Kendall didn’t wait for James to tell him to turn around. Wimp.
“That’s enough! We have to get moving.”
The sound of a new voice made all of us freeze. Henry was standing behind Kendall, and Robert followed closely on his heels.
I began to laugh. It was all so surreal. James. Henry. Robert. Doctor from hell. Talking about breaking me free, about removing tracking devices. It was all some nightmare, a dream I would soon wake from. It was freaking hilarious. The four men stared at me in shock. This made me laugh even harder.
Henry roughly and without hesitation lifted my skirt so my thigh was revealed. He paused for a second. For that one brief second his face showed weakness. I wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Wait. I can do this myself,” I growled, snatching the knife from James.
I clamped a hand over my bare skin, holding my thigh against the dirt. I bit my lip as I held on tightly to the knife, took a deep breath, and ripped open my skin. Then all I could feel was pain. I was ripping myself apart. It was as if someone had shot liquid ice through my veins, freezing my very soul. My breath stuck in my throat and sat there burning. It took everything in me not to scream.
“It’s lodged in there pretty well,” replied James, his voice monotonous.
The ice was ablaze now. I probed the opening the knife had created, every movement shooting scalding heat down my legs. The heat seeped through my vertebrae, making my head feel dizzy. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take; it was unbearable. Would it never end? A muffled scream escaped my lips. I tried to clamp my mouth shut. Still, noise escaped it.
Then the physical pain eased, but it was replaced with something else. Something worse. The emptiness that haunted my very being had never been more present. I would never return to the compound. That identity, however flawed it had been, was forever gone for me. Would I miss it? Perhaps. It was the one thing that had always been constant. In that world, I always knew my place, always knew what role was assigned to me. I was in a new world now. I could no longer run from coming to terms with who I really was, not the person I’d murdered and buried long ago. I was scared as hell.
I vaguely felt James put pressure on the wound, attempting to stop the blood that oozed down my leg, ounces of my prescribed persona mixing with the dirt. Abandoned. Ripped from me.
I was so tired. So very tired. James quickly moved in front of me, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open even to look at his face. I felt his arms wrap around me and lift me from the ground. I didn’t fight the darkness, not anymore. My life would never be the same and the uncertainty of what I now faced left me petrified.
Maybe if I were lucky, I would sleep forever.
The room was dark. How long had I been out? Hours? Days? My eyes were crusted over and I felt the sleep dust off into my cramped fingers as I attempted to free my eyes. I slowly sat up, my head feeling light as I stretched my arms in front of me, my elbows popping loudly in the much too quiet room. Tomb-like. Was it night? Next to me on a nightstand was a glass of water. I reached for it, consuming it faster than I’d thought possible.
I took note of my surroundings. I was in a bed, a rather large bed. The room was much too vast, filled with furniture from a time not so long ago. Everything was covered in dust, signaling the house hadn’t been used for some time. The room made me feel small, weak. Too much space. I tried to listen for noise but was only greeted with an eerie silence. I didn’t like the quiet so much anymore.
I knew I could open the door, explore, find answers, but I wasn’t ready. I lay back down on the bed and proceeded to curl myself into a ball. The bedspread smelled of mold and neglect.
I still felt a hole inside of me. I held my wrist up into the sliver of light that peeped into the room. My numbers were still etched there. Good. I rubbed them gently, caressing them, possessing them. They were mine.
I wasn’t ready for answers. I closed my eyes and let myself once again drift to sleep.
When I awoke my stomach was writhing with hunger. Next to my water now stood a jar of peanut butter. I undid the top and stuck my finger into the gooey contents. I hadn’t tasted peanut butter since before the compounds were inhabited. It was sweet and thick, and I instantly wished I had something else to drink.
Where the hell was I? I needed answers.
Robert. Things were too complicated with James and Henry, and I didn’t have time to sort through it at the moment. Robert was my best chance for getting the information I needed. There was a time I had trusted him. Could I trust him again?
If Robert had ever thought about running, why didn’t he run with Emma?
Did he do it for me?
Why?
How did he know I was going to be taken?
And James. He could never go back to his life.
Guilt. Damn, what a powerful emotion. But at least I felt something besides empty.
I was in a tattered nightgown—plaid, glaringly not part of the council-approved wardrobe. Someone had changed me. I shivered. The thought of a stranger’s hands on me made me want to stop my journey before it began. Who ever decided to place such fragile souls in such utterly destructible bodies?
I spotted a robe lying across a chair and slipped it over me. I clutched it tightly as I pushed open the door. If the room looked neglected, the house was completely abandoned. Pictures hung crookedly off the walls. The paint was peeling. I even thought I saw something scurry off into the corner when I opened the door.
Was this a house from before? A relic from the time when we knew what it meant to be free? It looked abandoned, forgotten. Yet it was still standing.
I was still standing.
