by Megan Curd
Panic consumed me. My brain kept screaming run! but I was rooted to my spot. “Where are we going?”
Riggs was as cryptic as always. “You’ll see soon enough. The women’s restroom is right there,” he gestured ten paces ahead and to the left. “I assume you need no assistance in this endeavor?”
“No, I’m capable, thanks.”
Right foot, left foot. It was a conscious effort to make it to the bathroom.
I half-expected it to be a torture room.
When I walked in and was greeted by a typical set of stalls and sinks, I leaned against the door and exhaled loudly. It was only then that I realized how badly my hands were shaking. It was a wonder that I’d managed to carry the scrubs.
The thin blue fabric slid along my body like water. It must have been silk. It did nothing to quell the chill from the air conditioning. Goosebumps plagued my arms and I shivered.
There were no mirrors. Part of me was glad, but I also wondered why. Did Riggs not want anyone to see themselves? How badly were his patients treated? Were they maimed? Disfigured? My mind raced with horrific possibilities.
As I gathered my uniform, I wondered what could have gone wrong in Riggs’s life to make him so evil, and his son so…I don’t know. Jaxon wasn’t like his father, but he definitely wasn’t giving any hints as to who he really was. If I got back to my room tonight, I’d start reading his journal.
I returned to the hallway to discover Riggs dressed in the same attire. It lessened my fears, but only slightly. “Will you tell me where we’re going now?”
Riggs inclined his head and motioned to the end of the hall where a silver, windowless door stood. Three deadbolts locked the door from this side, and a small camera was installed in the upper right corner of the wall. A red light blinked in the lens.
“We’re going to see your parents, Miss Pike. Now please, be quiet. I really shouldn’t be proffering this opportunity to you, and may very well end up regretting it.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Riggs was taking me to see my parents.
They were here.
My parents — the people I’d begged the Polatzi to find for so long, the people I’d tried to hear just a whisper of their whereabouts from anyone — were here.
Here, in the academy.
Why?
Even more, how did they get here? Who brought them?
Well, at least I knew the answer to at least one of those questions.
Every step I took down the hall echoed in my ears like a death march. My heart constricted in both excitement and absolute terror. What if they hated me? What if they didn’t care at all?
That would be worse. Emotions, however strong on either end of spectrum, meant there was hope for redemption. What if I met them, only to find them completely apathetic?
I couldn’t come back from that. Bile burned in the lower part of my throat, and I fought to keep it down. The last thing I wanted to do was vomit in front of Riggs.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “I can’t do this.”
Riggs stopped and looked at me quizzically. For a moment, I thought I saw sympathy play out across his usually taciturn face.
“You carry a photo of them in your satchel, as well as a melted piece of steel that was once your mother’s teapot. It baffles me that you would cling so tightly to their memories if you aren’t interested in seeing them.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to see them. It’s just…” I trailed off, unable to verbalize my fears to someone who was waiting to uncover my weaknesses.
His smile seemed to prove me right, but he extended a calloused hand.
An invitation.
To what, I wasn’t sure.
I’d been alone for so long that for some reason this offer of comfort, no matter whom it came from, seemed welcome.
His hand was warm in the cool hallway as he led me without saying another word. Each window we passed, the thrumming in my chest became louder until I was positive that Riggs must hear it.
He squeezed my hand encouragingly as we stopped in front of the door at the end of the hall. The rectangular window glass was thick, and below it was a cat flap. Riggs pressed a small red button that glowed rhythmically beside the door, as though it possessed a heartbeat of its own. There was a buzzing noise and the glass in front of the flap slid away.
Riggs knelt down and called into the flap. “Atticus Riggs plus one, here to confer with Mr. & Mrs. Pike.”
A shadow covered the opposite side of the flap, and then a set of fire-red eyes peered back. I jumped in fright.
The red-eyed figure on the other side grunted and disappeared, but then Riggs unlocked the door. Inside was a waiting room, complete with TVs, old magazines, and an unmanned receptionist’s desk. Riggs pulled me behind him with an urgency he hadn’t possessed earlier. “Quickly,” he said in a hushed tone, “and don’t look behind you.”
Of course that’s what I did.
Red eyes stared back at me, and I was mesmerized and horrified at the same time.
At one point, this creature must have been a human. It had human features, but its skin was mottled, burned, and weeping from burns that should have killed it. There was nothing to base gender on; no hair, no facial features to distinguish if the person before me was male or female.
The person smiled, but it only made things worse. One side of its face lifted, but the other remained burned into a grimace, giving the appearance of a severe stroke victim. Through my immediate revulsion, I saw what this person must have been: someone like me. My heart broke.
What muscles remained were lean and lanky. The seared flesh on the person’s chest was visible, but they wore knee-length, baggy cargo shorts that made me think that I was looking at a man. He was tall and his eyes were wary, as though no one had been near him in a long time.
For some reason I extended my hand to touch his face.
That’s when he snarled and lunged.
“Stop!” Riggs yelled as he yanked me behind him and put himself between the man and me. Riggs’s hands were extended toward the man, who hit Riggs hard. The man’s nose cracked audibly when he connected with Riggs and fell back. The man howled in rage, but returned to the small plastic stool that sat in the corner, his nose now crooked. His eyes never left mine, and the hunger in them was palpable.
Riggs turned to me angrily. His words erupted with ferocity that was strangely paternal. “Did I not tell you to move quickly? To not look behind you?”
“I wanted to see —”
“I know you wanted to see, and now you have. You’ve seen what happens to someone who experienced the war that put us in these domes.”
Air hitched in my throat. “You’re telling me that…that person…saw the war?”
