I come to Adrienne’s defense again. “She wasn’t manipulating. She just wanted a chance to speak her case.”
“She has no case.”
I search his harsh face, genuinely curious. “You truly believe that? That there’s absolutely no way to ever work together?”
The commander’s lips curl with disdain. “Girl,” he starts.
“My name is Wren.”
“All right. Wren. The people on the Continent…you are all corrupted,” he says sternly, and I know he doesn’t mean the Adrienne kind of corruption. “You were corrupted the moment you became blind to the very thing that makes you human.”
I wrinkle my forehead. “And what’s that?”
He stares at me, almost disappointed. “God.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Yousee,do you? Youseethat you have forsaken God, youseeyou have abandoned the very foundation of humanity—our morality, our purpose? Youseethis and yet you want us to do the same? Never. We will never bow to your false gods.”
Whoa. The people at the Dagger weren’t wrong.
The Tierrans I’ve met so far are…intense.
“I get that,” I say carefully. “I really do. But if we don’t work together, eventually General Redden and the Company will come for Tierra Fe, for your resources.”
“Let them. We have God on our side. They just have greed.”
“And bombs.”
Commander Vásquez chuckles. “We’re not scared of their bombs. We have our own.”
A sharp knock echoes on the cell door. “Commander?” A female voice.
“Enter,” he barks.
A slim young woman, not much older than me, walks into the cell. She has caramel-brown hair arranged in a side braid, and dark eyes that cautiously take me in. She’s holding a canteen. She glances at the commander, who nods, then hands it to me.
I look up gratefully. “Thank you.” The cold water feels like heaven as it slides down my parched throat.
Unbothered by the woman’s presence, Vásquez keeps talking. “The people on the Continent have been stripped of their humanity—”
“Why?” I cut in. “Because they don’t all believe in God, or because some of them have been Modified?”
“I don’t speak of the demons.”
I prickle with offense. “You don’t truly believe the Modified are demons.” I’m unable to stop a harsh laugh.
“They are demons. The old demons, those spawned from the devil himself, were doomed to hell from the moment the dark angel created them. But the ones you call Modified, they were born of a new devil. We believe they can be saved, but it’s not our responsibility to save them.”
“I don’t understand.” I shift my position and regret it instantly, the pain in my leg threatening my consciousness again. I blink, trying to concentrate on his voice.
“We’re not opening our minds to your chaos. That’s how the world was destroyed in the first place. Because there was no order. Because human beings abandoned the one true source of strength.” Vásquez’s voice takes on a deadly edge. “We have order here, and we won’t jeopardize what we’ve built. If Adrienne wants unity, she knows what she needs to do.”
The entire time he speaks, the dark-haired woman stands at the window, doing her best impression of a statue as she watches our exchange. Digests it. There’s something about her that makes me nervous.
Taking advantage of my veins, I open a path into her mind, and maybe it’s a total coincidence, but she suddenly slaps the back of her neck with a strangled curse.
Commander Vásquez looks over sharply.
