As he looked around for a way to escape, Sean carried on an urgent conversation with their mother. It was obvious the two had known each other for some time. And despite the fact that this man had just rescued them all from Milagro, their mother did not seem overly thankful. Each was blaming the other for some massive problem that Ben couldn’t fully grasp. Just when it seemed like they were going to start pushing each other, Sean stopped at a window that looked a bit different from the rest. He calmly raised his hand to stop their mother from yelling and then undid a small latch on the window frame.
“Okay, everybody out,” said Sean as he pushed the window open. Rain and wind gushed into the hallway in a forceful torrent.
“You have got to be joking, Sean,” said their mother.
“Oh, it’s entirely up to you, Nora. You can escape with me and the kids, or you can go back to Milagro’s little love-in back there.”
From behind clenched teeth and after a few seconds of stewing, their mother said, “Fine.”
“Good,” said Sean with a nod and a satisfied smile. He heaved himself up and out the window in an acrobatic movement that made him seem much more agile than his disheveled appearance would suggest. He grabbed a rail on the outside of the building and hung cat-like from one arm, clearly showing off. Just before he began climbing down the ladder, a devilish grin spread across his face. He arched his eyebrows. “Down we go. Last one out close the window behind you.”
“Okay, everyone,” sighed their mother. “I’m sorry we don’t have time for much of a reunion here. Let’s just follow Sean and try to get out of here as quickly as possible. Then I’ll explain what’s going on, okay?” Voices and clamor echoed behind them in Milagro’s office.
Thomas, Hannah, and Alison needed no convincing and were already clambering down the ladder. But Ben’s legs felt like they were nailed to the floor. He watched his siblings cast off into the storm, but he couldn’t move.
“Ben, come on!” Their mother was halfway out the window when she realized that Ben was too afraid to move. “Here, give me your hand.”
Ben didn’t want to, but he let her help him. She pulled him out the window and into the rain. Ben couldn’t look at her. Maybe it was because he was so confused about what was going on. And who she really was. How can you let someone help you if you don’t know who they are? She was still his mother. But what else was she?
The ladder was slick and cold and Ben was barely able to hang onto the rungs, his hands turning white in the rain. Once everyone had made it safely down, Sean took off without a word. They crept along the side of the building, in between bushes and through flowerbeds, below the windows and hidden from the road. As Sean led them, he and their mother resumed their argument. Ben tried to pickup bits of the conversation, which was more like a volley of hushed barks. Their mother’s voice was tinged at the edges with a high-pitched hysteria Ben had never heard before.
“Nora, before we go any further . . . imperative that you tell me which . . . where the . . .”
“. . . can’t do this, Sean. Not after. . . already been taken once . . . almost killed me.”
“You have no . . . in this situation, Nora.”
“Just tell them . . . don’t own it any more than . . . slimeball maniac . . .”
“Nora . . . I have no choice in . . . You know . . . I have to do.”
“Sean . . . don’t get it, do you? . . . not like that . . . doesn’t have to be that way. . . dare you talk that way in front of . . . get us out of here!”
Inside the building, voices were shouting and alarms were wailing. The power was still off and the only light was the red glow of the emergency exit signs and the scattered sticks of flashlight beams bouncing off the walls.
They crawled around a corner of the building and into a huge shipping bay. Sean ran over to a dented red garbage dumpster and then motioned for them to follow. “Okay, I need to find a way for us to get to the truck,” he said. “Everybody wait here. Get in.”
“What, in the dumpster?” asked their mother. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Nora, please, just get in. It’s the only hiding spot.”
“You just find any opportunity to punish me, don’t you, Sean?”
“Come on, Mom,” said Hannah as she climbed up the rusted metal. “We’re already filthy anyway.”
