The Ending Series: The Complete Series

by Lindsey Fairleigh

John blinked several times. A deer in headlights held nothing on him. “I—I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  Anna nodded and bared her teeth in a self-disgusted smile. “You do that.”

  Quick footsteps drew Anna’s attention to the stretch of hallway behind her, and she turned around to see Howard, one of Gregory’s favorite lackeys, approaching. At least, he was one of Gregory’s favorites amongst the lackeys he still had after the uprising, and one of the few who’d remained by choice in the chaos and instability that had followed. The Re-gens had exacted a high toll with their unexpected rebellion, and it was one her son paid for every day with his increasingly rapid descent into illness. She needed more Re-gens…more subjects to run her tests on…more scientists to brainstorm possible solutions.

  She needed Gabriel McLaughlin.

  John tipped the scales in terms of intelligence, but he was an inside-the-box thinker. Gabriel, on the other hand, somehow managed to turn scientific experimentation into an art, constantly redefining the concept of “the box” with his intellectual creativity. Where John was an unquestionably smart man, Gabriel was a true scientific savant. If anyone could find a solution to the degeneration plaguing the Re-gens, Gabriel could.

  But Anna hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of him in her dreams for months. Not that it was his fault. These were dangerous times in the Colony, and only when Anna was feeling exceptionally desperate or bold would she dare to let her guard down, just for a brief window, while she slept, hoping Gabriel might be trying to contact her in her dreams. It had yet to bear fruit. Each time Anna woke from such an attempt, she had only disappointment to warm her bed—disappointment and the megalomaniac who’d long ago claimed her as his property…as his “wife.”

  Howard stopped just a little too close to Anna. But she was used to his intimidation techniques. Keeping her feet firmly planted, Anna squared her shoulders and met Howard’s eyes. “Did you want something?”

  “General Herodson needs you.” Howard held her gaze, challenged it. “Come with me.” And without another word, he turned and strode back up the hallway.

  Anna forced herself to unball her fists. After several slow, even breaths, she looked at John, who was still trembling against the wall. “What do you need to increase the effectiveness of the treatments?” She spoke the words low and rushed. Much as she might find pleasure in making Gregory wait, she knew the repercussions; the anger he would take out on her and the pleasure he would gain from her pain would be far from worth it.

  “More Re-gens. More assistants.” John paused, squinting. “A more intense electrical current.”

  Anna blew out a breath. “Alright,” she said as she turned away from him to follow after Howard. “I’ll see what I can do.” Gregory would have to see reason, especially when that reason came in the form of releasing the interred rebel Re-gens into her custody so she could use them to hone the treatment process—and, if she and John were able to make enough progress, save Peter’s life.

  Her spark of hope dwindled when she realized Howard wasn’t leading her to Gregory’s office on the other side of the Colony, but to the underground holding cells two buildings away from the electrotherapy lab. Doubt sprouted in her chest, spreading like a noxious weed. Gregory had been keeping his distance from the makeshift prison and its ailing Re-gen occupants. She feared his presence there now could mean only one thing—he’d finally settled on their punishment for rebelling. And when Gregory came to a decision, he acted on it quickly and without mercy. It was one of his few qualities that Anna actually admired. Except for right now.

