Sneak Peek: Rebel Born
THE POISON OF OUR AGE
My wrists are bound with steel cuffs.
Hawthorne viciously prods me forward. I stumble behind Agent Crow, through the blue banners and out of the Sword balcony. I glance over my shoulder, but it’s not the ache of betrayal that wrenches my heart. It’s fear that whatever has happened to Hawthorne is irreversible. His eyes glow with a distinctive silver light. I might have caught a glimpse of it the last time we were together, but I can’t be sure. I can hardly process what’s happening now.
Shrill screams of terror echo throughout the Silver Halo’s corridors. I am surrounded by no less than a dozen Zeros. None of the others approach us. Instead, the monsters busily butcher everything with a pulse. Unafflicted firstborns and the secondborn competitors attempt to escape from the floating colosseum, but hordes of killers intercept them.
My pulse races. I can’t help anyone!
Another shove compels me forward. We pass by a gondola station. Blood and carnage litter the platforms. Some firstborns jump to their deaths from the floating colosseum rather than be caught by the Zeros. The hairs on my scalp stand on end.
“Why are you killing firstborns?” I growl at Agent Crow.
“Why not?” he replies in a blasé tone, reaching to brush wisps of my hair from my face as we walk. I recoil from his touch. “They won’t do well in our new society, Roselle. We’re doing them a favor.” His mouth curves up at the thought, exposing the steel teeth that stand in stark contrast to his supple lips. The black disc adhered to his temple blinks with eerie blue light. It must be how he manipulates the silver-eyed cyborgs. Their obedience to him seems absolute. He doesn’t have to say a word. He somehow just thinks, and they respond.
I shudder. He’s depraved. The inky tattoos around his eyes and on his throat are deceptive. Although there are hundreds of the so-called kill tallies visibly etched into his skin, they only represent a fraction of the deaths he’s caused. He would have to be covered from head to toe to represent all the people whose slaughter he has brought about tonight.
Agent Crow guides us to a staging area where a nondescript medical supply airship awaits with its ramp down. No cargo is on board. The Census agent enters the front of the ship, and I’m shoved up the open ramp by the demonic-sounding killers behind me. Inside the tail, I find that the airship doesn’t have seats. I’m flung to the metal floor by the monster that was Hawthorne. Sitting up, I push myself to the wall, lean back against it, draw my knees up to my chest, and rest my forearms on them.
I’m not sure how smart these things are when they’re in Black-O mode. The silver-eyed woman who latched the cuffs on me made the mistake of securing my arms in front of me. If I can reach a sword, it will be no problem to cut them off. But there aren’t any swords. No weapons of any kind here in the cargo hold. It’s just me and the Zeros.
The airship door closes, sealing us in. My throat tightens. Dim lights come on, but it’s still dark. The Zeros’ eyes glow like small moons in the night sky. Gore mottles their mouths, their clothes, and their fingers. The steel claws seem to have retracted into their fingertips, but I know they’re there.
The airship rumbles and lurches upward. The Zeros don’t move. They don’t talk. They gaze straight ahead. They seem barely alive. Hawthorne sits across from me and several bodies away. He isn’t smeared in carnage like the others. I don’t think he was in the fight at the Silver Halo, which means Agent Crow wants to use Hawthorne some other way. More than likely against me.
My wrists tremble on my knees—or maybe it’s my knees trembling—or maybe it’s both. I thread my fingers together, but it doesn’t stop. Panic seizes me. It’s hard to breathe. I feel dizzy. Sweat soaks the back of my white sparring outfit. Wisps of damp hair cling to my cheek.
I have to wait for several minutes in the grip of the attack. When my panic finally subsides and my breath isn’t coming out in hacking pants, I try to get up, and all the creatures look at me at once. It makes me want to vomit. I press myself against the wall and rise. Carefully, I walk between the Zeros until I’m across from the ghoulish Hawthorne.
I kneel in front of him. He stares, but it’s as if he isn’t really seeing me. “Hawthorne.” I try a normal tone, but it comes out in a breathless whisper. “Remember when we first met? It was in Swords, when the airships fell from of the sky. Remember?” My voice quivers. Tears spill down my cheeks. “You tried to help me, and I hit you in the nose?”
He doesn’t even blink.
