Page 22

“You’ve never had a phone?” He was genuinely surprised. She’d always refused to give him her number, and he’d assumed it was a brush-off.

She looked embarrassed, a rare crack in her cool exterior. “No.”

Jonah spent that night showing her how to use it, guiding her through the apps and features.

Her eyes lit up when he introduced her to Snapchat filters, and for the first time, she laughed.

The sound was infectious, warming him in a way the fire never could.

He was in deep, he realized. Absolutely whipped for a woman who seemed to live in the shadows.

The nights they spent together in the library became the highlight of his day. Even when Lucas found them one evening, Jonah’s heart racing with fear of getting caught, Ruby had remained cool, staring their superior down until Lucas had backed off with a simple “Y’all have a good night.”

But outside of those nights, Ruby was like a ghost. No matter how much he looked, she was never outside of the room. Not in the dining hall, not in training.

When he woke up some mornings on the couch, the fire long dead, she was always gone.

But she’d always leave something behind.

A blanket draped over him, a new bookmark marking his place in the book, a granola bar or warm cup of coffee waiting for him.

Little gestures that made him smile. It was like she only existed in that room, and he was the only one who got to see her there.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he didn’t care.

He’d take whatever time with her he could get.

Jonah had been psyching himself up for days.

Tonight was the night. He had rehearsed it over and over in his mind—his easy, confident delivery, the small electronic reader tucked into his gym bag like some secret charm.

A gift, a way to make it official. All he had to do was get through today’s training. Then he could finally ask her out.

But as soon as he stepped into the gymnasium, something was off. The air crackled with an odd tension, a palpable energy that made his stomach churn. He nudged one of his roommates, shooting him a questioning look.

“We’re getting a demonstration from a real thermy today,” the guy whispered with a grin, as if it were some thrilling spectacle.

Jonah’s world tilted. His heart thudded painfully in his chest, the word thermy ringing in his ears like a bell.

It was one thing to hear the stories, to let himself believe the TCA’s rhetoric about monsters and the innocents they were supposed to protect.

But this? Seeing one up close, meeting one, it made his skin crawl.

How could he sit in judgment of something that looked so human?

What if, when the moment came, he couldn’t handle it?

His mind raced as his roommate droned on. "Apparently, she’s been trained to be an agent. Can you imagine? One of those freaks, walking around like she’s one of us?”

The room grew silent as Lucas made his way onto the stage, his usual commanding presence silencing any remaining whispers. The excited hum of the other recruits pressed in on Jonah, making it hard to breathe. His hands fisted at his sides.

“Before we begin,” Lucas’s voice carried easily across the crowded gym, “let me remind you that Ruby is an agent. She outranks all of you. Any disrespect will result in immediate dismissal. Am I clear?”

A chorus of "Yes, sir!" echoed through the room, but Jonah couldn’t bring himself to say a word. His stomach twisted into knots. There had to be another explanation. She would’ve told him.

Wouldn’t she?

His breath caught in his throat when she stepped onto the stage.

A tall figure with a sharp bob lifted her chin in quiet defiance.

Her eyes stayed glued to Lucas. Jonah’s heart dropped as her face came into focus.

There was no mistaking her—his Ruby—but her eyes.

.. The familiar veins of a thermophile laced around them, not the usual purple, but a deep, unnerving forest green.

She’s one of them.

The room boiled around him, the crowd pressing in on every side. His legs threatened to give way beneath him.

“Ruby no longer consumes human phlogiston,” Lucas continued. “She’s the only thermophile to have successfully stopped.”

Jonah’s eyes stayed locked on her. Ruby didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge the crowd, didn’t even glance in his direction. If she looked, he’d see through her, see everything she hadn’t told him.

Lucas was saying something else, but Jonah couldn’t hear over the buzzing in his ears.

His mind was stuck on one thing: she hadn’t trusted him.

They’d spent so many nights talking, sharing secrets, and yet she’d kept this from him.

He could feel the betrayal sinking in, cold and bitter, even as part of him understood why.

If he had been a thermophile, hunted by the people he worked with, would he have told anyone?

In a blur of movement, Ruby vanished from the stage, reappearing at the back of the gym in the blink of an eye. The crowd gasped, heads snapping toward her. Jonah hadn’t even seen her move.

Lucas laughed into the microphone. “You won’t be able to outrun a thermophile. Ruby’s speed is exceptional, but even the slowest of them can outpace you.”

Jonah barely registered the words. His chest constricted.

Ruby bent a piece of metal like it was nothing more than paper, then hurled it across the gym, embedding it deep into the brick wall above their heads.

It wasn’t the display of strength that sickened him.

It was the realization that Ruby had been hiding this power, this danger, from him the entire time.

The demonstration ended, and Ruby disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived. She never looked back, never sought him out in the crowd.

He waited for her that night. And the next. Each time, he told himself she’d show up, that she’d explain everything, and somehow, it would make sense. But each morning he woke in an empty library, a new blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

By the fifth night, his patience was frayed. He needed answers. It took some doing, but he finally wheedled Ruby’s quarters’ location from one of the more talkative officers. Her room was tucked away on a different floor, surrounded by two security checkpoints and a door that required ID.

When he knocked, she opened the door, looking disheveled, her hair messy and her sweatpants slung low on her hips. “Lucas, I told you I—”

“You could have told me.” Jonah’s voice was harder than he planned as he pushed his way inside.

Ruby blinked, startled, but she didn’t step back. “I didn’t want you to look at me any differently,” she whispered.

Jonah’s throat tightened. He hated how fragile she sounded, how the cool, sharp-edged Ruby he’d come to know was now... this. He wanted to say something, anything, to make her understand how much she meant to him, how much this hurt. But the words wouldn’t come.

Instead, he pulled her into his arms, and for the briefest of moments, she let him. She let him hold her. He fought against his exhaustion as long as he could, but eventually dozed off.

When he woke, Ruby was gone. Again.

He groped through her sheets for his phone, wincing as the bright screen lit up the dark room.

Dozens of notifications glared back at him.

He sat up, forcing his eyes to adjust. His sister had called him probably ten times while he slept.

He scrolled through message after message, half of which made no sense, random letters sent in a panic, while the other half begged him to answer his phone.

They stopped around five in the morning, total silence after two and a half hours of nonstop contact.

He immediately tried to call her back, but it went straight to voicemail. A call to his parents yielded the same. He left four panicked voicemails before his phone lit up with a call from an unknown number.

“Good morning, we’re looking for a legal guardian or immediate family member of…”

His sister was dead.

Jonah’s knees buckled as he listened to the words, the details slipping past him in a blur. A thermophile had burned her alive after turning her boyfriend. He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.

The days that followed were a haze of anger and grief. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t feel. He needed to get away. To quit. To find Edward, the thermophile responsible. To make someone pay.

Lucas stopped him before he could walk out the door, offering him a different position, something to keep him from losing himself completely while allowing him the flexibility to find Edward.

He’d be on camera, looking for human criminals.

It was stupid, a ridiculous idea concocted only to keep him within the TCA.

“This job will keep you safe,” Lucas insisted. Jonah hadn’t bothered to ask “from who?” It would only take a day for the real secrets, the real danger to emerge.

Ruby tried to call. Several times. But the anger was too raw, too consuming. He couldn’t stand the thought of her. Hundreds. Lucas had said she’d killed hundreds, maybe even more. Hundreds like his sister.

And yet, he left the ebook reader, wrapped in its gift bag, on her bed.

His hand shook as he stared at his phone, her name lighting up the screen one last time before he hit block. Then, with a breath that tore him apart, he buried it all—his feelings, his grief, his guilt—and got to work.