  Anna had no doubt of the severity of the punishment the uncooperative Re-gens would suffer, had no doubt that she was walking toward a mass execution. And she had no doubt that by extinguishing the rebel Re-gens’ second lives, Gregory would be all but killing their son.

  ~~~~~

  A livewire of tension and frustration, Anna descended the stairwell leading down to the long, underground hallway and its intermittent holding cells beneath one of the former college buildings. She couldn’t allow Gregory to kill the few remaining Re-gens, not when she needed them so badly. Her mind was awhirl with thoughts…possibilities…logic…arguments…excuses…pleas…none of which would be good enough if Gregory’s mind was already made up.

  The first door on the right, a heavy, metal barrier set in the reinforced cement wall, stood ajar, and Anna could hear Gregory’s disinterested voice floating through the doorway.

  “—but some mistakes are just too great to make amends for, MT-01. I can no longer trust you. Your words are now meaningless to me.”

  Howard passed the doorway and took up a guard stance on the far side of the opening. Anna stopped opposite him and hung her head. Now that she knew which Re-gen Gregory was addressing in the cell, she recognized the emotionless quality of his voice for what it really was—a mask to cover the betrayal he felt, to hide his utter heartbreak.

  Mikey—MT-01, in Re-gen terms—had been Gregory’s favorite. He’d been loyal to “the General” before his death and had trusted Gregory implicitly, to the point of volunteering for the Re-gen program when it was still in the experimental phase. He was the only Re-gen that Gregory didn’t address using a Re-gen identifier. Or, rather, he had been…before the uprising.

  And while Mikey hadn’t actually participated in the rebellion—in the massive slaughter that had taken place during those few, terrifying minutes that the General’s people had been immobilized by Camille’s metal-controlling Ability—he’d admitted to knowing about it before it happened. How could he not have when the oracle and orchestrator of the rebellion, RV-01—Becca—had been the closest thing he’d had to a best friend?

  “Pl—please, Father.” Mikey was sobbing, the sound sloppy and gut-wrenching. It was rare for a Re-gen to feel intense emotions, let alone express what they were feeling, and it yanked on the tangled wad of stored-up heartbreak that Anna kept tightly wound inside herself. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to summon such an intense emotional response in her own son. “I kn—knew you w—would be safe,” Mikey said between gasping breaths. “I—I would have w—warned you if I thought you—”

  His words cut off with the sound of flesh hitting flesh, but his sobs continued.

  “There are few things I enjoy less than the bitter taste of disappointment,” Gregory said quietly, “and I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt such intense disappointment as I do now.”

  “Pl—please, Father—”

  There was another fleshy smack, closely followed by a wet crunch that brought to mind a sickening image of the Re-gen’s skull cracking against the cement wall.

  “You were my favorite,” Gregory said in the silence that hung in the absence of Mikey’s sobs, thick to the point of choking. “I loved you like a son,” he whispered.

  Anna couldn’t bring herself to step through the doorway, to enter the holding cell that she knew now contained only one living thing. At that moment, she refused to think of Gregory as a person—he was so much less.

  Anna squeezed her eyes shut. Gregory truly had loved Mikey like a son; she knew it, had seen it with her own eyes. And he’d killed him anyway.

  She just hoped he wouldn’t inadvertently do the same to his actual flesh and blood.

  1

  ZOE

  NOVEMBER 24, 1AE

  The Farm, California

  Hurrying through the mud and drizzle toward the stable proved detrimental to both staying clean and staying dry. Wet earth squished beneath each footstep, and I couldn’t help but wonder why we hadn’t moved our excess canning supplies out of the house sooner. Only a few steps from the sliding stable door, my right foot slipped in the mud, and it was all I could do not to face-plant in the muddy gravel with an armful of empty jars. “Shit,” I mumbled, letting out my held breath in relief as I regained my balance.

  “That’s a bad word,” Annie observed behind me. “We’re not supposed to say bad words.”

  I glance
d back to find her half lost in concentration with each careful step, her little red rain boots spattered with mud. Muddy boots were better than muddy clothes, which Dani had made me promise to keep clean. Sam only shook his head.

  “I know, no bad words,” I said, straining as I used my foot to slide the stable door open wide enough for the three of us to scramble through and out of the rain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it.” With an oomph, I managed to push the door open, and Annie shuffled inside, Sam and me following behind her.

