A sliver of light cuts across my face.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Amicas says in a sharp, suspicious whisper. “Who are you?”
Memories overwhelm me:
The pain in my leg is so intense that I almost black out.
Pilar pulls me out of the smoking plane, and I see fire.
“He needs a tourniquet.”
“We have to get away before it explodes.”
I’m a survivor, that’s who I am. A stupid, unlucky survivor.
In order to bring myself back to the present, I blink a couple of times. “I have news for you,” I say with determination. “News about your daughter.”
Mrs. Amicus breathes in sharply, covering her mouth with her hand. Her husband, who is right behind her, narrows his eyes.
Mr. Amicus is the one to answer. “Wait, you’re that boy. They boy on the television, right before the Firsts took over.”
“Yes,” I agree wearily.
“We can’t have you in our home.” He starts to close the door in my face.
“Wait!” I grab the wood so he can’t lock me out. “Don’t you want to know what happened to Meghan?”
“What news can you possibly have? We already know what happened to her.”
This takes me by surprise. “You . . . you do? How?”
“How could we not know? It’s been over three years since we last saw her. You don’t think we guessed?”
A feeling of panic that I haven’t felt in a long time starts to take over my numbed emotions. What if they don’t let me in? I hoped the news of Meghan would emotionally motivate them to believe me, but if they already guessed what happened—would that lessen the impact of what I have to say?
“What about—”
“We have to go! We have to hide!”
“But we can’t just leave them!”
“There’s nothing left to leave! We have to go!”
I shake my head, regrouping my thoughts. They’ll want to know. I know they will. “If you let me in, I will tell you everything that happened.”
I concentrate my focus and study them as they have the sort of silent conversation that only people who have been together for a long time can have. They are obviously concerned. Nervous. Angry. But I think I sense a hint of morbid, pressing curiosity, too.
“She’s not with . . . with Michael? Is she?” Mrs. Amicus’s dark eyes fill with something that almost looks like hope as she finally speaks again.
Tears that haven’t bothered me in a long, long time suddenly prick my eyes.
“Don’t engage him,” Mr. Amicus says, but his wife pushes his arm away as he tries to put it around her shoulder.
“Answer the question, please.”
With a heavy sigh, I brace myself to answer. This is why I came back, isn’t it? But I’m not sure I can speak the words out loud, now that I’m here. I take another deep breath. “Yes. Yes, they’re together now.”
The hope in her eyes vanishes.
“We can’t survive out here. We still need to get off this batshit crazy island.”
“Okay. If we can get to Erroris, we can steal another plane.”
“But—”
“Gideon.” Mata’s voice is harsh. “They’re gone.”
“Please. Please let me in.” I need to get out of my head. I need to do this. They need to let me in.
What feels like an eternity later, she finally nods her head.
---
Over the next few hours, I find myself on autopilot, robotically repeating things I have learned and collected since I left the Colonies.
Interesting creatures, robots.
I explain to them what happened. I explain where I’ve been, how I escaped, and why I came back. They tell me how much worse life has been since the Firsts, aided by a few Seconds, took control. Knowledge is still evil. The Doctors are fools. Liminis will retaliate if they ever show their faces again.
Every day, they live in fear. A tense stalemate has been reached outside the walls, an alarming marshal law established within. The Liminis Doctors are still held prisoner, and the words I broadcasted three years ago still haunt them. They never thought they’d live to learn what they really meant.
After I tell them about Meghan, I explain that both reigns of terror are built on a false idea: Knowledge is not evil, it didn’t completely destroy the world, and a few million people scattered throughout the rest of the globe use it, even now, to rebuild and improve their lives.
It takes most of the night, but they finally accept it. After I show them everything, after shock, doubt, anger, and tears, they now believe that they have nothing to atone for—that their children had nothing to atone for, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone in the Colonies to have anything but absolute freedom.
“I guess we’ll just have to find a way to show them that their intelligence isn’t a curse,” Mrs. Amicus says “That the Firsts . . . and the Ten Colony Council . . . that they’re wrong.”
“The more people we can convince, the more of a chance we’ll have to initiate change, yes.”
“But—but how?”
It’s a daunting question, but that is why I stayed away for so long. A little energized by my success so far, I almost eagerly sum up what I know: “We need to change minds before we can change policies. Everything we do must start on the ground.”
The conversation ends on this topic, and I spend the next day sitting on their floor, hoping that they won’t suddenly decide to turn me over to the Firsts.
As soon as night falls, I tell them I have to move on. There are other people I need to visit. Other minds I need to change.
They agree, promising to do whatever they can to help me.
My next stop is in my old neighborhood. When Victor told me who his parents were, I was shocked. Mark and Lindi lived just a few doors down from my old house, but I always thought Edgar was their only child. I don’t know them well, but I guess they wouldn’t have told me about Victor, even if I did. It wasn’t until he became a Doctor that they even knew he existed.
And now—
I pick up speed and walk purposefully to their front door. Briefly, I wonder how Mata and Pilar are doing, but I have to shake away the thought because it’s so easy for me to get overwhelmed these days.
