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And very dangerous.

Onyx had been transferred to a different facility before the other test subjects had staged the breakout that resulted in Maya coming to Yveswich. What had prompted the transfer was…concerning.

“He lost control,” Maya was saying. “One day, he just…snapped. He killed twelve members of the staff and injured at least five others. Killed a few test subjects, too. The orderlies determined him too unstable to stay, so they made the decision to transfer him. They manacled and muzzled him, as if he were a rabid dog. I saw him from the window in my room the day theyparaded him by in chains. The look in his eyes when he stared in at me…” She paled. “I’ve never forgotten it.”

Magenta sat quietly beside her, staring at the patterned carpet with glassy eyes. She looked like she might throw up.

“Muzzled?” Travis murmured. “Why the muzzle?” Max knew precisely why he was asking.

“He bit all of the victims,” Maya answered. “Mauled them to death—as if he were a bear or a lion.”

Travis shared a glance with Max. Then Jewels. The Reaper looked deeply disturbed by what she was being told.

Maya continued. “We never saw or heard from him again, until we made it to Yveswich. He found us at the apartment building we were staying at. Where you found us,” she said to Max. “I was nervous about him being around us, but he insisted that he was fixed. That whatever was wrong with him had been…fixed,” she said again, as if that explained anything about this mess.“Curedmight be a better word. Anyway, I worried he was keeping secrets from us, but being alone as we were and having nowhere to go, we chose to trust him.” Her throat shifted with a swallow. “It was a mistake.”

“You said he killed Aurora,” Max prompted. “Did you see it happen?”

Her eyes—glowing like embers—lifted to his. “I wish I hadn’t,” she whispered hoarsely. A single glowing tear slipped down her cheek. She scrubbed it away.

“I know this is hard,” Dallas said gently. Maya looked at her with reluctance. “But can you tell us exactly what happened?”

Max added, “What did he look like? When it happened, I mean.”

“A monster.” Maya’s voice quavered. Her chin did, too. “His eyes were black, like ours, but…there were thin lines in the skin around his eyes.” She gestured to her under-eyes, brows, and temples. “We heard Aurora screaming, and we ran to help her.By the time we got to her, she was already dead—” She broke off with a ragged inhale.

Everyone gave her a few minutes to compose herself. Beside her, Magenta wept in silence, her arms hugging her knees.

Max felt a shred of sympathy. She was only a little girl. Only a couple of years older than Paxton. Fourteen, maybe. Too young for all of this.

“Has Onyx ever taken drugs?” Max asked.

Maya blinked another incandescent tear free. “What do you mean?” she sniffed.

“Street drugs. Like Venom, Stygian salts, Black Crystal, Trip, Devil’s Chalk, Malice.”

“I mean…anything’s possible. They had us on all sorts of things at the Facility.”

Dominic said, “I highly doubt they had you on street drugs. As bad as those assholes are, killing their test subjects with addiction and overdose doesn’t seem like something they’d do.” Max had to agree. They would seek to protect their investments, not destroy them.

“What about after?” Max asked Maya. “When he found you here, did you see him using any eye drops? Snorting anything?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Hmm.

Travis piped up. “There’s something I’d like to know. When we found Blue, the only language she knew was Ilevyn. So how are you talking to us right now?”

Blue was the one who answered him. “Scarlet—” She paused to correct herself. “Sorry, I mean Maya?—”

But Maya said, “Scarlet is fine. You can call me Scarlet.” Her eyes swept about the group, making it clear that Scarlet was the name she preferred to be called by.

Max tried not to frown. Dal’s eyes—soft with empathy—met his.

“Brainwashing didn’t work on every patient,” Blue explained. While her accent was still heavy, she was pretty fluent in their tongue, all her lessons with Dominic paying off. “Scarlet managed to hide it from them. It’s why she can still remember Maximus.”

Max met his sister’s blazing eyes.

Maya—Scarlet—cleared her throat. “Aurora is the reason why Magenta has all her memories back. She healed everyone after we escaped the Facility. Our friends who died in the tunnels… She’d healed them, too. Restored everything they had forgotten.”