I set my jaw, feeling Simon tense beside me as he kept his face hidden as best he could. “We’re looking for a man named Gustov,” I finally conceded. There were too many men to fight our way out, especially when more seemed to be pouring from the alley.

  The skinny man flashed a toothless grin. “Well then, let me oblige you ever so kindly and take you to the fine sir, Gustov.” A few men chuckled. “Right this way, ma’am.”

  JAYLA

  “Well, aren’t you a pretty thing,” Gustov said from his place a few feet away. He leaned against a metal table covered in dust and oil. Actually, the entire place was covered in grime. “What do I owe the pleasure of being called on at so fine an hour as this?”

  I bit back the nasty reply I had seething under my skin. “We have a few questions for you and a favor to ask.”

  Gustov let out a heavy laugh, and his large belly shook with him. “Favors aren’t exactly my thing. I’m more of the taking kind than the giving kind, if you know what I mean.” He licked his lips, and I think I vomited a little in my mouth.

  “We can make it worth your while,” Simon cut in. His face was still covered by the large hood he made no move to push back.

  “My price is pretty high. I doubt you’d have enough for even one of my favors.” Gustov shrugged and leaned back, the table groaning under his enormous weight.

  The men around him chuckled along, greedy eyes looking me up and down, and I narrowed mine back at them, baring my teeth just a little. “Here’s the thing, Gustov. I’ve come here with good intentions and no ill will towards you or your men, but you are quickly testing my patience, and I can assure you, I am not someone you want to test.”

  “Should we be scared of you?” the skinny, toothless man asked.

  “Damn right you should be scared of me.” I tilted my head to the side, my fingers tapping the gun at my hip as I watched the man squirm. His smile faded, and he took a step back.

  Gustov’s eyebrows rose, but he inclined his head for me to continue with my request.

  “You were on Governor Wallaces’s payroll—”

  “May he rest in peace,” one of the men interrupted.

  I let out an impatient breath. “We need to know any information you may have found out for the Governor, and anyone else who may have worked with him and have a few secrets to tell.”

  Gustov was silent for a moment before he burst out a cruel cackle. “You think I am going to tell you anything just because, what, you asked nicely?” He took a step forward, and I tried not to stare at his thick neck and wide cheeks jiggling with each step. “They do not call me the Keeper of the North because I can’t keep a secret. I worked my way up through the slums into a position that rivals that of your dearly departed Governor. So, if you think I’m going to tell you anything because you threaten me, you’re not as smart as I was led to believe the Watchers were. You’re going to have to do much better than that.”

  The corner of my mouth curved into a smirk. “What if you weren’t just the Keeper of the North, what if you were the Keeper of Cytos?”

  Gustov paused.

  “You’ve spent a lot of time hiding up here and from the looks of it, you haven’t been living in the lap of luxury that many others are.” I glanced around to the boarded up windows and dust-covered lights swinging in the haze and dirt. “There’s an entire world outside of the North, Gustov. Filled with secrets to be discovered and people to con into buying them. It’s just waiting for someone to take it back… why not you?”

  “Take it back… from whom?” Gustov asked.

  “Governor Grayson,” Simon answered.

  Gustov’s eyes widened. “That is not someone I want to take anything from.” He turned away from us, stalking back to the table. “It’s a nice offer, but I will have to decline.”

  “There’s a war coming,” Simon yelled. Gustov stopped, peering over his shoulder. “Peace is no longer something we will know in Cytos, and there will come a time when you will have to decide which side you will be on. You’d be wise to make that decision before it’s made for you.”

  Gustov hardly turned around as he sized Simon up and down. “Interesting words from a Carbon known to be a part of Grayson’s Resistance.”

  A few men didn’t hide their sneers as Simon pulled back his hood. “I would think my words would mean so much more considering who I am and where I was.”

  “Were you not their leader only weeks ago?” Gustov asked.

