Theo helped me carry her to the back where the drop station was. I pulled out an artifact and passed one to Theo first; he placed it on the drop station where it disappeared instantly and was replaced by more ammunition, which he quickly inserted into the sleeve of his jacket.

  Theo then held Camilla in his arms as I dropped my artifact down and was given a fresh medical pack. Then we put the artifact in Camilla’s good hand, making her squeeze it as best she could and directing her hand over the drop station.

  “You’re wasting an artifact on her?” someone said from behind us.

  “She’s gonna be dead soon anyways, what a dumb ass move,” another said.

  I ignored them both and tried not to notice the struggle it took for Camilla to even stand. She dropped the artifact and it disappeared. It was replaced by a small bottle of salve.

  We got more jeers and complaints as we dragged Camilla back to her corner. Even Gunner gave us a look that said he felt the same as everyone else. As soon as I’d put her down, I undressed the wound and put on the salve she’d been given across her shoulder. She hissed at the first touch but seemed to relax as the salve worked its way into her system. I watched as the blood slowly seeping out of her shoulder stopped, and the wound began to clot.

  I took my first aid pack and pulled out fresh gauze to wrap her wound with. She gave me a weak smile before her eyes closed, and she fell back to sleep.

  I leaned against Theo, and his arms wrapped around me, keeping me warm against the cool, damp space. “We’ll find a way, we will,” Theo promised and I nodded. He leaned back and I closed my eyes, allowing my mind to forget everything around me and stay, for one moment, out of the darkness.

  JAYLA

  “My dad wasn’t a horrible person, but he was no saint, either, I’m well aware of that.” Leanna sat across from Simon at the table I’d spent the better part of a day cleaning.

  The smell of Logan’s blood mixed with bleach and lemon still lingered in the air. After two days, Em had finally gotten out most of the shrapnel that had ripped apart the side of his body. His arm had been set in place and stitched back up; he was lucky it was a clean break. He was currently asleep on Em’s bed, where she insisted he stay so she could watch him. She sat in the chair closest to her bedroom door.

  “I’m not saying he’s horrible. I’m saying that if he knew about any of this going on, he should have been a man and said something. Not hide in his mansion, hoping it’d just go away,” Simon said. The two had yet to get on good terms. Actually, Simon wasn’t on good terms with anyone.

  “As I’ve said three times now, he didn’t know what was going on. He just suspected something wasn’t right. And until he knew for sure what was happening, he would be risking one hundred and fifty years of peace by stirring things up.” Leanna leaned into the table. The map was spread out between them, and a tablet filled with all the information Leanna could give us was beside it.

  She’d asked, more than once, where Caspian was. And for some reason, I didn’t tell her. I said he was away, on a separate mission, and we’d meet up with him soon, but I could tell she saw through my lie. Maybe I was jealous or worried she couldn’t be trusted, but I kept my lips shut and revealed nothing more than was necessary.

  We hadn’t told her much about our plans, only small details about the Void, the little we knew, and the connection to the Marked kids of the DEZ. Leanna, to her credit, had known a lot more than Logan had. Caspian had been right. And for some reason, he’d trusted her enough to give her the address to our personal residence, so I was inclined to believe what she told us to be true, but that didn’t mean I had to like her.

  I was learning the fewer people who knew all the details, the less chance of the wrong people finding out what we were doing.

  My feet were propped on the table, and I leaned my chair back, tilting it on the back legs while I listened to Simon and Leanna go at it once again. “Can we just get to the point already?” I asked.

  Em had one ear half listening to us, and the other listening for any sign Logan had woken up. She’d taken it upon herself to take care of him, not even letting his own sister enter her room to check on him. I guess it was all she could do at this point while we sat around fighting and forgetting we needed a plan. We needed allies.

  “The point is that my dad had been looking into Governor Grayson, and we might be able to find some information in his personal tablet, if we can get into the residence’s wing of City Hall,” Leanna said.

