I’m not expecting much from the interviews with Jericho, but I hurry to get changed into my Tac gear just in case. I had luckily left a set of the standard issue pants and shirt in my room, so we don’t have to waste time down at North’s offices.
Sage and Felix both leave and head back to their house together hand-in-hand and looking a little bit more peaceful now that we had gotten to hang out for a little while.
I’m worried about my best friend.
The amount of setbacks and situations she’s had to deal with in such a short amount of time is scary. I know that her mental health isn’t the best right now, especially since Riley has returned and the full extent of healing the damage that Giovanna has done to him is setting in.
Felix isn’t sure he will be able to make a full recovery.
Sage is freaking devastated.
Once I’m fully dressed, my boots laced on my feet and the few weapons I am allowed to carry strapped to my body, I head back out to the kitchen to find Kieran now standing with Atlas and Gabe.
Both of them give me a funny look at my outfit and I shrug. “I’m prepared for anything to happen tonight. I’m surprised you two aren’t.”
Atlas shrugs and flexes a little playfully. “Like I care if my jeans get shredded. Nothing can touch me anyway.”
Gabe shoves him and then gives me a sheepish grin. “Any clothes I put on just get taken off the second I need to shift, so who cares?”
Kieran rolls his eyes at them both, but when I step up to him, he gives me a firm nod. “This isn’t how I was planning on spending my evening.”
I cringe for him, thinking about how excited Sage had been for us all to eat together and just hang out, for once. She’ll be missing her Bonded because he’s working late, once again. “Sorry that you’re having to drag us around again.”
He holds out his arm for us all to grab and snaps back in his usual, snarky way, “It’s not you, it’s the fucking Resistance. Do none of them have shit going on besides ruining our lives? Can they not take a fucking nap instead of sending people over to us? At some point, I would like to see my Bonded’s face again.”
My chest warms just a little at that, knowing that even though he’s usually pretty quiet about his Bonded, he’s still just as devoted to Sage as she is to him.
I always knew Kieran was a good guy… except for that one time he tackled me in a cafe and dragged me back to my Bonds, kicking and screaming. That one time, he was a complete dick.
When we pop into existence at the old council buildings, I take three deep breaths to stop myself from losing the delicious steak sandwich I had just eaten and try not to whimper when it becomes clear that I’m not going to be able to save myself from vomiting. Thankfully, the cool palm that slides over the back of my neck is my saving grace as Gryphon eases the motion sickness for me.
“You’re really never gonna get used to that, are you?” Kieran says with a dry tone, and I swipe a hand over my forehead to clear away the sweat that is beading there as I try not to turn green.
“I don’t know how anyone is supposed to get used to being transported. It’s unnatural,” I croak, and Kieran rolls his eyes at me.
“It’s about as unnatural as ripping souls out, Fallows, so pot, meet kettle.”
He’s enjoying this way too much. I shrug and then take Gryphon’s hand as he leads us down to the elevator, a frown still over his face. Whatever has been said already in this interview room has him concerned, and I don’t like the sound of that.
When the elevator doors shut behind us all, he tugs on my shirt. “Going on a mission I was not clued in on?”
I shrugged back. “You tell me. If Jericho has told you where Davies or his Bonds are right now, feel free to instruct Kieran to take me to him. I have a score to settle, and I made sure I’m dressed for the occasion.”
Kieran shakes his head at me but Gryphon smirks. “Hell hath no fury like your bond when someone touches something that belongs to it.”
Damn straight, and I’m not going to apologize for it either.
We’d come so close to losing one of our own and, though there’s a part of me that is grateful for the soul-bonding and for the chance at gaining Nox’s trust, a fragile and fearsome thing, I still want to rain down bloodshed and violence on the person that had done this to us. As well as on Davies for facilitating it. Fuck, I don’t even care about what he did to me anymore. I care that he went after these men who belong to me.
He tried, and succeeded, in killing Nox.
