The Progeny

by Tosca Lee

  “The Utod . . . ?”

  “Hungarian,” he says. “It means Progeny.”

  Piotrek studies me as though I am the most fascinating creature on earth. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

  “No,” I say. “Which is why I was hoping you could give me some answers. Like why I did this.”

  “You’re asking us?” Claudia snaps.

  “The answer is simple,” Ivan says, ignoring her. “You were protecting something of great value.”

  It’s nearly the same thing Rolan said.

  “Like what?”

  Ivan takes a seat on a column of stacked hymnals, folds his hands between his knees. “Something too important for you to say. Or for me to ask. That is the way it is for us. To speak is to put your life and that of any other Utod you know in the hands of another’s fate. It is a great show of faith that Claudia and Piotrek have come here with me today.”

  Faith is the last thing Claudia looks like she has in me. “I notice I had no choice in the matter,” I say.

  “Thanks to your so-called Watcher friend, the Scions already know of your resurrection,” he says. “Rest assured, the risk is solely ours. If you are killed, they will harvest your memory. They will know where you saw us. What we look like. Anything we told you. If we are killed, they will learn only that you are here, and that you remember nothing.”

  “You say you don’t know why I disappeared. But when we spoke you knew what I had done.”

  He shakes his grizzled head. “Not at first, though it became obvious. You had talked once, in theory I thought, about doing such a thing. There was some new unsanctioned clinical trial in the U.S. that you had heard of. You wondered out loud about the benefit of such a procedure to any Progeny who knew too much. You called it a last, life-saving defense. I didn’t believe you would actually do it! Then you vanished. I left Zagreb two weeks later. Many did, spooked by your disappearance. The same thing happened after your mother went missing. And so imagine my surprise when I heard your voice again, especially after the news that you were dead.”

  I unsling my backpack and set it down. “I take it you didn’t know about the dying part.”

  “You couldn’t have told me. Had something happened to me, the knowledge of your plan would have been harvested from my memory.” He shrugs a shoulder. “You knew this.”

  “So you’re saying you have no idea why I did it? That doesn’t make sense. The only thing I left myself was a single link to you!” I try to tamp down the rising wave of panic, but it’s not working.

  “I said I did not ask and you could not tell me,” he says, far too calmly. “I never said I had no idea.”

  I feel myself squinting in the pattern of light thrown across the room, yellow diamonds strewn against the walls. “Is this about the diary?”

  Claudia makes a sharp gesture. “Do not speak of that here!”

  Ivan stays her with a mild murmur. “Reason dictates that if you were close to finding it, you would not have stopped until you ended this all,” he says. “You would not have buried it and abandoned the legacy simply to stay alive. And the Audra I knew did nothing without reason. And many things seemingly contrary to reason. That was her genius.”

  I note that he hasn’t answered my question.

  Then I realize: He doesn’t want to talk in front of the others.

  “Well, I don’t know what that reason was anymore,” I say.

  “You see?” Claudia says. “She knows nothing. Why should we risk any more lives for her?”

  I am so over this chick.

  “You told me to come,” I say to Ivan, steadfastly ignoring her. “That I would be safe here. Well, here I am. Now what?”

  “Yes,” Claudia says succinctly. “Safe. At great cost to ourselves! By now the Scions know you were desperate to keep something from them by any means, which makes them want it even more. Make no mistake: The killings will accelerate, if only because they know you are alive. Your return is more of a danger to us than if you had truly died!”

  I actually blink at the blunt force of her words.

  “You have forgotten who you are,” Ivan says gently. “But I have not. I told you to return for your sake, but for ours as well. Your ‘resurrection’ will send a surge through the underground court. It will give them hope. Some who left will return. In that way, Claudia is right. You cannot come back after disappearing if you are unwilling to give them that. Better that you never returned at all.”

  “What are you saying?” All this time I had pictured spending my foreseeable future in some underground safe house. Not posing as the Progeny poster child! What can I possibly offer them? Hope? Resurgence? I can’t even summon those things in myself.

  “I am saying you are the daughter of Amerie Szabo. By virtue of that fact alone, anything you knew was of interest to the Historian. But this thing that was so great a liability that you had it removed from your memory, it is of interest to us as well.”

  “So let me get this straight. I faked my death and erased my memory to keep something from falling into the Historian’s hands. Now that he knows what I did, he’ll let me live long enough to rediscover it—before killing me and harvesting my memory to get it.”

  “Or perhaps not even that long, depending on what they think it is,” Piotrek says.

  “Noted. Meanwhile, you want it, because if the Historian wants it that badly, it might be useful to you.”

  “To us,” Ivan says quietly. “You . . . are one of us.”

  “But every minute I’m with you puts you in danger. Which is why you won’t help me unless I’m willing to undo everything I did. Why? Because you don’t trust my reasons?”

  “No,” Ivan says. “Because the stakes are far higher. Had you stayed dead, we would have mourned you, and you would have achieved your goal. But now, as Utod and Scion alike learn you are alive, everything has changed. The Historian will not rest until he discovers what you were so intent on keeping from him. Which is why we must find it first.”

