Fateless (Stateless Book 3)

by Meli Raine

  And rescued by strangers.

  Strangers we couldn't have summoned before I found out about my brother.

  Speaking of Duff, he ushers us in, sending a thumbs up to the pilot, who starts to lift as I dump Kina into a seat. The look she gives me makes me feel crazy paranoid again, like I felt at the fence and then in the junker, my hands yanking her pants down to find the birthmark that would prove she's Glen.

  No mark.

  Not Glen.

  Instinct makes my fingers jump to my own collarbone, my touch light but jarring. Mine was removed.

  Was Glen’s?

  What the hell am I thinking? This is Kina. This is her. And all the gaslighting and testing and crazymaking is undermining my ability to keep her and the kids alive.

  My enemies have done a tremendous job of infiltrating my mind and planting seeds of doubt.

  This is what we were all trained to do.

  I shouldn't be surprised.

  Who do you trust when you don't know who to trust? We were trained in this, too. Rigorous classroom exercises, extensive philosophical readings, physical tests in Woods and in The Field.

  Kina turns away from me now, eyes only on the children, tracking and counting, her elevation gone.

  And just like that, as we lift into the air, so are we.

  Gone.

  But what are we going to?

  “Wy–er, Callum,” Duff says, handing me a headset that’s wired for sound. He motions to his mic and I adjust mine close to my mouth. Kina sees us and hands noise-canceling headphones to everyone else, the older kids bending over smaller ones to help.

  The gesture is genuine and automatic, built into them by nurture.

  Kindness is Kina's greatest downfall.

  “Callum,” Duff says over the headset, the sound weirdly distorted, like he's in my head and a thousand miles away in a wind tunnel, calling on a bad line.

  “Yeah.”

  “That was bad. Don't know if the toddler will make it.”

  “Right.” My eyes jump to Kina, who catches my gaze for a fleeting second, as if she can read my mind.

  And doesn't like what she finds.

  Our words are short and clipped. I assume the pilots hear everything. “We're taking you to a campground. Pennsylvania. Completely isolated.”

  “Got it.”

  “Assembling a cover story. Team there already.”

  My heart leaps up at the words.

  “Other kids all accounted for? Five to nine?” It's harder and harder to hear him, so I'm keeping my phrases shorter, hoping like hell Foster's team found some way to rescue the five-to-nine year old trainees.

  “Not sure.”

  “Damn it.”

  He grimaces. “Sorry. Rescue got complicated.”

  All the tension in me pools in my mouth, a caustic taste of failure I can't spit out. “How complicated?”

  “One kid taken hostage.”

  My expletive is muffled by a sudden engine roar as the pilot moves us faster.

  “Kina know?” he asks, eyes darting to her.

  “No. She thinks they're all gone.”

  “It'll help to know most of them made it.”

  “That's utilitarian.”

  “Bottom-line kind of guy.”

  So am I, I want to say, feeling a palpable need to connect.

  I don't, though.

  I don't because my needs don't matter.

  The children and Kina are what matter.

  My thigh bobs up and down, a nervous fidget I cultivated intentionally when I worked in The Field. We were taught that blending in meant acquiring some of the weirder quirks of people in mainstream society. This is one of them.

  Every office has a fidgeter. The person who makes the table vibrate, whose bouncing foot drives someone else nuts, who can't sit still.

  I didn't realize the fidget had tied into my neurological reflexes on some level.

  Fake habits can become real over time.

  “She needs to know,” Duff says. His eyes meet mine, unreadable. “Want me to tell her?”

  “NO!” The bark that comes out of me is so loud, it makes Kina jolt.

  “I can hug them if I want to!” she flares, Hayley in her arms, the little girl looking at me with terror.

  “I wasn't talking to you,” I say more gruffly than I intended.

  She turns away without a word.

  I don't blame her.

  “Do it now,” Duff interjects. “We've got five here, plus the older ones, and now six – maybe seven - more kids.”

  “What is the cover story?” I ask, knowing I'm distracting him, not caring. The gears in my mind are spinning out of control. I need to slow them down so I can make decisions from a place of calm, cool focus.

  “Setting it up now.”

  “Who is?”

  “Keep it simple,” he says in a no-nonsense voice. “People. People are.”

  He can feel my sigh more than hear it.

  “Fine. People. The story?”

  “Homeschooling off-the-grid cult family.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Foster parents. Went rogue. Kids abused and neglected. Gun accident, toddler shot, authorities tracked back to the–”

  “Compound.”

  “Yeah. Compound. We're going there.”

  “That word is a trigger.”

  “No. It's a shot across their bow.”

  My fingers itch for my bow and arrow, to shoot something. Anything. To take aim at something moving and make it stop. To regain control. To see cause and effect in action.

  “Cover story sounds like a tabloid story.”

  “That's the point.”

  “What about the masses? The media?.”

  “We'll plant lots of neighbors. We've got plenty of operatives. Then there are the busybodies who know nothing but invent reasons to be part of the scandal. Nosy retirees in the campground.”

  “'Scandal narcissists,’” I tell him.

  “What?”