I’m not going to take that shit lightly, and neither is my bond.
When the doors open again, I find North and Nox waiting for us, their heads together as they mutter heatedly to each other about something, only stopping when they see us all standing there.
North barely looks at me before he turns on his heel and stalks off towards the cells.
Instantly, I want to cry.
But he always could read me like an open book, and even without looking at me, he says to me through our mind connection, just between the two of us, I can’t right now, Bonded. Not with everyone here, because if I look at you right now, after what you did for my brother… after what he did for me… I will make an absolute fool of myself. I’m supposed to be the strong one for us all.
I have to blink away my own tears at the broken tone of his voice, the raw edges of it tearing at me. He just said he needed space, but I need him like I need air right now. I need to hold him close and ease away the guilt and pain that he’s feeling, to reassure him that everything is okay now.
We’re all going to survive this, no matter what it takes.
As we make our way through the hallways, I find that there are more people than I expected there to be in the holding cells. The last time we had come down here to speak to Atlas’ sister, she was the only one that was left after the processing but, as we walk down the long hallway together, every cell is occupied.
I want to duck my head and hide, to pretend I’m focused on what we’re actually down here for to save face, but I can’t. If there’s anything I can do to help North and Gryphon, then I’ll do it.
They both deserve a strong and capable Bonded.
So instead, I look in every single glass pane at the horrors that wait for me there.
I know a lot of the people here.
I look into the faces of soldiers and grunt-work Resistance members mostly, but there are also some higher-ups that I recognize. A shiver runs down my spine as I spot one of Davies’ advisors staring back at me.
Ray Branston, an Elemental nightmare.
“You recognize him?” Atlas says, and I nod my head with a sigh.
“Branston. He was one of the decision makers in the camp that I was held in.”
He also used his Gift to torture the prisoners, forcing water into their lungs and dry-drowning them. I’d also seen him suck all of the water out of a victim’s body with the flick of his wrist, killing them excruciatingly in an instant. He got off on it too, enjoyed the acts of killing innocent men and women.
He deserves to die down here.
I want Azrael and August to eat him.
Atlas nods and scratches the back of his head a little, looking sheepish as he says, “He’s my godfather, one of my dad’s closest friends. Gryphon warned me that he would be down here, but I didn’t know how much of him you saw in your time there. I should’ve said something.”
I shrug and step forward, leaving the man behind. Atlas struggles to tear his eyes away from the man he had known all of his childhood, the guilt of it all eating away at him until Gabe claps him on the shoulder and leads him away with a few snarky comments.
I don’t listen in on any of it, mostly because I already know that it’s not my job to police my Bonded and their interactions with each other, but also because Gabe and Atlas have found their own sort of friendship. It’s been built on ribbing each other and making rude remarks over the stupidest things.
Guys are weird.
“We’re at the end,” Gryphon says to me, and I nod, carefully steeling myself as we pass Aurelia, still sitting in her cell.
She’s even thinner than the last time we saw her, something I didn’t quite think was possible, but there’s a light in her eyes now as she stares at the thick concrete that separates her from her Bonded.
She can feel him here.
Even with all the shields and precautions that have been put into place, she can feel her Bonded’s presence. She’s my enemy, but there’s a small part of me that feels sorry for my Bonded’s sister and the indoctrination she had as a child.
She never stood a chance.
But maybe she did, because Atlas got out of there. He found out about me and he ran, never looking back, except to use everything that he knows about those evil people to keep me and our Bonded Group safe.
I can’t keep thinking about her, or I’ll drive myself insane.
As we get to the last cell, I stop and look in at her Bonded. Jericho looks exactly as I imagined he would from Atlas’ description of a man who enjoyed camping and the simpler things in life compared to that of his Bonded Group.
He’s tall, at least as tall as Gryphon and North, and there’s a carefully rustic beard that covers the bottom half of his face. His eyes are a warm honeycomb color that make him look approachable and not at all like the enemy that we’re fighting so hard to dispose of.
