“That’s…amazing.”
“I thought you would’ve healed yourself by now. Different powers for different people, I guess, though I’d never heard of regeneration on that level.”
“You’re the only one?” I’m able to lift my head long enough to see Mosley waving us over, shouting for us to hurry. Behind him, the doctor and a woman in a purple outfit anxiously throw white sheets onto a bed.
Finn says, “I researched as much as I could in the libraries. There were stories of some of the original Kinders being able to heal scratches and bruises in a matter of minutes. Never found anything about something amazing like a gunshot wound or a broken bone.”
“Bones?” I whisper. It’s getting harder to get my words out clearly.
“I don’t know which was crazier—shooting myself or the fact that I put my forearm between two cinderblocks and broke it with a rock.”
“You did… You did what?”
“Broke it in two. The end of my arm was dangling there like a broken branch. I held it back in place and thirty seconds later, boom, good as new.”
“You’re…” My word trails off. I’m so tired and cold that I can’t even remember what I was going to say.
“Nuts? You could say that.”
Drifting in and out of consciousness, I’m vaguely aware of the man known as Dr. Carlson leaning over me, shining a bright light in my face. There’s a woman he calls Nurse on the other side of the table. I feel a burning sensation in the bullet wound along with a tugging feeling. His words claw through my floating daze. “She’s awake. More sedative, Nurse. Hurry.”
“How much?”
“Just a drop or two. We can’t spare enough to put her all the way under.”
And then I’m drifting away again, down and down again into an enveloping blackness. In my dream, I’m running along a dry riverbed, trying not to twist my ankle on the loose stones. My breathing is ragged and the air is thick with the smell of gunpowder. All around me, I hear explosions and the cracks and pops of different types of firearms, but when I look for the source, I see nothing but trees and green grass on the riverbank. I don’t know what I’m running from, at least not until I look over my shoulder.
A wall of water ten feet high rages behind me, catching up, getting closer and closer. White, frothy foam at the forefront thrashes and bubbles, roiling and crashing along the rocks. It’s then I realize that the oncoming river itself is making the sounds of battle, rather than the sound of rushing water.
I step on a loose stone and it rolls beneath my foot. I’m down on my hands and knees, scrambling desperately, trying to get back to my feet and then the water is upon me and I’m swept up in it, floating and tossed head over heels to the point where I don’t know which way is up. I can’t breathe. I’m choking. I feel life slipping away while I drown and then—
“Caroline? Can you hear me?”
“Huh? Wha—”
“She’s awake! Doctor? Doctor, come see.”
I force one eye open, then the other. I’m in some sort of tent, I think, with white canvas walls and a couple of beeping boxes with wires attached to my body. I try to sit up and feel a soft hand on my arm. “Let me…”
“Rest now, honey. Don’t pull your stitches out.” It’s a woman’s voice, and I assume it belongs to Nurse.
“Am I—did he?”
“You’re going to be fine,” she says. I look up into a face that seems familiar. Someone I knew from long ago. The hair, the eyes. It’s almost as if I’m looking into a mirror that shows me the future.
I’m still dreaming. I have to be. Or it’s the medicine they gave me. I’m seeing things. I know I’m seeing things.
“It’s been so long,” she says. “I never thought it would happen like this.”
Chapter 11
A small number of soldiers gather around us, along with Finn, Mosley, Dr. Carlson, Mosley’s brother Bobby, and a man who carries himself as if he’s the leader of the group. He’s the one who Mosley referred to as Hale, and he stands to the side of Mosley with his hands clasped behind his back.
Also sitting in front of me are a man and a woman. They’re full of smiles and questions, statements about how worried they were about me, and they’re so proud to see what I’ve become. I take this all in as I hear the woman think, I hope she hasn’t told them her secret.
They comment on how grown up I am.
And, they also claim to be my parents.
I’m still not entirely sure I’m awake. Finn refused me with a smile when I asked him to pinch my arm.
Nurse, or Mother, says, “I can’t believe it. Look at you.” Her eyes are red and watery.
The bearded man, who also looks alarmingly familiar says, “We were certain we’d—that we would never… Well, you know.” He hangs his head.
If I’m awake, and if they’re my parents—and it’s an incredibly strong if—I don’t know where to begin. My heart pounds. My fingers and toes are numb.
Could it be? Is it true? I’m fairly certain that I’m actually awake.
I turn away from them and ask Finn, “Are they really…”
A corner of his mouth goes up, along with an eyebrow, as if they’re attached by a string. “They say so. From the stories they told us, the timing is right.”
“Of course we are,” Mother says. “Caroline, it must be so hard for you to understand.” She tries to say something else but sputters until her hand goes over her mouth.
Father puts an arm around her. “We could explain, but…”
I spit my words out full of venom and spite. “Oh, I’m sure you could. I’m sure you could explain exactly why you abandoned me, why you ran away like cowards and left me behind. How many years has it been?” My wounds have been sewn up, and I can feel the stitches pulling as I strain with my anger. “Why? Huh? Tell me, give me the reason why I grew up without a mother and father.”