Chapter 33
I hadn’t gotten more than a few steps down the hallway when a noise rushed into my ears. I turned to see James sitting in a broken wood chair not five feet from the room where I had slept. His clothes were rumpled, his hair tossed about, his eyes heavy. I never imagined he could look this way.
“Robert?” It was all I could bring myself to say.
He quietly told me Robert was in the barn. Those were all the words we could share with each other.
The brightness of the sun stunned my eyes into submission; I held my hand in front of me to ensure I wasn’t going to run into anything. The ground was hilly, making my already weak legs impossible to coordinate. Finally, my eyes began to adjust and I noticed the abandoned barn. How long had it been since I had seen one of these? Had I ever actually seen a barn? Or was it something that I’d only glimpsed in the days of television and movies?
The doors moaned loudly as Robert pushed them open. Even inside the barn, I could feel how cold it had gotten. We must have been somewhere north. I suddenly felt embarrassed, like a child who got caught sneaking out. Except what I had done, what I had caused, was so much worse. And the results had affected not only me.
“I’m sure you need some answers,” he said, concern on his face.
“I don’t know what to ask,” I finally managed, my voice cracking. And it was true. Where would I possibly begin?
“Do you love him?” Robert asked.
His question took the breath right out of me. I felt my cheeks burn and my eyes once again found the floor. “I…I don’t know what I feel,” I stammered. “How bad is it?”
“It isn’t good. It’s complicated.”
“How complicated?”
“We’re not sure if we’re still being tracked. I took care of the snatchers but by now the compound will know you’re missing, and so the chosen ones will know you’re missing. A girl gone right before deportation doesn’t look so innocent. It looks planned. Not only that, it looks planned by someone on the inside.”
Too many questions were screaming to be answered inside my mind. But I could only focus on one, because it was about him, about James. Later I would ponder how Robert rid us of the snatchers. Later I would wonder how many girls went missing without anyone truly questioning our leaders. But first I needed to know about him.
“You mean they could suspect that James helped?”
“We’re not sure. Of course, he will be the first one questioned. Your relationship, from what I understand, wasn’t exactly secret.”
No, it wasn’t, though no one really knew the truth behind it. The world thought I was merely a plaything to James. They didn’t know about dancing or reading Jane Eyre.
“But he seems to have figured out a decent cover story,” Robert said, breaking my train of thought.
I nodded for him to continue.
“James is supposed to be traveling to the compound he was assigned to in sector seven. They won’t expect him there for another few days. So Kendall and I got a few members of the council to vouch for him, saying they called him in for questioning regarding your disappearance. He will help us get you out, then return.”
“Wait. What? Hold on. Members of the council are on our side? And James—he isn’t running with us?” I asked as the panic began to take complete control.
“We have several members placed in the upper ranks of the council.”
“Members? We?”
Robert nodded, taking a seat in an old wooden chair. “The resistance. Did you think that everyone was just sitting back, content with what the chosen ones were doing? There has been a system in place for quite some time.”
“Like a resistance movement?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re a part of it?”
“Yes.”
“And the doctor, the one who saw me at my inspection, is he a part of it?”
Robert hesitated before answering. “Yes. Kendall is a part of it. I think he may have been one of the first members.”
His hesitation unnerved me—there was something he was holding back, but a more urgent question forced itself out. “How long have you been a part of the movement?”
Robert’s eyes narrowed as if he were seeing something I couldn’t. “For a long time. Long before I came to your compound.”
“Did Emma know?”
“Yes.”
I inhaled deeply. How much had been kept from me and for how long? “And Henry is a part of it as well?”
“And Henry.”
“And Julia?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“And Julia,” he repeated, a sad note lingering in his voice. “But don’t think that everyone in the resistance approved of her actions. She had help getting into Templeton from a rather extreme sect. Most of us would never condone her need to kill those younglings. I thought at first she did it on her own, but when she spoke the words…” He stopped.
“You mean the quote from Frankenstein?”
Robert nodded. “Yes, it’s a sign. Lets us know who’s part of the movement.”
James’s creator must have been the one to give him the book, to point him in the self-reflective direction he sought. Maybe Kendall wasn’t bad at all. Maybe he was a revolutionary. Maybe he even created James merely for helping him with his own war.
“We have pockets all over the sectors. Gathering Intel about the council and chosen ones.” Robert must have guessed my next question because he shortly followed with more. “There are whole populations of naturals who don’t live in compounds.”
“How is that possible? We had no choice. It was compulsory. Are you talking about Isolationists?”
“Mostly,” he said. “But not everyone who escaped to the Middlelands is on our side. Some people don’t like to follow any rules. You of all people should know that,” he replied with a small smile.
I kicked at the floor. “Why would the chosen ones just allow this to happen?”
“They can’t stop them if they don’t know where to find them.”
“And you know where to find them? The Middlelands is a wasteland.”
He laughed. “Is it? Have you ever been? Well, I certainly hope not, since that’s where we’re going to spend the rest of our natural lives. We’re going outside the grid, Tess. In the places between the East and the West.”
