"What is it?" she asked, rubbing her eyes. "Is something wrong?"
He smoothed her hair back gently. "No, I came to tell you I'm leaving for a while. I didn't want you to wonder where I was again."
She reached over and turned on the light. "It's four in the morning. Are you leaving in the middle of the night?"
"No, tomorrow," Ty said. "I wanted to ask you a favor."
Her whole face lit up in pride. "Ask then."
"I'll need someone to look in on Isis from time to time," he said, smiling. "Maybe take her for a walk once in a while. Can you do that?"
Her eyes widened in fear. "How long will you be gone?"
Ty patted her head again. "I don't know. Awhile. I'll be back."
She leapt toward him and put her skinny arms around his neck. "I don't want you to leave."
He hugged her back. "I don't want to either, but I have to. Don't tell Mom and Dad, though. It will be our secret."
"Like our gifts?" she whispered.
Ty hugged her tighter. "Yes, exactly like that."
He let her go and stood up. "Keep taking your pills and don't tell anyone about that either, alright?"
Tears streamed down her face. He wiped them away with his hand.
"It's only for a little while. Don't cry."
He regretted coming to tell her now. But he couldn't leave her without saying goodbye.
He sat back down on the bed. "I'll stay until you fall asleep again."
She wiped away her tears and fished a tattered storybook from the drawer in her nightstand. A serene woman slept on the cover, a crystal crown nestled in her wavy blond hair. Sleeping Beauty.
Eve held out the book for Ty to take. "Read to me."
He opened to the first page, and started reading. Eve fell asleep by page three.
Ty closed the book, leaned back and closed his eyes, going over the plan. He needed to keep it simple, but Ty could think of no way to get Maya out of the facility without revealing he had a gift too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ty was the first in the breakfast room the next morning, dressed for the hunt. He chewed on a piece of buttered toast and drank some tea while he waited for the rest of his family. Eve came in not long after, still wearing her pajamas, her eyes watery when she smiled at him. He winked at her.
His parents came in soon after. Violetta sat down without looking at him at all, her mouth set in a thin line that screamed how very angry still she was. Somewhere between a snarl and a smile, that expression on his mother's face never boded well.
Ty chewed his bread slowly, trying to decide whether to break the silence. He was spared by his father.
"How do you feel today, Eve?" his father asked.
Eve brushed a strand of her back behind her ear. "I'm still so tired. It's funny, though, I don't even remember falling."
His mother replaced her cup with a clatter. "It is that way sometimes, with head injuries. I'm sure your memory will return. If not we'll give you another therapy at my facility."
She looked at Ty as she said the last words, her mouth still deciding between the smile and the snarl.
"Why didn't anyone tell me she was injured?" Ty asked.
"We didn't want to worry you," his mother replied sweetly. If the words came from his father, he would have believed them. His mother was lying.
A crash of fork against china, and a loud thump sounded to his left.
"What's wrong, Eve?" his father yelled, leaping to his feet so fast his chair crashed to the floor.
Ty reached Eve faster. Her eyes were rolling into the back of her head and her tiny body was twitching all over. A fine froth appeared on her lips and ran down her chin.
His mother pushed Ty aside harshly. "I will take care of this."
Ty lunged to shield Eve with his body and looked at his father. "Don't let her do this! She'll do the same to Eve as she did to Julian."
A frightened look, like that of a cornered animal, flashed in his father's eyes, but he quickly composed himself. "Move aside, Ty. Let your mother handle it."
"How can you say that? I won't let her do this!" Ty shouted and tried to pick Eve up. The froth was spilling from her mouth now, and her eyes had rolled all the way into the back of her head.
His father pulled him out of the way and held him back. His mother picked Eve up in her arms and left the room.
Ty struggled to get free, to save Eve. His father didn't let go. "Eve will be alright in your mother's hands."
"She won't and you know it. She's taking her to the facility!" Ty shouted. The cold building in his forehead made it hard to see. Any moment now, he could lose all control. Hurt his father, make him disappear.
Ty relaxed and willed his power to recede.
"Your mother knows what's best," his father said, not meeting Ty's gaze. "Can I let you go?"
Ty nodded and his father released him.
"Eve is your daughter too. You can stop this," Ty said, all his rage safely locked away.
The vein in his father's forehead was pulsing now, color rising up his neck to his cheeks. "You will not tell me what to do. Your only job is to obey me and your mother."
"Or what?"
Some of the color left his father's face. He righted his chair and slumped back into it. "Or you end up like your brother and Eve. I can't lose any more of my children."
Ty stared at him for a full minute or more before all the implications of what his father had said found the right place in his mind. "Why do you let her do this?"
His father looked down at his hands. "I can't stop her. She won't have anyone with a gift in her family."
Ty stared at him, unable to believe it. He'd thought his father wasn't as ruthless as his mother. Now he knew they were both the same.
Ty turned and ran from the room, with only a searing knowledge that the day had finally come. He had to leave. Or die in the attempt. He wouldn't be going alone.
