by Lisa Lee
It was good news, but the thought of lying around all day, waiting until evening, seemed torturous.
“Can I use my electronic notepad?” I asked.
“Oh! I completely forgot about that! It’s probably in your room. You can get it tonight,” Nurse Wilkins replied.
I nodded my head, but I guess something of my restlessness must have shown on my face, because she told me I could take a walk if I wanted. So, I took a walk in the morning, alternately sat and paced in the infirmary, had lunch, took another walk, and then went back to the infirmary to alternately sit and pace some more. Fortunately for me, my friends interrupted my exciting plans by visiting me.
“I am so happy to see you,” Kaitlyn said as she hugged me.
“Me too,” Bethany said, hugging me as well so I was sandwiched between them.
“It’s good to see you too,” I said and meant it. Seeing the two of them made me feel like I was really getting back to normal.
“We were worried,” Bethany said. “What happened with Mrs. Stout?”
“Um . . .” I began, not sure what to say. I saw Nurse Wilkins in the background give me a warning look. “I think she had a heart attack or something. I must have passed out.”
“Really?” Bethany said. “That’s the story you’re going with? I thought we were friends.” She removed her arm from around my shoulders and crossed her arms, giving me a skeptical look.
“Your friend is telling the truth,” Nurse Wilkins said. “What do you want? You want her to make up something to satisfy your voyeuristic interest?”
“No, ma’am,” Bethany replied, her eyes lowered. Someone who didn’t know her well would think her reddened cheeks a sign of shame, but I suspected it was a sign of anger.
“Nurse,” Kaitlyn began, “of course we don’t want Eden to make up something. It’s just that Mrs. Stout’s death was so sudden that we expected a long, dramatic story. I’m sorry we didn’t think of how difficult it would be for Eden to relive the experience.”
Nurse Wilkins looked mollified and went back to shuffling things around on her desk.
“How have things been going?” I asked Kaitlyn and Bethany.
“The same,” Bethany replied with a shrug. She glanced sideways at Nurse Wilkins and whispered, “Let’s talk later.” In a louder voice, she said, “Let’s play the Evil vs. Good game.”
“You have the cards?” I asked, incredulous. There was only one set of the cards in the whole school, and you had to check them out of the library. My parents had never allowed me to play, so when I saw it was available via the school library, I had immediately added Bethany, Kaitlyn, and myself to the waitlist. The game was perfect for three players. There was a judge, an “Evil” player, and a “Good” player. If you didn’t want to do the “Evil” or “Good” deed on your card, then the other players could pop you on the forehead with a finger flick.
“I have the cards,” Bethany said with a smug smile. “The school hasn’t pulled it yet.”
“I explained to the librarian that it helps girls distinguish between right and wrong,” Kaitlyn said, her face as guileless as ever.
“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s play.”
The game was as fun as we thought it would be, some of the cards causing me to laugh out loud. Unfortunately, it seemed we had just started when Nurse Wilkins told Kaitlyn and Bethany that visiting hours were over. A glance at the window showed that daylight was losing to autumn’s longer nights. We had been playing for over an hour. I thought about the memory stick.
“Can I go to dinner with my friends and then go back to my room?” I asked Nurse Wilkins.
“Sure,” she said. “You don’t have to wait until later.”
I was comforted by the ritual of dinner. I wasn’t hungry, but I had missed being around my friends and having a routine to ground me. There were no real earth-shattering conversations. Annalise and Jaelle told me they were happy to see I had recovered. I smiled at their words. I didn’t say that I hadn’t really recovered, that I hadn’t processed a single thing that had happened to me in the last two years. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I couldn’t keep it together again. I wished I could have a heart-to-heart conversation with Bethany and Kaitlyn and tell them everything that was going on. But I had to hold my secrets, no matter how heavy they became.
“You want to come to my room after dinner?” Kaitlyn asked, her face alight with curiosity and concern.
