Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(95)

“You got my message?” he asks, stunned. “What did I say?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear you. I only saw you. Could you see me? I was on a ship beneath the sea.”

Hawthorne looks skeptical. “We sent the message on a loop. It was supposed to keep broadcasting continuously, but we think Crow destroyed it soon after it was sent.”

“I saw it twice,” I reply. “I couldn’t hear anything you were saying. I just saw you shouting. We had theories that this world might exist—”

“Why do you look like Roselle?” Hawthorne growls.

“She’s a copy of me.”

“You’re the original?” He’s skeptical.

“Yes. This world is Spectrum.”

“So you’re saying you’re the real Roselle from a different world? If that’s true, wouldn’t you have been here before, for Spectrum to copy you?” Hawthorne growls and points to the other me.

“You must’ve believed that I existed, to have sent me a message, Hawthorne. I don’t remember being here. I know I was, but I left all of it behind when I awoke.”

Roselle takes a step toward me. She raises her hand and shows me her palm. “Do you have a scar on your hand—a star?”

I nod, showing her my palm.

“Can you tell Hawthorne and me how you and I got it?”

“Why? You don’t know, and apparently neither does Hawthorne.”

“If your story makes enough sense,” she replies, “I might be inclined to believe you.”

“Okay,” I exhale. “It happened the first time I deployed. They air-dropped me near the battlefield in Stars. I was supposed to tag wounded enemy combatants and mark them for death. I found one. He was Gates of Dawn. I was required to beacon him—mark him for death by drone strike. I did, but I wanted to give him his sword back so he could defend himself. His name was Reykin Winterstrom—a firstborn Star. He’d rigged his sword to burn anyone, other than himself, who touched the hilt. It scarred me—us—with his family’s crest. I beaconed him for a med drone and stayed with him until it arrived and patched him up. Afterward I fled. The Gates of Dawn army was almost on me. If Hawthorne hadn’t come when he did, I would’ve been captured and executed.”

“Why don’t I know this?” my copy asks.

“Ransom Winterstrom, the secondborn technician who implanted me with a Census device, is Reykin’s brother. He purged your memories of Reykin—the espionage we perpetrated for the resistance—and the familial connections between them.”

“Ransom Winterstrom freed me from the collective,” my alternate states.

“He told me that,” I reply.

Hawthorne growls at me, “I figured out most of that. Spectrum could fill in the blanks from what I knew,” he says to Roselle. “This doesn’t prove anything.”

I try again. “I went back to Stars—after Hawthorne became firstborn. Hammon was pregnant. Crow was going to kill her. Reykin saved us. He and Daltrey Leon got Hamm and Edge new identities as firstborns in the Fate of Seas.” I direct my gaze at Hawthorne. “Hammon said to tell you she misses you.”

Hawthorne swallows. His voice turns gravelly: “All things you could have made up, knowing what I already know.”

“In my world, Gilad is probably dead,” I say.

Hawthorne looks shocked.

“Census attacked our Bases the same night as I was taken from the Silver Halo, by Crow and his Black-Os. Only a few Trees survived, and Spectrum turned the rest of the Sword soldiers into mind-controlled monsters. Gilad probably never had a chance.”

Hawthorne shakes his head. “We’ve been to the Stone Forest Base—doing recon. They’re filled with Crow’s Black-Os.”

“Not in my world—in my world they’re graveyards.”

Hawthorne’s face pales.

“I believe you,” Roselle says, stepping closer to me. “Whatever’s in my head—the implant—it doesn’t work. It’s dead or something. When I woke up, Ransom told me my implant isn’t a VPMD—that it isn’t normal. He said it’s organic material, but it’s dormant in this world. He said it couldn’t survive here. We had a conversation. It was so brief—and I was confused—and then he was gone. That was a while ago. How long have I been in here? When did Ransom upgrade me to ‘ghost status’ in this world?”

“Ghost status?” I ask.

“We call it that,” Hawthorne replies, “because we feel like ghosts here.”

“Have I been here years?” Roselle asks. “It feels like years.”

“It’s only been a handful of months,” I reply.

“After I woke up in the Sword Palace, the box, I found I was no longer a prisoner of it,” my alternate says. “Ransom kept telling me, ‘Free them all,’ before he left. When he was gone, so was Crow. I searched for Hawthorne first. It took a while, but I found him in the morgue. He wasn’t dead. He was just lying there with his eyes open—but vacant. When I touched him, he awakened.”

“What happened to her?” Hawthorne asks me. “How could she do that? I was part of the collective, until she touched me.”

I meet his eyes. “Roselle and I diverged. I woke up from Spectrum’s control in our origin world, but Spectrum had made a copy of me.” I gesture toward Roselle. “Ransom came back here looking for the copy of me. He upgraded her. Then he erased the Spectrum copy of himself. He only exists in the other world now.”