by D. K. Dailey
“Why aren’t you answering his question?” Her tone is sharper than mine.
He doesn’t look at her. Taking a calming breath, he massages his temples again, like the gesture will make all this go away. “You are not our real son.”
I’m momentarily suspended in time, like the seconds before the bomb went off at the Shaw Technology gate. I’m crushed. I want to cry.
His voice cracked with each word, and now my heart cracks, too.
Chapter Thirty
I can’t speak. Not that I don’t have a lot to say, I do. Too much. But my voice is lost in my throat. I’m mute.
If I’m not his real son, then…“Who am I?”
He flinches.
“Am I Dreg?”
Tears stream down his face. I’ve never seen Dad cry, and something uncomfortable squeezes my insides.
I want to weep too, but I hold it in because I could never cry in front of someone like Saya. She’d probably laugh and never let me live it down.
He nods. I am Dreg. I am one of the outcasts. The part of society apparently being hunted down, taken, experimented on, and executed.
“Why take me in?” I would have been better off being raised Dreg than to have been shown the very best life has to offer, only to have it ripped away. But if I had never been Golden, I wouldn’t have been Emmaline’s big brother or April Shaw’s son.
“Kade!” Mom barges into the office, nearly toppling over Dad’s desk. I stand, and the weight of her almost crushes me. Hugging her tightly, I breathe her in. She still smells like vibrant wildflowers hidden in a deep forest. The fragrance lingers in my nostrils, and I try to engulf it in my memory. Her smell isn’t mingled with the staleness of the jail this time. Instead, it mixes with my dad’s cedar office aroma.
She lets me go and holds my hands. “I can’t believe you’re alive. Noodle said—we weren’t positive.” Our hands stretch between us as she leans back and gives me a motherly eye. “What happened to your wrist?” She looks where my raised half-moon is lumpier.
“Had to cut out my c-chip.”
Peering into my face, she bites back what she wants to say. I know Mom’s expressions well. This is one she used to give me when I was small and fell frequently. One that encompasses her need to protect me and her knowledge that she can’t.
“Actually, I cut out his c-chip.” A slight smirk rises on Saya’s face. “I accidently cut him too deep. He lost a lot of blood but recovered.”
“And who is this?” Mom gazes at Saya and then straightens her hair. Strange. Why is she fretting over her appearance? Although Saya is a guest, she’s also a Dreg, someone Goldens aren’t supposed to socialize with.
Saya stands and introduces herself with a mocking flourish. “My name is Saya. Proud Dreg.” She sticks her hand out for my mom to shake. “Nice to meet you Mrs. Shaw.”
Mom eyeballs the gesture. “Call me April.” Shaking Saya’s hand, Mom smiles.
Saya looks surprised but then smiles back. Her skin glimmers at the unexpected welcome and, like always, the result is breathtaking. It distracts me until I look back at Mom.
Tears roll down her face, and she sniffs them away, motioning to the sitting area. “Shall we all sit down then?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve wanted to tell you the whole truth since you were little, Kade.”
“Does this have to do with what you couldn’t tell me when you came to see me, M-Mom?” I stutter on the word “mom.”
She doesn’t answer right away. She walks to the wall of windows, then presses her hand to the glass. “The privacy settings aren’t on. Someone could be watching.”
She walks by the panels, hand gliding across the glass, tinting each window darker. “We need to be careful.” As the last window tints into the privacy setting, she sits next to Dad on the dark, shiny brown leather couch. Saya and I sit on the other one. She sits a little closer to me than normal. I don’t know if that’s for her comfort or mine, but I’m grateful.
The pressure behind my eyes has me struggling to keep calm and tear-free. I will not cry in front of her.
Staring at me, Saya does the unexpected. She takes my hands in hers and scoots even closer. My thigh touches hers, and our hands rest in her lap.
The pressure eases. With her by my side, I’m ready to discover the truth about my life—or what was my life—with clear eyes and courage.
