by Casey Hays
“And how many are immune?” I whisper.
He hesitates a moment.
“How many?” I repeat.
“One out of every three.”
“One?” My voice cracks under the shock.
His face contorts with a scowl. “All this time, Eden made us believe the toxin was what killed us.”
I crease my brow. “Why would they do that?”
He sighs, a heavy thing emitting from him, and clenches his fist, pain flooding his eyes. “Apparently, to protect us.”
I shake my head, carefully readjust my position. Ian runs a hand through his hair, turns a full circle. He tosses the water bottle back into the box and crosses his arms over his chest.
“And . . . Tabitha?”
I’m suddenly afraid to hear the answer. His eyes settle over me.
“The virus is everywhere. Across the river, too.”
My breath eases out of me in slow shock. And images of my village begin to click together like pieces of a puzzle. Were babies in my village born with this sickness? Diana’s baby boy? Was he sick? I don’t know. I never saw any sign of such a sickness in my village. How could the Council have kept such a secret? How could they have hidden such horrific symptoms from us?
And then, I shun myself for wondering such a thing at all. Despite my memory loss, I remember the council members were well-practiced in deception. Of course, they were. They kept the entire world hidden from us for decades. This would have merely been one more secret of many. One sniffle, and a child was taken away from its mother never to be seen again. No one questioned it. No one fought to keep a child.
Until Diana.
My pulse quickens. I squeeze the edge of the blanket, a sudden and terrifying thought invading me.
“Is Tabitha sick with this virus?”
Ian shoves his hands into his pockets, and his eyes soften into sadness.
“She’s gone, Kate,” he whispers.
I forget to breath. And his words chase the fear in my chest, slicing through me like a knife. I blink.
“Gone?”
Ian’s eyes crease with moisture.
“I’m sorry.” He goes to his knees, catches my hand in his, and entwines our fingers together. “We thought it was the toxin that took her. We’ve always thought it was the toxin.” He pins me with his eyes, shakes his head. “We’ve always been wrong.”
The bullet in my hand is suddenly too heavy, and my fingers loosen. It lands with a thud in my lap.
“She’s gone?” I repeat.
His shoulders sink. He moves in, filling the space that separates us, wraps me in his warmth, and lets me cry.
Chapter 18
I
t’s a strange thing to know someone . . . and not know him.
As the uncountable hours pass us by in the darkness of the cellar with only a small candle to light the way, this becomes my conclusion.
Ian tells me everything after this. About him. About us. And where I don’t remember our conversations, he has never forgotten a single one. Not one. He shares his fears, his desperation. He relays every single time he let me down, and every time I forgave him for it.
I simply listen.
He spills every bit of his heart into the room, into the unexpected intimacy this imprisonment has created. He tells me the dreadful details of our journey from the first moment we met. Some of them sting with sharp edges I’m afraid to claim. But his touch ensures me that he feels them, too, and this draws me toward him.
I’m certain that my heart has danced with his.
The memory of Ian evades me still, but the reality of him unfolds before me like a blossoming flower giving off its hint of sweet nectar one tiny drop at a time. And it makes me believe in us.
He has discovered the origin of his supernatural abilities. Knowing this makes him stronger in some ways. I see this in him—in the excitement that lights his eyes when he describes it. He understands his function, and he can fully embrace who he is—what he is. Of course, with this comes the realization that someone purposely did this to him, and this rips the control solidly out of his hands again. He tells me he has no power over how the Serum affects him, and he must learn to adapt to it in order to live in harmony with it.
“Self-control has never been more important.”
There is a pinch of fear in his voice when he says this.
His wounds, however, still do not heal.
Eden is slightly fuzzy, and I don’t remember every detail, but I understand one thing very clearly. The leaders created an illusion in the form of toxin to keep their people contained—manageable—by offering a warped and false sense of security. And yet, it couldn’t protect their children from the virus anymore than it could protect my own people. Or anyone.
What irony.
I don’t wonder whether Eden is different from my own village. It isn’t. And now an invading army from the north becomes a real threat to Eden—and every other village in its marching path.
Ian tells me of Ava, too, and that Justin’s father is working on a cure for the virus. He’s failed to find it, but Ava may be a key to success. For some reason this bothers him, and when I ask why, he says Penelope believes it is a dangerous thing to play God. But for himself, it angers him that Dr. Phillips experimented with his sister.
I wonder . . .
He worries for Ava. There is no way to know how the Serum will affect her until it’s put to a test. As for me, I have no doubt a test is on the horizon.
Ian lets me read to him from the Scriptures. He says he read some of it himself at Penelope’s. I choose to read from the book of John because it’s called John. I like saying this name when it appears on the pages, although I’m not sure why. It makes me think of the Pit, but it also floods me with a sense of peace about it. The book itself is filled with stories of miracles and salvation and ordinary people coming to know God. Ian doesn’t have much to say, but he listens. I can tell by the look in his eye that some of what I read resonates with him as much as it does with me.
So I keep reading.
I keep reading, and my heart begins to change.