Sean hoisted them up and into the dark, putrid mouth. “Okay, back in a jiff,” he said as he gently closed the lid. As the light disappeared, the smells overwhelmed them. It felt like Ben was sitting on a cardboard box, but there was certainly the noxious pall of rotten food coming from somewhere below him. Like an ancient beast being prodded awake, the container released a ghastly smell whenever anyone moved.
“Okay, Mom, what’s going on?” asked Ben, trying to contain his frustration. Everyone was still trying to get comfortable, but Ben couldn’t wait any longer. From the details he had picked up from the tense conversation between her and Sean, it was clear that whoever Sean was, their mother didn’t trust him. And if the man at the top of the pyramid was to be believed, she had stolen the cure for cancer. For their entire lives their mother had been an encyclopedia, but she had never divulged the most important things. Like who she actually was. Was everything about her a lie? Ben was sitting next to a stranger. He didn’t know whether to hug her or hit her.
Their mother sighed. “Ben, I never wanted it to be like this. I’m so sorry. You’ve obviously figured out that I’m a different person than you thought, that I’m . . . someone else.” She made wet, sniffling noises in the darkness, but Ben couldn’t bring himself to console her.
“Well, who are you then?” asked Alison.
“And who are we?” added Ben. There was something else to the equation. Sean had said that their mother could choose whether or not to come with him and the kids. Why were the four of them more important than their mother, the actual thief?
“Well, my name is Nora Graham, but for much of the last decade, I’ve lived under other names. And the four of you also had different last names a few times. We’ve been running around the country for a long time. I kept telling you that it was because of my job. In a way, I guess that was true. I used to work for that . . . man you just met in that office there. Before you were born I was one of the most famous scientists in the country. I was the youngest triple Phd in American history. I had degrees in genetic engineering, ethnobotany, and oncology.”
Thomas made a sound as if he had just choked on a piece of food. Ben felt his head shake as he struggled to understand how their mother had never given any sign of this. Outside, there was urgent shouting and a stampede of boots racing past, and everyone went quiet until the noise faded away.
“What’s oncology?” asked Hannah.
“It means she knows about cancer,” said Thomas in a condescending voice. “And ethnobotany is obviously the study of how people use plants.”
“Thomas, I’ve told you about speaking nicely to your sister,” chided their mother, sounding like she was breaking up one of their usual fights. She took a deep breath and continued. “So about fifteen years ago, before any of you were born, Milagro hired me to help him find a cure for cancer, which is what I’d spent my entire academic career yearning to do. I was aware of the rumors of him being sneaky and money-hungry, but I told myself it didn’t matter. He gave me everything I needed to conduct my research.”
“I don’t understand,” said Alison. “What kind of research?”
“Well, everybody was looking for the cure in labs. I figured the cure was already out there in nature, that it was just a question of finding it. I knew about these tribes in the South American jungle, and how they had found plants with the power to cure illnesses. I wagered that somewhere out there was a plant that had something in it that could help cure cancer. So I focused on a section of deserted forest that, as far as I knew, was uninhabited and unexplored. I spent over a year in the jungle.”
Ben closed his eyes and tried to digest it all. Their mother was s
ome sort of jungle explorer. An international fugitive. A genius. How had she manage to hide all this? Never once in his fourteen years had Ben ever doubted that she was merely a secretary in some big company. It was ironic on some level, since it was something that in his most wistful dreams he had always wanted his father to be. And those photographs of the jungle back in their apartment now made sense. She hadn’t just been “traveling” in the jungle.
“I found flowers and plants that had strong medicinal properties, but nothing like what I was looking for. And then I heard whispers in the native tribes about this one plant, three feet tall with flowers of all colors, high up in the clouds in the mountains where no one lived. They said its pollen contained the power to dissolve tumors. But they said there was a curse. Countless explorers had gone missing looking for the plant. I went anyway. And just when I was about to give up and go home, I found the plant, in full bloom, growing out of the side of a cliff, thousands of feet up a mountain. It was the greatest moment in my life--until the four of you were born, of course. But after a few minutes of silence, voices spoke to me from the mist. And they called me by my name.”