I sit down and cross my legs. “You rescued me when I was Crow’s prisoner in Census. You were so brave. Nobody else lifted a finger. It was you. Just you.” I touch his hand, wanting so badly for him to hold me.
Suddenly his eyes focus. His hand pounces, wraps around my throat, and squeezes. My face flushes. My windpipe feels crushed. I hold up my hands to him, palms out, in surrender. He lets go.
I cough and sputter, gulping breaths. “Okay, so no touching,” I gasp when I finally get my voice back. I wipe my tears from my cheeks with my sleeve. I touch my ravaged neck. “I know you’re in there somewhere, Hawthorne. We’re a half-written poem, you and me. Wherever you are—whatever basement in your mind they’ve got you trapped in—I’ll find you. I won’t leave you down there alone.”
I talk as if we’re alone, reminding Hawthorne of everything we’ve shared together. Every stolen moment when we were secondborns. Every kiss. Every touch. My throat aches, but still I talk.
Hawthorne stares straight ahead. No reaction. No indication that he hears me or understands me. Hours pass with no sign of recognition from him. The pain of it is too much. It’s too real. It threatens to bury me. I hold my head in my hands and give in, sobbing quietly.
The cargo ship begins to descend. The touchdown is smooth. I try to pull myself together, wiping my face with the back of my sleeve. The tail opens. Humid air rushes in. The sky is still dark, but tall lights loom above us, like those that line the secondborn military Bases in Swords, throwing stark white light on everything.
Hawthorne stands in unison with the other mind-controlled monsters. He grabs my arm and roughly hauls me out of the hold. Agent Crow waits on the hoverpad. The black beacon on the side of his forehead blinks blue. Around us, palm trees sway in a salty breeze. Balmy air blows loose strands of my hair.
“Pleasant trip?” Agent Crow asks. He smiles, baring his wretched steel teeth.
Normally I try to have something scathingly ironic to say back to him, just so that he remembers he hasn’t beaten me. This time I don’t. This time he has destroyed me, reached inside me and torn my heart out, and I know this is only the beginning.
“Where are we?” My voice is gravelly.
“A little place we call The Apiary,” Agent Crow replies. “It’s a small island near the Fate of Seas, one of the first military Bases to have Trees. It’s been decommissioned, as far as most people are concerned. Not a lot of people outside of Census know of its existence.”
I can just make out the ocean in the distance. All around lie the relicts of a decrepit military Base. Ancient airships that I’ve only seen in holographic history files rust out in the open. Everything is at least a few hundred years old. The only lights shine from the Base’s Trees and infrastructure. Nothing but water lies beyond the Base from what I can tell. Behind us, rough tree-lined, rocky crags dapple the horizon. No other signs of civilization.
Viable airships hang from the Tree’s branches, but they’re not current models. I wouldn’t know if I could fly one unless I got inside the cockpit. Behind me, the cyborgs form two lines. Each of them is spaced the same distance apart. Efficient. Mindless. Controlled and manipulated by a psychopathic Census agent.
Agent Crow strides ahead of me into the Tree’s trunk. I’m prodded to follow. A familiar dimness greets me inside the Tree, but the smell isn’t the same as the military Trees I inhabited as a soldier. This structure has been resurrected to fit the needs of madmen. We enter a warehouse for hundreds of thousands of adult-size vials—cylindrical tanks filled with fluid. Blue neon light glows from the tops and bottoms of the transparent cylinders. Inside each is a person, curled in a fetal position, floating. Some resemble modern Homo sapiens. Others don’t. Some are amalgamations of different species. Others are unifications of human and machine. Above us are levels of vials as far as I can see, arranged in concentric rings like the cross section of a real tree.
Energy thrums and snaps in the air. There’s an overcharged, singeing scent. If I licked my fingers, I could probably taste it on my skin. As it is, I feel it in my chest. My hair rises, from the smell and from fear.
Agent Crow teeters on the edge of mania. His insolent smile cuts through my haze of disbelief. “Would you like a history lesson of the Fates Republic, Roselle?” he asks. “Not the one you’ve been taught in Swords about the nine Fates forming for the common good to create perfect symmetry between the classes. That’s mostly propaganda. I’m talking about a real history lesson.”
“Enlighten me,” I reply.
