Invaders

  “And you’ve been watching the governments and the Fed, but you haven’t interfered?”

  Orion scowled. “I have already explained this to you.”

  “So, did you know that Ezra planned to betray you?” I was going completely off script, but I wanted to see the look of shock register on “Chief” Orion’s face. Soon enough, the pieces would start to come together for him, too, just as they had for me.

  He snorted, his eyes narrowing. “How dare you suggest such a thing, you pathetic creature. Is that all you have left—shock tactics and grasping at straws?”

  “I want an answer,” I shot back. “Did you know he was going to betray you, or have you not figured it out yet?”

  “Ezra is more loyal to me than a cretin like you could understand,” he said, his voice carrying a menacing calmness. “I protected both him and his sister—my beloved Pandora—with everything I had, from the very moment they came to me as orphans after the war that tore our planet apart. They were only young teenagers then, but I felt that they were my responsibility. He has always been loyal, seeking to return the favor, for the shelter and security I offered them in their youth.”

  I struggled not to pull a face, thinking of the implications between Orion and Pandora. If he had taken her in as a young, teenage orphan, becoming a surrogate father to her, then there was something infinitely wrong with the relationship that had developed between them. I grimaced. It would have been like me dating Roger, which didn’t even bear contemplation. The very idea turned my stomach.

  “Maybe you were the one who needed to pay for something,” Navan said, following my lead.

  He glared at Navan. “You will never get me to believe that Ezra and my dear Pandora have been anything but loyal to me. Pandora and I had dreams the likes of which your tiny minds couldn’t comprehend. We built empires together while in one another’s arms. We watched imagined cities flourish—she’d describe every detail, building them in my mind with her words.”

  He had disappeared into his own thoughts for a moment, his eyes taking on a faraway expression at the thought of his fallen love. There was a fondness in his voice that almost made me feel guilty for killing her. It didn’t take a genius to understand that, no matter what he’d done as leader of the rebels, he had really loved her. His grief was palpable, even through the thick glass of his cell.

  “I never said anything about Pandora being involved. I doubt she knew about her brother’s betrayal, any more than you seem to,” I said softly.

  His head snapped back toward me, a glint of malice in his eyes. “You are using the same tactics that the Fed tried to use to break me. You are using torture of the mind to see what you can prize from my lips. You seek to torment my spirit and my heart, using the dead to persecute me, yet you claim to be paragons of morality!” Rage seemed to bristle from every fiber of his being. “Hypocrites, the lot of you! At least we coldbloods are open about our violent natures.”

  “Ezra has already betrayed you, Orion,” I replied bluntly. “Doubt all you like, pretend it isn’t happening, but it won’t do you any good. Pandora might have been loyal, but her brother isn’t.”

  “Torturer!”

  I shook my head. “We know deals have been made with the humans, and we know it was a coldblood rebel who made those deals. In fact, we know it was Ezra. I saw him with my own eyes.”

  “Liars! You are doing this to get in my head. The other interrogators couldn’t do it, and neither will you.” I could see his resolve slipping.

  “Then tell me who else could have made an alliance with the humans to bring the nudus shield down, to ensure the rebel base could be destroyed? Who had that kind of power? Who had that kind of freedom and those kinds of contacts? Who has been keeping secrets from you? Really, I’m as intrigued as you are.” I parroted his words back to him.

  Orion strained against his chains, the shackles rattling violently as he struggled. “I own that boy!” he roared.

  “And maybe that’s the problem.” I smiled coldly, knowing it was all coming together for Orion.

  Ezra had betrayed Orion, abusing that loyalty for his own ends. It looked like he had been making deals behind Orion’s back. Moreover, the notebook had never reached Lazar because Ezra had kept it to himself. Likely, the serrantium weapons had never been intended for the rebels, either—at least not those who followed Orion. I didn’t know how far Ezra planned to go, or what it was he wanted, but it was obvious now that he no longer held any loyalty to Orion.

