Before
Riva
When we said our goodbyes for the last time, the guys each held my gaze for a little longer than usual, as if they thought they could send some of their strength into me with their eyes.
The urge to hug all of them twined through my body, sharp as barbed wire when I resisted it. But I couldn’t give in to the longing.
We never made a big production of parting ways at the end of the day, and we couldn’t risk giving away that anything was unusual about this farewell. Not with the guardians watching: several in the gymnasium with us and others through the cameras mounted by the ceiling.
If we wanted to ensure that after tonight they could never separate us again, we had to be so careful. They had to believe thatwebelieved we’d see each other in here tomorrow morning like always.
Who knew what they’d do to us if they realized what we were planning.
So far, the six of us had managed to act like everything was normal throughout today’s training and socializing session. It helped that it’d been one of the easy days, basic testing rather than torment.
I’d raced Zian around the track twice as fast as any of the others could have run until our breaths came ragged.
Debated with Jacob about which of the knives would make the most effective long-distance projectile.
Plotted a hypothetical course across mapped terrain with Dominic’s hesitant but thoughtful input.
Laughed at Andreas’s banter while he decided to teach himself how to juggle, with only partial success.
Dropped onto the sofa next to Griffin during a break, when he put on the TV show only he knew was my secret favorite.
The other guys said the soap opera was corny with all the relationships that kept rearranging themselves after the characters’ melodramatic outbursts, but Griffin pretended it washisfavorite so that they’d heckle him instead of me. Because that was just how he was.
“You’ve got your tough-girl reputation to maintain, Riva,” he’d told me once with one of his soft but brilliant smiles when I’d tried to say he didn’t have to take the heat. “I’m allowed to be the sappy one.”
But despite all our efforts, on the inside today’s session didn’t feel normal to me at all. The knowledge of what we were planning to do tonight weighed on my shoulders like a backpack full of bricks. Heavier bricks than any I’d actually carried before.
Our escape depended on me—on that toughness Griffin had talked about.
The weight became almost suffocating when I waved to the guys as the guardians escorted me and Griffin out first.
Andreas winked at me. “See you tomorrow, Tink.” The silly nickname—born after we’d first watchedPeter Panas little kids and Drey had declared me as tiny as Tinkerbell—didn’t do much to reassure me.
But then Zian mouthed the words that had become our mantra over the years as we’d prepared for this moment:We are blood.
With that phrase resonating through my body alongside my pulse, I walked out with my chin up.
Everything depended on me, but we were in it together. We were entwined by the strange powers that were ours alone and the eerie substance that ran through our veins.
The guardians always took Griffin and me first because our rooms were on the highest floor of the underground complex. In hushed conversations, the six of us had determined that Andreas and Dominic were one level below, and Jacob and Zian the level below that.
Beneath them were the training rooms we were leaving now. We had no idea how much farther down the facility might reach beyond that.
Sometimes I pictured it as a vast pit in the earth sinking down, down, down, all the way to the molten core some people called Hell. The image seemed fitting.
Hell seemed like exactly the word for the throbbing strain that would ripple through my body on the days they prodded my unearthly strength with their strange machines. For the sickening sight of the prop animals—and sometimes people—they tortured in front of me to gauge my reactions.
For the things they did to the guys in their own solo sessions that left them with anguish etched on their faces.
They probably thought they’d beenkindto us today instead of just not totally horrific.
Even for a simple trip back to our rooms, the guardians always made sure to outnumber us. Four of them strode along in a ring around Griffin and me, the harsh artificial light glancing off their weird metal helmets and vests.
I sucked a little air in through my mouth, tasting and smelling it at the same time. The four today gave off pheromones with a faint tang of nervousness, but nothing extreme.