CHAPTER 24

brOMM

I f I’d had any doubts before that my time with Artemis in that web of glowing lines was real, then they were assuaged now. Not that I’d had any doubts to begin with. But she was here, holding my hand, unmasked and stunning in her determination.

Yet, even if we took away the mission and all the responsibility that rested on her shoulders, there was still a wall in place that was clear for me to see. Right there, just behind those mesmerising, earthy brown eyes, there was a shield still in place that I had yet to knock down. It stung a bit, but I understood it. When she was marooning as Arthur Mercer I’d known it then, just as I knew it now: I was going to have to work stars-damned hard to get her to fully open up and trust me. To trust that I was here and not going anywhere. That my feelings for her were genuine and eternal.

I’d never fallen in love before, and the reason was clear. My soul had been waiting for hers.

When T’s voice drifted over to us as he spoke to someone on his holo-tab, she tilted her head ever so slightly as if she were trying to keep him in her sight, her upper lip curling almost imperceptibly into a sneer. It was a completely accidental insight into her mind, a rare external show of how she felt about the Tornu guard. It hadn’t escaped any of our notice how her distaste for him was a clue that their past went deeper than just some guard helping a subject escape, and not in a positive way.

At least on Artemis’s side. I caught the way T kept glancing at her when he thought no one was looking. I knew that look, too. It was one brimming with affection and longing, the look of a man who’d lost his chance.

I wondered if that was perhaps where her wall came from. Was it a past heartbreak? Did he still have a chance with her? If that was the case, were her feelings for me even real?

No, I wasn’t about to doubt us. I was hers and she was mine. Whatever other noise that existed around our relationship was never going to change that.

I pushed those thoughts to the side when we approached a nondescript door. T had begun discretely leading us when he overtook our clustered group, but he stopped at the door. He stood in front of it, a frown marring what little we could see of his face while he covered it with the gas mask. I was curious why he never seemed to take it off, even now. Did we need some for us, too?

Actually…

‘Hey, T?’ I called out, and the look Artemis sent me for drawing his attention our way was uncomfortable at best and disdainful at worst. She squirmed when his eyes went directly to her and lingered for a moment before finally resting on me.

‘Yes?’

‘Should we have gas masks, too?’

He froze as the question caught him off guard, but then the grim reality of our blatant vulnerabilities seemed to settle within him. ‘Probably.’

‘Do you have any to spare?’

‘I do not.’

‘Do they use gas a lot?’

‘Yes,’ he and Artemis answered simultaneously, both of them wearing twin haunted expressions.

‘So… we’re screwed,’ I concluded.

‘Don’t worry about it, Bromm,’ Artemis stroked a hand down my arm reassuringly. ‘If you all stick close I can shield us from anything they throw our way.’

‘Well, we’re not going to have to worry about that if we can’t even get through this stars-damned door first,’ T complained, turning back to scowl at the offending object.

‘I can help with that too,’ she confessed, pushing through to the front. She took one look at the door, lingered on a tiny symbol in the upper left-hand corner that seemed to be depicting some sort of cog, closed her eyes, placed her hand against the metal and suddenly I was back inside the web.

‘Woah…’ I slurred, disoriented. It was a lot like what had happened earlier in the cafeteria, only faster and more jarring.

Artemis took one look at me and rushed over, concern etching deepening grooves in her forehead. ‘How do you keep ending up here?’

‘Dunno…’ I mumbled.

‘Okay, well… It’ll only take me a tick or two to unlock the door and we can get out of here. Can you hold on?’

I held onto her and made a noncommittal noise that she took for my agreement, and then she stuck to her word. Within a few ticks the door was open and I was sucked back out of the void to find myself propped up by Foryk who’d apparently caught me after I’d collapsed.

‘You good?’ he asked when he saw me open my eyes, helping me get my feet back under me. My legs felt a little fuzzy, an aftereffect of what I could only describe as an out-of-body experience, but my strength was slowly coming back to me.

‘Does that happen a lot?’ asked Artemis, coming back to examine me for any sign of injury or illness.

‘Nope. Just since you got here, apparently,’ I admitted.

She didn’t respond, the mystery even stumping her.

‘We can solve that mystery later,’ Dorian stated. ‘We need to find Reece and Brin.’ Then, as an afterthought to Artemis, ‘And the kids.’

‘All right, stay behind me. If they come at us I’ll need to be able to block their attacks,’ Artemis warned, and though it was obvious how a few of the guys – namely T – were less inclined to allow her to take the lead, her abilities were what we were relying on for this to go smoothly so we all silently agreed.

Our pace was slow but steady as we entered the facility. I didn’t know what I expected, but it was exactly like the rest of Nova Station: monochromatic, metallic, and cold. Sure, the walls and floors were heated, though mostly through the excessive electrical currents that kept the station functioning rather than any effort made for the resident’s comfort, but there was nothing homely about this place. The only emotion Nova Station’s architecture evoked was anxiety over accidentally smudging the clinical cleanliness.