  “No, no, this is all a fabrication!” Orion bellowed. “Ezra would never betray me, after everything that I have done for him. He would NEVER go against me!”

  His denial reminded me of when Brisha had found out about Pandora’s double life, and the pain she had suffered at the loss of, not only trust, but a friendship she’d valued. Undoubtedly, Orion had valued Ezra, not only as a right-hand man, but as a son and an equal. Judging by the twisted look on his face, the pain of discovering the truth was immense. It was almost like he was going through the stages of grief, just as Brisha had.

  “YOU!” He jabbed his finger toward the glass. “You seek only to bring me agony! You murdered my love, but you aren’t content with that, are you? No, you want to see me crushed to dust beneath your boot. You want to see me lose everything. Only then will you be satisfied, you vile harpy! You killed her! Over and over again, you’ve killed her in my mind and in my memory—and you will pay for what you’ve done!”

  “I think that’s our cue to go,” Navan whispered, taking my hand and helping me up. With Orion still roaring away behind us, we hurried down the walkway and headed back toward the elevator, with the two agents who’d brought us there following close behind. My whole body trembled with adrenaline, every nerve wanting to be as far from Orion as possible. I could never erase the sight of his agonized face glowering at me through the glass, his spittle flying so hard and so fast that it peppered the pane like sea-spray.

  When we reached Commander Mahlo’s office, we found her standing halfway across the room. The screen in front of her showed a live stream of the subterranean prison. I could hear Orion screaming as he fought against his chains, rocking violently against the bonds that held him. It was a scary sight, but what was more frightening was the despondent look on the commander’s face. Evidently, she’d seen and heard everything.

  Clicking the screen to mute, she leveled her gaze at us. “It’s all no good,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I countered, my heart still racing.

  “The trade deal will be useless now. We all thought there was something amiss with the offer, and now we know what it was.” She sighed wearily, gaining twenty years in the space of two seconds. “It is clear to me now that Ezra wishes to lead the rebels himself. He was toying with us, in making that deal—he never would have given the prisoners back in exchange for Orion.”

  Navan nodded. “He has to make a show of doing everything he can to get Orion back, but I imagined he had no intention of doing so, not when he wants to be the leader. It serves him better if Orion stays here, or, best of all, if he can pretend that our side killed him in retaliation.”

  I turned to look at him, realizing he’d spoken my thoughts aloud. Undoubtedly, Ezra would have staged something to make it look like the Fed hadn’t upheld their end of the bargain—another means of stirring up their hatred, to spur them on in the fight to come. As long as Orion was alive, Ezra could never truly take over.

  “I think you may be right,” Commander Mahlo said.

  I frowned, feeling sorry for her. “What will you do?”

  “I will discuss the matter with my team and the rest of our agents. Thankfully, we have yet to have our vote, so it is not too late to go back on our decision,” she replied solemnly. “Thank you for your service today. It has been enlightening, to say the least, and we could not have done it without you.”

  “It’s why we’re here,” I replied.

  As we headed back through the labyrinth of Lu
nar HQ with the merevin guard as our guide, my mind turned to Ezra. If he’d turned against Orion and was plotting some unknown scheme with the notebook—having done all of this under his boss’s nose—then there was no telling what else he’d managed to hide.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On the way back from Commander Mahlo’s office, we asked the merevin guide—whose name, we’d discovered, was Isina—if she could take us on a slight detour toward the medical wing. Even though Navan had been frosty with her earlier, she seemed to have forgiven us for our standoffishness, and took us there with a bright smile and a spring in her step. It was about time we visited Stone and Ronad.

  “How did you figure it out?” Navan asked as we walked.

  “That Ezra was working on his own this entire time?”

  He nodded. “As soon as you said the words, it seemed so obvious.”

  “I was sort of winging it,” I admitted. “Once I saw Orion’s face, when we mentioned the notebook and the deals with Earth’s leaders, I realized what was going on. Ezra took the notebook, and Ezra was the one making deals. It made sense for us to presume that Orion was in on it all, because Ezra was his right-hand man, but I’m guessing that was what made it the perfect ruse.”