Luckily Rober and Ty had made thousands of plans to escape over the years, the last one only a few days ago. The hovercraft, the maps, the plans and machines. This time, machines would be replaced by friends and family. And Ty had to do it all alone.
Rober would've helped him had Ty not sent him away like a coward. He couldn't think of that. Maybe one day he'd get the chance to apologize.
~
Keep it simple.
If Ty kept it simple today then all would be ready for their escape before anyone would be the wiser. He hoped his mother wouldn't harm Eve in the time it took him to arrange all the pieces of his plan.
Ty rushed to the Montague building, calling Adam once he reached it.
Adam didn't sound too happy about his call, but at least he picked up.
"How's Sage?" Ty asked hoping his father hadn't lied about her being harmed during questioning.
"She's under house arrest," Adam answered and left it at that.
Ty almost sighed in relief. Adam would never be willing to help if Sage had been mistreated by his mother.
"I thought we could go for a hunt later today," Ty suggested. "If you can get us a craft, that is."
"Tonight?" Adam asked. "I'm working until late and then—"
"Come on, it will be fun. We've been cooped up in the city for a week already. I might even be able to get us some night vision gifters fresh from the facility," Ty invented wildly.
"Won't be quite the same without Rober, now will it?" Adam said, a nasty edge to his voice. It wasn't unexpected. He did singlehandedly thwart their revolutionary plans.
"No, it won't," Ty agreed. "I'll make sure my father brings him back soon. I just need a little more time to convince him."
"I hope you succeed," Adam replied in a more friendly tone.
"So how about that hunt? Can you get the craft?"
"Sure, why not? Meet me at the HQ at six."
"Well, I have the whole day off. I thought I'd go get us some cool animals for tonight," Ty said. "How about you give me the craft now?"
"Now? How do
I explain that?" Adam asked.
Ty chuckled. "Do you really need to? I'm waiting at the entrance to your house. Let's go get it now."
Fifteen minutes later they reached the SF flight control, and ten minutes after that Ty had the craft at his disposal. Commander Klein who was on duty put on a semblance of a fight, but neither Ty nor Adam had yet been refused the use of an SF hovercraft for their hunting expeditions since they turned sixteen and came of age. Only today, Ty needed Adam to do the asking to keep his real intentions hidden.
"Meet back here at six, then?" Adam said.
Ty agreed and steered the craft out of the building.
Five minutes later, he parked it next the facility. All he needed now were the maps of the West Coast. The facility bordered the common university and its history department had all he needed.
He entered the library of the geography department, and used his tattoo to enter the restricted section. His work at the facility gave him the same level of clearance as professors had.
A simple search of the database in the room gave him more maps of the West Coast than he would ever need. These maps contained all the raw data for the more sophisticated maps the SFs used. Rober and he had figured that out years ago, while they were still making their plans to found their own city. Ty downloaded the maps to his phone and erased all trace of his presence there.
Now for the hardest part.
He returned to the facility and entered through the reception area on the 40th floor. An alarm sounded as soon as he neared the empty reception desk. A door behind it slid open and two green-clad security staff bounded towards him. He turned back to the exit, only to see it seal shut with thick titanium bars. He only had enough time to wonder whether his tattoo and high family clearance would still be sufficient to open it again when the two guards seized him, twisting his arms painfully against his back.
"What are you doing? Let me go!" Ty commanded.
"Your mother wants to speak with you. We are to take you down to the sleeping area."
His searing cold power woke inside his head, right between the eyes. Grew like an avalanche grows as it crashes down a mountain.
Ty pushed it back. If he let even a trickle of his power show here his mother would clear all the exam rooms to give him his test. Not that she would get far. He had enough anger and hurt stored up in that metal chest in his mind to erase this whole two hundred-story building like it never existed. But Maya was in the building, and possibly Eve. They both needed him to get them out.
~
Maya was woken harshly by her two guards. They hardly let her zip up her bodysuit before dragging her down the corridor to the exam room. Twice as many of the doctors as usual milled around the room that looked into the examination chamber. A few clapped her on the back as she passed.
The man with the steel hand had his arm around Ronia's shoulders. They both had tears in their eyes. The words, "Good luck," appeared in the air, just as the man spoke them. Then Ronia wailed and hid her head in the man's chest, sobbing loudly. Maya fixed her eyes on the exam room and kept walking.
Inside, the garden she had planted the day before still blossomed and the baskets of seeds were still beside the basin. The garden was Maya's biggest achievement and the greatest sign of her failure. If only she'd been more confident in her gift back home.
She'd also truly believed yesterday's test was to be the last. Now Maya was equally certain today's would be the worst.
Still, it would give her one more chance to use her gift. One more sweet goodbye to all she could have done.
A few of the doctors came in and began attaching the sensors to her chest and even her forehead. She was given no VR goggles today. She settled near the small garden to wait. It would all be make believe anyway. None of it real.
Soon she was left alone. The room turned dark, and the ground beneath her feet shook. Then the room was propelled downwards with such force Maya dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach. She lost all sense of direction and her surroundings in the sickening movement.
The darkness receded and Maya stood alone in the dried up wasteland of the Badlands. The sun was a purple band on the horizon and the night winds were already picking up, threatening to knock her down.
