Creators (Entangled Teen)

by Truitt, Tiffany

  “Yes, owe. I don’t even care why you left anymore, but the fact remains that you did. I had to sit there and watch my mother drink herself to death. To watch Emma die in childbirth. To trek through the woods to find that my little sister was manipulated. That she could die. And I did it without you!”

  I clenched and unclenched my fists before continuing, trying to ignore how heavy my head felt. “I got your letters. I know that you always wondered if having children was the best idea. But that doesn’t matter because you did have children. Children you abandoned.”

  “I left because it was the only way to stop—”

  “Who? The council? The government that you feel abandoned you, right?” I walked toward my father, forcing my anger down, pulling up an emotion that I liked to keep hidden. “You came back here and made me believe you were that person—that man I cried for at night, but you’re not him. Are you?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  “No one is who they were back then. That’s how we’ve survived,” he replied, averting his eyes. Maybe he did it because saying it meant acknowledging everything we lost, or maybe he looked away because it was a lie. I wasn’t sure, and I probably would never be sure about his intentions again.

  “But at what cost?” I countered, blinking back the tears. When my father couldn’t answer, I nodded. “Right. You brought that man into my home; you risked the lives of everyone I loved to keep him hidden. I deserve to know why.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Five minutes. I just want five minutes,” I said “Show me that all of this has a reason. Prove to me that I wasn’t just a pawn.”

  “I…” My father’s voice trailed off, and I could sense that his determination was wavering.

  “If you did this for Louisa and me, then give me what I need. And I need to talk to him.”

  My father gave a curt nod. “Fine. Follow me.”

  …

  As I trudged through the woods, I went through my list of questions for Abrams. Questions I feared the most because they would lead me to the answers that changed my world. Would the answers make me feel better? Or was I better off not knowing?

  James’s letters had told me the council knew Abrams was missing, and that they were doing everything in their power to find him. Despite his notoriety, he was still important to them. I couldn’t help but wonder why. There was no way he was an active creator; it was some miracle of science that he even still lived. But what would the council want with a man who could only bring them shame?

  “How did you get Abrams?” I called out to my father, who walked ahead of me.

  “The council kept the monster moving. Always on the go from one compound to another. They kept him gagged, chained, hiding in cellars and basements. Naturals never knew the reason for their damnation lay right under their feet.”

  “But why?”

  “Why does anyone keep something? Because it has purpose,” he said, looking back at me over his shoulder. “They needed information. Information Abrams refused to give, no matter what they did.”

  I furrowed my brow. “What kind of information?”

  “The kind that could change the world.” He paused. “We ambushed one of the transports. Killed the captors and took him.”

  “Just like that?” I refused to believe that anything to do with my father was so simple.

  “Just like that,” he deadpanned.

  “I can see where I get my great communication skills from,” I said.

  My father came to a stop, pointing his finger toward a scrunched up, haggard creature tied to a tree. Its head was covered in a burlap sack.

  Abrams.

  “But how? Isn’t he supposed to be dead? He’s like a billion years old,” I said. Even seeing it, it was still hard to believe.

  “Come on, Tess, we both know there are no bounds to what science can do,” my father replied.

  “That’s what those creatures were looking for? That’s why they were in the woods. And why they attacked the community?”

  My father nodded grimly.

  “How did they know where we were?” I demanded. My father had put the whole community in danger by bringing this man there, but it still didn’t explain how they found us.

  “I’m not entirely sure. I can’t figure that one out,” he admitted, wrapping his hand tightly around his gun, an edge to his voice. “Right now, all you need to know is that we have him. And we will get what we need from Abrams: the knowledge we need to take the council down. For good. I never thought they would find us in the community. I brought Abrams there because I needed a place to try and get the information. Somewhere safe. Somewhere off the grid.”

  I remembered the bloodied man who had run toward Sharon only days before. The blood hadn’t been his. Had my father attempted to torture Abrams as well?

  I stepped gingerly closer to his prisoner. I lifted my hands toward the bag. I wanted to see him. I wanted to put a face to the pain I had felt all my life. It would be so much easier to hate one person than an entire government.

  As my hand met with the rough texture of the bag, my father’s voice halted me. “You sure about this?”

  No. But there was no turning back now. There wasn’t time for that anymore.

  I grabbed onto the bag and pulled it off.

  All the air rushed from my lungs.

  Abrams was right before me. Tied to a tree like a prisoner of war, bruised and bloodied, was one of the men responsible for almost every dark and twisted thing I had ever seen.

  Except it wasn’t a man.

  It was a woman.

  …

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. How was this even possible? The council despised women, blamed them for everything that was wrong with the world. Claimed our emotions and natural-born wantonness weakened the men, leading the country to ruin. Was I to believe that this creator, one of the original masterminds behind the creation of the chosen ones and the downfall of the naturals, was a woman? The very thing that the council warned against had given birth to the council itself?

  “Are you going to stare at me all day?” Her voice was quiet and wispy, like the leaves that crackled and crunched under your feet as you walked through the woods.

