“But first we need to talk about something. After we met at Haven, I started digging into my brother’s dealings. He put three tails on me?” Cross scoffs. “I tailed him right the fuck back.”
I manage a weak smile. “Of course you did.”
“I’ve been watching Travis for weeks, and there are things happening in the background that you need to know about. Projects our father had approved. Secrets he’d been keeping from us.”
“What kind of secrets?” I say warily.
“I’m still trying to uncover all of them, but right now? The most pressing matter is your Uprising. Do you remember the hospital room you found during that mission, the one full of fragmented Mods?”
“You mean the Mods that the Company has been experimenting on? Because there’s no other reason why that room had freezers full of blood vials.”
“Maybe. I don’t know about any experiments. If my father asked his people in Biotech to conduct research, it’s a secret I haven’t unearthed yet. But that’s not my concern right now.”
I tamp down my impatience. “What do the fragmented Mods have to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” he says quietly. “I’m not talking about the fragmented. I’m talking about the corrupted.”
Chapter 28
The corrupted.
A queasy feeling crawls up my throat.
“I visited that hospital,” Cross continues, his eyes never leaving my face. “When you were there, you assumed all the patients were Mods.”
“Most of them were marked,” I say, thinking back to the night at the hospital. There must have been at least twenty people in that room, and the majority had tattoos on both wrists, indicating they were—or at least used to be—Company slaves. “And I saw a lot of silver veins. They were flickering in and out, like the synapses in their brains were misfiring.”
Uncle Jim told me that’s what happens when a Mod’s mind is fragmented. They aren’t able to filter properly, and so their minds are swarmed, ceaselessly, with other people’s thoughts and projections. It’s a staggering amount of stimulation, enough to drive a person insane.
“At least half the people in that ward were Primes,” Cross tells me, his tone flat.
My brows knit together. “No. That’s impossible.”
“I had two different Mods, former loyalists, verify it by penetrating their minds. There were no electric shocks in their necks. They’rePrimes. And Catherine corroborated it when I went to question her—”
“Catherine?” I interrupt. He says that name as if I’m supposed to know who it is.
“Catherine De Velde,” he clarifies. “Lyddie’s mother. She’s the head of Biotech.”
The casual mention of Lyddie, the person who turned me in for concealment, only reignites my anger. I tried so hard to see it from Lyddie’s point of view. To see her as a victim of the propaganda that Primes like her consume from a young age. They’reraisedto hate us.
But I don’t have my head in the sand anymore.
Lyddie knew exactly what she was doing when she turned me in. She knew, especially with my bloodmark, that I’d be sent to the firing squad. I can no longer find a way to justify her actions.
Other than plain fucking evil.
“There’ve been cases of corruption in the wards,” Cross says. “Corrupted Primes have been cropping up all over the Continent for years.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Catherine described their symptoms to me, and it’s exactly what happened to my mother. The corruption doesn’t always happen instantaneously. It depends on how severe the rewiring was. But ultimately, those damaged wires take their toll. Moments of confusion, disorientation, anger, all mixed in with moments of clarity. Eventually, their thoughts become incoherent, their memories full of holes. Sometimes it sounds like there’s voices in their heads, which is why it’s been misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, but at some point, their mind goes completely silent, and the subject becomes catatonic. That’s how it happened for my mom.”
“And your father?”
“Whatever Adrienne did to him, it was a lot more effective, and the results were immediate. He went from confused to incoherent to catatonic in less than twenty-four hours. Merrick Redden no longer exists. He’s just a shell.”
“Forgive me if I don’t feel much sympathy for him,” I say bitterly.