  Simon shrugged. “Things have changed, and I’ve picked my side. How about you?”

  I tensed, watching as Gustov considered Simon’s words. My hands brushed against my gun. Fingers twitched eagerly with the tension hanging in the air. Simon knew better than anyone what Grayson was capable of and the steps she had already taken to make her move. Cytos was no longer safe for humans, Carbons, or Watchers.

  Finally, Gustov inclined his head towards the far end of the warehouse we stood in, to a single door at the back. We followed as he opened the door to a small private office and sat at the large desk. Simon and I stood before him. The tall, skinny man closed the door behind us.

  “I did not think she would make her move so quickly,” Gustov mused.

  “Nor did I, but things are happening fast,” Simon said.

  My eyes flicked between the two men, not wanting to reveal how little I knew. Simon had mentioned just after Governor Wallace’s death that the assassination order most likely came through Grayson. Marc Holden had been on her payroll for a long while, working for her and promising to do her bidding should she find a way to get him the Governor’s chair, and it seemed she found a way.

  “How long?” Gustov asked.

  “Weeks at best,” Simon replied.

  I finally turned to Simon, my brows raised waiting for an explanation.

  “Grayson wants complete control of Cytos. She’s sat in the shadows for far too long while her people suffer. She was one of the few who survived the original… the terror,” Simon stumbled over his own words. “She’s one of the few who remember it.”

  Gustov was the one to answer my questioning look. “Venzier wasn’t built by Carbons looking to take control again. They wanted peace, too.”

  Now, I was thoroughly confused. “Venzier?”

  “It was a hidden city, built under the mountain in the Muted Forest, now within the boundaries of the Void. A place built for Carbons, by Carbons. A refuge of sorts,” Simon said. “After the war, Carbons were left with the reality of what they had done… what we had done. We had killed our friends, our own families. We’d been used as weapons, and humanity had suffered the consequences. Some were unable to cope, many chose death to combat the guilt.”

  Simon shifted on his feet, and his throat bobbed before he continued. “They built the city of Venzier as a way to live out their lives without the constant reminder of what they had been made to do. Thousands of Carbons lived within the mountain, thousands of them trying to move on. Until one day… they were all gone.”

  I scrunched my brow, looking between Gustov and Simon, the latter just as somber as Simon.

  “Gone?”

  “Changed,” Gustov corrected.

  “One night, a black figure entered the city.” Simon gulped. “The Carbons in Venzier knew exactly what it was… a Reek. They existed before the Peace-Making. They killed it before it entered the city walls. Burned its body and any trace of the thing as best they could, but the virus had already swept in, and it took hold like a plague no one had ever seen before.” Simon’s jaw clenched and his fists balled. “The transition was swift, taking hundreds with them in a matter of days. Thousands more in less than a few weeks. There was no way to stop them or the virus from spreading, and no one to control the Reeks from tearing us and everyone else apart, though they tried. Only a few survived, barely escaping the virus before it took every Carbon in sight.”

  “That’s when they put up that wall,” Gustov said. “They thought if they hid what was inside that forest, they could just ignore what it was, what it meant. But as you well know, it’s come back, and it will take everyone with it.”

  “So Grayson was in Venzier? And she survived?” I whispered.

  Simon nodded. “She was one of the few. And she has spent her whole life trying to hide what she found out there, what still lives in the forest. But she no longer can. She’s erased the memories of any Carbons who knew what had happened, even I didn’t remember it until… until a few days ago when you told me what you saw, and all the memories seemed to flood back.”

  “You were there?” I asked. I silently wondered if Em’s dad had ever known of Venzier or if that had been erased from his memory. My guess was on the latter.

