by Angela White
Tracy’s sobs hurt Charlie in new and terrible ways and he did the only thing he could while swearing that if his mom didn’t have a great reason for all of it, he was leaving.
Tracy was too depressed to argue with him. She rolled out of his arms and onto her side, shaking as she cried. They’d won and she didn’t even remember being hurt.
So why do I feel like I lost something that I can’t get back?
When Charlie stormed from the tent, Tracy didn’t notice.
Charlie wasn’t expecting two Eagles guarding his tent and immediately misunderstood. “I’m not dangerous to her!”
Shawn snorted. “You’re the worst of the lot kid, screaming at her like that.”
“Especially when we’re here to guard your snotty ass,” Billy added. He didn’t want to be out in the cold. He wasn’t afraid to let it show.
“She let females be hurt!” Charlie protested. “She sent them out there!”
“And you think you’re the only one who wants answers?” Shawn growled. “Grow up. You got off lucky. Jeff certainly didn’t.”
Charlie was being hit with their thoughts and their words. He hated them for making sense, for being right when they said each of the fighters had agreed beforehand. His inability to fix things for Tracy was a wound he couldn’t heal in himself either.
“I don’t understand!”
“Tomorrow should bring some answers, boy,” Billy pointed out. “Until then, do what the rest of us did when we’ve provided the service you have waiting now. Love her and bring her back. And for Pete’s sake, don’t leave her alone.”
“That’s the biggest rule,” Shawn reinforced. “The mind does terrible things when you’re left alone to blame yourself.”
Charlie was calm enough now to begin asking questions about the right and wrong things to say, and the two Eagles helped him eagerly. Angela needed her son. They would try to help the boy see that the sacrifices were steep, but the cost of doing nothing or anything less than what she had, would have been more than any of them could pay.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Consequences
1
“My name is Angela White and I’m a descendant. I’ve always had abilities, though I didn’t know about my true heritage until I came to Safe Haven.”
Angela was on a makeshift witness stand, in front of three hundred survivors who wanted Adrian’s death. It was in their minds.
“When I joined this camp, Adrian recognized my gifts and took me under his wing. He started teaching me to be strong, to fight for myself. Like everyone else, I fell for the line that he was doing it all to save our country.” She looked out at the upset faces. “He was exactly what I needed, like he was for the others who came here in bad shape. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for him.”
“Did you know he was lying about the government?” someone shouted out.
The guards moved that way, but Angela stopped them.
“They have a right to question their leaders. I’ve always meant that.”
The guards stepped back and Zack stood up. “Did you?”
“No,” Angela answered without guilt. “I don’t see everything and the future changes with every choice someone makes.”
“But he was a traitor,” Zack insisted. “How could you miss that?”
“How could I miss Caesar shooting me?” Angela sent back. “It isn’t just Crista who paid that price, Zack. You remember the rest stop, don’t you?”
All of those who had been there shifted uneasily. Remember it? They were still having nightmares about it.
“I’m not perfect. Looking into the future isn’t simple. I don’t always see everything. It’s how we’ve been able to have assassins in camp,” she reminded them. “Not knowing if I’m a target when I come from my tent each day hasn’t been fun.”
Zack slowly sat down, but his anger hadn’t calmed.
“Adrian hid things well. He used distraction on me, as he did with the Eagles and everyone else. When I would catch little things, he’d deny it or make sure that Kenn was there to stir shit up and take my focus off. I didn’t actually see his scheming until after I was shot.”
Angela took a sip of the water bottle, and lit a smoke. She still had the pack Donner had given her.
“I should have died there. I saw it right when he shot me, my death.” She paused, remembering the ugliness and the sense of incompletion she’d been sentenced to end with. “Adrian wanted to save me, to use his gifts, but it would have exposed him to everyone.”
She glanced at some of the most sensitive among them. “None of you were ready for that. He knew I wasn’t either.” Angela shivered as she recalled that moment. “When I made the call, he knew I had accepted that Marc would probably die while fighting the first troops the government sent out. He connected us and showed me everything.”
“You’ve known he was a traitor since before Marc came back?” Jax demanded. “How could you do that?!”
“How could I not?” Angela responded calmly. “I saw everything that’s happened. The first battle, this one, and then us leaving for the island that Kendle came from. I saw us putting down roots, growing. We were happy and healthy, relearning peace, and then they came for us again.”
Angela’s voice broke a bit. “Not even the descendants survived. They came in from four sides of the island and squeezed us into the middle, just like I did to them here. You’ve seen how effective that is,” Angela reminded everyone. “I saw us winning this war and dying two years later. I had to stop it.”
Angela waved and Shawn quickly brought Adrian out with a hand on the cuffed man’s arm.
The crowd muttered and stared in confused anger as he took the seat by Angela without meeting any of the eyes trying to catch his attention.
“Adrian didn’t give us his full story yet,” Angela explained. “There wasn’t time before because I had to keep Donner on his toes. We’ll do it now.”
