Page 128 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twelve

Riva

N adia bobs on the balls of her feet in the grass, her latest neon T-shirt flashing under the sunlight in the yard. “I can’t wait until I can get out there on a mission. They only let the non-Firsts who’ve already done a lot of fieldwork join in for that one.”

I look up at her from where I’ve been stretching out my legs on the grass. The morning’s exercise hasn’t done anything to loosen the knot in my gut that’s lingered since my talk with Clancy yesterday.

“You wouldn’t want to go until you’re definitely ready anyway,” I say, not knowing what else to tell her.

You shouldn’t want to go at all. Clancy’s just using us. And I don’t know how much worse it could get.

What would be the consequences of laying out the things I’ve discovered? Before I left Clancy’s office, he warned Jacob and me to keep what we’d learned to ourselves… or we wouldn’t get the chance to work with the other shadowbloods at all.

He’s got his guardians watching us, I’m sure. How much could I even tell Nadia or the rest of them before I got dragged away?

I need to keep training, keep watching, and figure out a way to actually get us out of here. None of the rest matters as long as Clancy’s calling the shots.

Nadia lets out a huff and swipes the short strands of her thick black hair back from her face. “I guess not. But even if it is nicer here than it was in the old facility, I want to see more of what’s out there.”

My chest constricts, knowing that longing for freedom so well. “Yeah. You’ll get there.”

On my terms rather than Clancy’s, if I can manage it.

The carnage from the photos he showed me of the last kids we tried to rescue flashes through my mind, and the knots in my gut pull tighter. My terms have to be safer this time.

Booker saunters over from where he just finished a round of strength training. “When they send you on one of those missions, you’ll have to trade in the neon for stealth-wear. Are you sure you can handle that?”

Nadia rolls her eyes at his teasing, but a hint of a blush appears on her brown cheeks at the same time. “Maybe, maybe not. My whole job is lighting things up.”

Her words tickle my curiosity. “That’s your shadowblood power?”

She nods and picks up the jump rope she brought out for an aerobics workout. “I’m a human glowworm. Lucky me.”

She flips the rope over her head and starts up a brisk rhythm, moving her feet back and forth rather than simply keeping them in place. A shimmer appears beneath her skin.

Within a matter of seconds, the glow has risen to the surface, shining off her as if she’s a signal beacon.

Booker laughs and claps his hands in approval. “We’ll never get lost in the dark with you around, anyway.”

As I get up, planning on taking another run through the stealth course—since stealth is definitely going to be key in working around Clancy’s security systems—Booker glances at me. “The mission went okay, didn’t it? You’re all right?”

I hesitate, startled. The questions are perfectly straightforward, but his concern sounds genuine.

What’s the best way to answer? I roll the words around in my mouth. “Things got more complicated than we expected. I’m still figuring out how I feel about that. Why? Did you hear something from Celine’s group?”

Did the younger shadowbloods who came along pick up on something being off even though we never said as much in front of them?

But Booker shakes his head with a flash of sunlight off his pale hair. “Nah. Just your vibe.” He waves vaguely around my body. “I see auras, basically. Like a haze that gives an idea of where a person’s at, physically and mentally. Yours looks kind of uneasy.”

Oh, shit. I had no idea he could pick up on my internal state while I’ve been doing my best to put a good face forward.

“I’m still not totally used to the whole setup here,” I say in the best explanation I can give. “This island isn’t where I was planning on ending up.”

He lets out another chuckle. “Yeah, I guess that’s the same for all of us.”

Nadia pauses in her rope-jumping. Booker bumps his knuckles against her shoulder in a playful but affectionate gesture. “I’m going to go tackle the ropes. See you around, Glowworm.”

She watches him go, the rope swaying in her hands. I recognize the longing in her expression, all the way down to my bones.

“Were you in the same facility before?”

Nadia jerks her gaze back to me with an embarrassed purse of her lips. “Some of the time, anyway. When we were kids. There was a point when they started only letting girls train with other girls—and the guys with the guys. Until now.”

A chill washes over me. That might be kind of my fault too.

When my guys and I tried to escape the first time, one of the guardians who caught me said something about it being a mistake to include a “female” in the mix. Maybe they figured the emotional connections forming between us had given us extra motivation to want to get out.

