He dragged me on.
We made our way down the hall, toward a door swinging open in the wind.
The pain in my soul overtook me, wiping out everything else.
I wailed.
114
JACK
I set Finn down on the grass, thirty yards from the building, far enough away, I hoped, to ensure debris wouldn’t hit him.
I spun back toward the building just as Beckett and Sage emerged. Blood stained Sage’s shirt. But where was her father?
I thought of the gunshots. What happened in there?
I started sprinting toward them. We were out of time. I’d been counting in my head. We had to move away from the building now.
“Take her!” Beckett’s voice carried to me on the wind. “I’m going back for him!”
He lowered his shoulder out from under Sage. She collapsed to the ground.
Beckett rotated toward the building.
I knew it was too late for Beck to go back. If he went in now, he’d never come out … at least not in whole pieces.
Two of my sprinting steps matched one of Beck’s, but I still didn’t know if I’d be fast enough. I didn’t waste my energy on shouting at him to stop. He never listened to me anyway.
Somewhere in the periphery of my mind, I heard Finn cry out, screaming his sister’s name. It revived Sage, and she started dragging her body toward her brother. Imogen rushed to help.
My feet felt like they barely touched the ground while I ran.
If ever in my life I’d been holding back, if I’d stored away any untapped reserves of speed, this was the moment I wanted to use them, this was the moment I needed to go full-out.
Expend it all to save my brother.
I tackled him to the concrete just outside the door.
My body covered his.
The bomb went off.
115
BECKETT
The weight of Jack’s body landed against me, pulling me down, protecting me.
Something exploded, a horrifying noise that swallowed all other noises.
Pieces of brick from the building rained down on the sidewalk, just inches away from my face. Jack’s chest covered my head. I couldn’t move to get a better idea of what was happening, how we were trapped.
Debris covered us. The world was dark, filling my lungs with dust and soot.
Somewhere, far away, a sound broke through again.
Imogen was screaming.
But I just wanted to lie here for a while, even though I felt like I was suffocating. It was better than the alternative: feeling the weight of the guilt of leaving Sage’s father behind. I knew it’d hit full force if we ever got out from under this rubble.
Sage would never forgive me. I had heard her howl inside the building at the top of those stairs. I know what it did to her to leave him behind.
Her father.
I’d never forgive myself.
If I’d been Jack, I could have carried them both. We all would have made it out alive.
If I were stronger, I could have done it with both of them.
But Jack wasn’t there.
It had only been me.
And that wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough.
I was never going to be enough.
116
JACK
I should have gone faster.
I should have moved faster with Finn. Busted us outside more quickly. Worked harder. Allowed for more time to go back in and help the rest of them.
Sage’s dad was still inside the building.
Dr. Cunningham had still been alive inside that building.
I could have done it. I could have carried him out. And Sage, too. At the same time.
I should have pushed myself harder, given more. I needed to give more.
More. Always more.
Instead, Dr. Cunningham was still inside.
He died.
Why did I let everyone down?
People dying.
Everywhere people dying.
Because of me.
117
IMOGEN
I was digging.
I was digging with my bloody hands, and I was screaming. Calling out for Jack and Beckett. Shouting into the pile of rubble, searching the spot where I knew Jack had landed on top of his brother on the sidewalk.
I spotted a leg. I threw more bricks and cement and debris away, ignoring the searing pain of my flesh.
And, then … a butt. Jack’s perfectly sculpted butt.
I’d never been so happy to see it.
I kept digging, calling their names, listening for any noise that told me they were still alive.
Jack grunted.
“Thank the stars,” I cried.
“Beck?” Jack’s voice croaked. “Beck, you there, you bastard?”
Beck groaned.
Relief flowed from every pore in my body. It mixed with the blood that covered my cracked, decimated hands.
We were going to be okay.
It was going to be okay.
118
SAGE
Somehow, all five of us dragged each other into the Jaguar. Imogen drove us to a deserted parking garage, far away from all the sirens closing in.
They cleaned and inspected the wound at my torso. It appeared the bullet exited out the back of my body. The bleeding had stopped, but pain still seared through the middle section of my body. For now, they wrapped it. I guess we’d see what happened. It’s not like we could check me into a hospital.
We all hung near the car: Finn sitting on the ground closest to me with Ollie curled in his lap, my brother no longer a modwrog but unable to move his legs yet; Jack in the driver’s seat, covered from head to toe in bruises and gashes, his injuries already fading, already healing; Beckett leaning against the hood, his calf muscle still wrapped with a piece of my gold dress and an egg-sized bump on the side of his head where his skull hit the sidewalk—it looked painful but better than him dead; Imogen in the back of the Jag with her legs propped out the side, her hands—her poor hands—resting on her thighs. The time would come—and soon—when I’d have to somehow communicate to them what Sven said about the recruits dying off.