Her bodysuit was still unzipped, and she could clearly see the sensors on her chest and arms. The cold wind beat her long hair around her head. From the distance a low growl reached her.
No! Not more cats!
She turned in a circle, looking for a place to hide. Only cracked earth stretched before her in all directions. Night was falling fast. A second growl joined the first.
Had they transported her to the Badlands?
She kneeled and brushed her hand along the brown, dried up soil. The earth still held some of the day's warmth.
A new growl sounded, closer than the last.
Maya stood up and started running away from it, out towards the dying light of the day.
There was no tree to hide in, no river to let her swim away to safety, no bush to conceal her.
She stopped, bent double from the painful stitch in her side. As her breathing slowed she clearly heard soft footsteps running towards her.
A tree. I need a tree to hide in.
She knelt on the ground and dug her fingers into the earth, looking frantically for a seed, a shoot, anything that she could grow into a hiding place.
The dry earth was so tightly packed her fingernails broke against the surface. All was dead here, no living thing for her to breathe life into.
She screamed when a growl sounded right by her ear. Four pairs of dead green eyes shone in the distance, reflecting the day's last light.
She scrambled away on all fours. And knocked over one of the baskets of seeds.
"Not the Badlands. Only an illusion," she repeated to herself over and over again. Some of the fixtures in the exam room flickered through the vision of the wasteland.
She grabbed a fistful of the spilt seeds and felt around for the basin of soil. The vision of the Badlands solidified again. She searched for the basin more frantically. Finally her knuckles collided painfully on its edge.
She dug a hole in the earth and dumped the seeds into it, covering it hastily.
Be an oak, she ordered them as she let all the searing white heat her chest would hold flow into them. Be an oak!
A few of the seeds sprouted wheat.
Tears streamed down her face as she sent more of her life giving power into the seeds still in the soil. An oak, please. Or any tree. Any big, tall tree.
More wheat erupted from the ground, fully formed.
A growl sounded a few feet away.
"Work, please work!" Maya screamed. "I don't want to die!"
The cats' footsteps were closer now, coming from all directions in a circle around her.
She grabbed another fistful of seeds from a basket, and begged them to turn into a tree before she plunged them into the earth.
Her whole body shook from the strain as she gathered yet more of the life-giving heat into her chest. This would be the last attempt. If she failed now, the cats would get her. It was the last of the power she could reach.
"Please!" she screamed, as she sent the jet of her power into the seeds.
A loud growl answered her plea. The nearest cat was only a foot away, its fangs bared, its shining green eyes anticipating a sure kill.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"Release me!" Ty yelled at his two guards again when they reached the elevator. They only gripped him tighter.
The ride to the sleeping area, located on the lowest levels of the facility, took only a minute or two. Ty was saving his real anger for his mother. She wouldn't dare put him to sleep, not behind his father's back. If Ty had learned anything from their conversation that morning it was that Caesar wasn't ready to let Ty go.
Ghostly white figures in identical stainless steel beds lay side by side in the rooms on either side of the narrow hallway, fifty per room. All had thick tubes
attached to the veins in their arms, and each bed had a screen above it monitoring their vitals.
Young, old, middle aged, male, female, unrecognizable. All sleeping until they died. In the two years since he started helping his mother none of these poor people were ever woken. Their usefulness had ceased the moment they gave his mother all the information she needed about their special gifts. To her they were data so the fabricators could make things more lifelike, so that weapons could be improved and the experiences of the Citizens more intense, more real and less virtual.
His mother waited by the last room in the hallway. The windows of the room were draped and she smiled widely as the guards led Ty towards her, her eyes alive with happiness.
Such an unnatural lie the woman's eyes were.
"You have finally decided to come to work then?" she asked sweetly as soon as they were within earshot.
Ty looked side to side at his captors in answer, then glared into her smiling, lying eyes.
"I had to make sure you would come down here. Today your real training begins. I realized this morning that I had been too lenient with you. To do the work I do you must be hard. As hard as me."
"That's not going to happen!" One day becoming as ruthless as Violetta Remarque had always been Ty's worse fear.
"Keep a tight grip on him, I want him to get a good long look here," she told the guards then punched a code into the panel by the door. The windows turned clear.
Only a single stainless steel bed occupied this room, a tiny figure lying beneath a thin sheet in it. Ty's heart stopped.
Eve.
Small, kind Eve, a tube attached to her arm, a poisonous green liquid pumped into her veins. Asleep forever.
Ty could not form a coherent thought beyond that.
"This is your doing, Tyberious. Never forget that. I have known that Eve has a gift for a while now. I was certain you knew it as well. I was waiting for you to tell me so we could deal with her together."
"Tell you?" Ty spat. "After what you did to Julian? Never."
His mother smiled even more sweetly. "Yes, I realized that was your plan a few weeks ago. So I gave you your last chance with the bracelet. Did you actually think you could hide someone with a gift from me, stupid boy? I've examined thousands of these people. I can tell when a person has a special gift practically just by looking at them."
The Grower's Gift (Progeny of Time #1) Page 19