  Simon nodded. “Yes, but I didn’t remember. I still don’t remember it all, but every Carbon knew of Venzier when it existed. All memories of that place have since disappeared from existence. Why do you think no one mentioned these things before? You can’t control what others will talk about, so her solution was to make us forget it even happened, and that’s easily done with this damn microchip in our skull that we can’t remove.” Simon brushed his hand to the back of his neck. I knew all about the microchip, it was one of the only ways a Carbon could die, but I hadn’t realized it could still be used to control them as it had before the Peace-Making.

  “And how do you know about all this?” I turned to Gustov.

  He smirked and shrugged a shoulder. “I have a way of finding things out.”

  “What do the Marked kids have to do with all this?” I asked.

  Simon flinched, and his eyes darted to the ground before he shook his head. “I don’t know. The genetic kids have stronger abilities given to them by their Carbon parents, and it would seem an immunity from the virus from their human side.”

  Something in the way Simon shifted on his feet had the hairs on my arms rising. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I wondered if it was the guilt of knowing he’d sent his own son into a place he knew about but had forgotten… or something else. Later, I told myself.

  I was satisfied to see Gustov’s mouth gaped. Finally, something he didn’t already know. “She’s sending… she’s sent children in there?”

  Simon nodded.

  Gustov visibly trembled, and he looked down to his hands. “What’s your plan?” he asked quietly.

  “We want to get those kids out of the Void… all of them,” I said.

  Gustov’s eyes flashed to mine, and he gave a curt nod, sending his cheeks jiggling again. “Then consider us an ally. Whatever information I have that will help is yours, in exchange of course, for what you’ve promised me.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “Even now you seek power?”

  “Always a business man.” Gustov shrugged. “You don’t get to where I am by being soft, even if what she is doing is terrible, someone is bound to profit from it. Why not me?”

  I scowled, balling up my fists to avoid wiping the stupid smirk off his face. But I knew we needed his help, so I swallowed back the rage.

  “Grayson will move quickly. Can we trust you and your men to be ready?” Simon said.

  Gustov gave him a crooked, wide grin. “Of course you can.”

  The walk back to the apartment felt long. The weight of everything I’d found out tonight was heavy on me. Simon had kept things from me… important details.

  Simon could sense my conflicted thoughts. “I didn’t tell you about Venzier because I am still trying to figure it all out. Which memories are real and which are nightmares...”

  “Those things, Reeks, were the citizens of Venzier. Weren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are now—they were all changed, infected.”

  “How did you survive it?”

  Simon shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “She’s managed to keep this a secret for so long. How?” I wondered.

  Simon shrugged. “The best lies have an ounce of truth to them. Grayson told everyone the wall was to preserve our history. She just didn’t mention it was our dark past, not our triumphant victory.”

  I shuddered a breath. “You still should have told me. If we had known Grayson was there—”

  “What?” Simon turned on me. “How would that have changed things? Would you have felt sympathy for her? Would you have understood why she was sending children into the Void to kill those things? Her former friends, her family?”

  I looked away from the hate and rage spreading across his face.

  “My own son is in there. You don’t think I realize who’s responsible for that? You don’t think that despite the history that is a part of me, too, I still want to see them all dead. You think that isn’t something a bit too personal to share with someone who looks down on us Carbons like we chose to be this way?” Simon shook his head and let out a long, shaky breath. “These memories… they haunt me! I don’t need a constant reminder from you of what I should or shouldn’t have done, and what my choices have cost me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Save it,” Simon stopped me. “We’re both in this for our own reasons, and I trust you will do whatever you must to get Caspian back, so just know I will do the same for my son.”

  I clenched my jaw. I would do anything for Caspian.

  As we walked back in silence, the cool night air trailing down my spine, I realized something neither of us would say out loud but both knew to be true. If it came down to it, we would choose our own loved ones over the masses. And we wouldn’t hesitate to do so.

  CASPIAN

  Vic trembled in my arms as I led her to a nearby camp. She felt frighteningly small. These few weeks in the forest had taken a lot from her. I could feel every rib as my hand lightly pressed against her back. Her shoulders were sharp and her cheeks hollow.