I thought about the USB. “I do, but I’m so tired I should probably go to bed early,” I said. “Maybe later this weekend?”
“Sure,” Kaitlyn replied, reaching across the table to give my arm a small squeeze.
“Yeah, you should take the time to rest,” Bethany said. “You don’t look so good.”
“Thanks . . . I think,” I said.
Annalise and Jaelle looked at Bethany incredulously.
“Well, I’m just being honest,” Bethany said defensively.
Brushing my teeth later in the evening, I had to give Bethany points for honesty. I felt a lot better, but I looked like I had been sick. My clothes fit looser on my thinner frame, and my face looked older. I shrugged and went to my room. I was sure I would have no trouble putting the weight back on.
Once back in my room, I plugged in the USB, wondering with anticipation what it would reveal. On the screen, my mother lay in a hospital bed. She looked terribly ill; ravaged would be a better word. Her hair was gone, only a few wisps remaining, and her frame was skeletal. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick. Someone off-camera was talking with her.
“You don’t have long,” the off-screen male voice said. Was my mom dying? The man’s voice was soft, with well-modulated tones. My brain tingled. I had heard that voice before, but where?
My mother nodded. “I know,” she rasped.
“You are not afraid?”
My mother just shook her head and smiled. I smiled back at her a little, happy in some small way that I was getting to see her face and hear her voice, even if under horrible circumstances.
“You aren’t afraid for your daughter? We can help her reform her sinful ways if you just tell us where she is.”
I gasped. It was Mark Brown’s voice.
“Inspector Brown,” my mother said. “I know this world is full of Rachels. I know that Eden is a Leah.” My mother paused to catch her breath. “God will place her where she is meant to be.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
My mom shook her head, and her eyes closed.
“Then you are of no further use to me, are you?” Inspector Brown said, moving into the camera frame for the first time. His voice was almost a whisper, but his body was stiff, his face suffused with red rage. His right hand reached out for my mom’s throat.
I gasped.
My mom opened her eyes and smiled.
I shook my head. “Mom,” I whispered, my hand touching the screen.
“You’re smiling?” Inspector Brown asked, my own unasked question.
My mom closed her eyes and seemed to exhale.
Now, instead of strangling my mom, Inspector Brown grabbed her shoulders and shook her. When she didn’t respond, he moved away, his face revealing extreme frustration. “Damn you!” he shouted, his fist hammering at the air above him.
“What’s wrong?” I heard another voice say, followed by the sound of a door slamming shut. The voice was female.
“She’s dead. This ungodly woman up and died on me,” he said, kicking the bed.
I stopped the video and closed my eyes, feeling the grief well within me.
“I guess this is a dead end, then,” said the other voice with disappointment. I hadn’t stopped the video like I thought. The tears running down my face had fallen on the notepad, which was gripped tightly between my hands. I couldn’t speak clearly enough to give an oral shutdown order to the notepad.
“You know . . .” Inspector Brown began pacing the small room. “This is not a coincidence.”
�
��What do you mean?” said the unknown woman.
“That girls like Eden are disappearing,” Inspector Brown replied.
“You think they’re being kidnapped?” said the female voice.
“No, I don’t think so,” Inspector Brown replied. “I don’t really think Eden was kidnapped. Do you notice how all the royal families—east or west—never have to use surrogate genes or wombs? And they have no defectives? It’s as though the virus never touches them at all.”
“They know which girls will not require the use of a surrogate?” the female voice inquired. “But’s that’s impossible. Plus, the male could be the problem.”
“Maybe,” Inspector Brown said, pursing his lips.
“Well, who do you think is the middleman, the broker between the girls and the families?” The woman’s tone had changed.
“It was supposed to me!” Inspector Brown kicked the bed again, and I felt my heart skitter inside the numbness.
“How unfortunate,” the woman said.