  Simon scoffed. “They’ll have erased that by now, any evidence against Grayson will be gone.”

  “We don’t know that. Holden hasn’t even moved into the residence yet. That’s what the LinkedNews said. Out of respect for my family.” Leanna nearly spat out the words. “But if we don’t go now, it will for sure be gone for good.”

  “Simon’s right,” Em reluctantly said. She turned her head to face the group, but kept her body angled towards her door. “We’re better off going to the source of this information than trying to find it anywhere in City Hall. That place was probably cleansed before your shuttle even blew up.”

  Leanna flinched at the mention of the shuttle explosion. For as tough of an exterior as she put on, she had just lost both her parents and almost lost her brother. How she was still sitting here in once piece, I couldn’t tell you.

  “Any idea who your dad had on his personal payroll?” I asked.

  Leanna shook her head. “He didn’t mention names and never had meetings in person.”

  I released a long breath.

  “Well, there is one person I know of, but he wouldn’t be connected to all this. I don’t think, anyways.” Leanna’s brows scrunched together. “When my dad started to get suspicious of Grayson, he wanted to check our alliances in Kuros and Eres, but he couldn’t just go there himself. So he sent me to meet with the representatives of each city and feel out if Grayson had gotten to any of them.”

  “And?” Simon waved an impatient hand.

  “And,” Leanna said, narrowing her eyes at him, “he sent me there on an undocumented shuttle he commissioned, so no one would know. And I remember the guy’s name. Gustov. He’s from here in Cytos, calls himself the Keeper of the North. He has a hanger on the north end of Cytos and has shuttles for hire. Maybe he’ll know a few names or secrets that can help us.”

  Em’s eyes shot to mine, and a smile spread across my face.

  “Turns out you aren’t just a pretty face after all.” I smirked at Leanna, and she rolled her eyes at me. “Simon and I will have a chat with Gustov. Em, if you can locate Governor Wallace’s tablet, maybe we can gain some access from here, if it’s not already erased.”

  Em nodded and swept into her room to retrieve her tablet and likely check on Logan again. Leanna crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair with a little pout I ignored.

  “Shall we?” I inclined my head to Simon.

  “Why do I have to go?”

  “Because I said so.” I dropped my feet from the table with a hard thud. “Get your stuff and let’s go.”

  Simon looked ridiculous in the oversized jacket of Caspian’s. He wasn’t a small man but Caspian was taller. He pulled the black hood of the jacket farther over his head, so his face was covered in the shadows we swept through.

  I hadn’t given him any weapon outside of a pocketknife he refused to give up, not trusting him enough yet to not stab me in the back. Simon was keeping tight lipped about nearly everything at this point. I asked questions about the Linked video he’d been watching, the kids playing ball in what I assumed was the DEZ, but that had only set him off and nearly caused a brawl between him and Em. We’d find out eventually, we always did, but until then I didn’t entirely trust Simon not to betray us.

  The streets were quiet, and thick clouds covered the moonlight. We stuck to the alleys and back streets to avoid running into anyone unwanted.

  “Do you even know where we’re going?” Simon asked, his voice hushed.

  “North.”

  “Yes, I know north. But that’s kind of a general direction, isn’t it?”

  “You spent your entire life on these streets, didn’t you?” I glanced over to find a scowling Simon. “You, out of any of us, should know exactly where we’re going. Or weren’t you very good at your job?”

  “I didn’t go north very often,” Simon said quietly.

  “And why is that?” I asked.

  “There are a few… unfriendlies in the north,” Simon said. Well, that explained the amount of complaining he’d done when I told him he was coming.

  “And you didn’t think to tell me this before?” I demanded.

  Simon shrugged. “They don’t care about Watchers.” And that explained the request for one of Caspian’s jackets—the black details on the back would be familiar to those who knew the Watchers, insignificant to those who didn’t. His eyes darted back and forth the farther north we went.

