Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(2)

Exhausted, I climb the ladder to my capsule, crawl inside, and close the hatch and stretch out on my mat. The small space is a cozy cocoon, and I’d stay in it forever if I could. I just want to be left alone. I hate people now. Well, I don’t hate them. I just don’t want to be friends with any of them. It’s nothing personal; it’s just that they all die or leave. It’s not worth it—friendship. I scrub my hand over my scarred face.

I resist turning on the visual screen embedded in my ceiling, for a little while, but then I think about Hamm and Edge. What if, somehow, they show up at the Opening Ceremonies? Before I know it, I turn it on, blinking as my eyes adjust to the bright light. The scene is chaos. People running—screaming—in every direction. It takes me a second to understand that an attack of some kind is taking place in the Silver Halo. People are slaughtering each other. I sit up on my thin mattress and throw aside my blanket, knowing I should do something, but what?

My nose wrinkles. An acrid scent burns my nostrils. I lift my hand to cover my nose and mouth. Hissing clouds of white vapor fill the air through my capsule’s vents. My eyes water, but when I wipe them with the back of my hand, I find a streak of blood, not tears, on my skin. Sounds of coughing and moaning erupt in the airship. I clutch my blanket and try to cover the vents. Blindly, I fight to open the capsule’s hatch, but it won’t budge. Kicking it does no good, even with both feet, as hard as I can, over and over. Light-headedness overwhelms me. My lungs feel like they’re melting. Through the slit between my swelling eyelids, I witness the end of the world play out on the ceiling of my capsule until my last, dying breath.





Chapter 1

The Poison of Our Age

My wrists are bound with steel cuffs.

Hawthorne viciously prods me forward. I stumble behind Agent Crow, through the blue banners, and exit the Sword balcony at the back of the Silver Halo suite. I glance over my shoulder, but it’s not the ache of betrayal that wrenches my heart. It’s fear that whatever has happened to Hawthorne is irreversible. Silver light beams from his eye. I might have caught a glimpse of it the last time we were together, but I can’t be sure. I can hardly process what’s happening now.

Screams of terror echo throughout the colosseum’s corridors. I’m surrounded by no fewer than a dozen Zeros. Fast and ferocious, these once ordinary people pounce on the scattering spectators fleeing the Secondborn Trials. Switchblade-sharp claws extend from the monsters’ fingertips. The flesh of their victims rips. Blood, slick and gory, blooms in patches of red everywhere I look. I tug against the cuffs on my wrists. Hawthorne clamps his hand on my nape and squeezes until I wince. A warning that he can snap my neck in seconds if I resist. I stop struggling and stumble to keep in step with my captors.

Through the chaos of the ensuing massacre, I study the Zeros. On the back of these predators’ hands, zero-shaped monikers suck in light like black holes. Silver beams extend from their left eyes. They move as an otherworldly pack, in an intricate choreography, without fatigue or missteps. Like one machine, they slaughter with precision everything that moves, everything that isn’t one of them or part of Census. All except me. I shudder. They must be communicating, but in a language that only they understand.

None of the other marauding Zeros approach the team surrounding me. Instead the monsters busily butcher everything with a pulse. Unafflicted firstborns and the secondborn competitors attempt to escape from the floating colosseum and are immediately pursued.

My training and experience as a soldier keeps me from being sick. I can’t help anyone!

Another shove compels me forward. We pass a gondola station that leads to the training field below. Blood and carnage litter the platforms. Some firstborns jump to their deaths rather than be caught by the Zeros. The hairs on my nape stand on end.

“Why are you killing firstborns?” I growl at Agent Crow.

“Why not?” he replies in a blasé tone, reaching to brush wisps of my hair from my face as we walk. I recoil from his touch. “They won’t do well in our new society, Roselle. We’re doing them a favor.” His mouth curves up, exposing the steel teeth that stand in stark contrast to his supple lips. The black disc adhered to his temple blinks with eerie blue light. It must be how he manipulates the silver-eyed cyborgs. Their obedience to him seems absolute. He doesn’t have to say a word. He somehow just thinks, and they respond.

He’s depraved.

The inky tattoos near his temples and on his throat are deceptive. Although hundreds of the so-called kill tallies are visibly etched into his skin, they only represent a fraction of the deaths he’s caused. His skin would need be covered from head to toe in order for it to accurately represent all the people whose slaughter he brought about tonight.

Agent Crow guides us to a staging area where a nondescript medical-supply airship awaits with its ramp down. The Census agent enters the front of the ship, while I’m shoved up the open ramp by the killers behind me. Inside the tail, I find that the airship doesn’t have any cargo, nor any seats. The monster that was Hawthorne flings me to the metal floor. Sitting up, I push myself to the wall, lean back against it, and draw my knees up to my chest and rest my forearms on them.

I’m not sure how smart these Zeros are when they’re in Black-O mode or whatever it was that Agent Crow called it back when we were on the Sword balcony. The woman who’d cuffed me made the mistake of securing my arms in front of me. If I can reach a sword, I’ll have no problem cutting them off. But there aren’t any swords. No weapons of any kind here in the cargo hold. It’s just me and the Zeros.