The Revelation of Eden Pruitt, page 23
According to their sources, the Great Dismal Swamp was teeming with military personnel and search dogs. Everything within a hundred-mile radius was on lockdown. But no news of the explosion and six dead prisoners had touched Concordia’s airwaves. For whatever reason, the ‘powers that be’ were keeping the botched prison break under wraps.
Asher and Cleo were sitting next to one another, studying the butterfly ring Eden had pulled off the guard. An exact match to the one Amir owned. The one he’d been given as a supposed member of Swarm. Apparently, it was Amir’s ring that inspired Asher to alter his chess piece and Francesca’s locket and Jericho’s domino and Lark’s bullet and Amir’s pin. Each trinket embedded with nanotech, kept on their person at all times, enabling them to safely call for a meeting in the war room should the need arise.
They identified the guard to whom it belonged. He was already in their database of known Swarm members. He’d been part of the set-up. Now he was dead and they had his ring. But what could they do with it? They knew the guard used it to communicate. What they didn’t know was whether the ring had an identifier. If it did, anyone they attempted to contact with it would know the ring’s owner had died in the explosion. Pushing the button could very well jeopardize their location in Alexandria. So they didn’t make any attempt. Instead, Asher was conducting a thorough examination, explaining each step to an attentive Cleo.
Nairobi and the last remaining survivor from Bunker Three excused themselves to check on the asset. It was time to administer another dose. Eden’s jaw clenched. Her hands, too. She didn’t know what to do about the asset. There was nothing she could do about the asset. So she tried her best not to think of the asset at all. It was a coward’s solution.
On the table, Dayne’s phone vibrated.
A rapid-fire succession of buzzing.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Just as he picked it up, the television blared with an Emergency Broadcast Alert.
Eden held her breath.
They’d been expecting this. News about the missing bodies of Cassian Ransom and Prudence Dvorak. By now, divers had to have commenced with the recovery mission. By now, they had to know there were no dead prisoners in the back of the submerged van.
Cleo turned up the volume.
A smartly dressed Chuck Perez sat behind the news desk. With late-breaking music playing in the background, he began his report. Only it wasn’t about the recovery mission. It wasn’t about the missing prisoners. This was about another toxin attack. Civilians were dropping like flies up and down State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. The National Guard was on the scene. As Chuck Perez spoke, Dayne’s phone continued buzzing.
“I need to get to the media room,” he said, his chair scraping against the floor. “The wire is going crazy with news from our contacts in Madison.”
Cleo stood, too. “I’m coming with.”
As they exited, she gave Eden’s shoulder a squeeze.
Eden could do nothing but sit there, frozen in her seat, her stomach tying into knots. Madison was so unnervingly close to Milwaukee.
Drone footage showed first responders in hazmat suits, carting away the dead from Bascom Hill to Capitol Square. Eden remembered another scene in that same square. A protest turned violent.
This isn’t right. Where is Dwight?
She’d been so shocked when she’d seen it. But not Cassian. Not Cleo, either. She’d been monitoring the situation, keeping tabs on any and all protests unfolding across the country. According to Cleo, there had been a considerable uptick over the past year. Cleo had a map in her dorm room flagging seven different cities where they had occurred. Fresno. St. Louis. Detroit. Seattle. Milwaukee. Minneapolis. Madison.
“He’s targeting cities on the map,” Eden said.
Asher looked at her.
She stood, the legs of her chair scrapping against the floor, too. She moved to the smart board and used her finger to scrawl the names of the seven cities. “Cleo’s been monitoring uprisings. Protests and riots over the past year.” Eden circled Minneapolis and Madison. “What are the chances that two of them have been hit with this toxin?”
There was a moment of silence as Asher absorbed what Eden had said.
The knots in her stomach tied into a brick again. It sat heavy in her gut. Milwaukee was on that list. Her parents were in Milwaukee.
Asher’s walkie-talkie beeped.
Jericho’s voice filled the room. “I’ve got Pru and Cassian.”
