by Joe Hart
Zoey settles onto her heels and shakes her head, looking first to the door then at Vivian. “No. You’re lying. You’re calling for help.”
“Why would I need help? I have this,” she says, waving the gun slightly. “And I’m not lying.”
There is a sound at the door, a faint electronic beeping before it swings open. Standing there is a man she recognizes as Doctor Calvin, his bald pate and goatee bringing back the aftermath of Rita’s and her fight in the cafeteria. He wears the same smile as he did then, the crooked canine peeking out from beneath his pale upper lip. In his arms he holds a swaddled bundle of pink blankets almost identical to the one that was passed to Lee on the highway.
“No,” she hears herself saying as she backs away.
Calvin continues to smile and moves across the room, unperturbed by the Director’s corpse on the floor. He transfers the blankets and the weight within them to Vivian.
“Anything else, Doctor?” he asks.
“That will be all, thank you, Calvin. We’ll be fine from here out.”
He turns away, giving Zoey a barely noticeable wink, and she wonders absently if he assisted in her violation while she was unconscious.
The door thunks closed with finality, and the room is quiet again.
“Come here. I’d like you to meet your daughter.” When she doesn’t move any closer Vivian tucks the gun away in her pocket once again and cradles the bundle with both arms. “One of the first rules we learned in school was to always duplicate our experiments. Comparative data within the same trials is very useful and necessary to draw conclusions from. We fertilized two of your eggs and I can’t begin to express our elation when they both developed as female.”
She smiles down at what she holds and Zoey feels an inexorable force pulling her forward.
She crosses the distance separating them in a gliding motion, as if her feet aren’t really touching the floor.
As Zoey nears, Vivian turns her gaze up and extends her arms, offering the blankets.
Zoey reaches, heart skipping every other beat like a flat stone across water.
The weight is transferred to her and she looks into the folds of the fabric.
The baby girl is sleeping, fists tucked beneath the shape of her chin. She is so very much like the child Lee accepted on the road, but also different. She has lighter hair, and it’s wispier, like Lee’s, she thinks, immediately casting the thought aside. Also the baby looks slightly larger, fuller in the face and the pink chub of her tiny arms.
Zoey’s jaw trembles, all the fight leaving her.
She retreats to the couch and sits, unable to break her gaze from the baby even though she feels like she’s looking at her through someone else’s eyes.
Disbelief wars with anger, all the while overshadowed by an unnameable elation.
Her child. She’s holding her daughter.
One of her daughters.
A teardrop slips down her nose and falls to the baby’s blankets, soaking into a dark circle.
“She’s eight pounds, four ounces, twenty inches long. Her sister was a little smaller: seven pounds, one ounce, nineteen inches long,” Vivian says, coming closer. “They’re both very strong and healthy baby girls. You should be proud.”
Zoey finally manages to break her gaze from the infant and looks up. “You knew I’d try to trade myself, didn’t you?”
“It occurred to me after you escaped, yes. I postulated that if I could get you proof you might try to do something noble.”
Zoey returns her gaze to the baby who extends one arm lazily before tucking it close again, a soft snore coming from her. She begins to ask the question but stops, her throat and mouth filled with sand. Does she even want to know? But it’s not a question of that. She has to.
“Who is the father?” she manages to ask.
Vivian tilts her head to the side, wearing a puzzled smile. “Didn’t Jefferson tell you? It’s Lee.”
Zoey shakes her head. “That’s not true.”
“It is. Lee Asher is the father. We always paired the clerics’ sons with the women. As I told you they were specifically chosen for their virility and overall healthy genetics.”
“I went to Seattle and found a doctor there who helped test the blood you sent me in a bioanalyzer. We compared a sample of my blood and Lee’s against it. Only mine matched.”
The color visibly drains from Vivian’s face. She blinks rapidly, her throat bobbing as she attempts to swallow. “A bioanalyzer?”
“Yes. And now that I know the truth you need to tell me who the father is. I deserve that much. Was it one of the guards? Was it him?” She nods toward the Director’s body, hoping with all her being that it isn’t.
Vivian puts a steadying hand on the nearby chair back. She seems to wrestle with something before raising her chin. “I didn’t anticipate you testing Lee’s blood.”
“Obviously not.”
“I wanted to give you time to adjust to all this before you had to deal with anything else.”
“Now you’re concerned about my well-being? You did this to me, to everyone around me, and now that you’ve finally got what you want you’re being compassionate?” Zoey stares the other woman in the eyes. “Fuck you.”
“I know you’re upset, but you don’t understand.”
“I think I understand perfectly.”
“The blood sample I sent you didn’t come from one of your children.”
She begins to reply but the venom on the tip of her tongue dissolves. “What did you say?”
“The blood sample didn’t come from either of your daughters: that’s why Lee’s didn’t match, but I can assure you, he is the father.”
A lazy spinning sensation fills her head, trying to scatter her thoughts. “If it wasn’t their blood, then whose was it?”