  Although it was chilly inside the stable, it smelled of leather and hay, a pleasant surprise since many of the horses had opted to remain cooped up in their stalls most of the week.

  “Why are we bringing the jars in here?” Annie asked, her tiny voice taut as she crept inside. I passed her in search of a place to store our armfuls.

  “Over here,” I said, using my chin to point at the table stacked with Vanessa’s tattered and soiled clothes—the few items she’d allowed us to remove from her to be cleaned and mended. It was the table Chris and Carlos had put in Vanessa’s makeshift room during their daily visits to the last stall on the left.

  Hearing Annie grunt, I looked down at her and smiled. Each of her steps was strategic and determined as she drew closer to the table, holding the four jars she’d insisted on carrying, like boulders too big for her tiny arms. As always seemed to be the case when I was around cute little crazy Annie, my heart melted a little.

  “Why are we putting them in here?” she asked again.

  “Because,” Sam grumbled, “we all have to eat inside again.” He set his case of jars on top of mine. “We need the kitchen table for dinner tonight because of the stupid rain.”

  “It’ll stop soon,” I said, but I wasn’t sure that was true. We’d been mostly indoors for a couple of days, and none of us were sure when the weather would let up or for how long the break would last once it came, not even Tavis.

  “But why aren’t we putting them in the shed,” Annie rattled on, “with the jellies and the pickles and the—”

  Sam cut her off. “We’re just storing them in here until Jason and Grandpa Tom can fix the roof on the shed,” he said, sounding bored. “They have to wait for the rain to stop again.”

  “Oh, Sam,” I said, nudging him with my elbow. “It’s just a little rain…okay, maybe a lot of rain. But it’ll let up soon.”

  With a grunt, Annie finally stopped in front of the table, squeezing the jars so tightly I could hear glass grinding against glass. I held my breath, waiting for them to crash onto the hay-scattered cement floor but hoping they wouldn’t. Vanessa was chatting happily away to herself in her stall, and I didn’t want to send her into a spiraling fit.

  Naturally, Sam reached out to help Annie unload her jars, but she turned away from him, her wild blonde hair bouncing despite its damp tendrils. “I can do it,” she said primly.

  Sam’s palms flew up, and he stepped away from Annie’s accusatory glare. “Sorry.”

  Carefully, Annie placed one jar on the table, her brow furrowed in concentration. She set down another. “They’re all wet and slippery,” she grumbled, smearing a water drop on one with her fingertip.

  “That’s what happens when it’s raining,” Sam retorted, ever the older brother he’d seemed to become. “I told you I’d carry them.” Although Sam often feigned annoyance with Annie, I knew she amused him, and like with the rest of us, she often made him smile despite his grumpy mood. She was contagious that way.

  With a derisive sound, Annie scrunched her face. “I don’t like the rain anymore,” she said, sounding like Sam, but I knew it wasn’t necessarily true. Annie didn’t like that she had to stay indoors when it rained, but she thoroughly enjoyed the overabundance of puddles that popped up all over the property. More mud meant more fun, at least where Annie was concerned.

  Wishing I’d been in less of a hurry and grabbed my jacket, I ignored the visible puff of breath I exhaled as my fingertips felt for the small cubes protruding from my back pocket.

  “Tavis should make the rain go away,” Annie said, adamant as she placed the last canning jar expertly on the table. She grinned, triumphant.

  “Tavis can’t send the rain away just because we don’t like it, Annie,” I tried to explain.

  She looked at Sam, scrunched up her face again, then looked at me. Her bright blue eyes narrowed, but she listened without argument.

  “Don’t you like curling up on the couch, reading your animal stories with Mr. Grayson?” Despite how much Annie groaned about having to stay indoors, I knew she loved story time almost as much as she enjoyed romping around with Cooper and Jack in the dirt. And Mr. Grayson, old Bodega Bay’s infamous history teacher and captivating orator—or Daniel, as some called him—was the best man for the job.

  Annie huffed, an exaggerated, impatient sound. “Yeah, but—”

  “But what? We need the water in the wells and to fill the pond, munchkin. And we need it for our winter garden,” I explained. As if on cue, the encroaching storm above us worsened. Raindrops fell harder, echoing on the stable roof, and a gale of wind made the structure shudder and groan.