Blood flows from a gash in her head. Her hands are still warm.
Pilar pulls me away, and I am powerless to fight back. I can’t feel my feet. My vision swims. My eyes want desperately to close—
I knock on the front door, mentally focusing on the lists and facts that are stuffed in my backpack, rehearsing all the things I have to say without thinking about the things that will send me spiraling again.
An older lady—I believe her name is Ari—answers the door.
“Hello,” I say with a forced smile. “Are Mark and Lindi home?”
She glances at my hands—a reflexive reaction I almost forgot about—but there is nothing there for her to see; I had my tattoos removed as soon as we reached Pilar’s base. I can tell she is suspicious, but it isn’t her place to question her masters’ guests, so she beckons me inside.
I wait in the entryway, studying the pictures on the wall, until Mark finally comes down the hall.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
“Yes, hello. My name is—”
“I know who you are.”
He is neither rude nor polite—just stating the facts. I keep forgetting that I showed by undead, glutty face to the entire colony, just before I disappeared again.
I clear my throat and mimic his matter-of-fact tone, forcing myself to push on. “I have information for you about your son, Victor. And I was hoping you might help me, in return.”
The blood drains from his face, but he quickly regains his composure, smiles civilly, and gestures down the hall. “Of course. Come in.”
Only slightly thrown off by his flip-flopping attitude, I follow him into the kitchen.
“I’ll just go get my wife and son. My . . . uh . .
. other son.”
He leaves me alone again.
My hand moves automatically to the knee of my left leg. I am in the habit of rubbing the site of amputation whenever I’m sitting, alone, but the prosthetic is one of my pieces of evidence.
And a constant reminder that I was the one to survive.
---
It takes me an hour to present my facts, and now I am ready to field their inevitable questions.
“You actually left the Ten Colonies?” Lindi asks with a slight tremor in her voice.
“Yes.” Maps, notes, and charts litter the once-neat dining table. I wait calmly for them to process everything I have just told them, focusing on their faces with the intensity with which I now have to focus on everything.
“And there are others?” Mark asks. “Other people who survived the End of All Things?”
“Yes.”
“Roke.”
“Edgar, watch your language,” his mother snaps.
The boy must be in his early teens. About the same age my sister Jenny should have been.
Yet another memory I learned to repress.
“And the Council never told us. Doc—I mean, Victor, never told us.”
“Victor didn’t know. As far as we know, none of the Doctors did.”
The small clock on the wall ticks away the seconds as the three of them disappear into their own thoughts. I leave them to it, because I understand how hard it is to accept it all.
“Why did no one know about you?”
“We’ve kept to ourselves. We had no reason to reach out.”
“The ocean was supposed to have swallowed all of the pacific islands.”
“Well, it didn’t.”
Pilar was re-mapping the world when she found us. What would have happened if she never did? We would have never gotten on that plane. We would have died together, fighting the Doctors. We would have—
“So, let me get this straight.” Mark lifts his face and stares seriously at me.
The thought vaporizes before I can agonize over it again.
“The people of the Ten Colonies aren’t the only ones left. There are others, all over the planet, and they are using Knowledge to help them rebuild their lives?”
I nod once, slowly tapping my leg.
“So it’s not necessarily evil, and we were just told it was?”
“Exactly.”
“Roke,” Edgar says again, this time leaning away from his mother’s swatting hand. “So the Doctors were lying. That’s so—”
But what it was, I don’t find out, because Lindi (who hasn’t spoken in the last several minutes) cuts him off. “You mean to tell me,” she says in a quiet yet furious voice, “that the Ten Colony Council took away my son, erased my memories of him, and then forced him to be a slave, all so that the Doctors could stay in power?”
Though I know her anger isn’t directed toward me, I can’t help but feel a little intimidated by her tone. I sigh heavily. “Yes. That’s right.” This is, after all, how I hoped they would receive the news.
“But he was still a stranger to us.”
My stomach tightens at her grief. Victor and I were never close, and it would be a stretch to say we were even on civil terms, but he had a family. A family who didn’t know him. A family that wanted to. “I understand your anger,” I say, forcing myself to make eye contact with her. “I was angry, too. So was Victor. But that didn’t get us anywhere. The idea that Knowledge is evil still limits our freedom, whether it’s under the Firsts here or under the Doctors everywhere else. No one knows the truth, so no one will challenge the system.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Her voice is tight—she barely opens her lips to speak. “We have to do something.”
I sigh again. Focus. Facts. You can get through this. “I agree.
That’s why I’m here.”
“But if you and Victor failed last time—”
“We weren’t prepared last time,” I push onward. “I’ve spent the last three years making sure that what happened last time doesn’t happen again. I’ve studied political, social, and psychological discourse, researched possible alternative forms of government, and gathered proof of the Doctors’ deceit.”
“The next time I meet a Doctor,” Lindi says, “I am going to kill him.”
I almost smile, though it’s not funny. “I know it’s hard to hear,” I tell them as gently as I know how,” but you have to try and act without violence. Armed with compassion, rather than anger, we can offer a viable alternative to the status quo. And people will listen.”