Vivian looks down to the floor as if the answer lies there before bringing her gaze back up. “Mine. It came from me.” She lets out a shuddering breath. “The reason only your sample matched is because I’m your mother, Zoey.”
47
Hiraku steps to the edge of the drop and looks across the river toward the paling horizon.
Dawn will come within the hour, and they’re nearly ready.
Beside him Lawrence Cree settles into a folding chair before a portable desk. On its top is a computer console hooked to a small battery array on the ground. Another long cable snakes out from the compact processor leading to a complicated joystick. The screen flickers as the technician begins typing in commands.
“How long until it’s airborne?” Hiraku asks.
“Ten minutes. Maybe less,” Cree answers through his thick beard without looking up. “You’re sure you want to go ahead with this?”
“If you ask me that again, I’ll assume you’re questioning my authority,” Hiraku says. The man’s typing pauses before continuing. Hiraku turns his attention to the town to the right and below their vantage point. The houses and decrepit businesses are smudges in the early light, nothing moving but the river between the banks. The facility itself is much higher in person than he expected, and he supposes at another time it would inspire some type of awe, but this morning it is only an obstacle, another barrier between him and what he seeks.
He glances up at the hills to his left, seeing nothing marring the landscape besides the long, sagging lines of power cables between their towers and a single house past them, its shape a rounded lump against the lightening sky. He pulls the radio attached to his collar close and depresses the button.
“Are we in position?”
A short silence then, “Three minutes, sir.”
He turns to the men who accompanied him to the vantage point. “You two watch our flank. If you see anything, don’t engage. Notify me and we move.”
“Yes sir,” they reply in unison before melting into the shadows.
Cree exhales slowly. “Bringing the drone online now.”
Hiraku imagines the aircraft coming to life on the highway a quarter mile beh
ind them, its deadly cargo ready and waiting.
All at once a hyperawareness blankets him. Not simply a sharpened cognizance of his surroundings as is customary before a battle, but an internal one as well.
What the hell am I doing? Is this really happening? How did it come to this?
But just as quickly as the observation arrived, it evaporates with the memory of Shirou’s lifeless gaze, the blue tinge of his lips.
Hiraku closes his eyes, letting the rage return to his limbs, soaking his veins with its flow.
“Beginning takeoff,” Cree says.
“Good.” Hiraku steps back to the edge of the slope, staring at the rounded wall of the ARC as if he’s able to see through the concrete to its very center. “I want you to split that thing in half.”
48
“Get inside,” Merrill whispers, grabbing Newton by the collar.
“What the hell is that?” Tia says, sweeping her rifle toward the sounds of approach.
“Inside. Come on.”
They move as one, retreating up the steps as the cracking of brush and the crunch of footsteps become louder. They step inside the house Merrill just searched, closing the door behind them and backing into the center of the first small room, each covering a different direction.
“They’re early,” Tia says.
“Damn it,” Merrill breathes. A bead of sweat rolls off his temple and down to his jaw despite the cold.
“Wh-where do w-we go?” Newton says.
“In the next room. It’s got fewer windows. Move.”
They creep through the low archway, Merrill going last. Why? Why does it have to be happening now? They need more time. In a few minutes all hell will break loose. He curses under his breath, mind like skipping frames of film. How to get Zoey out and not engage Hiraku’s or the ARC’s forces?
All of his thoughts halt as a squeak comes from the next room that can only be the outside door opening.
49
Zoey is on the boat again, the world rocking around her, unstable and unmoored.
“You,” is all she can manage at first, and it’s more of a coarse, scratching sound than a word. Everything is untethered, as if the room, Vivian, the baby in her arms, even the very fabric of herself, is coming apart.
Vivian nods, trying to keep her face tilted up, but Zoey can see it’s an effort. “I know. I know what you’re thinking. How? How could this be?” She surprises Zoey by laughing, but it is harsh and without humor. “I used to ask myself that every day. When I first found out I was pregnant, later when I learned you were a girl, and last when I gave you up.” Vivian looks away and there is a sheen to her eyes.
“I don’t believe you. You said my parents were gone,” Zoey says, trying to gather the pieces of her wits that feel as if they’ve shattered like a glass pane. “It’s just another ploy, another wall.”
“I told you that because I wanted more time. I needed a better way to tell you, but it’s true. Believe me, things would be a lot easier for me if it weren’t. I was irresponsible, I admit that. I got caught up in the moment and the power of being in charge and I thought I was invincible. Love can do that to you. My work was my life, but when I found out about you, things changed. I nearly left NOA, nearly walked away from years of research, but I couldn’t do it. I was too important. And so were you.”
Zoey feels an internal tumbling sensation, as if something stable has broken loose inside. She looks down at her daughter. None of it seems real. A layer of numbness covers her; a full-body paralysis that reaches deeper than her muscles and nerves.
“I gave birth to you right before the rebels made their move. We barely got out of the compound alive. You were so small, just like she is now. And I would have died to protect you.”
The full weight of what Vivian’s saying settles onto her. She shakes her head, trying to hold it back.
