6

Two men stand beside the long mahogany table in dark pinstripe suits. They could be anyone, these dull-as-wallpaper mercs. It’s the men beside them who are interesting. Lasters, and not all that well off. One Laster wears a rumpled brown suit that looks like it was made for someone else, too big at the collar and too short in the arms. With his graying hair swept up in long waves over his temples, he looks like a professor from another era. His companion is younger, though the lines around his eyes and the weathered, chapped pink skin of his face makes him look years older. He wears the uniform of many a Laster: the long jean overalls with a thick sweater underneath. Glancing around the room with obvious mistrust, he cracks his thick knuckles uncomfortably every few seconds.

I reckon I don’t blame him. The Lasters are completely outflanked. Besides the two in pinstripe suits, against the glass of the tall windows stand a row of faceless dark-clad mercs. Four behind, two more at the door, and another two stand sentry at the entrance. The heavy cluck cluck cluck of a grandfather clock marks time through the drafty room. The men in suits don’t speak to us, don’t acknowledge us. The Lasters seem ill at ease. I notice that the younger one’s eyes, especially, dart back and forth from the fixtures to the large oil paintings of heavy-jowled Upper Circle men.

I’ve been in this room before, of course, visiting our father. It’s one of the government buildings, the oldest, and, in my opinion, the prettiest of the three buildings where the senators rule Dominion and beyond. It could be a mansion of the Upper Circle: wood-paneled walls and vaulted ceilings give the place an air of elegance. The soft leather chairs are leftovers of a bygone age, and its glass and brass lamps lend my thoughts to cozy libraries and teas.

A moment later, Colonel Deakins limps into the room in scarlet military dress. Face shiny and red from exertion, he stops to wink at me before sitting down opposite Storm and me. I lean over, but my elbow slips on the over-waxed wood of the table and I accidentally smash my nose into my companion’s large, unmoving shoulder. It smells like him, a rich symphony of musk and a hint of cloves. He glances down at me, his expression softening with amusement.

“Sorry,” I say, hitching myself straight and rubbing at my nose. “Wh-What are we doing here, exactly?”

The corners of his mouth turn down. “We’re getting to the bottom of a few things.” He taps the tip of my nose. His touch jolts me awake.

And just in time, too. In walks Senator Theodore Nash, glowing with good health, and behind him, Senator Josiah Gillis. My breath hitches in my throat and I cough slightly. A huge hand slaps me on the back. I’m sure Storm intends it to be a light tap, but it echoes through my bones.

“Good,” Nash says as he seats himself across from the Lasters. “Everyone is here. Shall we begin?” He pours himself a glass of water from the pitcher in front of him and drinks with relish. The glass is emptied in seconds. He refills it again and shares an unholy smile with us.

Storm gathers himself, and it’s as though he pulls the oxygen from the room.

“It’s time we talk about the future,” he tells the men solemnly. “I’m sure our friends here”—he indicates the Lasters with a sweep of his hand—“agree with me. It’s time we have equal and proportionate government before the chaos sets in. I’ve called you all here to discuss setting up a transitional council with representatives from each group that will help us solve some of our worst current challenges and maybe head off some of our future ones.”

I stifle a gasp. It’s unthinkable.

“Now really, Mr. Storm,” the colonel blusters. He taps a meaty fist on the table in front of us. The others are just as shocked, it seems. Senator Gillis looks turned to stone.

Beside him, though, Theo Nash smirks. “Dominion already has a legal government, Storm,” he drawls.

“For now,” Storm concedes with a nod.

“Is that a threat?” spits Nash.

“Now, now.” The colonel waves his hands.

Storm ignores the colonel. “No. It’s an acknowledgment of reality, Nash. Splicers aren’t surviving the Plague much better than the Lasters. And I don’t think I need to remind you”—his eyes move briefly to the Lasters in the room—“the Lasters are dying.”

“We’ll see about that,” Nash mugs.

Senator Gillis coughs loudly and clears his throat. “Gentlemen.” He nods sternly. As the barbs are thrown the Lasters grow agitated, as though they aren’t sure whether there will be bloodshed. “If we could refrain from insults, please.” Nash sits back with a look I’d as soon call unrepentant. “Now,” Gillis continues. His hands meet in a circle on the table. “Mr. Storm, Senator Nash is correct. The Senate is the elected ruling body of Dominion City. Why would we even contemplate undermining the structure that has been working well for more than a century?”

Storm pierces the senator with a look. “Because the Plague is decimating Dominion. And those bombs that rocked the city? That’s just the beginning.”

Nash jumps in. “The Watchers are our problem, Storm.”

“No,” Storm continues gracefully, “they’re our problem. They are a problem for the Lasters and the True Borns as well as the Upper Circle. And what are you doing about it? Burying your heads in the sand.”

