Chapter 13

Justice arrived in the War Room for his meeting with Noah and took a chair, the leather creaking under his substantial frame. Leaning back, he closed his eyes.

He’d gotten little sleep through the night, and had risen early to go for a run through the desert. He figured if he would be staying in his human form for the rest of his years, he better take care of it.

“Good morning,” Noah said as he walked into the room. “Sorry I’m late. Let’s get started.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Justice asked.

“They aren’t invited. I wanted the two of us to have a chat before we included anyone else. Make sure we’re on the same page.”

Made sense. He’d heard a saying of, ‘too many cooks spoil the pot,’ and he guessed that’s what Noah meant. In his experience as a leader, it always seemed best to have a general plan of action of the desired outcome before approaching the troops.

“Justice, what do you feel your future looks like here? Have you given it any thought?”

“Not really. Honestly, I’m just trying to get past the news of SR44.”

“Well, here’s what I’m thinking.”

Noah laid out his plan.

As Justice and his crew had all been military on SR44, except for Macy, Noah wanted them to consider joining forces with the Saviors in fighting the Colonists and their offspring. More numbers on the good guys’ side meant better results, as far as Noah was concerned. “It’ll give all of you a purpose. We can work with you to hone your fighting skills.”

Justice nodded and silently stared at Noah. He had always been a man who needed a purpose in life, and Noah offered him one. Would the rest of his group feel the same? And what about Macy? She didn’t have the will or the fortitude to fight anyone.

“And Macy?” he asked.

Noah grinned. “We always need another Healer around here. Cohen is our Healer, and Hudson’s mate, Beverly, is a doctor. She helps Cohen, but even with the two of them, they are running ragged with sick kids, pregnancies, and stuff like that on top of the injuries sustained while fighting.”

A little tingle of excitement raced through him. If he and his crew joined forces with the Saviors, they would be doing something good. There may not be anything to go home to, but they would still be honorable SR44 males fighting the most horrible part of their race—the Colonists.

However, he wouldn’t force anyone into doing something they didn’t want to. He would leave it up to each of them individually, and he told Noah so.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less. I don’t want to be out there with someone who doesn’t want to be there.”

Justice wondered about the tactical of what the Saviors had been doing.

“We’ve been killing the Colonists. The humans have also helped out. Some of their biggest criminals have turned out to be Colonists. Names you probably won’t recognize, such as Saddam Hussein and Jeffery Dahmer. The humans helped us out without even realizing it.”

The names didn’t ring any bells, but he committed them to memory so that Kade could look them up later.

“And what about their offspring?”

Noah sighed. “They’re tricky. When a human and Colonist mate, sometimes, the Colonist genes override the human genes, and we get the bad ones. Or if the human genes, the good part of a person, dominate, then we just have someone who’s half Colonist and may have a temper problem, or the desire to kill, but not the utter need to do so that we see in a Colonist.”

Justice rubbed his face. “It sounds complicated.”

“It is. We never thought the Colonists would take on human forms, and we never expected them to mate with humans. They really fucked up our plans. We never intended to be on Earth for more than a year or so. Hell, I was even thinking less time.” Noah slammed his hand down on the table. “But here we are.”

“Tell me about the Platoon,” Justice said, wondering why the two groups didn’t get along.

“Well, you can imagine our surprise when we found out that a group of SR44ians had landed on Earth. The FBI caught four of them when their vessel landed. Jovan found Liberty in Phoenix on a fluke. She also told us that the Platoon held the Saviors, specifically me, responsible for the destruction of SR44.”

“Why?”

“Because my father was in charge of the Royal Council. From what I’ve heard, he lost his fucking marbles and let everything go to shit because he felt guilty about sending us here. He was certain that I was dead, that we all were, and that he had blood on his hands. It made him crazy. Literally.”

Justice nodded, remembering the rumors. In fact, his commanders had withheld the information from the Royal Council on the transmission they’d received from the Saviors. They didn’t want to tell Noah’s father until they had certain verification that he lived.

“So the Platoon wanted you all dead.”

