Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (19 page)

Any such reassurance would be a lie, anyway. My own survival was my top priority. I didn’t feel guilty for that; it was just biology. I smiled after I judged our silence had gone on long enough. “Plus, I know you understand the importance of gathering more information about our…situation. I have some things I’d like to share with you, that I think you’d find valuable.”
 

He stayed silent, but scrutinized me with narrowed eyes.
 

I turned to the others to allow him time to decide. I didn’t know how to persuade him further. “China, I know you’re in. What about you, Jacky?”

She leaned back on her perch atop the back of a bench and shrugged. “That all sounds good to me. I know already you make a good teammate. I’ll go with you, for now. But,” she leaned forward, suddenly serious, “I won’t be confined. I will not be trapped in this. I will leave when I want. I will follow what orders I want. I will not be forced.”
 

I nodded. “That is as it should be. If you will listen to my reasoning and consider it, that is all I ask. The Game is quite enough enslavement for all of us, I think.”
 

She grinned and spat on the ground. “Screw the Game.”

China repeated it, the vehemence extra shocking coming from her child-like frame and angelic face.
 

Adam laughed, the barrier he’d been holding around himself seeming to fall away. “Screw the Game,” he said with relish. “I guess I’m in.”
 

I turned to Sam, who’d stayed noticeably silent until then. “Sam, what about you?”
 

He smiled, but shook his head. “I don’t think being part of a team is for me, sorry. I’ll be going.” He turned to leave.
 

“Wait, Sam,” I called out. “Why don’t you want to work with a team?”

He looked at the ground for a second, and then back to me, but I’d caught the white-knuckled fist he made and then quickly released. It wasn’t anger. He had the type of skin tone that blushed at a moment’s notice, and would have flushed with anger. Instead he was pale beneath his tan. “I don’t work well with others. Honestly. I’m better off alone.”
 

What secret was he hiding? “I don’t expect you to be best friends with any of us. Just to work together so that we can all live.”
 

He frowned. “That’s the problem. I’m not the one you want to have at your back in a life and death situation.”
 

Ah, maybe that was it. I could understand fear. “Sam, I know what you can do. I don’t want you fighting at my back during a life and death situation. I want you safe right beside me so that when I need you, you’ll be ready and able to help. We’ve got fighters. I didn’t ask you here to be one of them.”

He shuffled his feet. “But still, I don’t think—”

“I have no doubt that you’ll save all our lives at least once. If you walk away now, you’ll be leaving us to die without you if something happens. We need you, Sam. Please join us.”

“You’re kinda manipulative,” he said wonderingly.
 

I smiled widely. “I am. But I’m also being honest. I want you on my team. I want each of you, specifically. That’s why I called you here.”
 

He still hesitated, and I rolled my eyes. “You know you want to, Sam. Just say yes.”
 

He took a deep breath. “Okay, yes. I just hope you don’t regret it.”

I settled back in my seat again, legs and arms spread wide to show my confidence. "I won't. I made a promise to myself to never regret anything again."
 

“Bunny, you heard all that, right? I’ve got a consenting team. Register us.”

ALREADY? YOU MOVE FAST.

—Bunny—

“I’m single-minded.” Singly focused on my own survival, to be exact. But I didn’t say that last bit aloud.

A window misted into existence like a mirage in front of my face.

YOU HAVE BECOME THE LEADER OF A TEAM.

SPECIAL CONDITION ACTIVATED

YOU HAVE GAINED THE SKILL “COMMAND”

A new Skill? My eyes widened and I sat forward. “Display Skill Window,” I murmured under my breath.

My tongue twitched with the desire to display the team management Window, but I held myself back. “Did you guys get a Skill?”

China tilted her head to the side. “It says we can communicate with our leader via Game Windows.”

Adam frowned at the invisible screen in front of his face, and then at me. “And I suppose that would be you,” he said resignedly.

“Yes. It is me.” I hadn’t known the leader would be appointed like that, but I wouldn’t apologize that it was me. The situation and my seeming power play made me a bit uncomfortable, but I kept it hidden and tried to begin as I meant to go on, with outward confidence and control.

Sam shuffled his feet and looked between Adam and me nervously.

Jacky chuckled. “Did you expect different? It’s not like anything changed. There’s just a pretty label on it now.”

We stared each other down for a moment, and then Adam relented. “So I’m your subordinate now. What information do you have that you thought I’d be interested in?”

“You’re my ally,” I corrected. I very deliberately took off my link, and handed it to China, who put it in her bag.
 

Adam’s eyes widened, and he did the same.
 

When everyone in our group had removed their links with varying levels of understanding why we were doing so, China carried her backpack away, out of the links’ audio receptors’ range.
 

“Everyone, be careful to shield your thoughts from Bunny. Just consciously acknowledge that you don’t want him to overhear this.” When China returned, I looked to her. “What I have is a name, I believe.”

She knew immediately to what I referred. “Mendell.”

“Mendell? One name? Is that first or last? What context is the name in? How, exactly, is something like that going to be useful?” He was rolling a coin over and between his knuckles with angry energy, tiny sparks of static electricity jumping off it.

China replied before I could. “My sister was taken by them, by NIX. We think that’s the name of the people who run the Game.” Her voice wavered in the beginning, but strengthened as she continued. “Eve was there when it happened. And then people in masks came to my house to make it look like my sister ran away. They were talking about what they would do with the ones they’d taken, and we listened. They said they’d be taking samples from them to Mendell. That’s the context.”

