The building had been in use until recently. Food wrappers lay in the small trash bins in two corners, while the layer of dust on everything was fine. When she pushed open the only door down there, it was to discover a room with the utilitarian and commonplace gray walls she’d seen in the first image of Persephone.
Below the bed with its dirty brown blanket lay a red-haired rag doll.
• • •
“NONE of the other locations show any signs of involvement in the conspiracy,” Aden told Zaira when she returned to the valley after confirming the lab was exactly what it seemed. “They must’ve cleared the midrise when we brought in Smith and the others.”
The timeline fit with the debris they’d found, the amount of dust on the floor and the shelves. “Damn it!” Infuriated, she went to throw something . . . and realized she was holding the little girl’s doll.
Hand trembling, she placed it gently on the table beside her and Aden’s bed. And though the rage threatened to push her to angry blindness, she took a minute to breathe, just breathe, as Ivy was teaching her, and when she opened her eyes, it was to see Aden’s beautiful face in her sight. “What do we do now?”
“We keep going back and forward through the permits,” he said. “It’s our one solid lead and we will mine it down to the bone if that’s what it takes.”
Zaira shuddered, nodded.
“First, though, you have to eat.” Tugging her outside, Aden drew her to one of several outdoor tables set with nutrient drinks as well as other foodstuffs.
A number of children were already at those tables, smiled when Zaira slipped into a seat. “Here, Zaira,” Tavish said from across the table. “This bread is nice.”
Heart aching with too much emotion, she took the offering. “Thank you.” Aden, I don’t know if I can handle this. Handle their innocence while knowing that somewhere out there, another child as innocent was being slowly suffocated to death.
Aden’s hand closed over her shoulder. Yes, you can. You’ve always been stronger than you know, with a wild and fiery spirit.
A small hand curled into Zaira’s at that instant, a tiny girl with big green eyes in a face that reminded Zaira of her own, looking up. “Can I sit here?” she whispered.
“Yes.” Her voice came out rough, almost harsh, but the child smiled and scrambled onto the bench seat beside her.
A single instant of kindness, she thought again, her heart breaking. How do we save them all, Aden?
One at a time.
Chapter 75
WHILE ZAIRA AND a number of other teams continued to mobilize to find Persephone, Aden watched over the children and the Arrows in the valley. Interview requests kept being made on air and on the PsyNet by media sources desperate to talk to him, but Aden had no intention of appearing on any screen or answering any questions.
The squad had to maintain a fine balance between not being so “other” that they became terrors people wanted to kill and being so visible that the other major powers considered them a threat.
Better to be the shadow who had a face, but a face you saw rarely and mostly when the shadow saved you from harm. His deliberate lack of public appearances would also ease the minds of those who might’ve believed the Arrows would make a bid for total power in the Net.
And his place was here, holding together a family that had as many damaged adults as it had innocent children. There were, however, some hopeful signs. From the start of the relocation of the squad’s “heart” to the valley, Aden had made it clear that regardless of their geographical assignments, each member of the squad had a confirmed space in a home here. Aden had been surprised—in a good way—at how many of the long-range scouts had begun to return to the valley in the time between assignments.
Jaya and Ivy, the two Es most involved with the valley, had begun to drop a quiet word in his ear when they felt a scout wasn’t ready to leave:
“His heart is too hurt.”
“She’s tired.”
“They need to heal.”
Aden had found ways to delay assignments by juggling squad members. It was easier now that so many of the older or “broken” Arrows had come out of hiding, and because his men and women weren’t being wasted on Ming’s personal vendettas. As for the training sessions with their young, those continued—sometimes a lesson was tough, but it was never brutal.
When Aden found Carolina sobbing behind one of the cabins that afternoon, he didn’t hesitate to scoop her up in his arms and rock her until she sniffled and told him what was wrong. “I can’t make my mind do what the teacher says.” Her lower lip shook. “I tried hard, Aden. I really tried.”
“You don’t have to do it all at once,” Aden told her, making a mental note to have a talk with the teacher involved. Walker was doing an incredible job of educating them in how to handle the increasing emotionality of their charges but not all had adapted well. He knew they, too, were trying and that it would take time. What gave him hope was that not one had asked for a transfer.
Rubbing away her tears with small fists, Carolina said, “Really?” A quiver of hope. “I won’t get in trouble?”
Aden sat down with her in his arms, his back against the cabin wall. “The reason you need to learn to control your mind is that you’re a Gradient 9.3 Tp showing signs of being a natural combat telepath.”
Carolina’s family had signed her over to the squad when she was three. She’d hurt herself by stepping onto a piece of broken glass. In her pain and panic, she’d broadcast so loudly that she’d incapacitated every individual within her home. Like a gun going off near a changeling’s ears, it had made them psychically deaf. Two younger members had ended up unconscious, one with what they’d initially thought was permanent brain damage. “Your strength means you can do a lot of harm with your mind if you’re not careful.”