Betrayed ✔️

Chapter 30: "What did you do?"

JAY

I HATED BEING powerless and scared.

But that was exactly what I felt when I saw the red-cloaked people take Ada.

As soon as she was in the car, the ones holding me back whacked me over the head then jumped into their own van and sped away.

I tried running after them- a very stupid plan in hindsight- but I was desperate. The passageway had dropped us in a remote area of England- there were no people or animals. Or even signs. Only stretches of empty, green fields and a winding grey road. I didn't know where I was.

A silver car rolled up beside me. I stopped and gripped Ada's knife in my hand. The group that attacked us had taken my knife and gun, but didn't take the blade Ada had dropped.

The driver's window rolled down and Nate looked at me. "Get in, loser."

"I have never been glad to see you before this moment," I said happily sliding into the front passenger seat.

Nate scoffed and tossed me a bottle of water and a granola bar. "Eat. You need your strength for what's gonna happen next."

I unwrapped the bar and took a bite. "How did you know where to find me?"

Nate paused before answering, and my insides went cold. The granola bar suddenly tasted like sand. Nate rarely hesitated. He was always so confident and sure of himself.

"Nate," I said slowly. "What did you do?"

"Special Agent Keen called me. She gave me a choice."

"A choice?"

"She said- she said that she had hired the Sanguis. To, uh, take over the Agency. She then, um, said that she hired a separate group to- to kidnap you and the Analyst."

"What?" It felt like a heavy stone had been dropped on my chest and was slowly crushing me.

Brief flashes of our time at the Academy swept through my mind. I forced them back and tried to remind myself that she was a traitor who tried to kill Ada- my sister. I could not, in good conscience, defend her after that.

"But then Keen offered me a choice...Either you or the Analyst."

"Shit." I pressed my hands to my face and leaned forwards as the terrible dots connected together. "Nate, why the fuck would you do that?"

"I was genetically obliged to choose you! Plus, can you imagine, after I die, me going to Heaven and explaining to Grandma that I abandoned you? She would take her slipper and beat me to a second death!"

"There were a thousand other things you could have done that did not involve you selling out Ada to to a fucking traitor!"

Nate frowned. "Since when have you cared so much about that, in your words, damned Analyst?"

"Why didn't you tell me Niamara was alive?" The question was out before I could stop it. I could have told him Ada was our missing sister, but I wanted to really lay on the guilt first.

Nate sucked in a sharp breath, then chuckled softly and shook his head. "How long have you known?"

"Long enough. Now tell me the truth."

"She was kidnapped when you both were three years old. Mother was... well, she was Mother. Grandma and Dad? I don't know what they were thinking. They tried searching for many years, Grandma never gave up until the Lord took her, but we could never find anything."

"Why did you lie to me?"

"Initially, we did tell you the truth. But then you would become so distraught. Once, you cried so hard that you had a fever for a week! So Grandma and Dad decided it would be best to write her out of your memory. We pretended she had never existed, hiding all the photos and any other evidence. After Grandma died, I took up the search again."

That was three years ago...Ada would have been at the Agency at that time.

I felt sick to my stomach. Wilson and I could have grown up together. She could have been given the same opportunities as me, maybe even gone to the Academy and seen that it is not nepotistic. But through a cruel twist of fate, she was subjected to a life of torture while her own family tried to forget she ever existed.

I remembered her contorted expression in the woods as she recounted some of her most horrifying memories of her youth and felt a blinding rage sear through me.

I wish Grandma, Dad and Nate had tried harder. I wish I had known about this earlier. I wish I hadn't let my guard down. I wish I had been stronger, so Ada wouldn't have been kidnapped.

I wish I had just been better.

"It's okay, though," Nate tried to smile, but it was too strained, "we'll find her. Once this whole business with the Agency is cleared up-"

"I've already found her."

"...What?"

"I've already found her," I repeated dully, curling my hands into tight fists, "That 'damned Analyst' you helped kidnap? She's Niamara."

"No." Nate chuckled nervously and glanced at me. "No way, Jay. Either you're lying, or- or playing some kind of sick prank-"

"We did a DNA test not too long ago...she's our sister, Nathan, and you might've sent her to her death."

He was silent for the longest time, staring blankly at the miles of grey road swallowed up by our car. Nate's chest rose and fell and he shook his head again.

"No...that's not possible...I didn't know," Nate whispered hoarsely, pulling over. He buried his face in his hands. "I didn't know."

I regarded him coldly, hot rage bubbling inside of me. "Even if she wasn't our sister, it's basic human decency to not sell her out."

"Niamara... Oh God." Nate looked as though he had aged ten years in that short conversation. "If something happens to her, I will never forgive myself."

"That's okay," I smiled brightly as he started the car. "Because if something happens to her, I'll kill you myself." 

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