“It wasn’t your fault,” he reassured me.
“Wasn’t it?”
With a gentle hand on my ankle, he told me more. “Abilities take time to master. Claire handed you a concentrated adrenal stimulant, which you took without knowing what it was.”
That’s true. Still, I pushed. “I shot it in my neck. Doesn’t that make me responsible for the damage I caused?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and groaned. I’d given him something to think about. Yeah, I wasn’t an innocent little girl after vaporizing government property with my radioactive body. Having superpowers made things…complex he’d explained to me. I’d done a “good” thing. Destroyed the bad place that belonged to the bad people. Without my blood, there would be no more superhumans trying to influence governmental decisions.
But it was theirs. They had the right to do whatever they wanted to do with their property, cloning me or otherwise.
Until they tried to kill me in it.
True, Liam and Mateo had broken several laws, including attempted homicide and a few other crimes I couldn’t identify. What court would prosecute a United States House Representative? Who would believe an almost fifteen-year-old girl who could set the world on fire?
“There are different laws for people like us,” he said.
He stood and extended his hand to me. I lifted the blanket to make sure I had pants on, which I did. The gray clothes were like his—new but had a stiff but worn before texture to them. I didn’t have the heart to examine the condition of the underwear. At least I had some, I guessed.
Satisfied, I swung my legs over the bed, discarded the covers, and placed my hand in his. The rough skin was tangible not imagined like in my dreams. I wasn’t hallucinating. Without reason or explanation, I trusted him without him confirming his identity. Because, deep down, inside the marrow of my cancer-riddled bones, I knew the truth.
He was my father. He didn’t have to say or prove anything to me.
I clutched his hand like a lifeline. No way was I letting it go again. I thought, no matter how hard I squeezed, I’d never hurt him. And now that he was here with me, I wouldn’t have a chasm of darkness growing inside of me anymore. I wanted to be happy. I did. But I feared it. What happened after that? Nowhere to go but down, right? He’d die, or I’d die, or we’d die together — do superhumans even die? Old Guy did and so did Moses. I guessed we would. [XW89]
And then what? I wanted to find out with him.
One of the rules was unavoidable: superhumans must eat. Unlike the pristine setting of Liam’s cafeteria, this other space was more basic and functional with black wooden benches and tables. It had less rich food than the other place but equally as filling. We piled up the different kinds of available dishes and sat next to one another. He drank from a smaller glass than my tower of water, and it stank of alcohol. Okay, dear old dad liked brown liquor. No judgment from me.
He said a prayer, and we both did the sign of the cross. He was a Catholic, too? No wonder I loved him at first sight.
“How long have you known about me?” I asked him while chewing.
After finishing a slender fry, he said, “Four years.”
I nearly choked on my next bite of cheeseburger. I was diagnosed around then. If Mom contacted him, she must’ve thought I wasn’t going to live, and she did so out of guilt. “I’m gonna die in a few weeks.”
He looked me in the face. “Let’s wait and see what our medical staff has to say about that.”
“And you stayed away from me because…”
“You mother and I — we had a mutual agreement. I sent Kendel, ‘Claire,’ to shadow you, though. That wasn’t part of our agreement.”
I almost choked. “By shadow, you mean…”
“Watch over you. She’s a shapeshifter, so you wouldn’t know she was there to protect you. You decide what kind of life to live for yourself,” he told me. Then, for the first time ever, I’d heard my parents referred to as a unit. “No one can decide for you. Not your mom and I…nobody. What you do, from here on out, is about your choices for your life.”
“What if I want to live a regular life, you know, not to be a human nuclear reactor? Can I do that? Is that possible for me?”
He didn’t frown. The way he averted his eyes and slowed his eating telegraphed his disappointment in my question. He folded his hands together and answered me. “Your call, though, I may need one favor…”
“A favor, like…” A sparkle on his left ring finger caught my eye — a band with tech embedded in it from the look of the design. “You’re married? I have a stepmother?”