Dad sits motionless, like a magical spell has stilled him. His face is stoic, while Mom’s facial expression sags. I recall coming into this office as a kid and being as stiff and uncomfortable as he is now, never wanting to touch anything because he was such a neat freak and I was a kid.
Mom takes in a heavy breath, then releases it. “As you know, we could not conceive, even with your father’s genomic and evolutionary research.”
Dad grips her hands in his.
If the babybox system were still in place, then maybe. I’ve only read the bare minimum about babybox but know it was a way for unwanted kids to find homes after a parent deposited them in a box or chute or something or other.
Mom doesn’t withdraw from Dad yet, she doesn’t entangle her fingers inside of his like usual.
“We looked into adopting and were on a waiting list.” She fights back more tears. This is a sore subject. When she was fifteen, she had a partial hysterectomy because of cancer. She described it as having only half her baby-making equipment and the half she did have wasn’t working properly. Three miscarriages and one stillbirth happened before I was born. As my parents explained it, Ems and I were miracle children.
“I need a drink.” Dad reaches for the whiskey decanter. “Anyone else?”
We all decline. Shrugging, he pours himself at least three shots.
“We were eating dinner downtown when we found you.” Mom’s hands shake as she continues. “We weren’t paying attention to our surroundings really. The market was the only time we saw Dregs because we never went out late at night since they tend to roam about after curfew. We were walking to our bubble when she approached us. Filthy, shivering, she held you in a gray fuzzy blanket. I remember wondering how the blanket and you were so clean in comparison to the woman.”
Mom’s eyes glisten with tears. “That woman wrecked herself with drugs but she was still pretty—hauntingly so.” She shook her head. “Such a shame.” She smiles dryly at the memory. “I don’t remember her name to this day. She came up to me and thrust you into my arms. Your face was covered, and I looked at her like she was cuckoo and handed you back. She wouldn’t take you back, though. I recall the conversation vividly.”
“I’m adopted?” I ask rhetorically. No, abandoned, not adopted. I am not the miracle baby they claimed. Emmaline is a miracle, but I am not.
“She called me ‘Miss’ and told me to take you. I said I would do no such thing. She said the father didn’t know she was giving you away. That she couldn’t let you live like her, and that you deserved better.” Mom wipes tears from her eyes with a hand. “I told her I couldn’t because,” she pauses, looking ashamed, “because you were Dreg. And then, do you know what she said to me?” Mom begins to laugh. “She pulled back the cover to show me your face and said, ‘Look at him, will ya? He’s beautiful.’ And you were my son, you were the most beautiful child I had ever seen.”
Emotion overwhelms her. “So, I took you, reluctantly at first. You were such a happy baby. You giggled and reached for my finger, and I couldn’t give you back after that.”
“April,” Dad cuts in, his voice devoid of emotion.
“How old was my—the woman who gave me up?” I chew the inside of my lip.
“Twenty-five, thirty, maybe.”
I’ve been picturing a teenager, so it takes a second or two for my vision of a down-and-out girl to change into an older woman. She’s skinny, but now more mature-looking, with wrinkles and loose skin, and aging unnaturally fast from drugs.
“April, I can’t let you continue on with a lie.” Dad twists toward her on their couch. “The lady that
gave Kade away didn’t stumble on us. It wasn’t a coincidence.”
Mom glares at him. “What the zard are you talking about, Bennett Shaw?”
Biting down on my bottom lip sends the taste of metal into my mouth.
“I arranged for her to be there.”
“You what?”
He drops his head. “The lady—your mom—was in a research trial at my job.”
“What kind of trial?”
“I can’t say. Some died and some grew even stronger. Your mother was one of the strongest. Maybe because she was on drugs and had wrecked her body already, she could withstand the testing.”
“Oh my heart, Bennett! I can’t zarding believe you.” Crinkles buckle Mom’s mouth into a pinched mess. She turns toward Saya and I. “Well, the lady gave you to us, and we brought you home. For the premier, we came up with the story that we got you from another country that didn’t have such strict adoption requirements and a long list. For the records, the premier allowed us to say you were a product of Bennett’s fertility treatments.”
