Return (The Resistance Book Three) by Nathan Hystad

Author:Nathan Hystad [Hystad, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Woodbridge Press
Published: 2019-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Serina

The room was emptied out. Even Shadow’s guards were asked to leave and wait in the hall. Benson and Wren had argued they wanted to stay, Wren giving Serina an expression on the way out that said “don’t mess this up.” But things had changed. Serina’s little brother Beck was alive, and somehow, he was the mysterious Shadow.

“I don’t understand,” she said, wrapping her arms around the stranger with her brother’s unmistakable eyes.

“I didn’t know until this year,” he said, as if that answered all her possible queries.

“What do you mean, you didn’t know? Didn’t know what?” Serina prodded, unable to let him go.

“I just found out who I am. I swear I didn’t know,” he said tenderly.

Serina’s head was reeling. “You went missing when I was thirteen.”

“And I was only five, right?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his eyes.

She nodded. “You were my little Beck. Always following me around, annoying me to no end, and I loved you to death. You and Dad were coming home to see us when you disappeared. The vessel was never heard from or seen again. Mom went ballistic, using far too many Fleet assets to search for you, until a year later when Jish told her to stand down. She said that you were both dead, and there was nothing to be done about it. Clearly that woman was wrong. Maybe Mom could have found you if she’d kept looking.”

“I don’t think so. From what I know, I was heading back with our father, and our vessel was boarded. There were a few families on the commercial transport ship, and the adults put up a fight and were systematically killed. The kids were… taken.” Beck sat down, and Serina joined him, their knees touching. Normally, she would have pulled away from contact with a stranger, but with him, it didn’t seem weird or pressure-filled. It was just being.

“And you don’t remember that?” she asked.

“No. I was so little, Serina. As I got older, I recalled some things, like Mom’s voice, and you… I always remembered you, but I didn’t know why. They kept us at a facility in the middle of nowhere, a station where we could go to school and train to be whatever they chose for us,” Beck said.

“They sent you to school?” Serina asked, surprised by the revelation.

“I showed great aptitude, so they gave extra attention to me. I was also one of the youngest they reared there, and that meant I had fewer barriers. I took it all in, their methodology and ideals. I was malleable, and Shadow saw that. By the time I was twelve, I was on supply runs with the older ones.” His eyes went distant.

“Where you killed people and took their possessions?” she asked.

“Sometimes. We didn’t always kill. But when they fought back, we did,” Beck admitted.

Serina didn’t blame him for anything. She herself had done a lot of things she wasn’t proud of during the last thirty years. She was no saint and certainly wasn’t in a position to judge others’ actions.

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