Mother opens her mouth, but Father interrupts before she can speak. “It was for you, Caroline. I promise.”
“For me? How could it be for me? You abandoned me. You never came back.”
“Life,” he says, sighing. “Life got away from us. We came to the city to work, to earn money so we could bring you here.”
“You’re lying,” I hiss. “You didn’t want to be around me because I was—”
“Special,” Mother interrupts. “And that’s not it. That was never it.”
“Then what, huh? Give me a real reason, not whatever lies he’s telling,” I say, pointing at the man claiming to be my father.
Mother gives him a long, regret-filled stare with watery eyes and says, “Should we tell her?”
“Do we have a choice?” he answers.
“What? Tell me.”
Mother looks around at the people standing nearby. She asks for privacy, but the leader, Hale, says, “We learned certain things about Scout Mathers, extraordinary things, along with this young man here, and I think whatever has to be said needs to be said in front of everyone.”
Mother’s bottom lip trembles. “Wait? You know? But—”
“Call it a matter of Republic security.”
She nods, relenting. Father huffs and gives Hale a look that would melt stone. He says, “Your grandfather got into an argument with the General Chief… My lord, what was that man’s name? It’s been so long.”
“Hawkins,” I remind him.
“Right, right. Hawkins. God, what a miserable sack of shhh—horse dung that man was.” Father stands and puts his hand on Mother’s shoulder. I watch his fingers slowly squeeze as a measure of reassurance. “It was—I barely remember. It was over something ridiculous, like trading beans for boots, maybe, and it got out of hand and somehow your grandfather let it slip that there was more than one Kinder in the village who would happily kick his rear and thank him for the privilege.”
Mother adds, “And rather than telling him that it was you, your Father took the blame and Hawkins ran us out of the encampment. We didn’t have a choice, Caroline
. You were so young, and it was either face execution in The Center or accept our banishment.”
“Hawkins was going to execute you for being a Kinder? He believed you? I thought everyone knew they were gone?”
“It took some convincing.”
“But—but Ellery, we all knew about her.”
Father steps closer to me. I can smell the faint hint of tobacco in his rumpled jacket. His pants are ripped at the knees; his boots are stained black with something I can’t identify. He looks like a working man, the way I remember him, but a decade older. He says, “Ellery wasn’t the, uh, the saint that everyone thought.”
“I know that. Finn told me.”
Mother glances sideways at Finn, then back to me. “She was helping Hawkins stay in control with her visions.”
“She what?”
“If we’d known at the time, we never would’ve let her…do what she did to you.”
“It’s okay to say it, Mother. I think they all know by now.”
Mosley nods, as does Hale, Dr. Carlson, and a number of the surrounding soldiers.
“We hoped that you didn’t…”
“That I didn’t what? Get some of the bad stuff in her blood?”
“Yes,” spits Father, “you know that Ellery did it to prevent Hawkins from reporting her. She was a frail, old woman trying to protect her identity. She wasn’t evil.”
Hale speaks up and says, “A frail, old woman who betrayed her people.”
“Maybe so, but that was a long time ago. Anyway,” Father says, “that’s the story. When you reached the proper age, your grandfather was supposed to steal you away from the encampment in the middle of the night, and, well, here you are, regardless. It’s just such a shame that he...that he didn’t make it.”
Finn must have filled them in on the details while I was out.
I’m struck speechless. I don’t know what to say or what to believe. For years and years, I’ve accused them of abandoning me, I’ve hated them for leaving me behind, and now I learn that they were banished to save me? Father lied and they both accepted their fate so that I might live in peace. I don’t want to ask the obvious question: what would’ve happened if General Chief Hawkins found out long ago? The answer no longer has any bearing. The past is gone and Hawkins is likely dead. I should’ve killed him myself when I had the chance.
Mother gets up from the bench and cautiously holds her arms out for a hug. She nudges closer to me, waiting to see if I’ll accept it.
I look at Finn as if he has an answer.
“Go on,” he says.
And I do. I bite my lip and I fall into Mother’s arms, squeezing her tight, ignoring the pain in my chest. I bury my face in that soft spot between her neck and her shoulder and I cry. I feel Father’s arms around us both, pulling us in, our little family reunited after so long.
The soldiers surrounding us cheer and clap, all of them except for Hale, whose untrusting eyes judge me from a distance.
Do I care why?
Not in the slightest.
Doctor Carlson says, “Can we give them a minute, please?”
Hale ponders for a second and lifts a hand to his men. “Little room to breathe, boys. We can discuss what to do with the Kinders later.”
I don’t like the sound of that, but it’ll sort itself out. Right now, all I can think about is how wrong I’ve been for a decade, maybe longer. “I can’t believe it,” I say between sobs. “You were gone and I thought—I thought you were dead or—I don’t even know, but you were here all along. Alive.”
I can tell Mother wants to hug me tighter, but she’s being careful of my bandages and wound. She says, “We’re so sorry, Caroline. Nothing can ever make up for it. Nothing. And you have to understand how absolutely, unbelievably, ridiculously hard it was for us to leave you behind. You’ll understand if you ever have a child some day. Not if, when. I promise you that. Once you look into your baby’s eyes, you’ll never be able to imagine leaving her behind. I thought I would die from the regret—we both did—but that hope, knowing that we’d get to see you again one day, that’s what kept us going.”
