Page 2 of Silver Elite

A feeling of foreboding shivers through me at the tall, bearded man’s approach. Controller Fletcher was the first to reach the boy after I shot the predator. Several other men tail the controller, one of them cradling Rachel’s son.

“Give him to me!” She lunges at the group, reaching for the boy whose clothing is soaked with blood. “Where’s Betta? Someone needs to find Betta!” Tears stream down Rachel’s cheeks.

“Nina already ran to wake her,” her sister Elsie assures her. “It’s okay, sweetling. Take a breath. Betta will be able to help him.”

Betta is our doctor. Rachel is damn lucky she’s nearby, because not every village has one. The citizens in our neighboring town have to come to Hamlett for medical treatment.

Tana and I push forward to take a closer look at the sobbing boy. The fact that he’s awake and able to feel enough pain to cry is a good sign. Despite the copious amount of blood, it seems most of the damage is isolated to his left arm. Tana winces when she notices the ragged teeth marks and a flap of flesh hanging off the gaping wound.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asks urgently.

Elsie is now pressing a rag to the young boy’s arm. “The bleeding seems to be slowing down. He’ll need quite a lot of stitches, though.”

Rachel starts crying again when she notices me standing there. “You saved him, Wren. Thank you.”

I touch her arm, then gently stroke my hand over Robbie’s head and his tight black curls. “I’m just glad he’s okay.”

The group hurries toward the long strip of one- and two-story buildings that make up the north side of the town square. The people of Hamlett have everything they’ll ever need here. The rations store, pub, schoolhouse, dance hall, media house, medical clinic. Our entire lives reduced to a handful of square miles. What we don’t have are the politicians or police forces we used to learn about in school. Unlike generations before us, our villages and cities are policed by soldiers and run by controllers. The controllers answer to the ward chairmen, who answer to General Merrick Redden, our benevolent leader. Redden’s Company is a highly efficient military machine. He has no need for politics or superfluous job titles.

The controller of Hamlett remains put, raising his eyebrows at me. “Your bullet went through its eye,” Fletcher remarks. “Nice.”

I shrug. I’m painfully aware of Jordan’s gaze on me.

“Don’t shrug it off,” Fletcher says. “You saved that boy, Wren.”

I resist the urge to lift my shoulders again. “Well, you know. I have plenty of experience with predators going after my cattle. I just acted on instinct.”

“Damn good instincts, then. Tell your uncle he taught you well.”

I’ll be telling him no such thing. Jim would be horrified if he knew I fired my weapon in town, even if a kid’s life was at stake.

I suddenly feel itchy with the need to flee. My legs carry me away before I’ve even bid Fletcher goodbye. Both Tana and Jordan follow me, the latter not as welcome. Fuck. I want to get out of here.

“You okay?” Tana frets, grabbing my hand to stop me.

“I’m fine. But seriously, I need to get home.” I squeeze her hand and continue walking across the dirt lot. “Come visit us this week. We’ll go for a ride.”

“You gotta let me leave, Tana. Otherwise he won’t let me, either.”

“Sorry. Talk later.”

“Sounds good,” she says before wandering off.

Jordan stays hot on my heels. When we reach my dusty old motorcycle, he has stars in his eyes again.

“I’ve never seen anyone shoot like that,” he marvels.

“Like I said, I have experience from the ranch.”

“Wren,” he says firmly. “You took out its eye. That was a hundred yards, easy. A moving target. And a kid in the way. You could have accidentally blown his head off.”

I bristle, taking great offense to that. Blown his head off! Hardly. I guarantee I’m a better shot than anyone in Jordan’s unit. He’s not even in Silver Block, which is where all the elite soldiers go. I think he told me he served in Copper. I could outshoot a Copper guy with my eyes closed. I have half a mind to challenge this guy to a shooting contest—

No, rebukes my common sense. You will do no such thing.

The one rule my uncle instilled in me from a young age is to never draw attention to myself.

And like an idiot, that’s exactly what I did tonight.

Shit.

I shouldn’t have taken the shot.

“I’d love to come to the ranch and hit some targets with you. Not to brag, but I’m pretty good with a rifle, too. It would be fun.”

“Oh, my uncle doesn’t allow visitors,” I say, then wince when I remember I just invited Tana to come by. I try to smooth the lie over by adding, “Tana is really the only one he can tolerate. Probably because we’re childhood friends. She’s basically another niece to him.”

“Well, maybe one day.” Jordan shakes his head again. “That was some shot.”

