Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. “You don’t hate me?”

  He shook his head the barest amount.

  My eyebrows rose. “Do you—do you still love me?” My voice increased in pitch as I asked the question.

  Jason glanced up at the roof of our tent. “If love were something that could be turned on and off whenever we wanted…” He laughed softly, a sound absolutely devoid of humor. “But it can’t.” He lowered his eyes, a spark of something flashing in their desperate, blue depths. “I think my dad was proof of that.” Surprising me, hope washed over his face. “Do you think my dad…that he might still be—”

  “He’s gone, Jason. Grams found him, remember?” I gave his hand a supportive squeeze as I watched the hope fade away. It was such a fickle, fleeting thing, hope.

  “Right.” He shook his head, dispelling any lingering hope. “No, I know that. I know.”

  “Well, um…” Clearing my throat, I glanced down at the envelope in his hand. “Are you going to open it?”

  With trembling hands, Jason unsealed the envelope and pulled out the tri-folded letter. He unfolded it, and I watched his eyes as he read, skimming quickly from side to side, devouring his mom’s words. The letter was three pages long, and it only took him a few minutes to read through it.

  “Holy shit,” he murmured when he reached the bottom of the third page. “Holy fucking shit.”

  I tightened my hold on his thigh. “I know…it’s a crazy story,” I said, shaking my head.

  “No.” Jason pointed to the second to last paragraph, and I started reading.

  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.

  “Holy shit…eliminate you,” I said, echoing Dr. Wesley’s words. If she was right, if her information was trustworthy, then one or more of our companions could really be agents of the General. Only Chris and Ky had been with Jason from the beginning, and only Sarah had been with Zoe. None of them can be…that. And why the hell didn’t Dr. Wesley tell me about this?

  I met Jason’s eyes, the horror I felt mirrored in his. Chris and Ky were his two closest friends. The idea that one of them could be working for the General, planted near Jason for the sole purpose of executing him should the need arise, was obviously killing him.

