Free Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four by Emma L. Adams Page A

right?”
    “Yeah. We didn’t think. The earpieces are back at Central. They ran out of battery. I have the tracker, and I lost her trace when they closed the doorway.” But a trace would be here, in Ada’s house. It had to be.
    “Trace?” asked Alber, blankly.
    “When a person uses magic, they leave a kind of echo. I can pick up on it and follow it, using a tracker. If I found her signal and I had a key that opened any world, then in theory, I could find her.” I couldn’t tell them that if I’d lost her signal for good, that was it. Not to mention the sheer unlikelihood of opening a door to the exact right place. I didn’t know nearly enough about the source the world-keys were made of. The source I’d tapped into on Vey-Xanetha.
    “That’s… not right.” Jeth shook his head, frowning. “Trackers can’t trace a person offworld. They usually only work on low-magic worlds where there isn’t as much interference. Ada told me that’s how she found Al, when…”
    “When those asshat Conners took me prisoner,” said Alber, his jaw clenching. “They didn’t have anything to do with this, did they?”
    “No, they’re dead,” I said. “Did Ada not tell you…?” It didn’t matter if her family knew now, anyway. Somehow, saying the words aloud was nothing compared to the shit I’d been through already. “The experiment. I was a part of it. I have… lustre in my blood. I’m an amplifier.”
    I paused. The Fletcher family gaped at me like I’d declared I could teleport between universes.
    Jeth was first to speak. “You… you were part of it?” He turned to Nell. “Did you know?”
    “I suspected,” she said, “but I’ve never heard of lustre.”
    “You haven’t?” So Enzar didn’t have access to amplifying sources. I stored that information away. Right now, all that mattered was finding Ada. “I can only amplify certain magic-fuelled devices, like the Chameleon—or bloodrock, I guess.”
    Jeth shook his head. “That’s… insane. Ada didn’t tell us.” A note of suspicion crept into his voice.
    “It’s not like I’ve been telling everyone across the Multiverse,” I said. “Even my boss doesn’t know.”
    “That so?” Jeth looked at me with definite suspicion. “Wasn’t your father the one who spearheaded the whole thing? Skyla said, right?”
    For God’s sake. “That’s irrelevant,” I said tightly. “I didn’t volunteer to get shot up with an unknown magic source.” I looked away from their stares, fists clenching. “If I knew how to find Ada, I would. But I don’t.”
    “You can turn invisible,” said Nell. “You can go anywhere, unseen. Why not use it to go after these creatures?”
    “I need to be touching a Chameleon,” I said. “We handed them in at Central because the batteries had run out. I don’t need it to actually be switched on, though. I can draw on the source even if it’s dormant. Chameleons are made out of bloodrock, right?” I directed the question at Jeth.
    “The coating’s bloodrock,” he said. “The inside is a mixture of Valerian and Klathican tech—you know their enhancement drugs? They give people a temporary boost. I figured I could create a one-use only device that did the same. Most didn’t work, but for some reason, bloodrock did. It’s more efficient than bloodrock solution because it doesn’t rely on being constantly applied. But I’d never—I’d never have thought of injecting it inside a person.” He cleared his throat, not looking me in the eyes. “If you found Ada, you’d have to hand her the device, and make sure the battery was charged.”
    “I can transfer my abilities to her,” I said. “She has an absorbent in her blood.”
    “She does?” Jeth glanced at Nell.
    “Don’t you claim to know more about my daughter than I do,” said Nell, her lips white with anger. “You’ve done nothing but stir up trouble.”
    “Nell,” said Alber, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Right now, he’s our only