Page 25 of Rebel
Lore sucked in a breath. “What? No. We discussed this. Xavier wouldn’t, I mean, why would he?” Lore looked from Xavier to Tide. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Tide ignored Lore, instead fixing his weary gaze on me. “You saved my life, and I owe you the truth.”
Foreboding gripped my insides. “The truth?”
“You aren’t free, Rogue. Once we take you to Athion, you’ll be taken to a lab where they’ll experiment on you to find a way to make all human females infertile to Trads. You’re not the first one-percenter, and you won’t be the last, but it’s the only way to save a billion other human females and to stop the Trads for good.”
“You bastard.” Vex made to stand, but I grabbed his arm.
“Wait.” I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat, ignoring the ice flooding my veins. “You’re going to give me up to be experimented on?” I looked to Xavier. “That’s why you came to Vesper V. To find a one-percenter and take her back to be used?”
Xavier’s jaw ticked. “Yes. That was our mission, but then I met you, and I … I fell for you, Rogue. I won’t do this to you. I won’t let them do this. Yes, I fucking sabotaged the ship, and I’d do it again.” His pale blue eyes blazed with defiance as he glared at Tide. “I wanted you to get to know her like I know her, and don’t stand there and tell me you feel nothing for her. I can tell you’re attracted to her, both of you.” He looked from Tide to Lore. “We agreed we’d find a human female we could all love, and she’s the one, dammit. You know it, so why are you fucking fighting it?”
Vex made a sound of protest deep in his throat.
“She can’t be the one,” Tide snapped. “She can’t give us children.”
The room descended into pin-drop silence, and my insides twisted at the reminder of what had been taken from me.
It was Lore who broke the tension with his calm, matter-of-fact tone. “Xavier said someone tolove, not someone to produce babies.”
Tide frowned. “Lore?” He looked bewildered. “You agree with him?”
Lore’s throat bobbed. “I can’t do this, Tide. I know what happens in those labs, and I can’t subject her to that. I won’t. The others were faceless and nameless. Laird knows we never interacted with them because we knew what we were doing was wrong, and it was easier to turn a blind eye to it when the human was just a subject and not a person. I tried to do the same with Rogue. I tried to distance myself, but Rogue … Rogueisa person. She saved you. She saved us all. We owe her more than that.”
Tide stumbled into the room and slumped into the nearest chair. “Then what do you suggest we do? This is our job. This is who we are. We can’t go back without her.”
“Then maybe we don’t,” Lore said.
Tide let out a bark of laughter and then massaged his temples as if the exertion of making the sound had been too much. “I need to think about this.”
Xavier pushed his chair back. “And while you do, I’m going to shut off that fucking signal.”
Tide didn’t protest as Xavier left the room.
Vex squeezed my hand, and when he spoke his voice was a lethal rumble. “You think as much as you want, but if you believe you’re going to hand Rogue over to your Athion butchers, then you’ll have to go through me. All of me. And trust me, I know how to bring the pain.” He gently tugged me to my feet. “Come on, you need to rest.”
Tide kept his gaze fixed on the table as I walked past, but the sudden tensing of his shoulders was acknowledgment enough.
12
XAVIER
The fucker isn’t bluffing. He’s sent the bloody signal. Oh, Laird, the man is as stubborn as a watering hole oxen. Thirty minutes of broadcasts have spiraled off into space. Let’s hope no one’s picked it up. I shut it off and sit back in my seat to stare out of the tower window. The quad below is silent and empty, and the dustlands beyond barren and still. Someone needs to make a note of the predators out there. Time to access the logs to this place. The entry can be anonymous. I’m getting good at the subterfuge, but heck, that’s why Tide and Lore chose me to go down to Vesper and play the part of captive. They knew I could pull it off.
Back in the academy, they’d called me the many-visage because of my ability to don many faces, and I’d been prepared to do that with Rogue, but then one look into her stormy eyes, and I was hooked.
After that, sabotage was an easy decision, and it worked because they have no choice but to accept how amazing Rogue is, but it’s more than that. She’s more than an anomaly. Tide can see that now. He just needs time to accept it.
I switch feeds on the monitors to bay four, to my secret, my ace in the hole—the shuttle buggy that comes with the station. Fully fueled and ready to hop. I’ve done my research, and there’s a trade port close by we could hop to. From there, we can pool our credits and buy a ship and be gone before the Athion government can trace us.
That’s the plan, and if Tide isn’t in, then we’ll leave without him. The monitors beep, and then data scrolls up over it. I lean in and scan the information. Barometric readings, temperature logs for the past six months, and then at the bottom, an alert. Total star eclipse in minus twelve hours for twenty-four hours. Strange. A twenty-four-hour period of darkness? That isn’t on the Limira reports. I pull up old data and information on the planet. Shit. It seems like the blackout happens once every century. I guess we’re about to make history.
I push back the seat and head out of the tower. Better check the generators and gather the lamps.
13
Marick
