in place for two seconds until the cuff vibrated. It had enough power to repel up to eight shots. If Ian stayed close, he would be partially protected, but if he went down, we were sunk.
“Let’s go,” I whispered, concern eating at me. Perhaps at the peak of my fitness I might’ve been able to carry Ian, but today I would be lucky if I could drag him on a smooth surface. We needed to get to Aoife as soon as possible.
Ian set off with an unsteady gait. In the room next door, two guards and two techs lay unmoving. The techs had been shot in the head, while one guard had a hole through his chest and the other had been shot at close range with what appeared to be his own blaster.
I closed my eyes at the destruction. I knew it had to happen, and I was no stranger to death, but so much carnage turned my stomach. Holding my breath, I stopped and collected the extra blaster. Ian’s stance wobbled and his eyes were going glassy.
“Stay with me, Ian,” I murmured. “I’m not leaving you and I can’t do this alone.”
“If I go down, leave me.”
“I won’t,” I said calmly. “So you better not go down.”
Determination lit his gaze, but by the time we’d descended the stairs, Ian had taken to leaning heavily against me. I paused to give him a chance to catch his breath. Everywhere I looked, dead guards stared back with unblinking eyes. Ian had single-handedly taken out at least a dozen armed guards after being outnumbered three to one in close quarters.
Speculation turned into suspicion. He was about the right age. And he knew Loch, though he tried to hide it. My eyes narrowed as the pieces snapped together. This entire time a member of the Genesis Project had been hiding directly under the Consortium’s collective noses.
The Consortium had hunted Loch to the ends of the universe to cover up their little experiment and the fact that they had treated the project members as expendable and less than human. Ian had a good reason to hate everything about the Consortium. Was this his payback? Did he have something to do with Ferdinand’s disappearance?
I spun around and planted my blaster in Ian’s chest. His eyes widened, but he didn’t move. “Did you betray Ferdinand?” I asked in a furious whisper. “Was this your doing from the beginning? Did you put a hit on me?”
He blinked and some of the fuzziness cleared from his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “I did not betray you or your brother.”
“But you must hate the Consortium.”
His expression shuttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
He sighed and the sound rattled dangerously, letting me know time was short. “Look around. If I wanted you dead, do you think I would need these imbeciles to do the job for me? I did not betray you, Bianca.”
He moved surprisingly fast, knocking my blaster up toward the ceiling and spinning me around. His arms wrapped around me, trapping me with my back to his chest, the blaster pointing harmlessly away from us. I struggled, but I would have better luck breaking out of triple-max prison restraints.
“I did not betray you and I will not hurt you,” Ian said. “But I will not let you expose me with your wild theories, either. Promise me that you’ll keep any knowledge about me to yourself.”
“I could lie.”
“You could, but you won’t. Promise me, Bianca.”
“And if I don’t?” I pressed.
“Bianca,” he growled and gave me a little shake. “We’re not leaving until you promise. Do you want to kill me?”
“Maybe I do,” I bluffed.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered into my ear. I shivered. “Promise me, Bianca.”
“I will, if you’ll promise me something in return.”
I felt him tense against me, then curse under his breath. “What is it?”
“Promise me you’ll let me help until Ferdinand is found. And not from Serenity or wherever else you plan to dump me. I go where you go and we find him together.”
He sighed again, but I could tell his resistance was wavering.
“You owe me this much, at least,” I said.
“Very well, if you promise to keep anything you may know about me to yourself forever, I’ll let you come with me to track down Ferdinand.”
I could argue about who was coming with whom, but I decided to take what I could get. “I promise I won’t ever use any of your secrets against you,” I said