I shook my head. Of course I wouldn’t.
“Go to your room. I’ll be there in a bit.”
It was a while before my father came into my room. Maybe hours, I’m not quite sure. I sat on my bed waiting patiently. Every once in a while I would get up and run my hands across the spines of the few books that graced my and my sisters’ bookshelf. More and more books made it onto the banned booklist every day, and our bookshelf was getting emptier and emptier.
I could barely read, but I still loved the things. I loved the way they felt in my hands. I loved the way they smelled.
By the time my dad came into the room, I could hear my mother and sisters in the kitchen. My father shut the door behind him and took a seat on the bed. Much to my dismay, he didn’t mention what I’d seen in the bathroom. Not once.
He pretended as if it had never happened.
“Tess.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Every night after dinner you will spend two hours studying with me.”
“What?”
“You can’t afford to go through life without an education. You will work on your reading with me every night. If I can’t be here, you will sit still and listen to your sister. Do you understand me?”
I didn’t. “But I don’t want—”
“I don’t remember asking you what you wanted, little girl. You will work on your reading. You will be read to every night. You will remember the stories you hear. You will commit them to memory, and you will learn from them. Do you hear?”
I looked up at my father, unsettled by the mystery man before me. “But I thought the books were bad.”
“Anything is bad in the wrong hands, Tess. But you’re a smart girl. You gotta be ready for what’s coming.”
“What’s coming, Daddy?”
This question stopped him. For a few moments he was unable to speak. Whatever he was thinking of saying never made it to his lips.
“Just do what you’re told.”
I nodded.
“Open your hands.”
My father placed a book into my open palms, a book I remembered having to remove from our bookshelf sometime back. I remembered it only because I’d liked the title. It was called A Tale of Two Cities.
I looked up at my father. I knew this wasn’t allowed. But he made no explanation for the book. He didn’t explain why it was so important to educate me and not Louisa. He didn’t give any reasons for how he had kept this book. One thing was certain—my father had secrets.
His secrets became my own. I began to sound out the words on the first page. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
James, surprisingly, was a very heavy sleeper. He barely budged as I crawled out of bed and headed to the kitchen. Robert had been smart enough to bring a supply of food and water for our journey; I didn’t think anyone would mind too much if I had a snack. We were down to having only one hot meal a day. I was used to three square meals in the compound. The whole run-for-my-life thing was going to take some adjusting.
And the toughest part of the journey hadn’t even started yet.
We were to hike a good twenty miles over the next couple days to meet the group who would take us to our new home. That was only the first leg of the trip.
“It’s not nice to steal from the group’s stash, Tess.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Jesus.”
“Nope. My name is Henry, remember?” he asked with a grin.
“Shut up,” I replied, taking a seat across from him at the kitchen table. I still wasn’t sure where we stood. I wasn’t even sure I knew him at all.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Want to go take a walk? Explore like the old days?” He raised an eyebrow.
I nodded. Despite everything that now stood between us, I didn’t hesitate. I wanted to see more of the world that had existed before me. “Here. Wear this,” he said, standing and walking over to me, placing his jacket on my shoulders. I was suddenly very much aware of the fact that I was standing in my pajamas, and he was fully clothed.
Henry laughed good-naturedly at my discomfort and headed out the door.
It took a solid hour of walking before we found what once was called civilization. I don’t know what I expected to find in the darkness of this forgotten city, but I certainly didn’t find hope. We were both quiet as Henry aimed his flashlight on various symbols of the destruction that had ravaged this place: overturned cars, windows smashed out of buildings, light posts bent in half. I thought I even saw human bones, but Henry moved the beam so quickly that I couldn’t be sure.
We walked for hours. The more we explored, the more I realized this was only the beginning. Leaving the compound didn’t mean a better life; it just meant a different one. Every world I stepped foot in seemed decided for me.
Henry sighed as we reached the house. “Tess?”
“Hmm?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. He seemed unsure. This was the Henry I knew from my childhood. “You could be happy, you know.”
“What?”
He took a step toward me. “Just because he can’t go with you doesn’t mean you’ll be sad forever. I can see you happy. You could have a family. Or you don’t have to have one. But you have the ability to choose. We could make a life somewhere out there, Tess.”
“We?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.
Henry was even closer to me now. I recognized the look in his eyes. There was a lot I didn’t know about life, but I knew what it meant to want. I took a small step away from him. “Good night, Henry.”
“Wait.”
I stopped, my back toward him. “Did you know my father was a part of your little resistance group?”
“Tess.”
I turned around to face him. “He brought a chosen one home once. Do you know anything about that? I think he meant to save him. I keep dreaming about it. I know it’s important, but I don’t know why.”
Henry looked down at his feet. “I can’t tell you everything.”
I clenched my jaw. “Of course you can’t. Just another person who needs to keep me in the dark. You know what kind of life I want, Henry? One where everyone doesn’t treat me like I’m weak, like I couldn’t understand. One where the people I care about most let me see who they are.”
