The Ending Series: The Complete Series

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  And you, Jason, apparently take after me. We’re valuable, which means we must always be cautious. People who desire power will seek out those like us, because no matter how much power they have, they will never be satisfied. They’ll always want more, and we can give them that. Case in point: Gregory Herodson.

  You must be asking yourselves why I’ve stayed with Gregory for so long. I let him use me as an instrument of destruction and a way to increase his power for several reasons, but chief among them was to protect you. Gregory placed a Monitor close to each of you, intended to carry out your execution should I step out of line. At the first sign that I wasn’t absolutely under his control, he would have sent word, and you would have died. If I’d attempted to contact you or your father, and the Monitors found out, you would have died. I couldn’t allow that.

  This is very important —These Monitors may still be with you. They would have had the gene therapy and already been familiar with their Abilities by the time they were implanted into your lives. They would still have fallen ill when infected by the Virus, but it would have been nothing more than a bad case of the flu to them, as their genetic code would have already been altered. It is possible that they don’t even know what they are. Herodson has people like your father who can alter perception as well as memories; they are, after all, the heart of the T-R program. Your Monitors could be sleeper agents, programmed to carry out their mission and eliminate you only when they’ve been triggered. If this is the case, those triggers will include any sign that I’ve been in contact with you. Be very careful about who you share this letter with. Better yet, share it with no one. Burn it.

  I’m so sorry that you have to deal with the fallout from my decisions, but I’m not sorry that you’re still alive. The hope that we will meet again one day is one of the few things keeping me going. I love you both, so very much.

  Love,

  Mom

  There was a long moment of silence after Jason finished reading. It was Gabe who finally broke it. “Well, at least we know who one of these ‘Monitors’ is.”

  Jason, Zoe, and I all exchanged narrow-eyed glances with one another, not quite sure where Gabe was going with his proclamation.

  And then I understood. It was the very reason Becca had advised Dr. Wesley to include the information about procreation. “Oh crap.”

  “Sarah,” Jason said softly, setting the letter on the table. He looked at Zoe “Yours has got to be Sarah.”

  “But…she’s my friend,” Zoe said. “She wouldn’t hurt me, I know it.” Her hands clung to the edge of the table in a white-knuckled grip. “I mean, I know it.”

  I sighed and, shaking my head, pulled out a chair and sat heavily. “But if Sarah doesn’t even know it…”

  “So she’s a sleeper agent,” Gabe said. “It’s the only explanation.” He looked at Jason. “What do we do?”

  Jason placed his palms on the table. “We get Sarah alone and interrogate her.”

  “But she’s pregnant,” I said. “Whatever she’s done—or might do—it’s not the baby’s fault. We can’t hurt her.” I looked to Zoe, hoping for her support.

  She was biting the inside of her cheek, her gaze distant with thought. “I can get inside Sarah’s head, rummage around to find out the truth and, I don’t know”—she shrugged—“try to get rid of it or something?”

  “Deprogram her,” Jason said with a nod. “Good plan.”

  “And how precisely will we mentally interrogate and deprogram her without setting her off?” Gabe’s voice was calm, composed; it was his problem-solving-research-genius voice, which was awesome. Because we really needed a problem-solving research genius on our side at the moment.

  “Sedative?” I suggested. “One that won’t hurt the baby?”

  “I think Harper’s got some in his med kit,” Jason said. “But I don’t know how safe they’d be.”

  “There’s another option,” Gabe said, and all eyes focused on him. “My Ability seems to be expanding, and I might be able to force her into an unconscious state.”

  Jason straightened. “Define ‘might be able to.’”

  “Fine.” Gabe took a deep breath. “It’ll take a lot out of me, but I can definitely do it.”

