by Tahereh Mafi
“You what?” Warner is looking at me closely. “How will you get to my father? How will you fight him?”
“I don’t know!” I’m pacing across the room now. “But I have to find them. They might be my only friends left in this world and—”
I stop.
I spin around suddenly, heart in my throat.
“What if there are others?” I whisper, too afraid to hope.
I meet Warner across the room.
“What if there are other survivors?” I ask, louder now. “What if they’re hiding somewhere?”
“That seems unlikely.”
“But there’s a chance, isn’t there?” I’m desperate. “If there’s even the slightest chance—”
Warner sighs. Runs a hand through the hair at the back of his head. “If you’d seen the devastation the way that I did, you wouldn’t be saying such things. Hope will break your heart all over again.”
My knees have begun to buckle.
I cling to the bed frame, breathing fast, hands shaking. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t actually know what’s happened to Omega Point. I don’t know where the capital is or how I’d get there. I don’t know if I’d even be able to get to Sonya and Sara in time. But I can’t shake this sudden, stupid hope that more of my friends have somehow survived.
Because they’re stronger than this—smarter.
“They’ve been planning for war for such a long time,” I hear myself say. “They must have had some kind of a backup plan. A place to hide—”
“Juliette—”
“Dammit, Warner! I have to try. You have to let me look.”
“This is unhealthy.” He won’t meet my eyes. “It’s dangerous for you to think there’s a chance anyone might still be alive.”
I stare at his strong, steady profile.
He studies his hands.
“Please,” I whisper.
He sighs.
“I have to head to the compounds in the next day or so, just to better oversee the process of rebuilding the area.” He tenses as he speaks. “We lost many civilians,” he says. “Too many. The remaining citizens are understandably traumatized and subdued, as was my father’s intention. They’ve been stripped of any last hope they might’ve had for rebellion.”
A tight breath.
“And now everything must be quickly put back in order,” he says. “The bodies are being cleared out and incinerated. The damaged housing units are being replaced. Civilians are being forced to go back to work, orphans are being moved, and the remaining children are required to attend their sector schools.
“The Reestablishment,” he says, “does not allow time for people to grieve.”
There’s a heavy silence between us.
“While I’m overseeing the compounds,” Warner says, “I can find a way to take you back to Omega Point. I can show you what’s happened. And then, once you have proof, you will have to make your choice.”
“What choice?”
“You have to decide your next move. You can stay with me,” he says, hesitating, “or, if you prefer, I can arrange for you to live undetected, somewhere on unregulated grounds. But it will be a solitary existence,” he says quietly. “You can never be discovered.”
“Oh.”
A pause.
“Yes,” he says.
Another pause.
“Or,” I say to him, “I leave, find your father, kill him, and deal with the consequences on my own.”
Warner fights a smile and fails.
He glances down and laughs just a little before looking me right in the eye. He shakes his head.
“What’s so funny?”
“My dear girl.”
“What?”
“I have been waiting for this moment for a long time now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re finally ready,” he says. “You’re finally ready to fight.”
Shock courses through me. “Of course I am.”
In an instant I’m bombarded by memories of the battlefield, the terror of being shot to death. I have not forgotten my friends or my renewed conviction, my determination to do things differently. To make a difference. To really fight this time, with no hesitation. No matter what happens—and no matter what I discover—there’s no turning back for me anymore. There are no other alternatives.
I have not forgotten. “I forge forward or die.”
Warner laughs out loud. He looks like he might cry.
“I am going to kill your father,” I say to him, “and I’m going to destroy The Reestablishment.”
He’s still smiling.
“I will.”
“I know,” he says.
“Then why are you laughing at me?”
“I’m not,” he says softly. “I’m only wondering,” he says, “if you would like my help.”
FOUR
“What?” I blink fast, disbelieving.
“I’ve always told you,” Warner says to me, “that we would make an excellent team. I’ve always said that I’ve been waiting for you to be ready—for you to recognize your anger, your own strength. I’ve been waiting since the day I met you.”
“But you wanted to use me for The Reestablishment—you wanted me to torture innocent people—”
“Not true.”
“What? What are you talking about? You told me yourself—”
“I lied.” He shrugs.
My mouth has fallen open.
“There are three things you should know about me, love.” He steps forward. “The first,” he says, “is that I hate my father more than you might ever be capable of understanding.” He clears his throat. “Second, is that I am an unapologetically selfish person, who, in almost every situation, makes decisions based entirely on self-interest. And third.” A pause as he looks down. Laughs a little. “I never had any intention of using you as a weapon.”
Words have failed me.
I sit down.
Numb.
“That was an elaborate scheme I designed entirely for my father’s benefit,” Warner says. “I had to convince him it would be a good idea to invest in someone like you, that we might utilize you for military gain. And to be quite, quite honest, I’m still not sure how I managed it. The idea is ludicrous. To spend all that time, money, and energy on reforming a supposedly psychotic girl just for the sake of torture?” He shakes his head. “I knew from the beginning it would be a fruitless endeavor; a complete waste of time. There are far more effective methods of extracting information from the unwilling.”