The words were gasoline poured straight on the tenuous flame of hope in her chest. That hope ignited into a roaring fire. It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t a set-up.
He had Cassian.
“We’re on our way,” Jericho said. “Over.”
37
Cass and Dvorak met a man named Jericho at what was once the Reagan National Airport. Now, a relic of the past—a behemoth tomb that echoed when they walked. Jericho was dressed in black combat gear that looked like it had gone through war. He had a deep, soothing voice, a firm handshake, a no-nonsense manner, and even more information than Emmett, the bartender.
Dvorak sat in the passenger seat of Jericho’s UTV, holding it together. But Cass wasn’t fooled. He’d been there, in Emmett’s back office, when Dvorak’s knees had hit the ground. When a wail of lament had torn up her throat. When she’d taken the butterfly pin from Emmett’s hand and thrown it—in a wild fit of rage—against the wall. After hearing Dvorak’s story, Cass could hardly blame her.
She and Amir had been friends for decades. When pregnancy had been forced upon her, he was her confidante. When she ran from the abuse, he had been her safety. Together, they had built a Resistance to fight the cult they’d been born into. Ad Astra Per Aspera. Through hardship to the stars. Francesca’s glass eye. The disturbing room in the Bryson’s basement. Maybe not every Swarm member abused their children, but the philosophy sure lent itself to abuse. Amir and Dvorak had been bonded by proximity and trauma and purpose. And now, that bond had been severed. Her partner in crime was dead. Thanks to a prison break that never would have been necessary had he and Eden and Cleo not led the government into Washington, DC.
The truth set him on edge.
He listened carefully to everything Jericho had to say while riding in the back of the UTV on their way to the Potomac Yard. When news came across his two-way radio about a crisis unfolding in Madison, Jericho informed Dvorak about a similar crisis that had already occurred in Minneapolis. A crisis Cass and Dvorak hadn’t been aware of while locked away in their cells. None of the prison guards felt compelled to share their copies of Concordia Times. But Cass recalled two of them muttering about Minneapolis on one of his trips to the showers. Now he knew why. A deadly toxin was being unleashed into cities and civilians were dropping like flies. The first attack had been in Minneapolis. Another was unfolding in Madison. The public believed Interitus was to blame. But Interitus didn’t exist.
Jericho updated Dvorak on the state of the Resistance and the botched prison break that ended with their van plummeting into the Potomac River. Jericho had taken part in the prison break. So had Francesca, a woman named Lark, four more members of the Resistance. And Eden. She’d gone with Jericho. She was there when the convoy transporting six prisoners to South Mills, North Carolina, exploded.
Cass had questions. In what capacity had Eden joined the Resistance? What did they know about her? What had she told them? He bit his tongue, knowing those questions would only rouse suspicion. Dvorak was harboring plenty of that on her own.
His muscles were tense. His nerves, raw. These people wanted to take down the Monarch. In that, their goals were aligned. But their method of doing so included destroying the Monarch’s soldiers. Cass couldn’t care less about those soldiers. The Resistance could destroy every single one and he wouldn’t blink twice. Unless, of course, they included Eden among them. And they would, wouldn’t they? She had the same design, the same potential. Most damning of all, the same proclivity to be controlled. If Cass were Dvorak, he’d want Eden destroyed like the rest. His hands curled into fists. If they wanted to get to her, they would have to crawl over his cold, dead body.
Jericho drove over a bump.
A pair of twin buildings came into view—their glass fronts reflecting the sun. Jericho wasted no time. He brought the UTV to a skidding stop in front of the building further east. Cass followed him and Dvorak inside. With his stride long and his heart beating like a drum, he trailed them through the building to a closed door on the ground floor. Jericho didn’t knock. He barged into a boardroom with a long conference table. Only two people sat around it. The giant on the moped who’d led them to Washington, DC. And a tall Black woman dressed in the same combat gear as Jericho, only her fatigues were much less ravaged. The pair stopped in the middle of their conversation.
