K A N E

Riley, Delphinium and I walked into the fortress, the massive entrance swallowing us whole like a gaping mouth. Jake and the tech specialist accompanying him were already ahead of us, having disappeared into the crowd of real Imperium soldiers. Both Riley and Delphinium wore grim looks, mirroring those of the soldiers here. More than that, Delphinium also wore a shoulder-length black wig under her helmet because her natural white hair would be recognized here instantly. It made her look almost like a different person, almost as if she really was an Imperium soldier.

I let my eyes wander around the enormous place. The open world was far behind us now as we travelled deeper inside the fortress. No one spared us a second glance, me pushing the trolley with fake fuel containers and the two girls walking beside me like guards. They both held guns in typical Imperium fashion. If anything went wrong, at least we had that to fall back on. And if anyone tried to lay a hand on any one of us, I'd bash their faces in. Something about this place seemed to awake those violent thoughts.

In fact, this entire fortress radiated evil and malfeasance. The feeling I was getting inside of here...it made me want to shrink back into myself and hope that my death would be fast. It felt as if they already knew we were coming and were simply toying with us.

But I squared my shoulders and deepened my frown. The army was coming. Soon, with any luck, this fortress would be wiped off the earth.

The place was slightly darker now that the natural light from the sunset outside was so far away. I didn't turn to look back.

Thoughts of my brother kept resurfacing. Before he'd turned into another version of Orion, before they'd destroyed his former self, he was in a place just like this one. Dark, hopeless and surrounded by nefarious people. Ever since I'd learned about his fate, I'd wondered how they'd changed him so completely. Had they simply beat him into submission, or was there some other reason he wasn't the same person? Now, I had my answer. They'd put him through the same process that Delphinium had gone through.

And Delphinium had been able to break free of their grasp eventually. But I'd seen my brother at his worst. I wasn't sure if there was any coming back from what he'd done. Even if he could snap out of it, I wasn't sure what would be left of him to save. I didn't think I wanted to know. Perhaps it was better for him to suffer without knowing like this than live with the weight of the sins he'd committed for a villainous master for the last five years.

"Turn here," Riley muttered, not wanting anyone to catch her speaking a language other than Russian or Romanian. She was following the same path that she'd taken a few days ago.

After taking a few more turns, we reached an elevator. Riley froze as she took in the keypad. "We got here faster than last time."

Only a few people walked through this hallway and none of them spared us a second glance. "We need to give Jake as much time as possible."

So I tilted the trolley, purposely making the fuel tanks fall to the ground and roll away. "Oops." Heads turned to find the source of the noise, so I made a show of picking all of the heavy tanks and placing them back up on the trolley. Delphinium went on a fake rant in Russian and from the angry tone of her voice, she was berating me for my unfortunate 'mistake'.

It took about ten minutes to slowly place all of the canisters back onto the trolley and tie them down. Ten precious minutes that Jake could have used to place Riley's information into their system.

"Do it," Delphinium told Riley in a hushed tone. "People are beginning to stare."

At the assassin's command, Riley placed her hand on the pad and it scanned her fingerprints. I had a horrible vision of it flashing red and sounding an alarm, causing all the real soldiers to swarm us. But green lights flashed and the elevator doors slid open.

As we stepped inside, I prepared to close the doors and shut us out from the horrors of this place for a few minutes. But a hand slapped the closing doors, making them fall open again. Three new soldiers stood among us now: two tall, skinny men and a large woman. The helmets they wore shone under the elevator lights but their eyes were dark. I had to fold my hands together to prevent them going around their throats, the necks of Orion's henchmen.

The woman said something to me in either Russian or Romanian and my heart dropped. The only other languages I knew were Spanish and a bit of Portuguese. But Delphinium stepped in and said something back to her. After that, the woman was quiet and Delphinium gave me a look from behind the two men.

After what seemed like ages of silence and tension, the doors opened for us. Our group got out while the other three mercifully stayed in to go down even further.

The doors closed again and Riley said softly, "I'm not sure if this is the right floor. It's definitely near, but I lost count the higher we climbed the last time."

"We need to find it quick." Delphinium glanced both ways. "The army isn't inside yet but they will be. And once they are, we need to be getting ready to escape. I don't know how long they'll be able to hold the soldiers off."

"I think..." Riley leaned over to look down a hallway. "I think it's this way." The two of us followed her until we hit a metal doorway. "This is it." Her words were barely there because a soldier already stood guarding the door.

Delphinium said something to him that made him leave his post. When he'd disappeared down the hall, Delphinium whispered, "Were going inside. Guard the door. Don't engage any soldiers unless it's absolutely necessary. And if you need any help..." She pointed to her ear, which held one of Jaxon's earpieces. Riley, Delphinium, Jaxon and Finn had them to communicate between the various groups.

Riley nodded and slammed her hand against the second keypad. The engine room door popped open as if the room was relieving some built up pressure inside. We didn't waste any time in getting inside and shutting the door.