“Divorcing. Lawyer doesn’t know where to find me.” He self-consciously moved his hand and ate a forkful of food. “You can’t be something for someone. Truth comes forward whether you want it to or not.”
For him, that hadn’t worked. I received the advice in stride, but both he and my mother were crazy if they thought for a second I’d let this moment go. “Do you have any family besides her? Any kids?”
Without mentioning his estranged wife’s name, he counted while dawdling over pasta salad. “I have a half-brother, Zachary, who is serving a tour overseas and an aunt who’s in an assisted living facility. Two stepmothers, one across the world. I have shadows on all of them.”
That’s it? I had an uncle, a great-aunt, and two grandmothers? “What about your parents?”
“Mother died when I was twelve, father four years later.”
I couldn’t eat without wanting to know everything about this man, so I decided to keep inquiring, and, if he got sick of me, he’d let me know. Although, I had an eternity’s worth of knowledge to gain in God knows how long with him. “How’s your leg?”
Laughing, he rubbed his shin. “It’s fine. Took a few days for the skin to totally regenerate from the radiation burns. Don’t heal as fast as I used to. Plus, I have a scar for my trouble.”
Add healing to the list of things I’d seen him do — super-strength and flight. I lifted a piece of blueberry pie to my mouth and let its gooey filling drop into my mouth before I bit down. This was the birthday gift I’d always pictured and never shared, not even in my journals, for fear it’d never come true. For the rest of the meal, we exchanged small talk. Until the end, when I asked for more information on what exactly it was we were doing here.
“C’mon.” He wiped his hands on a napkin and tossed it onto his tray. “I’ll show you, and then, you’ll tell me your decision.”
Funny. I made my decision the second he’d woken up at the foot of my bed. “Wait.” I grabbed my tray. “What am I supposed to call you?”
He shrugged. “Everybody but your mom calls me Director. What do you want to call me?”
Director was too formal. “How about Jason?” I’d never said his name out loud before, and it sounded weirder in the air than it did in my head. “Or Dad?” Which was worse?
His twisted lips communicated the same discomfort. “Trial and error. We’ll figure it out.”
Sounded reasonable though my stomach knotted.
“What’s wrong?” he asked me.
All these things were happening, I explained to him, and I wanted it to stop or, at least, slow down. Two weeks ago, I was minding my own business and dying of incurable bone cancer. I had one wish — to meet my father. Standing face to face [XW90]with him, I openly wondered whether all the death and destruction I’d seen, caused, or been a part of was worth it. He listened to everything I said without commenting, but his eyes never wavered from mine. Near the end, he put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me. I tightly wrapped my arms around his midsection and laid my head on his chest.
“I embraced this life. Consider what it will cost you before you do it.”
His wife wasn’t anywhere around. She hadn’t chosen this life, and it looked like it cost him his marriage. I didn’t know my stepmother or her reasons for leaving, but for me, I hadn’t gone through all this hell to turn my back on him and walk away. If I died now, I’m f
or sure it wouldn’t be alone anymore. My heart stuttered as I clutched onto him. I never wanted this exciting feeling to go away. “Dad?”
He squirmed a bit. Dad it was. “Yeah, Luciana?”
“It’s Lucy. I want this.”
Dad patted me on the back. “Give yourself some time to reconsider, Think about it.”
This time, my tone was more insistent. I’d sign up for everything he was involved with doing. “I want this.”
Clearly, he was the pushover parent since he didn’t fight back.
“Can I see Mom?”
“Sure.” He squeezed me again.
My father ushered me down a flight of metal stairs to a room he opened by biometric handprint. Inside lay my mother on a bed bigger than mine, free from wires and tubes, asleep. I glanced back at him for permission, and he waved his hand in a “go ahead” motion. Eager to rejoin her, I lifted the covers, slid in next to her, and lay [XW91]down. The time display on the wall showed it was a little past midnight on December second, two days before my birthday. I wished myself an early happy birthday, snuggled next to my mother for the first time in ages, and closed my eyes.