Father kisses the top of my head. “No amount of apologizing will ever begin to make up for it, Caroline, but I hope you understand, at least a little.”
“I do,” I say, pulling away from Mother and leaning my head against his chest. “But now we’re going to war.”
And thus begins a long, long conversation full of promises and regrets, assurances and demands, begging and pleading, that leaves me exhausted. I’d come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t immortal as a Kinder, but I had no idea how fatigued I could become from arguing with my parents, especially with two sewn holes in my body. They tell me that there’s no way I’m going to fight, not now, not ever, considering the fact that we’ve only just reunited. They gave me up once, they’re not going to do it again. I tell them I’ll be fine as soon as the healing process takes over—which, according to the clock hanging over the white surgery tent indicates that I have approximately three and a half hours before the citizens of Warrenville march out to their captors.
“No,” Father says, “I absolutely forbid it.”
Mother pushes a loose strand of hair out of my face and gives me a warm, concerned, motherly look. “He’s right, Caroline.”
I had lived with Grandfather for years and years, yet I still felt independent, self-sufficient, as if I could’ve lived and survived on my own. I led a group of a thousand people through hundreds of miles of dense forest. With Finn’s help, we fought off the entire DAV vanguard.
And here I stand, arguing with my parents like a whiny teenager.
It occurs to me that yes, we’ve been reunited but I’m my own person. I’m strong. I have abilities that only one other person in the world has.
“Listen to me,” I say, “I understand you feel the need to do the—the parent thing, and I’m your child, but I’m not a child. I’m fighting. Finn and I are fighting. It’s not right, what they’re doing. President Larson is giving up without fighting back because he wants to save himself. And slavery? Father, honestly? I can’t let that happen. I can’t. They deserve better and if we stand any chance at all…” And then something occurs to me… “You’re here. Didn’t you come to fight?”
Father stammers, “I—we—neither of us believe that giving up is the right answer and yes, we came to fight, but that was before—Caroline, listen to me. We can’t lose you again.”
“And what would’ve happened if I had never shown up here, huh? What if both of you had fought and died? What then? Was I supposed to go along thinking that you were gone for good?”
Mother takes his hand. “She has a point. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in chains and neither do you. Let’s not forget that.”
“That was different, that was before we knew she was still alive.”
“Then why, Father? Why are you here?”
He takes a deep breath and lifts his eyes up to the rafters. “We got word that the DAV had crossed Rafael’s Ridge and burnt the encampment to the ground. They said everyone was dead. We thought…” He coughs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
Mother finishes for him. “We thought you were dead, Caroline, and we decided that we’d rather go down fighting than waste away in some factory up north. But you’re here and—”
I consider stomping my foot like a toddler, but the likelihood of blinding pain prevents me. Instead, I sternly say, “The fact that I’m alive doesn’t change anything. Not a bit. The blackcoats are still going to come, and they’re still going to take everyone, willing or not. You won’t believe the things Finn and I can do. We can show you. Even with this small group of soldiers, we might have a chance.”
Father holds his palms out. “Caroline, they have ten thousand men, and automatic rifles, and tanks. They have tanks for God’s sake.”
“Maybe so,” I say, “but we have the will to survive, and two Kinders, so we can either fight for our future, or die in chains fo
r theirs.”
Chapter 12
Finn and I wait off to the side of a large congregation. Word had spread like juicy gossip through The Center, the way it used to do back in my encampment, and now every man, woman, and child, soldier and volunteer alike, stand in the southeast corner of the warehouse. They give us expectant glances and chatter in hushed voices. I can’t tell if they’re excited or scared. Perhaps a little bit of both. Mother and Father are close by, giving me warm, reassuring smiles, but they’re not allowed to come closer until Hale has said what he needs to say to us.
The leader of the Rebel Coalition shoves his way through the crowd with Mosley at his side, looking determined. He’s added a RPV army jacket to his attire, but all the official pins and badges of recognition have been replaced by a small emblem of a single fist held up, resting on a blue background with orange trim. This badge rests over his left breast, and when he stops in front of us, he beats his chest twice on top of it.
Hale says, “So.”
Finn holds his chin up and replies, “So.”
Hale snarls slightly. “I can’t say that I enjoy the fact that you two are here. Kinders, of all things. I think the whole country rejoiced when they thought all of you bastards had died out, yet here you are. So young. Tell me how.”
Finn says, “Someone gave me a serum, when I was a baby. It made me a Kinder, just like the first ones.”
“Is there any more of this serum out there? Could there be more of you?”
Finn hesitates. It’s not something either of us had considered. “I can’t say absolutely not, but if there were, I’m sure I’d feel them.”
Hale pinches his eyebrows together and glares at Finn. “Feel them? How?”
Finn shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s one of my…abilities, I guess. I could feel Caroline long before I met her, another one of my kind, you know?”
“And she’s the only one?”
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