“I don’t understand how what you and Henry did has anything to do with me,” I said. I didn’t even want to think of that.
“It’s not Henry’s.”
I felt the blood drain from my cheeks. “You mean, a chosen one and you…”
“Yes. I thought he liked me. He offered me anything I wanted. Books. Cigarettes. Alcohol. All sorts of contraband items. His name was George. Do you know him?”
I shuddered. I knew him all too well.
“Watch yourself, Tess. Let me know if you need anything.” And without another word she walked over, kissed me on the cheek, and headed out of the room.
I had a mission. And it made me feel alive.
I sat down at one of the mess hall’s tables, waiting. He noticed me instantly. Caught my eye, blushed slightly, and turned to walk out of the room.
I jumped up. The sound of the chair falling to the floor didn’t stop me. “Henry!” I knew it came out as a yelp—I hoped he could hear how desperate I was. How much I needed my friend. After my conversation with Julia, it was clear he needed me, too.
He stopped, frozen in his tracks. He didn’t turn to face me, but he didn’t walk away, either. I slowly approached him until we were inches apart. Then I reached out and touched his shoulder. How good it felt. He tensed but still didn’t turn around.
“Please. I need to speak to you. I wouldn’t ask, I wouldn’t dream of bothering you, if it wasn’t terribly important.”
He turned to face me; the passion in his eyes was frightening. A look I never saw in our childhood. I realized he was a man now, not the boy I’d known. I withdrew my hand quickly.
“You could never bother me.”
His voice sounded so different. It caught me off guard. Such sadness as he said it; he was breaking my already sick heart.
“Will you take a walk with me?” I asked.
“No.”
I inhaled sharply.
“Please, Henry. Please, just a small little walk.”
“It’s not good if we’re seen together,” he said roughly, glancing over his shoulder.
This confused me. Who here would care if we talked?
“Then let’s go somewhere we won’t be seen,” I countered. I grabbed his hand and it felt so warm. “Please.”
He didn’t say anything, but at least it wasn’t no.
“Please,” I said again.
“All right.” I could see he felt defeated.
We didn’t talk until we were outside the compound’s walls. As we stood in silence, both of us daring the other to speak first, I saw him glance toward the forest line—the forest where once he and his family had attempted to run off.
This was going to be more difficult than I expected.
“I need you to tell me what happened when you tried to escape.”
He went pale and took a step back from me. “Don’t.”
“I need to know.”
“Please, don’t ask me to do this.”
“I don’t have a choice. Not anymore.”
“We’ve known each other over a decade and you’ve never asked me before. Why now?” he replied angrily, throwing his hands into the air.
“Templeton,” was all I offered.
He took two steps toward me, bridging the distance between us, almost close enough to touch me. Whatever anger he had was now replaced with fear. “That place isn’t safe, Tess.”
“I know.”
Utterly unsure of myself, I slowly placed a hand against his chest. He swallowed and looked away from me. It felt different from touching James, but I didn’t mind it as much as I should. “It’s important, Henry. Please. Tell me.”
He grabbed onto the hand on his chest. “I’ve been so lonely without you. Did you know that?”
I felt my throat go dry. “You have Julia,” I charged.
“She isn’t you. I mean, I care about her, but damn, she isn’t you. Hell, she’s half crazy, I think. She spends more time ranting about the council than trying to have any sort of relationship with me. But I guess that’s part of the appeal.”
I frowned. She cared about more than that. She cared enough about him to warn me. But maybe she hadn’t mentioned our talk to him. “What happened when you tried to escape?” I asked again. I had to change the subject. We were getting too close to discussing things we could never come back from.
“They did it.”
“Who?”
“The chosen ones. They attacked us.”
I shook my head, but Henry continued. “They caught my family. I thought they were going to take us back. I wanted them to; I didn’t like being out there. I watched what they did.” I tried to pull my hand from his, but he only held on tighter. “What? You said you wanted to know.”
“You’re lying.” I stepped away from him.
“Am I?” He grabbed me by the arms and pulled me to him. I tried to get away, but he held onto me, pressing his chin against my forehead. His breath tickled me as he spoke.
I had awoken something in him that would never be able to sleep again.
“The council couldn’t let us get away. If we did, then anyone could leave. We would have destroyed the sense of fear they’d worked so hard to create.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? And why would they let you live?” I asked.
“Because I was a child. I didn’t understand what I saw. Hell, maybe some part of me was convinced they’d deserved it. I buried it inside me. And they let me live because they needed a symbol. I was the boy who was saved. They wanted the naturals to trust them.”
Henry touched my cheek. I was surprised by the goose bumps that appeared down my arms as I struggled to catch my breath.
He watched me in silence for a long time before stepping away. “But I’m going to show them they can’t keep me quiet.”
He sounded so dangerous, so crazed.
“What are you talking about?”
He stopped and stared at me. He looked like a man destroyed. “They took her, too.”
“Julia?”