But we’d get Imogen help. We would not let her die.
We needed a plan, but my mind still hadn’t processed everything that just happened.
My brain kept circling back to one fact: my father … I’d left my father behind.
That was my fault … Beckett had been forced to help me. If I could have carried myself ….
I was still in too much shock at losing him so soon after finding him, that I couldn’t even tap into the depth of my pain. I had a terrifying hunch that the heartache wouldn’t recede for a very long time. Maybe never.
Imogen spoke before my thoughts could go deeper. “Now what, Sherlock?”
She turned her head to look at Jack in the front seat.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Jack said. “Why would Dad be willing to blow us all up unless he got what he wanted from Sage?” He eyed Beckett.
Dread washed over my whole body at the truth in Jack’s unspoken words. Why, unless their dad had gotten to my eggs.
Beckett lifted from where he rested on the car hood. “We don’t know that for sure. He might have other motives. We don’t know. Let’s just get to Canta and go from there.”
“Canta?” Jack said. “Why?”
“Dr. Cunningham’s safety deposit box. It says so in his note.”
You already read my note? I scowled at him from where I lay on the concrete.
Beckett leaned forward and handed me the folded piece of paper my dad had given him. He avoided my eyes.
“Can she read?” Imogen called from the back seat.
I growled at Imogen and snatched the paper from Beckett with my ungraceful, clunky hands.
“Just asking! Golly, somebody’s sensitive ….” She muttered. I could hear her rolling her eyes.
I struggled, anxious to open the p
aper but couldn’t grab the edges with my fingertips.
“Here, let me help,” Finn said, reaching for the paper. He opened it and handed it back to me. “You look horrible, by the way.”
I smiled at him, or at least I thought it was a smile. His comment sounded so normal—so Finn—that even in the midst of my exasperation at Beckett, I wanted to hug my brother. This emotion—the joy at Finn being normal again—would also take time for me to process.
Finn’s voice sounded lower, and his body was much bigger, but it was still him. I reached over to touch him, to reassure myself of his presence, but when I heard Ollie growl from Finn’s lap, I stopped. Even still, that didn’t keep my happiness from swallowing me up: My brother was alive. He could talk. We were together again.
All these thoughts and feelings were set aside when I started reading the words from my father:
Dear Hope,
If you’re reading this, then I’m not with you, and for that, I’m extremely sorry. I have a lot to be sorry for when it comes to you, but I also have a lot to be grateful for and a lot to be proud of.
First, I want you to know how hard it was for me to let you go when you were eighteen months old. I wanted so badly to watch you grow up, to raise you myself and be your father. Your mother and I both loved you from the moment we set eyes on you. You’re a very special gift to both of us. I want you to always remember that. And I hope you will remember those words as you read what I must tell you next.
I always called you my little seed. The beginning of something good. You are that. But the truth runs deeper than you know.
You are not my biological child. The sperm and egg for you were pulled from a pool of highly qualified and rigorously selected donations. We needed a strong genetic base for you.
Before you were created, we worked long and hard on the genetic organization of proteins within that egg and within that sperm. After you were in embryonic form, we did the same for you—meticulously selecting the proper proteins to code into your genes themselves—all to transform your cells, to alter them for the specific expression of certain traits.
Your first nine months were not in your mother’s belly but within a gestational tube. Your mother and I, we watched you growing every day. We loved you, every day.
That is why I sent you away with your mother. We had to do it to keep you safe. I have never stopped loving you. I have always loved you, Hope. Like my very own. You are my daughter, and you always will be, no matter what.
But you—your genes—are a descendant of every human being on this planet. You are a descendant of no one person, and yet every person, all at once. No one can own you, no one can claim you. You are a child of the universe. You represent all the world could be, my love.
You were our first and only hope. You’re the lost seed that all our species is meant to be. You’re the beginning of something amazing, something that has always existed, something that has always been available to us—the original way of life for humankind. You are one, and you are also many.
The science to which I dedicated my life was meant for good, but now I see the world is not yet ready for it.
The truth revealed at the right time, when people are ready to see and accept it, is revolutionary. But when humanity is exposed to the right knowledge at the wrong time, it is dangerous.
And so, my love, you must hide.
The code is so much more than you know. I have more to share with you.
I wish to tell you everything, but it is not safe for me to put in this letter. It would expose too much.
There is a safety deposit box at Home State Bank in Canta, Kansas. You will find the key on the farm, buried under your mother’s favorite tree. No one knows about this—not Dr. Adamson, not Vasterias.