  “Well, just stick behind me and keep your mouth shut, and maybe you’ll make it out unscathed.” I smiled.

  Simon returned my smile with a glare.

  We were silent for a few moments. The cool breeze of autumn snaking in sent a shiver down my spine. I was not looking forward to the colder weather.

  “So, tell me Simon.” I tilted my head to the side. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what? Going to talk to this Gustov guy? Because you made me!”

  “No, why are you helping us?” I knew he wasn’t doing this for the reasons he’d claimed, to get his life back in order. And we hadn’t offered him any money or compensation, so that wasn’t it. I had thought over all the possibilities and was at a loss.

  Simon turned his eyes towards me, and I expected him to give me some sarcastic reply, but instead he let out a long sigh through his nose and said, “Because I’ve made bad decisions in my life. And although not all of them can be atoned for, there is one I made a vow to fix.”

  I raised my brows, waiting for him to continue.

  He groaned. “I wasn’t always the leader of the Carbon Resistance. And I hadn’t aspired to be that, either. Over twenty years ago, I was just a solider looking for a cause and a place to fit in. The Resistance seemed a good fit. People were friendly to me. They weren’t all as bad as you’ve made them out to be.” He gave me a side glance before continuing. “I was on a mission one night, searching for some information, and managed to grab the attention of a young, observant Watcher. She followed me for several blocks before I somehow circled myself into a dead end. She was a pretty little thing, dark hair, brown eyes, and a glare that could cut through ice. She wasn’t a commander at the time; she was just a lowly Watcher working her way up the rankings.”

  “Reyes?” I breathed.

  Simon nodded. “She was ready to kill me, and I’m surprised she didn’t. But to save my own skin, I offered to be her inside source, to give her information about the Resistance. Stupidly, she agreed and let me go.” Simon smiled at the memory. He had known Reyes before she was the Commander? But she had never said anything, never told me… “I didn’t intend on meeting up with her again as I had promised. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her… she’d gotten under my skin like an itch I couldn’t get rid of. So I went to our meeting and gave her a bunch of made up information. And after the official meeting was done, we just sat there for three hours talking about… I don’t even remember. Random stuff like our favorite restaurant, which Linked show we never missed, how many minutes we could hold our breath underwater. Stupid things, but I’d never had such a good time.”

  Simon swallowed as he looked to the ground and shoved his hands into his pockets. “We were idiots, stupidly in love with the wild idea that we could somehow make this work. She was a Watcher, I was a Carbon in the Resistance, and there was no way this was going to work… not in Cytos. So we’d planned to leave the city together, to start a family. Only as a Carbon, starting a family was more difficult for me, but it had been Reyes’ dream to have a child. So I found a doctor in the Genetics Lab that I paid off. We gave her a lot of money to create our child and keep every bit of it off the records and quiet. We were so set on a future we thought was possible that we didn’t notice one night when we were being followed.”

  A tear fell down Simon’s cheek, and he quickly swiped it away. His face turned from sorrow to anger within one blink. “My own men found us. Called me a traitor and a scum lover. They were going to kill us both. I knew it because it’s what I would have done. You can’t have someone on your team who was disobedient, who was in love with a human. So I lied. I lied with every breath I had and claimed I had been using Reyes to get information on the Watchers. I spilled secrets she had told me in confidence, things I wasn’t supposed to know, but she had trusted me, and I betrayed that trust. I laughed in her face. I spat on her. I made sure there wasn’t a question in any of their minds that I had any feelings for her. And I watched as she believed every word I said. I nearly broke as she pleaded for me to stop talking, to stop breaking her heart, but I kept going. I had to, to keep her alive.” His voice broke as he said, “And then I watched as they beat her within an inch of her life. Broke every bone in her hands, kicked her face until it was hardly recognizable. And then they stripped her naked and left her on the steps of the Watchers Headquarters, as a sign and a warning.”

