The crease between his eyebrows deepened, and he nodded.
“But the accident…and Dad practically disowned you when you joined the Army,” I said dumbly. “He hated the military. I don’t understand.” I tried to push away the crushing realization that, for whatever reason, Dad had lied to us. “Does any of this make sense to you?” I asked, hopeful.
“Keep reading,” Jason ordered, unblinking as he stared ahead. He wasn’t showing any outward reaction, and I couldn’t feel his emotions, but somehow, deep down, I knew he was filled with a violent maelstrom of confusion, disbelief, betrayal, and anger that easily rivaled mine.
I refocused on the letter. “‘It’s best if the kids never know the truth,’” I read hollowly. “‘Tell them whatever they need to hear so they never come looking for me. It’s safer for them that way. We both know this.’” I hesitated, trying to rein in the sudden suffocating pain I felt in my chest. “‘Remember, every scar makes us stronger. We have to be strong…for them. This is for the best. Love them, Tom, for the both of us, and take care of our family. I love you, all of you, always. Yours forever, Anna.’”
The letter fell from between my fingers. “She left us,” I whispered.
Abruptly, Jason stood. He said nothing, just stalked back toward the ghost town, while I stayed behind, motionless…heartbroken…betrayed. I didn’t doubt that the same emotions fueled his actions as he disappeared through the trees.
I looked down into my lap. The thin, worn letter still rested between my fingertips. It seemed impossible that our dad had lied to us for so long, that he’d kept so many secrets. As I stared blankly at my mom’s words, my eyes began to sting and the writing turned blurry.
It wasn’t long until Jason reemerged through the trees, a giant ax gripped in his right hand. He passed by me without even sparing a glance in my direction. I watched him stalk away, his steps determined, until he was out of sight again, deeper in the scrubby woods. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the ax blade splintering wood.
I’d never pretended to know my brother well, but his eyes tended to deceive him—they always had. When Dad cursed him for joining the Army, his eyes had filled with sadness. And seven years ago, when Dani and I had wandered home after a day basking in the sun on the beach, a look of wonder had filled his eyes as he looked at her—like he’d discovered something hidden, something pure. So the emptiness I saw in his eyes when he walked past me with the ax told me how much our dad had hurt him. How much our mom had. Why’d they do it? Why’d they lie?
As I slipped the note back in its envelope, I noticed something else inside—a photo. The back was discolored and the edges were torn, but the moment I saw the cursive name written in faded black ink on the back, my heartbeat quickened. Anna.
I slowly flipped the photo over to find the image of a woman who could only be my mom staring back at me. Her hair was straight and black like mine, some of it hanging past her shoulders while stray wisps were suspended on a breeze, frozen in time. Her eyes were like Jason’s and mine, as bright and vivid as gemstones; they could’ve been green or blue or maybe both, and they were surrounded by dark, thick lashes. Though her gaze was shrewd, she looked happy. Her full, pink lips were pulled into a broad smile that revealed perfectly white, straight teeth. She was wearing a white eyelet skirt and a purple tank top that exposed her pale skin and slender frame. Beside her, a resplendent collection of driftwood and green and white sea glass rested on the sand. Her bare legs were folded under her, her yellow painted toes peeking out. Although her right arm was raised as though it was draped around someone, the photo was torn in their place. All I could see was a child’s hand resting on her skirt. Jason’s hand. Does he remember taking this picture? She, Anna, my mom…was real. She was stunning, and seeing her for the first time sent silent tears streaking down my cheeks.
I wasn’t sure which feelings made it so difficult to breathe: desperation—grief—resentment—curiosity—maybe love? Did I love my mom? I didn’t know if I could. I loved her for existing, for being alive and so vibrant, even if it was only in a picture. But she’d left me…us. Part of me hated her for that, and hated my dad for lying to us. He’d cheated us out of ever knowing the truth, and his death had cheated us out of ever knowing the reason for the lies. I wanted to scream…but instead I just cried.
16
DANI
MARCH 18, 1AE
Dr. Wesley studied me, her gaze sharp and unwavering. I was in her office, again, sitting on her small, unyielding sofa, again—but unlike the last time, I wasn’t lost in a haze of pain. I was paying attention. The décor was as stark and no-nonsense as the doctor herself, lacking any embellishments or personal touches.
Dr. Wesley sat behind her wide, wooden desk, looking as exhausted as she’d sounded the previous day, and I felt a little guilty about the arsenal of questions I’d just launched at her. Anything and everything I could think to ask about the Re-gens, her work in the Colony, and the Colony in general had erupted from my mouth.
“I’ll answer your questions,” she finally conceded, and I squirmed under the intensity of her stare. “But nothing I tell you gets written down.” She made a shooing motion in my direction. “Put that away.”