And with that I left him standing in the dark.
Chapter 37
I watched as James was flipped into the air, landing painfully on his back. I watched as the man he was fighting wiped the sweat from his brow. Could I call them men when they moved like something unknown to me, something so alien? I didn’t know men could fight in such a way.
With a growl, James pulled himself to his feet. His arm whipped back and pushed through the air, making contact with the attacker.
Somehow they had found us.
We had begun our long trek to the extraction point. We never saw them coming.
Henry lay on the ground. Not moving. He was no match against a chosen one. No natural was. I didn’t know if he was dead.
I saw the other one staring—he was coming for me. I turned my attention back to James. He and the chosen one were moving too fast for me to see who was winning.
My heart was pounding.
The other was coming for me.
Kendall grabbed my arm and pulled me away. My feet dragged across the dirt. I couldn’t leave James.
“Go, Tess. Run!” James yelled.
Kendall tugged again on my arm, and I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I had no idea where Robert was. The three chosen ones were everywhere at once. We hadn’t been prepared.
Kendall dragged me deeper into the unknown, closer to the line that separated West from Middlelands. I pushed with all the strength I could muster.
I wanted to live. This would be the start of my rebellion.
Suddenly, Kendall stopped. We were both panting, gasping with the need for life. “We have to keep running. We’re just naturals, Kendall,
we won’t be able to beat them. Running and hiding is our only option.”
It was the truth. I didn’t know where Robert was, and Henry was already down. I knew James could fight, but was his training enough to beat three older, wiser chosen ones?
Kendall, whose face was covered in sweat, gave a small shake of his head. I grunted and stalked over to him, grabbing his arm. I used all my strength to pull him along with me, but he fought me every step of the way. I felt angry tears threaten to spill from my eyes. Too many people had risked so much for me to live; I wasn’t going to die like this.
I had to see what else life had to offer.
“Please, Kendall! We can make it. We’ll find a place to hide, and we’ll wait for James to come for us. He can save us. But we have to move!” I could hear how frantic my own voice sounded.
“I can’t,” Kendall whispered.
I let go of his arm and backed away. “Then I’m sorry, but I’m going to run. I won’t die for you.” I would have to find a way to explain it to James later.
“But you are going to die, Tess.” And there it was—the same look Henry had given me when we discussed the chosen ones outside the compound. Kendall’s eyes were filled with a sort of wild desperation that echoed the darkest thoughts of my mind. He would do anything to get what he wanted—and I stood in his way.
I went still. “What are you talking about?” I asked, slowly moving away from him, unable to deny the feeling of dread that had settled over me.
Kendall started to walk toward me. “I used to believe so much in the cause. I helped men like your father build up their resistance group. I gave them information from the inside. I even helped them sneak out chosen ones. You’d be surprised how many chosen ones the resistance movement has tucked away. But what I didn’t understand was that I was trading one life of servitude for another. The resistance movement will ask for you to give them everything, Tess. Everything. At least the council offered me power, wealth, any material thing I wanted.”
I scanned the horizon, looking for the best escape route.
“You won’t get away. You can’t beat them. We had the element of surprise.”
“I am not dying today,” I said through my teeth.
“Do you know why I was demoted by the council? It’s not like they caught me passing information or anything; no, it was over James. His scar.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. The longer I kept him talking, the more time I was giving James. If he wasn’t already captured. Or dead.
“When the chosen ones first wake up, they’re not exactly the most agile things. I guess that’s to be expected for someone who spends the first half of his life sleeping. James took a nasty spill one day during combat practice. He was rushed to me so I could fix him. It would be a quick procedure, but he didn’t want me to fix the imperfection. He begged me to let him keep it. I think he liked being different. And I couldn’t say no to him. I’ve made a lot of chosen ones, but James is special.”
“And so you let him keep the scar, and they punished you for it? Why wouldn’t they just force you to fix it?” I asked. I looked around me for some kind of weapon, but Kendall had chosen wisely. We were in an open space.
Prey.
“Come now, Tess. You know how the council works—they let you believe you have a choice,” he replied with a bitter grin. “That small action, and I am demoted to the inspection center. But I’ve found my way back in.”
Something inside me knew, knew without him having to say it.
He had betrayed us.
“Why?”
“Because the council promised me they wouldn’t hurt James. They promised me they would elevate me. You have no idea what it’s like having them look down on you, making you feel like you’re nothing every single day. I helped create life!”
“But you’re like me. You’re a natural.”
He laughed, running his hands through his thinning hair. “Chosen ones and naturals are just titles. The only difference between the two is power. I understand that now. I need that power. They knew when they saw how much I cared about him how to get to me. They came to me, questioned me. About you. About James. They knew you two weren’t right. They offered to change his placement, offered him a position on one of the subcommittees. They would reinstate me, too, I just had to go through with the plan. Wait till we got close to meeting those weirdos from the Middlelands, kill you, and force Robert to tell us everything he knows.”
