Super Secret | Half Hero Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 32: All In

Nawell dressed the girls in questionable hemlines, hooped earrings, and shimmery materials, while the boys opted for refined cotton shirts and tailored linen pants to help them blend into the crowds in Caracas. How they'd managed to pack for every occasion in the few plastic bins they brought with them was astounding.

Mac and I were free to dress however we pleased. My plain white tank and bikini top combo paired with silky athletic shorts (courtesy of Nawell, once again) was the most fashion-forward I'd ever looked, though it painfully highlighted the reason Valentina hesitant to bring me along. 

My pasty skin was so egregiously white I could double as a shrunken homing beacon in certain emergencies.

"What the hell is that?" Mac squawked at all three girls emerging from the nonfunctional bathroom they'd been changing in. "Are you headed to Spring Break?"

"We're blending in with the nightlife," Isla told us, twirling in the tight orange tank dress that she filled out very well.

"Are you?" Mac genuinely questioned their choices.

The neon color warmed up her caramel skin and complimented Isla's towering legs in a pair of strappy sandals. Her hair had been piled on her head and fixed with a colorful scarf to look like tendrils of beachy waves that could barely be controlled. Nawell had wiped the dark makeup off to give her sister a fresh-faced charm. It was a far cry from Isla's punky getup in the cabin, and she looked incredible.

"It's Caracas, you prude," Valentina teased in Mac's direction, giving us a sultry wiggle of her tush. "You'll see."

"I've seen too much!" Mac growled. "Put on a robe!"

Valentina spun around in her jean shorts that barely contained the curve of her lovely lady rump with a sassy smile. 

Even worse, when Cyrus stepped out into the light my jaw nearly fell off my skull. He looked dangerously hot with his sultry scar tracing the austere angles of his handsome face and lean build dressed in a crisp white button-down and light slacks.

Our eyes met briefly, but I broke away before I could see his reaction. I was too distracted by the tingles he'd sent to my nether regions.

"Let's get this train moving," Valentina called, fluffing her hair to fall in shiny raven waves framing the stimulating tube top precariously holding her breasts in place. "Have fun guys."

The twins gave me a smothering hug before dropping through the portal that Isla generated. I watched the sheen of Nawell's strapless spandex column dress flitter out of sight but avoided giving Cyrus the satisfaction of my attention when it was his turn.

"How are they supposed to get ahold of us if there's a problem?" I complained as the purple sparklers disappeared.

"Val's got that covered," Mac relaxed back into a grimy mattress to stare out at the moon. "You've got enough to worry about."

"A lot of good that does me," I sighed.

"Don't worry, I'm thinking about your mom and Aaron too," Mac folded himself up to look at me. "We're going to figure that out as soon as we stop this group from selling everything they've got to the highest bidder."

"I don't get it, Mac!" I exclaimed, tossing my hands up to the bunk springs above me. "I mean, you didn't even tell me you were a freakin' Scion when we met, so I don't know why I expected the truth! You didn't want anything to do with Scions, or me, a couple of months ago! But now? You're all in!"

"I didn't tell you the truth because I was trying to protect you," he growled.

"From what?!"

"From this," Mac's face clouded over as his head sank into his chest, defeated. "And for the record, I didn't know Varun created six other Scions. I honestly thought I was the only one...Until you showed up. Ella, we are trying to stop this from happening to any more people."

"Wait, I thought there were only five of them?" I cocked my head as Mac cringed.

"They didn't tell you about Mohamed?" He asked through gritted teeth.

"No," I sighed. "But why am I not surprised there's another one?"

"Hey," Mac warned, holding up a thick finger. "This isn't an easy topic for them to talk about, and it's a nightmare you've already lived. Mohamed was the youngest survivor of project Scion, and their brother. For some reason, he didn't make it. When Varun gassed him, his new powers pulled him apart like pork in a slow cooker."

"You don't need to describe it so vividly," I remarked over a small nauseous gulp.

Neither Basem nor Nawell had alluded to Varun using a gas chamber to create them, nor that they had another sibling, and I couldn't say I blamed them. Their past was officially way more fucked up than mine, which was really saying something.

Just the thought of Aaron in traction after the attack was enough to make me physically ill. When my dad died, my family was irrevocably transformed for the worst. A part of our whole had been excised. That empty ache never goes away, you just grow accustomed to it, and I couldn't fathom having to go through it again.

"His little brother's death made Cyrus ask questions that Varun didn't like," Mac went on, ignoring my comment altogether. "When Cyrus went digging, he found things he couldn't un-know. He found out about the mass graves, the inoculations spiked with the Scion serum, the refugee deaths, all of it. He found all the evidence of the same awful stories you've been listening to over the last few days. Varun lied to those kids like lied to you and me."

"Yeah," I agreed, still not grasping how this information was going to help us now. "Everybody did shitty shit, even my dad. I get it. What I don't get is, how does going after C.E. make up for it?"

"Actually your dad was the bravest of all of us," Mac argued with a feisty edge in his tone. "Hamm ordered David's execution because he threatened to go public about all the bodies they were burying. We all had blood on our hands, that much is true, but your dad was the only one of us willing to die for the truth. I should've died the day that chopper went down...Because I was on it." 

Woah!!!!! Holy big reveal, Batman!! Or were you expecting to find out that Mac was onboard the same chopper that killed Elle's dad?