Renegades (Hotbloods #3)

“Yorrek, it’s me. It’s Angie, from the building site,” Angie repeated. “Bashrik sent me. You haven’t been around in a few days, and he thought it might be nice if I came and invited you to check on the lab’s progress, in case you felt he’d been too harsh with you last time,” she explained softly, though they were difficult words to believe. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting this guy around.

“So you think me to be a little child who can’t handle a bit of banter between males?” Yorrek snorted.

Angie sighed. “No, not at all, Yorrek. He just wanted you to come and give your opinion, since you’re going to be working there the most,” she replied, trying a different tactic.

Yorrek shook his head angrily. “Nothing will induce me to go outside, so you can turn around and forget about it!” he muttered. “I’m going to stay in the safety of my house, with every security measure I can get my hands on, and conduct my experiments here until the alchemy lab is complete.”

I frowned. “Why would you want to do that? Isn’t that awfully lonely?”

He scoffed. “It might be a solitary existence, but at least I’ll stay alive!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There is someone stalking me, trying to gain intelligence on the immortality elixir. They think I’m not onto them, but I am,” he murmured, his holographic eyes flashing left and right, checking every angle for approaching danger. He had apparently judged us to be safe, given our inferiority. “Now, before I get my missiles out again, I’d like you to get off my porch and scram! You’re drawing attention to me, you idiots!” he snapped, startling us into backing away.

Even so, his hologram didn’t disappear until we had stepped out of the garden. I looked to Angie, seeing my own disappointment reflected on her face. It was clear now that we had no way of capturing Yorrek, even if we had the serum ready. I had my knives, and the others had their strength and skills, but what good were they against a solid metal door and an ultra-high-tech security system? Even with everyone’s forces combined, we’d be dead or brutally injured before we pried Yorrek out of that shell.

Realization dawned on me like a punch in the face. We were running out of ways to gather intel for Orion, and time was running out.





Chapter Eleven





Later that night, with the Vysanthean moon glowing above me, its silvery surface tinged with the faintest hint of red, I dragged myself away from the training center, with every muscle aching, feeling like the walking dead. Navan had been asked to stay behind for some one-on-one coaching, and I was secretly glad of the time alone.

The training session had been just as tough as I’d feared it would be, with us performing aerial assaults on one another in the darkness. Even with the wing serum, I was at a disadvantage again. The coldbloods could see better in the dark than I could, meaning I’d been battered and thrown in every direction, from all angles. I could see my fellow trainees were relishing it, being able to exact their revenge after the prize I’d been given by the queen. They wanted to take me down a peg or two, which was to be expected. I just wished they could do it in a gentler way.

It had been relentless, with us moving on to flight simulators in some of the small vessel replicas they kept in the huge training hangar. Half of us had been out of the ships, while the other half were in the cockpits. Obviously, I had been outside of the vessels, getting annihilated by the simulated gunfire of the training ships. We were supposed to find a way on board without getting shot out of the sky, but I hadn’t managed it. Everyone else had. That fact stuck in my throat as I made my way back to the palace. So far, I’d managed to keep up with the coldbloods, to some extent. This was the first time I’d felt like an actual failure.

Knowing I needed a pick-me-up, I decided to visit Lauren in the library, to update her on the status of our intel efforts. I’d promised Angie I’d do it before I left for training, but a last-minute nap had eaten up my time. It didn’t matter, though. Lauren would still be nose-deep in books, having forgotten the outside world even existed.

As I followed the familiar route to the library, the unsuccessful excursion to see Yorrek weighed on my mind, with Orion’s name glowing like a neon sign in my head. It was always there, a constant reminder of what he could do if we didn’t get him what he wanted. I thought of Roger and Jean and felt a shiver of dread run through me. No matter what, I couldn’t let anything happen to them.

I knocked on the library door, praying it wouldn’t be Queen Brisha who answered. A minute or so later, the door creaked open, and Lauren’s bespectacled eyes peered out, like she was a mole emerging from its hole for the first time in months. A chuckle rippled from my throat, and a smile spread across Lauren’s face.

“Riley!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, where a blast of stale, fierce heat hit me full in the face. The fire was blazing, but the evening’s training had left me hot and sweaty, to the point where such warmth felt almost unbearable.

“I thought I’d come and give you an update, since we haven’t seen a lot of you lately,” I said, wiping beads of perspiration from my brow.

She shrugged. “What do you expect when you put me in a library like this? There are so many books! I can’t help myself.” I knew exactly what she was like, where books were concerned. If she was buried in an interesting book, the sexiest man in the world could walk past her and she wouldn’t notice.

“Hopefully you’re doing a lot better than the rest of us, then,” I replied. “Which is kind of why I’m here. We’ve had a little hiccup with gathering information from Yorrek. He’s got this insane security system set up because, for some reason, he thinks somebody is following him and wants to squeeze him for information… someone other than us, that is,” I explained, trying to rein in my frustration.

She grimaced. “He’s definitely a bit of a weirdo. I’ve run into him a couple of times at the building site, when I’ve gone to see Angie and Bashrik,” she explained. “If he’s not going to come out of his house, that’s no good at all. Has anyone come up with another way we might get some information about the elixir?”

“Not yet, no, though we’re all working on it. Do you think you could have a look through some of these books, see if there’s anything else we might use? Maybe there’s a book on disarming intricate security systems in one easy move,” I muttered.

“I’ll see what I can find, but, yeah, I don’t think it’ll be that easy,” she said, her eyes already sweeping over the shelves.

“I’m surprised the queen isn’t here,” I said, glancing around, just to be sure.

“Well, she was here, but she left about an hour ago,” Lauren said, grimacing. “She was really upset about something, but I didn’t dare ask her what was up. I’m not really sure what you do with weeping queens, so I thought it best not to say anything. Anyway, she was sobbing by the fire for a while, and I couldn’t just leave her all alone, but when I came over to offer her a cup of tea, she got up and ran off.”

“You’re… You’re sure she was crying?” I asked.