“When we came here I had no choice but to place you in the program with the rest of the girls we’d collected. You were one of the last females born on record, and I couldn’t ignore that fact. There was something greater at stake than either of us.” Her voice trails off and it looks as if she will cry for a moment before smiling sadly. “Sometimes when you were little I would come to your crib in the middle of the night and hold you while you slept. Once in a while you’d wake up and just look at me and let my hair slide through your fingers.”
The ghost of the memory washes over her in that instant, stronger than ever before, and any will holding back the reality of what Vivian’s telling her crumbles.
At last she’s found her mother.
Her jaw works for a time before she can form the words. “I always wondered where you were, what you looked like, and the whole time you were right here.” Vivian bites her lower lip as a tear escapes one eye. Zoey swallows and it feels as if a piece of jagged rock is lodged in her throat. “You said I was important. I was important to the research,” she finally says. “But not to you.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You would have never given me over, never put me in the box, never let me suffer if you loved me.”
“I had to, Zoey. You were too crucial for me to keep you to myself. I needed to test you like all the other girls, make you follow the same rules, and it killed me inside. But don’t think for a second I wasn’t looking out for you. Why do you think you were allowed to keep that owl or the books or the chewing gum?” The look of astonishment must be apparent because Vivian continues. “Oh yes, we knew about your hiding place, knew Simon was the one giving you the contraband. I allowed it both because you were my daughter and I never thought it would cause a problem. I was wrong, of course, I never should have underestimated the power of a great book. But I loved you then and I love you now. What was done had to be done.”
Disgust wells up inside her at the sight of the woman, Vivian’s self-pity and righteousness overwhelming.
“You said you were in love,” Zoey says. “Who was he?”
Vivian pauses, becoming very still. “He was my personal bodyguard while I was lead scientist. He saved me more than once and was injured very badly.” Her posture stiffens. “He’s gone now.”
So there it is. Her heritage laid bare.
Zoey’s gaze drifts down to the child. She’s starting to move in the blankets, struggling up from sleep. What were you dreaming? Something beautiful, I hope. Something that might come true someday. Because that’s what dreams are for.
If only all this could be as insubstantial as a nightmare. If she could wake up and leave it behind in tatters of fading memory.
But she won’t.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, still looking at the baby.
“What? What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”
“The past. None of it. I was obsessed with finding who I was and didn’t realize I already knew.” She brings her eyes up to her mother. “And I’m nothing like you.”
Vivian’s mouth wobbles before hardening. “That’s fine. I didn’t ask for any of this. All I could do—”
“We need to leave.”
“What? Why?”
“I told you in the vehicle. There’s a man on his way here with an army.”
Vivian sighs. “Zoey, please. There’s—”
“He took over Seattle in one day. He has a thousand men with him; vehicles, weapons, everything he needs to destroy this place.”
“Even if I believed you, the ARC is impenetrable. We revamped our backup generators after your last visits and shielded all of them from the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse. As long as we have power, we have defense. The autoguns will tear apart anything that comes within five hundred feet of the walls.”
“You don’t know this man, he’s different. He’ll find a way.”
“Enough of this nonsense. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters. Now we have a chance.”
“We have a chance no matter what. You’re in control. You can decide what happens. Evacuate the ARC and we’ll go somewhere el
se, somewhere safe. If I’m the keystone you can still do everything you set out to do. You can save the human race. Rita and Sherell are with me. You can use what you’ve learned to help them have baby girls. There are other women out there, hiding and afraid, but you can change that. Once the world knows what you’ve accomplished there won’t be a need to hide anymore. In my time outside the walls do you know what I’ve seen?” She stares at Vivian, locking her gaze with her own. “Fear. Every terrible thing I’ve witnessed stems from it. You can take away the fear and replace it with hope.”
Vivian watches her for a long span, the quiet in the room delicate and precarious like a precious artifact balanced on the edge of a table.
Finally, the older woman raises her eyebrows. “That was quite the inspiring speech, Zoey. But why would I risk everything I’ve worked for by stepping outside these walls?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Vivian barks a laugh and Zoey recoils at how cold it sounds. Her daughter squirms again, making an irritated cooing. “The right thing to do? You have no idea what the right thing is. You didn’t see the world before, you know nothing of it. It wasn’t a good place, especially for women. People’s actions after the Dearth only further proved that. Your head is full of fairness and truth and honor, but those things are daydreams. They’re not real, they never were. There’s only advantage and who has it.”
Her voice has risen to a crescendo, and she seems to come back to herself before continuing in a quieter tone. “You had your turn to paint a picture, now it’s mine. There once was a young woman who had everything she ever wanted. Good parents, a nice home, a great college she attended, and a bright future. She was in love with a young man who was her mirror image: smart, handsome, successful, athletic. She thought her life was perfect; blessed you might even say. She had just started working under a supervisor who headed one of the most cutting-edge genetics research programs in the country when she went to a campus party. Lo and behold her new supervisor was there. He talked to her all evening and was charming, eloquent, and extremely intelligent. She wasn’t afraid of him at all until he forced her into an empty room and locked the door. Then he raped her.”