  “We have to talk to Zo and Gabe,” I said. “Right now.”

  ~~~~~

  Zoe and Gabe were sitting on one side of the rectangular Formica kitchen table inside the farmhouse Jason and I had visited earlier. Someone had died in the bedroom, but the five months that had passed had shifted the odor from putrid to merely pungent, and closing the door made it tolerable. Jason was standing at the end of the table, arms crossed over his broad chest and the letter from Dr. Wesley clutched in fingers, and I was pacing back and forth along the side opposite Zoe and Gabe. The manila envelope with the packet of documents and papers the doctor had left with Zoe, along with her letter to me, was on the table in front of Gabe.

  “Why didn’t you mention Wes’s little care package earlier?” Gabe asked, tapping the manila envelope. “There might be something in here that can help with…” His eyes flicked to and away from Zoe so quickly that I wasn’t positive I hadn’t imagined it. “Things.”

  “I know…I should’ve shown all that stuff to you. But when Camille told me about how Dr. Wesley was actually in love with Herodson—”

  Gabe’s eyebrows shot upward. “What? Wes despises him, I assure you.”

  I shook my head. “But she doesn’t, not really. Before Camille was turned into a Re-gen, she overheard Dr. Wesley telling someone that she couldn’t leave the Colony because she wouldn’t abandon him…because she loved him.”

  Gabe took a deep, even breath. “And did Camille happen to mention whether Wes stated Gregory Herodson, specifically, as the recipient of her love?”

  I blinked several times, searching my memory. “Um…no. She just said ‘him.’”

  Gabe’s answering smile wasn’t overly kind. “And you just leapt to the conclusion that she was talking about Herodson.” He shook his head. “You must truly despise her.”

  “Of course I do,” I snapped. “She killed everyone. God, it’s like you’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome or something.” I pointed to Jason, and then to Zoe. “Even if she created the Virus just to save them”—I glanced at my boyfriend and amnesiac best friend—“no offense, she still did it. She still killed billions of people.” I skewered Gabe with a raging glare. “That’s not something you do that deserves forgiveness or pity. There’s no repentance for that.”

  Gabe blinked slowly. “She’s not the enemy, Dani.”

  “Yes. She is.”

  “She was talking about her son.”

  “What?” Jason, Zoe, and I said in unison. Both Zoe and I glanced at Jason, who frowned and shook his head.

  “Peter,” Gabe said. “His name is Peter, and Herodson is his father.”

  Crickets filled the room. Or rather, the absence of crickets. I was pretty sure we were all holding our breath.

  My cheeks flamed and shame filled me. I’d assumed wrong and put us all in danger, and now I felt like the biggest moron in the world.

  Jason cleared his throat. “As disturbing as that is, it’s not the most important thing at the moment. Can we get on with this?”

  Right…the letter. “Yeah, of course.”

  Uncrossing his arms, Jason raised the letter and started to read.

  Dear Jason and Zoe,

  I wish I didn’t have to write these words to you. I wish things were different. Some of the things I’ve done…I wish I hadn’t, but I didn’t have a choice. Now we all must live with the fallout.

  If you’re reading this, it means Dani decided you should know the truth. I can’t say I agree with her decision, but I also can’t say that I haven’t yearned for this day since I left both of you and your father. Whatever else you glean from this letter, know this: I love you. I always have, and I always will.

  Over two decades ago, Gregory Herodson, who you know as General Herodson through Dani and Gabriel, threatened both of your lives. If I hadn’t left you to join him, hadn’t created a virus that would spread the gene therapy like wildfire, and hadn’t helped Gregory begin his “Great Transformation,” then you would have been killed. Please don’t fool yourselves; I knew exactly what would happen once the Virus was unleashed on the general population. I knew that those infected would either die or go through a genetic mutation that would leave them forever altered, for better, or—in the case of most people—for worse. I knew all of this, and I created it anyway.

  I’m not asking for your forgiveness or even for your understanding. I’m fully aware that I deserve neither. It is reward enough to know that both of you are still alive. Nothing is more important than family. Please don’t blame yourselves. This was my decision, and the blame must fall on my shoulders. I accept it, even welcome it.

  Now, I have consulted with RV-01, and she has advised me in what I must tell you if you’re both to continue to survive. According to her, whether or not you read this letter is essentially a fork in the road—the future will be drastically different if you don’t read it than if you do. I just wish she’d told me which is the better path to take. But she didn’t. What she did tell me is thi
s—it’s imperative that I explain the effects the gene therapy has on our ability to procreate. I don’t know why this knowledge is so important, but according to her, it’s a matter of life or death.

  One of the side effects of the gene therapy is that the gametes (eggs and sperm) of the survivors will be unstable after the initial mutation. The time it takes for them to stabilize is different for everyone—some never stabilize, and some stabilize in around three years, at which point the survivor can reproduce. When genetic stability has been reached and procreation is once again possible, gestation will occur at an accelerated rate. Gregory has had me experimenting with treatments to speed up the stabilization process, though I’ve yet to be successful. You will find a summary of the data I’ve collected so far enclosed with this letter—these documents have “Project Eden” on the header. Please give them to Gabriel, as he will understand them best.

  Children of two mutated parents are mutated as well, gaining some combination of their parents’ Abilities. I inserted a genetic block into you both when you were young to prevent your Abilities from manifesting. They remained latent until activated by a trigger I built into the Virus. As you are second generation, your Abilities should, in time, prove to be some combination of mine (being able to affect the potency and effectiveness of another’s Ability) and your father’s (being able to alter another’s perception as well as view, and even change their memories and sense their emotions).

  From what Dani told me, Zoe, you take after your father, which will be difficult for you. Tom learned—over a very long time, I might add—that the key to controlling his Ability was to not fight it, to not even think about it, but to let it become an extension of his senses, as integral and second nature as his senses of hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste.

  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 y
ou 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 everyone 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.