A month ago I thought it was a good idea to launch a covert operation into enemy territory. My instincts had been screaming for a while that something was wrong. Implausible attacks on our soil were escalating. More key figures with old ties to The Reestablishment were turning up dead. After a sudden, unexplained gas explosion at an elementary school, I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t an accident that over a hundred children died that day; we knew which nefarious force was responsible.
I needed to do something.
I lobbied hard for launching a mission into the Ark. I felt certain that if we didn’t find a way to gather intel we might miss something more dangerous. I tried to tell everyone that something was coming; that we needed to know what they were capable of—what else they were planning—but no one would listen to me.
No one had ever breached Ark Island and lived to talk about it.
The last refuge of The Reestablishment is notoriously impenetrable and unknowable—and Warner always insisted we weren’t ready yet to take on that risk.
I decided to do it anyway.
At the very minimum, I thought coming home alive from a mission no one had ever survived would finally earn me the respect of my friends and family. Instead, every day has been a new kind of hell. It’s true that I’m mostly pissed at Warner. But it’s true, too, that Rosabelle has me entirely messed up.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
My last conversation with her plays on repeat in my head all the time. The sound of her voice. The fear and tenderness in her eyes when she told me she trusted me.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about her constantly.
Still, I swing wildly back and forth between certainty and uncertainty where she’s concerned. I went from seeing her all day, every day—to radio silence. And my mind has filled this dangerous vacuum with vivid memories and disturbing daydreams. The rare glimpse of her smile. The sight of her surrounded by dead bodies. The silky give of her skin. The blood spattered across her face. The breathless sound she made when I touched her. The moment she pointed a gun at Kenji. The way she looked at me like she wanted me. The image of her dead body in the morgue.
I swallow, hard.
I turn my eyes to the water, listening to the wind as the tide grows more turbulent. I squint up at the sky, the gathering gray clouds. The world feels ominous to me in a way it hasn’t in a long time.
I feel like I’m losing control of my life.
I’ve never felt quite like this, never been so distracted or angry or confused, not since I was a kid. My emotions are operating at a heightened pitch, swinging between discomfort, desire, humiliation, fury—
I take a deep, cleansing breath.
When I was looking into Rosabelle’s eyes things feltclearer, but in her absence I’ve been inundated by calls to get my head checked.
Literally.
I went to visit Adam the other day and he pulled me aside to ask, very seriously, whether I’d considerseeing a psychiatrist for the unresolved trauma that’s leading me to make poor and destructive choices.
I stuck my head in his freezer for a full minute just so I wouldn’t lose my shit in front of his kids.
Everyone thinks I’ve lost my mind.
The night Warner put Rosabelle in prison, I tried to get him to see my side in all this, but he shut me down so fast—and with so much venom—I was stunned. Furious. We haven’t had a proper conversation with each other since.
Worse, he had no trouble shutting me out.
I was a little more optimistic a few days ago; I thought the ice between us wouldn’t last. I thought it’d turn out like it did in the movies: we’d bump elbows in the kitchen reaching for the same tub of protein powder and he’d realize he couldn’t do this without me.
Nope.
My older brother deleted me from his life, as if our yearslong bonding montage never even happened. I’m just a subordinate to him now. He hardly speaks to me anymore; instead he pages me all the time, ordering me around like I’m some kind of nameless foot soldier.
Warner and I have fought before, but never exactly like this, and never for this long. Every interaction between usis now clipped and volatile. Not even Juliette seems capable of mediating. She’s made a couple of half-hearted attempts to get us in the same room, but it’s clear she’s on Warner’s side. Hell, everyone is on his side.
In a stunning reversal, I’ve managed to unite everyone against me in his favor. Warner’s never been so unanimously supported in anything. Ever.
“C’mon, man,” Kenji says, peering up at the sky. “Wrap this up. It looks like it’s going to rain and I want to head back.”
My jaw tenses. “I thought you were avoiding Nazeera.”