He clasps his hands behind his back, and we stroll together through a ring of the glowing tanks. “As you know, our species has made such medical strides in the past centuries that we live significantly longer now than our ancestors did—sometimes a hundred years longer or more. Advances in medicine and technology keep driving those ages higher. Once, our population exploded. We were on the brink of exhausting all our natural resources, bringing catastrophic destruction to the planet. We were wasting away. Something had to be done. At the same time, a powerful ruler by the name of Greyon Wenn the Virtuous came into power. Have you heard of him?”
“Of course,” I reply. We continue between the glowing containers like lurking rats. “Greyon was a ruthless warlord and a brilliant strategist. Brutal in his tactics, he slaughtered his rivals when they surrendered, and he set about systematically toppling every other government until he became the first supreme ruler to dominate the world. He formed a single unifying government and presided over it with ruthless aggression.”
A sudden spasm of motion explodes in the cylinder next to me. I lurch away. Hands press against the transparent surface. An open mouth with sharp fangs gropes the glass. The eyes of the creature are completely black. Gills cover its neck. Webbed fingers paw at us through the fluid. I’m not sure if it was once a person or not. I shudder. Hawthorne shoves me away from the tank, propelling me in Agent Crow’s direction.
Agent Crow chuckles and keeps walking. “You surprise me, Roselle. You know our true origins. Your mentor, Dune, taught you well,” Agent Crow says. “You’re not as ignorant as most people I encounter.”
“Dune always said, ‘Know your past so you can avoid it in the future.’”
Agent Crow chuckles. “What else did he teach you about Greyon Wenn the Virtuous?”
“I know Grisholm Wenn-Bowie was said to be a direct descendant of Greyon,” I reply numbly.
“Yes, you could trace his family line all the way back to the supreme ruler . . . but the same could be said about you, Roselle. The St. Sismode line directly descends from Greyon. Some say that the Wenns and the Bowies have the name, but it’s your family that has the blood.”
“They’re all dead now,” I say tonelessly. “You and your minions decimated them.”
“All except for you and your mother. But the Wenn and Bowie lineages lost their nobility and intelligence years ago. We simply rectified the genealogical error. We relegated them to where they belong—a footnote in history. But getting back to Greyon . . . The world was staggeringly overpopulated, and growing more so in peacetime. Greyon Wenn decreed restrictions be enacted on procreation. His government began issuing birth cards, a rudimentary way to give permission to a couple to have a child. Firstborns weren’t the only ones allowed to have birth cards. It was based purely on genetics. Once undesirable traits were expunged, it became an issue of privilege. Cards were dispensed at higher and higher prices. Families died off. Inherited wealth became a way to ensure the survival of the family name. Finances were pooled and given to firstborn heirs to keep family lines alive. Only the elite could afford to have children.
The government began issuing cards for secondborn children, but with the explicit provision that the child be given to the government when the secondborn reached adulthood. And voilà! The Fates Republic was formed. Of course, there will always be rule breakers, and enforcement of laws is essential—so Census was born.”
I consider trying to choke him to death, like I did when we first met. I could probably do it if I could get my cuffs over his head. Hawthorne lingers so near to me, though. It wouldn’t take much for him to break my arms. I contemplate other killing scenarios as we pass more tanks. The beings inside these appear more human, but these people have machine parts grafted to them. The fine-boned lines of one woman’s face are covered in a shiny coating of metal. Her left eye has been replaced by a protruding lens. She doesn’t move as we pass.
Agent Crow drones on. “Over time, the population scales tipped, and we slid back the other way. Our low birth rate threatened us with extinction. Depressing the birth rate was never meant to be a permanent solution to overpopulation, and even though we were living longer, the population was declining. So again, something had to be done.
He has led us to a Census bunker. He scans his moniker under a blue light near the security doors, and they roll open. We walk a short corridor to the lifts and enter an elevator car. The last time I was in a Census elevator, it filled with lake water, and I almost died. I feel like I’m drowning now, too. The elevator doors close, and we descend.
And still, Agent Crow continues his history lesson. “Scientists were put to the task of finding a solution to our complex problem. Cloistered away from society, they lived like kings and queens on this island oasis, creating generations of offspring we affectionately refer to as zeroborns. A harvesting plant was built right here on this military Base.”
I scoff. “Why not just repeal the laws and let everyone repopulate the world naturally?”
