Page 298 of Scarlet Wars
James nodded once. “Only way we’ll get the whole truth.”
“Where do I even begin to leak him?” I asked, more to myself than anyone else.
Caden’s voice cut straight through the fog in my head. “Don’t focus on a date. Focus on a subject. Focus on what you want to know.”
“Which is?” I muttered, as I released James and Caden from their chains.
“Try to retrieve all his memories linked to the Radicals,” James demanded, as he massaged his wrists. “I want to know why the hell this traitor thought he was in any way helping you by letting our Collective be attacked by these savages.”
Cara flinched, barely, but I caught it.
“And focus on yourself,” Caden added with that familiar charm that grounded me even as it flooded my system with raw adrenaline. “Focus on anythingyouwant to know.”
I nodded once before I stepped toward Maurice, then lifted my hands, ready to place them on his head, exactly like Caden had shown me what felt like a lifetime ago in the woods of Kanata C.
“Don’t look for intel,” Caden said quietly behind me. “It’s all subjective, shaped by his perception. You’re not hunting objective truth. You’re stepping into a story only he can tell.”
I nodded once, my throat tight. Then I closed my eyes and laid my hands on either side of Maurice’s head, fingers splayed, bracing, like I was about to dive somewhere I might not come back from.
Power simmered low in my chest. I let it rise and curled it toward my fingertips.
“Focusing on myself…in someone else’s head,” I muttered, more to keep myself grounded than anything else. “Not weird at all.”
And then it happened.
There was no warning. Just a snap.
A jolt of white heat across my spine, and then the world shifted sideways.
I wasn’t in the chamber anymore.
I wasinsidesomething else. Insidesomeoneelse.
Inside Gordon. Maurice. My father.
Unlike a blue portal, I wasn’t a spectator in this reality.
I was inside Maurice’s head—seeing through his eyes, wearing his body like borrowed skin—and I found myself in a familiar looking office.
Wood-paneled, sleek, with a US flag hung crookedly on the far wall. The hum of political ambition hung in the air like cologne.
A jolt of shock ran through me as I recognized the man Maurice was speaking to.
Bill Ferrars.
My old boss from Boston.
Killed by Radicals during my first year at Cyclos.
Except here, in this memory, he looked younger: less gray at the temples, a little straighter in the spine.
Maurice—I—stood tall, composed—every inch the predator disguised as a diplomat.
“Youoweme, Mister Ferrars. Without me, your ancestors would’ve died in the Battle of ’59. So, when my daughter asks for an internship here,” I said, my tone calm and terrifying, “youwillaccept her. Youwillguide her. And shewillbecome the best lawyer this country has ever seen.” I paused long enough for the weight of his words to settle.
“And when the day comes for us to retrieve her,” I added, the warning unmistakable in my voice, “youwilllet her go without so much as a whisper of resistance.”
Bill nodded without flinching. “Consider it done.”
