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?”
“The rebels won’t come back here until they have the immortality elixir,” Navan said sullenly.
“What if we told them that the elixir can only be made here? That there’s a certain ingredient or something that can only be taken from Vysanthean soil?” I said, though I knew it was a longshot.
Navan shook his head. “They’d get us to box it up and bring it back to them one way or another. Until they have a working elixir, they aren’t coming back to Vysanthe. I guarantee it,” he replied, making it clear he’d already thought through most scenarios. But then, something glittered in his slate eyes, and he sat up taller in his chair. “Unless… If we could find a way to reverse the effects of the elixir, once the rebels arrive on Vysanthe, then we could destroy them that way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.
A moment later, his face fell once more, and he exhaled. “Actually, it doesn’t matter. Because without knowing how a successful immortality elixir works, we can’t hope to come up with a counteracting agent,” he muttered, throwing his head back in annoyance. “We’d need to take a live specimen and figure out an anti-elixir from that…”
A gruff voice spoke from behind us.
“How did you get clearance to be here?” a guard asked, curling back his lips to reveal sharp fangs. My heart leapt to my throat. I glanced at Navan, but he made a subtle gesture toward his pockets, revealing that he was out of any useful serums, aside from the Elysium we’d need to knock out t
he intelligence officer.
“We have permission,” Navan replied firmly.
Panic coursed through my veins as the guard drew closer. Unless this guy backed down, if we wanted to leave the control room unnoticed, we were going to have to kill him. But, in doing so, I knew we’d only end up drawing more attention to ourselves, the way we had with Queen Gianne and Kalvin. Someone would inevitably find his body or sound an alarm that he was missing, and then we’d be in serious trouble.
“Who gave you permission?” the guard pressed, his face stern.
“I did,” a voice called from across the room, making us all whip around in surprise.
Pandora made her way through the stations, her boots thudding on the hard ground, her eyes cold and focused. “They are here under my jurisdiction, Bartok. I should have sent word earlier, but I had some misdemeanors to attend to at the party. My apologies.”
The guard bowed anxiously, suddenly nervous in Pandora’s presence. “No need to apologize, ma’am. I should have known better than to question guests of yours,” he mumbled, before backing away, hurrying as far from her as possible.
I looked at her suspiciously as she waited for Bartok to fully disappear, her shoulders tensed, her eyes homing in on him like a predator watching prey. What was she doing here? And, more importantly, why was she helping us? Surely, she knew we were up to something, if we were down here in stolen clothes, while everyone else was up at the party.
“So,” Pandora said, turning slowly back around with a knowing smile on her lips. “How’s Chief Orion?”
Chapter Sixteen
“I don’t know what you mean,” Navan replied, our stunned silence dragging on a moment too long. “We were just trying to find some video footage from Gianne’s attack, to see if there’s anything we can do to fortify the new lab against that same kind of onslaught,” he explained, leaving me speechless at the sharpness of his mind. I was still reeling from the sound of Orion’s name coming from Pandora’s lips.
She smiled tightly. “Relax, you don’t need to lie to me,” she said, peering over Navan’s shoulder to look at the screen, which the hypnotized intelligence officer was still working away on. “Orion and I are… Let’s just say we’re close acquaintances. I had a feeling you were gathering some kind of intel out in the garden, although I had to keep up pretenses around the other guards. You ran off before I could speak with you in private.”
I gaped at her. How could she be on Orion’s side? She was Queen Brisha’s most trusted advisor! Was she double-bluffing, trying to trick us into giving something away so she could arrest us? I couldn’t tell. Her face was a confusing, blank canvas. How had she managed to reach such a prime spot in Brisha’s court without alerting suspicion? A million questions raced through my mind, but Pandora spoke again before I could ask one.
“I would gladly have sent your information to Orion myself, since I am aware he’s expecting news from you. You certainly did not need to go through all of this rigmarole, drugging defenseless intelligence officers and knocking out guards,” she muttered, glancing back over her shoulder. “The pair of you draw too much attention to yourselves.”
“If you wanted things done your way, you should have revealed yourself to us earlier,” Navan replied defensively, scrutinizing her. I could sense that neither of us knew what to make of her now; she had thrown us completely off guard.
Pandora shook her head, her purple ponytail swinging from side to side, jangling the golden trinkets woven within the strands. “Get him to stop what he’s doing and delete everything from the system. I’ll use my own device to set up a connection with Orion. This is much too risky.”
A frosty stalemate stretched between Navan and Pandora, the two of them facing off against one another, though neither said a word.
“I suggest you do it now, before your serum wears off. I know you don’t have any left,” Pandora said with a slight smirk.
Navan remained frozen for a moment, before he finally relented. Turning to the intelligence officer, he instructed him to delete all memory of the event in the system. The officer nodded and set to work, his hands dancing across the screen. His eyes were still blank, his shoulders slumped.