I saw Inspector Brown jerk and then slide to the ground, his mouth a perfect O of surprise. He lay unmoving on the floor beside my mom’s bed. I heard footsteps and the quiet closing of the door.
That night I didn’t dream, but I remembered. With an almost visceral hunger, I remembered the mother for whom I longed. I remembered her rinsing our hair with scented water so that while learning my lessons, I would randomly catch a scent of jasmine, rose, lavender, or whatever other flower we were growing at the time. I remembered that she never sat still for long. She was a body in motion—cooking, cleaning, sewing, or doing something—yet her motions were graceful, never hurried. I remembered her narrow hazel eyes framed by thick brown lashes, chestnut-brown hair mixed with gray, and white alabaster skin so different from my own. The person I saw in the video was a shadow of her former self. I hungered all night for a mother’s love that would never return to me.
In the morning, I took off my necklace and gripped the cross as tight as physically possible. I heard a snap and felt pain in my hand. I opened it to find the cross had cracked, and my skin had been pierced by the two jagged edges. As I looked at the slivers of blood, my vision went red. It was as if I saw my room through a red gauzy veil. I closed my hand and didn’t look again until I had washed it all away.
TEN
Gideon, The Return of the Prodigal Son
Gideon sat on the ground outside the guest residence hall, his back against the wall. His fingers randomly pulled threads of sparse grass from the ground as he remembered his dream. He couldn’t shake an ominous feeling. He had dreamed of the knitting girl the day Lily lost her first baby. If the dream was connected to Lily, should he even return home?
“Ugh!” Gideon stood up, wiping the dirt from his hands and pants. He strode off and walked around the campus. It was midafternoon on a Sunday. Church service had let out a couple of hours ago. Now the farm was mostly quiet, but a few groups of men sat outside, talking and laughing with one another. Gideon ignored them as he walked at a fast clip around the campus. Perhaps the men sensed his mood, for though they nodded respectfully as he passed, no one asked him to join them.
Gradually, Gideon slowed his pace. He felt a twinge of guilt as he caught sight of Matthew and James in his periphery but decided to walk a little further before he turned and walked backed to the hall. By the time he returned, day had slipped into early evening, and it was almost time for dinner. Giving his guards a nod, Gideon continued inside without them. He was grateful the walk had calmed his ping-ponging thoughts, but his heart still felt disquieted. He sighed when he spied Brother Adam sitting in the lone chair in the room.
“Eh, you’re finally back. I thought I was going to have to send out a search party,” Brother Adam said, looking relieved.
“Is anything wrong?” Gideon asked.
“Segenam’s gone. We don’t know where he went. You’re the only other one who was unaccounted for. The head brother is going to say something at dinner tonight. He asked everyone to come fifteen minutes early.” Brother Adam slowly stood up. “I’m glad nothing happened to you.”
Surprised to see that Brother Adam had worried about him, Gideon was further surprised by James and Matthew bursting into the room, guns drawn.
“Pack quickly,” James said. “We leave in ten.”
“Why?” Gideon said.
“We have orders to head for the palace immediately.”
“What?” Gideon said, almost shouting.
“Talk on the way,” Matthew said. “Pack now. We have to go.”
Matthew and James were in full guard mode, constantly scanning the room and speaking through their watch phones to other guards. By the harsh set to their faces and the way they were speaking to him, Gideon knew they thought there was some real threat. He packed his few belongings and was ready in five minutes.
Matthew and James stopped him as he reached for the door to go outside. Instead, a plethora of royal guards came in, surrounded him, and rushed him so that he was almost running to the car. Once in the car, he looked around and saw about twenty armored black SUVs and various police vehicles with flashing lights. James sat in the passenger seat up front, and Matthew was next to Gideon in the back.
“Wait,” Gideon said. “What about Brother Adam?”
“In another vehicle,” James said at the same time Matthew shouted into his watch phone, “Go, go, go!”
“What’s going on?” Gideon asked.
“Stay down, sir!” Matthew shouted and then forced his head down.