When we wake again, Ian lights one of the last of three candles left in the bottom of the box. It slowly melts, the wax flattening and spreading out across the wooden table, and a fear of being trapped in darkness consumes my thoughts for a moment.
Ian paces the floor like a caged animal. He stops, studies the ceiling, hands on hips, and his expression reveals that his mind is working out a plan. Another couple minutes, and he climbs the ladder to push against the trap door. No sounds come from above, and his restlessness grows stronger until I’m pulled into its current.
Claudia should have come for us by now.
Ian’s hands explore the edges of the door.
“There has to be a way to open it from the inside,” he mumbles to himself. “A lever or something.”
I struggle to sit, dragging my legs over the side of the mattress to rest my heels against the floor.
“What do you think is happening up there?”
He gives the door a grunting shove. It creaks dangerously. He casts his eyes downward, then drops to the floor in one smooth motion. “Nothing good. It’s been too long.”
My insides tighten. “What are you planning to do?”
He tilts his head toward me.
“Get us out of here.”
With that, he flies up the ladder with astonishing speed, shoving his shoulder into the trapdoor. The momentum sends him hurtling back to the cellar floor just as quickly with a resounding thud. I gasp in shock.
“Ian!”
He rolls onto his side. A moan escapes him, low and guttural. I slide off the mattress, grab hold of his shoulder to help him sit up.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” He coughs once, pulls himself upright with a groan. A large indention marked by a spider-web of broken concrete splinters out across the floor beneath him. He gingerly touches the wound on his arm with a wince.
“What were you thinking?” I scold.
“I was thinking . . .” He coughs again. “About that.”
He points upward with a smile, and I follow his line of sight. A thin shaft of light, barely a finger’s width, glows above us. He drags himself to his feet.
“One more shove is all it’ll take.”
Before I can protest, he’s gone again, up the ladder like a flash of lightening. This time, he’s prepared. With a groaning yawn, the door gives way against the pressure of his weight. The cupboard guarding the entrance falls with a crash, and Ian’s head disappears through the ceiling.
A shout fills the room above. With a gasp, I pull myself to my feet and stumble to the foot of the ladder just as Ian springs from the hole. More shouts. Gunfire pops. I cover my ears, my eyes pinned to the square hole of light. Another shout turns into a choking screech that ends abruptly, followed by dead silence.
“Ian?”
He peers down the hole. “Stay there.”
He disappears again. My adrenaline beats out a rhythm in my throat. I grasp a rung, set my foot on the bottom step. A rapid tattering of gunfire causes my heart to leap, and from somewhere inside the house, a gurgling scream erupts, followed by a bellowing sob.
Slowly and methodically I climb, knowing all the while this is a terrible idea. I should stay here until he comes back. But I can’t keep myself from taking the next rung. I have to know what is happening.
When my head breaks the surface inside the pantry, Ian is nowhere in sight. The door to the kitchen stands open, but not a sound reaches my ears, and a sickening feeling flutters through my stomach. Cautiously, I climb out of the hole and stand on wobbly feet. My fingers grip the doorframe for support. I move into the kitchen.
The sun shines through the small window, bringing the scene into focus. To the left lies a soldier—one of the same soldiers I’d seen outside the window of my sickroom. I recognize the eyes even as they gape with the certainty of death, his neck turned awkwardly. A trail of blood trickles from his nose to run backwards across his cheek. The table is upturned and the floor is littered with food and shards of glass from broken dishes. I don’t look at the young soldier again as I step around the fallen table to avoid him.
“Ian?” I take another tentative step. “Hello?”
Silence. I hold my breath, terror causing the hairs on the back of my neck to rise up, and I take another unsteady step until I’m standing near the door that leads to the living room.
“Ian?”
He suddenly fills the doorway, a desperation sketched over his features. My hand flies to my chest, and I step back in surprise, my eyes wandering over him. He grips the broken end of a rifle in one bloody hand— a hand so red, covered in mucky chunks of what appears to be flesh and bone . . . and bits of hair. The rifle is cracked away from the barrel, which he holds in his other hand, and the jagged edges of metal jut out in a floral pattern from the end of each piece—a metallic bouquet. He drops both pieces with a clatter and leans on the heels of his hands in the doorframe, a red smear spreading beneath his fingers as they slip downward. His face is stoic, his eyes skating across the dead body a few feet away. Tiny smatterings of blood dot his cheek, his chin . . . his shoes. I survey him, a pounding exploding in my ears.
“What happened?” I wheeze.
His flickering eyes turn dark, more desperation flooding in. His chin falls to his chest, and eyes tightly closed, he pinches the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. I curl my fingers into the crook of his elbow and tug his arm downward.
“Ian?” His name is barely a whisper on my lips. “Where are they?”
He doesn’t answer, and panic begins its relentless tugging at my ribs. His eyes flicker again ever so cautiously, bloody fingerprints gracing each side of his nose. After a long moment, I shove around him, determined to find out myself. But he yanks on my wrist, stopping me.
“You don’t want to go in there,” he warns.
His hand is warm and slick, causing my stomach to turn. The tortured sound of his voice fills me with dread, and I slip from his hold and stagger into the living room. It’s empty.