“Yes. I liked her. I was beginning to forget you, and she was good. I knew there were limits, but I finally felt normal. Then it happened, and she got so messed up. Talking crazy. And I started to believe her. I started to agree. I don’t think I could go back to what I was before.”
I nodded.
“Our women are theirs to screw with. And if the chosen ones can kill them in the process, so much the better.”
“They’re not all like that,” I whispered.
“Oh, Tess. Don’t tell me they got you, too.”
“No!” I exclaimed, almost offended. “I haven’t…I wouldn’t. It’s just, I’ve seen things since I’ve been there. And it’s not all black and white.”
His jaw clenched.
“Yesterday I watched a creator kill a chosen one because he was sick. Something was wrong with him, and they ended his life. Like he was nothing.”
“They are nothing, Tess. They aren’t even human,” Henry replied through his teeth.
“That’s not true! I know one of them. He plays the piano and reads. He doesn’t want to be a killer. He would never.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes. I am.”
And despite not being sure of anything, I was sure of James.
Call it instinct.
Henry shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at me. “You said you watched them kill one?”
I nodded.
“How?” he asked, his voice taking on a different tone. He almost sounded calm.
“They injected him with something.”
“That simple?”
“There was nothing simple about it.”
He was silent.
“Maybe it’s not the chosen ones’ fault. At least not completely,” I said. “My first day there they brought me to this room down in the lower level of Templeton. They were just lying there, young chosen ones. Alone, waiting to be awakened. They had no sense of the world around them. And even when
they open their eyes, they have no choice over what they are shown in the videos. If most of them are monsters, it’s because the council made them that way.”
Before I knew it, Henry’s hands were holding my face. He was making me nervous. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t safe.
“What do you want from me, Tess?”
He was scaring me. Not just the desperation I heard but also how close he was. He abruptly let me go and began backing away.
“Wait. I want you to help. We have to find a way to fight back, to stand up to the council. This can’t be the only life I get to live. I refuse to accept it,” I proclaimed.
“Did you ever wonder what makes someone a terrorist?”
“What?”
“Those men who strapped the bombs onto their children’s chests? You ever wonder what would drive someone to do that? I have. I think I can understand it now. Some of us can’t just sit silent waiting for it all to end. We want to end it ourselves.”
His words caused a chill to settle over me.
“Besides,” he continued, “if I was on the winning side, the side with the power, they wouldn’t call me a terrorist. That’s the jacked up thing. Even more so than the violence and death.”
“Shut up. Stop talking like that. There has to be another way. Maybe if we could get the people of the compound to listen, we could do something.”
“What, and wake them from their naps? No one would listen.”
“Then maybe we can try and leave. Take our chances in the wild.”
“You really think they would just let us?”
I sighed with frustration. I wasn’t going to give up. Henry’s story had only fueled my fire.
“Please don’t ask me to see you again.”
“I won’t,” I said, biting my cheek to stop the pain that threatened my heart.
“I would give anything for things to be different. Anything. If I could be your friend, Tess, if I could…but it wouldn’t be good for either of us, especially now.” He stopped and muttered what I thought was a curse. Then he threw one more glance to my face and ran.
I felt it again: loss. Except this time it seemed permanent. I was alone.
Chapter 18
You want what you can’t have.
You want it because it will destroy you.
You want to be destroyed.
You want to destroy him along with you.
I could hear Henry’s voice inside my head saying these things to me. Was he right? Was the only reason I sought out any kind of relationship with James because I knew where it would lead me?
Henry seemed bent on destruction. Was I the same? I knew the rules. And there were rules about everything. But I seemed recklessly willing to break them all. Was I doing so out of some need to rebel against a system that had taken so much from me? Or had I merely found another way to end my pain—the destruction of myself?
The need to touch and be touched was like a drug.
As I walked to James’s room after spending the morning scrubbing the countless windows of Templeton, I feared our meeting. I had not seen him since Frank died, and I had been unable to shake the guilt that overwhelmed me when I thought of the incident. I still wasn’t sure I could have done anything to stop his death, but the fact that I did nothing at all left me feeling bereft.
When I reached James’s room, the door was already open. James lay on his bed, his arm thrown carelessly over his eyes.
I sat down on the bed next to him and gently shook him.
“James?”
With a heavy sigh, he slowly sat up. I grabbed his hand and held it in my own. “I’m so sorry.”
“How did you know?” he mumbled.
Could I admit my part in Frank’s death?
“You know what? It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I knew they wouldn’t choose me.”
“Wait. What?”
“No one chose me, Tess. They didn’t want me.”
The Introduction Ceremony. James had not been selected by any of the subcommittees. He didn’t know about Frank’s death. Instead, he was feeling the pain of rejection. James would be left to a life of glorified babysitting. He had been labeled forever as insignificant. As nothing.
“I knew after the interviews…”
“What happened during the interviews?” I asked.
“I couldn’t answer the question.”