I woke up first, but my injuries hadn’t been as extensive as hers. While she slept, I studied her face close up. Without makeup on, she still didn’t look thirty-two years old. Neither did my father, who was the same age. No way! Superhumans aged more slowly, too? This was too good to be true!
“Stop staring.”
My mom’s whispering voice cracked. She was tired, worn out. From everything, I thought. I was, too, but meeting my father gave me new life. I downplayed the excitement, but my hand slightly shook when I moved it forward to clutch hers. “Mom.”
“Whisper, Luciana.”
“Why?”
Mom eyed the corner of the room. I followed her gaze and concentrated on the spot. A camera. For surveillance or for spying — was there even a difference? She didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure. Everyone had secrets, and my father wanted in on those secrets. As far as I could tell, my parents wanted to protect me but in completely different ways. “Has he said anything to you like ‘If you keep secrets, I can’t protect you’?”
I swallowed hard. “No.”
“Yeah, well, he probably will.” Her eyes darted. “I don’t trust him that much.”
“But he’s the love of your life.”
Mom’s eyes watered. She lay unmoving on her pillow and looked at me. I’d never thought about this before, but I was a living, breathing reminder of what they had — both good and bad — almost sixteen years ago. What kind of pain must she be in every time we saw one another? I’d never dated or been broken up with. I didn’t have a reference point.
“The love…of my life.” She repeated herself twice. A decade plus of hurt feelings clouded her face. He was the reason she didn’t date guys all these years. My friends said for years she was gay. I denied and denied it, and then, I started to think maybe it was true and she was into girls and that her friends were her secret girlfriends I didn’t know about.
No, she wasn’t a homosexual, not that I would’ve cared. Just infinitely heartbroken. The irony was she was the one who broke up with him and wanted to disappear forever, not him. These were raw, years’ old, self-inflicted wounds she hadn’t nursed, salved, or bandaged. And I’d inadvertently poured salt in them by my mere existence.
She told me everything she remembered about the past week, my father, and her extraction. Yeah, about that — my breastbone was still sore from him elbowing me. It hurt every time I inhaled and hooked and unhooked my bra. I might have an internal injury or just one heck of a bruise. I wished I healed like my father. I didn’t tell her about my injury. She had enough to deal with as it was.
Her story was filled with emotional breaks and teardrops. At the end of it, she wished me a happy early birthday, like she did every year, and I loved it.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Since you’ve met him.” Several breaths later, she said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
I closed my eyes to reimagine the man and whispered, “Man, you were crazy to let him go.”
“I was desperately in love with a fifteen-year-old boy in search of himself, and when he discovered who he was” — she sniffed — “I [XW92]wasn’t the person to walk with him anymore. I broke up with him so he could live the life he wanted to live…without me weighing him down.”
My hand found hers as her tears dotted the pillow she lay on. By weighing him down, I wondered if she meant me, too, but, according to her teenage pregnancy warnings, she didn’t know I was inside her until he was long gone. “Is he living that life here?”
“Looks like it. He’s married.”
I argued back, “Divorcing. And she’s not here. You are.”
“Divorcing?” She paused. “Luciana, you don’t know that — ”
“Mom.”
She squeezed my fingers and licked her lips. “Your father is Jesus Christ to you, but like anyone but Jesus Christ, he has flaws. It takes two to make a relationship go south.”
“Don’t spoil this for me…”
“See his imperfections and accept them and him for who he is before deifying him. That’s all.”
Fine. She was trying to spoil my euphoria. Good luck with that. I propped myself up and spoke way above a whisper. “Nothing you can say about him will change my mind.”
Mom moved her stray hair back behind her ear as she shook her head no. “I swear, I’m not trying to. Just take some time, baby. Make an informed decision. This is your life we’re talking about. That’s all.”
