Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(58)

“I acquired my table etiquette through long, grueling hours of training with technicians and the sadist himself.” Cherno draws the plate of raw octopus nearer to him. Its pinkish suction-cup arms jiggle amid a parsley garnish on the white porcelain dish.

“Crow taught you to dine like this.” It’s not lost on me that Cherno’s the only being here who has gone through the same kind of torment that I have. In that way, too, we’re connected.

“He did. If I did something wrong, he would withhold my meals for days.”

“I hate him,” I blurt out, pushing my eggs around the plate, my appetite lost.

“I hate him, too,” Cherno states, like it’s a fact he has long made peace with rather than an emotion that festers like it does in me. “As I matured, Crow awakened me from Spectrum’s control to consciousness, from time to time. Sometimes he’d run experiments on me—interviews—both from inside Spectrum’s world and outside of it, in the real world. He’s obsessed with gods. He wants to steal our traits. I refused to give him the answers he wanted.”

“How did you know to resist him? He raised you from infancy, didn’t he?”

“Yes. In body, I was a child. In mind, I was not. I have memories of my lifetime as a dragon. I had been in a dormant stage—a hibernation, forced upon me by my enemies. Given a few more eons, I would’ve returned to the form I once held, but Crow stole my life from me and trapped me instead in this weakling’s body.” Disgust oozes from him. “Childhood with him was harrowing. Crow tried, but he couldn’t scrape information from my mind, because he doesn’t understand my innate traits. He knew just enough about me to be able to control me. I inadvertently gave him some information early on. He has found some minor priestesses’ tombs because of me, but nothing of real value. I now know why. Everything he’s searching for is submerged beneath the sea.” Cherno gestures to the transparent wall. Kingdoms slide by us. A magnificent world, dormant—the vanity of ancient beings.

I do the math on the timeline. It doesn’t make sense when I consider our physiology and Crow’s age. “Cherno, how old are you?”

“In this body, I am almost three.”

“Three decades?”

“Three years.”

“How is that possible?”

“The technicians have ways of accelerating the aging process. They also have made advances in slowing it down and, in some cases, suspending it. Do you know how old Agent Crow’s body was before you drowned him?”

“Twenty-five, maybe?”

“He told me he was well over two hundred years old. His sister, Sabah, died two centuries ago. Census manipulated his identity and that of his family’s. He’s the ultimate chameleon. And I should know—I’ve met quite a few.”

“How long have you been awake?” Reykin asks. “Out of Crow and Spectrum’s control?”

“I became the master of my own body, such as it is, a fortnight or so ago,” Cherno replies. “It has been a gradual process—disconnecting. It took a while for the device in my head to melt. Spectrum reclaimed me on and off in the weeks leading up to my device’s final demise.”

“Your technician didn’t notice the changes in you—that your device was melting?” I ask.

“He noticed. That’s when I incinerated him. Census believed he jumped from the airship to his death. They couldn’t recover footage of him after he left my capsule. It’s because I gouged out his eyes before killing him. Technicians don’t have advanced vision. They can’t see in the absence of light. That means they cannot visually record what happens to them for the collective to view. The instant offline status of both his neural implant and his moniker was consistent with him plummeting to his death.”

“So at the end you were just pretending to be assimilated, like I was?”

“Yes, I managed to fool Spectrum for several days. I understand its world and know how to pretend by simply following you, as your bodyguard. It helped that they were distracted by other matters—your mother’s plot with Census for one. Had I had Crow’s full attention, like I did when he first started studying me, then I’d never have gotten away with it. His focus waned from me when you arrived. He spent less and less time with me, and I became conscious less and less frequently, until my device failed.”

“I replaced you as his favorite toy?”

“You became his favorite assassin. He liked to use you against anyone who ever slighted him—intentionally or otherwise.”

“I remember none of it,” I whisper with a painful ache in my belly.

“I saw you inside.”

“Inside?”

“Inside Spectrum. You were locked away in the box.”

“The box?”

“Agent Crow’s private, inner sanctum—his palace of horrors. Most of the poor souls in that place believe it’s the real world. Be grateful you cannot recall it.”

“Why? What happened to me there?”

“I was always under the impression that he wasn’t interested in anything you could tell him about the outside world.”

“What was he interested in?” I hold my breath, because I already know the answer.

“Hurting you.”