There wasn’t time for a group meeting, but he was right. This groundbreaking and brilliant organization worked only because each member believed himself or herself equal to the others. That equality was a carefully constructed sham, but the belief was important for the end goal. “The others will contact you within the next five minutes.”
There would be no dissension, not on this point. Because if it was a case of a live Arrow with vengeance on his mind or a dead one, the equation was simple. Should Aden Kai prove problematic, the organization would have to live with the loss of data, change plans accordingly, adapt.
Adaptation was the key.
Chapter 5
ADEN SENSED ZAIRA fall into a deep sleep, her breathing even. Her skin, when he checked it after about what must’ve been an hour, was no longer as clammy. Though they were in a cold climate, which the rising wind was turning even more bitter, they were well clothed and had enough food to last another day. After that, they’d be in trouble, and Zaira was already dangerously weak as a result of blood loss.
Making sure the hood of her jacket covered her head, he curled his body around hers in an effort to keep her warm, his mind alert. However, that mind was bound in chains he had to force himself not to test. It went against his instincts, but he couldn’t afford to do any damage that might debilitate him—his knowledge as a medic told him that whatever implant they had in their heads, it was unstable.
Technology this advanced could be created underground, but the Arrows worked in the shadows, worked in that underground. They would’ve picked up hints if this had been a long-term project. No, what he suspected was that the implant was some nightmare combination of the Human Alliance implant that shielded against psychic intrusion and the “hive-mind” implant developed by Ashaya Aleine while she’d been under the control of the Council.
Her research had been destroyed, a large part of it by Aleine herself, but it was possible that someone had smuggled out a prototype or had siphoned off enough of her research before she pushed the destruct button, to reverse engineer her creation and fiddle with it in concert with the Alliance implant to achieve this psychic-blinding effect.
If his hypothesis was true, the implant in his skull and in Zaira’s couldn’t be as well constructed as either of the originals—Aden had cause to know that Ashaya Aleine had helped the Alliance develop their implant, too. She was a genius on a level rarely found, and she worked in tandem with her sometimes psychotic but always brilliant twin. It’d be difficult for any lab in the world to procure a team that could match their combined abilities.
There remained a slim chance that he was wrong, that this was an independent creation, but if he was right, these implants could well have a remote self-destruct built in, as with the original Alliance implants. Their abductors could kill them from a distance. If so¸ the only reason he was alive was likely because they wanted to interrogate him about classified data.
Zaira, however . . .
He sat up, staring down at her. She’d been taken because whoever had been watching him believed she was a weakness in his armor. That fact had kept her alive up until now, but it wouldn’t last. Their captors might think Zaira was already dead, but if they didn’t find her body they’d push the detonation key in order to make certain. She’d die in a matter of seconds unless she was out of range. The same applied to him. They wanted him alive, but only to a certain point.
No one was stupid enough to hurt an Arrow, then set him free to come back with retribution on his mind.
“Zaira.”
She woke silently and with Arrow swiftness. “Yes?”
“We need to move.” He explained why as she sat up, a slight catch in her breath the only indication of pain.
It was an hour later, when she stumbled while they were crossing an exposed, treeless area that had only a thin covering of some kind of foot-high shrub or grass with tiny white flowers, that he realized something was seriously wrong. “Your wound?”
She halted in among the grasses. “Significant pain, some light-headedness.” Chest heaving in shallow breaths, the softness of her lips bracketed by white lines, she held his gaze. “I’m not going to last much longer.”
He knew what she was telling him—to do what Arrows were trained to do and make the rational, logical decision: leave her behind. Gripping her chin, he said, “We are not that anymore. We are not only assassins trained to die and to kill. We do not abandon the weak or the hurt. And we never, ever leave our own behind.” That, he decided at that instant, would be the new motto of the squad, be what all trainee Arrows were taught. No Arrow is disposable. No Arrow is to be left behind.
Zaira’s eyes held his for a long moment, the thickness of her lashes throwing shadows over the rich black of her eyes. “You’ve changed,” she said. “You were never Silent, but now you’re . . . different.”
Aden didn’t disagree because she was right. Touching Vasic’s bond with Ivy had altered him on a fundamental level. His fellow Arrow and closest friend guarded that bond with intense protectiveness, but Vasic had permitted Aden within his shields, permitted Aden to see the shimmering power of the translucent yet unbreakable strands that bound Vasic to his empath. Not only that, but he’d permitted Aden to touch one of the strands, feel the power of the emotions that locked him and Ivy to one another in an intricate, intimate tapestry.
Aden didn’t know if it was because he’d been permitted so close, or if it was because Vasic was his blood brother and Ivy an empath, but when he’d touched their bond, he’d felt a sharp stab of emotion that was as painful as it was beautiful. A knife blade that slid in through muscle and bone and heart to make him bleed. “Vasic allowed me through his shields,” he told Zaira. “After his bonding.”