With a cry, the tall woman pushed to her feet and nearly tackled Dvorak in a hug. Dvorak stood there with her arms by her sides—for a beat, maybe two—before hugging the woman back. Cass looked past the embrace, searching for Eden, his beating heart beginning to pound. Where was she? He was about to demand an answer when his attention slid to the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the opposite wall.
He stopped breathing.
There she was, standing in a courtyard, dressed in the same battle-worn fatigues. Her hair braided over her shoulder. Her blue-gray-green eyes wide inside her perfectly clean, uninjured face. She was staring right at him, her lips slightly parted.
He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe—positive if he did, the moment would vanish. He would wake up in his prison cell and despair.
Eden didn’t move either. It was as though she feared the same thing.
Until the moment became too much. He had to touch her. Feel her. Hold her. His blood pounded with the need. Every nerve in his body begged for it until he could resist no longer.
He strode to the door and flung it open.
And there she was, her body colliding into his. He wrapped his arm around her waist. He lifted her off the ground as he slammed the door behind him and walked all the way outside. He pressed his face into the sweet, soft curve of her neck, their hearts beating in unison as she dug her fingers into his hair, and then his mouth was on hers. His body on fire as he kissed her and she kissed him back with a fervency that matched his own.
This girl he craved.
This girl he cherished.
This girl he loved.
So much, he couldn’t think straight.
The monster’s words slammed through him, shoving Cass painfully and mercilessly into sobriety.
He dragged himself away.
But Eden didn’t let go. She kept her arms locked around his neck and looked up at him with swollen lips and flushed cheeks and a shy smile that made his fingers ache. He wanted to bury them in her hair. He wanted to keep kissing her, tasting her, feeling her until he was consumed with Eden Pruitt, this girl he had dreamt about, worried about. She was here, in his arms. So intoxicating he couldn’t think at all, let alone think straight. Mustering every ounce of willpower within him, he unclasped her hands and stepped away.
“Does anyone know?” he asked.
“Dayne.”
His body tensed. “How?”
“I told him.”
“You told him?”
“I had to.” She frowned at the ground between them, as though annoyed by the distance he’d put there. “Barrett and Violet killed two highway patrol officers and a civilian on national news.”
“What?”
“It was a fake. Dayne could spot it almost immediately. But the location wasn’t. They were heading into Minneapolis. I needed to know why they were there. I needed to know if my parents were okay. Dayne knew how to reach Violet because she’s a missing person in his newspaper.”
Eden kept talking.
But Cass stopped listening. His ears were ringing. His mind spinning. Dayne Johnson knew the truth about Eden, and his literal job was to share news. “We have to leave,” he said.
Eden’s forehead puckered.
Cass glanced over his shoulder, toward the door several paces behind them, urgency burrowing beneath his skin. They needed to leave right now, before Dayne spilled the beans. But Eden didn’t look at all inclined to go. “Brahm has an army.”
“I know.”
“Those guys in there want to destroy that army.”
“I know that, too.”
Her unflustered acknowledgement of this particular piece of news had the urgency burrowing deeper. “If they find out that you are part of that army—”
“I’m not, though.” Her blue-gray-green eyes flashed. “I’m not part of that army.”
“They won’t see it that way.”
“We don’t know how they will see it.”
Cass ran his hand down his face, unsettled by her choice of phrase. He would have much preferred, ‘Don’t worry. They won’t find out.’
She stepped closer. “We can’t leave, Cass.”
“Yes, we can.” Easily, in fact. There was a UTV parked in front of the building. They could hop on and go. They could leave right now while the reunion was unfolding in that boardroom and the Resistance was distracted.
But she was shaking her head. “Where would we possibly go?”
He grappled for a suggestion. A legitimate possibility. But she gave him no time to grab one. “A team of divers is swimming to the bottom of the Potomac right now. Maybe they already have. At any moment, Concordia will announce your Houdini-like escape. If you were wanted before your imprisonment, think how much more rabid the country will be once they find out you got away.”
