The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

“What is Jay talking about, Morgan?”

It was Cody who answered, his voice oddly hollow. “She’s… a princess from Matrus. She killed her twin sister.”

I looked down at the young boy, and back to Morgan, wondering if it could possibly be true. It was all so very much to take in. Violet was either in enemy hands or Solomon was on board—and both ideas were awful for completely different reasons. Morgan was a princess… and had killed her twin? I was going to need the story on that. But there were so many things that needed my attention. Jay was wounded, Cody looked lost and broken, Alejandro and Mags were injured, and… My mind kept going to sickening places, where Violet was already dead. I had to go after her.

“I’m nothing like my sisters,” announced Morgan flatly, interrupting my thoughts. The look of sheer disgust on her face made it hard for me to believe she was lying.

Blinking at her, I nodded, and then turned away, needing a minute to sort through what I could do something about and what I couldn’t. The injured were going to be cared for by people more qualified than me, so that was off my list. Morgan could wait. We just needed to notify Ms. Dale and Henrik about who she was, but if what Cody was saying was true—and at this point, I doubted the kid was cogent enough to think of a lie—then that meant that whatever her background, she was definitely on our side. So she could stay.

“How long ago did they take Violet?” I asked, turning around.

Morgan’s brows drew together over her green eyes, and she checked her watch, her mouth moving slightly. “About… I don’t know, twenty, twenty-three minutes ago?”

“Okay.” I squeezed my fingers together, activating my microphone. “Jeff, how much fuel is left in the heloship, exactly?”

There was a pause, and then Jeff’s voice filled the line. “The readout says five percent, Viggo, but I’m not quite sure what that means in terms of flight time.”

“It means about twenty minutes of flight, probably less,” supplied Amber’s voice in our ears, a strange reminder that half of what I was saying was still being broadcast to members of all our teams. “What’s going on?”

“Violet was taken by Desmond on a heloship, heading…” I looked at Morgan expectantly, and her frown deepened, her eyes anxious.

“East,” she supplied.

“East,” I repeated into the comm. “Solomon was seen on the heloship as well, so there’s a chance he got in and caused some damage. We need to get to a Patrian airfield, and find some fuel, so we can track the heloship down.”

“You can’t,” replied a rich masculine voice, and I recognized it as Logan Vox, one of the rebel leaders we had recruited to take out the soldiers at the plant. “It’s the reason I went into hiding and started recruiting for the rebellion. The Matrians started collecting pilots and dismantling aircraft. Our storehouses for parts—fuel, tools, munitions… they were all cleared out. It’ll take at least a few days to repair the heloships, if we can even find the parts we need to repair them. It’d be too late at that point.”

“Well,” said Ms. Dale imperiously, her voice firm and commanding. “We’d better figure something out. Violet Bates is the reason we’re all here and in this fight, boys and girls. She’s the one who cracked this conspiracy wide open, and we owe it to her to go after her. So let’s think of a way.”

As if on cue, a car roared up toward us. Alarmed, I turned and yanked my gun around, my heart pounding uncomfortably, only to relax my aim when I saw Owen throwing open the door. Blood streamed from a small cut over his eyebrow, but the rest of him seemed relatively unscathed.

“Viggo,” he shouted when he spotted me. “There’s something I have to—”

“Madre de dios!” I looked past Owen to see Cruz standing on the other side of the car, his uninjured hand covering his mouth. My small amount of relief that Cruz had escaped further injury was overwhelmed by concern over what he was looking at. “What is that?” he demanded.

“Desmond,” Owen replied grimly.

I quickly crossed the twenty or so feet that separated us and threw open the rear door. I immediately had to look away. If it weren’t for the hair and the eyes, there would be no way of discerning the identity of the… well, pulpy remains of human lying in the backseat, clumsily thrown atop what looked to be some kind of tarp. I was surprised her eyes were still intact, given the remains of her face alone. I doubted I’d ever be able to forget the image of an exposed and broken jaw pushing through her flayed skin like that, while her still-open eyes stared vacantly at the seat ahead. I took a closer look at Owen and realized he was covered in blood, likely from carrying her.

“You moved her?” I asked him, still not comprehending why he would bring us such… decimated remains.

“Yeah, well…” He met my gaze, his eyes hard. “It seemed like the right thing to do. After all, people should see that even monsters can be killed.”

The queasy feeling in my stomach remained. “It’s true. But that’s pretty, uh, gruesome.” In truth, it was hard to connect that broken, mutilated body to the woman who had orchestrated so many of the awful plans that had changed the face of Patrus—and Violet’s and my lives—forever. I found it hard to feel the anger, hard to feel that she was really gone. I knew this had been more merciful than the end she’d deserved, but it didn’t make me feel anything at the moment other than disgust.

Owen’s eyes glinted, and the hard look didn’t fall from his face. “Look, I didn’t bring her here for your approval. I brought her here because she fell—she almost fell on me—from the heloship that escaped the plant. I thought it was important for people to see, and it might be useful in dealing with the Matrians… but more importantly, I marked the coordinates where she landed. Maybe Thomas can triangulate the starting location from where the body landed. We could track Violet.”

The thought sent a pulse of energy through me. I immediately stood up and moved over to one of my men, asking him to give me his comms. Within seconds, I was back to Owen, holding the equipment out to him. He quickly slipped it on.

“Thomas,” his voice buzzed in my ear. “I found where Desmond hit, and marked the coordinates. Do you think you can—”

“Are you sure she’s dead?” Ms. Dale demanded. “We need proof. This is something we can’t leave to chance—”

“I’m sure,” I replied, cutting her off. “Owen brought her corpse back. She’s definitely dead.”

If Thomas had any triumph or sorrow over Desmond’s death, his voice didn’t show it. “Give me the coordinates, Owen.”

I moved back over to Morgan as Owen began listing off the coordinates, questions burning through my mind. How had he and Violet gotten separated? “Morgan, why wasn’t Owen with you?”