  “He had the freedom to go where he wanted, doing whatever he wanted, all under the guise of working for Orion,” Navan said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’d think I’d have learned by now that there’s very little loyalty between coldbloods.”

  I smiled. “Hey, he fooled everyone. Orion included. Looks like your species loves to overthrow its leaders, or at least deceive them. I mean, Pandora betrayed Brisha, Aurelius betrayed Gianne. It was only a matter of time before someone betrayed Orion—why break the pattern? I wish I’d pieced it together earlier, though.”

  “You did it faster than the rest of us,” he commended me, putting his arm around my shoulders. “I guess coldblood advisors can never be trusted.”

  “Good thing you don’t have one!”

  “I don’t need one—I’ve got you. Anyway, I’m no leader,” he said. “You’re the one leading all of this right now, Captain Idrax. We wouldn’t have captured Orion if it hadn’t been for your quick thinking.”

  “I don’t really feel like a leader,” I admitted. “I feel more like a frazzled, worn-out creature who’d like to hide in a hole somewhere until all of this has blown over.”

  He laughed softly, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I told you, you should’ve stayed in bed.”

  “What, and miss all the action?” I teased. All this talk of betrayal made me think of Earth’s history books. Advisors were often the ones to supersede power from the very people they sought to advise, believing their own version of governance to be better than the present one. I only had to glance through a book on Roman or Greek history to find endless tales of disloyalty.

  “Here you go!” Isina, the merevin, said. We’d stopped in front of a set of white double doors that opened onto the medical wing. “I’ll wait out here to take you back up to the main section of HQ whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Isina,” I replied, before stepping through the doors. The scent of harsh chemicals stung my nostrils. All around, pristine white walls and chrome floors shone, faintly streaked with the last round of mopped disinfectant. The first ward contained twenty-six beds, and I guessed the other set of double doors at the far end led into another ward. Every single bed was occupied by a wounded soldier, all in various stages of pain and recovery.

  A lycan medic looked up in surprise. “Are you here to see one of our patients?”

  “We’re looking for two of our friends—Ronad and Stone, a coldblood of sorts and an ambaka,” Navan replied, as I continued to take in our surroundings.

  Both lycan and merevin medics were at work, though I spotted one unusually dressed Rexombra tending to an injured Rexombran soldier. She was dressed in vividly patterned clothing that swept behind her in a long train. Around her neck and forehead, she wore teeth and feathers of all shapes, sizes, and colors, along with elaborate earrings. I didn’t know who she was, but she was singing softly over the sleeping Rexombra, wafting a thurible in front of his nose, like the ones I’d seen priests wave in church, though this one spilled a vivid purple smoke that smelled pungently of herbs and flowers. Her presence reminded me of Alfa, who was still missing in action.

  “Three, actually,” I corrected him. “There should be a lycan called Dio here, too.”

  The lycan medic nodded. “I can take you to them, though they are all in separate wards, given the varying degrees of injury.”

  “Thank you,” Navan said, as the medic led us through the first ward, past the singing Rexombra.

  “Who is she?” I wondered aloud to the medic.

  “She’s the Rexombran shaman. They do not allow anyone else to heal their wounded. Whatever it is she does, it appears to work every time,” the lycan marveled. “Indeed, I think it has a healing effect on all those who hear her sing and smell the incense she burns, though she uses technology that is far more advanced than ours, alongside her songs and smoke.”

  “Can’t she help you?”

  “Her technology is geared only toward Rexombran genetics. I doubt it would work on lycans or merevins without some improvisation,” he explained, with a sigh. “Anyway, we’re managing just fine as we are.” His tone was a little too bright, as though he didn’t quite believe his own words.

  A few minutes later, we arrived at a much smaller ward, which seemed to be used for intensive care patients. There were only four beds, and all the wounded here looked half dead already, though three of them were sitting up against a stack of pillows, staring listlessly ahead. Ronad was one of them, but his bruised and battered face turned toward us as we entered. He tried to smile, before a grimace twisted his features into a mask of agony.

