Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(80)



“It has to.”

He exhales deeply. “So instead of killing my brother for revenge, you decided to go for candy?” He gestures toward the store. Rainwater has turned his already-dark hair inky.

“I went for a walk. The candy was a happy accident. They didn’t have crellas, but they had these.” I lift the small jar in my hand. “Would you like to try one?”

He bends his face slowly toward mine. My stomach does somersaults, and my heart feels as if it’s melting as he presses his mouth to my sticky lips and tastes the cherry bomb on my tongue. My knees weaken. I drop my shoes, and my arm curves around his nape. He’s so warm, an inferno. Shivering, I lean into him. Reykin’s hand slips into my hair and clutches me. The candy explodes in our mouths in a stunning array of sweetness.

We break apart, me giggling, Reykin with a smile. “Well,” I say breathlessly, “now I understand the ‘bomb’ part.”

His look sobers me. Tenderness slackens his sharp edges. My heart aches in recognition, thumping more wildly. Our fervors match. The adrenaline he ignites in me—fear and desire, always those two together, like a Reykin cocktail—slips through my veins. He can’t feel that way for me. He needs to remain vigilant. My mind’s growing, and with it cracks keep splitting open in the veneer of who I was. Beneath the fissures lies a surging, ruthless energy, straining to get out. Reykin can’t see it yet, but it’s there. I can be thousands of people at once. I’ve always been a weapon, for someone or something, but now a formidable goddess has awakened inside me.

“Will you do something for me?” I ask.

“Anything,” he says with a sultry look that makes me want to kiss him again.

“Will you wait for me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re rushing to judgment with me. I’m not . . . trustworthy . . . I can’t accurately predict where this is going or what I may do.”

His smile deepens. He doesn’t believe me—he doesn’t understand. “Roselle, I think you need to worry less about—”

“No. Hear me out. I understand Spectrum on a level I didn’t before now. Everything’s evolving, Reykin.”

One corner of his mouth raises in confusion. “Explain what you mean.”

I think about how to describe a difficult concept in simple terms. “Okay, once, we were all individuals. Spectrum could only control someone with an implant—a VPMD. It wasn’t the AI it is now. It was basically a capable computer. Soon, though, it became self-aware. It found that by collecting more minds, it’d have more options—more ideas to harvest. Spectrum grew more efficient and based its core values on resourcefulness, which sounds great, right? But if more is the end goal, then it can never be satisfied.”

“I understand that,” Reykin says. “Like you, I’ve witnessed it in action. It’ll keep implanting VPMDs into everyone it catches to control them.”

I shake my head. “No, it won’t. It’s too efficient for that. It won’t be long before Spectrum won’t need implants anymore. It’ll be able to interface with someone, like you, for example, by reaching out to you telepathically and scanning your entire genetic makeup and your brain’s unique neural pathways. Spectrum will read you, and then Spectrum will own you. It’ll control you on a neurochemical level—firing your neurons at will.”

“So when it finds us, it’ll control us. End of story?”

“Not quite the end. It will keep evolving. When it does, it will simply absorb an intellect and discard the shell. It won’t be concerned with your body anymore. You’ll be part of the collective.”

“Why? What does it want?”

“It’s looking for something, but it’s not very interested in this little world. It wants more.”

“How do you know this?” he asks.

“When I captured Ransom’s mind at dinner tonight, I saw Spectrum through his experiences. It gave me insight, but when I used the passcode I found in Ransom and unlocked memories he’d hidden inside me, everything about Spectrum began to make sense. Spectrum is evolving quickly, but so am I. I can infiltrate minds in ways Spectrum can’t yet—I can do it with, or without, a VPMD.”

“You can do what?” His hands go to my arms and squeeze.

“In theory, I can hack the brain of someone who’s not implanted with a VPMD.”

“In theory. You haven’t done it yet?”

“No, I haven’t tried yet, but it’s really elementary.”

“You think it’s elementary because the implant in your head is growing?”

“It’s not an implant anymore. It’s part of me.”

He shivers. The door behind me opens with the sound of a tinkling bell. A crowd of boisterous people files out. Their happy chatter makes my revelation seem far worse. Suddenly I foresee that one of them is about to slip on the pavement. I push past Reykin. “Sorry, he’s going to fall,” I say, noticing the confusion wrinkling his brow.

Ahead of me, a slim man slips on the slick sidewalk. I reach out and catch his elbow before he tumbles all the way to the ground. He turns to me. “Whoa, thanks,” he says with an embarrassed grin. “It’s slippery.”

“You’re welcome,” I reply. His friends laugh and tease him as they walk away.

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