Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(50)

I can hardly keep from crying, so I ask, “How did you escape Virtues?”

“Phoenix helped me avoid the legions of mind-altered soldiers and citizens scouring the streets and shooting down aircraft. Your mechadome has very old maps of the sewer systems in its files—for every fatedom, city, town, and residence in the Fates Republic. It guided me through an underground network of tunnels, city by city, until we were out of Virtues. From there, it became a little easier. We just continued underground until we made it to Stars.”

“Did anyone resist Census’s takeover, beside the Gates of Dawn? What about secondborn Sword soldiers?”

“There was a massive purge.”

“What do you mean by ‘purge’?”

“Census knew that secondborn soldiers, when they discovered what Census was doing, would more than likely rebel, even with your mother in control of Swords. Census had a plan for that. At the same time as the Opening Ceremonies of the Secondborn Trials were commencing, secondborn soldiers were being eradicated in the Fate of Swords.”

My breath catches. “How?”

“Your former Base, Stone Forest, was hit the hardest, probably because it was close to Forge and your mother couldn’t have seasoned warriors mounting an attack on her city, or against Census. She was complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of secondborn Swords. Census led the slaughter. They already occupied the Census underground facility of every Tree. It was easy for them to pump lethal gas into the ventilation systems of those Trees’ trunks, and into the hanging air-barracks docked on the branches. Most secondborn soldiers died in their sleeping capsules while watching you and me spar during the Opening Ceremonies of the Secondborn Trials.”

Panic and the urge to vomit hit me simultaneously, but then something else happens. It’s as if I’ve eaten a chet, because the nausea dissipates, along with my trembling. I still feel horror and disgust, but it’s not making me dizzy or allowing for any of the other symptoms that accompanied my panic in the past. I think the device in my head is compensating for the neurochemicals in my system by releasing others to neutralize their effects.

I’m able to calm myself enough to ask, “What about Twilight Forest Base, or Platinum—Darkshire?”

“Twilight Forest Base was treated the same way. Some Trees in Platinum Forest and Darkshire weren’t gassed at all. Instead they were overrun by zeroborns. The captured secondborn soldiers were taken for VPMD implantation and then surgically altered with military enhancements and enlisted into the cyborg ranks. What we know is that the device implantation was performed on most Bases from predetermined Trees. Some of the soldiers who managed to escape found their way to the Gates of Dawn resistance, but it wasn’t many.”

“How many other Bases survived?”

“Out of the thousands? A few. Some of the military Trees survived—the gas failed to deliver in some of them—but most Trees on all the Bases are now filled with rotting corpses. They’re mass graveyards. This is no longer a struggle for power, Roselle. This is an all-out war for our existence.”

I’m numb. I think I’m in shock, even though I’m not at all surprised by what Reykin’s telling me. I’ve been a part of them. Deep down, I know how they operate. Efficiency. It’s about achieving goals in the least amount of time and with the least amount of effort. It doesn’t matter who dies or how many or what’s destroyed. Immediate, uncompromising results are all that matter. I know I’m like that now, too. In the end, I didn’t hesitate to kill everyone in the throne room—even myself—to achieve my goal of killing Crow. It just didn’t work as I’d planned.

“Census and their High Council deserve everything that Crow’s bringing them,” I say.

“What’s Crow bringing them?”

“Death. The Census High Council ordered my mother to murder Crow with seraphinian, a poison. She failed. Crow had already locked every Census agent out of Spectrum. Their master-level devices no longer work. They can’t control the VPMDs anymore, and that means they can’t control any zeroborns, including Black-Os. Census agents are adrift now, existing outside of Spectrum. Rudderless.”

“That coincides with our reports of the past two days. The Census High Council is just . . . gone. Virtues is in chaos again. Bodies lie dead in the streets—we’re getting intel that they’re all Census agents.”

“Crow’s vendetta against Census is probably the only reason I escaped. Had Crow been in residence at the Sword Palace when I was still in my cell, I wouldn’t be here now. You saw what happened on the beach when he returned. He’s telekinetic, too, and he’s in all of them, but the proximity of his true body matters for some reason. He’s stronger in it than when he’s occupying someone else’s.”

“Maybe he’s not bypassing their consciousness?”

“Maybe, or his own body has been genetically altered to give him his power. I’m not sure. He doesn’t seem to be able to move things with his mind when he’s not in one of his own clones, but when he is, I’ve witnessed him project Cherno across the room as if the dragon-man were a hologram.”

“You move things with your mind, too, don’t you?” Reykin replies. “Or did we all just hallucinate that grenade flying out of Daltrey’s palm and out to sea?”