“What sort of people would chose to live as fugitives?”
“The same people who long ago figured out that the balance of power had been destroyed. People who predicted that one day the protection promised by the chosen ones would no longer hold true. People who knew one day deportation wouldn’t mean a better life, it would mean—”
“Death,” I replied, finishing his sentence. It had meant my death.
“These people, Tess, most of them left their homes and hid before things became too serious. They raised what was left of their families in hiding because they sensed that something wasn’t right. Others have been brought there because, well, because it was where they belonged.” The way he spoke these words caused a chill to run up my spine.
“These groups, they will just let us come and live with them?”
Robert nodded.
“It seems dangerous, letting new people in. I mean, if I had a place that was secret, safe, I wouldn’t be so quick just to let anyone in. I would worry if I could trust them.” The words were tumbling out of my mouth quickly. I only briefly cringed at how easy it was for me to dismiss the world as liars and cheats.
“They don’t let just anyone in. They only let people in when they have good reason.”
“Good reason? What possible reason could they have for wanting us in their community?” I was no one. I had no parents. My once best friend was connected to a murderer. My sister hated me. And I was quite sure that whatever I had with James was near destroyed.
“I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you that,” Robert said softly.
“Please, Robert. I certainly can’t talk to that man, doctor or no doctor, not after my inspection. I don’t even want to be in the same room with him.”
“And James?”
My heart fluttered at his name but something inside of me silenced its call. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t talk to him. Not yet. There are too many things I need to figure out.”
“Very well,” he replied, and I saw something change in his eyes, a look I had never seen. It was a mixture of rage and desperation only being held together by the thinnest string of control. “They will let us in, Tess, because you are different. You’re important to them. You’re important to them for the same reason you are a threat to the chosen ones. The same reason the resistance craves your company is the very reason your name was on that deportation list.”
I swallowed. It was all becoming clearer—it had something to do with my inspection. It was only after it that things became so chaotic, that my name was put on the deportation list. “Tell me,” I begged.
He took a deep breath. “When you went in for your inspection they discovered something.” Robert seemed to be struggling. I wasn’t sure which emotion was causing the difficulty, the anger or the desperation—I could hear both in his voice. He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds as if he were trying to shut some unnatural image out of his mind. When he opened his eyes, they were soft, almost kind.
“Tess,” he continued, “you’re not like the other girls, women, at the compound. When you decide to settle down and have children, you will not die. Your children will see the world and get to live in it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What happened to Emma will never happen to you,” he replied, his voice cracking.
My hands were shaking. How could I believe what he was saying?
“There has to be some mistake. That’s impossible.”
“No, Tess. It’s true. Kendall says it is very rare, but sometimes when a girl comes in for an inspection they discover that her body has somehow changed, evolved. It has learned to protect itself from what’s killing the mothers. He and his kind are instructed to report any cases to the council.”
I could feel my lungs shutting down, the air trapping itself in my throat. “No. If that were true then how come we haven’t heard of anyone else finding this out?”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t. Don’t you s
ee? When they report a girl’s name, the council takes care of it. That was why you were on the deportation list.”
“But other women were on that list!”
“They picked people at random to make your death look less planned. What does the council care if a bunch of naturals die? They can just make new humans and train them to be whatever they want them to be.”
“So you’re saying those women and children are going to be killed because of me? Because I’m some sort of freak?” I could hear how wild my voice had become but had no desire to control it.
Robert slowly stood up and took a step closer to me. “Tess, you have done many things wrong. Many. I won’t sugarcoat it for you, but this, what the council is doing, that is not your fault.”
“And yet here I am,” I said, throwing my hands in the air and taking a step away from him. “In a barn, sitting here talking to you. And where are the others on that list? Are they dead yet? Why do I get saved and they don’t?”
“We can’t save the world just yet,” he said with a small smile.
“Then why bother saving me?”
“Because those people in the Middlelands, those people who are risking their lives by joining the resistance, need hope. You’re that hope, Tess. Hope that it isn’t the end of a people. You’re one in a thousand. Hell, maybe one in a million.”
“Don’t! Don’t you label me with some damn ideology for a people I don’t even know!”
“Tess.”
“What about you, Robert? Why are you here? James could have done this with the help of Kendall. Why would you just leave? Didn’t the resistance need you at the compound? And what about Louisa?” I was yelling now and didn’t care who heard me.
Robert ran a hand through his well-kept hair. He was slow to answer me. I slammed my hand against the wall of the barn. He jumped.
“And don’t give me some crap about because it was what Emma wanted. Emma would have wanted you to stay and protect Louisa.”
“We’re in a war. The sooner you figure that out the better. The council has to use science and test tubes to create life, but for you it comes naturally. What we need now more than anything in the world is hope.
Chosen Ones (The Lost Souls, #1) Page 20