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I shook my head. “Never mind.”
“Are you supposed to be going to meet someone?” Jorik tipped the canteen to his mouth, and the way his throat moved as he swallowed had me mesmerized.
A quiet, throaty chuckle from Rix pulled my attention away from Jorik, and my cheeks grew hot.
I sighed. I was so tired of …everything.I didn’t want to thwart the plan, even though Neffers was probably dead, but it seemed pretty much hopeless that I’d get to where I needed to be anyway. Maybe, just maybe if I told them the plan, they could get me there. They could join the cause. I tipped my gaze up to meet theirs, hugging my knees even tighter into my chest. “Neffers was part of a secret organization.”
Their brows hiked up their foreheads.
“What kind of organization?” Jorik asked slowly.
My eyes drifted up to his face. He had a nice face, despite the blood splatter. His green eyes practically glowed in the setting sunlight, and when he smiled, two big dimples pressed into his cheeks. The man was quite puzzling. As big as a bear, with muscles to spare, and yet he had such a gentleness about him. A kind, rumbly voice and sincerity in his gaze, that even though I knew I shouldn’t let my guard down around him—I wanted to.
“Revolutionaries,” I finally whispered. “They want to take down the government. Restore order and democracy.”
“They want to assassinate the president and end his near century-long dynastical rule,” Zane said, coming up the ladder slowly, his thick, dark hair was mussed in a way that made my body warm in an alarming way. A heavy layer of scruff decorated his sharp jaw and chin, but his steel-gray eyes were laser-focused on me. His scarred brow lifted just slightly.
Rix and Jorik both stared at me.
Zane’s lip tilted up just a fraction of an inch on one side. “Right, Kitten?”
I jerked a curt nod.
“And you were going to do it?” Rix asked with disbelief.
“They’ve been recruiting others,” I said, not liking the way his lack of faith in me felt. No, I’d never been on a real mission before, but I wasn’t completely useless. I was a Kappa Sigma Theta. The most lethal Hellcat ever created. Just because I hadn’tactuallykilled anybody didn’t mean that I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
“And so where is the rendezvous point? Because I sure as fuck hope you know that we can’t step foot on Canadian soil without knowing it means death. Sure, we can probably get away with mooring in their inlets, maybe hunting in their woods, but they’re not going to let us waltz through their country to get to Sector Three to kill President Weyser—as much as we all know they would like to see him dead, too.” Zane’s tone was covered in skepticism and sarcasm.
I wanted to grab one of the Yakku blades off my thigh and ram it into his shin.
He wasn’t wrong, however. Even though I’d never stepped foot outside of a compound—unless I was in a windowless transport vehicle—I knew that the Canadian borders were firmly closed to the U.S., which made us being in Sector Nine, what was formerly known as Alaska, difficult.
No country was on good terms with the United Sectors at the moment.
The Weyser family’s militant rule and their quest for global power had made them an enemy of everyone, but at the moment there seemed to be a tense truce going on as all other countries had turned their focus inward to take care of their own dwindling populations.
It also helped that when Russiadidtry to overthrow the United Sectors government roughly sixty years ago, there was enough of a Hellcat and super-soldier army that that plot was extinguished before it even reached United Sector soil.
President Borovokov was still licking his wounds—or so joked the lab techs who gossiped around me when they were taking my blood for testing.
One thing was for sure, though. President Weyser was building up his super-soldier and Hellcat forces to reclaim the United Sectors’ position as a global powerhouse.
Wartime superiority is always a priority when vulnerable, and the race to civilize and reclaim the glory days—a life like people lived before Stratera—seemed to be something everyone wanted and why Weyser had so much support.
He promised better days and a better life. Even if it meant enslaving people like myself, the three men on the boat with me, and Lambdas to do it.
One thing I appreciated about these three guys—well, two of the three anyway—was that they were patient. They waited for me to collect my thoughts before speaking again.
I ignored Zane’s huffs of annoyance. He was just miserable; there was no changing that. “The plan was to meet in Sector Six—”
“Formerly Washington State,” Jorik said with a nod. “On the coast, I’m assuming? Juan de Fuca Strait, maybe? Or at least what’s left of it. Leavenworth is the closest coastal town.
I nodded. “Yes. In two months’ time,” I said on a sigh, leveling my gaze at Zane and giving him a challenging lift of my brow. “From there, we were going to meet up with others from his organization and move east as a group. People like Neffers were supposed to be recruiting other Hellcats from other compounds. He called the causeRevolution Inferno.”
If I hadn’t been looking straight at him, I would have missed the seconds-long flare in Zane’s eyes. But then it was gone. “Kappas are fucking psychos, so I doubt they give a shit about supporting a revolution. All they want to do is kill.” I couldn’t miss the way his tone changed to something more accusatory or the way his eyes narrowed, causing slight creases to form at the corners.
“NotallKappas,” I said, maintaining his gaze.
