Darkness. Then a hiss, followed by a flicker of orange light. A match, bursting into flame. Touching the wick of a candle. Then another. The glow builds steadily, pushing away the shadows until I can make out Mason, crouching by the entrance of my tent. He secures the candles, then kneels beside my bed of fur pelts and leaves.

“Allie.” His voice is an urgent whisper. “Wake up.”

“I never fell asleep.” I shiver, wrapping the fur around my body, but it’s impossible to escape the cold. It’s always freezing now: an endless, cloudy winter day. Even when the sun peeks through the gloom, its rays carry no warmth. Just the same watery gray light that marked daytime inside the bunker.

The bunker. It’s been a year since I escaped. Twelve months on the run.

“What time is it?” I ask. 

Mason’s jaw tenses. “Time to go, I’m afraid.”

I sit up, pulse suddenly racing. “Trackers?”

He nods and I notice his mud-streaked shirt. The assault rifle slung over his shoulder. “Our scouts spotted them, ten miles east and headed in this direction.”

My heart sinks at the news. I thought we’d finally lost my father’s bloodhounds when we crossed the Rockies, but I should have known better. He’ll never let me go. Not after what I did. “Why?” I whisper, fighting back tears and exhaustion. “Why won’t they just leave us alone?”

“Because they’re afraid of you.” I feel Mason’s strong arms around me, drawing me closer. Warm and comforting as a blanket. “Your father knows what you can do. He understands your power.”

“What power?” I pull free from him, motioning to my sparrow-like body. A year of running and near starvation has stripped away my muscles and curves, leaving little more than a fragile shell. Seventeen and I could pass for a seven-year-old. I’m tired of fighting. Tired of pretending to be more than I am. “Look at me, Mason! Do I look like a threat?”

“Not on the outside,” he admits. “That’s never been where your strength lies.” He tilts my chin up. Cups my cheeks in his hands so gently, like he’s holding a treasure. “Your weapon is your mind, Allie. He’ll never control it, and that’s what frightens him the most. He knows what you’ll do with the truth. In time, you’ll move thousands against him. Then millions.”

He’s wrong. There’s nothing special about me, or my mind. So what if I’m a psychic freak? I’m not the only mind-reader in my family. No, my father’s only hunting me because he wants revenge. I did more than run away with some vials of stolen vaccine. I betrayed him, and I know what he does to traitors...

I open my mouth to explain all this, but before I can say anything, something happens to Mason’s eyes. Their warmth vanishes and they narrow into malevolent slits, his handsome face blurring. When he speaks again, his voice sounds different too. High-pitched and sing-songy. Taunting and cruel, like a schoolyard bully.

Rise and shine, traitor. It’s time to wake up.

My eyes flutter open to a girl’s face. I gasp as her delicate features come into focus. As my mind slips out of a dream and back into a nightmare.

Violet.

“Poor, sweet Astrid.” Her lips pout with mock sympathy. “Are we having a bad dream?” Pain explodes across my cheek, a split second before I realize she’s slapped me. “Welcome back, traitor. Did you really think I’d let you die so easily?”

*

I squint at the brightening horizon, recognizing the plateau spread out before me. While I was unconscious, the Enforcers must have carried me back in the direction we came. Back toward the coastline. Away from Wil, Brenne and Vin. With any luck, my friends will have reached the evacuation point by now. They may already be airborne and headed to safety.

Finally, something’s gone right for a change.

The myostun is starting to wear off, thanks to the cocktail of drugs they gave me. My lungs still burn and I’m wheezing, but at least I can breathe again. I hunch forward and massage my temples, trying to push through the worst headache of my life. It feels like invisible hammers are pounding my skull, but that’s the least of my problems.

Violet is watching me, her eyes glinting with malice. Whatever misery she has planned for me, she can’t wait to get started.

“Owwee,” she mocks. “My head hurts. Founders’ blood, Blake! You always were such a drama queen, but don’t worry. You’ll know real pain soon enough.”

I answer her with my best ‘you-need-to-die-now’ glare, but she dismisses me with a trill of laughter. Whatever power I had over her is long gone. It’s etched all over her face, contempt oozing from every meticulously plucked follicle and pore. I’m a traitor. The daughter of a traitor. She can do whatever she wants to me now.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I croak. “Never was. Never will be.”