Fair. I should take time to confirm his divinity — check his hands, his feet, his side — that whole thing. Those proofs in the Bible were for the doubter. Though she’d introduced me to godhood in the form of these powers, now, she was the one having questions and doubts.
For years since my diagnosis, I did, too. I questioned God’s existence. Really, like, who thought it was a good idea to let girls like me rot inside out from bone cancer? With these powers, in a way, I was closer to being like Him. I could start or prevent a lot of things. But I hadn’t yet. Didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to be uninvolved.
Somewhere, at any time, people were suffering in the world, and I had power to stop it. Was the fact I was lying here next to my mother a sign of neglect? Maybe, but I wasn’t God. I couldn’t be everywhere at once, and I accepted that.
Mom’s door opened. Behind it was a woman with long, auburn hair. I thought she was Claire at first. “Good afternoon, [XW93]Lucy, I need you first for intake and assessment.”
Afternoon? My internal clock was all messed up. I kissed Mom goodbye and left the bed. I had a thousand questions, but my escort answered a great deal of them by shapeshifting her face into Mateo’s Chief of Staff, Claire Allen, and back to, what I assumed, was her natural form. “My real name is Kendel,” she confirmed. “I’ve shadowed you for the past four years.”
She transformed into Murdoch, the policeman who tackled me and brought me home, and then one of the nurses who helped to administer my chemo treatments, and two other people I remembered but couldn’t identify from where or when. I didn’t see the need to know the details of her intrusion into my privacy. I crossed my arms and held myself around the elbows.
Kendel stepped in front of me. “Shadow, all right, Lucy, not a voyeur.”
“What’s the difference?”
“There are differences. We have a protocol to protect you. I didn’t watch you bathe or change clothes or anything.”
I studied her face for sudden changes. This was a shapeshifter, after all, and catching her slipping with a physical tell would be difficult. Her statements aggravated me. “And you followed that protocol, Kendel?”
“To the absolute letter. Nobody likes answering to the director[XW94], not even me.”
Oh yeah. My father was her boss. “What’s first?”
She explained the basics. They would take my information, vitals, measure and fit me for
one of those high-tech [XW95]bodysuits she and my father wore. From there, they would test the extent of my powers and train me for combat.
And I was ready for it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My “shadow” ushered me to an area used for medical treatment where there were these isolated bluish glass physical examination tubes. The girls going through cancer treatment with me — I called them my “tribe” — named these machines “cocoons.” It was why my mother nicknamed me Mariposa, because she thought I’d emerge as a butterfly and not die in the metamorphosis process.
I dropped my clothes behind an opaque screen and changed into a nightgown. The air conditioning in this place was spectacular but not when all you were wearing was a paper sheet and cotton underwear. With reassurance from Kendel, I stepped into the opened cocoon she pointed me to and admitted to her that I was scared.
“You’ve been here,” she reminded me. “It’s a little bigger than ones you’re used to.”
Didn’t matter. I was being treated for bone cancer then, not a superhuman ability to burn. The examination required me to be still as death for ninety seconds. Sounded like a short period of time to anyone who had never been in one before. “It’s like being buried alive for a minute and a half,” I once told Mom, who insisted I exaggerated. “Closed casket burial, six feet of dirt, and silence.” My tribe agreed with me. One of the girls even described it as “the suffocating vacuum of space.”
I lay on the soft, padded insides. The lid’s hydraulics hissed and sealed shut. There, in my two-minute death, the machine did its work. I eyed my vital statistics through the glass. I’d practiced not blinking and become a master at it. Apparently, I’d lost weight, too. I didn’t remember the last time I was that close to my target. Heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, Body Mass Index, cholesterol, white cell count, cancer number — everything was ideal. The black masses were gone as well. How had my tumors and mets disappeared? Cocoon examinations were accurate 99.99 percent of the time, and if it said no cancer, then there must not be even a microscopic amount of the disease inside of me any longer.
The Nuclear Winter Page 17