“What happened to my—” I pause unwilling to call the lady who gave me up my mother. “What happened to my biological mother?”
“Your mother could’ve been a model in a former life. And she was smart,” Dad says solemnly. “About a week after she gave you up, she overdosed at one of the apartments given to trial participants.”
“And my real father?” I say “real” because I want to hurt my dad. He deserves it.
“He’s an unknown. Even with the DNA we’ve collected, there have been no matches to you yet.” His voice softens. “I regret not having more info on,” he stammers, “y-your birth parents.”
Holding back my disappointment, I focus on my mother’s face, which carries an apologetic expression, unlike my father’s hardened features.
“I falsified your records, and that worked until we started gathering genome sequences from citizens and started the raids. We were exposed then, and I had no choice.”
“You knew the whole time they would come for me?”
Mom looks at him, shocked again, and he avoids her gaze.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to run.” I raise my voice in accusation.
Saya squeezes my hand in support.
His forehead wrinkles, and he lets out a long breath. “My hands were tied.”
“I can’t believe you would do that to our son.” My mother’s normally calm voice is steely, echoing my sentiment.
“I’m Dreg. And Emmaline is Begotten.”
The misery in his eyes turns to triumph. “I was at the end of the interspecies organ transplant trials, and I couldn’t create disease-fighting organs. But I created a few Begotten as research projects, but they were not the digital of health either. They can be created, but only from parts of healthy Dregs. Emmaline was our greatest—and only—successful human subject.”
“Ems is a research project to you?” I fume. I want to yell. I want to hit him. I even want to throw shucky.
Saya stands and bursts into the conversation with an accusation of her own. “Goldens are supposed to be people Dregs look up to. But you cause nothing but hurt and pain. You raid our homes and hideouts and take my people, all to figure out how to make yourselves stronger.”
“Self-preservation,” I mumble. Goldens would like nothing more than for only Goldens to survive. But it’s impossible when Dregs are the strong ones.
Saya sits back down, seemingly aware she’s too loud considering we are on a secret mission. The tips of her ears grow pink. Silence expands as we look at each other and calm down together.
I’m reeling from this new info. Every single accusation Pike made has been confirmed, plus so much more.
My father speaks slowly. “There’s a raid planned sometime soon for a recreation center in the flatlands. I’m not positive where it is or how they found out about it, but it’s on their radar. Lately, the raid parties have been small. I’d tell you more if I knew, but I don’t.” This is a last-ditch effort to warn me, to keep me safe, like he couldn’t or wouldn’t do before. I’m not positive how I feel about him trying to protect me now. Technically, I’m not his son. Maybe I never was.
Saya meets my eyes for the first time since my parents started talking. She doesn’t want to let on that the recreation center he’s talking about might be ours. We need to get back and warn the others. I stand and pull Saya to her feet. Then I step around the coffee table to hug Mom. Her embrace is so tight it knocks the wind out of me but I don’t mind.
Dad and I stare at each other. We used to be so close. I used to want to be exactly like him—close to the premier and making groundbreaking discoveries—but now I’m ashamed of him. We hug but step back quickly. Too strange.
Mom grabs an item from one of the bookcases. My gray Dreg paperboy hat. “Your biological mom gave this to us, too. It was tucked beside your baby blanket.”
A hat and a blanket is all my biological mom gave me. That explains why my dad was so adamant I not pass my blanket down to Emmaline. I had made such a big deal about it when she was born. But when I draped the blanket over her, he’d snatched it away and yelled at me. I was eleven. The blanket was another reminder of being Dreg.
I grip my hat, and the pliable wool rubs against my hands. I have a newfound love for it.
I turn to leave, knowing our time is up and that we need to warn everybody at the center about the raid. Part of me screams, Find Ems and take her. There might not be another chance! Another part of me knows we have already spent too much time here. Besides, she doesn’t belong with Dregs.