  “Hey, buddy, how’re you feeling?” Navan asked, sitting on the edge of Ronad’s bed and resting a hand on his shoulder. He still looked too badly injured to hug.

  I sat down on the other side and looked up at Ronad’s damaged face as the lycan left us alone. His right eye was swollen shut, his lips twice the size they normally were, while deep welts and blossoming bruises created a livid pattern across his features. “You look like hell,” I teased, reaching for his hand. I noticed that his knuckles were torn and bleeding, too, though I refused to let go of him.

  “Can’t… speak too… much,” he croaked. “I’ve never… felt so weak… in all my life.”

  “You’re alive, though, Ronad, and that’s what matters,” Navan told him. “You made it out of there.”

  “Thanks to… Xiphio.”

  I forced a smile onto my face. “He found you, but you survived on your own.”

  “Not… too well.” He tried to grin again, but the movement ended in a hiss of pain. “I was… too slow out there. If I’d been a… coldblood still… like, a real one… I’d have been… able to fly from the… danger. I was a… liability. I haven’t felt… like that… since I was a kid—useless and… slow.”

  “Hey, you did everything you could’ve done in getting to safety,” Navan assured him. “It has nothing to do with being a coldblood or not being one. They would have tried to shoot you down either way, and I doubt anything could’ve helped matters.”

  It seemed as though Ronad was starting to really regret his decision to shed the true coldblood part of his identity. Then again, when he’d taken the serum that had changed his genetic makeup, he’d never expected to leave Earth again. He’d done it to distance himself from the world and the people he had come from, who only served to remind him of what he’d lost with Naya. He could never have known what was coming, just as I could never have known I’d end up liaising with alien military leaders and marrying a man from the opposite side of the universe.

  “Did you… find out… who took us down?” Ronad rasped.

  I squeezed his hand. “We think we know who’s responsible, but we haven’t figured out the extent o
f their influence just yet. As soon as we know everything, we’ll come back and visit you.”

  “In the meantime, rest and recover,” Navan urged him. “You’ll heal in no time.”

  Ronad’s eyes glittered miserably. “I hope… so. I hate… being cooped up. I want… to get back out… there, to help with… the retaliation.”

  “You will, pal, you will.” Navan patted him on the arm, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced. Ronad was in a bad state, and without the quantity of coldblood medicine that would be needed to fix him fast, his recovery was going to take a bit longer than he’d probably have wanted.

  “We’ll visit again really soon, okay?” I promised, my chest tight at the sight of him in such an awful state. More than ever, I wanted revenge on the people who’d done this to him, and to Angie, Lauren, Xiphio, and Stone. Ezra would pay, just as soon as we discovered how deep his networks ran.

  “I’m just… going to sleep… for a bit,” he murmured, while Navan helped him sink below the covers, tucking him in tight.

  “Rest easy, Ronad,” Navan said, smoothing back his friend’s hair like a worried mother.

  I took Navan’s hand, pulling him gently toward the door of the ward. “Come on, let’s leave him in peace. He’s earned it.”

  We called the lycan medic over, and he took us through to see Dio. He was in one of the larger wards, and though his arm was wrapped in a bandage, and there was a strip of wadding and gauze across his left eye, he didn’t seem too worse for wear. When we arrived, he was fast asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him, not after what he’d been through. I wasn’t sure of the exact details, but he’d been aboard one of the Rexombran ships, which had been the first to enter the fray at the rebel base. I was just glad he was alive.

  Leaving Dio to his rest, the lycan medic took us to the back of the medical wing, into a private room that branched off from a sterile corridor. Evidently, this was where the most severely injured patients were kept, each one monitored individually. The medic knocked gently on the door before ushering us inside. I wondered why he’d knocked, given that Stone was supposed to be unconscious. It became clear a split second later, when the open door revealed Lauren sitting in an armchair beside Stone’s bed. She was reading aloud to him, though the book wasn’t familiar to me.