Every face focused on Adrian, many praying he could explain what he’d done, that he had a reason they could accept. After all he’d done for them in the beginning and all he’d taught them to do for themselves, few of them actually seemed to want him dead as much as they wanted him to be able to justify his actions. That was what Angela had been hoping for.
Adrian sighed and grabbed the pack of smokes on the table between them. “I wasn’t supposed to be here to face this. That’s the first thing you need to know. I told her to let me die when we brought Conner out of Little Rock.”
Adrian lit the cigarette and then reoffended everyone by taking a long swig from Angela’s bottle of water.
“My mother was in the same position that Angela was while she faced Donner. My father was the enemy and my mother wasn’t powerful enough to stop him from placing me in the labs. All children from descendant relationships are studied to determine their gifts and by those, their place in our society. I was chosen to hunt other descendants because I can call them together.”
Adrian’s tones were too full of pain and anger to deny, but it was hard for him to keep going. This exposure, the answering for every choice he’d made, was his biggest fear.
“You’ve done this for all of us,” Angela stated, trying not to be gentle, though the urge was strong. “Every person here has been brought down as low as a soul can go, and then clawed their way back up to being human, free of the chains that held them. You’re the only one left.”
Adrian loved her even more for recognizing that, but he also hated her for it, just like everyone else who had briefly turned against the people who were trying to help them. It was always easier to hate the messenger than to face the message.
“I spent my childhood learning how to lead a hunting team and being trained for battles against our kind.” He glanced at Marc. “Mental battles, where I challenged alphas, took their packs, and then handed them over. I did that for twenty years, waiting for the time my mother promised me would come. At times, I forgot about her words, her goodness. I sank i
nto the evil half and wallowed in it. I was good. My name became known and the higher-ups started sending me in to clear specific groups that they thought might go rogue.”
Adrian crushed out his cigarette. “I destroyed rebellions that might have challenged the government and forced the truth to light.”
“Why?” Angela asked quickly, before the crowd could erupt in shouting.
“Because when the truth came out, the world was supposed to be destroyed. Those in charge were willing to annihilate the United Stated and go below ground. It was already planned!”
“Is that the only reason?” Angela prompted. She of course, knew better.
“No. I didn’t want things to change,” Adrian confessed harshly. “And it wasn’t because I liked my job. I loathed it! I knew from my mother’s stories that I had a hard destiny ahead of me and I didn’t want it.” Adrian shoved out the rest like a bad bowel movement. “I didn’t want to lead! I never have!”
The crowd gasped. That hurt more than his betrayals. It was the one thing they had been sure of–that he wanted the job they’d gifted him with.
“When the war came and brought society down, I was on my way to my father to try and stop it from happening. I went to see who he wanted killed next.”
“That’s where I saw you,” Samantha stated from her place by the door. “I put it together before Angela did, that you had once been on the government payroll. I didn’t tell anyone because I was hiding the same secret.”
“Except you hadn’t been hunting our kind,” Adrian pointed out. He wanted to be sure that she didn’t suffer any of the blame.
“No,” Sam told them. “But I’ve been thinking about it and almost any of the sudden storms I told them about could have been from one of our kind. I didn’t know anything about descendants then.”
“They made sure of that with the special people,” Adrian responded. “Those who can control physical gifts are rare among descendants. The government likes to keep them in the dark from childhood.”
“Tell us about the future your mother saw,” Angela instructed, getting them back on track.
“She knew the world would end. It was her nightmare. She was committed several times because of the warnings she tried to give.”
“What was your role in that future?” Angela led. These were things that Adrian had never discussed with a single soul, and here he was, baring it all to hundreds of condemning survivors. It wasn’t easy and she needed him to get it all out.
“When my mother realized she would have to send me to the labs, that my father wouldn’t exempt me from the experimenting, she tried to run away. We spent time on an island, where she called on the Maker to show her what to do. The vision she received told her to make me a double agent.”
Adrian continued over the immediate protests of a lame scheme to save his skin.
“She said if the world didn’t end, I would have committed so many sins that I would never be forgiven. She also said it was only one life and the changes we would make would be worth my sacrifice.”
Angela identified so much with Adrian’s mother. She’d known her son would be turned evil anyway, and had found a way to give the world hope because of it.
“She said if the war did happen, that the government would send me out to gather descendants who might be trouble. She said I would be surrounded by power that was incredibly loyal to me for helping them and their weaker members survive the holocaust. She was right.”
No one shouted now, but they were furious that he knew of their love and had been betraying them the entire time.
“She said when I gathered enough of you into one group, the government would start to notice and that I should make the choice as soon as they threatened my life. She knew I would need all of you to keep me alive then. The government only deals with rogue descendants in one way.”
“She knew you would find enough of us to fight them?” Jennifer asked from her place by Samantha.
All of Angela’s team was at this table, waiting for it to be over so they could have that private meeting Angela had promised them when they’d agreed to her crazy plan.
