The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,26

hovering over Roman. But when his back was finally to me, I turned my head toward the IV line, taking it between my teeth and yanking—hard.

The long needle pulled partway out of the vein. The tape hissed as the edge lifted off my skin.

I tensed, my hands curling into claws. Watching the man’s back. Waiting.

He didn’t turn around. He coughed without covering his mouth, smearing sweat and snot against the sleeve of his black shirt. My ears filled with static as I took the plastic tube between my teeth again. I didn’t look away from him, even as my heart began to bang in warning.

The tape gave way, lifting enough for the needle to slip out. The drug spilled over my wrist and the back of my hand, dripping onto the rubber mat beneath me.

The man rose again, pulling a cell phone from his pocket. He tapped out a message. Its screen cast a faint blue light on his face. That, combined with the glow from his helmet, was enough to confirm what I already suspected.

It was a semitruck of some kind. Every inch of it, from the inside of the door, to the ground, to the walls, was covered in old tires, cut open and melted together again in a tarry black quilt.

Thoughts were sharpening in my mind again, fragments piecing themselves together. I looked to the IV stand over me, then toward the haphazard way the others had been strung up.

Our suspicions had been right. They were only after me.

The boy was a Yellow, too, wasn’t he? I’d seen his button, and I assumed the kidnappers had as well. But I was the only one in proper handcuffs, lined with rubber. The girl was a Green, considered relatively harmless by most of the population, but her hands had been bound in front of her, and her ankles were locked together with zip ties of her own. If they were only ever after me, why hadn’t they just killed the others—witnesses—outright?

One possible answer was leverage. What was better than one hostage? Three of them. They could kill one or both of the others as a sign to show how serious they were about doing the same to me.

But there was this instinctive feeling I had about Roman and Priyanka that I just couldn’t shake. It had seared through me like an electric current from the second I saw Roman fire that first shot, and it hadn’t disappeared since.

I hated feeling suspicious of Psi who needed help; it made me more nauseous than the sedatives. If I questioned the motives of every stranger in a terrifying situation, I would never have opened the van door for Ruby all those years ago.

But the attackers, these two Psi, the men who had us now…Everyone in this situation was too well trained. No one shot like Roman did without hours of practice and instruction. No one fought with the confidence of Priyanka without having done it before.

Maybe they were part of this after all. I wanted to believe that all Psi were on each other’s sides, but I wasn’t stupid. There was the rumored nihilistic Psion Ring group, for one thing, constantly floating threats that undermined the work the Psi Council was doing. Or, the kidnappers could have hired these two to act as bait, knowing I’d be more likely to accept another kid’s help. If that was the case, they’d done their job well.

But…they were tied up and drugged, too.

As Vida always said, the best way through bullshit was to wade in, hold your nose with one hand and a grenade in the other, and cut straight through it. Right now, I needed to eliminate the immediate threat and then wake up the others for answers. As the only one of us currently conscious, it fell on me to figure out exactly how to do that.

“Changing the Op—” The man stuffed his phone back into a leather pouch on his belt and took two swaying steps toward the wall that aligned with the truck’s cab. He pounded on it. “You see that shit? Why the fuck should we take them there? The zone crossing is going to be a goddamn nightmare as it is.”

I couldn’t make out the muffled reply, only that there were two distinct male voices.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. His helmet light flickered as he swept it over us again, this time pivoting toward Priyanka, to my left. The IV bag above her was empty, sucking into itself as if