  We’d survived two nights in the forest before it was time for her to check in. Vic had refused to enter the camps even just to get a little rest, especially at night. She wouldn’t say why or what had happened, but the haunted look in her eyes told me not to push it. She’d explained that her usual plan was to wait until a camp was empty to enter and check in, though I got the feeling something had happened to cause her not to want to go down there. But now, she was nearly past her check in time, so we headed at dawn to Camp Fifty-Three.

  She dug her heels in at the sight of the steel door in the ground.

  “We just have to check in and clean up, then we can leave, I promise,” I whispered in her ear.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me, a plea in her eyes, before reluctantly she nodded and allowed me to open the hatch and pull her down.

  A few kids were still inside, some just waking up, but as soon as we entered, all eyes turned on us. The smell of the Reek’s blood still lingered on Vic. I led her to the back, ignoring the looks and stares. When I reached the small bathing chamber, I turned on the water, which was ice cold, and began washing off the blood from Vic’s clothes, her hair, and her face. Though the Reek blood had been what kept her alive for so long, she had me now, and she wouldn’t have to go through that process ever again if I could help it. I could see how just this little amount affected her. She stared blankly at the wall in front of her, not daring to look at the people who wouldn’t stop staring at us.

  Someone moved behind me as one of the kids cleared his throat. “She isn’t welcome here,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” I glared over my shoulder.

  Another kid stood up beside him, her eyes were wide and fixed on Vic as she said, “He said she’s not welcome here. Check her in and leave, now.”

  “Or what?” I turned the water off and took my time spinning around to face the now four kids standing before me. One of them was shaking, but I realized quickly it wasn’t from fear of me—it was from Vic.

  “Just… just get her out of here,” a long-nosed, freckle-faced kid said from the back.

  “We’re free to enter any camp we choose. This is neutral space. We all know that. Unless you want to go threatening us some more…” I clicked my fists together and my weapons shot out. Still, the kids didn’t flinch, they didn’t move, not until Vic stood to her feet.

  “Get the hell out!” one shouted, and I scrunched my brow at Vic, looking over my shoulder at her as she placed a small hand on my arm.

  “We should leave,” she whispered.

  “No,” I said firmly. “We’re getting you cleaned up, filling up our supplies, then we’ll leave.”

  “Hah!” the freckled-face kid spat. “Why would you need to refill your supplies? Doesn’t the Ghost have enough from everybody she steals from?”

  “She’s not a Poacher,” I yelled back.

  “No, she’s worse,” the girl said. Her hands still trembled, but she balled them into fists and straightened her spine. “We heard what she did in Camp Eighteen, the kids she murdered and stole from.”

  “I-I didn’t. They attacked me…” Vic stammered.

  “You know what, I don’t give a shit what you guys think. We’re cleaning up, then we’ll be leaving… when we’re good and ready.” I turned back around to restart the water, but Vic grabbed my wrist.

  “Even she knows she’s not welcome here,” a dark-haired boy said, sneering. “Safe zone or not, there are more than a few people willing to break that rule for her.”

  “Is that a threat?” I tilted my head, sizing up this kid who looked half my size and as thin as a twig.

  “It’s a warning,” the kid said, neither balking at my stance, nor my weapons. “When word gets out the Ghost is here, people will drop everything to get revenge on this one. You’re lucky we’re even giving you time to leave rather than locking you guys in and waiting for the rest.”

  “Go ahead, lock us in,” I challenged.

  The girl huffed. “We ain’t idiots. We know what that one’s capable of…” She nodded to Vic behind me, who was now shaking so hard her teeth chattered together.

  “Let’s go,” Vic begged, pulling on my arm like a little child.

  “Fine,” I said under my breath, grabbing a dry, but dirty, towel from the ground and wrapping it around her. The clothes would dry fast, they always did, something in the fabric. But she still shook, though I wasn’t sure it was from the cold.