“Which one?”
“The one about our purpose, our reason for existing. I don’t understand why the hell the naturals need us. And then when they started asking me what I thought about your people, I froze. Because I didn’t know how I felt. I haven’t known how I felt in such a long time.”
James began to pull away from me, but I grabbed onto his arm to stop him. The movement caused me to be closer to him than I had ever been before.
James noticed, too. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered.
I let out a shaky laugh. “You’re talking crazy. I’m not.”
He shook his head. “No. You are,” he replied, scooting away from me, sitting up against the wall. “I…when the other boys would talk about the female naturals, the Templeton girls, I never got it. Sure, some were attractive, but I never felt that thing, you know. I mean I would read about it in books. But I never understood it. Then I saw you in the damn piano room. And I felt it—want. I wanted you.”
I could have stopped him, but I didn’t.
He reached for my hand. “But I won’t ever, Tess. I promise. I understand the rules.”
“Do you want to kiss me?”
I said the words without really thinking about what they would mean to each of us. I was tired of life always being difficult. I knew what it meant to want, but I was sick of how tainted my wants had become. Everything I wanted came at a price. I couldn’t let the council, or Henry, or Julia define my relationship with James. I had to define it.
I needed to trust myself.
There were a million reasons I shouldn’t have asked him this question.
But the want was there all the same.
“You can if you like,” I continued, wondering where my bravery was coming from.
James grabbed me by the arms and pulled me toward him. An unfamiliar panic began to run through me—I had never let anyone kiss me before. James slowly, painfully slowly, leaned toward me. I felt a shiver run down my spine at the mere thought of what was about to happen. When his lips pressed against mine, it was so light I wondered how a kiss could ever be considered a sin. When his hand moved through my hair, I pressed against him harder. My heart sped up. This was the line it was so dangerous to cross.
This was the line I wanted to cross and never return from.
I pulled away from James and practically jumped off the bed. I couldn’t look at him, was afraid I would read disappointment on his face. I knew how the kiss felt to me, but what if he didn’t agree? I mumbled something about meeting my supervisor and stumbled out into the hallway.
As I walked away, I became aware of how noisy the mansion had become. People were shouting and running. Farther away from me I could see a fellow natural sitting against the wall, crying into her hands. A group of chosen ones were huddled together, talking quickly, as if devising a plan.
I turned to see James following after me. “Tess, wait. We need to talk,” he called out. As a chosen one passed us, he reached out and grabbed James’s arm. The two of them bent their heads in conversation. I watched as the flush in James’s cheeks disappeared. And I saw fear.
He walked toward me in a daze, his hands shakily holding the wall.
“What is it?” I asked. I had to fight the growing need to place my hand upon his in comfort. It was okay in the privacy of his room, but I couldn’t in front of any of these people. Doing so would make them a part of our relationship, and I wanted them to have nothing to do with it.
“They’re all dead.”
“What do you mean? Who?”
He kept shaking his head.
&
nbsp; “Who?” I asked again.
“The young ones. The chosen ones.”
He must have meant those still in the incubation period. Had the council found something wrong with them? Had they wiped them out? I couldn’t imagine how much blood there would be down there.
“A natural did it.”
Clearly I had misheard him.
He pushed past me and began to walk down the hall.
“W-wait,” I stammered. “What do you mean a natural did it?”
“Exactly that,” he replied, refusing to look back at me. “A natural committed murder.”
Chapter 19
The alarm was never good. Used to warn of impending attacks during the early days after our move into the compound, it had now come to stand for something else—a wrangling.
The alarm was used to assemble the compound. Someone was being taken. This was beyond merely being reported; an alarm, a wrangling viewed by the whole camp, meant you had already been found guilty. You were to be the lesson.
It meant death.
As I walked through the overcrowded hallways toward the dining hall, I could feel the panic. One question lingered in the air, caressed the backs of our necks, making the hair stand on end: Who?
As I stood in my row, I could sense my body reacting. I could feel it betraying my fear without a second thought of loyalty to my defiance. My palms were sweaty. I tapped my foot furiously. I avoided looking around me; I didn’t want to see this happen. I began to memorize the floor, every dull and empty inch. I felt the presence of someone beside me, someone familiar. I glanced up and was caught off guard to see Robert standing there. Of all the places, why would he stand next to me? His eyes met mine and they were empty.
I thought back to James’s words. A natural had killed the young chosen ones? How was that even possible? The council had created such a general feeling of indifference among my people that I didn’t think anyone was capable of even thinking of such an act.
Henry.
No. He couldn’t do anything like this. He wouldn’t murder someone. I had learned from the other Templeton girls on the transport home that all thirty of the young chosen ones had been killed. The cords that kept them alive, aiding in their breathing, had been pulled from their bodies. The lone creator who worked downstairs, the man who I’d watched murder Frank, had been knocked unconscious.
Chosen Ones (The Lost Souls, #1) Page 12
