***
Jenica takes the long way home, hoping to keep under the radar and shake off any pursuers as we make our way back to Resistance Headquarters. We are mostly silent during the flight, though at some point I let my hand fall back behind my seat and reach for Blythe. Wordlessly, she places her hand in mind and holds it tightly. We remain that way until our craft lowers over the Nevada dessert, its landscape set on fire by the setting sun. By the time we reach the tunnel that leads into the citadel, she has released my hand.
I try not to overthink things where Blythe and I are concerned. Something has happened, and I don’t mean just in the physical sense. We made love physically, but there was more. A lot more. A lot of things unsaid. For now, though, so much has happened and there is more to come. Things will get worse before they get better, especially now that the Rejects are openly waging war with the rest of the country.
So for now, I am content with the knowledge that in the battle for Blythe’s heart, I am now clearly the frontrunner. It’s enough for me for now. Especially since I still have one last part of myself to reveal to her. As much as I know she won’t like it, I hope that she can accept it. It has to be soon, before I let things go too far. Bruising her trust is the last thing I want to do when she already withholds it from most other people.
Once we are safe inside the refuge, Jenica lands us just outside the hangar where several members of our team are waiting for us. Dax is the first one we see as we disembark and he scoops Blythe up and hugs her so swiftly and intently that it take everything in me not to beat the shit out of him right then and there. I have to remind myself that they are best friends and that bond can’t be broken no matter how she might feel about me.
Yasmine appears next, her arm around Agata. When she sees me, her face lights up like a city skyline and I imagine mine does the same. When she hurtles herself toward me and I swing her up into my arms, twirling her in circles, I am reminded of why I am here. I am fighting for her, for her future and the future of those like her. While things haven’t been easy, and the fight is far from over, I count today as a win just for the simple fact that I’ve made it home to her safely. I’ve lived to fight for her another day.
Laura and Sayer Strom are there too, and everyone is accounted for. Sayer had to do some evasive flying to get away from D.C., we are told, but their return to headquarters was otherwise uneventful. Jenica exchanges a glance with the Professor before announcing that she’s going to see to the welfare of our rescued prisoners.
“I’ll go with you,” he volunteers. The two disappear together across the landing strip just outside the small hangar where our Hovercrafts are stored, headed toward the main building. Somewhere in that building, a broken and battered Olivia lays recovering in the infirmary.
We all go our separate ways from there. Blythe to her room to shower, change, and rest, and me to tuck Agata in before doing the same.
“Talk later?” I mouth to her silently as she glances at me over her shoulder. She nods and smiles, heading across the artificial grass toward Mosley Hall.
I lead Agata toward Hexley Hall, listening to her excited chatter and watching her with a smile as she bounces and skips along the grass beside me. The Professor’s weather simulator is imitating a balmy summer evening and the twinkling of false stars almost trick me into feeling as if I’m looking at real twilight overhead. It’s wonderful, this safe haven the Professor has created for us with the help of so many, but it is also a prison, one that I hope Agata won’t have to spend the rest of her life in.
“Hey, squirt,” I say, pausing when we reach the park situated at the center of our hidden city. “Hold on for a sec, I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” she answers as she joins me on a bench, blue eyes locked on me expectantly. She has so much of Trista in her and it reminds me of our encounter at Stonehead. I wonder if I will someday have to tell Agata that her mother has been killed. I want more than anything to go back for my sister, but keeping my word to her is more important. I can’t very well keep Agata safe if I am killed or captured trying to rescue Trista. Now I wish I’d fought harder to get her to come with me when I made my first escape. At the time, she’d refused.
“I hope you’re happy here,” I begin slowly, trying to keep my tone conversational. “You making friends with the other kids?”
She nods and shrugs. “Yeah, everyone’s nice, I guess. Although, none of the other kids know calculus.”
I laugh, remembering Agata’s first days out of surgery. After getting her bionic cerebrum, the kid had traded in her dolls for notepads and pencils, finding fun in equations that looked like hieroglyphics to me.
“Well, neither did you until you had a computer for a brain.”
“Only half my brain’s a computer,” she argues, shooting me a playful glare. “But it’s okay because the scientists in the Professor’s lab have promised to let me apprentice with them. If you say it’s all right, I can study under them after my classes.”
I mull it over for a moment and try to think of what Trista would want. “Okay,” I answer, producing a smile from her. “But only if you keep up with your other schoolwork and take time once and a while to be a kid. Scuff your knees, beat up mean boys, and make mud pies or something. Deal?”
Agata smiles—showcasing a gap at the bottom where a tooth used to be—and points to a bandage over a red and bruised knee. “Way ahead of you.”
I frown. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Dani Perkins pushed me down,” she says as if it’s no big deal. “He’s bigger than me, twelve years old and a big bully.”
“Want me to kick his ass for you?” I ask, only half serious. I’d at least pick the kid up by the back of his neck and shake him a few times.
“Already taken care of,” she says slyly. That look has more of me in it than Trista. I know she’s been up to no good.
“What did you do, you little demon?” I ask with a chuckle.
“Oh, just showed everyone in Hexley Hall that Dani is afraid of the dark. I shoved him through an open utility closet door and locked it. Used my EMP signal to turn the lights out. Left him in there until he started shrieking like a little girl. By then, everyone in the dorms had come out to see what the fuss was all about. Miss Milica let him out and, of course, Dani told on me.”
My lips are twitching but somehow I manage to keep a straight face. Milica Brady, the Hexley Hall matron who watches over all the children, is a no-nonsense woman. “How much trouble did you get into?”
Agata shrugs. “Bathroom duty for a week. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s my girl.” Seems like the kind of thing she’d have learned from me, anyway. After we sit in silence for a while longer, I speak up again. “I saw your mom yesterday.”
Agata’s smile fades and she looks up at me with tear-filled eyes. “Where?” she asks, her voice suddenly small. For all her intelligence, just then I am reminded that she is only a scared little girl.
“At the Stonehead facility.” I decide not to insult her intelligence. She deserves to know the truth no matter how hard it is to hear. “She works there now. She didn’t recognize me, though, because I was in disguise, but she asked about you. You should have seen her face when I told her that you were safe. She’s happy about that.”
“Is she going to be okay?” she asks, one tear spilling over and running down her cheek. I swipe at it with my thumb and fight tears of my own.
“I hope so, squirt. I really hope so. She could be in a lot of danger. She’s been helping people like you escape. If they find out, it’s not going to be pretty.”
Agata smiles through her tears. “Mom’s a hero,” she says. “Like you.”
I try to smile back but it’s hard. “I’m not a hero, Agata. I’m just your uncle who loves you and wants you to be safe. No matter what happens, always remember that. I’ll be here for you as long as I can but what I’m doing here is dangerous and I don’t know… we
ll, I may not always be around.”
She swipes at her face with the back of her hand and sniffles before resting her head against my chest. I wrap my arm around her and pull her close.
“I pray for you,” she whispers in the darkness. “I pray for you every day. When you went to Stonehead, and then when you went back again. I prayed.”
I simply squeeze her tighter. “I know you do, squirt. I know you do.”
And in the back of my mind, I wonder if the prayers of a child are enough.
The Bionics Page 49