“Yes. She said if the power was too weak, we couldn’t win and to hand you over and keep looking for a stronger group. I was set to do that all the way through the beginning. Even as far back as Wyoming, when we started to draw the attention of the Mexicans.”
“Was that intentional?” Marc called from the rear of the crowd. It was as close as he wanted to be to Adrian for these details.
“Yes,” Adrian admitted. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the anger. “The government wanted the guerillas stopped and I had a small army of Eagles that could do it without them having to send troops out. By then, I knew we had Angela’s gift being hidden here and I wasn’t concerned with losing. It also gave me more time to stall.” He looked at Angela. “She had me by then. I’d chosen to try the insane scheme I was been given by my mother. Angela was the reason why.”
“You love me.”
“More than I’ll ever be able to say.”
“And you would have given everything up if I’d been willing?”
“Yes. We would have disappeared and left Safe Haven to die.”
“Because I wouldn’t, you fell into your mother’s plan and started making things happen?”
“Yes.”
“Tell us her plan now,” Angela ordered, hating Marc’s wave of self-doubt. He hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t missed anything. Adrian’s mind was a steel trap forged through decades of fighting descendants. There was no way any of them could have gotten through enough of his doors to find the truth, unless he wanted them to.
“She said there were two ways to make sure the government couldn’t restart the world and hold it hostage again. The first one was to send a descendant into the bunker to take over. Descendants would lead the country and eventually the world. The other was to battle the government until there were too few of them to recover. That choice allowed the freedom our country was built on and it had higher odds of success. The bunkers used to be heavily fortified with our kind. There was also a chance that during the battles, someone could get to the bunker and end the new war with fewer casualties.”
Angela got a fresh cigarette from the remaining three as Adrian paused. It was almost her turn again.
“The plan was to make everyone here so dangerous that the government would come in force. If they only sent out a few hundred men each time, we would have been emerged in small battles for the next decade, which would have given them time to reclaim the topside. We had to force a huge battle that would even the numbers. The next fight would be where both sides sent in everything they had left and that’s exactly what happened.”
“The bunker has been destroyed,” Angela told everyone. “The man running it blew his brains out, with my help.”
“They have no men left to send after us now,” Adrian said. “Because Angela had the guts to finish my mother’s plan, we’re all free.”
“Is that it?” Zack demanded. “That’s his excuse?”
“His confession,” Angela stated. “The only choice we have to make is on his punishment. There’s no question of his guilt. Or mine, for that matter,” she added.
The crowd wasn’t against her now. The shouts of not guilty for her were numerous. The shouts for Adrian’s death were loud.
“In a few minutes, we’ll vote on it. First, we have to decide on leadership. Before we do that, I’ll take questions if anyone has any.”
This was the hardest part for Adrian. He’d known that if he was here for this moment, it might color the crowd into condemning her as well.
“Why did you agree to do things his way?” Seth asked from near Marc. He was still unhappy with the things she’d ordered her females to do.
“Because it was the only thing that would work,” Angela answered honestly. “Men respect strength, power, and little else. I showed them who was stronger.
“But we lost so many–”
“More than we would have if I had lined two armies up and let them battle it out to the death?” she asked sharply. “We lost roughly forty irreplaceable Eagles and camp members. Friends and lovers.” Angela sighed, allowing her pain to bleed all over everyone in the room. “It would have been triple any other way and we wouldn’t have gotten this new breeding stock to join us. Did you see that nearly a quarter of the soldiers have already hooked up with a Safe Haven woman or one from the Indian camps? We’re about to repopulate our country with patriots and that’s the only distinction that’ll label them. We’ve started to conquer the race problem.”
“I don’t understand.”
Angela hated to say it so bluntly, but she was too tired to be tactful. “Adrian’s mother understood that if there were no separate races or classes, there wouldn’t be a race problem. It was mistake to divide us this way. Intentional or not, that era in human history is nearing an end. We won’t see it in our lifetime, but we’ll know it’s going to happen.”
“What about the–”
“They won’t matter in the end,” Angela interrupted, growing weary of obvious questions. “When the mixed outnumber the pure, the pure will fall silent and then out of sight and then out of existence.”
“Is that a good thing?” Neil asked quietly. “To interfere with the natural design?”
“Don’t you understand yet?” she queried in concern. “That’s our job as we begin the new world. We’re fixing the mistakes and to do that, we have to go the roots of each problem. Why do people hate each other so much and why are they so prone to killing each other? Because we’re so different. Take away some of the differences, you take away part of the atrocities.
“And that will–”
“No. Even if we’d all been one people from the beginning, it wouldn’t have solved the issues,” Angela answered. “We have a lot of work to do to make this happen.”
She looked around the room. “Unless you vote me out of here, because I have to tell you, I’m tired already, and we either do it my way, the way that will give us a future of peace, or I need to be banished. I can’t walk that line anymore.”