Page 64 of Broken Ties

Nature has tried to take back this place from the horrors of what happened here, but the evidence still juts out of the grass and weeds. They could be rocks. If you had no experience with violence and passed by quickly, I’m sure you could convince yourself it’s a rubble pit. The nightmares would come later, after your brain processes the fleeting images and tries to file themaway. I don’t have the luxury of ignorance, so the longer I stare, the more I see and the worse it gets.

A pit of bones.

Stacked in piles, very obviously done while there was still flesh attached, and by the way the bones have scattered some, I’d guess they were once very orderly rows of corpses. Though bones are far less offensive than fresh bodies, or decomposing ones, the longer I look at the mounds of white, the more horrifying it becomes. I’m no expert in archaeological recovery, but there are very obvious markers for a general gauge on the body count I’m looking at.

There arehundredsof skulls.

I was expecting bodies—with Nox’s reaction, I was dreading the inevitability that it was children. In the short amount of time I had to speculate, a slideshow of the nightmares I’ve seen while working against the Resistance flicked through my mind and I’d steeled myself against the worst of it, but this is something else entirely.

“They all died at the same time.”

I can’t pry my eyes away from the field of jagged white remains as I reply, “How can you be sure? Is there… something I’m missing? We’d know if this many Gifted disappeared at once.”

His eyes flash to black, but the nightmare creature that pops out from behind his ear sits obediently at his feet, as though even it is reluctant to touch anything in that pit. I’ve seen those beasts carve their way through people, their own and the Resistance’s offerings, and they’ve never faltered before.

It sits as still as death.

“Gabe.”

I scowl down at the bones, thrown by the sudden change in topic. “What?”

Nox continues in that same blank voice, “It was the numbers his cousin gave him that led me here. I figured out they were coordinates, dates, and times. I have no idea how the kid got a hold of them, we need to question himimmediately, but they corresponded with the Magnifier attacks… all but one.”

He crouches down at the edge, getting a closer look at one of the piles stacked high, his head tilting like he’s seeing something I’m clearly not. “I trust Black, but not enough to risk Gabe. This is something bigger than anything else we’ve seen so far. This is… what the Resistance are planning for us all.”

I don’t know how he’s so certain of that despite my own reaction to it, but he refuses to say anything else. I walk the perimeter of the ditch, finding pockets among the white stacks that only add to the death count. It is very quickly apparent that there’s no point trying to make a count as the bones are stacked, nature reclaiming them and obscuring how far down the piles go.

It takes an hour for Black to get back, North appearing along with him still dressed in his suit but with a Tac vest strapped over top and a helmet flattening his perfectly coiffed Councilman hair. There’s a sour look on his face, like there’s a stink in the air he can’t ignore, but he thanks my Second with a nod before he stalks over.

I meet him in the middle.

He gives me a look I know well enough, and I reach out to him with my Gift, only to find his words already waiting irately for me there.

We agreed to ground all scouting missions.

Black is the only person here outside of our Bond Group to overhear us and this doesn’t pose a risk to any of us, so I reply out loud, “Nox found something else hidden in the intel around the Gifted and I agreed it was worth looking into. Thisdoesn’t compromise any of the safety concerns that called off the TacTeams.”

Nox’s lip curls for the first time in my presence today and he snaps at his brother, “This has nothing to do with your precious little Bond. The entire world doesn’t revolve around her—just yours.Pathetic.”

He stalks off back toward the overgrown pit. North watches him for a minute before he shoots me a look.I was trying to avoid setting him off.

I give him one back. “And I’m not. Either change your approach with him or deal with the consequences of me doing it instead, because I’m done tiptoeing around just so my Bond can bear the brunt of his trauma. Fuck. Just—come and look at this, North, before all hell breaks loose.”

Without waiting for a response, I follow Nox’s path down to the pit to look over the fragments of bones jutting up out of the earth. I’m not the scholar either of the Dravens are, but I’ve seen enough dead bodies in the Wastelands over the years to know that we’re looking at a mass burial like we’ve never encountered before. God only knows how deep it goes down, how many layers there are, how wide it stretches out.

My chest tightens.

North walks up to join us, leaving Black at the top of the hill to keep watch. There’s no one nearby that my Gift can detect, and none of Nox’s nightmare creatures have flagged anything, so my Second is no doubt giving us some space to argue without an audience. He’s good like that.

After a moment of silence, Nox finally speaks, “My bond reacted to this.”

There’s nothing about those words that should send chills down my spine, but the way Nox says them in that carefully blank tone sure does.

I glance over to find his eyes have voided out again, and it hits me that it’s his Gift that’s telling him all of the information I can’t see; a Death Dealer viewing carnage and recognizing something within it.

My gut churns, but I don’t know if it’s fear, uncertainty, or disgust that the Resistance has stooped this low.

I’ve never looked inside Nox’s head before. I’ve prised my way into North’s head, but only with his permission—or urging, more like, because he was determined to help me gain full control of my Gift and wield it to its full potential against our enemies.