“Damn it,” Rex sighs out loudly. “What could have done this?”
“Mom can’t know about this, Rex,” I murmur, my eyes telling him what my lips can’t.
His true hybrid blues widen in response when he understands that I think this was somehow involved with emergents - an emergent like my mother and I came from.
“Aria, you can’t possibly think they missed some?” he asks in a whisper.
“Name something more powerful than our mother,” I whisper back.
He shakes his head, and his lips offer nothing else. He knows I’m right, but he’s terrified what will happen if anyone else pieces the puzzle together. They’ll be on a mission to learn all they can about emergents. If they discover the truth, my mother and I will be slaughtered, along with the rest of our family who have harbored our secret.
I walk away, and I move into a room no one else has entered yet. The door shuts behind me, sealing me into the thick, padded room. It seems just as gruesome as the rest of the place - bodies that have been painted red with more blood than I've ever seen before. But then I gasp when I see pictures taped up all over.
There’s one of me in the center. My eyes are fully violet and exposed after my father died and I cried too hard to keep the contacts intact. It was just our family there that day, so my mother and I let the tears fall freely without fear of someone seeing our secret.
Rex walks in, startling me when the door shuts behind him, and his eyes widen in a gasp just as mine did. He jerks my picture off the board and pushes it into his pocket. I see Mom’s picture taped up, her eyes glowing violet, and I rip it down and hand it to him. He conceals our secret in his pocket, and my eyes continue to follow the trail of violet eyes.
My gaze falls on one in particular that makes me sick. It’s Kellan Maverick - dirty and grizzly with his bushy beard and matted hair - shortly after he eluded the United.
He’s like me - his violet eyes shining for all to see in the glow of the light - the escaped Stringham prisoner suspected to have leveled compounds, cities, and so much more.
I rip it down to hand to my brother as well. If they link him to an emergent, they’ll never trust my mother or me.
Together, we start ripping down all the violet-eyed pictures and shoving them away. The fewer people who ask questions about emergents, the better.
“This is bad… really fucking bad,” Rex whispers so low I barely hear him even though this room is obviously soundproofed.
“This is worse than bad. The unaligned are piecing the puzzle together. They know who we are, damn it. What happens if they tell the United?” I panic, and his hand tightens on mine.
“Then we’ll all disappear. I won’t let anything happen to you,” Rex says softly, his brotherly protectiveness surging forth.
His hands shake slightly, and I’m worried what’s about to happen. I jerk him around so that his eyes meet mine. I sigh in relief when I see his pupils normal, but then we feel an explosion quaking the floor. The ceiling above us shifts as dirt falls through the instant cracks.
The door falls off, opening us up to the next room as the walls around us begin to crumble and crack.
“Get the fuck out! It’s going to collapse!” Jase orders, and suddenly I feel him beside me, his speed too fast for a normal full blood.
He grabs my hand to jerk me away from the crumbling ceiling. The metal screams out while folding and buckling to the weight of the surface. Rex rushes to the front, and then the tunnel collapses, shutting off our way out.
“Damn it! Uncle!” Rex prompts.
“Working on it,” Uncle Grayson says while everyone falls in behind him.
The ceiling is still folding and debris still litters the underground world as we impatiently wait.
He injects himself with olophine to keep his savage from breaking free, and then he holds his hands out to incinerate the debris too fast for anyone to see a spark. Aunt Angelica flips through the crowd, and she uses her gift to force a new opening for us to climb up.
Jase grabs me at my waist, and he launches me through the opening before popping up beside me almost just as quick. He takes my hand again, and I screech as a blast explodes beside us - grass and dirt slinging up with the flakes of uranium.
“Take out their tanks!” Jase yells to my uncle, and he does as instructed… per the usual around Jase.
I swear he’s the captain and my uncle is the lieutenant.
I feel a striking against my side, and I scream out as blood gushes from me.
“Fuck,” Jase growls while scooping me up and pressing me to his body.
“Aria!” Rex screams, and I shiver upon hearing his tone.
