Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(29)

“What other promise is that?”

“The promise I made to allow your line to go on. If I kill you and I kill her, then the line ends, unless I artificially continue it, but that’s tedious and time consuming, and the results are often fraught with complications.”

Othala gasps. “Kill me?” She snatches her hand away from his and brings it fluttering to her throat.

“You’re no longer much use to me, especially because you’ve been plotting with Edmund and Malcolm Burton and my High Council”—he gestures to the crowd in front of him—“to assassinate me and take back your supposed power.”

Her cheeks darken. She glances in the direction he indicated. “I have no idea where you’ve gotten such a strange idea, Kipson.” Her voice quavers. “I assure you, my only interest has been in helping you assimilate to your new role as leader—”

His finger shifts to his temple. The blue beacon throbs. A female Black-O with limp, dark hair marches from the crowd to the dais and stops near the thrones. My mother recoils as the soldier opens her bland lips and speaks. “‘You’re certain that this poison will kill him instantly?’” the soldier says, but the voice is unmistakably Othala’s. The mind-controlled woman’s timbre changes to a male voice as she answers herself. “‘It’s a fast-acting aerosol. One inhalation and his lungs will vaporize along with everything else inside him.’” Then my mother’s voice comes from the soldier again. “‘When can I administer it to Crow?’” The soldier’s voice deepens to a male’s. “‘This evening—after he kills Roselle for us.’” The soldier closes her mouth and stands in dreary silence. My mother’s betrayal hangs like a stain in the air.

After a long pause, Othala clears her throat. “I—I’m under orders from the Census High Council, Kipson. Marius and Claudia know of your escapades of late, and your refusal to follow their directives. Your own people at Census ordered your death.”

“Yes,” Agent Crow replies, “I know. Marius Cabal, Claudia Anubis, and their sycophants have lost control of Spectrum—or rather, they’ve been shut out. The AI has outgrown them. Even Marius, the all-powerful Master of the Hunt, can no longer manipulate the army with his master-level implant.”

“But you can still influence it,” Othala states.

“Of course. I’ve adapted along with the program. The rest of them have remained stagnant.”

“How did you do that?”

“Genetic enhancements. My scientists know that if they fail me, they die.”

“Census believes that once you’re gone, it will be a simple matter of reinstating governorship of the machine.”

“The machine!” Agent Crow laughs with true amusement. “It ceased to be a machine a decade ago. They think they can just flip a switch and obtain dominion over Spectrum! The only way to gain control of it now, Othala, is to become a part of it.”

“What do you mean ‘become a part of it’?”

He smiles. “I would tell you, but it’s pointless. You’ll never understand.”

“You plan to kill me, Kipson?” Othala plays with the amethyst ring on her finger, twisting it around and around.

“I think it’s only fair, don’t you?”

She worries at the jewel on her finger more and more frantically, gouging her nails into the ornate filigree around the gem, trying to pry it open. Her glossy nails break and bleed.

“Are you looking for this?” Agent Crow opens his palm. On it lies an identical ring. “It’s a heavy stone, but then, it has to be to contain the mechanism that will release the aerosol poison.”

My mother’s fingers still.

“They must not have explained to you how this poison works. If you were to use it like this—open the mechanism—it would surely kill us both.”

“They gave me an antidote.”

Agent Crow snorts. “There’s no antidote to this particular poison. You’ve been deceived.”

Blue lights flash a pounding beat on Agent Crow’s temple. The dark-haired female soldier reanimates and kneels before her master. She opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue at him. Crow places the ring on it. She pulls her tongue back into her mouth and closes it, pursing her lips. Standing and backing away from him, she turns to face us, and then she bites down hard on the gem. An involuntary sound wheezes through her larynx. Then her cheeks turn gray and cave in—dehydrating as if all the moisture is evaporating from her body. Her eyes dry up and shrink into tiny beads in hollow sockets. Dropping to her knees again, she shrivels. Her hands wither. By the time her head collides with the floor, her skin is leather over bones. The atrophy is such that she’s half her size in seconds. A gruesome mummification.

Agent Crow chuckles. “I so enjoy seraphinian. Witnessing its power never gets old. As poisons go, it has no equal.”

My mother’s eyes have grown wide. Her hands tremble. She somehow looks boneless—a slumping, sullen sack of skin in a red-velvet dress, the armpits of which have darkened with sweat. As for me, I’m rotting with fear from the inside out.

“Kipson,” Othala says, wavering, “I—they ordered me to kill you. I had no choice. They’ve lied to us both.” My mother’s lower lip vibrates. She looks toward the assembly in desperation.