“Claudia?”
“No, Kate.” He leaps after me, grabbing my arm again. “It’s bad. You don’t—”
I shrug free from his grasp and move toward the corridor. The narrow passage is eerily dark except for light cascading across the floor from a partially open door at the end. The children’s room. The room where Claudia tended to my injuries. I pause, swallow. The silence is so loud.
And then, the weeping. It’s a gut-wrenching cacophony—aching, tearing at the soul. Ignoring Ian’s warnings, I stumble toward the room, thrust open the door, take in the scene. My breath flees my lungs as my hands fly to cover my face.
Claudia sits against a wall, disheveled and bloody. Her skirt is ripped open clear up the seam revealing black bruises all along her inner thigh. Her bottom lip bleeds, and her eye is painfully swollen shut. This should have been enough to ask of her. Her suffering should have ended there, but it doesn’t.
Huddled on the floor, knees draw up, she cradles her dead brother in her arms, rocking her body backwards and forwards. The motion, both tender and tormented, overpowers every other piece of the ghastly picture, her weeping overlaying all of it. She clutches Michael to her chest with grasping fingers. His throat is slit into a crusted smile, and every bit of his blood seems to have drained across the floor, hardening into a thick, crimson stain. Already his body is stiff with death.
A soldier lies sprawled across one bed, face-down, his pants around his ankles. The back of his head is nothing more than a large, gaping hole. Blood drips every second with a tiny splat against the wood.
I turn toward Ian as the truth comes to me as clear as a blue sky. Red dripping hands hanging against his jeans, he stands near the door, a new kind of pain etched across his face. He won’t look at the bed, and he squeezes his bloodied fingers into tight fists.
Claudia’s weeping dissolves into quiet, heaving sobs. I sink to my knees, my hands falling to my sides with soft thuds as an anguish envelops me. An anguish so familiar it lands a hard punch to my gut. These are good people. Kind people. How could this have happened?
Ian moves closer, sinks to his haunches beside me. Together, we absorb the monstrosity before us—nothing like I’ve ever seen. My stomach reels, and I fight the urge to vomit.
Suddenly, my mind is bombarded with pictures running through my brain in a nonstop pattern. Smatterings of faces, people from my village. I gasp, squeeze my eyes closed, press my fists into my temples as the images assault me. Ian touches my shoulder.
“Kate?”
In that instant, my mind clears as if a lamp has been lit inside my head. I raise my eyes toward Claudia crumpled against the wall, and my memories—trapped and scattered and flitting out of reach—crash over me in a giant wave of remembrance. It’s so overwhelming that I fall forward, catching myself on the heels of my hands.
“Hey.” Ian wraps an arm around my waist. “Are you okay?”
I squeeze my eyes shut again; Claudia releases a single, hiccupping sob. Ian’s arm tightens, and my life rolls out before me. I see Layla’s baby with her strawberry birthmark. I cling to Layla’s feet and kiss a river of her flowing blood—as red as the blood surrounding us now. I feel the whip crack against my bare back. I lie flat on my stomach, my head hanging over the edge of the Pit, and watch my salty tears drown out the image of Ian’s dead body below.
Mona’s green eyes pierce me. I bite my lip.
I feel the weight of Tabitha’s tiny body as if it were only yesterday that I bounced her on my knee. I hold a grieving Diana in my arms. One ghastly memory after another gallops past me and comes to a full stop at the feet of a sobbing sister cradling her dead brother.
Layla. A lashing. The tree.
I remember killing Mona . . . and I remember hating her.
My eyes flood with tears.
Tabitha is dead.
“I remember.” The words are a whisper inside my sobs. “I remember.”
I cling to him, oblivious to the fact that I will be covered in blood at his touch. He folds me into his warmth, bending his head into the embrace, his breath heavy against my throat. I squeeze closer until his arms tighten, and he chokes on his own sob, and I’m trembling. Trembling with relief. With fear. With love.
Claudia weeps on, and I remember. I remember the pain of all the loss I’ve suffered. Loss that is mimicked in this very room.
I remember how angry I am. How the circumstances of my life have turned me bitter with it.
But I also remember Ian. I remember that I love him.
Claudia sobs . . . and I remember.
It’s the only sliver of beauty in the room.
Chapter 19
I
an releases me, his eyes grazing mine for only a moment. I can’t read them. His pupils shrink, the irises twitching, barely perceptible. I squint at him, feeling a strange kind of distance fluttering between us. Even with the flooding in of my memories, I sense the change come over him.
His tears—they stand there in his eyes, but a swirling blue hue full of intensity drowns them out. Briefly, he slides his hand down the side of my face—lets it rest warm against my neck. His eyes dilate, shrink just as quickly.
I blink back my tears, sinking back onto my heels as he stands and moves away from me.
“Claudia.”
Ian says her name so softly, and still, she jumps at the sound. He takes another step.
“No,” she quips. She catches a glimpse of the blood adorning so many parts of Ian’s body, and tugs her brother to her, holding him in place and daring Ian to make one more move toward her. Ian squats where he is, clasps his hands, drops his chin to his knee.