I eyed Pandora curiously, every word she said making me more and more uneasy. All those times I’d been sure I could feel the burn of eyes on me… Now, I knew why. This whole time, Pandora had been watching us. It also made sense that she had been so lenient about our suspicious activity. When she had found us creeping around the ancient wing of the palace, she’d given us the key because she had wanted us to leave. She might not have known where we were headed, but she would’ve suspected it was part of our mission for Orion. That was why word never got back to Queen Brisha. It had all been a ruse. I was glad, at least, that Pandora hadn’t overheard the conversation Navan and I had been having moments before her arrival.
“If you’ve been here all along, why is Orion getting us to do all of this for him? Why ask us to gather information on the elixir, when he has you?” I asked, realizing it didn’t quite add up.
She sighed, as if I were an idiot. “Do you honestly think I could have gained my position as the queen’s most valued advisor if I snuck around stealing things from her and asking her key workers for information? I am Orion’s eyes inside Brisha’s court, but I cannot risk being caught as a traitor. I am important to him in a way you are not,” she explained, puffing her chest out with pride. “I am here to report on the queen’s movements, weaknesses, army, and explorations—anything that will aid the rebels in the war to come. You are here to reach the places I cannot, without getting myself in trouble,” she added, with a flick of her wrist.
“Surely, the queen would’ve confided in you about the elixir if you’re that important to her,” I replied, suspicion dripping from my tone.
A haughty expression fell across Pandora’s stern face. “She continues to keep that information to herself, no matter my approach,” she said bitterly. “I tried to ask the alchemists, too, but they are tight-lipped, even with me. The idiots fear they’ll lose their jobs if they breathe a word to anyone,” she muttered. “Now, tell me, what did Yorrek reveal about the elixir?”
“We have enough information to satisfy Orion, and that’s all you need to know,” Navan cut in.
“There’s no need to be so secretive, Navan. We’re all playing for the same side, remember?” Pandora reprimanded, frowning. “I don’t suppose Yorrek mentioned a book, did he, when you questioned him?”
I tried to keep my expression impassive. “He said the queen kept a collection, but he didn’t mention one in particular. Should he have?”
She shrugged. “There has long been a rumor that she’s keeping one of Yorrek’s notebooks somewhere, one that contains all the failed trials and near successes with the elixir,” she explained, her eyes narrowing in annoyance. “I don’t know if it’s true, as I myself couldn’t get a word out of Yorrek, but I thought he might have been freer with his words to you. If you did happen to hear anything, I’m sure Orion would be delighted to know about it.” An unmistakable warning hovered in her voice. Still, I wasn’t about to confirm her suspicions, not if there was a way we could get to that notebook first. It might be just the thing we needed to develop an anti-elixir.
“I’m sure he would, but Yorrek didn’t tell us anything about it,” I replied confidently. “Lauren spends every day in the library, and she hasn’t seen any sort of secret notebook,” I added, putting sarcastic emphasis on the word “secret.”
A thoughtful expression flickered across Pandora’s face. “Hm. Very well.”
The intelligence officer turned from the computer to Navan. “The task is complete,” he said in a monotone. Without hesitation, Navan delved into his pocket, tilting the man’s head back before administering the last of the Elysium. A few minutes later, the officer went limp.
“If you’re done here, follow me,” Pandora instructed. We stood and left the sleeping intelligence officer to the rest of his shi
ft.
Following Pandora up the same stairwell we had arrived through, we passed the guards, who were still asleep against the door, though one had slumped in front of it. Pandora pushed him aside. Inside the dim interior of the staircase, I picked up my beautiful gown and heels. I brushed my hands across the exquisite material, knowing I’d likely never get the chance to wear it again.
It took ten minutes before we reached the gap in the wall, the scarlet curtain undulating outward. Feeling desperately unfit in comparison to my coldblood companions, I paused to catch my breath before following them out into the dusty hallway of the abandoned wing.
“You managed to make an unholy mess of a perfectly good wall,” Pandora remarked, flashing an accusatory glance at Navan. “This is what I mean by drawing attention to yourselves.”
“Nobody comes this way,” Navan replied tersely, the muscles twitching in his jaw.
“But if they do, they will see this and suspect something immediately,” Pandora continued, her tone patronizing. “I’ll have to get this seen to tomorrow. Yet another task on an endless list.” She scowled, turning on her heel and heading through the ghostly galleria.
She didn’t stop until we were back out in the frosty night air, surrounded by the twisted trunks of forgotten trees and the overgrown grass of a long-lost garden. She had brought us to the same spot we had come to the night we left for the artisan market. I still thought fondly of that strange square, with its twinkling lights and jaunty music. Subconsciously, I lifted a hand to my heart, feeling for the climpet that flashed there.
“So, this is why you were creeping around in the abandoned wing of the palace?” Navan mused.
“Not quite,” Pandora remarked as she took off into the air, flying up to the shadows of the surrounding mountainside. There, she landed, perching on a ledge, hidden from sight. Navan followed, lifting me upward and landing a short distance away. Pandora took out a comm device and pressed a button on the side that made it flash red.