The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,29

I couldn’t stop the thought from welling up in my mind. One less person to potentially have to run from. One less reason to question my gut.

But also one less person to fight off the people who had taken us.

I released a hard breath. Who was I kidding—I was never going to leave either of them behind to the mercy of these people. For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the eye again. If there was even the slightest chance they were innocent bystanders, then I was going to give them the exact same chance I had to get out of here.

“Where the hell are we?” Priyanka asked, the words slightly slurred.

The thick curtain of her wavy black hair fell over her shoulder as she propped herself up on her elbow and, finally, pushed herself fully upright. The drug was clearly still working its way through her system; she had that slightly glassy look of someone whose brain was caught up in a fog. Which meant that I had an opportunity.

In another time, and in a very different world, I would have felt guilty for trying it, but this was life or death. And I was going to make it out of this truck alive no matter what.

“I’m a little more concerned about who took us,” I said evenly. “Did you recognize any of them?”

“Why are you asking me that?” she said, reaching her bound hands up to touch a spot on her cheek where a new bruise was forming. It was the size of a fingerprint. “Shouldn’t you have some sort of catalog of bad guys we can work through? Who are the idiots who are always out screaming on highways and at speeches with signs?”

“You mean Liberty Watch?” I said.

“If they’re the ones who think that you Psi should make up some sacrificial army, then yeah, Liberty Watch.”

Ice prickled down the length of my spine.

“You Psi?” I don’t know how I managed to get the words out. I don’t know how I managed to smile when panic’s numbing fingers were stroking my face. “How hard was that hit you took?”

A heartbeat of silence passed between us before Priyanka reached up and pressed a hand to her face. “Yeah. Wow. My mind is a mess right now…I’m—” She sucked in a breath through her nose, glancing down at Roman. “I’m…I’m one of those…a prodigy.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh…a Green? Whatever the government has decided the ‘correct’ label is,” she said.

None of this felt right. None of this. Were they not even Psi? I hadn’t seen them use their abilities—they looked young, but so did plenty of adults who weren’t affected by IAAN.

Do something, I thought, feeling my handcuffs’ lock again. Don’t let them get free before you do.

I leaned forward, bracing the bottoms of my palms against the ground, crawling forward, toward the dead man. Priyanka’s gaze was almost suffocating as she watched me. My breath caught with the effort it took not to turn and meet it head-on.

Keys—I needed the keys to the handcuffs. I felt across the man’s charred chest for anything that might have once been a pocket. The smell of burned hair and skin made me gag until I finally had to hold my breath. The utility belt around his waist was in better shape, but the few pouches attached to it either had cigarettes stashed inside, or were empty.

What I was doing was horrifying, but my mind had switched back into survival mode. The only thing I could really focus on right now was getting out of this truck and staying alive.

If the handcuff keys had been on him, they’d either melted or had been thrown off him as the man had tried to save himself. The better bet was that they were with one of the soldiers up front.

“It’s bad enough that we have to announce our abilities with those hideous buttons, but why do we have to use the labels they gave us?” Priyanka asked. “Why did you government-Psi types keep that?”

My fingers trembled as they brushed the hilt of the small knife attached to the man’s utility belt. This could work. I just needed to wedge the blade between the small links and use enough force to break one of them.

My eyes fell upon the gun at his side, and when I finally glanced back at Priyanka, she was looking at it, too.

Then her dark eyes shifted, meeting mine.

Shit, I thought, my fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife