Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26999 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26999 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
I saunter into the apartment filled with black leather and expensive art—stolen art and for no reason that simply wanting it. There are no barriers in our world anymore, at least not where Julian and Ava are concerned. Julian wants. Ava wants. Julian takes. If the bank vaults weren’t air tight, they’d all be emptied already.
Julian sits down on the couch, waving a hand for me to join him, before filling two crystal glasses with brandy. You’d never know the man had been a “Bud” guy only two years before. I like whiskey. I hate brandy, and Julian damn sure knows it. But every time I come here, he pours me a glass. And every time, I ignore it. It’s some sort of test, though I have no fucking clue what he’s trying to prove.
As usual, Julian studies me, willing me to pick up that glass. When I offer him nothing but a deadpan stare, his lips quirk. “Do you know that you’re the only Zodius who would dare to snub my offer of anything?” He seems pleased with this, as if my actions somehow make me worthy of a role as his “second.” Yet anyone else would be beaten for such a refusal.
Julian sets his glass down and spreads his arms across the back of the couch. “Tell me about Addie. I always thought she was one of those preacher’s daughter kinds of fantasies for you. Only it’s the general’s daughter.” His lips twitch. “Did you kiss her broken heart and make it better?”
I have a fantasy all right, the same fantasy I indulge myself in at least once a day, and it does not involve Addie, but rather me slitting his throat and ending all of this. Only it wouldn’t end. Julian has laid out an insurance plan to keep himself alive—a strategy he’s made clear to both the government and the Renegades. Upon his death, the three biological weapons they’d taken from that port years before would be released, followed by a string of random disasters that would escalate around the country.
We should never have allowed him alone with those weapons, and at this point, I can’t take them from him. I know where he’d release them should war break out, but I don’t know where they’re being stored or who’s hiding them. If I did, I’d end this, and Julian, once and for all.
I force myself out of the fantasy in which I kill Julian and back to the conversation. “She’ll be cooperating,” I assure him. “But she’s been kept in the dark on Red Dart. I’ll manipulate her into manipulating her father, and we’ll get what we need.”
“Quickly,” Julian bites out. “Guide her quickly.”
Ava sashays into the room wearing a pink silk robe and drapes herself over Julian’s shoulder. “Did you tell him about the fertility testing?” She doesn’t wait for a response, excitement lifting her voice. “I injected six women with a series of injections created with my pregnancy hormones. Their fertility ranges immediately skyrocketed off the charts. Next step is to pair them with some of the soldiers and see if the hormones make them lifebond compatible.” Ava lavishes the women inside Zodius City with gifts and luxurious living quarters. To her, and Julian, they’re the future mothers of Zodius children. Seventy percent of the nearly one hundred women inside the Silver, Gold, and Twilight Quarters—the female housing units—are brainwashed by the glamour and Ava’s unique ability to mold nearly every female mind she touches. That’s her new superpower—mind control. Only a small percentage of the women are immune to her newly found skill. So much so that, despite the requirement of frequent, rotating sex partners, these women wouldn’t leave if given the chance.
“What Ava failed to mention,” Julian interjects dryly, “is the part where two of the six females she injected have died.”
A muscle in my jaw tics. “Then the injections were premature. We can’t afford to lose fertile women.”
Julian grimaces. “There will be more. And the last thing I need is a bunch of panicked females worried about why women are disappearing.”
“Then we wait until Ava expands her testing,” I press.
“No,” Julian states. “I want them all injected now, and we’ll deal with the fallout and be done with it all at once. There’s no reason to wait.”
Ice slides down my spine. This is where the buck stopped, where I exit Zodius and I take those women with me. And that means tonight, before it’s too late to save them. And since we now know that any woman who has had sex with a GTECH develops a psychic energy that could be traced by our trackers while above ground, I may well be setting us all up for a death wish.
Ava curls up to Julian’s side but focuses on me. “We’ll need more women, Creed. You’ll need to send a team out hunting.”