I try to distract him from my feat of marksmanship by standing on my tiptoes and planting my lips to his.

He jerks in surprise, then smiles. “What was that for?”

“Nothing. I had a nice time tonight.” I take a step back. “Good night, Jordan.”

I grab the black helmet from the back of my bike and throw it on, avoiding his gaze as I fasten the strap. A moment later, the engine roars to life. I speed off, still feeling his gaze on me.

I really do need to stop sleeping with soldiers. Next time I’m feeling…needy…I might have to look elsewhere. There are a few unattached men in the village, but Tana says they’re interested in something more serious. I don’t want anything serious. I’m only twenty. Not ready to devote myself to somebody else. Other people’s relationships seem suffocating, and I’ve witnessed so many women bending to a man’s every whim.

I don’t bend.

I reach the paved road at the end of town, where a blue metal sign shines in the darkness. White lettering displays our ward, village, and population. They update it annually, but Hamlett’s population hasn’t grown much over the years. Which is how Redden likes it. The General claims that prior to the Last War, overpopulation was a serious problem. We wouldn’t have gotten to that dire point, to global conflict, to seven continents devastated, four of them razed or underwater, if it weren’t for all the people battling over dwindling resources.

Greed. Everything always comes back to greed.

I feel my mind tingle with an invitation, smiling to myself when I recognize the familiar energy. After I accept the link, a deep voice fills my head.

“You still out?”

I’m quick to answer. “No. Driving home.”

“Well, damn. You’ve already broken his heart? You work fast.”

“Oh, shut up. Like you don’t break hearts on a nightly basis.”

“I’m celibate.”

“Ha!”

“You’re always laughing at me. Stop it.”

“Stop saying ludicrous things.”

But that’s not Wolf’s style. He has no filter, never has. And he’s an outrageous flirt, although the flirting didn’t really start until we hit our teenage years. One day, we were two kids talking about kid stuff; the next, we were discussing our love lives. A bit unnerving, considering we’ve never actually met.

I linked with Wolf when I was six years old, and to this day I still remember the excitement I felt when I first heard his voice. It was a warm summer morning. I’d been playing in the clearing outside the little house Uncle Jim had built for us. There are pockets within the Blacklands where the sun can penetrate, if only a thin shard of it, and our grassy clearing was one of those havens. Every day, we had five or six hours of concentrated sunlight that shone down on us before the mist shifted and we were eclipsed in darkness again. That morning, I ran up to Jim, vibrating with elation.

“Uncle!” I exclaimed. “I have a friend. ”

Predictably, Jim had reacted with suspicion. I don’t know why I expected otherwise. “What friend?” he demanded, looking up from the new beam he was sanding. That year he’d started building raised walkways to lay over the black quicksand pits so we could navigate more easily when we went hunting. I used to love dancing across those beams during our excursions.

Rather than share in my happiness when I told him a random boy had opened a path into my mind and said hello, Jim grabbed the front of my sweater, gripping the scratchy wool in his fist. Later, when I was older, he would admit how scared he’d been that day, how he’d always worried something like that might happen. Spontaneous linking is common in telepathic children. Kids, especially young ones, have little control of their gifts. But that morning in the clearing, he looked more furious than afraid. He ordered me to never speak to the voice in my head again.

The reminder brings a familiar rush of guilt. I promised I would close the link to the curious boy, only a few years older than me. The problem is, when you grow up in a world of darkness with a grumpy guardian and no one else your age, you welcome another child to play with, even if you are just playing with them in your head.

I didn’t completely disregard Uncle Jim’s wishes. When the boy made contact again and I guiltily let him, I was clear I couldn’t tell him my name. “That’s dumb,” he griped after I informed him I wasn’t allowed to. But we did have fun picking code names. I chose Daisy because it was my favorite flower. He chose Wolf because he liked wolves.

I know I should’ve pushed the boy out of my mind—literally—but life had been lonely then. Just Jim and me, living in a place with only five hours of sunshine and a lot of scary shit trying to kill us. I needed Wolf. I liked his company. I still do, even when he’s mocking me about breaking hearts.

“Seriously,” he says now. “How was your night? I need to live vicariously through you. It’s been a couple of months for me.”

I’m surprised. From the smug way he brags about it, he’s very popular with women.

“Why is that?”

“Been busy.”

“So that’s why you’ve been quiet lately.” I hadn’t heard from him in weeks before he suddenly touched base earlier tonight.

