Birthright

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

"Found you, Skrat."

Kray clenched his teeth, but that didn't prepare him from the sensation of Stan Aries' fist driving into his midsection. He groaned into the thick cloth around his mouth and tried to bend over, but the three Meta boys with Aries kept him pressed into the wall.

Nausea roiled through him, threatening to bring up the dinner he'd gotten at the cafeteria less than an hour ago. More importantly, he wanted to scream in anger and pain, struggle his way free and slam Aries right in his smug face. But he couldn't do any of that. It was a story he'd lived through in another lifetime, with Oliver and his goons, but in comparison that had been child's play. This was the real world, and the menace in Aries' voice and the unhinged look in his eyes told Kray he was straddling a very thin line between life and death.

It had been three and a half months since he'd wound up in the Wasteland with Alex. They'd brought him back to the Mainland after he was rescued and stuck him in an interrogation room for three days straight, asking the same questions so many times he didn't know who he was anymore. Thankfully Instructor Masso burst in on the fourth day and insisted that he needed medical attention, and then brought him back to the school to keep him safe from reporters and protestors.

Why the protesters? Because while the world had found out that General Drasse's daughter had been kidnapped by a Sanser gang out in the Wasteland, the fact that the gang was deeply affiliated with members of the esteemed Meta Faction was a dirty secret that the ANEF hadn't dared air to the rest of society. The official story was that, after the attack on the processing plant during the students' field trip, the criminals kidnapped Alex and Kray and held them for ransom. While everyone understood why anyone would kidnap the daughter of the esteemed general, they couldn't figure out the Sanser boy's involvement in the whole mess.

So reporters raced to dig up everything they could find on Kray. His parents' treason, his stay with the Eagan family, his friendship with Alex Drasse. His mysterious disappearance from the face of the planet for two whole years, before he landed in the most prestigious foundation school in the Mainland. Sentiments about him ranged between curiosity and distrust. Some people were suspicious, others were downright hateful.

And then Alex appeared in an interview. It was a shock to his system, to see her onscreen after complete silence from her for a whole month. She looked better. Much better. The bruises on her face were gone, and her burning golden eyes, though subdued as always, were focused of filled with pain and anguish. She'd sat ramrod straight in her chair across from the interviewer, lustrous black hair framing her face like a silk curtain, dressed in her sharp Enforcer outfit with her hands clasped demurely in her lap. She looked every bit the Meta in the jumbotrons advertising the Meta Faction all across the Mainland, and a cold sweat and tremor broke across his body because she resembled the worst he'd ever thought about her.

She detailed the attack at the processing plant and the kidnapping, and anyone watching would never have been able to distinguish between the lies and truths that effortlessly blended together as they fell out of her mouth. She called Kray a hero and spoke at length about how he'd tried to save her, only to get captured as well. She didn't say anything about his planeshifting ability, of course. Instead she told a tale about how they were taken underground and later shipped out on a cargo plane. She attributed their escape to a combination of luck, cunning, and their fearless determination to get back to civilization and expose the criminals.

It all sounded canned and rehearsed, and even the parts about him did nothing to warm the ice hardening in his chest. It was all a political game, every word out of her mouth. Probably penned and proselytized by her father. By praising him, a Sanser student at Calsin Foundation, the Concordance Policy would remain intact, maybe even gain footing in the mainstream population. What better way to promote Sanser and Meta Enforcers than to highlight a moment in history that illustrated how well they worked together?