“All right,” she said, haughty and detached. “I will entertain this for five minutes.”
She turned around and located a chair right next to Avery, who scooted as far away from her as he could as she sat down primly, crossing her legs at the ankles and folding her hands in her lap. “I’m listening.”
While it didn’t look like that to Wren, he was gonna take it. The sooner he got it over with, the sooner he could go look for Teddy.
“Your instructor has been harassing one of your trainees for over a decade,” Wren said. “I can’t say if he was the only one, but I honestly doubt it.”
She recoiled, but it was barely perceptible. Too small of a reaction to learning something so horrible.
“Accusations like that will have to come with proof, Wujia,” she said, and for the first time he heard that name not as an insult to him, but a shield. “And names.”
“Kellan,” Wren said. “Instructor Kellan has been abusing Damir since we were children.”
“Define abuse,” she asked.
“Is it a foreign concept to you?” Wren snapped. “Do you need a dictionary?”
“Wren,” Hart said softly. “Let us leave hostility at the door.”
“Let us not,” Wren said, shaking his head. “I think hostility is what I have been getting from Nexus my entire life, and those I love have fared even worse. I’ve earned this.”
“We have never done anything to hurt you,” Gwen said, but something in her voice showed she wasn’t as convinced as she had been just a moment ago.
“You know what? I’m not even gonna dignify that with an answer. We can all pretend that my time at Nexus was just a complete joy and leave it at that. But what Damir has been through…what he is still going through should be a reason for you to burn it to the fucking ground.”
“Nobody ever reported anything,” Gwen said, and Wren snorted so hard he was sure he popped a blood vessel in his sinus.
“Would you have believed us?” Wren asked. “Can you look me in the eye now and tell me you would have trusted a trainee you despised from the moment he walked into Nexus? I could have brought you videos of it happening in real time and you would have ignored them.”
“That isn’t true,” she said quietly.
“Yes, it is,” he said firmly. “And Damir was too scared and too closely watched to do anything. Kellan had been hurting him for years. Following him. Watching him. He never said anything, but he was threatened and held under a boot all in the name of your fucking institution and your blind trust in the people who work there.”
“You have no way to prove this,” she said, her fingers twisted around each other as she avoided looking at anyone.
“Damir has kept journals his whole life. Detailed accounts of everything. I have seen him being threatened and followed. His team has seen Kellan breathing down his neck since they were placed. Since I have been in Arcstead he has followed us, threatened us, twisted my arm, and made sure to let Damir know he would pay if he didn’t do what he was told.”
“And what does he supposedly want?” Gwen asked and Wren was sad to admit he had no actual idea what his endgame was.
“I don’t know, but he’s the one behind the drugs made from animal venom hitting the market. And he’s the one who stole your artifacts and installed a crazy machine inside a warehouse and TRAPPED US INSIDE IT!”
“This is taking it too far, Wujia,” she said, standing up. “You have been through a lot and that machine clearly affected you because you are imagining things. I will have—”
“You will have nothing!!” Wren yelled. “I know what I have seen and I have witnesses! Avery saw it. Midas did too.”
Gwen whirled on her heels to look at Midas, who gave her a singular sharp nod, and Avery, who stood wide-eyed and nodding like his life depended on it.
“You both have seen a Nexus instructor do this?” she asked, never bothering to sign, and it pissed Wren off even more. Fucking bitch. Midas scowled immediately, jutting his chin out and refusing to engage with her.
Avery side-stepped to stand in front of him, squaring up to Gwen.
“We haven’t seen Kellan there, but we have seen the machine and the mess he left making it,” Avery said.
“So you don’t know it was him,” she said, sounding relieved.
Avery frowned even harder. “If not him specifically, then someone else from Nexus.” He turned to look at everyone around the room, signing so Midas could see. “As I was saying before we got interrupted, the parts in that machine were classified and sealed ages ago. If anyone has access to them, it’s a Nexus higher-up or a PUMA director.”
“But—”