“I thought you said the place was uninhabited?” said Thomas.
“That’s what everybody thought. The voices belonged to a tribe called the Sibuaji. They guarded the plant in the only place it grew in the entire world. But they knew I was working for Milagro, and they wouldn’t let me take any samples. They told me how Milagro himself had once tried to find it, and how they managed to keep him away from its real location. But they said that it was only a matter of time before he found a way to actually steal it. They told me things about Milagro that made me sick, things that no one knows. I stayed with them for a while and I guess I came to see things their way. Milagro had hired me to find the plant for him, and if I didn’t bring it back, he would just find someone else to do it for him. I gradually realized I’d do anything to keep the plant out of his hands. The Sibuaji offered a solution . . . a way of hiding the plant.
“They knew that I was trained in genetic engineering, and they proposed something that shocked me. I . . . I originally thought it was a bad idea, but . . .” Her voice cracked and she started crying softly. “But after a while, they convinced me to try their idea. I guess the scientist in me wanted the challenge. I’d spent my entire life reading books and doing experiments. But I wasn’t prepared for how it would be. I guess I needed a Phd in life or something.” She trailed off into a sad cry, but then regained her composure with a loud sniff. “The technology was simple. It was basic sequencing and splicing. It was the perfect plan, really. No one would ever know. The plant could be destroyed and kept from Milagro, and its genetic code would be perfectly hidden.”
“Okay, wait,” said Ben. “I don’t understand. You hid the plant by splicing it with . . .” Their mother whimpered something undecipherable. Ben’s suspicion that he and his siblings were involved in his mother’s thievery was growing into something unspeakable. She had stolen the cure for cancer. She had hidden it somewhere. Something involving genetic engineering. Sean was rescuing them. It was simple, horrifying arithmetic.
“So you’re saying the code you stole from Milagro,” said Thomas, “the genetic code of the plant . . . it’s spliced into . . .” Thomas couldn’t hear himself say it either.
“He doesn’t own it, Thomas,” said their mother. “No one does. I just wanted to keep it out of his hands.”
“What? How is that possible?” asked Alison in an exasperated plea.
“I thought it would be pretty easy. And it was, in terms of technology. I never had any training in emotions, though. The Sibuaji wanted one child to carry the code, but for some reason I thought that having four would be even better. It would disguise things and make it harder for Milagro to find the code. At some point in my university years, I gave up on ever having kids. And then, when the Sibuaji told me their idea, I realized I could have a family. It wasn’t too late. But it didn’t work out as perfectly as I’d thought. Things in textbooks and labs sometimes don’t, I guess.”
“So, which one of us is it in then?” demanded Thomas.
Their mother either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to answer. She kept talking. “And then, something in me changed. Having children was something so emotional that all of the science I knew became completely useless. And that’s when we started running, away from Milagro, away from the Sibuaji, away from my past and who we really were. I invented a new identity, working as a secretary, and raising you the best I could, never wanting to admit that the children that I loved more than anything on earth were brought to life for anything less than pure love. I tried not to think about how long we could get away with it. We moved whenever I thought Milagro or anybody working for the Sibuaji was getting close to us. But then, a few weeks ago, Milagro finally found us.”
Ben knew that it was the call from Mrs. Brodsky to the police that had tipped Milagro off. Mrs. Brodsky had given out their mother’s description and the fact that she had four kids. The need to confess had been weighing on him since that long-ago argument with the senile, pink-slippered hag. “Mom, I . . . I,” stammered Ben. “I think I got us into this whole mess. The night they took you away, we . . . I got Mrs. Brodsky really angry and she called the cops and--”
“Ben, it’s okay,” said their mother. “He was about to find us anyway. It doesn’t matter now. Maybe I started getting sloppy, or tired . . . I guess this whole thing had to end--or start--sometime.” She wept in the darkness, and it sounded like Alison and Hannah were hugging her.