  “Works for me.” Jason looked at me, and I nodded, as did Zoe when he shifted his questioning gaze to her. “Let’s do it.”

  ~~~~~

  “No matter how you look at it, that leaves Chris and Ky,” I said, glancing from Jason to Gabe and back. We were sitting in the living room of the farmhouse, staying out of Zoe’s way while she sifted through Sarah’s mind in one of the bedrooms. “Either of them could be your Monitor—”

  “—or it could’ve been Dalton,” Jason said. Dalton had died back in Bodega Bay, before we ever left for Colorado. He’d been with Jason from the beginning, making him the only other feasible candidate. We’d already eliminated Holly, Hunter, Cece, and all of the others who’d left the base with Jason as candidates to be Monitors because they’d chosen to go their own way, away from Jason. We agreed that a Monitor, sleeper or not, wouldn’t just give up on a mission like that. We were certain. Fairly certain.

  “So…do we do this all again?” Gabe nodded toward the kitchen.

  “It’s going to be a lot harder to pull something like this on one of them,” Jason said.

  I rubbed my eyes, then took a deep breath. “This might be crazy, but what if we don’t do anything? If they’re set to activate only if we mention your mom contacting you guys, then maybe we can just keep going as we are…”

  Jason leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’ll be like playing hot potato with a live grenade.”

  “At least it would still have a pin in it,” I mumbled.

  All three of us looked up as Zoe appeared in the mouth of the hallway. She shook her head before dragging her feet across the carpet and plopping down on the floor beside me. She rested her head on my shoulder and yawned.

  “Anything?” Gabe asked.

  “Nope.” She yawned again. “Nothing but Sarah.”

  Gabe frowned. “Which means either she’s a blip and her DNA miraculously stabilized quickly enough for her to carry a child to term, or you can’t sense the sleeper part of her.”

  “I think we have to assume the latter,” Jason said. “We’d be fucking idiots not to.”

  Groaning, I rubbed my eyes. “So if we go with that—Zo can’t uncover the truth—then we can’t rely on her to weed out and unmask any other sleeper agents, either.”

  Gabe leaned back in his recliner, popping up the footrest. “We could trigger them on purpose, flush ’em out…”

  Jason shook his head in sync with me. “Too dangerous,” he said. “We can’t assume they’d immediately go berserk and rush us or anything like that. We have to remember that Chris and Ky are trained fighters with years of experience in combat tactics and strategies. Even if they were triggered, they’d wait…they’d have a plan, and we can’t bank on Zoe picking up on it. Especially with Sarah, because we don’t even know what her Ability is.”

  I leaned my cheek against the top of Zoe’s head. “So we wait. We keep going as we are, keep our mouths shut, and pretend everything’s normal.”

  Gabe and Zoe nodded.

  Jason met my eyes, everything about him weary, and nodded as well. “We wait.”

  MAY

  1AE

  18

  ZOE

  MAY 1, 1AE

  Fallon, Nevada

  The sun was just setting, filling the sky with the most vivid, ethereal waves of purple and orange I’d ever seen—an unexpected welcome to the mountain-rimmed patches of forest we would be trekking through for the next week or so. The awe-inspiring sunset was a tranquil ending to a tedious day of cart-driving and thinking, thinking and cart-driving, along Highway 50 through the high desert. We were a little less than a week outside of Tahoe, finally.

  Sitting beside the campfire, I watched Jason intently. I watched everyo
ne more intently. For someone who always seemed to arrive to a party early—to know my companions’ secrets before everyone else—this time, I felt like I was the late arrival. Why couldn’t I sense the Monitors, sleeper agents or not? Why can’t I now? I could sense everything else, including Jason’s dejection as he sat on the other side of the fire, quietly lost and drowning in his own misery. I should have been miserable. But I wasn’t.

  I wondered if I should be grateful for not being able to remember my past, for not being in the same wretched state as Jason. But I wasn’t grateful; rather, the reminder that I was so far detached from what used to be my reality was disconcerting. Instead, all I could feel was gratitude for my mom’s timely intervention, that she’d stopped Clara before she could finish whatever else she’d been attempting to do to me. Without her interference, I most definitely wouldn’t be sitting around the fire with a beer in my hand, relaxing with my friends. Well, relaxing might not have been the right word, but I was alive and mostly intact, which was more than I could say for Clara.

