Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) by Lindsey Fairleigh, Lindsey Pogue Page A

you—if
I—I could—”
    “Kill me, I
know.” I sighed, frustrated with myself for upsetting him. He’d already been
through so much—too much for most people to experience and be able to keep
going. And now he had one more problem to deal with—worrying about whether or
not he might accidentally electrocute the rest of us if we touched him at an
inopportune time. There was only one person who could help him with his new
problem. I placed my hand on my hip and straightened my spine. “Do you have any
clue what his job was?”
    Carlos raised his
eyebrows. “Huh?”
    “Gabe—back at the
Colony. Do you know what his job was?” I repeated.
    Carlos kicked a
small rock. “No.”
    “He was in charge
of Ability research.”
    “He was?” Carlos
looked up, interest flitting over his features.
    “Yep.” I moved
across the trampled grass to stand in front of him. “And if anyone can, he’s
the one who can help you figure out how to do the electrotherapy thing safely
and effectively and learn how to control that whole zapping people
thing.” I looked up, met Carlos’s eyes, and waited.
    A second.
    Three.
    Twenty.
    Carlos pressed
his lips into a flat line, inhaled deeply, and nodded. “Fine. Okay. Yeah, I’ll
do it.”
    “You will?” I
said, doing a really poor job of hiding my surprise. Jason’s stubbornness had
been rubbing off on Carlos in a really unfortunate way.
    Carlos looked at
the ground. “Yeah, but…not yet. I mean, I want to get a little better at all
this first, and…can we not tell Jason?” He met my eyes briefly, then
looked away. “It’s just that he hates Gabe, and I don’t want him to, like,
think I’m betraying him or something.”
    My stomach flip-flopped,
making me feel a little ill. “Uh…yeah. Sure. Why not?” What’s the harm in
one more secret, anyway?
    I ignored the
part of me that whispered, You mean, what’s the harm in one more lie ?
    “We can help,
too,” Mase said as he stepped out from between two of the carts, little more
than a hulking shadow.
    I yelped and
jumped at least a foot off the ground. “Jesus, Mase!”
    “Sorry.” Mase
ducked his head as he moved closer. Camille followed close behind him, her own
slender, shadowed form half his size. They stopped a yard or so away from
Carlos and me. “I knew you had first watch tonight, and we wanted—”
    Camille hit his
arm with the back of her hand.
    Scowling, Mase
corrected himself. “ I wanted to tell you something Camille told me
earlier.”
    My eyebrows rose
as my gaze slipped from Mase’s hard, dark features to Camille’s pale, elfin
face. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I glanced down at the small dry-erase board
she was clutching to her chest. It was another of the items we’d taken from Colorado
Trails Lodge. Camille still wasn’t “speaking” much, but it seemed that Mase had
managed to get her writing during the hours they’d spent driving a cart
together earlier today.
    I returned my
attention to Mase.
    “Dr. Wesley is a
liar.”
    I frowned and
glanced at Carlos, who shrugged before pulling himself back up onto the wagon. I
refocused on Mase. “About…?”
    “She loves him.”
    I cocked my head
the side. “I’m sorry, Mase, I’m not following…”
    “Father—General
Herodson. She loves him.”
    My mouth fell
open. “That’s not…” I started to shake my head. “That’s not possible.” She’d
gone out of her way to save me by making the neutralizer and attuning it to my
blood—twice. And Zoe…Dr. Wesley had shown up before Clara—the General’s shiny
new toy—could do more harm to Zoe than simply wiping away her memories. Dr.
Wesley had been leading the anti-Herodson rebellion by supplying neutralizer to
a trusted few, including Gabe and, before he’d been killed and made into a Re-gen,
Mase. She hated General Herodson.
    Except…she hadn’t
really done anything to stop him, and she had an Ability that could tear the
foundation of his power, his mind-control Ability, right