I don’t ask what’s kept him busy, same way he’d never ask me. That’s standard procedure when you’re Modified. There’s no such thing as absolute trust. Even Jim, the man who risked his life for me and my parents, theoretically the one person I should trust implicitly, doesn’t get one hundred percent from me. Otherwise, he would know all about Wolf.

“To answer your question, it was fun. But he got a little needy at the end. Kept begging to see me again. I suppose I can’t blame him. I’m exquisite.”

That gets me a wave of laughter. “Arrogant bitch.”

I laugh, too, but the humor falters when I think about Jordan’s earnest desire to see me again.

“Does it ever bother you?” I ask Wolf.

“What?”

“Lying to Primes. Like the ones you sleep with. Or your friends from upper school. Job placement colleagues. You know, the good ones. Do you feel bad lying to them?”

There’s a pause.

“Sometimes,” he admits. “But the occasional pang of guilt is preferable to the alternative. Or alternatives, plural. You never know how a Prime will react to finding out their lover or classmate or co-worker is a silverblood.”

He’s not wrong. Best case, they’re horrified but are somehow convinced to keep your identity a secret. Likeliest case? They turn you in and attend your Command execution, cheering when the firing squad pulls their triggers.

“What’s this about, Daisy? You feel shitty about lying to your soldier tonight?”

“Not exactly. I feel…discouraged that he’ll never know who I am. He has no idea that he spent his entire night with a woman he’s incapable of ever truly knowing. Sometimes I wish people could know me.”

“I know you.” His voice is husky in my mind. “Does that count for something?”

My heart clenches, and I have to swallow the lump of emotion. “Yes. It does.” I gulp again, eager to lighten the mood. “Anyway, I gotta go. I’m trying to concentrate on driving. Can’t telepath and drive, you know?”

“That’s not a rule.”

“If Redden has his way, it would be.”

No, if our esteemed leader had his way, telepathy would be outlawed because we’d all be dead. He almost succeeded in wiping us out in the Silverblood Purge twenty-five years ago, before he took over the Continent. His men dragged tens of thousands of Mods out of their homes to be executed. That’s how much he hates us.

The sad part is, the Coup wouldn’t have been successful if there weren’t hordes of people who agreed with him. That we’re aberrant. That we’re abominations and our gifts are not natural, even though the things I can do with my mind are as natural to me as breathing.

I cut my speed as I approach the long driveway of our property. Soon our ranch comes into view, the old split-level house and handful of outbuildings on a sprawling acreage that’s far too large for the both of us. Our two hundred head of cattle need the space, though.

Uncle Jim had serious connections when we emerged from the Blacklands, managing to secure us a prime location, and in an asset ward, no less. The Uprising has always been good to Jim, whose insurgent efforts as Julian Ash were both plentiful and effective. Unfortunately, those efforts also made him a major person of interest to the Command. Jim will be a hunted man for the rest of his life.

Right now, in the pitch black, with only the faint glow of the solar porch light guiding me home, I’m reminded of the Blacklands. The eternal night. It’s fucked up, but sometimes I miss it. It was a simpler time.

Three years of fighting for survival…so simple! My subconscious laughs at me.

Yes, okay. It was difficult. Not to mention exhausting, forever being on the alert. I fell off one of Uncle Jim’s planks into the black pits once and realized how quickly I could have drowned if I’d been alone, without Jim to pull me out. It was scary in there for a little girl.

“Why were you gone so long?” my uncle says when I walk into the house.

He’s in his worn leather chair, sipping a glass of synth whiskey. He always grumbles that synthetic alcohol pales in comparison with the real thing. I’ve never sampled anything pure, so I can’t judge.

“You didn’t have to wait up.”

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.” His dark-brown eyes track my movements as I hang my rifle by its strap on the hook by the door. “How was the celebration?”

I hesitate, wondering how much to tell him. I opt for the truth, because we both know he’ll see right through me if I attempt to lie.

“Don’t be upset,” I start.

“Fucking hell, Wren,” he growls.

“I said don’t be upset.” I approach his chair and cross my arms to my chest. “It’s not a big deal, I promise. And I think you’ll agree I was right to act. If I hadn’t, Robbie would be dead.”

“Who the hell is Robbie?”

Yeah, Jim never tried making friends with the citizens of Hamlett. He’s a recluse. And kind of a dick. The other villagers know him as the antisocial jerk who shows up a couple of times a month to get laid or buy whiskey from Mr. Paul’s store. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly social, he grabs a meal and a pint at the pub. When he’s there, he doesn’t spend much time on pleasantries. Despite his last name, you’re more likely to get a “piss off” from Jim Darlington than a “hello.” I suspect someone in the Uprising threw the word darling into his new identity just to needle him.

