“What do you mean?”
“When you were working undercover for us in the Command, you told me you were willing to do anything to take the General down.”
“Yes, and then you went in and did it yourself,” I say, my voice edged with sarcasm.
“I took down the man, not the system.”
I fold my arms against my chest. “Can we talk about your corruption now or are we still dancing around the subject?”
She shrugs, causing strands of red hair to slide over one shoulder. “What do you want to know?”
“What do I want to know? How about: How the fuck is it possible?”
“Trust me, it’s very possible.” Her tone is dry.
“How many other corrupters are there?”
“I’m the only one we’re aware of.”
“On the entire Continent?” I say in surprise.
“As far as we know, yes.”
“Do you have a bloodmark?”
Without a shred of modesty, she pulls up the bottom of her shirt to show me the red circle above her belly button. It’s about as large as mine.
“It appeared when I was eleven,” she says. “But I didn’t discover I had the power to corrupt until a couple years later. Hell, I didn’t know how to use any of my powers until my father and I connected with the Uprising. He was a Prime, worked as a coal miner at the Spearhead facility in D. When my bloodmark appeared, he found a way to contact the network and gave me up to them.”
I frown. “He gave you away?”
“Happens all the time. Prime parents of Mod children only have three options, Darlington. They report their child to the Company and let the Primes use them as pawns or slaves. They hide their child’s abilities and risk being executed for treason and concealment if it ever comes out. Or they ask the Uprising to protect them. My father chose the third option. He loved me, and if he’d known how to handle my abilities, I think he would’ve kept me with him and concealed my powers from the Company. But he was out of his element. He knew the network would be able to help me more than he could.”
That’s what my mother did, too, or at least I used to think that. Before I read Jim’s letter, I believed she gave me to Julian Ash in order to protect me, not only from the Company but from the Uprising. Afraid both sides would want to use me to further their own agendas.
But none of her motivations make sense to me anymore. If she was working against her own people, why wouldn’t she just report me to the Company and letthemuse me? Maybe she feared the Company would deem me too big a risk and kill me instead? Incitement typically means a death sentence, but I was only a child. I don’t know if General Redden would’ve been barbaric enough to execute a child.
“I started training when I got to the Dagger.” Adrienne’s voice pulls me back to the present. “Until that point, I didn’t even knowhow to use telepathy, let alone corruption. And it was only during my training that I realized not everyone can see the thought strands.”
“Thought strands?”
“When you read a mind, how do you absorb the person’s thoughts?”
Confusion puckers my brow. “What do you mean, absorb? I just…hear them. Their thoughts are like voices that I can hear in my own head.”
“You don’t see them?”
“No. Do you?”
She nods. “When I’m in someone’s mind, their thoughts appear as individual threads. Hundreds and thousands of them, swirling like a kaleidoscope of gold. I can seeandhear them at the same time.”
“The night of the Jubilee,” I say slowly, “after you corrupted the General’s mind, you called it rewiring. So those gold strands are like wires?”
“Precisely. The first time I did it, it was an accident. I assume the same way it happened to you with incitement. I was twelve. Khem and I were training in mind reading—Khem was on the Authority. A powerful mind reader.” Regret flickers through her expression. “We lost him a few years back. Teriq was given his seat.”
I’m fascinated by all this. I hadn’t realized there was a whole Modified political system operating right under the Company’s nose.
“I was surrounded by all these gold threads in Khem’s head, and I suddenly visualized myself running my fingers over them. I don’t know why. A random instinct, I suppose. But when I did it, I realized I could actuallytouchthem. Which got me even more curious.” She releases a heavy breath. “I pulled one of the threads.”