He’s covered in dust and there are holes at the bottom of his shirt, a warm jacket thrown over the top of his outfit, as though he has been traveling for quite some time. The only thing on him that looks well maintained is the ring on his finger. I would wager it is a symbol of his bonding with Aurelia, a treasured symbol of what they share.
He stares at me through the glass with the same assessing keenness that I am showing him, but he is the first one to speak.
“The little girl who broke the Resistance camp in half and destroyed the great dynasty of the Bassingers. I wasn’t expecting you to be so… small.”
I raise an eyebrow and glance back at Atlas who is hanging back towards the table, standing closer to Gabe and Gryphon. I’m glad he’s nowhere near Nox because I can feel the pent-up anger in him that is just looking for an outlet, and I don’t want my Bonded fighting right now.
“I’m sorry that I don’t meet your expectations, but it’s not my fault you pledged your loyalty to a cause that’s so fragile it can be taken out by a single girl and her Bonded.”
Jericho shrugs and takes a seat on the single chair in the cell. “I didn’t pledge my allegiance to anything but my Bonded. Why the fuck do you think I’m here?”
I shrug and glance over my shoulder at where Aurelia is pressed against that concrete, her eyes shut as her palms lie flat on the ground beside her. It’s a power position if I ever saw one, and a trickle of dread runs through my mind.
The cell can hold her, Gryphon says directly into our mind link, and I take a steadying breath.
The cell can hold her, and even if it can’t, there’s nothing any of them can do to us. We already know what they’re capable of, Atlas chips in as well, and I remind myself that he knows absolutely what his sister and her Bonded can do.
A small, dark part of my mind that has nothing to do with my bond pops in with the small, helpful detail that Atlas has been gone from his childhood home for a while.
A lot of things could’ve changed in that time.
August butts up against my leg as though he’s reassuring me as well, and Jericho’s eyes flick down to stare at North’s shadow creature as though the Doberman-like creature has come from the depths of hell itself.
Kinda rude considering August is the sweetest boy ever at my side, a living embodiment of North’s protective love for me. He doesn’t even attempt to eat anyone around me anymore.
“I think it’s kind of sweet that you wanted to come here and die with your Bonded. It’s more than I can say about any other member of her Bonded Group, so kudos to you. Well, I guess we can’t blame Peter… I already took care of him.”
I don’t look back at Atlas as I say this, mostly because I’m baiting Jericho. I don’t want the man to know that we’re stuck in limbo of not wanting to kill Aurelia for Atlas’ sake, so she’s just got to waste away in the cells here instead, being fed properly but dying of her own volition slowly nonetheless.
The move pays off when a slow smirk stretches over his face.
“I’m not here to die. I’m here to make a deal.”
Jericho refuses to speak to us about the deal he’s proposing until he is let out of the cell and able to see his Bonded, even if it’s just through the glass. Nox is keen to just let the shadow creatures in there to convince him to start talking, but I shoot that down pretty quickly.
He already knows what Atlas is capable of, as well as the rumors about the Draven Bonded Group. If he’s come all of this way, he either has something very big to offer us or he’s underestimated our abilities greatly.
Atlas chews on the inside of his cheek for a minute before he finally shrugs, saying, “He’s Resistance. He joined my sister’s Bonded Group and was happy enough to go along with everything that my father has said. There’s no excusing that. It’s not like he didn’t know any better, but unless the Resistance has created some sort of ‘super soldier serum’, he’s not going to be a threat to any of us. If we get him out of the cell, Gryphon could get inside of his head and shut off his Gift instantly. Oli could rip his soul out of his body, and the shadow creatures could easily tear him limb from limb. He’s not really a threat to any of us.”