  Her age showed in every crease and wrinkle that covered her face. And there were a ton of them. She was the oldest woman I had ever seen. Decrepit. Sandpapery. The blues of her veins broke through her skin like some sort of beacon, calling to whoever was looking for her. Bright curves of color against her alabaster skin. A bit of drool mixed with blood slipped out of her mouth. Her eyes, which once might have showcased color, were covered with a milk white slip of film.

  Something so weak had destroyed so many.

  I had a thousand questions for her. But at the mere sight of her, I lost all my power again. She was like the villains of stories living only on the pages. Except this villain was far more dubious than I could have even begun to imagine. It was hard to believe that she could actually be real.

  “You have five minutes,” my father reminded me. I nodded numbly as he moved to stand behind me. He didn’t bother to explain away my shock. He simply held his rifle pointed at the woman he had hidden within the community. Apparently, despite the ropes and men who stood guard in the tree lines, my father didn’t trust her. Of course, she had fooled an entire country, so I could understand his fear.

  “She looks like you,” Abrams said to my father. “Your daughter, I’m assuming?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but his voice cut me off. “Don’t you tell her anything about yourself. If you have questions, you’d better ask her. You’re running out of time.”

  I closed my mouth and stared at the enigma in front of me. Even broken and weakened, the woman spoke with such an air of authority that I was half ready to follow her every command. It wasn’t the way a woman was taught to speak.

  There was a part of me that liked the way it sounded.

  “Ask away, child.” Abrams grinned. The whispery static of her voic
e caused me to shudder. Under the power lay the threat, and while I would never give up fighting for my own rights, I would never take my power at someone else’s expense. Yet she seemed to enjoy it.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” I whispered.

  “Of course you do,” she whispered back.

  I closed my eyes briefly, then pulled forward the image of Emma. I let the moment of her death play inside my mind. When I opened my eyes, it wasn’t so scary to look at her anymore. “I want to know about the women,” I replied, my voice steel.

  Abrams raised an eyebrow. “The women?”

  “I want to know what you did to them. Why they can’t give birth. Why they had to d-die,” I stammered. I could feel my hands shaking. Not out of fear, but out of something else—something darker, feral. Something more lethal.

  If this was the fire that Henry walked around with inside of him, I didn’t blame him entirely for giving himself over to it. It buzzed and burned inside of me, killing the fear. But I couldn’t let it consume me. If I did, I risked becoming like my father, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was so different from the villain tied up before me.

  Abrams sighed and leaned her head back against the tree. “And I thought you had a good question for me. I do get so incessantly tired by these mundane ones.”

  Something inside of me broke. I flew at Abrams and snatched her by the collar of her shirt, pulling her tight against the ropes that kept her entrapped. My father had taught me how to kill, and I had never felt the desire to do so burn so brightly inside of me. “You listen to me, you maniacal monster! I know it was you and your kind! You did something to them. Put some damn chemicals in the water supply or poisoned them with those damn vaccinations. But I know you did it. I want to know what you did.”

  “Look at those tears,” Abrams purred. “Such weakness.”

  I hadn’t even realized I was crying. “Shut up,” I yelled, slamming her head against the tree. Part of me expected my father or his men to intervene, but they all stood by and watched.

  Abrams chuckled. “Do you want me to shut up or do you want me to answer your question?”

  I slammed her head again. Her eyes rolled up to the back of her head. I unclenched my hands from her shirt and staggered away, then paced back and forth. My hands clutched onto my hair to keep from wringing her neck. Never before I had felt anything like this. The fire was getting strong, burning out of control.

  “You’re asking the wrong question,” she managed to squeak out between coughs.

  “What are you talking about?” I kept my feet moving. As long as I was pacing, I wouldn’t resort to violence.

  “It’s not how but why.”

  It’s not how but why. I had always thought the council could be responsible for the death of so many women, but to hear it confirmed, to know my sister’s death could have been avoided, was staggering in its simplicity.

  I fell to my knees. “Why?” My head dropped into my hands. I couldn’t look at Abrams; it was one thing to dream of confronting your enemy, but it was entirely different to do so in person. This weak, deathly ill thing had taken my sister from me. My enemy was human.

  “They were already sick.”

  I lifted my head, narrowing my eyes. “You mean you didn’t make the women like this?”

  Abrams gave the slightest shake of her head. “No, we didn’t do this, but we didn’t do anything to stop it, either. Actually, I had very little to do with the illness that plagues the women. My father, and men like him that made up the council’s team of scientists in the early days of the war, noticed that more and more women were dying during childbirth. Dying at alarming rates. They searched out the reasons everywhere. Maybe it was the effects of the nuclear war. Maybe it was a biological attack from the eastern sector. Maybe it was something in the water.”

  “So, what was it?” I asked. My heart picked up speed. It was as if I were at the edge of the mountain, and whatever Abrams said next would send me to the bottom of the ravine or save me. Was it possible that I could absolve the council of this?

  “Rubella.”

  “What the hell is that?” I looked over my shoulder to find my father towering over me, glaring at Abrams.

