Page 319 of Shadowblood Souls
Andreas
It’s another bright day, which means I can wear the sunglasses I requested without looking at all strange. I adjust the frames on my nose and lean back on my hands where I’m taking a brief break from training in the yard.
The dark lenses let me train my eyes on each of the guardians monitoring our progress or moving to and from the facility without them noticing the reddish gleam that gives away my talent. For the past few days, I’ve been riffling through as many memories as I can reach, at every possible opportunity.
One of them has to have seen or experienced something that could help us get off this island.
It’s hard to narrow down my search. The only way I’ve found I can focus my ability to pry inside people’s heads is by targeting a specific person.
I started by digging up memories involving me or my friends, but those didn’t get me very far. Glimpses of moments like the attaching of bands around Riva’s arms and walking her into abedroom to meet Zian only left me twisted up with fury and a sense of helplessness.
Clancy didn’t get to see through his plan. Riva’s okay. But just thinking about what he tried to force them into makes me want to batter him with my fists and feet until he looks worse than the victims of Riva’s screams.
Who knows what messed-up plan he’s going to come up with next? We have to escape.
I have to find a way how.
If I’d been paying more attention, we might not have gotten stuck here at all. If I’d taken a moment to scan Griffin’s mind when the guy I thought was Jacob beckoned me and Dominic down that hall in the facility…
All it would have taken was a brief peek, and I’d have known it wasn’t Jacob. That it was a trick.
I could have stopped us before we ended up trapped in that room, before he had a chance to go back to trick the others as well. I could have warned everyone.
And maybe we’d have gotten away.
I’m the only one with a talent that would have let me realize the problem before it was too late, and I fucking failed all of us.
Guilt gnaws at my gut as I adjust my position on the grass. I’m not going to miss a crucial detail like that again.
For my current quest, I’ve switched to homing in on memories involving the man in charge. Clancy gives the orders to the other guardians—he introduced most of his staff to this place.
He knows its inner workings better than anyone, so the things he told his underlings could hold the key.
The man I’m currently studying surreptitiously from behind my shades isn’t offering anything all that useful, to my disappointment. I sink into a memory of Clancy telling him to escort a group of younger shadowbloods to the climbing course,leap from that to a moment seeing Clancy at the other side of the cafeteria, and from there to a conversation Clancy was a part of involving some sports team in the regular world.
I grimace and push myself off the coarse grass, knowing I can’t rest for long without the guardians hassling me about keeping up my training. As if I’ll be a willing volunteer for any of their missions now that I know their motivations are more about financial gain than making the world a better place.
We have to play along for now, or we’ll end up shut away in our rooms, no chance to discover a way out at all.
I make my way through the trees to the rope course, knowing it’ll allow me a vantage point where I can check out the guardians monitoring the area without them seeing what I’m up to all that well. It can’t hurt to keep both my muscles and my agility in tiptop shape too.
After I’ve clambered up one of the ladders and set out across the hanging boards between my starting platform and the next, one of the younger shadowbloods emerges below me. Even from above in the mottled jungle light, I recognize him immediately from his skin tone, so dark it’s almost literally black.
I’ve made a point of chatting with all the shadowbloods I’ve crossed paths with during training and meals. Iwantto find out what their lives have been like—and who knows when one of them might have something useful to contribute.
So I know that the kid down below is named Ajax, and that he’s part of what appears to be the middle “generation” of younger shadowbloods: the ones who are currently fourteen or fifteen years old. The few times I’ve seen him around, he’s been pretty quiet.
Now, he glances up at me, runs his hand over the stubble of hair on his scalp, and moves to the ladder on a tree ahead of me. He times it so that he reaches the platform just moments before I swing off the last board to join him.
“Hey,” he says in a low voice the guardians on the jungle floor won’t hear, with a careful but intent look at me.
He’s positioned himself like this on purpose—because he wanted to talk to me?
I walk slowly around the platform as if considering my options for my next trek. “Hey. Everything good?”
“About as good as it can be, huh.” Ajax rests his hand against the tree trunk. “You know, with my power—I’ve got a little bit of telepathy. Can’t pick up much, but I catch bits and pieces of thoughts. Stuff people are thinking the most loudly.”
A chill washes over my skin. I keep my voice quiet and even. “Oh, really? You must ‘hear’ a lot of interesting things.”