Mom hands me two more items: my flutterboard and a backpack. “Your clothes and some other stuff,” she says tearfully. “I packed it for you after Noodle told us you were alive…in case you ever came back.”
“You stored that in my office?” Dad’s voice fills with surprise.
“I thought if he came back, it’d be here. He’d want answers only you could provide…only we could provide.”
Moms. Good ones are always one step ahead. I stuff my hat inside the backpack. I’m not ready to wear it yet.
She tugs my Dreg clothes. “I don’t want you wearing these.”
I stuff the flutterboard in the backpack—a tight fit—and shoulder the bag to give her one last hug.
“Come back and visit.” Sobbing and smiling, she lets me go. Mom pins Dad down with her gaze—ironically, the Rigo death stare—daring him to object.
I lower my head as tears threaten to fall. One mantra blares through my head as we head out the office door. One of the most important Dreg rules: Forget what you know.
I am finally ready to forget what I know. Except for Emmaline and my mom, of course.
Chapter Thirty-One
We enter the hallway as rumbling noises from outside penetrate the walls. I look at Dad for an explanation.
“Find a passageway and go. Cops.”
Taking Saya’s hand, I rush down the hall and into the unused west wing. On this side of the house, cathedral ceilings soar above us. A track lighting system set into a winding metal trajectory curls above our heads. We pass through rooms decorated with expensive paintings in ornate frames, masks, and three-dimensional art. A gluttony of space my family rarely uses.
Pounding on the front door ricochets throughout the house and scares me. Marching feet follow.
“Where the zard are the passageways you talked about?” Saya asks softly.
I take her hand and pull her into one of my little sister’s more eclectic playrooms. We step over a working train set, life-size dolls, and a painting easel, and then work around a tea-party set with a matching table and plenty of stuffed animals.
A passageway inside the closet leads first to the den and then outside. But escape isn’t possible with cops combing the house. We’ll have to stay hidden until they give up.
As I open the mirrored closet doors, an automatic light comes on. I drag Saya in with me and slide the doors back into place from the inside. M
oving to one side, I tap my foot at the bottom of a wall panel, and it makes a gushing sound as it opens.
The inside is dustier, tinier, and darker than I remember. Most Goldens don’t have passageways in their homes but space between walls is normal. Wasting space is another luxury, a rich-person’s requirement.
I whip my backpack off and lower it to the floor quietly. The last time I used this hiding spot I was thirteen and much skinnier and shorter. This tight space between the walls leaves us no choice but to lean against each other. I’d be lying if I said this is the only hiding spot I could think of. It’s the only one I could be this close to her.
With Saya pressed against me, I breathe lightly. I try to calm down, but it’s too difficult when she’s this close. Normally, I’m planning my next move or figuring out a way to be irresistible. But now is not the time to make one of my lame-brain moves. My focus remains on getting us out of here alive.
Boots stomping through the hallways echo throughout the house. Soon, Emmaline’s cries leak through the walls, and I blame myself for bringing her more pain.
“Your sister?”
I nod, my heart wrenching from the sound. “I wish I could’ve seen her, too.”
We fall silent when the voices get louder and are accompanied by tapping boots. Doors open and close with hard screeches and bangs.
Someone stops outside this playroom. “Mr. Shaw, your neighbor reported seeing movement in your office.”
The noise becomes uncomfortably close. Oh shucky! Now they’re outside the closet door.
“Movement?” Mom huffs. “Did they also report their own rotten kids break curfew all the time? Since they’re so interested in reporting what’s none of their business, let me return the favor.”
“Officer,” Dad says calmly, “What she means to say is that the neighbors misreported what they saw. My wife and I were up late, talking in my office.”
The authorities must have been on high alert.
“We will see about that,” the officer replies, opening the closet door. “If we find your son here, you will be in violation of the third common law for harboring a Dreg, and you can and will be charged with aiding a criminal. We’ll be forced to remove your daughter from your custody.”