Origin (6 page)

Hunter gave an awkward shrug, and a second later, he was standing on the floor, looking as cuddly as a pit bull.

Luc cast both of us dark looks. “I get that you two have problems—big problems—but guess what? You’re not the only aliens out there who are butt sore. There are bigger problems than what you guys have. Yeah, I know, hard to believe.”

I glanced over at Hunter, who shrugged again and said, “Someone didn’t get his warm milk this morning.”

I snickered.

Luc’s head swung toward him, and damn if I couldn’t believe I was standing in a room with an Arum and not killing him—but he was also not trying to kill me. “You need to be glad that I like you,” Luc said in a low voice. “Look, I need to talk to Daemon. Can you go do something? If not, then maybe you can be helpful?”

The Arum rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I have my own problems.” He started back toward the hall and then stopped, glancing at me. “See you on the flip side.”

I gave him the middle finger good-bye.

When he disappeared down the corridor, Luc turned toward me and folded his arms. “What happened?”

Seeing that I had nothing to lose, I told him what went down at Mount Weather. Luc gave a low whistle and shook his head. “Man, I’m sorry. Truly I am. If Daedalus has her, then I don’t—”

“Don’t say it,” I growled. “She’s not lost to me. We got Bethany out.
You
got out.”

Luc blinked. “Yeah, you got Bethany out, but Katy got caught in the process. And I’m…I’m not like Katy.”

I didn’t know what the hell that meant. Turning from him, I thrust my fingers through my hair. “Did you know that Blake would betray us?”

There was a pause. “And if I did, what would you do?”

A bitter laugh snuck out. “I’d kill you.”

“Understandable,” he replied evenly. “Let me ask you a question. Would you have still helped your brother rescue Bethany if you knew Blake would betray you?”

Facing Luc, I slowly shook my head as the truth hit me square in the chest. If I’d known that Kat wouldn’t be coming home, I don’t think I could say yes, and I couldn’t put to words the fact that I would choose her over my brother.

He tipped his head to the side. “I didn’t know. That doesn’t mean I trusted Blake. I don’t trust anyone.”

“Anyone?”

He ignored the question. “What do you want from me, since you obviously aren’t going to try to kill me? Do you want me to take down the security again? I can do that. It’ll be a freebie for you, but it’ll also be a suicide mission. They’ll be expecting you.”

“I don’t want you to take anything down.”

He looked at me, confused. “But you’re going after her?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll get caught.”

“I know.”

Luc stared at me so long I thought the kid might’ve had a seizure. “So you really were coming here to kick my ass?”

My lips twitched. “Yeah, I was.”

The kid shook his head. “Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”

“I know.” I folded my arms. “And I know once they have me, they are going to want me to make hybrids.”

“Have you ever had to watch people die, over and over again? No? Ask your brother.”

I didn’t hesitate. “She’s worth whatever I have to go through.”

“There are worse things,” he said quietly. “If you and Hunter could put away your differences for two seconds, he’d probably tell you himself. There are things that they are doing there that will blow your mind.”

“Even more reason for me to get Kat out.”

“And what’s your plan? How are you going to get her out?” he asked, curious.

Good question. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

Luc watched me a moment, then busted into laughter. “Good plan. I like it. Only a few things could go wrong with that.”

“How did you get out, Luc?”

He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t want to know what I did. And you won’t do what I did.”

A cold shiver crawled over my skin. I believed the kid.

Luc stepped back. “I got to take care of this other issue, so…”

My gaze slid to the hallway. “Working with Arum, huh?”

His mouth twitched. “Arum and Luxen aren’t that different. They’re just as screwed as you guys are.”

Funny. I didn’t see it that way.

Luc tipped his chin down and swore. Looking up at me, he said, “Daedalus’s biggest weakness is their arrogance. Their need to create what should never be created. Their need to control what can never be controlled. They’re tinkering with evolution, my friend. That never ends well in the movies, does it?”

“No. It doesn’t.” I started to turn away.

“Wait,” he called out, stopping me. “I can help you.”

I faced him, head tilted to the side. “What do you mean?”

Luc’s amethyst eyes, so like Ethan’s that it was disturbing, latched onto mine. There was something a little off about his, though, with the line around the pupils. “Their biggest defense is that the world doesn’t know they exist. They don’t know
we
exist.”

I couldn’t look away, and I decided that this Luc kid was kind of creepy.

