his chair, scanning the room. “Nelle, any news?”
“We’re trying to see if we can get into their systems. But nothing yet. We’ll call you if we get anywhere,” she shared, tapping at her keyboard as furiously as the silent treatment she was giving to Samuel, who pleaded with her to listen to him.
Shit. No access meant we had to explore other possibilities of tracking Alora.
I wasn’t going to break our deal with Kali.
She’d admitted that breaking her promise to Alora that they both would be okay taught her to be wary of all one-sided agreements.
Everything had a price in her eyes; everything had to be reciprocated or compensated. Bargains had become a lifeline for her.
I had to deliver on ours.
I couldn’t save my sister in time, and I wasn’t going to watch her lose hers too. Not when I knew what it did to you. How it stole your life from you.
“So instead of running away, she accepted your tattoo. I have to give it to her. In a week since you took her, she persuaded you to agree to ink her. I’m impressed.
” Damia scooped up the dried leaves from the glass jar and dropped them into her clay cup, its sides a child’s painting of a house and a mother and a daughter holding hands.
Nara had made it for her a year after Damia had taken the orphaned nine-year-old kid under her wing.
“But it seems the invitation to your celebration a month ago has slipped my attention. Lost in travel, I suppose?” The water in the kettle reached the boiling temperature, and the steam rose from the spout as high as her accusing eyebrows.
“I fucked up.” Damia was barely older than me, but damn if she hadn’t mastered ruling over us already when we were as little as when her daughter had painted that cup.
So all of us, Conall, Gedeon, and I, did what we had to—admitted our sins to her.
“Sorry about that.” I rubbed my nape. “Didn’t invite Conall either.
” Taking both our cups, I brought them into a veranda hugging Damia’s house from two sides.
“And it’s not going as well as you think it is.
” I placed the tea between us on the bench pressed against the wall, the fresh coat of sky-blue paint matching the cloudless sky.
Damia always took care of her house, like the people she cared about.
“What’s the problem?” She blew over the steaming liquid to cool it down enough to drink. “Gedeon would’ve never agreed to give her the tattoo if he didn’t believe in her.”