“I thought the vehicle was armored!” Gideon shouted back, trying to force his head back up.
“It is, but we don’t want them to see which vehicle you’re in,” Matthew said.
Thoroughly confused, Gideon kept his head down and tried to get a sense of what was going on.
“I got three mercs!” said a voice through James’s watch phone.
“Good job,” returned James’s calm voice. “Any others?”
“Don’t know; still looking. The ones we caught had smoke grenades.”
“My phone is flickering,” Matthew said, his hand still pressed hard on Gideon’s head.
Gideon’s eyes widened as he realized the possible implication.
Before Gideon could say anything, he heard James shout, “All non-Faraday cars pull out of formation, now!” Gideon could hear a murmur of voices through both Matthew’s and James’s watch phones.
“Do it now!” James shouted again. A few moments later, there were only five vehicles moving, with the one containing Gideon right in the middle.
“Anybody there?” James asked. Only the four cars surrounding the one with Gideon responded.
“Storm? Daniels? Raven?” James tried to connect with the other cars, but no one responded.
Gideon pushed away Matthew’s hand and sat up. “I think they know by now which car I’m in.” Pulling up the backseat computer, his fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.
“If we lose visibility, shift the car to screen mode.” He leaned and twisted to direct his statement to the driver.
“Was that an EMP blast?” Matthew said, looking at Gideon.
“I think so,” Gideon replied. “Tell the drivers surrounding us to have screen mode ready with this car controlling.”
“Sir . . .” Matthew began.
“That was an order,” Gideon commanded.
“Support in all vehicles have screen mode ready, my car leading,” James ordered via his watch phone. To Matthew, he said, “Remember the U.K. Prime Minister.” The prime minister had been assassinated after an EMP blast knocked out all the electricity in a one-mile radius surrounding her armored car detail.
Gideon looked around and realized that despite the blast, he could still see a great deal as the lights were out only in the area he was in. The EMP blast must have had a small, targeted radius. Realizing that he was the target, Gideon could feel anger sliding along each of his nerves. The emotion gathered strength as it traveled through him.
“How many miles until Geyser Park?” James asked. “That will be one of our blind spots.”
Shaking off the anger, Gideon focused on the screen in front of him. They were almost to the park.
“We have less than ten minutes,” he said to James.
“Switch to screen mode,” James commanded via his watch phone.
A boom sounded, and the car was shrouded in darkness. Wisps of smoke began to fill the car.
“I have no visibility,” said the driver, coughing. “I think that was a smoke grenade.” All the cars began slowing down.
“Screen mode!” James commanded, his voice sounding strangled. The smoke was heavier, but to open the windows would expose them to even more smoke.
With screen mode, Gideon had control of the car. He controlled it as though he was playing a video game, using his fingers to go forward or turn. With a touch of his fingers, the car was flying at just over two hundred miles an hour, and the cars surrounding him followed suit. A layout of the road was on his screen.
The one negative of the program was that it couldn’t detect obstacles on the road until the car was less than five miles away, which, considering how fast they were going, didn’t give him much time to react.
The screen began to make a warning sound.
“What is it?” Matthew said, tense.
Gideon said, “There’s a large roadblock ahead. I’m reversing course.” As his fingers flew over the keyboard, he heard another boom and looked up, to see a flyaway piece of metal strike the windshield. The windshield didn’t shatter, as it had been designed to withstand such things. The car that was now in front of them had not been so well-designed. It was a mess of shattered glass and misshapen steel.
“Should we check to see if anyone survived?” Matthew asked, even though Gideon had reversed course and the cars were moving backward.
“Already done,” Gideon said, staring at the screen. “Systems show no signs of life.”
The cars moved awkwardly as they made their way backward up a nearby down ramp.
“Drivers, take over,” James commanded once all the cars had made it up the ramp. He pushed a button so the siren would sound, and all the other cars did the same.