He smiled then. “They have something that I want, and I bet it’s where they’re keeping Katy.”

My eyes narrowed. Tit for tat never sat well with me. “What do you want?”

“They have something called LH-11. I want that.”

“LH-11?” I frowned. “What the hell is that?”

“The beginning of everything and the end of the beginning,” he said mysteriously, and a strange gleam filled his purplish eyes. “You’ll know it when you see it. Get it for me, and I’ll make sure you get out of wherever it is you’re at.”

I stared at him. “I don’t doubt your awesomeness, but how can you get Kat and me out of a place if you don’t even know where it is?”

He arched a brow. “You must doubt my awesomeness if you’re asking, and you shouldn’t. I have people everywhere, Daemon. I’ll check around with them, and they’ll let me know when you show up.”

Laughing softly, I shook my head. “Why should I trust you?”

“I’ve never asked you to trust me. You also have no other choice.” He paused, and hell if he didn’t have a point. “Get me the LH-11, and I’ll make sure you and your
Kitten
get out of whatever hellhole they have you in. It’s a promise.”

Chapter 7

Katy

It felt like forever since I was given a lunch of mashed potatoes and Salisbury steak. I was too amped up to check out the TV. Waiting in the silence drove me to pace the length of my cell. My nerves were stretched to the point that every time I heard footsteps outside the room, my heart leapt into my throat and I moved back from the door.

I was skittish, reacting to every sound. Having no concept of the amount of time that was passing or even what day it was, I felt like I was trapped in an airless bubble.

Making my hundredth pass in front of the bed, I mulled over what I did know. There were people here who wanted to be here—humans and Luxen, probably even a few hybrids. They were testing LH-11 on cancer patients, and God knew what LH-11 really was. A part of me could get behind that—if the Luxen really were here because they wanted to help. Finding the cure to deadly diseases was important. If Daedalus had simply asked me and hadn’t wanted to keep me in a cell, I would’ve gladly given up my blood.

I couldn’t shake what Sergeant Dasher had told me. Were there really nine thousand or so Luxen out there plotting against humans? Hundreds of thousands who could come to Earth at any time? Daemon had mentioned others before, but never once had he said anything about his kind, even a small enclave, wanting to take over.

What if that were true?

It couldn’t be.

The Luxen weren’t the bad guys here. The Arum and Daedalus were. The organization might have pretty packaging, but it was rotten inside.

Footsteps sounded outside the room, and I jumped a good couple of inches into the air. The door opened. It was Archer.

“What’s going on?” I asked, immediately wary.

The beret that seemed permanently attached to his head hid his eyes, but his jaw was tight. “I’m to take you to the training rooms.”

He did the hand-on-the-shoulder thing, and I wondered if he really thought I’d try to run. I wanted to, but I wasn’t that stupid. Yet. “What goes on in the training rooms?” I asked when we were in the elevator.

He didn’t answer, which wasn’t very reassuring, and it ticked me off. The least these people could do was tell me what was going on. I tried to shrug off his hand, but it was glued to my shoulder the whole way.

Archer was a man of few words, and that made me even more nervous and jumpy, but it was more than that. There seemed to be something different about him. I couldn’t put my fingers on it, but it was there.

By the time we hit the training floor, my stomach was churning. The hallway was identical to the medical floor, except there were a lot of double doors. We stopped at one and, when he keyed in a code, the doors slid open.

Blake and Sergeant Dasher were in the room. Dasher turned to us, smiling tightly. There was something different in his expression. A hint of desperation in his dark brown eyes unnerved me. I couldn’t help but think of those blood work results.

“Hello, Miss Swartz,” he said. “I hope you took the time to rest up.”

Well, that didn’t sound good.

Two men in lab coats sat in front of an array of monitors. The rooms on the screen looked padded to me. My fingers felt numb from clenching them so hard.

“We’re ready,” one of the men said.

“What’s going on?” I asked, hating how my voice broke halfway through the question.

Blake’s expression was blank, while Archer took up his position as sentry by the door.

“We need to see the extent of your abilities,” Sergeant Dasher explained, moving to stand behind the two men. “Inside of this controlled room, you’ll be able to use the Source. We know from our previous investigations that you do have some control, but what we don’t know is the extent of your abilities. Hybrids who have successfully mutated can react just as quickly as a Luxen. They can control the Source just as well.”

