Thomas, of course, was obsessed for the same reason. The girls were the key to the long-range goals of Fort Nevada’s move toward revolution. He saw the children born of such high-powered women as the future of free Sparks.
He believed the Council was spiriting away girls as they were found to be highly powered, before even their parents were fully aware of the magnitude of their difference. They hadn’t been able to discover to where or by whom yet—the occurrences were too unpredictable. Now they’d found one that had escaped that fate.
“He had another daughter. He faked her death. He hid her away, which may explain his varied interests.” Alex took a breath. “After his death, as soon as she was old enough, she left the city. She’s been living on the edge of tribal lands and working as a black market Spark. That’s how we found her. We heard rumors and put ourselves on her schedule so we could bring her in.” His voice turned mocking. “Can’t have any Sparks not pulling their weight for the good of the Council, now can we?” He shook his head. “Imagine my surprise when we pulled up and she had a corona around her like the sun at full eclipse. Like I said, it hurt to look at her.
“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. Emotion tightened his throat, and he swallowed to clear it. It had been beautiful, but still. Clearly, Thomas’s obsession had wormed into his psyche and latched onto Lena. He crossed his arms and continued. “And it was only the beginning.”
Thomas was still now, utterly focused on his friend. Alex recognized the excitement bubbling beneath the surface. But that surface? Calm.
“One of the disappeared girls,” Thomas said. “How old?”
“Twenty-four. Young enough, and old enough. Tiny thing. Big green eyes. Coated in freckles. Not pretty, exactly, not that it matters, but stunning in her own way.” He frowned. What did that have to do with anything? He barked a laugh as he focused on what mattered—the personality they’d have to work around to get her to join them. Just because he admired her ballsiness didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize that her strength would make things harder. “She’s a tough little pain in the ass.”
Thomas took a deep breath. “Please tell me you’ve brought her here?”
He shook his head. “She got away—”
“Dammit, Alex! This is important!” His gloved hands shot up to frame his head in anger and disbelief.
“I damn well know how important it is! She took us out. Took. Us. Out.” Alex made sure he had Thomas’s attention. “She can do shit nobody else can do. Not me. Not you.” He took a deep breath and released it in a noisy gust of frustration. “She had some kind of early warning system. Probably Dust. One minute, we were in the middle of a conversation, our guys scheduled to start moving in, and the next, she knew. Who we were, why we were there.” He shook his head.
What came next had been terrifying. Once he’d recovered, he’d felt such a euphoric rush at having found her that he’d had to tamp it down and twist it into rage. “I didn’t even have enough time to react. She just—our lungs stopped working. Our muscles contracted. It was agony. And she had enough control to put us on a fucking timer.”
They had hoped to find a Spark evolved to a dangerous, exquisite extreme. They’d found her, and that presented a danger all its own.
Alex ran his hands through his hair. “She took us out long enough to get out through her escape tunnel. Dust-made. Dust-protected. I found the exit in the side of an arroyo before we cleared out. The damn thing was a good three hundred feet long.” He shook his head again. “She made it to the tribe. I couldn’t do anything at that point.”
“You know where she is?”
Alex nodded.
“Then we’ll go get her. Tonight.”
Alex closed his eyes for a moment. Shit. He’d figured Thomas’s reaction would be strong. But this was on the extreme end.
“No, Thom.”
“Yes! She cannot get away. She belongs with us.”
“We’re not ready to go to war. And that’s what it would be. We have to do this the way we do things. We have to be smart.” Alex stared down into Thomas’s pale eyes, holding onto his calm. One of them had to.
Thomas took two quick steps to stand inches from Alex. “We cannot allow her to disappear. She is—she’s our Eve.”
“I know. And I’m working on it.” Alex grimaced. “My partner knows he’s onto something big. And as soon as the Council gets wind of this girl, they will scramble everything to ensure she is taken into custody.”
“Then you get to her first, Alex. Because if they get to her first and they can’t figure out how to harness her, they will kill her. And either way, they win. You get to her first. You bring her home to us. I don’t care what you have to do.”
Alex took a long breath. “Decades of work,” he reminded his friend. “Decades. Of my work. And we are so close. Zone Three is primed. I’m not willing to undo that for a girl you didn’t know existed five minutes ago.”
He wasn’t. Was he?