“Yes, and they succeeded in killing Talin. We tried to play nice, but they came into our sandbox and pissed all over the place. We took in Nico when he defected from the Platoon, and he’s been a good addition for us. We rescued Annis from Area 2. The rest of them, including Titus, actively hunted us.”

Noah shook his head and leaned forward. “Get this—Micah, their leader, he even aligned himself with a Colonist in an attempt to kill us off. That’s how twisted he was.”

Surprise and disgust turned his stomach. An honorable SR44ian male would never do such a thing, commit such a betrayal to his own people.

“The guy was a few pages shy of a full book, if you know what I mean,” Noah said.

Justice thought about it for a moment, because he didn’t fully understand.

“He wasn’t all there,” Noah explained, tapping his temple.

“Right.”

“But anyway, getting back to the offspring, if they’re bad and we can’t get caught, we’ll play judge, jury, and executioner. Most of the time, though, we let the humans handle them.”

Surprise hit him again. “And the humans know about you?”

“No. Well, they know about me, and a little about the rest of the guys. I’ve become one of the best murder profilers in the United States. I get called upon to help with cases everywhere. This gives me access to a lot of crime scene information, and I can be on the lookout for Colonist activity.”

“How do you know when a Colonist has committed a crime?”

“Black ash. Humans can’t see it. Our SR44 colors shine through our eyes, our true souls. Their souls are black, and when they kill, they leave behind the ash. I’d like to think it’s a little bit of their soul dying off and eventually, they’ll all be gone.”

Justice shook his head. “This is far more complicated than I could have ever imagined.”

“I know. Do you understand why the help would be appreciated? We’ve been running around for over two hundred years trying to get a lid on this, but it’s been tough.”

“It’s a lot for me to think about, Noah.”

His brain might actually explode. Never in a million years would he have guessed what the Saviors had been through, the fight they’d taken on.

“Take your time,” Noah said, and stood. “Like I said, the desire to bring honor to our people—even if we’re all that’s left—is far from being over.”

Silence stretched out for a while as Justice considered Noah’s words.

“I’m going to be meeting with Titus in a little while. You want to stay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I do. I’d like to hear what Titus has to say about his actions with the Platoon.”

“Good. I’ll have Blake bring him up.”

Noah paced as he talked to Blake on the phone, and Justice noticed they weren’t much different in size, except he may be a little wider in the shoulders.

When Noah hung up, he spoke. “Why do you trust the human so much? It seems he tends to be your second in command.”

Noah looked over at him, his brow furrowed, then sat down. “I have a unique relationship with the guys. Before Blake, there was Talin. He was smart, arrogant, and funny. He taught Blake a lot of what he knew. Maybe he saw his death coming—I don’t know. Hudson’s my friend, not to mention my mate’s father, but that’s a story for another time. But Blake, he’s smarter than he thinks, and when he went through his bad time with the drugs, things got fucked up around here. I realized that, somehow, that half-breed had wiggled his way into our lives and become a big part of it.”

Noah glanced around the room, and Justice hoped the male would continue. He found the social aspects of the silo interesting—a mostly unrelated group had somehow come together into a large family. The dynamics of accepting each other for their own personalities, flaws, and strengths regardless of their genetic make-up fascinated him.

“Abby and I were talking about it the other night,” Noah continued. “It’s like we’ve woven a sweater here. Each of us represents a thread. We’re all an intricate part of each other’s lives. When one of the threads gets broken, as was the case with Blake, the sweater gets messed up. It doesn’t look right anymore with a thread missing, and it doesn’t feel whole.”

He’d never in a million and ten years have guessed that an SR44ian would hold a half-breed Colonist in such high regard. Nor did he ever imagine an SR44ian male loving anything Colonist, but Nico seemed to do just that as he loved Alaina, also a half-breed. It seemed as if the Saviors had created their own little Utopia.

Just as he was about to ask Noah about it further, Blake came in, his gun at Titus’ back.

“What took you so long, half-breed?” Noah asked.

“Thought I’d bake a cake before coming.”

“That’s original.”

“Do you really want to know what I was doing?”

“Probably not.”

“Exactly. Sit down, Titus.”