  I don’t know how to tell him that I couldn’t retrace my steps even if I wanted to. They, along with every pertinent detail of my life, are gone. To make matters worse, the only person I remotely trust other than Ivan is the man who was supposed to kill me for it all. And right now Luka and I both need their help.

  But Ivan isn’t done.

  “The fact that you contacted me is proof you prepared for this possibility. As you yourself said, the sole thing you left yourself was a link to me. And, as it turns out, I do indeed have something for you.”

  My gaze snaps to him. “What is it?”

  Ivan gets up. “We have been here too long.” He looks at Claudia. “Are you satisfied?”

  Claudia gives a curt nod that is mirrored by her brother. But she looks disconcerted by this last statement of Ivan’s.

  “Come, Audra. You will stay at my house tonight.”

  “The friend I mentioned,” I say abruptly, “is waiting near the café.”

  Ivan shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but your friend cannot come with us.”

  Ivan’s quick refusal shifts me into panic.

  If Luka is lying, I need to be able to control what he thinks he knows.

  But if there’s any truth to Luka’s story, I won’t leave him to the hunters as payment for saving my life. I may not know who I was, but I know at least that much about who I am.

  “I need him,” I say. “He remembers things I don’t.”

  “Not possible,” Ivan says, moving toward the door.

  “Then the underground will have to get their hope somewhere else.”

  Ivan slowly turns.

  “Do you really know whom you can trust?” he says. “I wonder: How did he find you, anyway, the so-called Watcher you escaped?” I understand instantly what he’s insinuating.

  “I wonder the same myself,” I say, looking at each of them in turn.

  It’s weird having a Mexican standoff in the middle of Croatia.

  “There i
s an old saying among the Utod,” Ivan says, at last. “ ‘Better to die blindly than having seen too much.’ But I say: Better to live. If you have any question in your mind at all, then you must leave your friend behind. Particularly if you care for him.”

  “He’s not a threat,” I say, and pray that I’m not lying.

  16

  * * *

  Booths line the street advertising boat tours and deep-sea fishing trips. The beach beyond is filled with pedestrians eating gelato, couples walking with strollers, kids running ahead of their parents.

  I’ve just reached the main thoroughfare when Luka falls into step beside me.

  “So what now?” he says.

  Along the horizon, the Adriatic Sea is a sapphire beneath the setting sun, far too beautiful and serene to exist in the same dimension as my fractured existence.

  “The last ferry for Cres island leaves at eight thirty. We need to be on it,” I say. I don’t mention Ivan’s parting words as he wound his scarf over his head:

  “Be wary, Audra. Your return is a great gift to the Utod. Be careful of those you surround yourself with, and most careful for yourself. For your own sake, I wish you had never been found.”

  When I asked what he meant, he kissed me on both cheeks. “Tonight we will talk. I will tell you things you want to know, and many others it would be best you did not.” Despite the way his statement unsettled me—as it was designed to do—it contained the reassurance, at least, of answers to come. That, I could live with. For the moment.

  Luka pauses. “ ‘We’?”

  “I told them I had someone with me. A friend.”

  He stops cold.

  “Ivan’s taken the earlier ferry,” I continue. “He’ll meet us on the island dock.”

  “Audra, I told you—”

  “What was I supposed to do? You’re here, by your own insistence.”

  “That’s my problem, not yours!”

  I realize the irony. A hunter going into hiding with his mark. But I need him off-kilter, under more experienced scrutiny than mine. Just in case. After all, I trusted Rolan, too.

  The possibility has never left my mind that Luka might be after the exact same information Rolan was. That he might have lied about having had the opportunity to kill me before I removed every trace of it from my brain. That I am still his mark. But as the logical side of my brain continues its waning code orange, it also sees the value of bringing him along. Talk about keeping your enemies closer.

  “If it’s any consolation, they didn’t want to let you come,” I say.

  “They shouldn’t have agreed. It wasn’t smart.” I can practically hear the wheels turning in his head.

  “You promised to protect me. Kind of hard to do if you’re not with me. Besides, if we were as close as you say, I would’ve thought you’d be happy.”

  “I would have followed, kept close on my own.”

  “And you think they wouldn’t have noticed?”

  “I did it for years! Audra, I don’t think you understand the kind of scrutiny you’re going to be under,” he says, though he might as well be talking about himself.

  I shrug. “If anyone asks, just say you’re my boyfriend. It’ll make sense to anyone who saw you with me earlier this year, right?”

  “What am I supposed to say if I get questioned by your friends?” He seems genuinely at a loss.

  “That you know as much as I do. Listen. We met while I was leading my double life in Europe. We fell in love, I told you what I was. As far as you know, the trauma of being constantly on the run and hunted was more than I could take. That’s why I got the procedure. You agreed because it was the only way to save my life from the threat of some nameless, faceless hunter you were inept to protect me against—”

  “Thanks.”

  “It was an out, an opportunity for us to start over and be together. It’s very romantic,” I say drily.

  He looks sharply at me. I smile. “Hey, look at it this way: If we were a thing, it’s not even lying.”