The irritated look slipped off his face, replaced with intense focus. “A research lab, maybe? A place, or maybe a person…” he muttered. He’d already begun tapping on the ID arm sheath link clamped onto the cast around his arm, entering in information.

“That’s what I want you to find out,” I said.
 

He took a deep breath and held his hand up in the air, and as he let the breath out, his hand started to spark visibly, and his curls started to float upward from the electricity coursing through his body.
 

Sam and China watched him with avid curiosity, while Jacky stepped back in alarm, probably remembering her last incident with his abilities.
 

Adam laid his hand onto his arm sheath, and though his body was still, his eyes twitched back and forth with bug-like, skittering speed, focused on nothing in the real world.
 

I pulled up the team control Window under my breath while the others were all focused on him.
 

PLAYER NAME: ADAM COYLE

TITLE: NONE
CHARACTERISTIC SKILL: ELECTRIC SOVEREIGN

LEVEL: 58

SKILLS: HYPER FOCUS

He obviously focused his points in the mental Attributes and Speed, and Electric Sovereign would be the Skill that allowed him to manipulate electricity. Hyper Focus was also self-explanatory. But the irritating thing was the average level of his Attributes was far above mine. He must have started out with high points, and only added from there, because even fifty-eight level-ups didn't explain those numbers. If he hadn't broken his arm, he would never have needed protection from Jacky and me. He was definitely the highest leveled Player in the group

Adam fairly vibrated with the intensity of his concentration for a while. Then, he took his hand away from the ID sheath and its connection to the Internet and let out a shuddering breath. He rubbed now bloodshot eyes and then looked at me. "I've found something."

We all leaned forward in anticipation, holding our breath after the display he'd just given us.

He continued, "A person. An engineer, slash physicist, slash biologist, former genius that's been out of the scientific community and the public eye for a while now. It's not much, but he's suspicious. I hacked into the city property databases, and I found a place under the name of his deceased sister that's paying extraordinarily high electricity bills. Which doesn't mean much, but when I tried to figure out where the money was coming from to pay those bills, I couldn't."

I nodded, understanding the direction his thoughts had gone.
 

Jacky pursed her lips. "So? That doesn’t tell us nothing."

He smirked. "I'm able to understand the electrical impulses that run through a computer, and manipulate them. There should be no hiding the money trail from me, but it was in the form of a large credit deposit from a company I'd never heard of, and beyond that I couldn't track its path." He paused for emphasis. "It was purposefully hidden. Now, who would want their mysterious payments to a genius hermit researcher to be untraceable?"

China bounced on her toes and grabbed my arm in excitement as if to stop herself from flying away. "Oh my god. Yes! He's connected to NIX. He has to know something about Chanelle, and maybe she's even there right now, being held in some sort of research lab…" She tugged on my arm. "Eve, we have to go get her, before it's too late."
 

I refused to bring the team that very instant to look for China’s sister. She would have rushed to Mendell’s secret lair alone, but I was able to dissuade China with a compromise that we would go after the team had some time to prepare and gain information.

"But I'm not going to keep waiting indefinitely, Eve. If my sister's in there, I'm going to save her." She frowned at me with that face identical to Chanelle’s.
 

I nodded and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I know. But if she is there, it's better that we wait until we're actually able to save her, rather than making an attempt and failing, and her being trapped forever."
 

Adam snorted. "I’ll go there with the team, but no way am I risking my life for some random girl I don't even know."
 

I smirked, but said nothing. What was it exactly that got him that broken arm? Saving some random girl he didn't even know, if I remembered correctly. If the situation arose, I'd bet credits that Adam would save Chanelle and a hundred others, grumbling about it all the while.
 

But Sam knew him even less well than I did, and frowned. "If there are people there that need our help, we have to help them. We have the responsibility to do what we can."
 

"Right. While you're being a martyr, I'll be keeping myself alive,” Adam said.

I raised a hand. "Guys. We don't even know what we're going to find there yet. We’ll deal with that when we come to it. Right now, let's get to know each other better, so I know exactly what we're working with and how best to allocate our limited manpower."

Jacky tilted her head back and forth to crack her neck. "So basically you want us to tell about our Skills, right?"

"More or less. Skills, Attribute point delegation, any other special skill or ability you might have…basically anything that might be useful for me to know."
 

Jacky gave a mischievous smirk and grabbed a short branch from a nearby decorative tree, ripping it off.
 

I pulled up her statistics in the leadership Window, to compare her real stats with what she told us. Her Characteristic Skill was “Gravitational Autonomy.” When I touched the Skill, the words “Kinetic Class” appeared, but that was it.

She squeezed hard enough that her arm trembled with the effort, and her fingers sank into the wood, sap leaking from between her fingers and dripping onto the ground in milky spatters. With another smirk, she opened her hand and showed the pulverized wood pulp within. "I’m strong. Really strong, and sturdy enough to support my own strength, so I don’t rip my own muscles and bones apart. My points are almost all in the physical Attributes. My Skill lets me change the force of gravity on my own body, just a little bit. I can’t fly or nothing, but it’s good for fighting." She wiped her sap-covered hand on the ground, and then moved to me and placed her hands on my shoulders. First, she bounced up and hovered just an instant longer than she should have, and the weight of her on my shoulders was surprisingly light. Then she pressed down on me, and I had to strain to keep my posture straight under the pressure her significantly smaller frame exerted on mine.
 

I could imagine the surprising strength behind a punch aided by the force of gravity.

"I’ve never put even one point into Beauty." She looked each of us, as if to challenge us to argue. "I didn’t need to, since I was born beautiful, yeah?"