Page 19 of Silver Elite

Our shielding classes continue to make me feel exposed. It’s as if every question asked, every piece of information provided, is a direct attack on me.

“Can they read your mind if you’re not in the same room?” asks a recruit named Minh.

Tyler Struck shakes her head. “No. You need to be sharing the same energy space.”

“But they communicate telepathically over long distances.”

“Telepathy is different than mind reading. Once a telepathic link is formed, they can access it from anywhere. But the initial link must be established in person.”

Not always. Wolf and I linked spontaneously when we were kids in two different wards. Total strangers.

I’m not sharing with the class, though. I might be reckless, but I’m not stupid. I’m not giving these people ammunition they can use against me.

At the conclusion of each class, the Modified woman, Amira, appears to test our shields. Her presence has become easier for my fellows to stomach. Except for Bryce. Whenever Amira walks through that door, Bryce’s faces puckers like she just bit into a lemon, as if she’s appalled to be subjected to such atrocities. She’s probably already lodged a complaint with her high-clearance father.

Me, I’m busy battling the impulse to reach out every time I see Amira. The temptation to link with the other Mod remains strong.

After dinner, Lyddie drags me into the common room for a study session, keeping her promise to help me raise my scores. I feel guilty that she’s investing so much time and effort into me when I’m trying to fail. Though if I’m being honest, the reason I’m doing so terribly on my tests isn’t entirely due to self-sabotage.

I’m an intelligent person. Observant. Strategic. I’ve got an excellent memory—I can take one look at the north pasture on my ranch and tell you if one blade of grass is out of place. But force me to memorize codes and coordinates and military jargon, and it all bleeds together into one boring jumble. I’ve never been good at staring at screens.

Lyddie enlists Kaine, Lash, and Betima to study with us tonight. Because “the more minds, the more knowledge.” One of the many nuggets of De Velde wisdom. As obnoxious as she can be, I can’t deny she’s growing on me.

I’ve had Prime friends before. It’s not as if Tana and I isolated ourselves in Hamlett and never spoke to a single Prime classmate. I’ve slept with Prime men. Exclusively, in fact.

But there’s something different about befriending a Prime here. In a place that is designed to hunt, locate, and punish people like me.

We have another codes test tomorrow morning. Every Command installation is tagged with its own code. Red Post is P12. The weapons depot in Ward F is AF6. The airfield near the Blacklands is T299. I didn’t realize how many outposts, depots, and airfields there actually are on the Continent, and I resent the fact that the Uprising continues to shut me out when I could be helping them, damn it.

“Whoa, there’s a Silver Block outpost at the South Port,” Lyddie exclaims, staring at her source. “That’s where the trade ships to Tierra Fe dock.”

I perk up. “Do you think we’ll ever travel down there? Maybe for mock ops?”

I’d take that assignment in a heartbeat. Uncle Jim told me my mother’s ancestors were from Tierra Fe, before it was ever called Tierra Fe.

Kaine laughs. “They’ll shoot you on sight if you try to go there. We’re godless heathens to them.”

“I went there once,” Betima surprises us by saying.

“Really?” Lyddie’s eyes widen. “What’s it like?”

“Unbearably hot. Very green. Menacing.”

“How’d you manage that?” Lash asks.

“Well, my dad worked on a fishing boat,” Betima starts.

Lyddie clucks sympathetically, but Betima doesn’t seem offended by the response. It’s no secret that in terms of desirability, commercial fishing is low on the list of job assignments. Fishermen are transported by helos and basically dropped in the middle of the ocean. With our ravaged coastlines sorely lacking in safe areas to dock, fishermen need to be delivered to their vessels. And fish processing plants don’t operate on land anymore; everything is done on processing liners, which is yet another unfavorable assignment. I wouldn’t want to live on a boat my entire life. No amount of shore passes can make that sound fun.

“When I was ten, maybe eleven, I joined him on a cod run, and our boat got caught in a storm. We drifted for days, and the next thing I know, there’s a patrol boat speeding toward us and a bunch of angry men pointing guns at us. One of them got in my dad’s face, accusing him of trying to break the treaty. But our boat was pretty banged up. Sails shredded. Engine flooded. They realized we weren’t a threat and towed us to port.” She rolls her eyes. “Wouldn’t even let us step foot on land. We had to wait on the boat until a hovercraft from the Company picked us up. I’m assuming our boat went to a wreckage yard in Tierra Fe afterward.”

“They really wouldn’t let you past the port?” Lyddie says.

“Nope. They don’t want us there. You should’ve seen how they looked at us. Like we were dirt. Like we didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as them.”

Sounds familiar.

I bite back my bitterness.

“I keep telling my father,” drawls a new voice. “Those assholes shouldn’t be allowed to have free rein down there.”

I’m startled when Roe joins our conversation. He settles at another table, long legs stretched out in front of him. Then he lifts a slender metal tube to his nose and snorts, and I realize he’s doing a stim.

