The Brightest Night (Origin 3)

Sitting at the picnic table were the two teens Zoe had mentioned. Two boys sat close, their heads almost touching as they shared a book in their hands. They must’ve had amazing focus, because I had no idea how they could read when they virtually sat in the middle of an outdoor Romper Room.

“Is this all of them?” I asked, counting them as best as I could since some of those little suckers were fast. “There’s only like fifteen, and they’re all…”

“They’re all what?”

I had no idea how weird it would sound if I said I knew they were human. The three adults—two women and one male—weren’t rocking any alien DNA. It was bizarre, because I felt like there was something else here. Someone who did have alien DNA. I didn’t know how to describe that it wasn’t so much a feeling as a knowledge, so I went with, “There are no Luxen kids, are there?”

Zoe looked at me for a moment and then leaned against the base of an oak, her hands tucked behind her. “There are actually sixteen kids here, but there aren’t any Luxen kids. I went to the Chicago zone once and I saw little Luxen there, but many of the Luxen who were old enough to have kids died in the war, on both sides, and most of the ones who had children ended up registering. Young Luxen can’t always control their abilities. They slip in and out of the form all the time, and having three children who can’t control their forms was too much of a risk. Registering was safer; at least that’s how it appeared in the beginning. A lot of other Luxen don’t seem to want to bring a Luxen or hybrid child into this world, the same with the Arum. Well, except Daemon and Kat, but they’re crazy and apparently decided condoms were for people with common sense.”

I swallowed my laugh.

“Or maybe the condom broke,” she rambled on. “I don’t know, and I’m not going to ask, but I would be scared to death. Their kid is going to be crazy powerful one day, but until then, it’ll just be a baby, and when—”

“Wait. I don’t understand.” I twisted toward her, remembering the Luxen I had accidentally barged in on when I’d gone back to find my phone at Luc’s club. The male had nearly choked me out, but he’d been protecting his family—a family that included a little girl with pigtails. I had no idea if the other two siblings had been there and I hadn’t seen them—because Luxen always came in threes—or if something had happened to them. “Luc had a family at his club. A little girl who was a Luxen. I saw her—”

“They didn’t make it here.”

My heart squeezed and then stopped. “What?”

Somberness was a heavy weight in her voice. “I think it was Daemon and Archer who were moving them. Halfway here, something came up and they had to hand them off to another who was going to take them the rest of the way. They were spotted. We lost Jonathan, too—the Luxen who was escorting them. They were taken to wherever the ART teams take unregistered Luxen.” She watched the children, shoulders tight. “Luc has tried to find out where they’re being housed, and you know Luc. He can ferret out just about anything. Same with Daemon and Archer. Between the two of them, they’ve probably done recon on at least a hundred locations.”

All I could see when I looked back at the children was that little girl.

“We know unregistered Luxen are initially processed at ART offices, but where they’re taken after? No idea. Whenever we think we have leads, it’s a dead end.” Zoe paused. “Either they have them someplace we just haven’t thought to look, or…”

Zoe didn’t finish, but there was no need. Mouth and throat dry like they were coated with ash, I folded my arms over my stomach. The unregistered Luxen didn’t simply vanish, and if there were no leads, no evidence of a holding facility, then that left one possibility.

There were no holding facilities.

And that would mean the little girl with pigtails held by her frightened mother and her father who had been willing to kill to protect her were dead.8How many Luxen had been taken into custody? There weren’t statistics on that as far as I knew, and the worst part—and there were a lot of terrible parts competing for top spot—was this horrific possibility made sense. If the Daedalus planned on eradicating anyone who could fight back, why would they detain the Luxen? What would be the point?

I had to breathe around the building nausea. “And no one apprehended by ART has ever been seen again?”

Zoe opened her eyes. “A few escaped, but it always happened before they were processed. As far as I know, no one has ever escaped after that.”