Silver Elite

by Dani Francis

When you’re petrified on a daily basis as a child, there aren’t many things left to fear as an adult. Except, perhaps, awkward conversations. I would rather fight a cougar barehanded than subject myself to an uncomfortable exchange. Truly.

Primes don’t have enhanced gifts. They also don’t experience any physical signs when someone infiltrates their thoughts, whereas Mods feel it like an electric shock. People like him should be on guard.

The Aberrant, as they call us. Or silverbloods, when they’re feeling nice.

We didn’t ask to be this way. Some thoughtless war a hundred and fifty years ago released the toxin that made us like this. We didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Most Primes don’t have shields, or if they do, they’re easily penetrable ones. Which means this man is either Modified, a soldier, or a civilian Prime who for some mysterious reason has mastered the skill of protecting his thoughts.

We’re required to carry it at all times,

No Mod in their right mind would use a Company device to communicate, not when every word spoken or typed is recorded, a roomful of Intelligence agents monitoring every exchange. Same goes for the Nexus, our online network. We’d be fools to rely on either method to speak openly.

Even Primes detest the heavy-handedness of the General, the way he controls every aspect of our lives. Or at least most of them hate it. There are certainly die-hard loyalists willing to betray their own mothers for a brisk nod of approval from that man or his sycophants.

All telepaths have their own unique signature. When I was a kid, my uncle described it as your essence, a surge of energy exclusive to you. It’s almost impossible to explain unless you feel it yourself, but after an initial connection’s been formed, you automatically recognize the other person’s energy when they ask to link.

Yes, the majority are the very definition of silverbloods, the veins in our arms glowing when we’re using our powers. A rare few, like me, don’t fit that mold.

A Mod who can wield her powers without transmitting her actions to her enemies is a major asset for the Uprising.

I linked with Wolf when I was six years old, and to this day I still remember the excitement I felt when I first heard his voice.

I feel…discouraged that he’ll never know who I am. He has no idea that he spent his entire night with a woman he’s incapable of ever truly knowing. Sometimes I wish people could know me.”

“Do they know you’re Julian Ash?” “Yes.”

Luckily, I have no need to return to the house. Uncle Jim and I are drowning in contingency plans.

But he’s being taken to the Point. He’ll have to face the Tribunal.”

“What are you called?” He thought it over. “You can call me Uncle.” “But you’re not.” “In here I am.”

“That name you think is yours, you need to forget it, do you understand? The little girl you used to be is dead. You are somebody new now.”

There is no fear, though,

He stands tall, shoulders straight, face utterly expressionless.

“Goodbye, little bird.”

I take a breath and pretend to calm myself down. Really, I’m steady as can be. Not rattled in the slightest.

Her bloodmark sits high on her left cheek. It’s a perfect red circle, about two inches in diameter and a stark contrast with her lily-white skin. I shudder to think about what might have been if my own mark appeared somewhere other than my thigh.

What if Uncle Jim did decoy his mind during his interrogation, feeding Jayde a train of thought that deliberately led her away from me?

“Nobody’s coming to get you.”

The amount of Luxury credits required for even a few paltry cosmetic injections is astronomical—I can’t imagine how much a full-blown facial reconstruction would cost. And anyway, fuck that. I like my face.

“It means you’re joining the Command.” He smiles without a trace of humor. “You start tomorrow.”

“Your ranch has been reassigned. The new residents take possession tomorrow morning.”

I know it’s Company practice. Houses get reassigned all the time. Citizens transfer to new industries if the Company orders it.

“Your uncle was a deserter of the Command and a traitor to the Company. Which means you either know more than you’re telling us, or you were too stupid to figure out the truth about your guardian.”

“And I suspect that you, Dove, are not stupid.”

It happens then. The tears spill over, sending two warm rivulets pouring down my face. I collapse on the mattress and cry into my palms, cameras be damned. I have no energy left inside me to maintain the mask. I’m a broken, pathetic girl who’s all alone in this broken, pathetic world.

That day I realized how utterly insignificant we are to this planet.

My name is Wren Darlington and I am not a Mod.

Asshole is taken, so I’ll have to call this one Prick.

The Company holds a fifty-one percent stake in all Continental businesses,

Her son turned her in to the Command. The boy she’d spoken so proudly of had betrayed his own mother and reported her for concealment. Jim eventually told me she’d been sent to a labor camp in the north. Slaving at a salt mine. Because of this guy standing in front of me.

Maybe the Faithful have the right idea after all with those Old Era beliefs. At least back then there’d been some semblance of privacy, of freedom. You could live a life far from civilization if you chose. A harder life, certainly, but that’s the thing about freedom, isn’t it? There’s always a price to pay for it. The Faithful are free…to live in the shadows. To decamp at a moment’s notice and find another home on the fringes. To fend off starvation and be hunted by the Command.

Your mind is the one place where you should feel completely and unequivocally safe.

There’s something very aggravating about his face. It’s just so…symmetrical. And that dimple is always on the brink of appearing, as if he wants to smile but can’t quite let it happen.

“You’d be better off keeping a lower profile. The instructors enjoy making life more difficult for the troublemakers.” “Well, I plan on making life difficult for them, so it’s only fair they fight back.”

“That’s Cross Redden, Wren. The General’s son.”

“These are your fellows. And in here, you’re only as strong as your weakest fellow.”

“Weakness doesn’t belong here. In Silver Block, we eat the weak. We cut them out like a cancer.”

“We do not enforce the laws,” Radek says. “That is the responsibility of Tin Block. We do not patrol the streets—that is the responsibility of Copper and Gold.

Our mission is to locate Faithful camps and disband them. To detect criminal enterprises within our cities and dismantle them. To rid our streets and our wards of silverbloods.”

Being bad at something is hard.

“Why hasn’t the Command been able to install an outpost in Carora?”

How the Company is no longer willing to dispatch soldiers down there. There’s been no communication from Carora in more than a hundred years. Anytime an aircraft or ship has traveled that way, it hasn’t returned.

She writes Telepaths. It’s hard to resist the sarcastic urge to raise my hand and say, That’s me. She writes Projectors. Also me. Mind readers. Me again. Healers. I wish. Empaths. No thanks. Precogs. Definitely not. I don’t want that burden. Inciters. My humor dies.