I wonder how he managed to sneak recreational drugs onto the base. Stimulants aren’t illegal, but they’re wildly expensive, and I doubt the Command is allowed to use them during active duty. Doesn’t seem like the General would be super keen having his soldiers high on missions.

Kaine voices my thoughts. “How the hell did you get stims on the base?” he demands, grinning.

“My last name might not be Redden, but I’ve got the General’s blood running through my veins. They let me do whatever the fuck I want.”

He clicks the tube and does another stim.

“Have you been to Tierra Fe before?” Lyddie asks, peering at him over her shoulder.

Roe nods. “Shithole. That whole continent. They claim we’ve lost God and that’s why we don’t belong in their holy presence, but that sounds mighty convenient, yeah? Wouldn’t surprise me if they were cooking up a new toxin in some lab down there.” He shrugs. “Or working on the existing toxin.”

“The Aberrant toxin from the Last War?” Betima’s forehead wrinkles. “It’s all gone.”

“You can’t be stupid enough to believe there’s no trace of the toxin left.”

“There isn’t,” Lyddie says. “My mother is head of Biotech. She would know.”

“Maybe she does and hasn’t told you.” Roe looks amused.

Lyddie is steadfast in her refusal to believe him. She picks up her source and says, “Nexus, what happened to the biotoxin that created the Aberrant?”

The screen comes to life, a monotone voice sliding out. “ All doses of the airborne biotoxin were destroyed in the Last War, more than a century and a half ago. The laboratory where the airborne biotoxin originated, located in the Lost Continents, was destroyed after radiation levels were deemed safe. ”

“See?” Lyddie prompts, smug.

“What does that prove?” Roe challenges. “That a voice on your comm is asserting it to be true? Guarantee there’s still some of that shit floating around. I bet they’re colluding with the Aberrant, smuggling supplies to their secret base.”

Betima looks doubtful. “The Aberrant have a secret base? Where?”

“Somewhere near the Blacklands, I heard.”

“Sounds like a rumor to me,” she says. “If there was an Aberrant hideout in the wards, we would’ve found it.”

“Maybe not. They’re rats, remember? And what do rats do best?” Roe chuckles, answering his own question. “They hide in the shadows like the rats they are.”

He heaves himself off the chair. Rubs his nose. A manic glint enters his eyes, the stims clearly kicking in.

“You seen Kess?” he asks a young woman at the next table.

She shakes her head, a tad fearful. Roe has that effect on people.

“The toxin was destroyed,” Lyddie insists once he’s gone.

“It better have been,” says Betima, and it isn’t long before the discussion becomes political, which means Lash joins the fray. He argues that the Coup was necessary, even while relenting that the General’s iron rule over our lives veers toward extreme at times.

When the topic of the Silverblood Purge comes up, I’m surprised to hear Lyddie of all people questioning the General’s tactics.

“I don’t know if they all needed to be killed. There had to be another solution. Especially what happened in Valterra Ridge. There were so many children there.”

“Well, what about now?” Betima asks her. “Do you still think killing them is wrong?”

She bites her lip. “Maybe? I don’t know.”

Lash responds with the vehement shake of his head. “We continue to neutralize them because we refuse to go back to the way it was before the Coup. When Severnism was running rampant through the wards. When Primes were second-class citizens.”

I roll my eyes at him. “You weren’t even alive when President Severn was in power.”

“No, but my parents were. My father is a surgeon, did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”

“He didn’t start his training until I was born. And you know how old he was when I was born, Darlington? Thirty. From the ages of sixteen to thirty he cleaned sewers. He was the smartest kid in his class, and those Aberrant quats assigned him to Sanitation. Why?” Lash sneers. “Because he was a lowly piss-vein. His blood wasn’t elite. He couldn’t heal using some toxic fucking energy coursing inside him. He needed to use his brain for that. But Severn and his cabinet wouldn’t let him.”

“I’m not saying Severn’s reign was a good one,” I say, backpedaling, and we go back to memorizing codes.

—

It haunts me. The seething, disgusted expression on Lash’s face. I can’t get it out of my mind all night. I like Lash. He’s levelheaded. Bright. Yet even he can’t see we’re not bad people.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

Panic tickles my stomach as the thought pushes its way to the forefront of my brain.

I have to get off this base. I still don’t know how, but I have to.

Lash isn’t wrong. The Continent’s former Mod leader treated the Primes abominably. I can acknowledge that, but Severn doesn’t represent all Mods. His actions are not my actions. There are good people on the Continent whose only objective is to live their lives in peace. They don’t want to oppress anyone. They don’t want to feel superior. They just want to live.

Lyddie and the others are in the common room for another film screening, but I’m not feeling social tonight. Alone in the lavatory, I change out of my uniform and into my sleep clothes. I don’t store anything in my bunk locker anymore. My meager belongings are all here in my lav locker, including the knife I lifted after our first op.

It’s been a few days since I had a real conversation with Tana, so I reach out to her, desperation filling my throat the moment we link.

