Page 107 of Hidden Empire

He tilts his head, curious.

“Kim locked up the knives in that house tighter than she locked up the food,” I inform him, shoulders dipping in with each new embarrassing detail I reveal. As if being deprived of sustenance is somehow my fault when I know it’s not. “I literally cut my food by ripping it up or using a spoon.”

“Okay, no knife,” he says. “What did you use, Jade?”

“People used to throw parties by the river that runs around that area, and I was so close to it that I could hear water rushing. I could barely see a thing, but I kept running that way. I had gotten some distance on him, and I knew it wouldn’t last, so I couldn’t slow down.”

I can feel remnants of that adrenaline any time I think about it. My heart is already racing harder, making it more difficult to think clearly.

“When I was close enough to the river that I could actually get into it or cross it if I wanted to, I started looking. I was still screaming at first, hoping that the house just through the trees could hear me, but I had to stop. I could feel him getting closer, and I refused to lead him right to me.”

I knew he was furious, and I refused to face that wrath unarmed.

“I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl to find something I could use. I have a knick on my knee from that, too. The hospital had to pull out a tiny rock from it, I guess.”

I’m getting off track.

“Anyway, I was scanning my hand over the damp grass when I finally felt something sharp. I couldn’t see it fully, only what little bit of it the moon above would show me, but I was running out of time, so I needed it to work.”

I was ninety percent sure it was a broken wine bottle, maybe a large beer bottle, but either way, it was a lifeline. My only hope.

“I heard twigs snapping under heavy feet and saw little bursts of light flashing from behind trees, and I knew I was out of time. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around the duller end of the glass as many times as I could before I ran out of fabric.

As he got closer, I ducked behind a huge oak tree, using the shadow to disappear from the flashlight. When he walked past me, not even looking over his shoulder in the process, I just did it.”

I’d never felt more strength rushing into me, or bravery coursing through me before. And thankfully, it was enough to fuel me for what I needed to do.

“I got him in the shoulder first,” I mutter disappointedly. “I was aiming for his neck, but he moved before my arm swung down. I moved fast, though, pulling back as hard as I could to slam the glass back in again. I didn’t care where it hit him as long as it did. He tripped over his feet while crying out from the pain, and I didn’t let him get back up. I crowded him, stabbing where I could without getting caught.”

Time seemed to blur in that moment. I couldn’t tell whether it was going unusually fast or incredibly slow. But the awful smell of metal melted into the scent of the forest around us, and I could tell I was doing the damage I needed to do.

“While I was stabbing him, he was coughing up blood, and he kept trying to say these code words like it would make me stop. But I couldn’t stop, not until he stopped moving and talking… and breathing.”

“Code words?” Apollo asks, cutting in.

“Oh, yeah,” I confirm, wondering how I haven’t mentioned them yet. “He thought he could use mind control with code words to ‘unlock my brain’. Like he genuinely believed he could control me with some kind of conditioning? I don’t know, he used code words like they were a lock and key to my brain, but none of it actually affected me.”

“Mind control?” Apollo echoes.

“Yeah,” I say, crinkling my nose. “A lot of the time, I just pretended that it worked. I could see how happy it made him when I followed commands, so much so that when I didn’t, he got mad at himself. Like, I’d given him confirmation of his ability before, so clearly, he must have messed something up if I snapped out of his trance. It drove him so close to insanity, I swear. Sometimes his breakdowns were scarier than the games themselves.”

“Why did he think he could control you? Did he say?”

Well, not entirely.

“Bruce would constantly keep talking about The Knights,” I relay, shaking my head. “He thought he could control me because of what he learned with them? Like he thought he had words that would make me susceptible to his demands somehow.”

I never understood it, but I didn’t exactly have time to analyze him while I spent every waking moment trying to avoid him.

“The Knights don’t know how talented I am, they don’t know what they’ve lost letting me go, I’m too good for them and their little club,” I add, imitating some of his common rants.

“The Knights?” Apollo asks, jaw tightening. “Are you sure?”

I nod firmly. “He talked about it all the time. Do you… do you know what he was talking about?”

“I have an idea,” he says warily.

“The Knights are a real thing?” I ask, feeling nausea creep in. “I was hoping it was a drunken delusion, something he made up.”

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