I didn’t feel fear. I felt pain. I felt pain for James.
“But he trusts you!”
“He’ll never know.” Kendall pulled something silver from his jacket.
A knife.
I backed away from him. “Don’t pretend you’re doing this for James. If you cared for him, if you loved him, you wouldn’t do this. We’re the same, he and I.”
“No you’re not. We are nothing like him,” he said to himself as he stared at the knife. He was a man without hope, a man with no options. As he began to stalk toward me, I thought about how he was no different than Henry. How easily we kill for some cause.
He didn’t get very far.
It was Robert.
He sprang from behind and snapped Kendall’s neck as if it was nothing. Kendall crumpled to the ground without a sound, without a last word. Only silence. I didn’t cry out—I was frozen. For one moment the world had gone completely still.
I saw something move from the corner of my eye. The other chosen one had found us. Robert could easily take out an old man like Kendall, but he couldn’t beat a chosen one—it was impossible. Robert grabbed the knife that lay by Kendall’s forgotten body. I still didn’t move when he stood in front of me. I vaguely saw the knife rise into the air again and again. The gray sky became forever dyed by red.
The chosen one lay next to the creator.
“We can’t tell James,” I whispered.
Chapter 38
Someday both of us would have to deal with the events of the day. Someday James would have to come to terms with the fact that his creator was dead. I had made Robert promise to keep Kendall’s deception a secret. I couldn’t destroy Kendall. It would only destroy James.
I felt the pain James was feeling, as if I was connected to him, as if we were one. I knew he felt guilty, as though he had made a choice—me over Kendall. I knew that the guilt was nothing compared to what he would have felt if he knew the choice Kendall had made.
I had no time to comfort him. As we walked in silence toward the extraction point, I wanted to tell him it got easier. To tell him I no longer mourned my father. But it would be a lie. And since I couldn’t lie to James, I said nothing.
Robert half carried a badly injured Henry. Later, I would have to find the time to thank God that he lived.
A chorus of unfamiliar clicks echoed in my ear. James grabbed me and pushed me behind him as three men appeared from the tree line. The men were oddly dressed, but not so differently than us to appear completely absurd. They wore cotton or wool pants similar to the uniforms worn by the men of the compound. Their shirts were all varieties of plaid, their faces covered in beards. They looked like some reckless, wandering lumberjacks.
And they were holding guns.
The treaty didn’t apply to these men. They were Isolationists.
“The deal was we would take one chosen one,” the tallest of the three said, pointing his rifle directly at our group.
Despite his cryptic words, a surge of hope went through me. They were going to allow me to keep James. He could escape with me.
Robert nodded. “Deal’s a deal. I’m sorry, James.”
James heaved a heavy sigh. “Figured it would go something like this.”
He began to pull away from me. “Wait. But he’s the only one. I don’t understand,” I said.
“Robert’s a chosen one, Tess,” James replied quietly.
“No. No, he’s not. He’s…”
But as I looked for him I noticed his ice-blue eyes, the same eyes tha
t haunted my dreams.
It wasn’t possible.
But I could see it on his face. He was. I remembered the ease with which he’d killed Kendall and the chosen one, the fact that the earlier models hadn’t had the same mismatched flaw as the newer models. The mysterious circumstances under which he’d appeared at our compound. And James had known the whole time. There were too many questions buzzing in my head.
And then I knew why I kept having the same dream over and over again. “You were the chosen one my father and Jacobson brought home?”
Robert nodded. “Your father saved my life. He connected me with the resistance network. They forged papers for me, so I could protect your family in the compound when the time was right.”
“My father wrote of you. He showed you pictures of Emma, and you wanted to meet her…”
I should have felt thankful, but it was just another betrayal. Another secret kept from me. How blind had I been? He wasn’t as beautiful as James, but then again, the earlier models weren’t.
“It wasn’t my secret to tell, Tess,” James replied quietly. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to the side.
“Then you can go with me. I choose him,” I called to the men who still held their guns on us.
“No,” James replied, pulsing with emotion, “he knows these people. Or at least knows a lot more about them than I do. Robert will keep you safe.”
“No. My father saved him and he got Emma. I don’t owe him anything. What will you do? Go back?”
“Yes. I’ll fight them from the inside.”
I remembered Kendall’s words. Would fighting for a cause be enough for James? Wasn’t there more to life?
It was time to say good-bye.
I thought that when this moment came I would want to shut down, feel nothing. Yet I wanted to feel everything. Would this be the last time I saw James? The thought was unbearable. There were no words.
I ran my hands across his face, trying to memorize every inch of its glory. I brushed my lips over his scar. He sighed. I pressed my forehead against his. His hands clutched feverishly to my jacket.
“Tess.”
“Don’t. Don’t say those words. I’ll die if I hear them.” I knew to anyone else it would sound melodramatic, but I knew a part of me would die the minute he said good-bye.
Chosen Ones (The Lost Souls, #1) Page 23