  He pulls me into a doorway then, penning me in the shadows. He’s not smiling. “One problem: The Progeny don’t share who they are,” he hisses.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, and they’ve killed their own for less.”

  “Bullcrap, Luka. I just met two people whose mother was Utod and father was not.”

  “I guarantee you the father had no idea.” His expression has darkened. “And if he did, there’d be serious consequences.”

  “As serious as me hooking up with my own hunter? Would that be more believable?” I shoot back.

  For a moment, he actually looks rattled, a quick succession of emotions playing across his face.

  “Listen. You’re the golden child of Amerie Szabo. Don’t lose that card. You need them on your side.” He searches my eyes, says more softly, “Please.”

  Is that the look of someone urging—no, practically begging—for my sake, or for his?

  “Fine. You’re the friend I met over here during my time off from college. You came back to the States with me. You said yourself you were working for your dad to earn money to go to school in the U.S. When we got back I told you my abusive ex-boyfriend was stalking and going to kill me. I got the procedure, faked my death to get away. You came to Maine to look out for me because that’s the kind of stand-up guy you are, and yeah, okay, you’re into me. Everything was fine until my ex found me and started harassing me again, taking me all the way to the Center to try to get my memory back. As far as you know, we’re here meeting up with my old friends to get me away from him. Good enough for you?”

  He turns his head slowly, eyes on me. “It’s scary, how fast you came up with that.”

  I lean closer.

  “You want scary? Try this: If, for any reason, I find out you’ve been lying to me all this time, I will out you to them all. I’m pretty sure that would have ‘serious consequences.’ ”

  He steps away, and I brush past him.

  Five minutes later we’re heading down the street after a quick stop at the tourist agency to book ferry passes. We grab sandwiches at an outdoor café—cheese and tomato baguettes that would be considered understuffed by American standards—and take them down to the water to eat. A breeze is blowing in from the ocean, and though it isn’t cold, it’s bracing enough to remind me that I’m alive. Right now, for this moment. And I’m ravenous. Impossibly, I eat the entire thing, wash it down with a bottle of Fanta.

  “Cres island, you said?” Luka asks. I nod. “That doesn’t make sense. The Progeny don’t usually hide in underpopulated areas.”

  “He called himself a hermit, but he’s Progeny. I could feel him coming a block away.”

  Luka frowns as we walk up the road past several small boutiques toward some larger hotels. It feels good to move, to lengthen my stride and walk—fast. Despite the fatigue and drain of the last several days, I suddenly feel like I could run.

  “You need to burn,” Luka says, his long legs keeping up easily with mine.

  “What?”

  “Some energy. You’re amped. But we don’t have time or gear to swim.” He looks around.

  “Is that what I used to do?” I say. My mind is instantly back in Maine the morning I woke with damp hair. Is that what I was doing? The reason I swam to retrieve the cross from the truck instead of taking the johnboat?

  “Anytime you could.”

  We near the driveway of a boutique hotel. From the sidewalk I can see the swimming pool with the broad dining deck looking right out over the ocean.

  “There,” Luka says, pointing to a taxi preparing to pull in.

  “What?”

  “The doorman called that cab for a guest. Get him to take us instead.”

  A minute later we’re in the back of the cab and the edge is off. We ride the twenty minutes to Rijeka past magnificent homes facing the water with gates of climbing vines, window boxes full of flowers.

  I think back again to the way Ivan and the o
thers looked at me, as though I were the ghost of my mother. Recall what Ivan said about forgetting who I am and wonder how I’m ever supposed to remember in the shadow of her dubious celebrity.

  And I can’t stop hearing Claudia’s statement that it might be better if I had truly died.

  The ferry landing in the port city of Rijeka is a curving stretch of road. By the time we arrive, it is filled with cars lined all the way up the hill so far that we can’t even see the ferry itself. Farther down, several people have gotten out of their vehicles.

  The driver is saying something, lifting the hand that was dangling over the wheel a moment ago to gesture in the direction of the bay.

  “There is some problem,” he says and then clucks his tongue at the rearview mirror as the lane fills with more cars behind us.

  “Stay here,” Luka says, getting out. I watch him walk twenty yards down the road to get a good look at the dock.

  The driver is becoming impatient, sighing and gesturing to the meter.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I say, not sure if he understands me. This is the only place you need to be. A moment later, he turns off the engine and steps out of the cab for a smoke as a few cars farther down negotiate tight turns and begin to move back up the road.

  I lose sight of Luka a few minutes later and find myself staring out the window, drumming my fingers against my knee. At last I can sit still no longer and get out of the cab, start walking down the road.

  When I reach the bend, the scene opens below me: white police vans blocking the landing, blue lights flickering in the early evening. I hurry several steps, trying to see what’s happening. There are people in front of the dock craning to see around the police blockade.

  A hand on my shoulder. Luka.

  “We need to go,” he says.

  “What’s going on?” I say, eyes glued to the growing crowd. The police don’t seem to be breaking up a fight or arresting anyone. Just a few officers keeping the passengers back while others talk to what look like the captain and some ferry workers. And one lone car in the gaping hull of the ferry itself.