GEN-4

Chapter One The compound burned. Kael didn't watch the flames. He watched the exits. Three of them. One collapsed, one crawling with rebel survivors, one clear. The clear one felt wrong—the smoke moved against the wind, too fast, like something was pulling it. His ribs ached where shrapnel had bitten in ten minutes ago. The wound was still wet. Still bleeding. Good. He was the oldest. Twenty-five years of being the sharpest tool in a very small shed. The others called him cold-blooded. He called it staying alive. "Sector secure." Ren's voice came through the comm, flat as a dead battery. "Nineteen confirmed. No survivors." Kael's jaw tightened. He'd counted twenty-two before the assault. "Three runners." "I said no survivors." Ren didn't argue. He stated. At twenty-four, a year younger than Kael, he'd already perfected the art of sounding like a machine. The lab had done most of the work. The terrorists who'd taken them—taken all four, different times, different cribs—had rewired Ren's brain so thoroughly that empathy was just a word he'd read in a book. Sometimes Kael wondered if Ren missed it. Probably not. You can't miss what you never really had. "East tunnel," came a third voice. Sharp. Female. Vex. "They went east. One of them was a kid." Kael turned. She was perched on a chunk of collapsed balcony, her left arm hanging at an angle that made his own shoulder ache in sympathy. She didn't seem to notice. Or she noticed and didn't care. That was Vex—eighteen, defiant, and utterly convinced that rules were suggestions. "Your arm," Kael said. "What about it?" "It's dislocated." "No shit." She grabbed her own elbow, twisted, and snapped the joint back into place. The sound was wet and wrong. She didn't even wince. Proprioceptive override—her brain could disconnect from her body's positional limits. She could bend where nothing should bend, fit through gaps half her width, escape any hold by simply unmaking her own skeleton. The cost was mornings where she couldn't lift a cup. She'd never admit that. But Kael had seen her drop a glass of water twice last week and pretend it was nothing. "You could have asked Mira to reset it," Kael said. "Mira's busy playing nurse to the enemy." Kael looked down. Mira knelt in the rubble, her soft hands pressed against the throat of a wounded rebel soldier. Not one of theirs. An enemy. The man's chest was torn open—shrapnel, maybe, or one of Ren's precision rounds. He was dying. Mira's face was pale, her breathing shallow. She wasn't healing him. She couldn't. Her gift wasn't magic. Autonomic resonance. She could sync her nervous system to anyone she touched. Share their pain. Match their heartbeat. And in this case, pull the man's agony into her own body so he could die without screaming. The rebel's eyes fluttered. His hand found hers. Then he stopped moving. Mira stayed there for three more seconds. Then she collapsed sideways, gasping. Kael was already moving. He caught her before she hit the ground. Her skin was cold. Her pulse was slow—too slow. She'd taken too much. Again. "You're an i***t," he said. But his voice came out softer than he meant it to. "He was alone," Mira whispered. "Everyone else ran. He was alone and he was scared and he was eighteen, Kael. Same age as us." Same age as her and Vex. Eighteen. Born the same day, kidn*pped the same hour from the same hospital. Mira and Vex had been twenty-four hours old when the terrorists came. Kael had been five. Ren had been four. Two years in that lab. Then a seven-year-old and a six-year-old had broken out, carrying two toddlers through a warzone, and somehow found their way to military headquarters. That was sixteen years ago. Sometimes it felt like yesterday. Sometimes it felt like another lifetime entirely. Most days, it felt like both at once. "You should have let him die," Vex said, dropping down from the balcony. Her arm was still clicking. She was trying not to show how much it hurt. Failing. "He would have shot you an hour ago if he'd had the chance." "He didn't have the chance," Mira said quietly. "Because Kael and Ren already killed everyone with a trigger finger." "Vex." Kael's voice was quiet. That was enough. She shut up. Not because she respected him. Because she was betrothed to him, and the fastest way to lose an argument with your future husband was to pretend you had a choice. She'd tried that once. It hadn't ended well. The wedding was in three weeks. Contracts signed before any of them were born—political mergers between four high-ranking officials who'd eventually claimed the children as their own. Vex to Kael. Mira to Ren. Two weapons locked together in case one misfired. Vex hated it. Kael didn't care. That was the difference between them. Or that's what he told himself. Late at night, when he couldn't sleep, he wasn't always sure. "We need to move," Ren said. He hadn't left his position—a collapsed column near the tunnel entrance. His fingers were twitching. Tactical precognition. His enhanced brain processed micro-changes in the environment faster than anyone else's. Muscle twitches, air currents, sound reflections. He didn't see the future. He saw the present 0.8 seconds before it arrived. In combat, that was the difference between a bullet in your chest and a bullet in the past. In conversations, it made him unbearable. He always knew what you were going to say before you said it. He'd been finishing Kael's sentences since they were children. He'd stopped being wrong about six years ago. "There are three hostiles approximately six hundred meters east," Ren continued. "One adult, two adolescents. They are armed but not trained. A fourth hostile—the child Vex mentioned—has separated from the group and is moving north alone." "How do you know all that?" Mira asked. Ren looked at her. His face didn't change. He was betrothed to her, and he treated her like a piece of field equipment. Useful. Replaceable. Unremarkable. But his voice, when he answered, was almost gentle. Almost. "I listened," he said. Mira's eyes flickered—hurt, then gone. She was soft. Kind. The kind of soft that absorbed other people's pain because she couldn't stand to watch them carry it alone. The kind of kind that made her easy to ignore. Vex never ignored her. Vex hated her, sometimes, for being everything Vex wasn't—patient, gentle, obedient. But Vex also slept in Mira's room after bad missions. They were frenemies the way only people who'd been kidn*pped as newborns could