I rolled my eyes again, but Theo caught my wrist before I thought about moving it. “Honestly, why do you even give her a second glance? You’re better than that, Sienna,” Theo said.

  Vic had been quiet to my left, not one to step in during a fight. “She deserves every rotten word Sienna has for her. Don’t defend someone like that.”

  Theo shook his head. “Sometimes not saying anything gets under people’s skin more than responding does. She’s looking for a reaction, and that’s exactly what you gave her. It’s what you always give her.”

  Theo was right. Of course, he was right. She wanted a reaction, and I was always happy to oblige because I couldn’t just stand there and take it. That wasn’t my personality. Never was, never will be.

  “Next time, let me get my hands on her, and I promise I won’t say a word. I’ll just let my fists do the talking.” I smirked.

  Theo leaned in closer to me and whispered, “We all know those fists do enough talking as it is…Blaze.”

  I swallowed hard as I leaned back in my chair, but I didn’t say another word. Vic gave me a pointed look before Instructor Yarik returned, and we all quietly went back to our assignment.

  Running my mouth was like a hobby for me, but what would happen when I did that outside of here? What would it mean when the threat of a strike on my forearm was no longer the worst thing that could happen?

  The rest of the day blurred by, and I had a hard time focusing on actual schoolwork. I was too busy thinking about the explosion and what Camilla said. I had to be smarter outside of the DEZ if I wanted to provide a proper life for Vic and me, and that wasn’t going to happen if I continued to mouth off to everyone.

  We had just sat down for supper when the dining hall doors slammed open, and four guards filed in. They took up position on either side of the doors, guns ready at their side. When the doors opened again, two familiar faces walked through. The first was Instructor Yarik, her mouth in its usual stern grimace. The second was someone I had only seen in person once, but we all knew who it was.

  Scrapes of chairs echoed as we all stood to address the Carbon Governor of our city. She had a kind face, a slender body, and rose-blonde hair pulled back into a low bun. She waved us all to sit back down and we did, though our postures were much more attentive and rigid than a few minutes before.

  “Hello, children. As you all may know, I am Governor Grayson. My counterpart, Governor Wallace, sends his regards.” The Governor Representative of the humans sending his regards to a bunch of Marked kids? I doubted that. “I am here to congratulate each of you on completing your years of training here in the DEZ, and welcome you to join our society as an equal representation both for the Carbons and the Humans.”

  I shifted in my seat for a moment before Vic’s hand gripped mine, and I relaxed a little. I always hated when people pointed out we were both Carbon and Human…made from both, yet not quite either of them. I preferred to think of myself as something else altogether. Something better than this life we were forced into.

  “In only a few short months, you will leave the DEZ and join the world as full-fledged citizens.” Governor Grayson paused, as if waiting for us all to cheer, but she was met with silence. She cleared her throat. “The graduation phase will be done slowly and in stages, different than the usual protocols due to a few changes we’re implementing. These changes will benefit both you and the citizens of Cytos equally.”

  A quiet murmur of apprehension moved through the room. Instructor Yarik stomped a foot hard on the ground, and the room fell silent again.

  “You will be released in pairs, two at a time, over a span of a few weeks.” My heart stopped dead, and Vic’s grip tightened on my hand. In the chair across from me, Theo’s gaze caught mine, and his eyebrows were crossed with concern and confusion. “Instructor Yarik will let everyone know tomorrow the pairings and times you will be graduating based on who is ready first and who needs a little more…guidance.” Governor Grayson nodded to Instructor Yarik, who didn’t move a muscle in response. Our stoic instructor looked, for the first time, rattled. “I wish you all a happy graduation and a peace-filled life.”

  The guards snapped into position and swiftly left the room, taking Grayson and Yarik with them, along with the air from my lungs.

  “They’ll pair us together. I know they will,” Vic reassured me.

  Pure panic and fear filled my senses, and I couldn’t shake them off. I blinked rapidly, as if this vision would go away, as if this was all a nightmare.

  I glanced up at Vic, and though her words sounded brave, she looked anything but. She wasn’t the strong one; she wasn’t the valiant one in our group. I was. So, I set my jaw and gave my shoulders a little shrug.

  “Doesn’t matter either way. Even if we don’t go out together, we’re both leaving this hellhole soon, and if we have to wait a few weeks to see each other again, it’ll be fine. I’ll have everything set up for us. We’ll be just fine.” My voice cracked a little on the last fine, as if even I didn’t believe myself. But Vic did. Her shoulders softened a little as she went back to her supper.

  Across the table, Theo watched me. His brow was pinched and the look in his eyes echoed the same thoughts going through my mind. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t protocol. Around here, any change out of the ordinary didn’t bode well for us Marked Kids.

  Things were not fine.

  Chapter 6

  Jayla

  Two days later and I could still feel the blood that had coated my hands. I couldn’t scrub hard enough to get the image of those broken bodies, torn apart from the blast at the Genetics Lab, from my mind. Only two people had been killed but dozens were injured. Their screams still woke me up at night.

  It was much different to see the blood of the innocent versus the blood of my enemy. And though I’d seen worse, done worse, I couldn’t shake off what had happened.

