“Shit,” I swore and ended thecall.
Damien looked at me, alarm in his eyes. “What’s goingon?”
I stood, heading for the stairs to get to the roof where Nox was. “Our phones are buggedagain.”
The freaking FBI was a pain in my ass! Why were they doing this? We weren’t a danger to society. They were wasting valuable tax dollars monitoring us, while murders and terrorists were out there. Stupid. Their motivation to keep the Dream Wars going didn’t make sense to me. I mean yeah, they didn’t want overpopulation, and it was convenient for them that the poor and sick were getting knocked off first, but how messed up did you have to be to want a society where only the rich and strong survived?Ugh.
Damien followed me up the stairs, through the attic and out the access panel that got us to theroof.
As I stepped out onto the sunny rooftop in Bisbee, I momentarily forgot about our troubles with the government. The view wasbreathtaking.
“Kit!” Ronnie squealed and sat up, making her way over to me. “How’s the ankle?” sheasked.
“It’s fine. We have a problem,” I told her, then looked at Nox, who lay on his back staring at the clouds. “Nox, I need the burner phone again.” The moment those words left my mouth, he sat upright, stiff as aboard.
“What now?” He reached into his pocket and pulled itout.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you in a minute.” Grabbing the phone from him, I started plugging in Kevin’s number, deciding to stay on the roof in case the house was buggedtoo.
He picked up on the firstring.
“It’s Kit and I’m on a burner. What’s going on?” My heart was pounding in my throat. I knew this wasn’t going to be goodnews.
He sighed. “I could be killed for sharing this with you,” he statedgruffly.
Damien was listening in from my left side, while Ronnie was on myright.
“Then don’t. I don’t want you to get hurt,” I told himseriously.
He’d already put himself in danger for us—for me—before.
“I can’t live with myself if I don’t tell someone. It’s wrong what they’re doing. So wrong.” His voice was laced with so much barely contained rage that I knew whatever he was holding in was bad. Extremelybad.
My stomach knotted. “What’s wrong?” I asked. Adrenaline pumped through me as I braced myself for hisresponse.
Kevin lowered his voice. “The green stuff in the Dream Wars. It’s fuel. It’s clean energy fuel that burns hotter and longer than anything onEarth.”
I felt dizzy with anxiety. I didn’t want to know where this was going. “Okay.” I knew it was combustible, which made sense why the Galadrias drank it since they were basically alien dragons. It also healed their planet. It was some weird shit—thatwe could all agreeon.
“The United States has made a deal with the sentries, Kit. The US lets the ghouls continue to feed off humanity, and in return, the tall flesh eaters make sure certain high-value targets aren’t bothered in the Dream Wars. And that huge barrels full of green stuff make it over Earth-side everyweek.”
My food threatened to come up into my throat. “No.”
I swayed on the rooftop as I processed hiswords.
The government had sold us for barrels of alienoil.
“Yes. The high-value targets are given beacons that the ghouls can sense so they know not to harm them. The future of this planet is one where only a couple thousand rich bastards will be left to control the Earth with a never-ending clean fuel supply. They call it New World Vision. President Buckley tried to stop it and they threatened to kill herkid.”
Oh God.I’d met the president’s daughter once. She was a sweet kid. I couldn’t believe what I washearing.
“Why tell me?” Again, I couldn’t understand why he was sticking his neck out to give me thisinfo.
He sighed. “Because I don’t have a beacon. I’m just like the rest of humanity—food. If I end up dead, I wanted someone else to know. Maybe you can stopit.”
Me? How the hell was I going to stop anything like this. This was way bigger thanme.
Damien typed something on his phone, then showed me thescreen.
