We have two hours until the next teams are going to arrive, two short hours to get in there stealthily and locate Lydia, taking her out and opening the floodgates of the Resistance’s wrath.
I swallow roughly and check in with my bond one last time before I take Kieran's arm.
Is there anything I need to know before we head out?
It's quiet for a moment and then it answers me. The plan is to lure Davies here and we're not coming back without his head. If he leaves the camp, we follow him. Keep the Transporter with us.
I swallow and send that message through to North, but he just nods at me and then gestures to Kieran that we’re finally ready to move out.
I take a deep breath and then we pop out of existence as one.
We transport directly into the shielded area of the Resistance camp.
The moment our feet touch the ground, Gryphon’s eyes flash to white as he manipulates the minds of the guards around us. I feel a mixture of relief and disappointment that his eyes stay the same white color they’ve always been even as he stretches his abilities the farthest they’ve ever gone.
My question as to why he’s going to take hold of their minds instead of one of us just killing them all doesn’t have the chance to fully form in my mind before the answer is there, thanks to Nox's impromptu information dump.
We don't want anyone finding corpses and raising the alarm.
We have a two hour head start to work our way through the camp and find Lydia. We need to use that to our advantage, because she’s not the type of Gifted we’re used to facing.
Only Davies is stronger than she is.
I had always thought that the camp that I was in was the biggest, but as we look around at the lines of tents, this feels as though it's a city of its own. The tents are all worn-looking, aged and settled into place with the length of time that the camp has been here. I can tell just by looking who sleeps in each of them without even reaching for my Gift.
The further towards the center of the camp you look, the better maintained the tents are. The Resistance don’t care about equality or keeping everyone safe and secure, there’s a very clear division between the grunt workers and those who hold power. While North might’ve made sure we had a house to ourselves in the Sanctuary, there’s no difference in the standard of living between us or any other family there.
No matter what anyone tries to say about the Dravens, I know who the real monsters of the world are.
Kieran has dropped us off at the safest point to enter without being detected, but it means that we have to cross the entire length of the camp to get to Silas Davies’ tent, where his Bonded is waiting for his return. I trust North and Gryphon to make the right call here. If they’ve decided that walking through is what we should do, then I’m going to be stretching my legs here without question.
Gryphon holds the minds of the guards around us, carefully wiping out their memories and replacing them so that they don't notice a gap in their day, until we can dispose of them properly. As soon as we’re able to take out Lydia, we’ll be back here to mop up the rest of the enemy.
We all start to move together as one, Gryphon palming one of his guns as Atlas moves a little closer to me, rolling his shoulders back as he stares around at the camp to see if there’s any danger we might have missed. Gabe flanks my other side, his arms flexing a little as he tries to hold back his dragon. Now that it’s come out to protect me on missions, it’s almost impossible to contain. Nox lets a few of his shadow creatures out to walk with us, but North only lets out August, careful to make sure that our group doesn't become more visible than it needs to be.
Thankfully, Gryphon can cast his Gift out and sense the minds of people as they approach, shutting them all down before they can become a problem for us.
We make good time as we pick our way through the tents. It's early enough in the morning, or late enough at night, depending on how you look at it, that there aren't many people wandering around outside. There isn’t so much for Gryphon to do other than to monitor people.
I don’t make him do that on his own though.
My eyes shift to black as I call on my power, casting out my Gift to get a read on the Resistance fighters and the amount of power we're going to be fighting against.
There’s a lot of bodies around us.
A lot of power as well, enough that the first trickle of fear works its way down my spine, chilling my blood as it goes. My bond might’ve healed up from the soul-bonding, but we didn’t really get a warmup or the chance to figure out if it was back to full Soul-Rending power.
What if it can’t?
What if it just… refuses again?
I want to vomit at the thought, so instead, I focus on gathering information for my Bonded. I do what I can to forget about what I can’t control for now. I find the prisoners tent and try not to focus too long on the terrible condition the people there are in. I can’t help them if I lose my shit about it now. I can be angry about it later.
Most of them are longtime prisoners, already shells of themselves. The fact that there are children among them has my stomach clenching all over again. There’s no amount of therapy that will erase their traumas. Nox is living proof of that.
The kitchen tent is lively as the workers prepare breakfast for hundreds of people. I filter that information through to North and the others so we know about the potential problem there. A couple of the workers are pretty strong as well, strong enough that my bond is interested in their souls.
They could be good fuel if I need it to deal with Lydia.
The smell of the camp is familiar to me, something that always elicits a response in my body, usually in the form of a cold sweat across my forehead and clammy hands. I feel a little sick at the prospect of running into any familiar faces, but Atlas reaches over to squeeze my hand, his eyes narrowed as he looks around at the space.
I'm glad that he's not going to have to run into any members of his family here today. He doesn't deserve any more trauma. His sister being locked up in the cells back at the Sanctuary works in our favor right now, in more ways than one. I'm not sure how his bond would react to the sight of her here, but I'm sure if we ran into her third and final so-called “Bonded”， Atlas would not hesitate in taking the man out.
I find Lydia in the net that I cast out, sleeping in her tent.
She’s sleeping so peacefully, like a goddamned baby, and the fear and horror of the prisoners pops right back into my mind as my Gift takes in exactly how at ease the woman is right now. She’s in perfect health, not a scratch on her or a worry in that evil mind of hers.
I loathe her even more than before.
It's a risk, but I call out to my bond to see if I can tear her soul out from this distance. It falls in line with North's plan just enough that it's worth giving it a go.
It doesn't work, but it does wake her up.
I meet North’s eyes across the group, but he doesn’t look pissed off or disappointed in me, he just squares his shoulders and lets out more of his shadow creatures. They form into dozens of different animals. The snake makes an appearance again, coming over to curl around my legs before it disappears between the rows of tents now that the element of surprise is gone.
And it is gone.
It's almost comical to monitor Lydia as she wakes up and tries to sound the alarm. Every person she attempts to speak to, Gryphon shuts down. We're only a few hundred feet away from her tent when she finally bursts out of it wearing a gun holster thrown over a pair of silk pajamas. It looks utterly ridiculous in the middle of a war camp.