Agent Crow scrunches his face like I’ve said something distasteful. “Bah! I never took you for a simpleton!” He looks down his nose at me and sneers. “You’d let every dirt farmer have as many brats as he wanted, wouldn’t you? You’d let the lawbreakers go unpunished?”
“My way would make Census obsolete.”
“Your way will never happen.”
The elevator doors open. Before me sprawls a state-of-the-art laboratory. It’s eerily dim, lit by a low blue haze that seems to come from the floor. Incubation capsules resembling giant wombs hang from tubing in neatly lined rows and columns. I stand frozen, mouth agape. Agent Crow exits the car, turns, and gazes at me, his hands still clasped behind his back.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks. Technicians in gloves and black lab coats tend to the wombs. “The next generation of zeroborns. We use zygotes taken from captured thirdborns before we execute them. We used to genetically engineer our batches through cloning, but we’re getting much better results now—from diversity, of all things. Diversity has been the key to hiding our progeny. Clones don’t blend in well, but clones are useful in running our secret facilities.”
Hawthorne shoves me in the back, and I stumble from the elevator. Agent Crow turns and continues walking, passing rows of swollen, veiny, synthetic-flesh bladders filled with fluid and floating fetuses.
“Once the first generation of zeroborns was created,” Agent Crow says, “the operation became self-perpetuating. Zeroborns manufacturing zeroborns to work in the embryo centers, as caretakers, as population insertion specialists—chemically mapping the brains of our progeny with false memories so they can be inserted, undetected, into the population in any Fate we choose.” The technicians resemble one another, some right down to their freckles. They have zero-shaped monikers.
“How did you keep the zeroborns a secret for so long?” I ask.
“The zeroborns who are inserted into the population receive new monikers representing whatever Fate they’re assigned to. Take, for example, zeroborns earmarked to become Sword soldiers. We create them here, in our underground facilities. Other zeroborns care for them. They leave this facility when they’re infants. The zeroborn soldiers are raised at other secret military facilities, where they’re trained and given false memories of a life and family in Swords that never existed.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “How do you give someone false memories?”
“Reality and perception are easy to manipulate. Your eyes, as it happens, aren’t the best way to perceive the world. They’re horrendously inadequate filters. We don’t perceive most of what there is to see. Perception is a guessing game for the brain. Once you understand that, then you know that everything you perceive with your senses can be altered and manipulated, especially your visual perception. Take our cornea implants—the silver shine results from an alteration to the visual acuity. The Black-Os aren’t seeing what you and I see. They’re being fed a virtual reality on top of the world at large. Their cornea implants, coupled with alterations to the chemicals and electrical impulses in the cerebral cortex, override their higher cognitive reasoning, replacing it with artificial intelligence that we control. We can implant any memory we see fit.”
I glance at the black disc on his temple. “How do you control them?”
He pauses next to a fleshy womb. In the translucent sack, a fetus floats, blissfully unaware of its very unnatural environment. “The Virtual Perception Manipulation Device, or VPMD, began as a toy,” Agent Crow explains. “It was a form of amusement—tricking our brains with enhanced optics. Recreational visual deception. Eventually, Census created our own virtual worlds by implanting devices into the brains of zeroborns. The implants, once embedded, create their own unique neural pathways. Biochemically, we manipulate visual and aural perception, and with implants in the cornea, show them images they perceive as ‘real.’ We have complex programs and protocols. When we send Black-Os out to perform a mission, there are ‘laws’ that they have to follow, but the program also incorporates artificial intelligence. How the collective reaches the goal is almost entirely up to them. They just have to adhere to certain rules.”
“Rules like ‘Don’t kill Roselle. Bring her to the Sword balcony while you slaughter everyone else’?”
Agent Crow’s eyes dance with amusement. “We gave them your scent. Did you know that? They smelled you, like maginots would.”
“So they have olfactory enhancements as well?”
“And so much more.”
“You use that device on your temple to communicate with the Black-Os,” I say. It’s not a question.
“That information isn’t part of the tour, Roselle,” he admonishes. “We’ve already created our own population—our own elite forces. The time for a great change in power has begun. No longer will we be subject to the idiocy of the Clarities of the Fates Republic. Census will make the laws now. Your mother, of course, is the exception.”
“It always comes down to power, doesn’t it?”