  I had to bite my cheek to stop the red-hot anger boiling through me. Reyes, our Commander, beaten and left naked because someone she loved, someone she trusted betrayed her. And she had to believe it was true if she wanted to live. She’d probably spent the past twenty years hating him for what he did, never knowing it was the only thing he could do to save them both. And yet when the time came, she had turned to him to help us…

  “See, that’s the thing about love. It makes you do crazy things to protect others. I’ve made… terrible decisions to protect her and… and I have to live with them knowing that no matter what I told myself or how hard I tried to convince myself what I was doing was right and for a good cause, I knew in my heart it was wrong.”

  I understood what love could make you do. I was partnering with the enemy just to get it back… if he was really the enemy.

  “I was named the leader of the Resistance the next day by the esteemed Governor Grayson. She was proud of what I had done. I was so ashamed of myself that I wanted to just run away. I couldn’t live with it. But then I got a call from the doctor at the Genetics Lab telling me our baby boy had woken up.” Simon’s gaze stared into nothing, into a ghost. “I had forgotten all about the baby. And I knew that if my people saw Reyes with a child, they would torture her, probably hurt the child. One look at him and they’d know, they’d know I had lied, and they’d kill every one of us. So I once again paid the doctor to keep her mouth shut. She called Reyes, who was still recovering, and gave her another blow saying the child had died during the birthing process. I heard her sobs on the other end of the phone line, and it broke every part of me.”

  Simon let out a shuddered breath. “Then I took the child to the DEZ, thinking he’d be safe there. And for eighteen years, I watched on any feed I could find as he grew up, as he grew into a man. He had my hair, dusty blond, and her eyes, golden brown. He was perfect. And I thought that once he was old enough and out of the DEZ, I would tell Reyes. I knew she would never forgive me for keeping him from her, but she would understand that I did it to keep him safe, to keep her safe. We’d heard rumours of something weird going on with the Marked kids, so on the day of his graduation test, I went to the DEZ to get him out, but I was too late. And I had no way to get him back…

  “I had almost given up, thinking my son lost, when Governor Grayson sent us on that mission a few months ago to get that tablet from the Genetics Lab. I was worried it may contain information about our son, so I betrayed Grayson and stole it for myself. He was in there, along with every genetic kid from the DEZ, and my long-forgotten hope was suddenly restored because even though I didn’t know how I would get him back or where he was, I found out he was still alive.”

  “He’s still alive? In the Void?” I asked.

  Simon let out a long breath. “Over two years in that place and somehow he’d survived.”

  “He was the boy you were watching, in the Linked image when we found you,” I said.

  Simon nodded.

  “Does Reyes know any of this?”

  “No.” Simon turned sharply to me. “And you won’t be telling her.”

  I put up my hands. “Trust me, I wouldn’t want to be the one to explain all that.”

  Simon’s fists clenched and unclenched at his side before his shoulders dropped. “I don’t know if he’ll still be alive by the time we get there. Based on what I’ve heard, it’s a miracle he’s made it this long, but I have to try. It’s the least I can do.”

  I nodded, placing my hand on his arm, and he didn’t flinch or pull away. “We’ll find him.”

  “Find who?” A high-pitched voice sounded from the shadows to my left. My gun was raised and pointed towards where the voice originated.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  A skinny man with a crooked nose and a smug smile stepped forward. “I’d be asking you the same thing, sweetheart. What are two Watchers doing in our territory at this time of night?”

  I glanced behind him where a few more men stood, all clad in grey jackets with a jagged arrow patch on their chest. It pointed upwards… north. “Just going for a little walk, we’ll be on our way.” I took a step back only to find more men circled behind us.

  “Nah, no need to run away, darling. We like company, especially the good lookin’ ones.” The man took another step forwards, and I could smell oil and dirt wafting from him. “Now, how about you stop lying and tell us who you’re looking for?”