Page 174 of Silver Elite

A tsunami of horror slams into me. “They’reexperimentingon them?”

“I have no idea what goes on in here,” he replies. “And it’s none of my godfucking business. We’re here on an op. Let’s go, Darlington.”

Reluctant, I turn away from the fragmented Mods. I’ve taken three steps to the door when one of the unrestrained patients snaps out her hand and grabs my arm. She starts screaming. A bloodcurdling, earsplitting, never-ending scream. When I try to escape her grip, she starts clawing at me, jagged fingernails scratching down my arm, breaking the skin.

There’s a commotion from the doorway as a trio of orderlies in white scramble inside to pull her off me.

“It’s all right, Eleanor. It’s fine. You’re fine.”

Two men lead her to a bed while the third orderly, a large woman with beefy shoulders, turns to glare at us.

“Get out of here!” she barks. “I don’t care what block you’re in. You don’t belong here.”

I suck in a breath, my heart in danger of bursting out of my chest,because no, Idon’tbelong here. I don’t. As I race to the door, I pray to a god I’m not allowed to believe in that this never happens to me. That there’ll never come a day when I can’t close a path or shut out the voices.

The words Jim spoke in the clearing that day travel through my mind.Our gifts aren’t always a gift, little bird. Sometimes they’re a curse.

—

We find the supply room. Xavier calls in a unit from Gold Block to dismantle it, cordon it off. After what I saw in the hospital basement, everything else seems pointless. I check in with Adrienne in plain sight of Xavier and Kaine as we drive to the airfield. I tell her about the fragmented ward, and while she sounds disgusted, she surprises me by not being at all surprised.

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“There are places like that all over the Continent. This isn’t anything new. Not everyone can cope with the gifts we’ve been given.”

“So that gives the General the right to experiment on them?”

“Of course not.”

“I want to kill that man,”I growl to Adrienne.

“Control yourself. You are not there to be the fire that burns down the world, Wren. You’re just a piece of kindling.”

Kaine glances at me as we strap into the helo. “You good, cowgirl?”

“I didn’t enjoy that op,” I say flatly.

“I don’t think anyone did.”

“On a related note,”Adrienne is saying,“we do need you to keep an eye out when you’re in the wards. Our investigation into Julian’s execution has officially stalled.”

“What’s there to investigate? They fucking killed him. The end.”I can’t stop the bitterness from seeping out.

“We heard rumors there was an inciter in the crowd that day.”

My lungs seize, making it impossible to draw oxygen into them.

“We’ve been trying to verify the claim, but it’s basically one dead end after another. You were there that day—did you see it happen?”

“No. Like I told Tana, I noticed the firing squad was experiencing some weird moment of confusion, but it didn’t look like someone was controlling them.”

Somehow a sliver of oxygen makes its way in. My desperate inhalation sounds more like a wheeze, causing Kaine to reach over and take my hand.

“Darlington. Look. I know it was…well, sort of horrifying. But you need to put it out of your mind,” he says in a gentle tone.

“I’ll try,” I say out loud.

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