“Everything is about power, Roselle. The war between the Fates Republic and the Gates of Dawn has accelerated the transfer of power. Census has been hiding our declining population with zeroborn replacements masquerading as Swords, but we’ve been having trouble keeping up with your mother’s production demands. If things continue at the current rate, secondborn Swords will go extinct in a generation. The Gates of Dawn keeps throwing their martyrs at us, and we can’t grow new organic soldiers from infancy fast enough. We had to find a way to convert existing assets.”
“Assets?” I spit. “You’re talking about people!”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Roselle.”
“If the ban on procreation were lifted,” I snap, “Census would lose its power. So instead, you kidnap people like Hawthorne and insert VPMDs to make them obey you?”
“It’s called conversion, Roselle. We implant devices that allow us to control the host. Let the Gates of Dawn throw as many bodies at us as they want. We’ll just keep killing them and producing enhanced reinforcements until there’s no one else left.”
“My mother knows?” I can barely contain my rage.
“We needed each other, Census and The Sword.”
“How long will that last?” I ask him. He smirks but doesn’t answer. “How long has Hawthorne been your convert?”
“Not long. A few weeks. We grabbed him at his home after that little stunt you two pulled at the Sword social club. I must admit that I was impressed with how you handled our non-converted zeroborns. It showed just how weak they are compared with our enhanced AI versions.”
“Non-converted?” I ask.
“None of the assassins you fought at the Sword social club had cerebral enhancements. It was too risky. If the implants and other enhancements had been found before we were ready to unveil them, it could have ruined everything.”
“Other enhancements?” I think of the steel claws that sprang from the Black-Os fingertips.
“Lethal enhancements, Roselle. We’re on the cutting edge of tapping into other perceptions, what some would call a sixth sense. The new neural pathways that the VPMD creates have presented us with some tantalizing opportunities. We’ve commissioned Star-Fated engineers to help us with our research—only the brightest.” I haven’t seen these Star-Fated technicians around.
“You’ve commissioned them or you’ve kidnapped them?” I ask.
“‘Kidnapped’ is such an ugly word, Roselle. Most of them are secondborns. We appropriated them.”
We leave the room and enter a stark white corridor. The light hurts my eyes. Windows afford a view of a nursery. Swaddled in temperature-controlled cocoons, infants rock gently in nestled bins. Above them, holographic images of faces hover, talking and smiling, giving the impression that a real person is attending to the infant. These are interspersed with other images, flashes of light that I can’t make out.
“They haven’t gotten their cornea or other implants yet,” Agent Crow says. “The holographic images simulate mothers and fathers—a sibling—obedience to Census.”
Thousands and thousands of cocoon cradles fill the nursery. It reminds me of a morgue. “Cranston Atom, the mortician at the Halo Palace,” I surmise, “somehow figured out that something wasn’t right about the assassins at the club.”
“He was clever. At the morgue, Cranston noticed that the zeroborn monikers were all cut out of the Death Gods, but he also detected that the zeroborn moniker had left behind unique imprints inside the corpses’ flesh. The markings were different than ‘normal’ Fates Republic monikers. His discovery meant I had to kill him.”
“How did you get away with that?”
“We’re Census. No one questions us.”
We’ve reached the end of the corridor. Another elevator opens before us. Agent Crow steps in. I have no choice but to follow. Hawthorne enters after me, the doors roll closed, and I’m relieved to feel the car rising.
Hawthorne’s sandy hair lies over his eyes. I want to brush it away, but if I touch him, he’ll hurt me. He gazes straight ahead, emotionless. My heart aches with sorrow.
“How is it that Hawthorne was converted weeks ago?” I ask. “I just saw him yesterday in the war room of Upper Halo.”
Agent Crow laughs. “Hawthorne has no idea that he’s a Black-O when he’s not being actively redirected. Unless VPMD is turned on, you’d never know he is one of us. His eyes have the implants, true, but they won’t shine. You’d have to examine him closely. He’s the perfect spy because he’s unaware that he’s spying. We have but to question him.”
“You’re disgusting,” I growl.
“And you’ll make a fine Black-O, Roselle.”
A cold shiver slips down my spine.