  Shadow stirred in his stall a few doors down, and when Annie noticed my hand was in my back pocket, she grinned from ear to ear.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to give sugar to the horses,” Sam said wryly. Though he was going for disapproving, I knew he enjoyed our clandestine snack times with the horses as much as I did.

  I brought my index finger to my lips. “Dani just said in moderation.” I walked over to Shadow, deciding he might like the company since he was cooped up indoors like the rest of us. Little pattering feet followed, and Annie giggled.

  When Shadow’s head bobbed up and he anxiously approached the opened stall window, my grin widened. He looked like an oversized mountain pony with his shaggy, onyx coat, longer from the cool winter weather, and his unruly mane.

  “Hey, boy,” I said softly as he stuck his head through the window. Shadow’s eyes were opened wide and bright, and I knew that meant he was growing anxious and ready for exercise. “Sorry, buddy, not today.” A notion suddenly dawned on me. I looked back at Annie. “He’s going to roll in the mud the first chance he gets, isn’t he?”

  She simply giggled.

  “I knew it.” Patting the side of his face, I put one of the sugar cubes out on my flattened palm for Shadow’s greedy lips to find and gave the rest to Sam and Annie. “It’ll be our little secret.” I winked and pointed toward the other stalls. “Just be careful of the last one,” I said. Annie and Sam both looked at Vanessa’s stall. They nodded, familiar with the drill.

  Unfazed to have a Crazy living in our stable—one who’d “cared” for Annie to the best of her mentally unstable ability before Dani had stumbled across them back in Tahoe—Annie giggled and pranced from stall to stall as she and Sam visited each of the horses. Just as they were finishing petting Brutus, Sam squinted beyond me, toward the tack room. I knew that look.

  I glanced behind me and saw nothing, though I wasn’t surprised. I’d grown used to Sam hearing things the rest of us couldn’t.

  “Kitty!” Annie sang, then she trotted past me to the corner of the stable, where one of the three two-month-old kittens meowed to life and stretched in the doorway of the tack room.

  All of us smiled, unable to resist the brown kitten’s sweet mewing while she traipsed toward us in want of attention; her brown fur, blue eyes, and bobbed, fluffy tail looked like—to Annie at least—the Mr. Potato Head doll Ky had given her right before the incident. “Ky liked Mr. Potato Head, and he would’ve liked this name,” Annie had said when she’d named the little kitten Miss Potato. No one had argued with the determined little fireball, even if it was a painful memory. It didn’t matter that Jason had been forced to shoot his best friend in self-defense, to kill Ky—the Monitor the General had placed on him. It was a day we all wished we could forget.

  “She’s getting bigger,” Sam said, smiling as he watche
d Miss Potato spastically frolicking and squeaking as she played in the straw.

  Unlike Sam and Annie, my mind was shadowed by darker times. Thinking of Ky made my heart ache, then burn with guilt and regret as my thoughts jumped to memories of Sarah’s suicide. I thought about Biggs and the twins, whom we hadn’t seen in almost six months. They were all gone because of me, because of the tangled, messy web of lies my life consisted of.

  Annie giggled and gently stroked Miss Potato’s tawny belly as the kitten flopped and played at her feet.

  “Where are the others?” Sam asked, peering back at the tack room, the cats’ secluded safe haven during our coastal storm.

  “Bubbles is coming,” Annie explained. “But Doodle is getting a bath.”

  With hands in his front pockets, Sam leaned back on his heels and let out a deep exhale, one that exuded incredulity, like he might never be able to completely wrap his mind around Dani and Annie’s animal-speaking Abilities.

  “Look who I found crying outside the door,” Tavis said, striding into the barn. His dirty blond hair was matted, and water dripped from his nose as he held out a nearly drowned, squeaky black kitten.

  “Bubbles!” Annie exclaimed.

  Sam chuffed. “I thought you said she was inside?”

  Annie ran over to Tavis and the drenched kitten. “No, I said she was coming.”

  “What was she doing outside?” I asked. I made my way over to Tavis and the kitten. “She could’ve gotten washed away.”

  Annie greedily snatched Bubbles from Tavis’s hold. He grinned at me and stepped aside to let Annie fawn all over the kitten. “She was exploring, and then it started raining,” Annie explained. “She got scared.”

  “Well, I’m glad Tavis found her then,” I said, and crouched down to pet the matted black mess.

  I saw a flicker of something in Tavis’s mind, a memory of the past that sent a wave of longing through him—not lustful longing, but something lonelier. He glanced at me.

  “Zoe,” Annie said.