I glanced down at the small notebook on my lap. Later, when my Ability finally came back online, I was planning to relay everything I’d learned over the past day and a half to Zoe, Jason, and the others, and it would be a whole lot easier if I was able to take notes. But, once the doctor pointed it out, I realized it was one of the dumbest ideas I’d had in a long time—and dumb ideas seemed to have become my specialty lately. Absently, I hoped Jason wasn’t too worried about the fact that I hadn’t checked in with him this morning. Fat chance…
Tucking the book into the blue-and green-striped canvas tote bag I’d found in my coat closet earlier that morning, I crossed my legs and nodded. “I just need answers, Dr. Wesley. This place is so…” I shook my head. “I feel like I’m losing it, and—”
The doctor’s wan face transformed as she laughed halfheartedly. I thought it might have been the saddest laugh I’d ever heard. “I understand,” she told me. “You feel like you need to be doing something, taking a stand, because everything around here is too unbelievably”—she raised her eyebrows—“awful…at least, under the surface. And you need more information to do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing.” After a short, contemplative pause, she added, “You and I…we’re not so different, Danielle. I bet you’d do anything—whatever it took—for the people you love. You’d pay any price, or exact it from others, just so long as it meant they would survive.”
I moved my head in a single, protracted nod. I suddenly felt an odd connection to her…an unexplainable familiarity.
“Just remember that you can’t fight if you’re dead. If you’re dead, you can’t do anything.”
Again, I nodded.
“Very well.” She took a long, deep breath. “The Re-gens are, for the most part, my greatest creation. Giving life to a being that has passed—there’s no greater form of redemption.”
“Wait…” I shook my head, utterly confused. “Are you saying…you can’t mean that the Re-gens died, and you brought them back to life? That’s—”
“Crazy? Impossible? Noli, si quid tibi effectu difficile, opinari, hominem id non posse praestare.”
“‘Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish,’” I said. It was a quote I’d translated repeatedly during my graduate studies in linguistics. “Marcus Aurelius was a wise man.”
Surprise flashed across Dr. Wesley’s face, but was quickly hidden behind a mask of disinterest.
In a twisted way, I was actually enjoying myself. It was like playing conversational chess, and I hadn’t played a good game of chess in a really long time. I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling. “So, you really did bring people back to life. But as they say, they didn’t come back the same. They came back different…wrong.”
I tapped my pointer finger against my lips, thinking. “So…Camille and Mase, they were nurtured more than other Re-gens?”
Dr. Wesley nodded. “In a manner of speaking. With every Re-gen—Camille and Mase excluded, though nobody but a select few knows that—as soon as they wake up, they’re programmed with General Herodson’s commands and teachings, but they’re not shown much in the way of genuine care. They’re extraordinarily impressionable during their first few hours of rebirth, and they learn remarkably quickly. This impressionability is the reason why Herodson likes them so much—he acquires devoted followers without ever having to use his Ability.” She took a deep breath and frowned. “It does seem that some remnants of their former personalities and preferences remain, though again, that effect is greatly enhanced in Camille and Mase.” Her lips curved into the first genuine smile I’d seen on her since entering her office. “You may or may not have noticed Mase’s penchant for a certain word that starts with ‘F’—that’s spillover from who he was before. Camille took very good care of him when he first woke.”
Fiddling with my hands, I said, “This is going to sound completely ridiculous, I know, but…are they zombies?”
Her genuine smile evolved into a genuine laugh. The sound was musical and heartwarming. “For goodness’ sake, no! They’re alive. They breathe, their hearts beat, and so far as we can tell, they age normally. They were the recently deceased, made into Re-gens before too much cellular deterioration made them impossible to revive.”
Cellular deterioration. Recently deceased. Re-gen. Pieces were starting to fit together, and the image they created was unsettling. I pictured rows of hospital beds, the people lying in them being drained of blood day and night. “Let me guess…you use the blood of someone with the Ability to regenerate.”
“How could you possibly—”
“A friend of mine almost died—well, actually, she did die for a few seconds—but they brought her back by transfusing her blood with that of someone who could regenerate,” I explained.
The doctor looked pensive. “Hmmm…would this be one of the friends you mentioned the other day?”
Glancing down at my hands, I frowned. How much should I tell her? How much can I really trust her? “Yeah…it was my best friend, actually, though I didn’t know about it at the time. Someone poisoned her, and she died.” I shook my head, swallowing repeatedly and blinking away tears. “I can’t believe she actually died.” As terror filled me, my eyes flashed to the doctor. “Oh my God…is she a Re-gen?”
Dr. Wesley took a long time to answer. “No,” she finally said. “The process is very specific and requires the delivery of precise electrical pulses, several chemical compounds, and an infusion of a substance derived from the blood of someone with hyper-regenerative abilities. Your friend’s body probably just shut down for a few seconds before the regenerative properties of the donor’s blood could take effect.” After a pause, she added, “Danielle, I’m so sorry for what your friend went through…so unbelievably sorry.” She sounded on the verge of tears.
“Thanks, Dr. Wesley, but it’s not your fault.” But a nauseating feeling was settling in the pit of my stomach. Why is she sorry? I replayed several other things I’d heard Dr. Wesley say over the past two days…no greater form of redemption…you’d pay any price, or exact it from others…I don’t deserve… “Can I ask you a personal question?”
She sat up straighter and, hesitating for only a moment, nodded.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Dr. Wesley looked down, lowering her chin, then glanced up at me through her lashes. “I guess you could say I made my bed…this is me lying in it.”