My heart skipped. “What purpose does this serve? Why do you need to know? I’m obviously a successful mutation.”

“We don’t truly know that, Katy.”

I frowned. “I don’t get it. Earlier you said I was strong—”

“You
are
strong, but you’ve never consistently used your abilities or done so without the hybrid who mutated you. It’s possible that you’ve been feeding off his ability. And a hybrid may appear to have successfully mutated, but we’ve discovered that the more one taps into the Source, the more evident the instability in his or her mutation becomes. We need to test for any type of unpredictability in your mutation.”

As his words sank in and made sense, I wanted to run from the room, but I was rooted to the floor. “So you want to see if I basically self-destruct like…” Like Carissa, but I couldn’t say her name out loud. When he neither confirmed nor denied it, I took a step back. A whole new horror rose to the surface. “What happens if I do? I mean, I know what happens to me, but what about…?”

“The one who mutated you?” he asked, and I nodded. “You can say it, Miss Swartz. We know it was Daemon Black. There is no need to try to protect him.”

I still wouldn’t say his name. “What happens?”

“We know that the Luxen and the human he mutates are joined on a biological level if the mutation holds. It’s not something we understand completely.” He paused, clearing his throat. “But for those who turn unstable, the connection is voided out.”

“Voided out?”

He nodded. “The biological link between the two is broken. Possibly due to the fact that, in those cases, the mutation wasn’t as strong as suspected. We really just don’t know everything yet.”

A shudder of relief rolled through me. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a sense of self-preservation, but at least I knew if I blew up, Daemon would still be alive. But I stalled, not wanting to go into that room. “Is that the only thing that breaks the link?”

The sergeant didn’t respond.

My eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

“All in good time,” he replied. “Now is just not the time.”

“I think it’s a damn good time.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, further angering me.

“What?” I said, throwing up my hands. Archer stepped closer to me, but I ignored him. “I think I have a right to know everything.”

His surprise faded, replaced with a cool expression. “This is not the time.”

I held my ground, hands curling into fists. “I don’t see there being any better time.”

“Katy…” Archer’s soft warning was ignored, and he moved closer, his chest almost against my back.

“No. I want to know what else can break the link. Obviously something can. I also want to know how long you really think you can keep me here.” Once the lid came off my mouth, there was no shutting it. “What about school? You want an uneducated hybrid running amuck? What about my mom? My friends? What about my life? My blog?” Okay, my blog was seriously the least of my worries, but dammit, it was important to me. “You’ve stolen my life and think that I should just stand here and take it? That I shouldn’t demand answers? You know what? You can kiss my ass.”

Whatever warmth had been in Sergeant Dasher’s expression seeped away. He stared back at me, and in that moment, I realized I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut. I had needed to say those words, but the hard look he gave me was frightening.

“I don’t tolerate foul language. And I don’t tolerate smart-mouthed little girls who don’t understand what is going on. We have tried to make this as comfortable as we can for you, but we all have limits, Miss Swartz. You will not question me or any of my staff. We will let you know things when we feel it’s the appropriate time and not before. Do you understand?”

I could feel every breath Archer took, and it seemed like he stopped, waiting for me. “Yes,” I spat. “I understand.”

Archer took a breath.

“Good,” the sergeant said. “Since that’s now settled, let’s move on.”

One of the men at the monitors pressed a button and a small door opened to the training room. Archer didn’t let me go until I was inside the room. Then he did.

I spun around as he backed toward the door, my eyes going wide. I started to ask him not to leave me, but he looked away quickly. And then he was gone, closing the door behind him.

Heart pounding, I darted my eyes around the room. It was about twenty feet by twenty, with a cement floor and another door on the opposite side, and the walls weren’t padded. Nope. I wouldn’t get that lucky. The walls were white with scuffs of red. Was that…dried blood?

Oh God.

But that fear trickled away as awareness kicked in. The rush of power was tiny at first, a rush that felt like tips of fingers were trailing down my arms, but it grew quickly, spreading to my core.

It was like taking a breath of fresh air for the first time. Numbness and exhaustion eked away, replaced with a low buzz of energy that was in the back of my skull, thrumming through my veins and filling the coldness in my soul.

My eyes fluttered shut, and I saw Daemon in my head. Not because I could
really
see him, but because feeling this reminded me of him. As the Source wrapped its way around me, I imagined being in Daemon’s embrace.