Red-faced, the colonel half stands. “You go too far, Storm. We’ll rout every last one of those little bugs.”

Storm acknowledges the old war hero with a sweep of liquid-metal eyes. “Really? And how are you going to find them, Colonel?” The True Born ices out the colonel and turns back to Gillis with a quiet, “I’ll not keep pumping resources into this city just to watch it burn.”

Ah. So there it is. Storm has been floating the city. And there is his choke hold.

“Let’s face it, gentlemen, you’re not equipped to deal with this threat. The Watchers are recruiting more Lasters every day. And you simply don’t have the resources to fight them.”

“We have an army,” the colonel protests.

Storm doesn’t even glance at him. “Whose corps consists of Lasters, who are being recruited by the Watchers in droves, and the remainder of which are dwindling thanks to the Plague.”

This was one of the pieces of information I’d been able to glean from Colonel Deakins a few months back. Robbie’s father hadn’t hesitated to tell me about the death counts. “Up to four a day now.” He’d shaken his head at the losses. “They’re thinking of starting conscription again,” he’d told me. The last time the senators had voted in conscription, which forced Lasters only into army service, there had been open revolt in the streets.

The colonel goes silent now, his mouth a tight line of disapproval. For all his love of strategy, he likely never thought his words would come back to bite him in this way. The conscription plan must be further along than we’d thought, I reckon, as Senator Nash grins cockily at the red-faced Lasters. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

“There’s going to be hell to pay.” Storm’s words are quiet, but they echo around the room like a bullet. “You think the Watchers are a problem now, wait until you have half-empty barracks filled with sleeper agents.”

“An idle threat.”

A hand cracks down on the table like a clap of thunder. “Stop.” It’s the older Laster. He takes his time assessing the men at the table. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down with the effort of swallowing whatever emotion has taken hold and turned his cheeks red. “Truth time.” The Laster’s voice crackles with sincerity. “Us Lasters have come upon hard times, sure. Some of our grandfathers and grandmothers remember conscription. We’ve learned harder lessons since then, in the olden times. But I tell you true, Senator, you bring back conscription and you lose this city.”

“How dare you, Laster?” Nash yells, red-faced.

The Laster man holds up one red-chapped palm, silencing the senator with a withering glance. “We ain’t the animals you take us for. Dominion puts in power its Upper Circle and says we elect them. But we don’t get names on the ballot.” He jerks his head toward Storm. “But this man, a True Born, would give us voice. The Lasters are in favor of a council.”

“You’re guilty of sedition,” seethes Nash. He motions subtly with his hand. The mercs behind the Lasters take a step forward. But it’s Senator Gillis who, with a frown and a shake of his head, stops the arrests.

“These men have been brought here to speak their mind, Theo. They are our guests.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Gillis rises and adjusts the fall of his jacket. “I think it’s time we call this meeting to adjournment. We’ll meet again once we’ve had a chance to discuss your proposal.”

Gillis walks over to the Lasters and shakes their hands, ushering them out. By the time Nash has left with his wall of mercs, Gillis comes back around to us. At my back, Storm’s hand radiates heat and inhuman strength. He gazes down at me, lips curling up on one side. The planes of his face are dressed in shadows, but I shiver at the power in his eyes, circling his head in thick, tangled skeins. How can all these men not know what they are dealing with?

Josiah Gillis shakes Storm’s hand, murmurs a word of thanks. But it is Storm who takes the meeting back. “We should meet again before the month is out. We have much to discuss. And Gillis? The Lasters need to be at the table.”

“Yes, I suppose they do.” He rubs his jaw like he’s been socked. “Lucy.” He nods at me, the afterthought, before exiting the big, empty room with his one remaining merc.

“So.” Storm turns and perches on the table. I shiver again, this time from the loss of heat from his hand. The smile he gives me is light and free. “You’ve just been witness to history, Miss Fox. What did you think of the circus?”

How can he be like that? I wonder. One arm hooks casually across the neighboring chair. I work my throat, swallowing past alarm and panic.

Sedition, my brain says, over and over again. They’d hang a Laster for saying what Storm has said. What will they do to the True Borns?

“Aren’t you worried?” I finally spit out.

Storm cocks his head, studying me. “About what?”

“They’ll find a way to get back at you. They’ll punish you, the Lasters. All of us.”

He chuffs. “They can try.”

“But why? Why would you put yourself and all the others at such risk?”

Storm leans over. His melted silver eyes hypnotize me. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“How is that, exactly? The Upper Circle—”

“Ignores four-fifths of the population. I wasn’t kidding around here today. There is a reason the Watchers are gaining in popularity.”

“But how will putting Lasters in front of the senators fix that?”

