Page 41 of Rebels Rising

Quite frankly, she was even more terrifying than her Kikshrut pet, and that was saying something.

Yet, as I studied the smile on her face that mirrored Addy’s and Eloria’s, there was something about her that softened those hard edges. She wasn’t merely a killing machine. She was a person who had suffered through unimaginable torture, her body sliced apart and reassembled into the perfect assassin. A fate she had never asked for in the first place.

I ruminated over what I knew about her as a person. I had witnessed multiple acts of heroics, always putting others before herself. I had watched from a distance as she’d slowly opened up and allowed people to see a small sliver of who she truly was at her core. I’d seen her dazzle men and womenalike regardless of her gender or disguises. She’d even begun a romantic relationship, possibly with more than one man if what Addy had told me happened with Cadmus was any indication.

Not just that, but I’d seen the way the others looked at her. None of us really knew what to make of her now that we all knew she was a woman, though I’d had a lot more time to let that information sit, and even I could admit she was a beautiful one at that. The footage we’d seen as evidence of her brutal abilities cast a negative light over her, shadowing all the good she’d shown us. However, that good significantly outweighed the bad.

I would have been a hypocrite if I’d held those kills against her. As a military officer, I’d killed before. I’d done it using an array of methods, too. I’d tortured and taken lives and destroyed buildings and ships and even at one point an entire city. All of it was legal since I’d essentially been hired by our government to perform those jobs. It was my duty, and I took it seriously.

She hadn’t been hired by the government, she’d been abandoned by them. She’d been turned into a monster at their behest in order for them to use her to bolster their own power. She’d seen the dark underbelly of the very people I had put my trust in, and while she was killing to survive I was doing so because I’d been told to.

Using that perspective,Iwas the monster, not her.

These thoughts were bringing up another issue I was struggling to wrap my head around.

Markus.

He’d been one of my best friends for so long now that I just couldn’t understand why he would disappear right when I needed him by my side. And he’d been there, too, before he’d performed his vanishing act. Nothing about it made any sense to me. There were no signs of him changing his mind for any reason. It was completely befuddling.

Addy was still acting shady whenever I mentioned him, but that wasn’t exactly shocking since they’d never gotten along. What worried me the most was that I was starting to doubt him now, too. I’d dismissed Addy’s accusations about his character for the entire time I’d known him, and now I was beginning to wonder if there had been something to it. She’d always had a knack for pinpointing the good people from those not worth her time, and Markus was the only person I’d ignored those warnings for.

Had I been wrong to do so?

I’d made myself abundantly clear to her that he was my friend and I’d trusted him implicitly, but after Artemis had informed us all ofJorna’s betrayal during that first meeting and taking into account the connection through their relationship, the evidence was piling up against him whether I liked it or not.

My mood plummeted as I recalled the details I’d received in that first meeting after we’d escaped. I’d assumed Jorna had died in the takeover, fighting for the side of justice. Instead, I’d learned she’d been alive the entire time, had abandoned those of us who cared for her, and was likely to have been responsible for the demise of her team. That was if they weren’t turncoats as well.

I hadn’t been able to sleep well since all the revelations, and I had the awful feeling that they weren’t even close to being over. The secret meeting Artemis had called that included Addy but not me was enough of an indication of that. It stung, I had to admit. If I was to be her second, then I was going to need to be looped in on everything, including those meetings. My exclusion made me believe that Artemis didn’t trust me, at least not fully.

The only explanation I could find for her mistrust was that my meeting with Colonel Granger had not remained as secret as we’d hope. How much of it she’d witnessed I didn’t know, nor was I privy to her thoughts and feelings on the matter. All I could do now was prove to her that I was someone she could trust, because we were going to be working closely for the foreseeable future. Not to mention her friendship with Addy brought us in constant contact whether we were willing or not.

But most importantly, Colonel Granger had been correct in her assessment. Artemis may have been a wild card, but she was a wild card we needed to recruit to our side. While that seemed to have come to fruition – of our own doing or otherwise – she was still a mystery, and mysteries could be dangerous in a war.

However, I had no other choice but to put all of my eggs in her basket. She was our only hope of defeating the enemy and putting an end to the corruption that had infected the Intergalactic Union to its very core.

All levity suddenly fled from the room when the door to the cockpit opened to reveal the two people I was still the most stunned were on board.The Christianson siblings stepped through, Katira hiding behind her younger brother almost shyly with her head bent down and her hair creating a curtain between herself and the rest of the word. Tarren, however, waltzed in with the opposite posture to his sister. Shoulders back, chin up, teeth clenched as if already preparing for the push back against their presence.

Except, the reception they received was not what I was expecting. No one jumped to their feet in alarm, nor did anyone start shouting for them to leave because they weren’t wanted here. Instead, Eloria took them in with an assessing eye, Addy looked at them with pity shining through loud and clear, and Artemis greeted them with an apologetic smile.

‘It’s been two days,’ Tarren snapped, his fists clenched so tight that his knuckles had turned white. Katira shrank back at his tone, and my heart panged at the loss of the person she used to be. Sure, she’d been a bit of a brat, the entitlement from her wealthy upbringing hard to shake, but she’d been bubbly and friendly for the most part.

Now, she was just a shell of her former self, and it physically hurt to see.

Still, with her brother ready to launch himself into action at the first sign of negativity towards either of them, I prepared myself for the same. Just in case.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve been busy, but I should have come to talk when I had a free moment. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,’ Artemis apologised, and she even sounded sincere. My gaze ping-ponged between her and Tarren as I struggled to make sense of the interaction. She should have been spitting poison after everything he’d done. It was his fault Reece had been wrongfully arrested in the first place, his fault Reece had suffered the way he had, and ultimately it was his fault Addy had ended up as collateral damage. She was their friend, not Tarren’s. What was going on?

‘What did you want to talk about, anyway?’ he asked her, backing down a little at the apology though he didn’t acknowledge it.

Artemis tore her gaze away from the siblings to look at Addy and the two of them held a silent conversation that confused me even more that I already was. That feeling grew to heights I’d never before experienced when both women turned to face me wearing identical expressions of unease that filled me with dread. Both emotions swirled within me like a tornado of doom, and I knew that whatever was going on here was something I wasnotgoing to like.

As if she really didn’t want to do this with me specifically as an audience, Artemis shot me an indecipherable look before locking eyes with Tarren and then Katira, holding Katira’s gaze when she spoke the two words that completely shattered everything I thought I’d ever known.

‘Markus Fletcher.’

Katira flinched, immediately backing away as if the breath had been knocked from her lungs. Tarren hissed, blocking Artemis’s view of his sister and puffing himself up as if readying for a fight. Their reactions told us all everything we needed to know. Artemis backed down, sharing another look with Addy that broke me even further.

I fell back into my chair, my legs unable to hold me up as the severity of what had just occurred settled itself inside me, winding itself around my ribs and squeezing as if to suffocate me.

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