“Why didn’t you tell me?” she choked out.
Walker was silent. In the blackness of the cave, with her own hands bound behind her, Keira died a thousand little deaths for every second he didn’t speak.
By the time he finally responded, she was numb.
“I was scared,” he admitted. “I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you every day. Every time I saw you. Not that I expect you to believe me. But I’d already told you that the Reformers wanted all the Experimentals dead. I’m not exempt from that, Keira. They let me live as long as I was looking for you. As long as I was doing their work, I was safe. When I did the seeking, it kept the other Seekers from being damaged by traveling back and forth between the worlds. That way, no one else would have to end up like Pike—eaten away, physically and mentally.”
Keira sucked in an enormous breath, ready to rage at him for all the lies—for breaking the trust he’d always begged her to have in him. If he’d just told her, she would have . . .
Her breath hung suspended in her chest, her lungs stretched and aching.
What would she have done? Once Walker’d started helping her, he’d signed his own death warrant. She never would have let him protect her if she’d known. Not when the cost was so high.
Outside, Pike’s shrieks turned into a slow, moaning whimper. The guards had caught him.
Between her clenched teeth, Keira snarled with frustration.
She wanted to be angry with Walker—to be scared of him, even.
But she wasn’t. And there was no time to second-guess herself, either.
“If I weren’t so damn stubborn,” she growled, “I—”
Walker cut her off. “If you weren’t so damn stubborn, then I wouldn’t have found you nearly as interesting. Or sexy. Or worth risking so much for.”
Keira thought about that. “So, you really are just like me?”
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “For one thing, you’re much prettier than I am.”
“Walker, I’m being serious,” she protested.
“I am too!” he insisted. “But there’s other stuff. My mother was a Darkling—it was my dad who was human. Their relationship was more complicated than the other people’s in the Breeding Program. They fell in love. And I was raised Darkside. So, we’re not the same. You can play music. And I can’t. So, if it comes down to it, you might have a way to save yourself. But after today—”
“Walker doesn’t have a way to save himself.” Smith swung into the cave. “Because the Reformers don’t need him anymore. Now they have me.”
The guards appeared in the cave’s entrance. Two of them held Pike, who was hog-tied and disturbingly limp. They bundled his body into a mesh sack while the third guard reached up above the mouth of the cave and pulled down a rope. It dangled in the entry like an enormous leash, and the guard clipped it to the bag that held Pike’s unconscious body. The guard gave the rope a sharp tug and it went taut.
Nausea rocked Keira as she watched Pike’s limp form rise from the guard’s grip, swinging into the open air, held only by the single thin rope. As he disappeared above the cave, Keira suddenly understood.
The guards hadn’t followed them up the mountain at all.
They’d come down over it.
And they were taking Keira, Walker, and Pike back with them.
Terror filled her veins and crushed her thoughts and sang to her muscles. Keira struggled into a sitting position. The guards looked at each other. One of them nodded.
“Walker?” Keira gasped.
“Don’t fight them. Don’t ask any questions,” he warned. He lay still, controlled.
The guards approached, pulling small bottles from their pockets. The urge to scream rose in Keira, irresistible and unstoppable.
Her mouth opened of its own accord, but as she drew in a breath, the guards cracked the bottles’ seals with their too-long fingers and something hissed into the air, spraying across Keira’s face. It filled her nose and mouth and she choked as she breathed it in. The earth and metal smell of it gagged her and the edges of her vision grew fuzzy. She closed her eyes against the undulating darkness in front of her.
When she opened them again, she was alone.
In a very tiny room.
With no way out.
Chapter Fifty
OH, CRAP, IT’S A CELL.