“What makes you think that?” Mark puts his hand on Lindi’s back comfortingly, and at his touch, she drops her head into her hand, shaking a little. He takes control over the conversation for his wife’s sake.
Pilar wraps her arms around me, but I stiffen. She has been my travelling companion for over a year, even turning into something of a friend, but her comfort isn’t the comfort I want. How am I supposed to recover if the only person who can help me feel better is gone?
After a socially unacceptable amount of time, I realize I have been staring. Mark’s eyebrows raise as he looks at me expectantly.
Feeling awkward, I clear my throat. “Passionate anger, no matter how well-reasoned and supported, doesn’t change anyone’s mind,” I say quickly, the words practically tumbling out of my mouth as they rush over each other to get out. “No one likes to feel attacked or stupid for what they believe in. Besides, it’s not their fault that they believe it. The Doctors’ strategy has been effective, and people, deep down, just want to do what’s right for their souls.”
“But if Knowledge isn’t damning anyone, then what grounds do we have for treating Thirds the way that we do?” Edgar asks. His eyes are wide and full of concern.
People just want to do what’s right for their souls. If you beat, enslave, and demean another person based on a faulty dogma, then you are the one who needs redemption. I can tell Edgar feels this, and it makes me feel validated, just for a moment, that I was right all along. People are ultimately good, if you just give them a chance, and they will make the right choice when they are given all the information.
“That’s why I’m here,” I continue. “The Doctors are wrong, but you can’t bully people into seeing the truth. Or murder them. That just puts people on the defensive. If we can get Thirds, Seconds, and Firsts to believe us—to see things the way that Edgar does—then the Doctors won’t have a leg to stand on.”
Lindi scoffs. “How are you going to get Firsts to care? They would have too much to lose if we de-villainized Knowledge.”
I’m forcibly reminded of Victor.
“I was thinking about how you so stubbornly want to revolutionize without spilling blood,” he tells me, “and I thought, what causes fear, wreaks havoc, but doesn’t hurt anything?”
“Either get to the point or get out,” I say.
“Ghosts.”
I’m not stubborn; I just don’t think people deserve to die for believing the only thing they’ve ever been taught. “You have to understand their motivation,” I tell Lindi, just like I had told her son. “Firsts aren’t monsters; they just want justice. They believe in justice for a perceived wrong that people with Knowledge committed thousands of years ago, so if we can show them that it was the Doctors, they will want to hold them accountable.”
“They would lose everything,” Mark says.
I suddenly feel like I need to leave—to be alone—so I have to fight to keep the irritation out of my voice. “They wouldn’t, though. Knowledge can improve their lives, like it has for others around the world, and as long as their way of life isn’t threatened, I’m sure they will want to help.”
Lindi makes a small, disbelieving sound, but she doesn’t say anything else.
I’ve reached the point where I can’t handle the stress anymore. It’s not their fault; it’s just a lot harder for me to be around people than it used to be. My foot bounces and I can’t stop myself from tapping
my finger nervously on the kitchen table.
Luckily, Mark steps in again. “Once we get the Firsts to see the truth, it will be easy to convince the other Seconds.”
“Jade?” I can barely hear my own voice.
Blood flows from a gash in her head. Her hands are still warm.
“Jade!”
Pilar starts to pull me away. I can’t feel my feet. My vision swims, my ears ring, and my eyes desperately want to close—
But I can’t leave her.
Powerless to fight back, I press my lips to her hand as Pilar pulls me away.
I can’t leave her.
I need to be alone. I can’t hold back the memories for much longer, and when they come, I will lose control. Here. Now. That’s all you can worry about. I force myself to go one.
“Seconds are motivated by self-improvement,” I manage to choke out, and a temporary blanket of calm covers my mind. “You know that. I know that. If we show them that they don’t need to be like Firsts, they’ll want to utilize Knowledge for a more fulfilling life instead.”
I wonder if they can see the dark cloud that crowds in on the corner of my vision. Do they know? Can I hide it yet?
Even if they don’t see it, I’m not sure there is anything else to say—it’s up to them, now, to accept what I told them or reject it. My chest starts to burn as I forget to breathe, waiting tensely for one of them—any of them—to speak.
“And you think this is the best way?” Lindi asks, her voice surprisingly steady now as she looks me in the eye. “That cooperation, common ground, and kindness will be enough to bring the Doctors down?”
I fill my diaphragm with air before answering. It’s almost over. I almost made it through. “I do.”
“Okay. We’re with you.”
For three long years, time has dragged by at an agonizingly slow pace. At her words, it’s as though it finally, finally returns to its normal speed. My sole purpose has been to free the Ten Colonies, and now I have both a Third and a Second family on my side. The end is finally in sight.
She runs at me from across the snow-covered Factory grounds, her long ruby braid streaming behind her.
“Hey! What the hell did you do that for?
I blink. She is a Third. She wears the same Wissen Schule tunic that Jenny used to wear. Yet, she is not only talking to me, she is swearing at me. “I didn’t see it.”
Fallen Firsts (Rebel Thirds Book 3) Page 23