  “People who make tragedies all about themselves.”

  “Right. Public sympathy will be high. Kids go into a rehabilitation center at an 'undisclosed location' to heal. It worked with some other cases a few years ago.”

  “Some of those lurid news stories in the past were cover stories?” I'm impressed. That level of mass manipulation takes a ton of coordination.

  And money.

  He ignores my question. “Put them in a rehab hospital for privacy. Kina can be there with the kids. Philippa, too. Everyone, including the older ones. They can hunker down. Wait out the news cycle. Then we move the kids to a more permanent home.”

  “We have more than twenty kids. One home for all of them?”

  His look makes me hate myself.

  “Right,” I mutter. “Not happening.”

  “Hang on and follow orders. You're alive. Most of the kids are alive. That's what matters.”

  I nod. The mic cuts out. My ears ring like all the bones inside are spinning in a centrifuge.

  He's right. Most of the kids are alive.

  That's all that matters.

  So why do I feel like we’ve failed?

  Chapter 3

  Kina

  “Where are we going, Kina?” Jocelyn asks, Jessie asleep in her arms, Hayley pressed against Mary's side like she's glued herself to the teen. When my eyes jump from the teenage twins, Jocelyn to Mary, the air seems to waver.

  Is this how people feel when they look at me and Glen? As if their vision is distorted?

  All those years of being irritated by comments about being an identical twin melt into wry amusement.

  For a few seconds.

  My nose fills, my sniff not enough. I bring my cuff up to wipe my nose and realize it's red through and through.

  I sniff harder.

  “I don't know,” I tell Jocelyn honestly. “But wherever it is, it'll be safer than the compound.”

  “Why did we have to leave?” Mary asks. “Why did they do that?” Horror w
ashes over her features, the betrayal beginning to seep in. “We–we–we are trainees! We are on their side! They wanted to kill the little ones. And then they tried to kill us!”

  “Sela was shot! And Thomas–was he really shot in the stomach?” Candace adds, sitting across from us, folded over and hugging her own stomach. “Like Janice. Are his intestines everywhere, like hers?”

  George asks, “Ith he going to be okay?” I haven't heard his lisp in years. It hasn't gone away. He's twelve and it's still there, though slight, his mouth twisted in a grimace, face muscles trying hard not to show how he feels.

  And failing.

  I'm stunned.

  They're being emotional. According to Stateless standards, it's wildly inappropriate, a sign of failure and weakness.

  But in child development terms, it's healthy. Emotional responses to trauma are needed. They are how we heal.

  How will we ever heal from what we've lived through?

  The very people who taught us everything we believe just tried to kill a score of children.

  Children.

  And all because of me.

  Shame floods me, my bones cold and heavy. Making eye contact is difficult, but I force myself. Not because I need to look at the children and teens for my own sake, but for theirs. I do not want them to project out any guilt. None of this is their fault.

  Not one iota.

  “I don't know,” I say, reaching for Candace's hand. She clutches mine like it's a belay line. “I know that we learned Stateless was ending the compound. That the newborns were taken elsewhere. That you older trainees would be relocated, but the rest–the ones I trained–are considered...” My words drop off as I realize what I'm about to say.

  Considered what? Failures? I can't tell children that the leaders who built the structure of the only society they have ever known consider them failures.

  A reflection of my failure.

  That is a nuance no child, no matter how mature, can ever weave into their psyche.

  Children blame themselves for events beyond their control. It's hard-wired into us, for survival.

  “Are they coming after us?” Tim's voice is so quiet, I can barely hear it. He's sitting next to Candace, slumped against a vibrating window, eyes still closed.

  “I don't know.”

  They want answers. Leadership. Relief.

  Comfort.

  I can't give them any of that.

  “The explosions at the camp. Did they blow everything up?” Mary looks down at her lap, eyes jumping to her clothes. “Is this really everything I have?”

  George looks at his arms, his belly, taking it all in.

  We were never allowed to have many possessions, but we each had books. A picture here and there. A toy or an item we treasured.

  What does my apartment look like now? The simple coffee mug I used most mornings must be shattered into shards, the walls and windows blown out of my home.

  Home.

  Losing a building is one thing. Losing possessions is another.

  Losing home–the physical and emotional construct of it–is devastating.

  We have nothing. Nothing.

  Our bodies.

  Each other.

  That’s it.

  And this team of strangers who is taking us in their vehicles and helicopters toward an uncertain future, surrounded by people we were taught are our enemy.

  Psychological whiplash is very, very real.

  Candace begins to cry, her chin quivering as she fights the emotion. Just thirteen, she is tall, her long hair in a thick braid, bangs grown out recently, pulled out of the tight weave she normally has. Dirt and scratches mar her face, her left shirt sleeve torn from cuff to shoulder seam.

  Big brown eyes look at me as if begging for all of the answers to all of the questions in the universe.

  “Is Mary right?” she asks. “Is this everything we have? Just our clothes?”

  “And each other,” I say with a hand squeeze, pushing aside all my own worries about the tiny babies. Tilly? Where is she? Where are all of them?

