Chapter 54

CODE RED! Cardiac arrest detected! Location data embedded.

CODE RED! Cardiac arrest detected! Location data embedded.

CODE RED! Cardiac arrest detected! Location data embedded.

—Emergency medical alert sent by personal monitoring device assigned to Pax Marshall (18 June 2073)

HOPE.

It wasn’t a word or a term that had held any meaning for Theo since she was seven years old. Before that . . . yes, she’d hoped. She’d believed. That the bird they’d found could survive, that they could escape watchful eyes to play in the grounds, that she and Pax would always be together and that they’d find a place to live with no rules, no strictures.

Childish hopes, but hopes nonetheless.

Now, this strong, honorable bear was asking her to believe in herself, in her own goodness. “It’s hard,” she whispered, a hot splash sliding down her cheek. “I’m so scared.”

Tugging her even closer, not a breath between them, he rubbed his cheek against the side of her temple. She felt enfolded in him, protected by him. “I know,” he said. “But you have courage upon courage, Theo mine. You survived a fucking Councilor—and you lived to dance on his nonexistent grave. Nonexistent because he was blown to pieces. Just in case you forgot. Some dreams do come true.”

Laughter bubbled through the tears, her chest aching.

“Then you got tangled up with the most handsome bear you’ve ever seen.” Rumbling words against her ear. “A good thing, because said bear might otherwise have been forced to kidnap you and steal you away to his den.”

Tears continued to fall from her eyes, a faucet that once turned, couldn’t be closed.

“Theo.” Her feet leaving the carpet as Yakov scooped her up in his arms and walked to sit on the bed, with Theo held tight against him. Managing to grab the soft blanket at the foot of the bed, he opened it out and wrapped it around her back, so that she was cradled in his warmth and the plushness of the blanket.

“Get it out, pchelka. Get the poison out. It doesn’t belong inside you. You’ve paid the price for your grandfather’s evil long enough. It’s time to be Theo. Just Theo.”

She didn’t know if it was the flagrant permission, if she’d needed that, or if it was him—her Yakov, who thought more of her than she’d ever thought of herself. The dam broke. She cried for the girl she’d once been, so happy and good at heart. She cried for the girl she’d become, so lost and hurting. She cried for the teenage years that were a blur in her mind, no shape to the memories. She cried for the young woman who’d begun to realize what she’d done, the blood that stained her hands.

And she cried for the Theo who’d never had a chance to become, her trajectory forever altered . . . but that same trajectory had brought her to this moment, where she lay in the arms of a man who thought her worth the fight, who thought her good. And it was in that realization that she found the fragile flame of hope.

Yakov existed. And he wasn’t repulsed by her though he’d seen the shadows in her heart. “My grandfather tried to train the rages out of me.” Her voice was a rasp, but she wanted to speak.

Yakov’s entire body grew stiff. “You don’t have to go back there, not to that bastard.”

“No, I want to. It’s the last drop of poison.”

“Hold on.” Yakov kicked off his boots, then shifted them both so that he was sitting with his back to the headboard and his legs stretched out, Theo cradled against the heated muscle of him.

When she lifted her head, he sucked in a breath, his fingers trembling as he wiped away the remnants of her tears. “I love you, Theo.” Firm words. Generous words. No demand to them. “I fell in puppy love with you in a dream. I could’ve never imagined that the reality would be so much better.”

Theo took a ragged breath, unable to say those same words. Not yet. Not until she’d done this. Tucking her head against Yakov’s neck and chest, she took a deep breath and walked back into the nightmare . . . only, the past didn’t unravel in a painful scroll.

It was . . . faded. Like a photograph left out in the sun.

Leached of poison.

It wasn’t hard to simply say it. “Initially my grandfather believed the rages to be nothing but temper tantrums, a result of my flawed Silence. So when I was seventeen, he began to punish me by tying me to a chair rigged up to deliver a shock at any hint of anger.” The pain had been spiderwebs of fire, but Theo had lived a hard life by then, could bear it.

“Later, when he realized I couldn’t control the episodes, he seemed to gain a perverse pleasure in ‘punishing’ me. We both knew it was something else altogether: he’d found a way to hurt me that wouldn’t affect Pax. He’d always hated that I held the deciding card when it came to how far he could go with me—without my link to Pax, I would’ve been ash in a crematorium fire at seven years of age.”

Theo would never forget her grandfather’s cold expression as he sat across from her in the soundproofed concrete basement of the apartment building where she’d lived with Colette. Two chairs. One bolted to the floor and wired for power, the other sleek, black and the right size for his frame.