“You sure about that?” She kneels beside me, back arched like a cat about to pounce. Something flashes in her hand, drawing my gaze. A curved blade, thin and tapered. She shows me the talon-shaped weapon, which crackles to life with plasma; pale blue mist dances on the razor’s edge as she waves it in front of my face.

“There’s something I’ve always wanted to do.” She sounds bored, like she’s contemplating what color of nail polish to try next, but her eyes tell a different story. The blade dips to my neck, hissing as it singes hair and flesh. I yelp and try to pull away, but massive hands grasp my shoulders from behind and hold me in place. An Enforcer, joining in on the fun. Violet fists my hair with her free hand, yanking upward.

“I suggest you hold very still.” She slices off a tuft with the blade, then another. Three more quick flicks of her wrist and she moves to the opposite side, shearing me with brutal efficiency. I gasp as she nicks my ear with the last swipe.

“There.” She sheathes the plasma blade, then appraises her work like an artist. I try not to flinch as she jerks my head from side to side. Try not to retch from the thick sulfur smell of burnt hair.

“Ferro would never shut up about those beautiful golden locks of yours. Made me sick to hear him pining over something so…” – She throws a clump of my hair into the wind, watching as the strands disperse like dandelion seeds – “common. Nothing special at all. Just like the rest of you. Like your family. Like your traitorous father and dead whore mother.”

With a savage cry, I break free and swing at her smug face, but my muscles are still too sluggish. She dodges my fist, then answers with a counterpunch that cracks my jaw shut. Before I can lunge at her, the Enforcer wraps his arms around me again. I buck against him, but he’s like a constrictor, choking the air out of my lungs. My vision tunnels, swirling with black and red dots; I’m seconds away from blacking out, but the Enforcer slackens his grip at the last moment, letting me breathe again. I’m too weak to stand so he props me up like a mannequin, knees buckling into the mud.

“Enough foreplay,” Violet announces as more Enforcers shuffle toward us. One carries a black helmet with a thick visor – the kind of bulky headgear a glide racer would wear to prevent brain damage. Or in this case, probably to cause it. “Someone wants to see you, and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

I draw in a ragged breath, eyes locked with hers as the Enforcer slips the helmet over my head. “You’d better kill me now,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “while you have the chance. Because if you don’t, I’ll make you wish you had.”

“I’d love that, sweetie.” She tilts my chin up, squeezing until her nails dig into my flesh. “Nothing would warm my heart more than to see you again, but the place you’re going...” – She grabs the visor and pulls it down over my eyes – “I don’t think you’ll be coming back.”

The faceplate clicks shut like a coffin lid, sealing me inside a bubble of darkness. This is what it must feel like to be buried alive. To see nothing. To hear nothing but the frantic rasp of your own breathing.  I try to rip off the helmet, but someone pins my arms behind my back. Seconds later, a spike of pain shoots into the base of my skull, followed by a tingling sensation that flows down my spine and limbs, all the way to my fingertips and toes.

I know I’m still kneeling in soft mud, but suddenly it feels like I’m standing on a hard surface. Sparks of color swirl around me, slowly coalescing into recognizable shapes. Three white walls and one made of tinted glass. A red tiled floor. A low ceiling studded with pale blue biolumes, their light casting an eerie glow.

My heart sinks as I recognize the surroundings. During Guardian training, I spent hours in interrogation cells just like this one, sifting through subversive auras. Pulling incriminating thoughts from one mind after another. Now I’m being punished for what I’ve done. For what I would still be doing if fate hadn’t intervened.

A chair appears in the middle of the cell. Then the profile of a man, slumped into that chair. His features solidify, each detail another kick in the gut.

No! Please! This can’t be real!

“Dad!” I run to him, my mind begging my body to wake up. This nightmare – it’s just another one of Violet’s cruel tricks. But as I approach my father, reality sinks in. He’s dressed like a prisoner in drab gray, his shaved head lolled backward against the headrest. My stomach twists as I absorb more agonizing details. The purple, black and yellow bruises mottling his skin. The glazed look in his eyes, which are rolled upward and staring at the ceiling. The coils of blister wire lashing his bloodied wrists to the chair.