  “Who are these men?” Mary demands, her voice loud, looking at Callum with defiance. “Who have you brought us to?”

  “Is this a training exercise?” Jocelyn asks, face flushed with the possibility that reality isn't as horrifying as it feels. Her face lights up. “Maybe Callum is doing this to test us! Smith and Sally used to say we should rise to the occasion, no matter how difficult or stressful, with the assumption that everything is real, and survival is at stake. Did we pass the test?”

  “You think this is The Test?” Tim asks, wide-eyed. “But I'm not old enough!”

  “Not The Test,” Candace scoffs. “But a test.”

  “No,” I say, ending their hope. “This isn't a test of any kind. It's all very, very real.”

  My answer stuns them, rendering them mute, dazed expressions attaching themselves to cherubic faces like leeches looking for a host. Stateless teaches us not to lie to each other. Lies are saved for the outside. For The Field.

  For them.

  Who, exactly, is them right now? Who is the enemy? Our own people shot at us. Tried to kill us. Eliminated the five- to nine-year-olds.

  Their faces fly through my memory banks, each stored forever at the age when we shared our happiest moments together.

  Gone. They're gone.

  Janice is gone. Thomas may be gone. Jay and Sela are in medical crisis.

  And me? I'm here. I'm here but hollow. Nothing inside me can be more important than everything outside me. These children are all I have now.

  And we're being hunted down.

  “So... this is it?” Jocelyn asks with a long sigh that sounds like glass shattering. “This is... all we are?”

  “It's just us and Thomas and Jay and Sela?” Mary asks, eyes jumping from Callum to Duff to the pilots. So many questions in her eyes. I can read the words in her dilated pupils:

  Who are these men?

  Where are they taking us?

  Is everything I know really gone?

  I also know that those questions pale in comparison to the one that screams inside her, echoing in a loop that deafens:

  Is this my fault?

  My mission now is to make sure these children are damaged as little as possible, inside and out. Nothing I do can change what has already happened, but I'll be damned if any of them think that what our leaders just did to them was justified.

  “It's us and a few more,” Callum says, breaking the silence, looking at Duff as he says the words.

  “What?” I gasp. “Who else?”

  Duff motions to Callum, who pulls his headphones off and hands them to me, the warm heat of the ear covers a welcome relief for my wind-chilled ears. One of the stems catches on my hair. I yank hard enough to feel strands pulling out.

  I don't care.

  “I got most of the five- to nine-year-olds out,” Duff says, his voice distant and different in the earphones.

  “You did? How?”

  “Intercepted the van they were using to transport.”

  “I thought they were–” The words choke me, like a boa constrictor, slow and harsh.

  “They were doing something with them off-compound. No idea what, but we got the van.”

  “You said most.”

  Eyelids slowly closing, he sighs. “Callum's right. You don't miss a thing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They held one of the kids hostage. It went down fast.”

  “You mean a Stateless operative shot one of our own children.”

  “Yes. We killed the hostage holder, but not fast enough. We heard a gunshot, then footsteps. We never found her, so we don't know what happened, but she wasn't rescued by us.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “Don't know.”

  “Who?”

  “Who was the Stateless operative, or who was the–”

  “THE CHILD!” I scream, making Mary jump in her seat, Candace looking at me with terror.
>
  “I don't know her name.”

  “Her? What age?”

  “The smallest.”

  Defense mechanisms kick in when our psyche needs to be protected at all costs for sheer survival. A single sniper on a mountain or a rooftop, a faster helicopter, a drone–any of these could take us out in this exact moment. My brain is on fire, my limbs feel like electric currents, and I'm covered in toddler blood.

  Suddenly, I can't remember the five-year-old girls.

  Not a one.

  Only a single year away from having them in my nursery, I am instantly struck with a blank memory. They are a blur, a line of tiny heads all mushed into each other, as if Monet himself painted them in my grey matter. None are distinct, but all are needy, faces turned up to me without expression, without distinction, without the honed individuality they so desperately deserve.

  A good mother figure would have their features, names, bodies, scents, likes and dislikes, fears and joys memorized. Called up at will from the wellspring of bonding and shared experience, but I can't.

  I can't.

  Which makes me a bad mother figure.

  Which finally makes me scream.

  Terrifying the children in the chopper isn't an option.

  Neither is keeping my multi-layered grief quiet.

  Callum senses this, turning me into his chest, moving my face so it's buried in the crook of his arm. I scream into him, at him, through him, his body absorbing the frightening violence of what I have penned within me. He lets me, encourages me, feels me.

  Feels everything I feel.

  Vibrations from the deepest wound inside me move up into him, his bones my tuning fork, his arms my guitar strings. All that I am is surrounded by him as I rage, rage, rage against something I can't control.

  The death of my children.

  At the hands of the very people who created them.

  Chapter 4

  Callum

  By the time we land, I'm certain the teens on the helicopter hate me.

  I don't blame them.

  Kina's screaming into my chest, her hot fury rippling through my torso like a flamethrower of emotion. If this is all I can give her right now, at least I have this. It's better than the immobile feeling of hopelessness that consumes me when I look at her as she absorbs the truth of what's happened.