Infinity Reaper (Infinity Cycle #2) - Adam Silvera Page 0,153

your fault!” the woman shouts, crying. “You swore I would become a Blood Caster!”

“Luna,” I say.

The young woman turns and white flames run up her arm. There’s something familiar about her. Her hair looks choppy, but that’s not it.

The stars be damned, she’s the specter that Atlas and I were pursuing the very first night of the Crowned Dreamer. Atlas had gotten a tip that a specter attacked her own family, and we rushed to the scene, pursuing her for blocks before we brawled. She was powerful too, and I needed a gem-grenade to take her down. That was also the night we first met Brighton and Emil, days before Emil’s powers manifested; some might even call our paths crossing destiny.

The same can be said for this woman who was arrested after Atlas and I flew away.

“Do you remember me?” I ask.

“You have fire now,” she says.

“Turns out it was always in me,” I say. “Is that Luna in there?”

She nods. “She gave me power and claimed she cared about me, but was nowhere to be seen when I was locked up.”

“There is no part of me that cares,” I say. “Luna is ours to end.” The woman holds out her palms like she’s about to unleash some fire. “Take a second to think. You’re outnumbered, and your power has been dampened from your time here in the Bounds, away from the stars. I’ve only grown stronger and less patient. You choose what happens next.”

The specter looks between us and the door, weighing her choices.

The white flames vanish, and so does she into the darkness.

Tala wastes no time running toward the cell, eager to make sure that Luna’s breath remains a stranger forevermore. She drops a gem-grenade and blows down the door. We stand outside the tiny room where Luna is pressed against the wall.

My grandmother eyes us like the reapers we are.

Seventy

Hunt the Shifter

NESS

I’m staying alive by posing as dead men.

One man was telekinetically shoved so hard into a wall that his neck snapped. I wore his puffy cheeks and shock white hair while limping past a trio hunting for me. I found another dead on the floor, strangled by his own stretched-out, supple arms, which coiled around his throat like a snake. I imagined his face not being so purple as I morphed into him to climb the stairs undetected. For the past ten minutes, I’ve been walking around as someone with thick eyebrows and a face shaped like a teardrop—before he was burnt unrecognizably by a wounded woman with electric hands.

No disguise is safe for too long in the Bounds. I either run the risk of bumping into someone who knows the person I’m impersonating or drawing suspicion for being unrecognizable. Maintaining someone’s features I captured at a quick glance is growing more difficult as I keep face-swapping under the stresses of being literally hunted by unleashed convicts.

I find my way into a small room with sterile white floors and four octagonal cells with plexiglass walls. This is one of the rooms they use for holding when creating effective containment for new inmates. When Bishop gave me and the Senator a tour years ago there were security guards monitoring all of the celestials, using these special tablets that could manipulate the conditions if the celestial was acting out. There’s no one for the guards to supervise at the moment, which makes me wonder if they’ve been freed too so they can join the hunt.

For once, I have some peace to catch my breath.

I glow gray.

It shouldn’t feel like such a relief to be myself again, but not using my power is exactly that.

I pick up one of those tablets, scrolling through the features: temperature adjustments as high as one hundred and fifty degrees and as low as negative fifty, electrification between one hundred and three hundred volts, air decompression, and toxic gasses. I don’t know a single gleamcrafter that could survive all of these.

The prison system has always been flawed, even during my ignorant days of fantasizing with the Senator about how I would punish the celestial who killed my mother. The procedures in the Bounds are so inhumane because the architects and guards simply don’t see celestials and specters as humans. The Senator’s supporters don’t care, especially as Bishop keeps masking this disturbing reality as dominance and security.

If not Sunstar, maybe someone else will end this cruelty.

I’m not counting on it.

The door behind me bangs open, and I quickly morph back into the man with the