  I took a swig of my beer.

  “That bad?” Sarah asked, plopping down into the camp chair beside mine. I tried not to let any hint of last night’s clandestine exploration of her brain show on my face. I hated that I’d been digging around her mind, and even more, I hated that, after finding nothing, I still couldn’t trust her.

  Sarah pointed to the bottle in my hand. “You keep making a”—she twisted her features into a grimace—“face.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, come on. I’m not that bad.”

  She started shaking her head before I could defend myself. “Zoe, trust me. That’s exactly what you looked like.”

  I held the bottle of beer out and studied it. She was right, I didn’t enjoy the taste, and I didn’t understand why everyone else did. “Even if it was cold, I don’t think I’d like it. I’m not sure how the guys drink this.”

  “It’s because we’re men,” Harper said, sauntering over. He had a cowboy hat on and a piece of straw between his lips, an ensemble he’d readily adopted during our travels through Utah and Nevada. He stopped beside me, waggled his eyebrows, and smiled. “’Evenin’, ladies.” He dipped his hat, and once again, I started laughing. This time, Sarah joined me.

  “Nice hat,” Sarah said with a snort. “Where’d you find that old thing?”

  “Old thing?” Harper’s hands thudded against his chest and he displayed mock offense. “This is vintage, ladies. Vintage. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, snorting again before tossing her head back for a belly laugh. “It means it’s old, ugly, and was purposely left wherever you found it. Trust me, you should toss that thing into the fire.” She rested the paper plate holding her fourth helping of cornbread on the mound of her stomach.

  I studied Harper’s hat while he poked and prodded at the fire with a thick stick, still mulling the piece of straw between his lips as he listened to Sarah’s playful teasing. The hat was tan felt, with a wide rim and a tattered, navy blue band. I kind of liked it. Although I’d probably never wear it—it was a little hideous—I was perfectly content with him doing so.

  “Where did you get that thing, anyway?” I asked.

  “I scavenged it. My grandmother used to tell me I would’ve been a good cowboy. It must’ve been my chivalry and good looks.” As usual, his eyebrows danced. “Anyway, it was time for a changeup.”

  “I don’t see it…” I said, eyeing his dark, olive-colored skin and sable features. He seemed more islander, more exotic.

  Harper shrugged, but he was right, it was time for a bit of a changeup. Like everyone else, the long days of riding, of meeting other survivors every now and again, and of having to deal with unexpected injuries, were wearing on him.

  “What’s on your mind, Zoe?” Sarah asked. When I glanced at her, her eyebrows rose suggestively at me. “Jake again?”

  I smiled. “No, not this time.”

  “How are things going between the two of you? Are they getting any better?” She grunted as she leaned forward and tossed her paper plate into the fire.

  I nodded. “Yes, actually.”

  “Then what it is?” she asked, the playful lilt in her voice replaced with concern.

  Sarah’s eyes were imploring when I looked at her, and unwillingly, I wondered why she was so curious. Digging around inside her mind for a brief moment, I found no malicious intent, nothing that would indicate her as a Zoe-assassin, so I tried to forget about the pact I’d made with Dani, Jason, and Gabe the night before, about the letter from my mom.

  Leaning back in my chair, I opened myself up to my friend. “It’s more difficult than I thought.”

  Sarah’s brow furrowed. “Am I supposed to read minds as well as be pregnant with twins? Or are you going to help me out?”

  I straightened. “What? Twins? But—when...?”

  Sarah smiled. “Harper heard two heartbeats during my morning checkup.”

  I searched Sarah’s face for any indication of how she felt about the news…the huge news.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Zoe,” she said and shook her head. “I’m fine with it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She heaved a sigh before leaning her head back. “I think I sort of expected it. I mean, there’s a lot of movement in here.” She pointed to her belly. “Plus, Harper’s been extremely attentive lately. I think he already suspected but wanted to be sure before he broke the news to me.”

