Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(44)

“No,” Cherno replies.

“Phoenix has a beacon,” Reykin says. “One of our ships will locate us soon. We just need to hang on until then. Can you stop moving so the bubble doesn’t burst?”

Cherno growls at him and then stills.

“Are you okay?” Reykin asks me. His arms are around me, protecting me from the knees being thrown my way as Daltrey shifts. I manage to nod, then rest my head against Reykin’s chest.

The smell in these close quarters borders on obscene. Cherno and I both still reek from the compost pile. I probably smelled horrendous even before that, having died and risen recently. His heart throbs in my ear like he’s still running from monsters. In minutes, an aquatic, whalelike vessel swims up on our rubbery bubble and swallows Phoenix and our balloon whole.

Within the hull of the enormous submarine, oxygen pumps into the chamber and forces water out through drainage pipes until our womb-like vessel settles on the wet metal floor. Cherno and Daltrey get to their feet and touch the rubbery walls. I try to roll off Reykin, but his arms tighten around me.

My face feels warm. “Hi,” I say, because I can think of nothing else.

“Hi,” Reykin replies.

He’s larger than I remember him. Stronger. Before, he was elegant and lithe from fusionblade training—every muscle stretched and poised, like an extremely strong Diamond-Fated ballet dancer. Now, battered by war, he’s taken on a warrior’s build. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think him a Sword. He’s always seemed to me much older because of his polish and sophistication. As I gaze at him, he somehow looks a little younger now, maybe because he’s trying so hard to be gentle with me.

Phoenix punctures the material. Stinky air escaping, the walls collapse in on us. Cherno tears at the material, stretching to free himself from its strange confines. Phoenix cuts bigger pieces away, exposing us to a launch hold with blue metallic walls, ceiling, and floor. Smaller aquatic crafts hang nearby. Pipes run along the ceiling. Reykin shimmies from beneath me and stands before pulling me to my feet. His left hand no longer has a golden shooting-star moniker. It has a small scar, though. It’s just like him not to get the scar removed—or maybe he installs a different moniker from time to time, to hide among the masses?

Reykin’s warm grip shifts in mine. He turns my right palm faceup. The pad of his thumb moves over the small star scar he finds there—his star—a seven-pointed star with three longer points that form a W with a backward R beside it.

“It is you,” he says.

“It’s me.” I wonder why my scar never healed like the rest of me. Maybe it’s timing—pre-versus post-implant? I don’t know, but it’s still there.

Reykin lifts my left hand, peering at my Black-O moniker. The ugly dark spot consumes the light around it. “Forgive me, but I need to take this out.”

The tenderness in his voice makes me want to weep. I can’t have him talking to me like that or I’ll lose control and degenerate into a blubbering mess on the floor. “Why are you being so polite? The old Reykin would be forcing the chip out of me with a rusted piece of lead, telling me to hold still.”

That’s good. Be tough.

Not a hint of a smile curves his lips. “Yes, well, that was the old me. This is the new me—the one who has had the arrogance beaten out of him. The one who knows he has made promises he could never keep.”

The rawness of his voice almost breaks me again. I blink away tears, and my throat aches. Reykin calls Phoenix forward. My little bot opens a hinge on its chest, revealing a compartment. Phoenix selects a moncalate, the tool for surgically implanting or extracting a moniker. I wonder if this is one of the devices Flannigan and I stole. As Phoenix offers it to Reykin, I blurt out, “Flannigan’s alive—only it’s not the real Flannigan. I mean she’s real and has some of the same memories, but she’s a clone, and Crow keeps her close, and he’s trying to get her to remember her predecessor’s past.”

Reykin just stares at me for several breaths, the moncalate in his hand hovering idle above my moniker.

From behind me, Daltrey asks, “You’re sure it was her?”

I glance over my shoulder at him. Tension etches lines in his face. “I’m sure. Crow told me he mapped all the memories he could recover from Flannigan onto the clone Flannigan’s new brain. He’s even calling her Flannigan. She thinks she’s Flannigan.”

“He’s trying to find us.” Reykin stares at Daltrey. “He’s using her memories to rout us and eradicate us. It wasn’t Roselle providing him with intel—it was Flan.”

If his suspicious look’s any indication, Daltrey doesn’t seem to be drawing the same conclusions as Reykin.

“I think it’s even more than that, Reykin,” I reply. “I think Crow’s in love with Flannigan Two. The way he looked at her, spoke to her, took her to Virtues with him to kill his enemies—he needs her close. He’s making her his Fated One.”

“Then he has a weakness,” Cherno adds. “If we get to her, we might be able to get to him. She could be the key to discovering the chink in his armor.”

A small frown touches Reykin’s lips for a second and then disappears. He bends his head and moves the moncalate to the surface of my hand. “I’ll be as quick as possible, Roselle,” he says. He delicately positions the tool on the skin over the implanted identification processor, near my thumb and finger. He activates the moncalate, and it goes to work, sterilizing and then laser-cutting a small incision and extracting the blood-coated chip.