Renegades (Hotbloods #3)

“How exactly are we going to send the intel to Orion?” I whispered, wanting to break the silence of our steady descent.

Navan kept his eyes dead ahead as he replied. “I have some of the hypnosis serum and some Elysium left. So we should be able to convince one of the intelligence officers to get a message to Orion, on a remote wavelength. You remember that black box I had, back at my cabin?”

“Yeah, but it didn’t work, did it?”

“The disc didn’t work. The transmitter would have worked. Anyway, they should have something like that down here that can send a message, separate from any main systems,” he went on. “The queen probably uses them to get messages to her spies in the South. We just need an officer to use one of them, to bounce the message off a deep-space satellite and reach Orion.”

“Why off a satellite?” I frowned, puzzled by everything he was saying.

“If we send it straight to Earth, then the transmitter will know where the message has been sent. If we send it via a satellite, the transmitter will think the message has gone to whichever satellite we’ve sent it to,” he explained. “So, even if an anomaly is discovered in the system, they won’t be able to trace where the message went.”

“Will they be able to read what the message says?” I pressed, feeling more anxious by the minute.

He shook his head. “I’ll get the officer to delete it as soon as it’s been sent and we’ve received the reply we need.”

“If you send it like that, how can we get confirmation that my parents won’t be hurt?” I asked. It already pained me to know there was nothing I could do for the humans that the rebels would continue to kill in Siberia for their blood. But I could do something about the rest.

“We’ll set up a connection via the satellite, and we’ll ask him to confirm his end of the bargain. If we’re satisfied with the answer, then we’ll give him the intel in a separate message. If we don’t like what he has to say, then we’ll come up with something else,” he said, though there was a hint of worry in his voice.

As we reached the bottom of the stairwell, he put a hand out and lifted a finger to his lips, bringing me to a silent halt. Beyond the door, the control room looked fairly empty. A few guards were wandering around, but they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what they were doing. Two stood talking in front of the doorway.

“We need their clothes,” I whispered, gesturing at my ballgown and Navan’s suit. They weren’t exactly inconspicuous.

“I have a better idea. Wait here,” Navan said, before slipping out the door. Peering through the gap, I watched as he crept up behind the two guards. He tensed his hands, then sliced them down hard on the sides of the guards’ necks. Their heads jolted, and, instantly, their eyes went blank, their knees giving way as they crumpled to the floor. I had never seen that particular Aksavdo move before, but it was certainly impressive. Casting a quick look around, Navan tilted their heads back and poured serum into their mouths, using his thumb and forefinger against their throats to coax it down without choking them. Which serum, I wasn’t sure.

Their bodies were already limp, but their eyes took on an extra layer of fogginess as the serum took hold. Navan hauled each one backward and leaned them up against the door, making it look like they were merely slacking. Then he hurried across the control room toward the huts at the back of the bunker. He reappeared five minutes later. A guard stopped him on the way back, but whatever he said to her, she believed him, and he continued on his way a moment later.

Moving the guards to one side, Navan reentered the small space where I stood, pulling black fatigues out of his suit jacket and handing me a set.

“What did you say to that chick?” I asked as I shimmied out of my ballgown and pulled on the military clothes.

Navan smirked. “I told her my friend had forgotten something, and those guards told me I could come and fetch it,” he said, zipping up the flak jacket and pulling the metal peak of the cap down over his face. I did the same, wanting to look as close to the real thing as possible.

Once we were ready, we snuck through the door and headed over to the workstations. A few officers were on duty, but Navan made a beeline for the back of the room, where a solitary worker was at his position, his station almost hidden from the rest. He looked up in surprise as we approached.

“Can I help you?” he asked uncertainly, his brow furrowed.

Before he could say anything else, Navan had poured the hypnosis serum into the officer’s mouth and clamped his hand across his lips. The officer had two options: swallow or choke. Fortunately for us, the officer chose to swallow the serum, the gulp echoing outward. Even so, Navan didn’t release the man’s mouth until the serum kicked in. We couldn’t risk him shouting out. As his eyes glazed over and his shoulders slackened, his face taking on a dopey expression, we both took seats beside the poor coldblood, making it look like we were hard at work surveying the monitors for any signs of Gianne. The hypnosis serum was working its magic, leaving him open to suggestions.

As Navan explained to the intelligence officer what he wanted him to do, I thought about the rebels and everyone’s obsession with the immortality elixir. It made me furious to know we’d have to give up our intel to Orion, after everything he had done to us. I still had the scars from the device he’d put in my neck, and Galo’s death still haunted me, though I’d forced myself to repress my grief for him as best I could, knowing it would only serve to stop me from functioning.

“I wish we could sabotage the rebels’ attempts to create the elixir somehow,” I murmured sourly. “I mean, there must be a way we could do that, and get rid of their hold on us. I hate that they have so much power over our every move.”

Navan sighed. “I know. It’s been playing on my mind a lot lately, too.”

I watched the hypnotized intelligence officer at work, his hands moving across the translucent screen below him, working to connect us to a secret frequency. There was only one saving grace in all of this: with the two queens occupied with trying to outdo one another, neither of them knew about Earth. I wasn’t sure I could deal with three factions in all-out war with one another. Not yet, anyway. Not while we were still in the middle of it all, and my species hung in the balance.

“Maybe we could figure out a way to bring the rebels back to Vysanthe,” I said, my mind clawing for ideas. “If we could bring them back here without giving away their base on Earth, then we could let them fight it out among themselves. We could make sure Gianne and Brisha are prepared for the rebels’ arrival, while convincing Orion that his attack will be a surprise. Then, maybe, they’ll all just… destroy each other?”