The Takeover (6 page)

MY HEART DIDN’T STOP
racing until we were on our private plane heading back to San Diego. My older mortal brother, Chris, was in the cockpit, and the Emporium agents were safe under Dimitri’s watchful eyes. Oliver was still basking in the triumph of his successful illusion—Ritter and I’d both made the mistake of complimenting him on it—and his gloating was likely driving Shadrach and the others to consider ejecting him from the plane.

Ritter and I were in the rear of the plane behind the curtain that blocked the metal bunks we often used to transport unconscious Emporium agents to our prison facility in Mexico. For now, an unconscious Bedřich was the only occupant. Opposite the bunks, shoved up against the right side, were storage compartments that contained everything from emergency supplies to disguises.

Ritter unbuttoned my blouse and eased it off my arms. It took considerably more effort, and pain on my part, for him to finesse the tight, thin layer of body armor over my head. The tiny side zippers did little to help.

My breath still caught with pain whenever I breathed. Glancing down at the wound, I saw it was worse than I’d thought, or it wouldn’t still be leaking blood. Ritter’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t say anything. The body armor was fitted and fully supportive, which meant I wasn’t wearing a bra, but Ritter’s eyes barely flicked over my bare skin as he mopped up my stomach and began injecting the area around my wound with anesthetic-laced curequick.

“It’s fine,” I told him, leaning back against the cargo locker behind me. The cool of the metal felt good in contrast to the heat of my wound. “No stitches.” I hated needles, and while I needed the curequick, I drew the line at stitches that might help me heal but would bother me more than they were worth.

That made him angry. “You think I don’t know how you feel? That you clench your teeth every time you take a breath, or that you move like something’s broken? My instincts are screaming you’re a liability, when normally they force me to admit you’re the right person for the job. Not to mention this damn connection we have. So stop pretending.”

I’d thought I was the only one who was annoyed at how the mental connection we shared sometimes seemed like too much information, but I understood now that it made him feel vulnerable. He took responsibility for everything that happened to everyone under his watch, but with me that went much deeper. He’d once lost his family and everyone he’d loved. He’d lived only for revenge.

Until me. Until us.

I reached out to him, pulling him close, glad the anesthetic was already taking affect. “I can’t promise not to get hurt, but I can promise that I’ll do everything I can to come back to you. Always.”

“I know.” His voice roughened on the words as his lips met mine, angling my head back as our kiss deepened. His mind shield vanished and his desire and frustration hit me, along with the thoughts:
I can promise not to prevent you from going into danger, but I can’t promise to like it.

Of course he wouldn’t prevent me from battle, because taking that away from me would change everything between us. I kissed him harder.
You like this well enough.

He laughed and the tension drained away. “I love you,” he murmured, nibbling my neck.

“I love you too. But put a bandage on me and help me find a shirt before Oliver decides to come back here to brag some more about how he single-handedly extracted us from the jaws of death.”

“No way,” Ritter said. “I’m not finished yet.” And he kissed me again.

For the moment, it was easy to forget that we’d almost gotten caught and that our cargo was possibly the most important we’d ever transported.

I only hoped that our Emporium captives really did have information we needed.

“NOT EXACTLY THE QUIET IN
-and-out you planned,” Ava said dryly as Ritter and I walked into the conference room in our San Diego Fortress four hours later.

I shrugged. “I think you’ll agree that the risk was worth it in light of what we returned with.”

“Yes.” Her steel gray eyes flickered over me with more than a cursory glance. Ava was not only the leader of our cell but also my fourth great-grandmother. Consequently, she was more concerned with my welfare than she might have been otherwise. But there was no outer sign of my wound, and by the end of our meeting, even the deeper internal damage would be only another memory.

Ava lifted a hand, inviting us to sit. I took the chair on the left side of the table, kitty-corner to where she stood, and Ritter settled next to me. Today Ava had her shoulder-length blond hair up, and she wore one of her customary suits. She looked younger than the thirty-six years she’d aged over the past three centuries. “I understand Dimitri sedated the third agent when he started coming to?”

“That’s right.” Ritter’s gaze strayed briefly to me. “We couldn’t risk him going nuts on us again.”

Ava held my gaze. “You’re sure it was Delia’s work?”

I nodded. “I’d like to take another look at him. Her constructs were destroyed, but still lingering. I’ve never seen the like.”

This brought a laugh, softening her gray eyes. “There seems to be a lot going on that we haven’t seen lately. At any rate, we’re going to take some flak for the rescue. In fact, the president felt the need to leave his special session of Congress in order to follow up on the disturbing reports he received from the facility.”

“So, he didn’t take it well,” Ritter said, “our going behind his back.”

“President Mann was very angry.” One side of Ava’s lips quirked up in a half smile. But there was something else lingering behind the levity. Something deep and dark, but though she shared my sensing ability, she didn’t reach out to share it with me, so whatever it was, she wanted to tell us in her own way. “I think I made him understand that we had no choice, especially because he doesn’t seem to be making much progress in Congress to protect either Unbounded or mortals.”

“Oh, they’ll approve DNA testing for members of Congress and term limits for Unbounded,” Ritter said. “Because if they don’t, in a hundred years, only Unbounded will be in Congress making decisions for all the world.”

Ava finally sank into her seat. “I hope you’re right—heaven help me for even agreeing that such testing is needed. I thought it would go more smoothly, but the voting has stagnated at every turn, even though not one of the five known Unbounded members of Congress has come forward to object publicly to the testing. At this point, the president is doubtful any of his new laws will pass in their current form.”