Does that mean… I threaded my fingers together, straining to hold my hands in place. “Did you create the Virus?”
Without lowering her eyes, Dr. Wesley said, “Yes.”
17
ZOE
MARCH 19, 1AE
The morning after Jason and I opened the box, Jake, Carlos, and I ventured over to the other side of the Arkansas River, which was about a mile south of our new camp. We brought the dogs with us, while the others stayed in our ghost town home. I was glad to be away from Jason. Every time I looked at him, I thought about what we’d found in the box, and I was tired of thinking about the box.
The night before, while we’d all been eating dinner around the fireplace in the larger parlor, Carlos had reached for a metal skewer sticking out of the fire, evidently forgetting that it would be searingly hot.
There’d been a soft sizzling sound as his skin burned, and he’d yelped a curse. At the same time, a dust-covered radio sitting atop one of the antique cherry bookshelves had turned on. Carlos had dropped the scorching metal skewer back into the fire and shook his hand vigorously.
I’d risen and dunked a napkin in one of the buckets of water we kept near the fire. “Here,” I’d said, handing the wet cloth to Carlos before running to get burn cream. The instant the cloth had been wrapped around his hand, soothing his burn, the radio had shut off.
The others anxiously glanced around at one another. The static of the radio had been the first electronic sound we’d heard in months, and it had been strange how creepy the noise was.
Chris had been the first of us to connect the dots. “Was that…” She’d glanced back and forth between Carlos and the radio. “Did you do that, Carlos?”
“I—I don’t know,” Carlos had said. His eyes had been filled with pain and confusion, making him look a little wild-eyed.
It hadn’t taken us long to come to the conclusion that Carlos’s previously unseen Ability was directly connected to energy. It turned out it wasn’t just pain that enabled him to channel energy into electronic devices, but concentration and control. If he really focused, he could even send out an electromagnetic pulse that would shut down everything nearby. He’d done so with our flashlights…repeatedly.
We didn’t know how far his Ability would reach, but we thought it could be useful in retrieving Dani, so it merited more exploration. We needed to test how far it could reach, which was why we were heading to the other side of the river. Our horses trekked effortlessly over the mountain trails toward Royal Gorge. The considerable amount of traveling they’d been doing was turning them into oversized mountain goats.
Once we reached the mile-long pedestrian suspension bridge, the horses were reluctant to step onto it. Eventually, after much coaxing, they did, falling into an easy pace.
As we crossed, Jake’s horse leading the way, Wings fell into step beside Arrow. Peering down at the rushing water of the Arkansas River far below, I realized the river had been the only constant part of my journey since leaving Fort Knox months before, following us as we made our way through Kansas and into Colorado. I’d come to rely on the sight and sound of the water to calm my nerves. The clomping of hooves on the wooden planks resounded throughout the canyon, and I closed my eyes in momentary contentment.
Jake and Cooper plodded ahead of us, while Jack trailed behind, sniffing and exploring the unfamiliar wooden slats beneath his feet. His tail wagged happily, and his nose found its way back to the ground every few strides.
“Holy shit,” Carlos gasped beside me. His arms were tense. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the reins more tightly, and his eyes were opened wide like those of a frightened child. I could see the sweat beading on his brow.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don�
��t like heights.” Carlos cleared his throat and looked straight ahead, refusing to let his eyes wander.
I’d never seen him afraid of something so normal. In an odd way, it felt good to know I wasn’t the frightened one for once.
As Arrow and Wings stepped onto solid ground, Carlos drew in a deep, calming breath.
Barren, rocky bluffs quickly gave way to dense shrubbery as we drew closer to the wooded hills. We searched for a shady spot within the trees that was large enough for all of us to dismount and concentrate on Carlos and his Ability.
“Over here,” Jake said quietly. He’d stopped his horse beside a squat fir. He pointed through the trees to a farmhouse down in a narrow dell, letting his reins slacken momentarily while his horse gnawed on the bit.
The single-story farmhouse was old, and junk was strewn all over the yard surrounding it. An overgrown, surprisingly bountiful vegetable garden filled multiple raised beds on one side of the house, and a few laundry lines were strung between trees on the other, a handful of chickens pecking at the ground and clucking between them.
“Should we check it out?” Carlos asked.
The place looked abandoned—the gardens were unkempt, there was no laundry hanging from the lines, and the chickens were running around freely.
I nodded, having the same interest in the property that Cooper and Jack displayed with their excitedly wagging tails and anticipative whines. They were eyeing a rickety chicken coop beside a small stable. There were another handful of chickens clucking around inside the coop.
“No,” Jake told the dogs sternly, a smile curving his lips. “You’ll scare them off,” he said, like the dogs might understand. “Stay.”
I leaned down and patted Wings’s neck. “We should check the garden and the stable, too. It couldn’t hurt.”
Jake nodded and we dismounted on the side of the road, tied the horses to a couple of firs atop the hill, and headed down into the shallow valley to catch some dinner.
Unsure what to expect, we held our weapons at the ready—Jake and I with our pistols, and Carlos with Chris’s shotgun—moving silently and swiftly toward what appeared to be the back of the house.
Into The Fire (The Ending Series) Page 20