“Dad! Wake up! Please! Look at me!” I scream myself hoarse but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink. “Dad? Can you hear me?” I’m crying hysterically now as I reach for his face, but my fingers pass right through him. That’s when I realize what’s happening. What the helmet is doing to my mind. This nightmare doesn’t exist right here and now, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

Who likes to play sick mind games like this? Who’s grooming Violet to be his twisted protégée?

“Please!” I spin around in a slow circle, searching for my tormentor. “I’ll do anything you want! Just don’t hurt him!”

“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that.”

Cillian Gant materializes by my side, his voice a trickle of ice water dripping down my spine. “Amazing technology, isn’t it? The helmets we’re wearing have a bidirectional neural interface. Feeds right into the neocortex and brainstem. It’s called augmented reality. Closest thing to being there.”

“Is this—?” My voice breaks up into sobs.

“Real?” Gant finishes for me. “Absolutely. Right now, I’m in the Citadel and your father is my special guest. Thousands of miles separate us, but you can still feel my touch” – I flinch as he rests a bony hand on my shoulder – “just like I can feel you trembling.”

“What –?” My gaze cuts back to my father. “What have you done to him?”

“Oh, that?” Gant flicks his wrist, like he’s waving off a small misunderstanding. “We were having some trouble getting your father to cooperate. He needed a little convincing. Nothing a few days of dream enhancement couldn’t fix.”

I shudder, remembering how Wil described his spider nightmare. I’d rather not know what Gant used to break my father, but he tells me anyway.

“Like most people, his darkest fear was easy to predict. Watching his beloved daughter being tortured in various ways… that loosened his tongue in no time at all.”

“Monster!” I spin around and slap him as hard as I can, but my hand whiffs through air. Same result when I try to kick him in the groin. The effort topples me over, my back hitting the floor. The impact may be simulated, but it still knocks the wind out of me.

“Sorry about that,” Gant taunts, his owl-like face looming above me. “Should have warned you about the safety features. You can’t hurt me. I, on the other hand…” He drives his heel down into my chest, sending pain screaming through my ribcage. “I most certainly can hurt you.”

I roll away from him, coughing up what tastes like blood, but it’s impossible to tell what’s real and what’s fake anymore. “Wh –” I struggle to speak, my voice a whimper. “What do you want from me?”

He answers me with a wicked smile. “That should be obvious, Miss Blake. I want you to come home.”

I turn and crawl toward my father, gasping for air. I can feel Gant hovering just out of sight, a predatory bird stalking his prey, but there’s nothing I can do to stop him. He has everything he wants. I’ve played right into his hands, giving him the excuse he needed to seize power. Now my father is jailed and dying. His body’s been mutilated and his mind’s been ravaged, maybe beyond repair. And it’s all my fault.

I curl into a ball, waiting for the next blow to come.

That’s when I feel it.

A sudden rush of warmth, like a hot spring welling up from my core. Washing over my body to melt away all the pain and fear. Aletheia. Now that she’s with me, it feels like she’s always been there. Maybe she has been. She wills me to get up. Promises this isn’t the end. I hear Mason and Wil too, their voices one and the same. He’s afraid of you, they tell me. He knows what you can do.

They’re right. When I sit up to face Gant, I see it in his eyes: a flicker of alarm, quickly swallowed by rage.

“Yes, Astrid,” he hisses. “I’m taking you back to Founder’s City to answer for your crimes.”

His face twists with hatred, a demon come to life, but I’m not afraid anymore. I see him for what he is: not a demon but a vulture, pecking at the carcass of a dying world. Before this is over, I’ll watch him choke on its bones.

“Blood traitor,” he spits at me. “Terrorist sympathizer. Enemy spy. Abomination. I look forward to introducing our people to the real Astrid Blake.”

“That’s not who I am.” I rise to face him, carried by Allie’s strength, and Thea’s. Knowing that it’s my strength now. My hope. My defiance. “My name is Aletheia.”

***

END OF BOOK ONE

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