be. Bound by trauma. Loosened by personality. Sometimes Kael heard them laughing through the walls. It was the only time either of them sounded like actual teenagers. "North," Kael said. "The child went north. That's toward the evac point." "He's looking for help," Ren said. "He won't find any." "Can you track him?" "I can kill him from here." Kael considered it. The child was a loose end. Loose ends became witnesses. Witnesses became rebels. Rebels became the reason Kael had bled more times than he could count. He had scars on top of scars. Some nights he couldn't sleep because his body remembered every wound at once. But Mira was still slumped against his shoulder. Her hand was still pressed to her own chest, feeling the echo of a dead man's heartbeat. She was shaking. Just a little. Just enough. "No," Kael said. "We move east. Take the adults. The kid lives." Ren's expression didn't change. But his fingers stopped twitching for just a second—the equivalent of a sigh, for someone who'd forgotten how to breathe emotionally. He didn't agree. But he didn't argue either. "Your call," Ren said. "It's wrong. But it's your call." Vex laughed—short, sharp, bitter. "And that's why you're not the leader, Ren. Because you'd kill a child and call it strategy. Kael kills a child and calls it Tuesday. There's a difference." "Is there?" Kael didn't answer. He just stood there for a second, looking at the smoke, feeling the weight of Mira against his side. He'd killed a child once. Fifteen years old. It had been clean. It had been necessary. He still saw the kid's face sometimes, right before he fell asleep. He'd learned to live with it. That wasn't the same as being fine. "Mount up," he said finally. "Extraction in ten. We take the adults, we grab the intel, we leave. Anyone have a problem with that?" No one said yes. No one said no. That was how it worked with four people who'd been raised as weapons. Orders were optional only if you were willing to die for the alternative. And none of them were willing to die. Not yet. Not before the weddings. The shuttle came down seven minutes later. Kael had to drag Ren away from the east tunnel—the older man was already lining up a shot on the fleeing adults, his tactical precognition showing him exactly where they'd be in 0.8 seconds. Exactly where the bullet would land. "We need them alive," Kael said. "For what? Interrogation? Mira can't take another hit of pain transfer. She's already half-dead from playing hospice to a rebel." "Then we interrogate them the old way." Ren looked at him. "You mean torture." "I mean conversation with incentives." "That's torture." Kael didn't answer. He just walked toward the shuttle, Mira's arm still looped around his shoulder, her breathing finally starting to steady. He didn't like it either. But liking things was a luxury he couldn't afford. Inside, the four of them stripped off their armor in silence. The walls were grey. The seats were grey. Everything about their lives was grey except the blood. Vex was the first to speak. "Fathers want a briefing as soon as we land." "Fathers can wait," Kael said. "They want the weddings." Ren's voice was clinical. "Lunar cycle. Ceasefire terms. Vex to Kael first—political spectacle. Then Mira to me—military consolidation. Rebel leader's son attends as witness. Name is Cassian Vey. Possibly an assassin." "Possibly?" Vex snorted. "Probably," Ren amended. Mira looked up from where she sat, her head against the bulkhead. Her eyes were red—not from crying. From the pain she'd absorbed. From exhaustion. From the quiet terror of marrying a man who looked at her like a spreadsheet. "Do we have a choice?" "No," Kael said. "I wasn't asking you." The shuttle hummed. Somewhere below, the capital's spires were waiting—white marble and steel, home and prison. Four fathers in four thrones, ready to dress them in silk and sell them to peace. Kael touched his ribs. The shrapnel wound was still bleeding. Still making him faster. Sharper. He knew it was stupid. He did it anyway. Pain was the only thing that felt real anymore. Vex watched him do it. "You're going to pass out from blood loss one day and I'm going to stand there and watch." "No you won't." "Want to bet?" "You'd lose." She hated that he was right. She'd catch him. She always did. Not because she loved him—she didn't. Not because she respected him—she didn't. But because he was her betrothed, and if he died, the contract would pass to someone else. Someone worse. Someone who wouldn't let her dislocate her own joints in peace. She looked away first. She always looked away first. Kael pretended not to notice. Mira reached across the aisle and pressed her palm to Kael's wound. He tried to pull away. She held on. "Let me," she said. "I don't need—" "I know. Let me anyway." She synchronized. Her breathing slowed. Her face paled. The wound on Kael's ribs stopped throbbing—not healed, just less. In return, Mira's left hand started trembling. She was taking his pain the way she'd taken the rebel's. The way she took everyone's pain. The way she'd been taking it since she was old enough to understand that other people hurt. "You're going to kill yourself," Kael said quietly. "Not today." She pulled her hand back. The trembling didn't stop. She hid it in her pocket. Kael saw anyway. The shuttle broke through the clouds. The capital sprawled below—a million lights, a million people who would never know that their protectors were four broken children who'd never learned how to be anything else. Kael looked at Vex. His future wife. Eighteen, sharp, defiant, and already planning her escape. He could see it in the way she stared out the window, mapping routes, counting exits. She'd always been like that. Even when they were kids. She looked back. "What?" "Nothing." "Then stop staring." He didn't stop. He kept staring until she looked away first. That was the only victory he ever got with her. He'd learned to take what he could get. The shuttle landed. Four fathers waited. The war wasn't over. The weddings hadn't begun. And somewhere in the eastern provinces, a rebel's son named Cassian Vey was probably writing a speech for a ceremony he planned to interrupt with a knife. Or maybe he was just some kid doing what his father told him. Kael had been that kid once. He still was, in some ways. Kael smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "Let's go get married," he said. No one laughed. But for just a second, Vex almost did.