Now he was the one shaking his head.
But she kept going. “This is the only safe place for us to be right now.”
“It’s not safe,” he said, biting the words between his teeth.
“We can’t run away from this. I can’t run away from it. It’s too big.” She took his hand and looked at him beseechingly, painfully, like this was the last conversation she wanted to have. But how could they talk about anything else? “I can’t go into hiding while other people risk their lives. We’re in a literal war, and the vast majority of the country doesn’t even know. I bring a considerable advantage.” Her hand squeezed his. “But only if I stop hiding it.”
Her words came like a kick to the groin.
He pulled away—emotionally, physically.
She seemed less hurt by the gesture than she was frustrated. Stubborn. Her resolve solidifying in the blaze of her eyes, in the hardening of her jaw. In the subtle lift of her chin. She looked fierce—like a warrior on a mission—and it scared the hell out of him.
“I want to tell them the truth,” she said.
“No,” he said back.
“I’m not asking permission.” Her voice was firm but tender. Her eyes soft. Filled with a knowing compassion that made him want to shove his fist into a wall. “I’ve proven myself, Cass. By now, they know I’m on their side. They will see this as a good thing, and if they don’t, we’ll just have to convince them.”
He wanted to shout. Curse. Take her face between his hands and tell her to stop being so reckless. But the door opened behind them. He turned quickly, positioning himself in front of her like a bodyguard. Like they had superhuman hearing and had eavesdropped on their conversation. If they so much as attempted to harm a single hair on her head, he would fight every one of them.
But they weren’t moving toward Eden. They were striding past her.
“Dayne just received news from our contact in Milwaukee,” Asher said, marching toward the west tower. “There are boots on the ground.”
38
The news room bustled with people and movement and commotion and the thick scent of coffee. Eden made a beeline for Dayne, who stood at one of the round tables, conferring with two of his journalists. If boots were on the ground in Milwaukee, then the toxin had to be there, too.
“What’s going on?” she asked as soon as she reached him, trying hard not to choke on her escalating panic.
“We think the toxin is in Milwaukee.” His answer came like a wallop to the chest. Even though she’d braced for it, it knocked the wind out of her.
“It hasn’t been reported on the news yet,” a journalist said.
Eden’s attention darted to the flat screens. Some featured somber-faced reporters. Others, drone footage of emergency vehicles with their red and blue lights flashing up and down State Street. So far, the attack on Madison had resulted in more deaths than the sum total in Minneapolis. Eden set her hand over her stomach, unwilling to fathom it.
Dayne dragged his palm down his stubbled face. “We keep trying to reach our people in Madison, but they’ve gone silent.”
The community in Minneapolis went silent because the community in Minneapolis had been wiped clean. They were gone, all of them. Eden imagined a mass grave. When she lay in bed at night, between yearning for Cassian and worrying about her parents, she pictured bodies tossed inside a giant ditch and covered up like they didn’t matter. Like they were of no consequence at all. Now Madison had gone silent. Would Milwaukee be next?
The door leading into Dayne’s office opened with a swoosh.
Cleo swept into the room with a stack of printouts, her long braids wrapped in a thick bun on top of her head. The scratches and scrapes on her face from the air raid in Washington, DC, had long since healed. The only sign that she’d endured any trauma at all was her limp and the fresh scar above her right eyebrow. Still, Eden could feel Cassian studying her, cataloging her injuries.
When Cleo finally looked up from the papers and saw him, she yelped. The printouts scattered as she catapulted herself into his arms. Cassian received the hug the same way he had when they’d arrived at Cleo’s dorm room all those months ago—like a stoic big brother. This time, though, he had a bruise on his temple. A cut on his opposite cheek. The structure of his face was sharper, more pronounced, as though his time in prison had shaved all excess away. Dvorak’s face had the same gaunt look to it. While the effect gave her a sickly appearance, it only made Cassian more devastating. A perfect sculpture chiseled from stone. At the moment, that sculpture was furious, and that fury was directed at Eden.