Inside the lockbox, you will find the directions you need to learn more.
Enjoy your life. Fall in love. Experience the entire range of human emotions. But mainly, my dear Hope, live.
Most importantly, live.
It’s my only gift to you now. Your life.
Always, always remember how much I love you.
Yours forever,
Dad
The paper floated from my hands.
I rolled from my side to my back, reclined on the concrete in shock, not wanting to make eye contact with any of the four people who undoubtedly stared at me now.
I wasn’t biologically my father’s child. I wasn’t biologically my mother’s child.
A descendant of everyone, a descendant of no one. No one can own you. No one can claim you.
But I wanted to be claimed. If not, then where did I belong?
I belonged to no one. Nothing.
At least Jack had a real mother. At least he has a father—no matter how bad he might be. At least Jack knows where he came from. Where did I come from?
Everyone and no one.
This loss, this disconnect, shifted something fundamental inside of me in a way that nothing else ever had before.
I believed I had met my father—even if I did lose him, at least I’d met him.
Now, a new reality unfolded before me: I didn’t have a father at all.
I wasn’t my mother’s daughter. Or Finn’s biological sister. I didn’t belong to any family, to any person.
I was all alone.
The inside of my chest felt like a hollow, empty shell. The world spun. An imaginary axis positioned itself directly over the spot where I lay on the concrete. The center axis of the world circled down toward me, emerging like a drill. It rotated, cutting into me, skewering me, pressing me deeper and deeper into the earth.
Dark, and alone.
119
SAGE
I didn’t move from the ground.
No one moved.
Now what? I couldn’t fathom any way to ever pull myself from this dark pit. I didn’t know how to climb out from underneath the drill that dug me deep into the ground.
Then, my father’s words reverberated in my mind. No, not my father’s words—words from the man who wasn’t really my father but who I desperately wished had been my father.
His words reverberated in my mind: “It’s only because it’s what she wants. That’s how powerful her mind and body are now.”
Did he speak the truth about this? If so, why had he died? Did I not want him to live? Did I not want to be strong enough to carry him along?
Too many parts of that equation felt convoluted.
I only knew what I wanted now.
I wanted some tactile connection to the source of who I was and where I came from.
I knew I would never get that, and because of this truth, anguish blossomed in my heart.
I felt that anguish rolling through my body. Really felt it. It flowed through me like a river.
And then, I pictured sucking that pain out of my body and holding it in my hands, playing with it like a liquid ball. I shaped it into something dark and ugly.
Slowly, steadily, I molded my pain into anger. And then I shoved it back inside.
At that point, everything became clear.
Oh, yes.
Yes, I knew what else I wanted.
I wanted to make myself into the most powerful weapon Vasterias had ever come up against.
I wanted to experience what they’d really made me to be: Prowess. Strength. Skill.
I wanted to destroy everything Dr. Adamson had taken from me.
I would find whatever clues my non-real dad had left for us. I would hunt down a cure for Imogen. And when my work was done, and everyone innocent was safe, I would make them all pay.
Dr. Adamson. Vasterias. Every evil person involved in this entire, wretched scheme.
They would pay for my non-real mom’s death. And my non-real dad’s death. And Caesar’s death.
They would pay for every pain I’d ever felt and for the darkness in my heart now.
I would be the instrument.
I would forge myself into the tool I needed.
The stirri
ng began deep in the pit of my stomach … a sharp, twitching sensation that spread out from my core.
It oozed across my entire body—this awareness of my ability to create inside me whatever I wanted.
And then, I felt it.
I felt myself transforming.
END OF BOOK TWO
Acknowledgements
This second book in The Mod Code Series came into the world just like my literal second child arrived in real life—faster and easier than my first. I hope this is a sign of what’s to come. (Not more babies, just more books.)
And yet, even with the smoother process, there are still people to thank because, after all, writing a novel is a team effort.
Thank you Carrie Jones for your developmental insights and direction after draft one of this story. You were spot-on with so much.
Thank you Katelyn H. Smith for your awesome copyedit skills. How do you do it? You’re amazing. I’m so grateful to have you as part of my team.
Thank you Paul Salvette and the team at BB eBooks for making my stories crisp and presentable. Your formatting rocks.
Thank you Edwin Flores and WebFloDesignLab.com for a beautiful website and dedicated help on all the “extras.”
Thank you to my family: my two amazing children who make daily life so fun, and my husband and best friend in life, Jacob. The world is brighter and lighter because of you three.
And of course, thank you to my readers. You guys made diving into book two so much fun because I knew you were rubbing your hands together, waiting in anticipation for me to finish! It’s for you I write, and for you I’m so grateful.
With all my love,
xxheidi
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The Golden Order Page 27