Page 175

This is awesome—exactly the way I wanted to start my day.

I blink, my blurry surroundings coming into focus, and I realize… I fell asleep at my desk.

Why?

One scan of the empty coffee mugs and the blood bags scattered around the trash can at my feet is enough to jog my memory. It was already late when we arrived back home, and I must have spent hours scrolling through forums and hacking into private servers in my frantic search for answers.

And once again, there are none to be found.

Sighing, I close my eyes, and the first thing I see is the image of the Omega collapsed on the floor in front of her dead mother.

The image haunted me the whole ride home.

Right along with the questions I had about what Soren told me happened right before we finished the fight. The ride home was melancholy, and it felt shitty to ask for details. So I waited until we got back to HQ to ask Gav.

It’s a good damn thing I did, because when he told me… Fates.

I’m pretty sure I owe him an apology for the way I responded to his retelling of events. Especially considering I stared at him blankly for a solid minute in absolute silence before abruptly spinning on my heel and escaping to my room.

Not my best moment, but right then, the only thing I could think was ‘I have to get answers.’

It felt imperative that I find some kind of explanation for what Idril did in that basement.

Thanks to her deranged father and his obsession with DNA, we can say with a fair amount of confidence that her abilities are probably genetic. Specifically, passed down through the maternal side.

But what makes Idril—and presumably her mother—so different? Where did her abilities originate? What else can she do? How is she doing it?

To my right is the notebook I started last night. I pick it up and flip through the pages full of scrawled notes—speculation, hypotheses, and a thousand unanswered questions.

I spent hours scouring online journals, studies, forums, and records. I made a dozen calls to some of the brightest minds and trusted contacts in various historical and scientific fields.

I even texted Riven to drop off the journals I found in the library last week, but all I got in reply was a middle finger emoji.

After that, I sat at my desk and stared sightlessly at my blinking cursor. Wondering why I just couldn’t let this go.

Somewhere around five in the morning, understanding finally dawned. Or… maybe it just took me that long to be honest with myself.

Idril saved my life. At least, she saved me from a hell of an injury. The likelihood of a Severed taking me down is small, but I still could have been injured.

Fates, the fucker could have gotten a lucky shot. It’s happened before.

Gav’s voice has been cycling through my mind all night. His clipped, no-nonsense tone recounting how the world lit up in a blaze of orange and gold, and when he looked up, a column of fire was soaring through the air, barreling straight for the Deadwalker at my back.

The way he tells it, the fucker was less than a breath away from sinking its fangs into my neck when the flames hit it, sending it soaring halfway across the basement.

By the time the fire burnt out, there was nothing left but a smoking pile of ash.

Which means the fire was hot enough to burn through flesh, muscle, and bone in minutes. Something I’ve never seen happen without chemical assistance.

Like what I used on Cage.

With a frustrated groan, I press my palms into my eyes as hard as I can.

What the hell is happening to me? I’m floundering. Lost at sea while a storm rages. I’ve never felt so unmoored in my life.

I lift my hand, admiring the newly healed skin. I haven’t told anyone this, but when I was holding Cage down with that poker, waiting for him to hurry up and die, I didn’t feel any pain while my hand was burning.

From the moment I saw that poker headed for Idril, my brain just… switched off.