Apparently once they came to that conclusion, they applied their new principles to the younger shadowbloods.

“I’m sorry,” I can’t help saying.

Nadia shrugs. “Maybe it was better like that. It’s not like anything could have happened in the kind of place we were before. I mean…” She trails off awkwardly, tensing as if she expects me to mock her for her romantic aspirations.

I don’t really know how to do this whole role-model thing. I’m only four years older than her, barely more experienced.

But I want to be something like that for her and all the other shadowbloods. If the guys and I are blood, then we’re connected to the rest of them too, if not quite as closely.

There’s no one else in the whole world who could really understand what we’ve been through.

I offer her the best smile I can. “I know. I’ve been there. We’ll get a real life eventually, where everything’s… a little easier.”

God, I hope I can fulfill that promise. Especially after the way she smiles back at me after my encouragement.

Another swell of cold wraps around my stomach. What if I end up leading them to their deaths instead?

Before I can shake off the thought and head over to the course like I intended, a couple of guardians jog down the mountainside steps.

Their slacks shift with their brisk movements, and for the first time I notice a glimpse of a monitoring band around the man’s ankle, just like the ones Clancy had us all wear on the mission.

The ones he made a point of taking off us when we returned. But the guardians wear them?

Understanding hits me like a slap to the face.

Clancy’s monitoring the guardians—so that he knows immediately if any of us tries to hurt them. If I went on a rampage out here and slaughtered these two, no doubt an alarm would go off somewhere and the whole place would be locked down before I could get any farther.

Knowing the guardians are okay is more useful to him than tracking our exact movements when we’re confined to the valley anyway.

They let us shadowbloods go without those anklets to give us the illusion of freedom. The guardians don’t need the illusion, because they know they’re actually free.

All more of his manipulative lies.

As the two guardians stride toward me, I force my hands to unclench. It’s clear from their gazes that I’m their intended target.

I move forward instinctively to meet them before they get closer to Nadia, even though I’m not really sure what I’d be shielding her from.

She and the other younger ones haven’t had to see half of what the rest of us have. Haven’t had to do what we’ve been forced to in order to survive.

And I’d rather keep it that way if I possibly can.

“We’ve got a different task for you, inside,” one of the guardians says with a jerk of her thumb toward the facility.

I frown. “Right now? I thought I had the whole morning out here.”

The other guardian rests his hands on his hips—by his electrified baton. “Change of plans. Clancy’s orders.”

A prickle of apprehension runs down my back, but I nod and go with them. Let’s find out what the man in charge wants from me today.

The guardians lead me to a different part of the facility than the areas I’ve become familiar with. In a small room with a vaguely medical vibe, they have me take off my running shoes.

Then they wrap a band around each of my arms, just below the sleeve of my T-shirt. The outer material feels like fleece, but something more solid presses against my skin from within.

As they click into place, tiny bumps jut out against my skin with a faint prick that fades away almost instantly.

I study the gray fabric warily. “What are these for?”

“Monitoring equipment,” the woman says. “They give a closer look at your internal state, but you’ll forget they’re even there.”

I find that hard to believe. And something about her phrasing sets off a sharper alarm bell in my head.

The man opens a door at the other side of the room and ushers me into a slightly larger space. The door thumps shut the second I’ve stepped over the threshold.

Zian turns at the sound where he’s standing at the far end of the room, his expression uncertain. Other than him, the room holds only a shag rug, a polka dot loveseat, and a double bed with two pillows and a duvet, all lit by a soft glow from the panel set in the ceiling.

My entire body is jittering with discomfort now. Something about this whole scenario feels way too wrong.

I glance at Zian, noting the matching bands against the peachy-brown skin of his bulging biceps. “Do you have any idea what this is about?”

He shakes his head, his mouth tight. “They didn’t tell me anything. I don’t get it.”

I’m starting to wonder if anyone else from our original group will be sent in to join us when Clancy’s voice warbles from a speaker set somewhere in the walls.

“It looks like we’re all set up now. Why don’t you two get comfortable? You can take things at your own pace, although of course the faster you move things along, the sooner you can go back to your typical day.”