“That’s because he wanted to,” I answered for Daemon, earning a wink from him. “Look, I don’t trust you, but maybe you didn’t know about the shields. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re not going to be able to get in there.”
“I talked to Luc last night. He didn’t know about the shields, either.” Blake shoved his hands into his pockets and stopped in front of us. He was lucky Daemon didn’t lay him out right there. “He’s willing to do it again—take down the cameras and stuff.”
Daemon blew out a long breath. “And what good does that do us? We can’t get past those doors.”
“Or if every door is set up like that,” I added, shivering. I couldn’t imagine going through that three or four times. Sure, I’d been in that cage longer, but the airborne onyx had covered everything.
The three of us were huddled along the fence surrounding the track, careful of keeping our voices low so other students didn’t overhear us and wonder what the heck.
“Well, I was thinking about that,” Blake said, shifting from one foot to the other. “While I was with Daedalus, they used to expose us to this stone each day. Our forks and silverware were encased in it. A lot of stuff was, almost everything we came into contact with. Burned like holy hell to touch, but we didn’t have any other choice. I’ve walked through the doors before and recently. Nothing happened.”
Daemon laughed as he looked away from Blake. “And you now just thought this was a good thing to tell us?”
“I didn’t know what it was. None of us did.” Blake’s gaze pleaded with mine. “I didn’t think much about it.”
Dumbfounded, I realized they’d been conditioning Blake. Probably exposing him and others to the onyx over and over but like last night, something wasn’t right. Why would they expose them to it? Sick and twisted punishment or for tolerance? And why would they want Luxen or hybrids to develop a tolerance to the one weapon that could be used against them?
“You can’t tell me you never knew about the onyx and what it could do,” I said.
He met me dead-on. “I didn’t know that it could incapacitate us.”
I pressed my lips together. “You know, there’s so much we have to just trust you with. That you really are working against Daedalus and not for them. That Beth and Chris are where you’re saying they are, and now, that you didn’t really know about onyx.”
“I know how this looks.”
“I don’t think you do,” Daemon said, letting go of my hand as he propped his hip against the fence. “We have no reason to trust you.”
“And you’ve blackmailed us into helping you,” I added.
Blake exhaled roughly. “Okay. I don’t have a glowing history, but I want nothing more than to get my friend away from them. That’s why I’m here.”
“And why are you here right this instant?” Daemon asked, obviously at his patience threshold.
“I think we can get around the onyx,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and holding them in front of him. “Now, hear me out. This is going to sound crazy.”
“Oh, goodie,” Daemon muttered.
“I think we need to build up a tolerance. If that was what Daedalus was doing, then that makes sense. Hybrids have to go in and out of those doors. If we expose ourselves to it—”
“Are you insane?” Daemon turned around, running his hand through his hair, clasping the back of his neck. “You want us to expose ourselves to onyx?”
“Do you see any other option?”
Yeah, there was one—we didn’t go back. But was it really an option? Daemon was starting to pace. Not a good sign. “Can we do this later? We’re going to be late.”
“Sure.” He sidestepped Daemon. “After school?”
“Maybe,” I said, focusing on Daemon. “We’ll talk later.”
Taking the hint, Blake skedaddled out of there. I had no idea what to say to any of this. “Expose ourselves to onyx?”
Daemon huffed. “He’s insane.”
He was. “Do you think it would work?”
“You’re not…?”
“I don’t know.” I switched my backpack to the other shoulder and we started toward the school. “I really don’t know. We can’t give up, but what other options do we have?”
“We don’t even know if it will work.”
“But if Blake really is sort of immune to it, then we can test it out on him.”
A wide grin spread across his face. “I like the sound of that.”
I laughed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? But seriously, if he has a tolerance to it, then shouldn’t we be able to? It’s something. We’d just need to figure out how to get some.” Daemon was quiet for a few seconds “What?” I asked.
He squinted. “I think I have the onyx part covered.”
“What do you mean?” I stopped again, ignoring the faint warning bell.
“After Will got you and a couple of days after Dawson came back, I returned to the warehouse and stripped most of the onyx from the outside.”
My jaw hit the ground. “What?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why I did it. Kind of like my big FU to the establishment.” He laughed. “Imagine their faces when they went back and saw it was all gone.”
I was speechless.
He tweaked my nose. I smacked his hand away. “You’re insane. You could’ve gotten caught!”