“It won’t—not right away. But you have to start somewhere.” He reaches out, his fingers running gently over a lock of my hair. I suck in a breath at the unexpected shock of it. He smiles, small and sweet, but his eyes keep watch on me. Steady and penetrating. It’s like he’s changing all the rules, I think to myself. The moment stretches out, leaving me uncomfortable, itchy in my skin. Nolan Storm isn’t an old man by any means—younger than Resnikov, at any rate, whom our parents wanted either Margot or I to marry. But I’ve never really thought of Storm in that way before. Maybe I’m misinterpreting the signals.

I clear my throat. “Doesn’t matter anyhow,” I surprise myself by saying. “It’s still not representational.”

Storm grins. “How is that?”

“Where are the women, Storm? How do you have a representational council with no women?”

I expect my guardian to scoff, to tell me women can’t sit on a government council. It’s what my father would have said. After all, there are no female senators in Dominion.

Instead, his face lightens and his eyes gleam with what I’d call mischief. He stands, his hand returning to my back. I’m overly aware of him, the sheer size and strength and crazy power of him. Directed at me. I want to hide under the table and whimper. Instead, I stand straight and walk out of the room with my head held high, and I wonder if I hear Nolan Storm correctly as he murmurs, “I do believe you’re right, Miss Fox. That’s a situation we’ll have to rectify.”

His words are drowned out, at any rate, by a commotion at the door. Nash and Gillis are pushed back behind a wall of mercs as we near. Before the senators stands a tall, wraithlike figure dressed in the black shirt and white collar of an OldenTime preacher man. A straw boater hat perches on his head, the ends fraying and unraveling on one side. The mercs have drawn guns on him, but the preacher man just smiles a rotten-toothed smile.

I know him. I mentally sift though the dozen and one preacher men whom Margot and I have seen camped in front of audiences. Where have I seen this one before? But my mind has gone blank, and even duller when I spy the preacher man’s knife. It’s long and curved, silver steel flashing in the dim light of the hallway. The mercs yell something at the man. But instead of dropping his weapon like a sensible man, he raises it above his head with a slashing motion.

Storm pushes me behind him, holding me tight against his back as something powerful emanates from him. The blue filaments of light above Storm’s head crackle and grow. He bellows one word, one word that the mercs ignore. “Stop.”

Shots ring out. Three, four. I get my head around Storm’s arm in time to watch the preacher man fall, the knife tumbling through the air with a wrinkle of light. A trickle of blood runs down one corner of his still smiling mouth.

All the air in my body leaves me in a great rushing whoomph.

“They killed him. Why did they have to kill him” I whisper into his back. The fabric of Storm’s suit bunches in my hands. Storm pulls an arm around his back and holds me tight as I breathe shallowly. The air stinks of blood.

“Check his mouth,” Storm orders the mercs at the door, who remain frozen above the body as though it will rise from the dead. They look at Storm dully. “Check. His. Mouth,” he says again, each word a cut. This time one of the mercs lowers his gun and squats down in front of the body. He opens the preacher man’s bloody, smiling mouth and pulls out a square of paper. The merc glances up at Storm as though waiting for an answer. “Bring it here,” Storm tells the man.

I don’t see it, but I can tell from the smell it’s covered in blood. They don’t ever tell you about the smell of violent death, how it fills a room with its cloying, terrible perfume. Storm pulls his arm free to open the paper. When he finishes reading it, he pulls out the square linen from his suit pocket and wraps it up before placing it in his jacket.

…

Outside we are surrounded by Mohawk, Kira, Jared taking point. We climb into the back of Storm’s vehicle, where he keeps himself pressed close to me, the heat of his leg burning the bare flesh of my thigh, warming my cold, cold body. He grabs my hands, which have become like ice, and rubs them between his own. They are hot, rougher than I would have imagined. It’s a shock. I’ve been living under Storm’s roof for months now, but he has always been very cautious about personal boundaries.

“You all right?”

I nod, looking around with mounting anxiety. I don’t want Jared to see Storm so close to me. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. But there are other things on my mind as well.

“What did it say?”

“Nothing.” Storm shakes his head.

“I have a right to know,” I tell him with dignity.

His hands still. Folded around my own, our hands look joined in prayer. My skin prickles with awareness. He’s too big, too powerful. I feel as though I will drown in the wake of his gunmetal gaze. “There were no words,” he says carefully.

“What, then?”

He sighs and pulls the slip of paper from his pocket. It unfolds in sections, and I am relieved that, despite a blotch of blood that stains one corner, it’s relatively clean. But it’s the symbol in the middle, drawn in a childish red scrawl, that has my heart hammering away in my throat.

Two circles, joining across the center, like a pair of crossed eyes.

Evolve or die.