“I can’t be here anymore, Tan.”

“There’s really no way for you to escape?”

“No. Cameras everywhere, alarms everywhere, and the captain is watching me like a hawk. I’ve fooled everyone into believing I’m a Prime, but he still doesn’t trust me. He thinks I knew Jim was Modified. Probably thinks I’m helping the Uprising, too.” I almost laugh in derision, unable to control my sarcasm. “I would love to help those assholes. But they won’t let me help them! They don’t care about me.”

“Polly’s not responding to me anymore, and I don’t know who else to contact, babe. The network isn’t running any operations through Hamlett because the village is being watched so closely. The Command thinks Jim had help here.”

“Do they suspect you or your dad?”

“I don’t know. But I just have a bad feeling. I feel like I’m always being watched.”

I’m a bad friend.

I’ve barely asked how she’s doing since I blew up our lives on Liberty Day. I’ve been so focused on my own predicament, my own imprisonment, that I didn’t even consider what Jim’s death meant to the people who knew him. Griff has been aiding the Uprising for almost eight years, from the moment Tana began manifesting her gifts at the age of twelve.

“Are you safe?” I ask her, worried now.

“As safe as I can be considering what runs through my veins.”

“Fair point.”

“I have to go. My dad needs me to help restock the bar. I’ll touch base tomorrow, keen?”

“Keen. I love you, Tan.”

“I love you, too.”

I slump against my locker, utterly drained. I want to go home.

There is no home.

I don’t care. I want my ranch. I want my uncle. I want my fucking life back.

“Look at you, all by your lonesome.”

I startle when a low voice travels across the room.

Anson.

I smother a sigh. The last thing I’m in the mood for is this guy’s predatory gaze and self-pleased smile.

“You know…” He tips his head, causing his long hair to slide over his shoulder. “I think this is the first time we’ve been alone.”

I tense as he crosses the room, his easy gait belied by the gleam in his eyes. His grin widens with each step.

I force a tight-lipped smile, my skin crawling. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

“I have. I notice you often, Darlington.”

He moves closer, invading my personal space.

“Don’t,” I warn.

“Don’t what?”

He smiles again, and my fists tighten at my sides. I stand stock-still as he bends toward me, his breath hot against my neck.

“I haven’t done a thing.”

Not yet.

When he takes a step away from me, I inch backward toward my locker.

“You know what I like about women like you, Wren?”

The sound of my name leaving his mouth makes my stomach churn with revulsion. But I refuse to show any weakness.

“I like how fiery you are.” He licks his lower lip. “Roe sees someone like you and wants to put the fire out. He doesn’t like the flames—he wants the ashes. He’s a sick boy, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“And you’re not?”

My instincts are screaming at me to get away, but I refuse to let him intimidate me. I do creep back another inch, though, until I feel the whisper of metal on my bare arm. My open locker door.

“No, I don’t want to put your fire out.”

I reach into my locker, my fingers wrapping around the cold steel of my stolen dagger.

“I want to watch you burn—”

I spring to action, grabbing his arm and pushing him into the lockers. At the same time, I press my blade against his throat.

Anson freezes. Caught completely unprepared.

“Don’t test me,” I warn, my grip tightening on the knife. “Because you’re pissing me off, and I’m not afraid to use this.”

Rage flashes in his eyes, but before he can react, we hear footsteps in the corridor and then a familiar silhouette fills the doorway.

Cross.

He stands there for a moment. Assessing. His gaze shifts between Anson and me, his expression unreadable.

“Either slit his throat or let him go,” Cross finally says, his neutral tone betraying none of the tension in the room.

I shoot him a withering glare. “Go away, Captain. This doesn’t concern you.”

He glances at Anson. “Booth. You’re dismissed.”

“We’re not finished with our conversation,” I say, keeping the knife against Anson’s throat.

“You’re done. He’s been dismissed.”

I clench my jaw. Then I lower the blade.

Anson shoots me a venomous glare before slithering out of the locker room like the snake he is, his footsteps fading into the distance.

I turn to face Cross, angry at the interruption.

Unfazed by my thunderous expression, he steps closer, his gaze searching mine with an intensity that makes my breath catch in my throat.

“He started it.” I don’t care that I sound petulant.

Cross nods, his lips quirking into a wry smile. “Where did you get the knife?”

I could lie, but I don’t. “I stole it from the warehouse after an op.”

That makes him chuckle. I hate how much I enjoy the husky sound.

He stares at me, expectant.

Without a word, I grit my teeth and flip the knife in the air a couple of times. I catch it by the handle then spin it around and reluctantly hand it to Cross.

“So obedient,” he murmurs.

“Don’t get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

He continues to study me. Contemplative. When he speaks again, his tone is impossible to discern. “Tomorrow’s a pit night. Recruits can go.”

I stare at him.

“You should go.”

To my shock, he hands the knife back to me. “Keep it in your locker. Only use it if he comes back.”

I watch him stalk out of the locker room, unable to make sense of anything that just happened.