  Sunlight leaked into the massive space of my penthouse apartment. The wall of windows looking out to downtown Cytos revealed busy streets filled with people going about their regular routines. Emery was sprawled across an oversized chair, one leg kicked over the armrest while she played with a long strand of hair. Her toes danced to an invisible beat in her head.

  I sat in an identical chair surrounding a large glass coffee table across from a couch fit for an entire household. It was just Emery and me, though.

  I’d inherited this place when my mom passed a few years back. She had gotten it from her mother. My family came from money I never saw made, but I enjoyed spending it, nonetheless. The marble floors and velvet drapes were one of the many luxuries that were a testament to that.

  “Bored?” Emery asked, glancing up with cat-like eyes, the gold flecks appearing almost as though they moved when she narrowed them on me. After two years with Em, it still was hard getting used to how perfect she was. That’s what you get when you partner with a genetic kid, though.

  “Incredibly,” I huffed, throwing my head back dramatically. “When did Cas say he’d be back?”

  “You were there. Why are you asking me?” Emery drawled before returning her attention to the ends of her hair.

  I sighed. “You know, as my Second in Command, you’re a bit of a headache sometimes.” I pushed out of the chair and stalked into the open kitchen, filling a glass with water before chugging it all in one swig. Emery shrugged.

  Despite her devastatingly beautiful exterior, Em was an assassin in disguise. She was the fiercest fighter I’d ever seen, and I wasn’t too proud to admit that in a match, she would beat me nine times out of ten. The single win I’d get would come from trickery, not talent. I was skilled myself, quite skilled, but she was better. Though her quick temper and snippy remarks got on most people’s nerves, especially Caspian’s, she was loyal and true. I trusted her with my life.

  “He’s an hour late,” I said.

  “Oh, so you do know when he was supposed to arrive.” Em smirked.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t like it when he’s late.”

  “Of course, you don’t.” Emery gave me a knowing look. Her smooth voice filled with amusement. “I can’t decide which sickens me more: that you won’t admit why you miss him, or the fact you have the capacity to miss him at all.”

  I glared at Emery, slumping back down in the oversized chair, not deeming her question worthy of an answer. Not that I knew the answer anyway.

  Caspian and I had a…weird relationship. It wasn’t a real relationship, at least not in the physical sense. We hadn’t ventured into that side of things yet, but the lines we crossed were pretty damn close and dangerous indeed. We toed the line between friends and lovers more often than I could count.

  But I couldn’t be with anyone that way; it just wasn’t in my future, as far as I could see. I was fine with the teasing, the flirting, but anything more was too much for me. I’d had lovers and so had Caspian, but a relationship was more—it was risky.

  I came from a long line of devastated relationships, and I’d rather not add his name to that list. My parents were insanely in love, inseparable I was told, but before my first birthday, my father was killed in a SPAC accident. I never knew him. My grandparents on my dad’s side split up when he was young and developed a passionate hate for each other. They both were so shocked by their son’s death they couldn’t even bear to see their own granddaughter without memories of him bringing back the pain. I’d only met them twice, the most recent time being when we buried my mom next to my dad.

  My mom didn’t talk much about her parents. The most I knew was my grandmother was a Carbon and grandfather a humanoid, half bot, half human. He was the first and only of his kind from before the Peace-Making. They had the kind of love you’d hear about in fairy tales, fate bound and devastatingly beautiful. But when my grandfather died of natural causes at an old age, my grandmother chose to go with him, ending her Carbon life forever.

  My mother never forgave her for leaving her alone. They were both gone long before I was born, but their story only taught me one thing: love could be beautiful, but only if you could hold onto it. And I knew, in my life, I would only lose the people I loved if I allowed myself that bit of hope, so I focused on protecting Cytos and being the best Watcher there was.

  Not many Watchers protected Cytos. We all worked with our own teams in our own quadrants, but we answered to one woman, one leader: Commander Reyes. She led our team of shadows, and we protected the city from the ever-present enemy not many knew existed.

  The door slammed open and I jumped, lost in my own thoughts. Caspian strolled in, his usual swagger on display with each step. “Waiting for me?”

  “What took you so long?” I demanded, storming towards him.

  He gave me a smooth grin. “What, did you miss me?” I rolled my eyes. “She missed me, didn’t she, Em?”

  “As always,” Emery said with a bored tone.

  “Shut up and tell me you got it.” I held out my hand.

  Cas took his time reaching into his pocket, keeping his smooth gaze on me as he passed me the thumb drive. His striking, teal-blue eyes watched for a reaction as his hand lingered on mine for a moment longer than it should have. I pulled it away fast to avoid letting the warmth of him seep in or a heat to bloom on my cheeks.

  Even though he wasn’t a genetic kid, it was hard to deny his striking features. He had the warm, brown skin tone of his mother—or so he was told, he’d never met her—and the teal-blue eyes of his father. Together, they created a conflicting picture both mesmerizing and haunting all at once.

  I looked away. “Any difficulties?” I asked, as I moved to my tablet and pushed the thumb drive in. The tablet flickered on, and a three-dimensional building popped up on my Linked system, a hologram I could move and turn as I needed.