Inside, there was large machinery and paneling everywhere. After all, this was the room that powered the entire fortress; it would need a lot to keep it sustained.

But my eyes immediately went to the center of the room, where a thick, translucent rod was built from the floor to the ceiling. Inside of it, electricity crackled. It cast a strange glow upon the center of the large room.

"These canisters go inside of those holes." I nodded toward the bottom of the glowing cylinder, where large holes were fashioned for the fuel to fit inside and power it. But first, we had to open up the empty canisters we carried and activate the bombs inside. After that, we'd seal the canisters back up and place them inside the energy harnesser so that no one would know that they weren't actually carrying fuel.

For a while, the assassin and I worked in silence, the only sound in the room was the steady hum of the electricity. Occasionally, Delphinium would mutter something to herself in another language.

I popped the top onto the canister I was holding, glancing up at my teammate. Her eyes were down on what she was working on, but she stood with the stiffness of someone who was waiting for something else. She was tense and ready to fight.

My eyes dropped to the canister I held, remembering all the cruel things I'd done and said to her in the last few weeks since we'd been fighting. And now that she'd revealed that Imperium had the capacity to completely control certain soldiers...

"My brother...did they do to him what they did to you?"

The room's hum was the only noise as she completely stilled. "Yes."

"And that was why you didn't bring him with you when you escaped: because he was Orion's?"

"I don't know. I wasn't sure."

"How is that possible?"

"I don't know exactly the timeline of what happened to him. When I knew him, he was kind. He was the one piece of humanity left in that place. Then he disappeared. I thought he was dead. But now, he's...well, the way he is now."

"Well..." I trailed off, trying to find the words. All I knew was that I needed to make this right. "Whatever the case is, I didn't know the full story. And I'm sorry for everything I said and did. I shouldn't have done all of that to you."

Her strange light eyes were boring into me now. I couldn't read the expression on her face. So, for once, I kept talking, "I wanted someone to blame. I couldn't blame Benny because he's not the person he was. So I blamed you. I was...hurt by it all. And I was angry, so angry, because I thought that you were the cause. I thought you were why he'd had to stay in that hellish place, because you were so paranoid and selfish that you'd leave him there. It never dawned on me that his downfall hurt you as much as it did me. For that, I apologize."

"You shouldn't apologize to me." Her words came slowly. "Do you remember how I couldn't defend myself, why I would not explain what happened between him and I? It was because I did leave him. I did purposely leave your brother behind when I escaped."

She was trying to take the blame again. Once, that would have made me cruelly satisfied. But now I didn't want to hear it. "No, Delphinium, I understand. You didn't have to-"

"I saw him and I still left him behind," she whispered. "I could very well be the reason he was put into that machine."

My eyebrows pulled down in a frown. "What are you talking about?"

Delphinium watched me for a moment, like she was debating whether to tell me or not. "It was when I was burning the Romanian fortress down. Flames were all I could see. I saw charred corpses all around me, but I kept running. I was so close to the exit. But then I saw him...Benny. He stood amongst the flames. I stopped running and stared at him. Because he'd disappeared from his cell even before I'd gone under the machine, I'd thought he was dead. But there he was, asking me to help him from the destruction.

"There was a battle within me over whether I should take him with me or not. He was my only friend in that whole godforsaken place. But I hadn't seen him in a year. I had no way of knowing whether he was brainwashed or not. I wasn't sure whether Orion had ordered him to entrap to me or not. I was paranoid and terrified. So I left him where he stood."

Lips hardly moving, her voice was barely a whisper. "I got out and watched as the entire thing came crashing down. Flames licked out at me but none touched my body. Even though there were evil people there, the guilt was crushing. It still is. Not everyone in that place was bad, not all of them supported Imperium's cause. And I thought Benny had been killed in my destruction, which did nothing to ease my conscience. But now we know he somehow escaped too. He took my old spot as Orion's right hand."

She licked her lips but said nothing more. I closed my eyes, absorbing her story. I put myself into her place: running out of precious time, unsure of who to trust and imprisoned inside the fortress for years. Even though her recollection was painful to hear and though perhaps she hadn't made the best choice, I knew I would have done the same thing. Especially now that I knew how Imperium could brainwash its soldiers.

"I understand," I told her. "I don't blame you for what you did. We all do things for survival. I have decisions I regret too. But...what's done is done. I know that now. He's not coming back."

She nodded sadly. "I know. This is who he is now."

Why had I protected him? Why had I ever argued his side? He was a monster, worse than any of us. I hadn't been willing to accept that. Rage and sadness had nearly torn me apart. I had almost gone down the same path Gigi had. Could I ever heal this sickness within me, this darkness?

"I don't like who I've turned into," I said softly. I hadn't even meant to say it.

"I know. I don't always like who I am now. That's what war does: it turns good people into something they were never supposed to be."

"Or it reveals our true selves."

"Yes." Her voice was quiet. "I've thought about that too."