“Then why—why did you want me?”
His eyes are jarring in their sincerity. “I wanted to study you.”
“What?” I gasp.
He turns his back to me. “Did you know,” he says, so quietly I have to strain to hear him, “that my mother lives in that house?” He looks to the closed door. “The one my father brought you to? The one where he shot you? She was in her room. Just down the hall from where he was keeping you.”
When I don’t respond, Warner turns to face me.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Your father mentioned something about her.”
“Oh?” Alarm flits in and out of his features. He quickly masks the emotion. “And what,” he says, making an effort to sound calm, “did he say about her?”
“That she’s sick,” I tell him, hating myself for the tremor that goes through his body. “That he stores her there because she doesn’t do well in the compounds.”
Warner leans back against the wall, looking as if he requires the support. He takes a hard breath. “Yes,” he finally says. “It’s true. She’s sick. She became ill very suddenly.” His eyes are focused on a distant point in another world. “When I was a child, she seemed perfectly fine,” he says, turning and turning the jade ring around his finger. “But then one day she just . . . fell apart. For years I fought my father to seek treatment, to find a cure, but he never cared. I was on my own to find help for her, and no matter who I contacted, no doctor wa
s able to treat her. No one,” he says, hardly breathing now, “knew what was wrong with her. She exists in a constant state of agony,” he says, “and I’ve always been too selfish to let her die.”
He looks up.
“And then I heard about you. I’d heard stories about you, rumors,” he says. “And it gave me hope for the very first time. I wanted access to you; I wanted to study you. I wanted to know and understand you firsthand. Because in all my research, you were the only person I’d ever heard of who might be able to offer me answers about my mother’s condition. I was desperate,” he says. “I was willing to try anything.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “How could someone like me be able to help you with your mother?”
His eyes find mine again, bright with anguish. “Because, love. You cannot touch anyone. And she,” he says, “she cannot be touched.”
FIVE
I’ve lost the ability to speak.
“I finally understand her pain,” Warner says. “I finally understand what it must be like for her. Because of you. Because I saw what it did to you—what it does to you—to carry that kind of burden, to exist with that much power and to live among those who do not understand.”
He tilts his head back against the wall, presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“She, much like you,” he says, “must feel as though there is a monster inside of her. But unlike you, her only victim is herself. She cannot live in her own skin. She cannot be touched by anyone; not even by her own hands. Not to brush a hair from her forehead or to clench her fists. She’s afraid to speak, to move her legs, to stretch her arms, even to shift to a more comfortable position, simply because the sensation of her skin brushing against itself causes her an excruciating amount of pain.”
He drops his hands.
“It seems,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, “that something in the heat of human contact triggers this terrible, destructive power within her, and because she is both the originator and the recipient of the pain, she’s somehow incapable of killing herself. Instead, she exists as a prisoner in her own bones, unable to escape this self-inflicted torture.”
My eyes are stinging hard. I blink fast.
For so many years I thought my life was difficult; I thought I understood what it meant to suffer. But this. This is something I can’t even begin to comprehend. I never stopped to consider that someone else might have it worse than I do.
It makes me feel ashamed for ever having felt sorry for myself.
“For a long time,” Warner continues, “I thought she was just . . . sick. I thought she’d developed some kind of illness that was attacking her immune system, something that made her skin sensitive and painful. I assumed that, with the proper treatment, she would eventually heal. I kept hoping,” he says, “until I finally realized that years had gone by and nothing had changed. The constant agony began to destroy her mental stability; she eventually gave up on life. She let the pain take over. She refused to get out of bed or to eat regularly; she stopped caring about basic hygiene. And my father’s solution was to drug her.
“He keeps her locked in that house with no one but a nurse to keep her company. She’s now addicted to morphine and has completely lost her mind. She doesn’t even know me anymore. Doesn’t recognize me. And the few times I’ve ever tried to get her off the drugs,” he says, speaking quietly now, “she’s tried to kill me.” He’s silent for a second, looking as if he’s forgotten I’m still in the room. “My childhood was almost bearable sometimes,” he says, “if only because of her. And instead of caring for her, my father turned her into something unrecognizable.”
He looks up, laughing.
“I always thought I could fix it,” he says. “I thought if I could only find the root of it—I thought I could do something, I thought I could—” He stops. Drags a hand across his face. “I don’t know,” he whispers. Turns away. “But I never had any intention of using you against your will. The idea has never appealed to me. I only had to maintain the pretense. My father, you see, does not approve of my interest in my mother’s well-being.”
He smiles a strange, twisted sort of smile. Looks toward the door. Laughs.