North looks around at everyone at the table before he signals to Gryphon to open the cell door. He uses his Neuro Gift to shut Jericho’s brain down as they maneuver him over to the interrogation table, locking him into the seat with his hands bound behind his back with the tech handcuffs on. They’re another layer of security for us all, and I’m not really worried about what Jericho has planned anymore. Atlas is right, we’re stronger than him, which means that whatever he’s planning on offering us must be big.
Aurelia watches the entire thing with tears in her eyes, but she stays in the same position, her back against the concrete wall and her palms flat on the ground.
It’s creepy as fuck.
We have to move to find more chairs, but once we’re all seated in a haphazard half circle around the table, Gryphon finally lets Jericho’s mind go, the white ring around his eyes slowly disappearing until he blinks rapidly, as though he’s clearing his vision. The moment he is aware enough to know that he has been moved, his head snaps towards his Bonded, his eyes drinking her in obsessively, and his lip curls at the state she’s in.
When he turns back to North, my Bonded shrugs. “She won’t take anything we offer her. She has been sent three solid meals a day, medical assistance, and her brother has been down to speak to her. If she won’t take what’s been provided to her, then what are we supposed to do?”
We had discussed the ethics of Gryphon using his mind control to force her to eat, but I had no intention of asking that sort of thing of my Bonded. Forcing a woman to do anything isn’t a pleasant experience. In the end, Atlas had been the one to say that she should be left to the consequences of her own choices.
North waits another heartbeat of silence before he says, “I’m not a very patient man, and I have no time for games. Put your deal on the table, and be done with it.”
I cross my arms over my chest as I lean in slightly, eager to hear what the deal is, what it is that he could possibly be offering us.
Atlas’ palm is warm on my knee, even as his face shows none of the frustration and disapproval that he’s filled with right now. He’d been quick to suggest that I sit between him and one of my other Bonded so that he could shield me if anything does go wrong here, always extra cautious, and I didn’t feel the need to argue the point.
I don’t really want my bond to come out right now, because I have no doubt that it’ll simply destroy everyone in the cells rather than bother to extract information from any of them. I don’t want to mess with the processes that North and Gryphon have in place like that. The tiniest scrap of information could turn the tide of the war.
We need every chance we can get.
“First, I will tell you the terms of the deal before I let you know what I’m offering you. I want to take my Bonded to Singapore. I want you to release us and let us leave the country together.”
Atlas’ hand jerks on my knee, the only sign of his reaction to this news, and North immediately cuts Jericho off. “Absolutely not. We don’t just let Resistance prisoners go, especially not high profile ones such as yourselves.”
Jericho’s lip curls. “We’re not though, are we? Aurelia is a Bassinger in name only. Her father sold her off to the highest bidders. The only reason she got to have one of her actual Bonds is because I was willing to sacrifice everything to have her.”
I frown and look around at the rest of my Bonded Group, but they’re all staring at Jericho intently. Only Nox seems distracted by the shadow creature at his feet. His head is ducked down as he strokes a hand over Procel’s head gently.
“I have no interest in listening to Resistance lies; we’re done here,” North says, and Jericho jerks forward in the chair, his bindings rattling at the sudden movement.
He looks fearsome, his eyes narrowed at North like he’s imagining ripping his throat out with his bare hands. “You’ve already figured it out. You’ve already figured out what the Resistance has been doing for generations, splitting up Bonded Groups and using the entire population as a breeding science experiment. Very few Bonded Groups are left as they should be, and only if the testing slips through the cracks. You will let me and my Bonded go to Singapore, and not only will we abandon the Resistance fight, but I will give you whatever information you need to kill them all.”
North shakes his head slowly, his mouth a grim line. “You don’t think that every Resistance prisoner that we’ve had in this place hasn’t offered us the same thing for their freedom? I have no interest in playing these games with you, Jericho. You’ve turned yourself in, and it’s all been for nothing.”
North moves as if he is going to stand, and Jericho snaps, “It’s about the god. The breeding experiments are about the void-eyed being, the one that lives inside your Bonded.”
That gets everybody’s attention.