He’s loyal, though. To me. To his friends in the Uprising. If he loves and trusts you, he’ll go to the ends of the earth to protect you. Literally. He took me to the damn Blacklands to keep me safe.

But if he doesn’t love or trust you…well…stay far away, because the man is pricklier than the cactus growing out back.

“Robbie is Rachel Solway’s son, and he almost got mauled by a white coyote. Same one that was harassing us.”

“Damn hybrid’s a nuisance.”

“Yeah, well, it was a starving nuisance. It crashed the party. So I killed it.” I falter when Jim narrows his eyes. He knows me well. “It was an impressive shot.”

He frowns. “How impressive?”

“The controller commented on it. Said you trained me well.”

“Wren.” He utters my name as if it’s an expletive.

“I’m sorry! What, you think I should’ve just let that kid die?”

“Yes.”

“The way you let me die?” I challenge.

“I made your parents a promise not to let you die. It’s not the same situation.”

“Maybe I promised Rachel not to let her son die. I mean, it was a promise made three seconds after the hybrid came, but I still fulfilled it.”

“I don’t want you dra—”

“—drawing attention to myself,” I finish, grumbling under my breath. “Yes. I get it. But I’m an adult and I know how to handle myself. In case you’ve forgotten, I work for the network.”

He gives a cynical chuckle. “You don’t work for them. You’ve run a few minor ops with them. That means nothing.”

I open my mouth indignantly, but he cuts me off.

“You’ve never been in combat. Never had to try to survive in the city.”

“I survived in much worse,” I argue.

“No, you haven’t. It’s a pit of vipers down there. You can’t lower your guard in the Point. Ever.”

“I have an edge,” I remind him, trying not to appear too smug as I hold out my bare arms. I switch over to telepathy to prove my point. “See? Nothing happening in my veins. I can operate in the city without detection.”

“Sure, kid. Until you accidentally incite. And then how do you talk your way out of that, huh?”

The reminder has me reaching down to rub my hip. A reflexive response. It doesn’t escape me that the burn exists in the first place because of this man. My guardian. The person who is supposed to protect me.

It really hurt. I still remember the smell of burning flesh. It was for my own good, I recognize that now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hate him a little bit for doing that to me.

“Stop being dramatic. I haven’t incited in years,” I grumble.

Yet he’s not wrong. When it does happen, it’s often unexpectedly. Over the years, we trained hard to try to control it, but always to no avail. I can’t even say how I incite. The first time I incited Jim, I was seven years old. By then, we’d been practicing for hours, days, months, in our clearing. Every morning, we sat facing each other, his knife beside him on the grass, while he ordered me to open a path, push my way into his mind, and command him to pick up the knife. Pick up the knife and cut a line in his palm.

“Say it again, Wren,” he’d ordered that morning.

So I did. Over and over again in my mind. Pick up the knife, pick up the knife. Yet his hand didn’t move.

Eventually, I started whining. “I don’t wanna do it anymore. Please.”

“You have to. You need to be able to control this power.”

“But why. ”

“Because they’ll kill you if they know you have it.” Jim had never minced his words, not even around scared little girls. “Try saying it out loud,” he advised. “I heard that helps sometimes.”

Dutifully, I used my voice. “Pick up the knife, pick up the knife…”

Over and over and over again. I grew so frustrated and furious with all the pointless practicing, my brain humming louder and louder, until finally a surge of energy coursed through me and—

He picked up the knife and sliced a line through the center of his palm. I was so frightened I ran into our hut and didn’t leave it for hours.

“Are you still planning on going to Ward T sometime this week?” I ask, changing the subject. I’m tired of the lecture. I receive at least one Jim lecture a day, and we already filled the quota this morning when he chastised me for forgetting to muck Kelley’s stall.

“Likely the day after tomorrow. Let me know if you want me to pick anything up when I’m there.”

“I will, thanks. And don’t you dare leave without saying goodbye.”

“Never,” he says gruffly, and any irritation I feel about his lectures melts away.

When I was ten, he disappeared for a week on a mission with the Uprising. Just up and left without a word. He sent Tana’s dad to the ranch to stay with me, then returned days later and was utterly clueless as to why I could possibly be upset with him. After enduring my silent treatment for a full day, he promised to never leave again without bidding me goodbye first.