  “You see, child, I find it much nicer to talk to you than him. He beat me for hours trying to get me to talk, but he should understand that a woman never does anything she doesn’t want to do,” Abrams said with a sly smile and a wink.

  With a growl, my father aimed his gun at her. “My daughter Louisa almost died! Now, answer Tess’s question!”

  Abrams’s eyes lit with delight and she gave a lazy shrug of her shoulders. I got back onto my feet and placed a hand on my father’s shoulder. His gun trembled in his shaking hands, and I knew, without a doubt, despite his questionable ways, my father had feared for Louisa’s life. He dropped his gun, taking several steps away from Abrams.

  “What is rubella?” I asked.

  “I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. For hundreds and hundreds of years, most naturals received shots to protect them from it. Nothing more than a case of measles that science learned to control. But here’s the thing that man always forgets about nature: it’s a real smart bitch. She’ll wait. Hide until you think you’re safe. Morph into a new beast while your back is turned, and just when you’ve almost forgotten her power, she’ll come back for you with a vengeance.”

  “So a virus killed my sister?” I asked. “Not the council?”

  “Yes and no. The virus mutated, becoming almost an entirely new beast. It held many of the same properties of its original parent. With the primary strand, sometimes people didn’t even know they were carriers. Our rubella shared this trait, showing no outwardly signs. Seemingly harmless. But its real threat, even back then, had been to unborn children. It caused birth defects, premature births, and even miscarriages. Some children survived back then but not with this new strand. It kills the baby, taking the mother with it,” Abrams explained. Gone was the glee that oozed from her as she talked about the power of science. Her eyes took on a far-off look.

  I knew that look.

  “Who did you lose?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.

  Abrams blinked as if her eyes were pooling with tears, but there was nothing there. An old habit, perhaps. “My mother. I watched as my father wept over her body for days. He and I had never been close before then. He had always belonged to the council; he had never been a father. Always off in a lab doing God knows what. In those moments after my mother’s death, I saw his human side. I thought we had connected. It was years later that I discovered what a monster he had become, and that was when I discovered I would have to become an even bigger monster to survive.”

  I swallowed. My throat still burned because I knew Abrams wasn’t done with her story, and I knew it would only get worse. “You said the council didn’t stop it. But could they?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is they didn’t try. The whole world was falling apart. Nuclear war happened because the government couldn’t control its people. People—that’s always been the variable the scientists couldn’t predict. And here was a virus that promised to wipe them clear off the earth. They had already begun attempting to create life—chosen ones as you have called them. The originals were disasters. Deformed. Monsters, really. They had no idea what they were doing.”

  With a shudder, I thought about the creatures that attacked us in the woods.

  “You’ve seen one?” Abrams asked, reading something in my facial expression. “I heard my son had used my father’s plans to create an army of exterminators. I haven’t seen them myself. Not since those early days. I always liked my creatures a bit prettier. What can I say.”

  “You liked them prettier?” I asked, unable to stop myself from walking closer to Abrams. I knew I was way past my five minutes, but my father, seemingly entranced as I was, failed to stop us.

  “I was four when my mother died. After that, I spent every waking moment in the labs with my father. Watchin
g and learning as they created life. When I wasn’t with him, I studied everything I could get my hands on. It’s a hard thing for a man to see his daughter become smarter than he is. Especially when he and the rest of his simpleminded chums went around blaming the whole lot of the world’s problems on female existence. But he didn’t understand—that was the way genetics, science, had made me. It wasn’t my fault. I was fourteen when I found the fault in their formulas. I was fifteen when the first chosen ones were created based off my work. Back then, we could create and awaken a fully grown chosen one in three years. Three years. That was a mistake; I rushed it. They weren’t ready. That was my mistake. We all made mistakes back then. My father was underestimating me. He never saw it coming.”

  “Why would you let the council use them against us? Why would you make the world like this?” I desperately grabbed onto her shirt. Abrams pressed her lips together and avoided meeting my eyes. “Please! I have to know.”

  “I fell in love with one of them,” she said quietly.

  I froze, my hands falling from her shirt. “A chosen one?”

  She nodded. “But he betrayed me in the worst possible way. He said he loved me, and yet he knew about the women. He was my father’s right-hand man. He watched them die and came to me in the night. Both he and my father used me to get what they needed, all the while teaching the world to hate who I was. Watching as we all died. My father had always told me they had tried to find a cure, and I had believed him. But fathers lie,” she sneered, darting her eyes toward my father.

  “So, you killed them? The creators?” I gulped, remembering the legend that had surrounded Abrams.

  She nodded. “They killed my mother. They told the whole world I was weak and dangerous when I was the one who created the world they wanted to live in.”

  “So, knowing how the women were dying, why didn’t you try and find a cure?”

  Abrams’s eyes met mine. She leaned forward, pulling on her ropes. “Because I finally saw the world my father and his men feared—a world filled with betrayal and hate and darkness. A world not worth saving. I killed those men, and the minute I did was the minute I realized how weak mankind was. The council was appalled by my actions, but they couldn’t kill me. They needed me.”