Enigma (Rogue #2)

35

Ever since Keone had awakened from his close-to-death slumber, it had been nothing but low spirits around. He sat in the corner with his knees hugged to his chest like a punished kid, his gaze pierced onto all of them. Eniola sat on the other side, as far as she could, huddling away on a beanbag. Her skin felt icy, yet hot when she thought of what he tried to pull today. Eniola hated to imagine what would happen if he succeeded.

Lucia had managed to not talk, despite always talking. Instead, she looked over at him with an icy glare, like the one Zaira gave. Iris did her best to ignore him by talking to Theo about her newest cyborg update, even though Iris never talked about that kind of stuff. Jay pretended to be twiddling with his fingers and Zaira stayed in the other corner, hacking away to save the world.

"I was told I needed to be awake because you all wanted me to spill my secrets," Keone finally spoke. "So, where is the interrogation?"

"We've been waiting for you to talk," Iris said. "What do you know about Enigma?"

"I could ask you the same," Keone said. Iris swapped him with a side-eye.

"This is not the time to be rhetorical!" Lucia suddenly shouted. "What should we know?"

"I'm not being rhetorical," Keone replied. "I truly asking Iris what she knows about Enigma. You'd be surprised at what she knows. Right, Iris?"

Iris stiffened before the side-eye got wider. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Really?" Keone said, lingering on his words. "It's weird. You knew about Enigma this entire time, yet you're around here running around the world acting like you don't know about it."

Eniola raised an eyebrow.

"They don't know, do they?" Keone asked. Eniola immediately rose from the slump on the beanbag.

"Know what?" Lucia spoke up, turning to Iris in curious horror.

"Yeah," Zaira replied. "How would you know about Enigma?"

Iris paled more than she already was and averted her gaze to the floor, as all of them put their gaze on her. There's no way Iris could've known about Enigma. Iris wouldn't keep such a secret like that. Keone was lying. He always did. Right?

"Since you won't talk, I will," Keone said before he cleared his throat. "Iris here helped me become Paradox."

"No, I didn't!" Iris suddenly snapped, facing Keone with wide eyes. A gasp came from Eniola.

"Hold on, hold on," Jay cut in. "What? I think I might've spaced out."

Iris swallowed back a nervous gulp while Keone smirked at her. "Tell them what you did, Iris."

"Yeah," Theo agreed.

Iris sucked in a breath. "It's true. I knew about Paradox and Enigma and year before happened."

"No way," Jay mumbled.

"How?" Eniola asked.

Iris gestured awkwardly before starting. "Before I talk, I didn't choose to get involved with this. It just happened. And that was because Keone blackmailed me."

"Okay," Eniola whispered in relief. "That makes more sense."

"But explain?" Theo continued. He traded a glare with Keone.

"Two years ago, I first figured out I could use being a cyborg to my back when Keone was in Rogue. And then I used these abilities to buy a rare power-up from the SCOPE. Not my proudest moment. Anyway, Keone saw me and threatened to tell me if I didn't do what he wanted."