“After today,” I said, “I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to admit to being Unbounded. The government was experimenting on them, remember?”

So far, only one Unbounded had announced his nature: Patrick Mann, the president’s adopted son. He was the official face of the Unbounded—and a Renegade Unbounded. For his trouble, the Emporium had teamed up with Hunters to kill him, but fortunately, the four Renegades from our cell who were guarding him managed to save his life.

“The Emporium has obviously stepped up their plan.” Ritter’s frustration showed in the growl of his voice. “Their agents are popping out of the woodwork like termites. All they need is one Unbounded president and a change in presidential term limits, and they will have won. We’ll have an overlord, not a president. Why can’t the mortals in Congress—or anywhere else—see that?”

Mortals did seem to like making things worse for themselves. They either wanted to dismember us, experiment on us, or fall to their knees in worship. Despite Patrick’s constant visits to groups all over the country, trying to show that we were just another race of humans, the mortal world was polarizing itself. The impending conflict promised to be long and bloody.

Ava must have caught my thought, because her eyes now seemed darker and haunted. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for the blood. Something had happened.

Ava raised a monitor and keyboard embedded into the top of the table and began typing. “We’ve been working hard on this to see if we can find any connection between what’s going on in Congress and the Emporium. There are precious few links, but what we have found all point to one man.”

She finished typing, and a holographic image of a man in his fifties appeared over the table. His hair was mostly a light brown, the gray on the temples blending in to soften the hard lines of his face. Even as a hologram, his hazel eyes seemed to peer inside me. What I could see of his chest hinted that he was in great physical shape, and there was no sign of the belly that most politicians sported at his age.

“This is Ropte—Senator David Ropte, to be exact. Before a few years ago, he wasn’t even in politics, but he has risen fast. According to intel on the thumb drive we recovered in Mexico, he received large amounts of money from the Emporium. All those records have been expunged in the past months, of course.”

“He’s Unbounded?” I asked.

“We don’t yet know if he’s Unbounded or a mortal sympathetic to the Emporium’s cause. In the past few months he’s increased his meeting schedule by four hundred percent. He’s been seeing senators, representatives, and other political leaders—anyone and everyone with any kind of influence.” Ava paused, letting that sink in before she continued. “He’s come out strongly against the President’s new proposals regarding Unbounded—both the testing and term limits as well as the bill that ensures protection from forced medical experiments.”

I thought about it for a moment. “He could be just another power-hungry idiot trying to use the Emporium for his own advancement. The announcement about us changed everything.”

“Whatever he is,” Ritter said, “if he’s not Emporium, they’ll string him along until they gut him.”

“Which might actually work in our favor,” Ava agreed. “Until this afternoon, we didn’t have anything solid on Ropte. However, there’s been a new development we can’t overlook.”

Dread filled my stomach. This was what she’d been leading up to. The darkness.

Ava jabbed her finger at her screen, pulling up another holograph that made my stomach churn. A family of four lay slaughtered, their blood seeping into the pale carpet underneath them. Ritter’s fists clenched tightly on the table near the gruesome image. He’d seen many such scenes during his long life, but this one of an entire family must haunt him, must bring back the night he’d lost his own family. I reached out to his knee under the table, giving it a brief squeeze. He relaxed marginally.

“This is what separates Ropte from the other power-crazed politicians,” Ava said. “The father of this family is Senator Burklap, and he’s been vocal in his support of the president’s new policies. He met with Ropte five times this month alone—and we’re only two weeks into the month. Twice, Stella picked up residual chatter about them arguing so loudly the secretary called security. Yesterday they had another meeting, and Burklap’s aide says he never returned to the office. Two hours ago, this slaughter is what that same aide discovered when he tracked down the senator at his DC residence.”

Ava paused, turning off the image. I was grateful for the chance to let my brain catch up. Staring at those dismembered bodies reminded me of all the deaths the Emporium had been responsible for, and how many of my loved ones they still might murder.

“A group of Hunters is claiming responsibility,” Ava added after several moments.

Ritter shook his head. “No way. They only kill Unbounded. And they never kill children.”

“The rules surrounding Hunters have changed too,” Ava reminded him. “At least with the new recruits who claim to be Hunters but are really just out for the sport.”

From what I’d seen, Hunters were all pretty much out for the sport, for killing and asking questions later. Almost from the first day I learned I was Unbounded, they’d been trying to kill me. “Maybe the family has some Unbounded connection.”

“No.” Ritter leaned back, folding his arms against his chest. “Some Hunters are downright bloodthirsty bastards, but too many of them are descended from Unbounded for them to start murdering children who haven’t reached the age of Change. They’d have to kill all their own children just for the possibility. And the attack against Senator Burklap’s family was experienced. They were cut specifically in a way to sever focus points. No wasted strokes like you normally find with Hunters.”

I really didn’t want to see the image again, so I’d take his word for it.

Ava pondered a moment in silence before saying, “Ritter, I’d like you to contact Keene and have him get some feelers out to see what the
official
word is from the Hunters. He should have some insight into it. But I’m with you on this. I believe either Ropte or the Emporium, or both, are behind these murders. Unfortunately, it gets worse. When I talked to the president this afternoon, he told me four more supporters have indicated their intention to change their vote. Not just any men, but outspoken supporters like Burklap.”

Fury built in Ritter’s eyes. “Their families.”

I could barely breathe at the idea. “Like Burklap.”

Ava nodded. “We knew the fight was going to get worse. However, I’m still hoping we’re wrong. Stella’s been tracking the families of the four since the news came. We have to find them, even if we’re only making sure they’re safe.”