  “None whatsoever.” Cas took a casual seat on the armrest of my chair, and I tried to ignore how close he was with the scent of the fresh outdoors wafting from him.

  Emery swung her leg around and faced the Linked image. It was the outside blueprint layouts of the Genetics Lab destroyed two days ago. I had sent Caspian in to retrieve it from the city files manager. He was my best negotiator and a shameless flirt, so it helped that the attendant was a pretty, single female willing to do anything for a compliment from someone like Cas.

  “What are we looking for?” Caspian asked.

  “A reason to blow up this building, and something that might have gone missing.” I twisted the image around with the flick of my wrist and began zooming in on each level, checking each marked room.

  “That one.” Emery pointed to an unmarked room at the end of the fourth floor. It was small and encased in a lot more cement and steel reinforcement than any other room. It appeared to be about the size of a coat closet.

  When I tried to access the room, the system wouldn’t let me, and a warning this was an unauthorized space flashed across the image. “That’s weird.” I tried again but was still denied access.

  “Pull up the cameras from the explosion,” Emery said, and I pulled out the thumb drive, replacing it with another featuring footage of the blast from a camera bot a block away. We had been over the footage more than once and so far hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. No one had entered the building before the blast, and no one had left after it exploded.

  The image pulled up on the Linked system another 3D version of the building, but this time the image was in full color lit up with the neon night lights of Cytos.

  “Go forward past the explosion, just a few minutes.”

  I did as Emery asked, watching her eyes scour through the video. The explosion made me flinch, even after the twentieth time seeing it. First Responder Bots arrived next, pulling off heavy chunks of cement from the bodies trapped underneath. My own image appeared from the shadows helping pull people out as the fire burned hot into the night sky.

  Then, I saw it. And so did Emery.

  “Go back.”

  I rewound only a few seconds and replayed the image. In the far corner on the east side of the building where the mystery room was located, a figure could be seen pulling debris out of the way. But they weren’t there to look for survivors; they were digging out the area around a steel box. The box appeared large enough to fit maybe one person inside. The figure must have been a Carbon, the only known being with the strength to do what we saw next. Once they cleared enough space around the front, the figure ripped the thick steel door clean off its hinges, tossing it aside as if it were no heavier than a paperweight.

  The Carbon reached inside the steel box and pulled out a small tablet they swiftly tucked into their jacket before running out of view, unseen by anyone else around.

  “How did we miss that before?” I mumbled, as I rewound and watched once again.

  “They looked like they were helping,” Cas whispered at my side.

  “Whatever it took was worth killing for, worth blowing up an entire block almost,” Emery stated. “We need to find out what was in there.”

  “I’ll check it out tonight,” I said solemnly.

  “I’ll come with you,” Cas offered.

  “No,” I said, turning to him and Emery. “I need you two for something else.”

  It was nearly morning by the time I returned from searching the blast site. Caspian was still awake when I arrived. Emery was sprawled across the couch fast asleep.

  “Find anything?” Caspian asked.

  I nodded before I inclined my head to the hallway where we wouldn’t wake Em. The entire floor was owned by me. The two-bedroom apartment Emery and I lived in mirrored the other across the hall, filling the entire penthouse floor. Caspian occupied that apartment alone, although he spent most of his time with us.

  He closed the door softly behind him before leaning against the wall. His hands were shoved in his pockets as he watched me pace back and forth.

  “The DEZ,” I started.

  Caspian waited for me to continue as my pacing increased. The movement soothed me, helped me sort through all the information I had discovered, and what it all meant.

  Finally, I stopped in front of him. “That tablet held all the records of every Marked kid in the DEZ.”

  “What would anyone want with that?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “But until I find out, I think it’s best we don’t tell Em.”

  Cas nodded, knowing she wouldn’t take the news well, and would likely murder every last person we found involved in this. Not that I’d blame her.

  Emery herself was a genetic kid, but she was a Pur. She hadn’t grown up in the DEZ. Her sister, however, had. She hadn’t even known she had a sister until her death made the LinkedNews. An unfortunate accident the DEZ had wished to keep secret, but you couldn’t hide a public execution from that many eyes.

  The news claimed a Marked kid in the DEZ had gone crazy one day for no particular reason and had killed five Carbon officers before one of the guards took her down trying to escape. It was broad daylight when this happened, and more than a few witnesses caught the entire thing on camera. The DEZ couldn’t hide what they’d done, and Em couldn’t stop seeing that image every day since. Sometimes, I heard her screaming in her sleep, calling out for them to stop, to not shoot. I tried waking her once before and nearly lost my own head in the process.

  I knew what her nightmares were filled with because I saw her sister on the Linkednews that day nearly five years ago, long before I ever met Em. When we’d met at Watchers Headquarters for the first time, I nearly thought she was a ghost, and it took a long time before Em explained to me, the girl we’d seen die right before our eyes wasn’t her, but the identical twin sister she hadn’t known she had.

  She’d sought out answers ever since. Her own parents had no knowledge of another child, but the resemblance could not be sloughed off as a coincidence.

  “Did you get an answer for me?” I changed the subject, moving on to the task I had given Emery and Caspian for the evening.