Jim is a hard man, but I know he loves me. I’m sure this wasn’t the life he’d envisioned for himself. Fifteen years ago, he went from a thirty-year-old Command colonel to a hunted deserter, in charge of a five-year-old with whose safety he’d been entrusted. He was forced to leave everything behind. His career, his home, his friends. But he did it. For my parents. For me.

“All right. I’m turning in.” He rises from his chair. “Good night, little bird.”

The endearment makes me smile. “Good night.”

In my room, I wash up and get ready for bed. I drift into sleep thinking not about the soldier I spent the evening with but the hot, rude stranger at the inn.

—

At the crack of dawn, I head to the barn to saddle my gentle Appaloosa mare. I could take the off-road vehicle—it’d be faster—but I enjoy my quality time with Kelley.

“Hey, beautiful,” I coo, running my hand over her spotted back. She’s got the prettiest dark-brown-and-white coloring, and her big liquid eyes reflect my smiling face back at me. “Ready to go fix a fence?”

Kelley nickers. I take that as a yes and mount, the leather reins loose in my hands as I guide her away from the stables and toward the trail.

The worst part about ranching is all the tedious chores. As much as I’d love to, I don’t get to spend all my time riding Kelley and swimming in the creek. I’m up to my eyeballs in feeding the animals, mucking stalls, filling water troughs. And those are the fun chores. Repairing fences is my least favorite task, but it’s one of the most important. Our fences keep our cows in and the predators out.

Kelley and I ride into the north pasture, where I dismount and let her graze while I locate the broken section of fencing my uncle told me about. I quickly tackle the job of fixing it, using a stretcher to pull the two split pieces of wire taut so I can reconnect them with a crimp sleeve. Then I spend the rest of the morning inspecting every inch of fencing until I’m satisfied there’s no access points for the white coyotes that want to terrorize our herd.

I’m slipping my thick work gloves off when Uncle Jim tries to link with me. A second later, his warning fills my head.

“Don’t come back to the house. Stay away.”

My shoulders snap into a straight line. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Command’s here” is his grim reply.

My heartbeat quickens. Why is Command at the house? We’re always warned before an inspection.

Racing toward Kelley, I reach out to Tana, but she doesn’t let me in. She’s either asleep, dead, or ignoring me. My money’s on asleep. She was thoroughly boozed last night.

“Uncle Jim? Are you okay? I’m coming back.”

“Absolutely not. Stay put.”

Yeah, forget that.

I heave myself into the saddle and click my tongue to command Kelley to go. When she’s slow to start, I apply pressure with my calves and urge her into a gallop.

We don’t take the same route back to the ranch, the one that would leave us out in the open, exposed. We approach from high ground, stopping at the rocky outcrop far above the south pasture where the herd is currently grazing. From there, I’m provided with a perfect vantage point to the house. It’s several hundred yards away, but Mods have perfect eyesight. We don’t need pesky things like glasses.

I dismount and creep toward the edge of the rocks, peering over. I see the trucks. Two of them, olive green with the black-and-silver Command emblem painted on the doors. When I spot Uncle Jim, my heart drops to my stomach.

He’s wearing a long-sleeved flannel and his usual faded jeans. Knees in the dirt, his cowboy hat thrown on the ground a few feet away. A uniformed man with an officer patch on his right sleeve presses a gun barrel to my uncle’s forehead.

“I can see you. I see them. Why are they here?” My knees are as weak as my breathing.

“They came to watch you shoot.”

Horror slams into me. This is because of me ?

My gaze swoops over the soldiers. Four others stand like stone statues behind the one in charge. I feel queasy when I realize one of them is Jordan.

This is my fault. I did this. I made that impossible shot last night, drew attention to myself, and now the Command is holding a gun to my uncle’s head.

I have my rifle. I can take them out. Shoot them…Desperation lodges in my throat, because there’s no possible way I can eliminate all five without at least one of them putting a bullet in Jim’s skull.

“What do I do?”

“You turn around and go find Griff,” he orders, his long sleeves obfuscating the fact he’s communicating with me. “He’ll take care of you.”

I swallow my cry of distress when the officer uses his free hand to grab Uncle Jim by a hunk of his fair shoulder-length hair. He shoves Jim’s head backward and spits out some words, sneering. There’s familiarity in the officer’s cold eyes. His face, his body language…it all screams, I know who you are.

My hands shake as I link with Jim again.

“Do they know you’re Julian Ash?”

“Yes.”

That’s the last thing he says before they throw him into the back of a vehicle and drive away.