Ben flashed back to the night she was taken away, the last time they had seen her, when he had asked about their father, and when the start of the tears in her eyes had first hinted at the secrets she held. Her black hair, slick with the humidity of her evening commute, home from work at a job she was infinitely overqualified for. And that smile on her face, which Ben only noticed now, in his memory. It was a smile of relief at seeing four children, safe again for one more day. A smile of courage to live a life of lies so that they could somehow try to be normal. Looking back, it became so much clearer.
“But, who was that man who rescued us just now?” asked Hannah. “We saw him before, at the airport.”
“His name is Sean,” said their mother. She sighed and her voice became business-like. “He works for the Sibuaji. I’ve known him since the beginning. His job is to keep track of the code, to keep track of us. But he hasn’t been doing a very good job . . . it’s taken him over ten years to find us.” She chuckled to herself. “That amulet I gave you, Ben--the thing that Milagro so wonderfully thought was the code itself--was a homing beacon that I was supposed to activate if I ever thought the code was in danger. I thought that I’d be able to escape and meet you at the airport, that we’d be able to get away from this mess. But I was wrong. I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”
Ben still didn’t know whether to say, “That’s okay,” or whether to yell at her for not telling them the truth years ago. They were all silent for a few seconds and listened to the sound of the wind and rain hammering against the lid of the dumpster.
But Ben couldn’t get rid of the resentment burning in his heart. Even though he now understood what was going on, he couldn’t forgive her. She had lied to them for the entire lives. “So, we’re some kind of science experiment then,” he said, “for some people we’ve never heard of--in some jungle?”
“No, Ben,” cried their mother. “You are my children.” The caterwauling voice made Ben recoil. He decided not to ask his next question, the same one he had asked the night before she had been taken from their apartment. The father question.
“I don’t understand,” whimpered Hannah. “Why didn’t you tell us who we were?”
“I’m . . . I’m so sorry, Hannah. There was never a right time to tell you this.”
“But we can still leave. Right now, I mean,” said Alison in quick exasperation. “Right now, let’s go. Cause we’ve all become pretty good at escaping lat
ely.” Her voice was nervous and fragile sounding as she tried to be funny.
“No,” said their mother quietly. “They’d only find us just like they found us before. It was only a matter of time. The Sibuaji had people trying to track us down. And Milagro had his own guards.”
The lid above them creaked open and Sean’s dripping head appeared out of the rain.
“And here’s the man who is only following orders,” said their mother, “and not his heart, which I’m not sure he ever--”
“Okay, we have a way out,” said Sean. “Move quickly and follow me closely.”
Chapter Twenty-four: The Single, Muffled Syllable
They shot across the road and into a clump of trees. From what Ben could glean from quick, stolen glances through the torrents of rain, the Milagcorp complex encompassed countless handfuls of smaller buildings scattered behind the main glass wave. It was like a mini city. A few miles off, the buildings became foggier and the gray rain mixed with clouds of ocean spray into a frothing mist that made it feel like waves were about to come crashing ashore.
They ran through gardens where roses of all colors were bursting into perfect blossoms. Fruit trees spread above their heads and the manicured gravel paths were hemmed in by deep green hedges. Once it seemed like they were somewhat safe amid the foliage, they slowed from a breakneck run and tried to catch their breath.
“Is all this part of Milagcorp?” asked Ben. The necks of all four kids were craned in awe at the scale of Milagro’s corporate complex. Their mother had apparently seen it all before. She strode on with a driven indignation.
“Milagro runs his own little executive college,” explained Sean. And then his voice took on the high-pitched and shrill phoniness of a TV ad. “You too can get an MBA degree in insider lobbying and public relations rhetoric.” But as they looked back at the main glass building receding into the storm, the lights of complex started to blink to life, one floor at a time. In ten seconds the entire pyramid glowed a bluish white.
The Fortress of Clouds Page 23