Never Fade

He’s one of them, he’s one of them, he’s one of them—

“Calm down!” he barked, giving me a hard shake. “Get a grip! I’m not gonna hurt you! I want to talk about Liam!”

Cole released his iron grip on my arm, then took a step back, holding up his hands. I was still breathing hard as I turned. The water served as a nice barrier that neither of us was willing to cross. Steam curled up around my soaking sneakers, then my knees, and then I was breathing the hot damp air into my tight chest.

“Liam who?” I said, when I got a grip on myself.

Cole gave me an exasperated look, and I knew the game was up.

“You brought him back in,” I said, an edge to my voice. “I did everything to make sure he’d be safe.”

“Safe?” Cole laughed without a hint of humor. “You think sending the idiot out into the world to be captured or killed was a kindness? He’s lucky I still check for our contact procedure, otherwise the skip tracer on his ass would have happily delivered him to camp.”

I couldn’t help it; my fists clenched. “How did you force him to help you?”

“Why do you assume I forced him to do anything, darlin’?”

“Don’t,” I gritted out, “call me that.”

Cole’s light brows rose. “I guess that answers my question about why you lied to Alban. Care to explain how you even know my brother?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Cate didn’t tell you?”

“I have my suspicions, but there wasn’t any mention of him in your file.” Cole cocked his head to the side, a gesture that was Liam to a T. The second and third fingers on his left hand tapped against his leg—a nervous tic, maybe. “Alban seems to have some idea, but the others don’t.”

He leaned out of the stream, resting against the stall for support. Still suffering, but coasting on a wave of pride that kept him from showing it. Classic Stewart move. “Look, he wasn’t working with me at all. That night—the one you saw—was the first time I had seen him since he split from the League years ago. We set up a contact procedure for emergencies, and he used it. I thought it was a life-or-death situation, otherwise I never would have told him how to find me.”

“Because you were on a deep cover Op?” I asked. “What the hell is on that flash drive? I’ve never seen Alban so worked up.”

Cole kept a steady gaze on my face, and, I think—because I was so furious—I was finally able to match it. “Tell me.”

He blew out a long sigh, rubbing the top of his head with bandaged fingers. They’d broken every single one on his left hand to try to get information out of him. Alban had told me as much, with no small amount of satisfaction.

“I’m guessing your Op, whatever it was, ended up being compromised and that’s why they stormed your apartment?”

Cole looked insulted at the suggestion. “Hell, no. My cover was impeccable. I could have stayed there forever and they wouldn’t have suspected a damn thing. I only got hauled in because the skip tracer trailing Lee saw him go into my apartment and called me in for aiding a fugitive Psi kid. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t shown up—I was three hours away from being extracted!”

“Fine, but you still haven’t told me what the hell you were doing in Philadelphia. I want to know what was on that flash drive and why you couldn’t find it at the end. That’s what you were looking for, right?”

“Yeah,” he said finally. “That’s what I was looking for. The dumbass took it without even realizing it.”

I balked at that. “What?”

“I was deep cover at Leda Corp, working as a lab tech on their Psi research that Gray commissioned. You heard about that program, right?” He waited until I nodded before continuing. “My original objective was just to keep an eye on how things were going. Alban wanted to know what kinds of tests they were running and if they had figured anything out, but I was also supposed to report back if I thought it was possible to extract any kids from the program.”

“You did,” I said, making the link so suddenly it surprised even me. “Nico—that was the testing program he was in.”

Cole hunched his shoulders against the stream of water. “He was the only subject that was…strong enough to be taken out. The others were just…I can’t describe it to you without it sounding like a horror show.”

“How did you get him out?”

“Simulated cardiac arrest and death,” he said. “The ‘disposal service’ the lab used was called, but the League picked him up first.”

My brain was firing at a rapid pace, drumming up one horrible possibility after another. “So the intel on that flash drive—it was research that you stole?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Something like that?” I repeated in disbelief. “I don’t even get to know what’s on the stupid thing?”

He hesitated long enough that I was sure he wouldn’t actually tell me. “Think about it—what’s the one thing every parent of a dead kid wants to know? The one thing scientists have been after for years?”

The cause of the Psi disease.

“Are you—” No. He wasn’t kidding. Not about this.

“I can’t give you details. I didn’t have time to look through the research before I downloaded everything, but I heard the talk in the lab that afternoon when they concluded their experiments. They had proof the government is responsible for all of this.” Cole clenched his hands into tight fists. “Though the fact that they shuttered the lab and permanently silenced all of the scientists the day after I got picked up by PSFs should be proof enough for most people.”

“Did you tell Alban?” I asked. No wonder he was so desperate.

“Not until I got back and I had to think up some excuse for why my cover was blown. I told him I downloaded it, but it set off some silent security system. I’m sure my pride will recover from that in about a thousand years.” Cole sighed. “I was afraid if I told him what I had, the agents here would already have figured out how to use it before I even got back with it.”

Cole’s fingers tapped at his side. “I couldn’t tell him before and risk the news getting ahead of me. As disconnected from HQ as I was, I saw things were changing here. People I knew and trusted were being shuffled out to the other bases, and people I didn’t like all of a sudden had Alban’s ear. It was enough to make a guy a little uncomfortable, you know?”