“He never wanted to help her. She is a burden he is disgusted by. He thinks that by keeping her alive he’s doing her a great kindness for which I should be grateful. He thinks this should be enough for me, to be able to watch my mother turn into a feral creature so utterly consumed by her own agony she’s completely vacated her mind.” He runs a shaky hand through his hair, grips the back of his neck.
“But it wasn’t,” he says quietly. “It wasn’t enough. I became obsessed with trying to help her. To bring her back to life. And I wanted to feel it,” he says to me, looking directly into my eyes. “I wanted to know what it would be like to endure a pain like that. I wanted to know what she must experience every day.
“I was never afraid of your touch,” he says. “In fact, I welcomed it. I was so sure you would eventually strike out at me, that you would try to defend yourself against me; and I was looking forward to that moment. But you never did.” He shakes his head. “Everything I’d read in your files told me you were an unrestrained, vicious creature. I was expecting you to be an animal, someone who would try to kill me and my men at every opportunity—someone who needed to be closely watched. But you disappointed me by being too human, too lovely. So unbearably naive. You wouldn’t fight back.”
His eyes are unfocused, remembering.
“You didn’t react against my threats. You wouldn’t respond to the things that mattered. You acted like an insolent child,” he says. “You didn’t like your clothes. You wouldn’t eat your fancy food.” He laughs out loud and rolls his eyes and I’ve suddenly forgotten my sympathy.
I’m tempted to throw something at him.
“You were so hurt,” he says, “that I’d asked you to wear a dress.” He looks at me then, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Here I was, prepared to defend my life against an uncontrollable monster who could kill,” he says, “kill a man with her bare hands—” He bites back another laugh. “And you threw tantrums over clean clothes and hot meals. Oh,” he says, shaking his head at the ceiling, “you were ridiculous. You were completely ridiculous and it was the most entertainment I’d ever had. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. I loved making you mad,” he says to me, his eyes wicked. “I love making you mad.”
I’m gripping one of his pillows so tightly I’m afraid I might tear it. I glare at him.
He laughs at me.
“I was so distracted,” he says, smiling. “Always wanting to spend time with you. Pretending to plan things for your supposed future with The Reestablishment. You were harmless and beautiful and you always yelled at me,” he says, grinning widely now. “God, you would yell at me over the most inconsequential things,” he says, remembering. “But you never laid a hand on me. Not once, not even to save your own life.”
His smile fades.
“It worried me. It scared me to think you were so ready to sacrifice yourself before using your abilities to defend yourself.” A breath. “So I changed tactics. I tried to bully you into touching me.”
I flinch, remembering that day in the blue room too well. When he taunted me and manipulated me and I came so close to hurting him. He’d finally managed to find exactly the right things to say to hurt me enough to want to hurt him back.
I nearly did.
He cocks his head. Exhales a deep, defeated breath. “But that didn’t work either. And I quickly began to lose sight of my original purpose. I became so invested in you that I’d forgotten why I’d brought you on base to begin with. I was frustrated that you wouldn’t give in, that you refused to lash out even when I knew you wanted to. But every time I was ready to give up, you would have these moments,” he says, shaking his head. “You had these incredible moments when you’d finally show glimpses of raw, unbridled strength. It was incredible.” He stops. Leans back against the wall. “But the
n you’d always retreat. Like you were ashamed. Like you didn’t want to recognize those feelings in yourself.
“So I changed tactics again. I tried something else. Something that I knew—with certainty—would push you past your breaking point. And I must say, it really was everything I hoped it would be.” He smiles. “You looked truly alive for the very first time.”
My hands are suddenly ice cold.
“The torture room,” I gasp.
SIX
“I suppose you could call it that.” Warner shrugs. “We call it a simulation chamber.”
“You made me torture that child,” I say to him, the anger and the rage of that day rising up inside of me. How could I forget what he did? What he made me do? The horrible memories he forced me to relive all for the sake of his entertainment. “I will never forgive you for that,” I snap, acid in my voice. “I will never forgive you for what you did to that little boy. For what you made me do to him!”
Warner frowns. “I’m sorry—what?”
“You would sacrifice a child!” My voice is shaking now. “For your stupid games! How could you do something so despicable?” I throw my pillow at him. “You sick, heartless, monster!”
Warner catches the pillow as it hits his chest, staring at me like he’s never seen me before. But then a kind of understanding settles into place for him, and the pillow slips from his hands. Falls to the floor. “Oh,” he says, so slowly. He’s squeezing his eyes shut, trying to suppress his amusement. “Oh, you’re going to kill me,” he says, laughing openly now. “I don’t think I can handle this—”
“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you?” I demand.
He’s still smiling as he says, “Tell me, love. Tell me exactly what happened that day.”
I clench my fists, offended by his flippancy and shaking with renewed anger. “You gave me stupid, skimpy clothes to wear! And then you took me down to the lower levels of Sector 45 and locked me in a dirty room. I remember it perfectly,” I tell him, fighting to remain calm. “It had disgusting yellow walls. Old green carpet. A huge two-way mirror.”