Somehow, walking these halls felt even more frigid than anywhere else on Nova. Whereas the hustle and bustle within the rest of the station provided as sense of community, even if that community was uniformed in more ways than one, this facility was empty.

And I meant empty empty.

There were no signs on the doors, the lights were dim as if on standby, and there wasn’t even a spec of dust. In fact, the latter was the only way I knew that this building saw any activity at all.

The lack of activity, however, was definitely a bad sign. No guards stood sentry at any of the doors. No scientists or doctors rushed about. No machines beeped or buzzed or anything I thought a scientific facility – illegal or not – would contain.

Something about this felt off…

‘Do you know where you’re going?’ asked T, and the look Artemis sent him could have frozen an entire planet.

‘Of course. Did you think I’d come unprepared?’

‘You’ve never been the one to prepare anything in the past,’ he snapped back, and that was when I whirled on him.

‘Now, hold up. I don’t know what history the two of you have but if you ever talk to her like that again I’ll make sure you’re the one stuck here getting experimented on while the rest of us find happiness in our freedom, do you understand me?’

Even behind the mask I could see how his face pinched and imagined the straight white line of his lips as he pursed them. ‘Of course, Your Highness. It won’t happen again.’

I frowned at his sarcastic use of my royal title, his problem with me new and unfounded, but I let it go. For now. We didn’t have the luxury of infighting right now, but it was something I made a mental reminder to come back to when we did. Whatever this tension was between T and Artemis, it needed to be resolved soon before it got us all in trouble.

‘The subjects are being held on the same floor,’ Artemis stated, leading us towards another unmarked door. She opened it to reveal a circular stairwell so vast that even our quiet breaths echoed back at us at an immense volume.

Instead of speaking, which would have alerted anyone within the entire facility of not only our presence but our direct location, she held up a single finger against her lips and waved us down. Our steps were slow, tentative and as light as we could possibly make them. Even so, I cringed at every little scuff of our boots that amplified back on us tenfold.

On and on we went, further down the spiralling staircase into the depths of enemy territory, when we finally came to a stop behind Arty. She paused to ensure we were still all behind her and keeping up, then gently opened the door into another hallway that was a mirror of the one we’d originally entered through.

Again, there were no signs on any of the doors, no guards, nothing. Yet, somehow, Artemis seemed to know exactly where she was going.

Still, and in spite of my trust for and in the woman I’d so quickly and easily grown to love, that persistent gnawing at my gut told me this was too simple. Too easy.

It’s a trap , a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Turn back.

I reached out to Artemis again, my unease growing with every step, and gripping her hand, tugging it firmly to get her attention. I drew her close and whispered in her ear.

‘This doesn’t feel right,’ I admitted.

She sent me an assessing look before her lips twisted into a grim smile. ‘I know.’

I scrutinised her for a moment. ‘You think this is a trap, too?’

Her sigh was weary, a sign of her long-term suffering. ‘I know so.’

I reared back in shock. ‘And we’re still heading in?’

She shrugged. ‘What other choice to we have? I can’t leave the kids here, let alone Addy and Reece. They need us.’

‘But… how…?’

‘Will we get out?’ she finished for me, and despite her nonchalant stance there was an anxious tension beneath it all when I looked closer. ‘I don’t know yet.’

I blew out the breath in my lungs slowly, hoping to gain some confidence. We were on a suicide mission, but Artemis wouldn’t let anything happen to us. I didn’t doubt she’d even protect T, even though they clearly didn’t get along.

But who was protecting her?

My resolve hardened at that morbid thought. She’d been alone for so long, she needed someone by her side. As an equal. A partner. If she needed me to dig deep and find a strength I’d never called upon before let alone knew existed, then so be it. She may have been the pillar holding us all up right then, but I would be her support beam. Or the cushion for her knees… Pick a metaphor, you get the point.

While she was strong for everyone else, I would be strong for her.

She paused at another door, examining it closely before turning back to face us all. ‘Reece and Adara are through here. I don’t know what state we’ll find them in, but it’s best if you just… imagine the worst. Then expect even worse than that,’ she warned us.

‘In other words, prepare yourselves for a gruesome sight,’ said T as if he needed to elaborate for her.

Maybe Artemis was onto something with her distaste for him. He was getting on my last nerve.

‘What do you need us to do?’ asked Henrik, stepping forward at the first sign he could help someone in need. As the self-proclaimed medic of the group, he was always the first to volunteer himself for nurse duties.

There was a deep sorrow in her eyes, as if she were speaking from experience when she answered. And the most heartbreaking thing was that was exactly what she was doing.

‘Just… be their friends.’

Without further delay, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.