An intercom clicked on overhead, and Sergeant Dasher’s voice filled the room, causing my head to jerk up. “We need to test your ability, Katy.”

I didn’t want to talk to the ass-hat, but I wanted to get this over with more. “Okay. So you want me to call on the Source or what?”

“You will do that, but we need your ability tested under stress.”

“Under stress?” I whispered, glancing around the room. Unease unfurled in my belly, spreading like a noxious weed, threatening to choke me. “I’m feeling pretty stressed right now.”

The intercom clicked on again. “That’s not the kind of stress we’re talking about.”

Before his words had a chance to sink in, there was a loud thumping noise that reverberated through the small room. I whipped around.

Across from me, the other door was sliding open, inch by inch. The first thing I noticed was a pair of black sweatpants like the pair I had on, and then a white shirt covering narrow hips. My gaze crawled up, and I let out a surprised gasp.

Standing before me was a girl I had met before. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I recognized her immediately. Her blond hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, revealing a pretty face offset by bruises and scratches.

“Mo,” I said, taking a step forward.

The girl who had been in the cage next to mine when Will had held me captive stared back at me. I’d wondered many times what had happened to her, and I guessed now I knew. A heartbeat passed, I said her name again, and then it hit me with startling clarity. She was showing the same vast emptiness that Carissa had when she’d been in my bedroom.

My heart sank. I doubted there was anything I could do that would remind the girl of me.

She stepped into the room and waited. A moment later, the intercom buzzed and Sergeant Dasher’s voice came through. “Mo will assist in the first round of the stress tests.”

First round? There was more than one? “What is she—?”

Mo flung her hand out, and the Source crackled over her knuckles. Shock held me immobile until the last possible moment. I darted to the side, but the blast of whitish light tinged in blue smacked into my shoulder. Pain burst and rushed down my arm. The impact spun me around, and I barely kept my balance.

Confusion swirled as I clutched my shoulder, not surprised to find the material singed. “What the hell?” I demanded. “Why—?”

Another blast sent me dropping to my knees as it whizzed by right where I’d been standing. It hit the wall behind me, fizzling out. In the blink of an eye, Mo was right in front of me. I started to stand, but her knee came up, catching me in the chin and snapping my head back. Starbursts blinded me as I fell back on my butt, stunned.

Reaching down, Mo grabbed ahold of my ponytail and lifted me to my feet with surprising ease. Her hand swung out, the blow catching me right below the eye. That burst of pain caused my ears to ring, and it did something else.

It knocked the stupor right out of me.

Suddenly I understood this stress test, and it sickened and horrified me. I had to believe that if Daedalus knew everything, then they had to have known that I’d met Mo. That seeing her here, in better physical shape than she had been in that cage, would not only knock me off guard but would confirm the futility of fighting against them.

But they did want me to fight—they wanted me to fight Mo, using the Source. Because what else, other than getting your ass handed to you on a silver platter, would cause such major stress?

Another punch caught me right under the eye. She put a hell of a lot of
oomph
behind it. A metallic taste sprang into my mouth as I called on the Source, just like the sergeant wanted.

But Mo…she was so much faster than me, so much better.

As the ass-kicking of a lifetime picked up, I held on to the small sliver of hope I had: Daemon wouldn’t be subjected to this.

…

Daemon

Stashing Matthew’s SUV several miles from the access road leading to Mount Weather, I hoped whoever found his car got it back to him in one piece. It was a pretty sweet ride. Not as good as Dolly, but not many cars were.

I traveled the last couple of miles in my true form, rushing through the heavy thicket. I reached the access road within minutes, and seconds later I was at the cusp of the forest, staring at the all-too-familiar fence that surrounded the grounds.

There were definitely more guards on duty—at least three of them by the gate, and I bet there were more inside. Cameras and security systems weren’t going to go down this time. I didn’t want them to.

I wanted to get caught.

Dawson probably thought I hadn’t given this much consideration. A lot was on the line—not only my future but my family’s and Kat’s. Once the DOD realized I was here, things were going to get rough. Getting in wouldn’t be the problem, and if I got whatever it was that Luc wanted, he would get us out—if he wasn’t lying. And if he was, I would find another way.

Part of me hoped that Kat was still here, that Daedalus hadn’t moved her to another location. Probably foolish to hope for that, because I had a feeling a big ol’ dose of disappointment was heading my way.