Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(17)

“What did your father say?”

“Rasputin Winterstrom is a smart man. Have you met him?” Ransom asks, his eyebrows rising. I shake my head, realizing that he doesn’t know his father is dead. Ransom goes on. “He said it wouldn’t work. It would look too suspicious—me supposedly dying before my Transition would only serve to bring Census to our door. He told my brother that they had to let me go—that I was the price they had to pay to keep my other brothers safe.”

“Reykin didn’t take that well.”

“No, he didn’t,” Ransom replies with a half smile like his brother’s. “He told me he’d always be looking for me, and when he found me, he’d free me. He said, in the meantime, I needed to learn everything I possibly could, wherever I was placed, to bring down the Fates Republic, only . . .” He hesitates and looks around at the containment units. “I wasn’t assigned to anything resembling the Fates.”

“Have you always been on the island in the Fate of Seas?”

“Yes, I’ve always been isolated. Being your personal technician is the only reason I’m able to leave it. When I first arrived, I didn’t think I would survive. We were tested, you know, for aptitude and moral ambiguity—a lot of us didn’t survive the first few weeks.”

“Why not?”

Something that looks like shame twists his lips. “They made us do things, experiments that caused pain to our subjects—intense pain, sometimes death.” His voice wavers under the strain of saying the words. “If you couldn’t do it, they took you out and killed you in front of everyone.”

I thought my Transition with Agent Crow was harrowing. It was nothing compared to Ransom’s. “Hopeless,” I whisper. Enduring pain isn’t much of a choice. You either do or you don’t—embrace the suck or die. Inflicting pain is a choice. It comes with a certain amount of acceptance, and the decision, once made, has consequences.

“That’s why he doesn’t know who I am,” Ransom admits.

I lift my eyebrow.

“Agent Crow—he doesn’t know that I’m Reykin’s brother, or even a Winterstrom. As soon as I could break into Spectrum, I killed Ransom Winterstrom and took on the identity of one of the other Star secondborns who didn’t make it. Everyone thinks I’m Calvin Star. If anyone views my fake profile, they’ll find my image attached to the Ekko family line.”

“Why did you do that?” I ask. “Reykin might never be able to find you.”

“You think I want my brother to find me after the things I’ve done?” His voice is taut. His hand goes to his nape, and he grips it. “I mean I want it more than I want anything in the world, and at the same time it’s my worst nightmare. The shame and dishonor of the things I’ve done will never go away.” His other hand clutches his nape as well. His chin tilts upward, and he winces. With a snarl, he drops his hands to his sides. “The only thing I want now is to annihilate Census. I made you to change an existing reality, Roselle. Census is the new world order. They’re in control of almost everything now. They have the most powerful army the world has ever seen. That’s reality. They can engineer humanoid beings, and they can control them. They couldn’t be stopped, because their army couldn’t be stopped—until now.”

“You’ve come up with a way of making them obsolete?”

His brow furrows with uncertainty. “Maybe. I’ve thought about it from every angle. To make their army obsolete, I had to engineer an even better soldier, so I built a prototype device unlike any that had come before it. It’s biotech that I created in secret. It’s not like theirs. I made only one. I wanted to use it on myself, but it’s been impossible to execute a plan to insert the RW1 Device into my own brain. For that, I’d need help, but here”—he lifts his hands and gestures to our surroundings—“I can’t trust anyone. Anyway, I already have a technician’s implant. The RW1 device and my technician’s implant probably wouldn’t have integrated with each other in the optimum way necessary to combat a Census master-level device.”

“Can you upgrade your device to a master-level one?” I ask.

“Again, in theory, but there’s a huge risk of something going wrong. And how would I hide it if I did? The moment Census discovered it, I’d be dead. No, I had to find someone I could trust—someone who’s strong enough to take on an entire legion of Census’s madmen. Then you arrived with that scar on your hand, and I thought”—he scrubs his face with his hands—“I don’t know what I was thinking.” He drops his hands to his sides. “Maybe I wasn’t thinking, but everything I’ve ever seen you do is noble—maybe even chivalrous. I’m desperate to stop them, and I saw your scar as a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“A sign that maybe you’re the one who’s supposed to bring down Census.”

“Me? Just me?” I ask with a dark scowl.

“Theoretically, you’re all we need. If I can hide you long enough—”

“Have you seen what they’re doing? Do you know about the population they’ve infected with their technology?”

“I’ve been forced to help them do it since my Transition Day. Do you know what that’s like—to be forced to do horrific things that make you a monster in everyone’s eyes, especially your own?” His sorrow and rage are enough to silence me.