Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(16)

My strongest impulse is to leap onto the railing overlooking the dark chasm of the cargo hold and hurl myself over its edge. The fall would kill me. It would be a quick death. I’m a monster now. I should kill myself, like Balmora did, before they use me as their weapon, but I need answers before I do anything, so I ask in a shrill tone, “How long have I been asleep?”

Ransom cringes, holding his palms out and pressing them toward the floor. “Shh, keep your voice down!” He turns his head and peers over his hunched shoulder, as if searching for enemies. He faces me again. “Do you want to alert Census agents to the fact that you’re awake? I’ve already had to creep into Spectrum’s system beyond my security clearance and hide the alarms going off when you deactivated your pod. And after that, I had to deal with this ship’s monitoring systems. Don’t blow this opportunity we have to talk.”

“How long?” I ask again, quieter.

“It’s been a little over a month since the night we were at my family estate.”

“A month!” I’ve lost another month of my life! Gone, in a blink of an eye. My stomach twists in knots because even as I search my mind, I have no memory of anything that happened in that time. “What have I been doing for an entire month since the fire?”

“Now isn’t the time to talk about that.”

“Why not?”

He sighs. “You don’t want to know what’s been happening. I promise I’ll tell you later, but for now just trust me that you’re better off not knowing.”

“Did you just ask me to trust you?” I scoff and jab my index finger near my forehead, even though I know he can’t see me. “You shoved a machine in my head without my permission. You granted them access to my mind—to me.”

“Yeah, I did, and it’s going to save our lives! You don’t know how amazing the technology is that I gave you!” he says with a note of satisfaction. “You’re not broken, Roselle. You’re exactly how I made you.”

My hand reaches out to the railing beside me. I grip the cold, metal bar to steady myself because my knees feel weak. I glance over the edge of the catwalk. Capsules filled with soldiers go on and on as far as I can see—and I can see farther than I ever could before. “Exactly how did you make me?”

Weary, he sighs and runs his hand through his thick, close-cropped hair. It’s the color of midnight in this light. “That question requires a long, complicated explanation.”

He turns, retrieves his flashlight, and sets the light on the ground between us with the beam pointing up so he can see me. He’s not much older than me, but he’s much taller. My lower lip trembles from cold. He swears and shrugs off his black leather coat. The garment screams “Census agent,” except it’s styled a little bit differently. It has a subtle lab-coat look rather than a hunter-killer one.

“Here.” He holds the material out to me. Bitter about what it represents, I eye it with suspicion and make no move to take it. “It’s warm.” He draws it nearer to me and, when I don’t back away, drapes it over my shoulders. The residual warmth from him comforts me, but I’m disappointed that the leather doesn’t carry with it the scent of lemongrass—like Reykin’s clothing does, or like it had when I first met Ransom in the laboratory. The coat has a piney scent, which is probably from the soap provided for him by his overlords. It’s pleasant enough but not as nice as the other Winterstrom’s lemongrass.

I’m pulled from my musing by Ransom’s next words. “I don’t know where to begin to explain things to you, Roselle. I think I need to gain your trust. I need to tell you what happened to me after my Transition Day, and why I’ve done what I’ve done to you—so you understand I did what I thought I had to do.”

“I’m listening,” I reply, but inside I’m trying to decide if the fall from this height would smash my head in enough to leave no chance of being resurrected.

Ransom shoves his hands in his pockets. “How much do you know about my family?”

“A lot.”

“Then you do know Reykin well?” He eyes me under his lashes with a hopeful air.

I shrug, noncommittal. Tears sting my eyes. I force them back, trying not to think of how Reykin and I parted. He had told me that he loved me. He thought he was going to die at the time, so it sounded more like a confession than a profession, but still, I hadn’t known that he’d felt that way until it was too late. I don’t even know if he survived the assault at the Opening Ceremonies. Agent Crow seems to think he did, though, which eases the ache in my chest just a little.

Ransom looks at his feet. “Well, if you know Reykin, then you know that he can be a pain in the ass most of the time.”

I blink, forcing back more tears. “He is an ass,” I agree, “but when it really counts—when all hope is gone—he finds a way to come through for you.”

“Yeah, you know him all right. From my earliest memory, he was always pushing me to work harder. When we were just little kids learning how to duel with fusionblades, he’d beat me mercilessly, never giving me an inch, never easing up on me. I could barely hold a sword, and he would pester me, show me how to grip the hilt better, demonstrate defensive maneuvers, perfect my form. The same was true about coding and systems architecture. He goaded me to try harder. I figured it was because he thought he was better than me, because he was firstborn. But then, a few days before my Transition Day, I heard Reykin and my father arguing. Reykin was pleading with my father to stage an accident—to fake my death. He insisted my father contact the underground resistance and procure me a new identity as a firstborn.”