  I saw a memory of her bursting into tears, completely despondent when she’d first received the news that she was pregnant.

  “Well, I’m happy for you. At least now they’ll have each other…being the first post-apocalyptic baby would be a lot of pressure.” I smiled, offering her what little jest I could in hopes it might make her smile in return.

  “Thanks, Zoe.” She nudged me with her elbow. “So tell me, what’s eating at you?”

  Mind still reeling from baby news, I shook my astonishment away and leaned back in my chair again. “Not that it’s nearly as exciting as having twins, but”—I stared out at the group of friends that surrounded me—“I’m starting to loath my Ability, I guess…trying to fit in, to be accepted. It’s all more difficult than I thought it would be.”

  “Really?” She let out a slow, even breath.

  Again, I nodded. My Ability was proving to be my biggest enemy, making it difficult to get closer to people because they still tended to avoid me, and it forced me to know things I didn’t want to know and to keep secrets I didn’t want to have to keep. It was ruining everything.

  “I’m just tired of being in people’s minds, that’s all. I wish I could control my feelers a bit better.” I watched her, waiting for a reaction. “I wish I didn’t have to carry so many secrets.”

  But Sarah sat there, oblivious, picking at the food crusted on the hem of her shirt. “Look at me,” she groaned. “I’m such a pregnant mess!” Her voice was nearly a hiss, and again, I fought the urge to laugh at her expense. “I’m sorry things are so hard, Zoe. I know there’s probably nothing I can do, but if there is, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

  Offering her a quick nod and a grateful half-smile, I watched as she struggled to her feet.

  “I better go change, I’m exhausted.” She gathered my hair up off of my neck, then gave it a gentle, playful tug. “Nighty-night, Zoe. See you in the morning.”

  “’Night,” I said, and I watched her waddle away. Sarah was so uncomplicated, or at least she seemed that way. She spent most of her time thinking about Biggs and babies and sleep and food.

  Jason, on the other hand, wasn’t. His mind was toxic most of the time, a reservoir of overflowing, dangerous emotions that would eventually suffocate him. Among his outrage and disbelief at what our mom had done was his constant concern for Dani. Over the past month, I’d learned a lot of things about my brother—he kept his emotions hidden, had a foul mouth, and was beyond stubborn most of the time—but stupidity wasn’t on
e of those things. He knew something wasn’t right with Dani, and although his guarded expression gave nothing away, I could feel his disquiet regarding her, as messy and convoluted as his emotions were.

  Dani was trying to get better, I knew that much. What she’d seen the night we were all attacked by wild drifters and her conversation with Ralph had spurred her toward trying to take better care of herself, trying to overcome her drifting problem…trying. But she was failing, and that was why I needed to tell Jason. He needed to know what the hell was going on with her, and she needed him if she was going to get any better.

  Setting aside my nearly full beer, I walked around the fire toward Jason, Sanchez, and Biggs, hoping Dani wouldn’t decide to return from her walk with Mase, Camille, and Carlos until after our conversation ended. I wanted to avoid getting caught in the act of tattling, because no matter how necessary I tried to tell myself it was to get Jason involved, I still felt like I was betraying her.

  Jason’s body tensed as I approached, his gaze questioning.

  “Hey,” I said and cleared my throat, readying myself to say what I knew I should but feared Dani might hate me for forever. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Jason frowned minutely. “Is this about…?” He gave me a meaningful look. “Did you discover something?”

  Glancing from Sanchez to Biggs and back to Jason, I shook my head. “It’s sort of personal…” I hoped that would squelch any formulating questions from our audience.

  Taking a deep breath, he searched my face. Whatever he found must have convinced him that what I wanted to talk about was important, because he nodded once, slowly, and stood. “Alright. Where to?”