It was only ever the two of them in that barren place.

“Pathetic coward,” Yakov snarled.

“Yes, he was.” Her grandfather had been a monster to her for far too long—at last she saw him for the weak little man he’d been inside. “As for protecting Pax from the abuse,” she added, “ironically enough, I did it by drawing power from Pax.”

“I didn’t realize Psy twins could do that. Share power.”

“Not all twins can. In our case, our bond isn’t wholly under our control. The door between our minds is instinctive and it shoves open when one of us is in need.” As it had when Scarab Syndrome first took hold of Pax’s brain. Theo had fed him all she could, even as she put on a front of being angered by the headaches and nosebleeds engendered by the draw.

In truth, she wouldn’t have cared if he took all of it, every last drop. It had been about keeping him at a distance, her brother golden and bright who she’d believed still had a chance.

“Why didn’t you drop the shield, allow the pain to reach your brother?” Yakov asked, his arms tight around her. “Not to cause harm, but as a tool to scare off Marshall.”

“He protected me for so long, Yasha.” Her heart ached for the young man who’d died inside each time he sensed Theo’s suffering. “I just wanted to keep him safe for once. I was also a stubborn teenage girl who hated my grandfather. I relished taunting him about the pleasure he got from abusing a vulnerable young woman.”

I guess—a breath through lingering agony—your Silence isn’t so perfect after all, old man. Are you experiencing sexual arousal? I read about such—Another jolt, her scream echoing off the walls.

Theo shrugged on the memory of that scream. “It was stupid to taunt him, but it was the only pleasure I had in life. I’m still not sorry I did it.”

“We all do stupid things as juveniles,” Yakov reassured her. “It just so happens you were with a psychopath at the time.”

A laugh bubbled out of her, and it was real, not forced or halfhearted. “The short of it is that I taunted him a little too much one day and he set the output to maximum. Liquid fire under my skin. You can see the results on my back.” A spiderweb of scars where the current had traveled through the specially designed micro-electrodes hooked into her skin.

“I have the odd rogue scar.” She touched a thin one on her inner thigh. “But the impact was mostly concentrated on my back—and it was the last time. Because I couldn’t protect Pax from that. He went into cardiac arrest at the same time I did.” Her last panicked thought had been her brother’s name.

She’d felt him reach out desperately to her at the same time.

THEO!

Then they were both gone.

“Bozhe moi.” Yakov pressed a kiss to the top of her hair, his hand shaking where it cupped the back of her head. “To know I could’ve lost you before I ever met you . . .” He squeezed the air out of her and she was happy to be so squeezed.

“I knew you were tough,” he added in a voice rough and ragged. “This just proves it.”

She soaked up the praise, a flower deprived of the sun suddenly pulled into the light. “I’m certain my grandfather would’ve left me to die if the medics working on Pax had managed to get his heart beating before mine. But they couldn’t, even though he received near-immediate attention.”

“Your brother is a stubborn fucker. He played chicken with death and won.”

“Yes.” She’d never be able to prove it, but she knew that Pax, a highly intelligent and well-trained Gradient 9, had done something in that final split second before flatline to link their destinies. “My brother’s heart didn’t start beating again until—irony of ironies—my grandfather did CPR on me and got my organ going.”

“I hope the abusive coward sweated half his life away.”

“I’m sure he did. It’s always amused me that he was forced to bring his most hated grandchild back to life.” Theo had always thought that meant she was as perverse as him, but Yakov had made her see the entire event in a different light: she’d been a child acting like a child, and he’d been a Councilor with all the power in the world.

Theo had taken what good she could from the situation.

“Pax has never admitted it, but I know he did it on purpose.” Theo wanted Yakov to know this part of her brother, the part no one else in the world ever saw, the part that Marshall Hyde had crushed and buried and hurt. “Linked his life to mine. So our grandfather couldn’t murder me without murdering him.”

Yakov took a deep breath. “Never thought I’d say this, but I like your brother—at least when it comes to his relationship with you. Pax understands family.” A hard nod. “But I reserve the right to look at him with suspicion in all other dealings.”

“Fair enough.” Theo knew Pax would expect nothing else; her brother had gone to great lengths to create an image of ice-cold power and heartless ambition.

“That’s all of it,” Theo murmured, her entire body liquid against Yakov. As if with the poison had gone every drop of tension in her. “Can we do hard-core cuddling now?”