in finding Trey. I pass through the bodies of soldiers who are packed close together.
Someone asks, “How do you propose we get the packages to those positions? Their security is impossible to breach. We’ve been studying it for a few specks and we haven’t found a way in.” A low murmur of discussion passes through the crowd.
A voice I recognize responds, “You don’t need a way in. In fact, you don’t have to be there at all before it happens.”
I feel like I might melt into the floor. Trey’s voice has the same effect on me as playing my favorite song: I want to turn it up, get closer, and feel the vibration of it.
“Who said that?” the redheaded soldier asks as he scans the crowd. The crowd parts and if I had a real heart, it would stop beating.
Trey comes into view. He doesn’t look good—I mean, he’s still incredibly handsome, but he looks as if he might fall down at any moment. Dark circles haunt his eyes. He still has deep bruises on his left temple and jaw.
“Trey Allairis,” Trey introduces himself.
“Rossi Latener,” the redhead replies. “You’re Rafian.”
“I am,” Trey replies.
“Welcome. You were saying?”
“You can deliver the packages with drones.”
The room erupts in laughter. Wayra pushes soldiers aside to stand next to Trey. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a few days, either. His expression is murderous as his violet-colored eyes glare at the laughing faces of the Amster soldiers. “You hear something funny?” he fumes. The soldiers closest to him stop laughing. It’s probably because he’s huge and menacing, towering over them like an avenging angel. The dark warrior tattoo on his neck makes him look scarier than he really is, or maybe he is scary and I just forgot that because we’re friends.
Rossi tries to be somewhat diplomatic as he says, “We were just discussing Kalafin’s heightened security. We haven’t been able to get our men past their interlocking matrix here or here”—he points to places on the three-dimensional hologram with a laser pointer—“let alone our drones.”
“I’m not suggesting you get your men or your drones past their security matrix. I’m saying you won’t need to because we’ll use their drones.”
Jax comes to stand on the other side of Trey. “Gennet Trey has been hacking into Alameeda drones and taking control of them since the war started. He can infiltrate any mother ship and get you as many of her baby drones as you require.”
Wayra gets nose to nose with the Amster soldier next to him as he sneers, “Are we funny now?” As the soldier backs away from him, the room explodes with a rumble of voices.
Trey waits for them to quiet a little before he raises his voice and says, “We’re talking about fully armed drones.” The room falls silent. “The kind of arms that can erase a city from Ethar.”
Rossi glances to his right. I look in that direction too, and see a dark-haired soldier leaning against the ledge of the console that houses a hologram. He’s so familiar, and yet I can’t remember where I might have met him until he asks, “How soon can you get us those drones?”
The resonance of his voice cleaves me in two. My whole world shifts on its axis. Right is left and left is wrong. Trey recognizes him too. “You’re Pan Hollowell.”
“Yes, I am,” my father says. He’s the tallest person in the room. He doesn’t have a single gray hair—he looks as young as Trey does. In fact, they’re strikingly similar. Short dark hair, violet-colored eyes, a military bearing. Although the tattoos on their throats are different shapes, Trey’s are interlocking swirls and Pan’s resemble concentric triangles; they’re both inky-black and intimidating. Pan looks amazingly well for someone who has been dead since I was five.
Trey straightens to his full height, ignoring the obvious ache it causes to do so. “I can get you the drones as soon as you provide us with a ship and some weapons so we can get your daughter back.”
“You know my daughter well?”
“Yes. I love your daughter.”
“Then you should have left her where I hid her.”
Cringing, my vision blurs. There’s an aching pull within me to return to my body. I try with all my might to resist it. I don’t want to leave Trey; I want to be his shadow, but something is very wrong. Have I been gone from my body too long today? I wonder.
Trey explains, “When I found her, Chicago had become a