We return to the trunk of the Tree. I’m escorted to a heartwood in the center of the facility. Agent Crow gestures for me to enter the heartwood with him. I clutch the pole and step onto a rising stair. Agent Crow is on the step beside mine. We’re lifted upward together through the tube. “There is something I want to show you on level five,” he says. We pass storehouses of neon vials containing people—his experiments. On level five, we step off the heartwood and walk together to the area that, in a normal Tree, would be used for the intake of new Transitions. Inside, secondborn Atom- and Star-Fated technicians are busy at work. They don’t appear to be mind-controlled. No silver light shines from their eyes.
Agent Crow commands the attention of the nearest Star-Fated man in a yellow lab coat. The tall, handsome man stops what he is doing on his holographic screen, climbs off his chair, and walks toward us. Dark hair falls over his brow. His eyes are focused on his moniker, but his inattentiveness doesn’t seem to bother Agent Crow. “I need you to prepare Roselle St. Sismode for Black-O conversion.”
My heart pounds in my ears. I turn to bolt, but I’m caught and restrained by Hawthorne and several other Black-O soldiers. I struggle, but they’re ridiculously strong.
The technician doesn’t miss a beat, ignoring my outburst. “I just need a requisition, and I can take her back to an exam room now. I’m sending you the appropriate files.” His fingers swipe the light of his star-shaped moniker.
Agent Crow uses his moniker to send the requisition. They’re still using the Fates Republic communication system. They must have ways of blocking access by nosy Star-Fated firstborns like Reykin, but for my sake, I hope not.
The technician draws a tranquilizer gun from the holster on his thigh. I kick him in the stomach and try again to get loose, but I’m immediately tackled by the nearest Black-O. He growls in my ear until I exhaust myself and stop struggling, and he hauls me back to my feet. I pant in frustration. Agent Crow leans in, touches my cheek, and smooths my hair away from my eyes. “I’m looking forward to your conversion more than I have with anyone else’s, Roselle. What will it be like when you fall into my arms instead of trying to rip them off?”
I spit in his face. He scowls and pulls a cloth from the pocket of his black leather coat. Methodically, he wipes away my spit. “Hand me the gun.”
The technician places the tranquilizer gun in Agent Crow’s palm. He places it directly over my heart. My eyes defy him, even as the dart penetrates my skin. I jerk at the impact when the needle hits my breastbone. My eyes blur. My ears ring. Everything mutes. A dreamy, faraway feeling sets in.
“Let her go,” Agent Crow orders. It sounds distant.
I’m released. My knees weaken and I almost collapse, but the technician reaches out and catches me, clutching me to him. He smells like lemongrass.
“Opa,” he groans. “It must be too much. You’re such a little thing.”
His deep voice sound so familiar.
“Don’t be deceived,” Agent Crow warns. “She’s a killer.”
“Oh, I know who she is,” the technician says. “Everybody knows Roselle St. Sismode.”
“Her mother expects her conversion to begin as soon as possible,” Agent Crow growls, “so quit the rhetoric. Prep her for conversion and tank her. Alert me the moment she’s ready. I’m leaving the Black-Os to guard her. Don’t let her out of your sight or you’ll regret it.”
Agent Crow leaves, and the technician says nothing. My head lolls on his shoulder. He lifts me in his arms and takes me to an examination room, followed closely by Hawthorne and several other Black-Os.
The technician lays me on an examination table beneath a bright-white spotlight. Beside it is a tall tank filled with briny fluid, like the ones I observed earlier. I drift in and out of awareness, trying not to succumb to the tranquilizer. The technician removes my cuffs. I feel him tug off my clothes and wrestle me into a wet suit. He inserts IVs into my arm. Using a powered sprayer, he coats my exposed skin with something.
Then he takes my hand and lifts it.
His thumb rubs over my palm.
He pauses and lifts my hand higher, inspecting it closely.
He rubs his thumb over the small star again.
“That’s—” He leans over the table, his head blotting out most of the white light above. A halo remains, ringing his aquamarine eyes, which bore into mine. “How did you get this star?”
I recognize the chiseled lines of his face, the way his dark eyebrows slash together. My pulse jumps as he lays a hand on my shoulder and shakes me. “The star is unique to my family crest.” He holds my hand in front of my face. “Seven points—a seven-three prism, with three long points that form a W. And my brother’s initials in relief—mirrored? What is this?”
My lips curl into a dopey smile. “Ransom . . . Winterstrom.” I squeeze his hand. “Reykin is . . . looking . . . for you . . .”
Rebel Born is forthcoming from 47North in 2019.