Merciless by Robin Parrish

Author:Robin Parrish [Parrish, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2009-04-30T20:00:00+00:00

34

Alex wasn’t sure how long she’d slept when she awoke to the sound of arguing downstairs. She felt stronger today, so despite the old man’s wordless protestations, she insisted on going downstairs for the first time since she’d arrived here at Payton’s sterile, function-before-form home.

She took the stairs slowly with the old man’s help, her feet aching with each step and her stomach still anguished. But her frequent pauses let her listen and watch the argument unfold, just to the right and bottom of the staircase. No one seemed to notice her. Most of them were sitting around what looked like a small breakfast nook; Payton stood off to one side, arms crossed, body leaning against one of the six metal I-beams that were holding up the interior of the three-story-high building.

“But he’s unstoppable! Facing him is suicide.”

“How do we know that for sure?”

“Agreed,” Daniel was saying. “Let’s not forget that we have a weapon now—a real way of fighting back. We can release Ringwearers from his control. And I think it’s safe to assume that once we’ve touched their bloodstream with the Dominion Stone, Ringwearers disappear from his internal radar—from the Forging—too. Oblivion can’t see Payton and Alex anymore, or their location, or else we would have been found by now. So why shouldn’t we free more of them?”

“Because what good would that do us?” Lisa replied. Alex was surprised to see these two falling on opposing sides of an argument. She’d noticed the glances and furtive hand-holding between them at the last group meeting. “Freeing Payton and Alex nearly cost us our lives. And even if we somehow freed every last one of the Ringwearers, do any of them realistically have a chance at stopping Oblivion?”

“I will stop him.”

The conversation halted. Everyone turned to look at Payton.

“How?” Alex called out, descending to the bottom stair.

There was a bit of commotion as some of the others protested her appearance out of bed, but she refused to return. She wanted to see Morgan’s message. So the others slid around the curving seats at the table and gave her a place to sit. Her one-handed caretaker sat next to her, watching over her IV line. She’d become accustomed to his presence and even found it oddly comforting.

“I said,” Alex repeated, once everyone was situated, “how do you plan on stopping Oblivion? And if your answer involves anything other than finding a way to draw Grant out from inside Oblivion . . . then you can just bury that plan right here and now.”

She’d spoken with such icy resolve that no one dared question her, at least not at first. She and Payton stared each other down with such intensity that a few of the others held their breaths as they watched.

“B-b-but . . .” Lisa stuttered nervously, not taking her eyes off of the standoff between Alex and Payton, “but I thought . . . that guy Devlin said Grant was dead. Didn’t he?”

“I don’t care what he said,” Alex replied, looking at Lisa with hardened eyes.

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