“Hm?” He tore his attention from the door. “Nothing.” He made an effort to relax back into the chair, but his attention was still on the Grief room.
“Seriously, what is it, Ry? The new guy?”
He ran a hand over his cheek and down his chin. “Yeah, I, uh . . . I kind of wish he wasn’t in there.”
“Why?”
Rylen shook his head.
“Why can’t you tell me?” I pressed.
“He’s done classified jobs that are best left unspoken.”
“Like what? I won’t tell anyone.”
Rylen ran a thumb over my chin, the tip touching my bottom lip. “It’s stuff I wish I didn’t even know.” He nodded toward the door. “Top told him he should go, ‘cause those meetings are confidential—they have an understanding that what’s said in that room stays there—but I’m hoping he doesn’t share too much.”
Geez, what kind of things has this guy done? He seemed so normal, but he’d definitely been broken by his time with the DRI. I decided to change tactics.
“Rylen . . . what do you do all day at work?”
He scooted closer to me and twined his fingers with mine. “Well.” He leaned his head toward mine and said in a low voice. “I’m working on getting a Bael airship to fly.”
I gasped and stared at him. “You’re serious?” I hissed.
“Yeah. But so far we’ve had no luck.” He put a finger to his lips to show it was our secret. I realized he was breaking major rules by telling me this. I wanted to ask a million questions, but having that information actually scared me a little. Plus, I doubted he’d tell me any details.
We held hands, both of us lost in our thoughts. I tried to imagine what the ship looked like, and what types of technological advances they had over us. Could we learn from them and adapt enough to fight them?
A weird feminine yelp came from the Grief room, causing Rylen and I to both tense. The voice was choked as she shouted something.
“Is that Remy?” I asked.
“Fuck,” Rylen breathed. His face paled. We both stood and moved to toward the door, just as a raging male voice let out a cry, followed by a crashing sound, screams, and shouts.
“Tater!” I said. Rylen was already running. He barreled into the room with me right behind him. I could not believe what I was seeing. Tater had Michael King on the ground, pinned, with his hands around his throat. Tater’s face looked crazed. Remy stood beside them, screaming for them to stop.
The chaplain and Rylen both struggled to pull Tater off the man, whose face had gone deep red. When Tater released him, Michael didn’t bother trying to get up. He just lie there, back arching, gasping for air.
“You killed them!” Tater shouted. My brother thrashed and they held him tighter. “Fucking idiot!Why? You had to know it was innocent humans down there!”
What . . . ? His words slithered into me like a poisoned serpent, and I began to shake and burn. He couldn’t mean what it sounded like. I rushed forward and stood in front of Tater, taking his face in my hands to calm him. His eyes finally focused on me, full of tears, and he sagged in the arms of the men holding him.
“He dropped the bomb on them, Amber. This fucker . . . he killed them.”
“He . . .” I glanced down at Michael, and a sickening sense of wrongness filled me. “He dropped the bomb?” I shifted my eyes from Tater to Remy to Rylen, whose tight features and locked jaw told me it was true. This pilot had been dropping bombs on townspeople. He’d killed my parents, and grandmother, and Livia. He’d killed Remy’s parents. She collapsed into a chair, shuddering. Another woman dropped to her side to console her.
My gaze slowly moved to the man on the floor, who was sitting up now, still gasping.
“Amber,” Rylen warned. I barely heard him. My feet were already moving, taking me to this human whose hands had flown the plane and released the bombs. He’d done it.He’d done it.
The room took on a deadly stillness. The chaplain and another man had gotten Michael King to his feet. He peered at me, cowering slightly, looking like absolute shit.
“You knew you were bombing humans?” It came out of me as a whisper.
The room was so quiet. This man and I were both shaking, trembling, this man who’d stolen my family with one flick of his finger. Even the chaplain watched, his face pained, and he didn’t try to intervene.
“I was told the encampments were outliers. Resisters of peace. The people who poisoned the waters.” His voice was so weak as he continued. “But you’re right to hate me. Because even after I began to question it in my mind—to question the sheer numbers of people at those sites—I was too cowardly to question them directly. I knew they would kill me. I knew the only way I could stop being used by them was to escape.”