“Yes,” Riggs said with tired eyes. “Yes, he did. He’s one of the survivors. He was exposed to nuclear radiation and lack of oxygen during the attack on New York.”
“Does he have human emotions any more? He acted like he was an attack dog.”
“You provoked him. He has a heart and brain. He feels, he just doesn’t know how to properly express those feelings,” Riggs said shortly. “Wouldn’t you agree that those things make us human?”
“Animals have those qualifications as well,” I said thoughtfully, but I was horrified as soon as the words escaped my lips.
Riggs looked murderous. “My son,” he said coolly, “Is not an animal. He is a casualty of a mindless war he didn’t ask to be a part of.”
My eyes must have been as wide as saucers. Riggs inhaled deeply through flared nostrils and closed his eyes. When he exhaled, he opened his eyes. “Your parents are in the first room in the right hand wing. Jaxon will retrieve you in an hour. Be ready. This is your good-faith payment to work with me. I expect to see you tomorrow at breakfast, ready to learn. Tell Sari to delete the video feed from your parents’ room. It’ll be on camera two hundred sixty-six. The password is ARiggs.”
He turned on his heel and stalk
ed back to the entrance. When he passed the badly burned man at the entrance, he paused and patted him on the shoulder. Burnt skin flaked off and fluttered to the ground beside them, but the burned man closed his eyes and gave a half-smile.
“Fa…” was all the burned man could articulate.
Riggs’s mouth twitched a hair upward before he flung open the door and disappeared back into brightly lit hallway, leaving me to sit in astonished silence.
***
The room Riggs told me to go to was easy enough to find. The door looked like any other, the whorls and swirls in the wood telling the story of how long the tree had lived before being cut down and turned into this common item.
Maybe everyone and everything in this place had a story of sadness and death that somehow connected to them.
My fingers traced a pattern on the wood as I sat against the door, my shoulder pressing against the cool lumber. A tear escaped and wound its way down my cheek.
Fear. I was consumed by it.
According to Riggs, my parents were on the other side of this door. What if they looked like the man who greeted us? The image of Riggs’s son had been seared into my mind, not unlike the burnt flesh that clung in oddly shaped patterns to his body.
Footsteps sounded behind the door, and I heard a muffled voice. It was a man’s. “Regina, can you go put an order in for milk? We’re almost out.”
It was my dad’s voice.
My mom responded. “Of course. Do we need cheese? We’ve been out for a while. I’ll ask for that as well.”
The sound of footsteps grew louder, and I scrabbled to my feet. A new type of panic—nervousness—set in and my hands shook uncontrollably. I put them behind my back to hide the oncoming panic attack.
The door opened as I stepped back and tripped over my own feet. An audible gasp came from the woman at the door.
I rubbed the back of my head and tried to put on a nonchalant smile, as though looking into my mother’s identical heterochromatic eyes: one brown, one green, were something I saw every day. “Uh, hi.”
Smooth. Like sandpaper.
Jaxon was right.
Mom’s mouth hung open, and she steadied herself by placing one of her delicate hands on the doorframe. She was still thin, her features still angular. Her red hair flowed over her shoulders, a wild mess of curls just like mine.
It was my mom.
Her voice was weak when she spoke. “You…how did you…”
The muscles in my jaw clenched as I took in her tattered clothes. A golden tattoo that seemed to glow wove itself intricately down her bare left shoulder to her elbow. I didn’t remember seeing that when I was little. When did she get that? Why? It didn’t seem like something the mom I remembered would do.
I hadn’t been expecting this. Death and destruction? Sure. Zombies, even. This? A tattooed mom? Not in a million years.
I swallowed hard as I tried to think of something to say. Somehow, talking about the weather seemed absurd.
She seemed to be taking me in as much as I was examining her. She never took her eyes off of me, but turned her head ever so slightly to call over her shoulder. Her voice shook. “Cole, we have company.”
Dad’s voice rang in my ears as he called out from inside the room. “More tests? They just tested you yesterday.”
Mom’s eyes began to overflow with tears. “No. Something…something better. Someone is here.”
She slid down the frame of the door, her hand outstretched to me. When I crossed the invisible barrier between us and touched her, we both collapsed into a heap of tears.
“Avery, my Avery,” she said through sobs. “You’re alive! Oh, I’ve prayed every night that you were alive and well.” She brushed stray hairs from my face and held her hand on my cheek. It reminded me of our times before bed when she would tell me how much she loved me. Her eyes were fierce as she looked at me. “How did you get here? Why did you come?”
I pulled away from her and wrapped my arms around myself, as though it would keep me from shattering into a million pieces. I rocked back and forth on the cold tile and watched as my mom leaned forward to touch me once more.
“Avery, my baby. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry for everything…”
Dad’s gasp pulled my gaze upward to the door. The look on his face sent me back to the day I looked over my shoulder and waved goodbye before heading to the market with Alice. He had simply stood there, a sad smile on his face. Now here he was, still wearing that smile, yet somehow it was different. Aged. The creases at the corners of his eyes were more pronounced, more evident.
It made no difference. He was my father.
They weren’t dead.
They were here. With me.
Alive.
I’d never felt so wholly fulfilled, yet afraid in my entire life. I’d take this place in all its hellish glory if it meant I could be with my parents.
As I sat on the cold floor and Mom stroked my hair, I curled up against her shoulder and let her hold me.
“Mommy…” I whispered like a child. I chastised myself for saying that word, but it slipped out before I could corral it in.
“Shh, honey, it’s all right. Everything is all right. You’re so beautiful. Every day I’ve dreamed of what you might look like, what kind of person you’d grown into.”
I blushed at the declaration, unable to respond. Mom continued to hug me as though if she let me go, I’d be gone like an apparition. I felt so at home, so at peace.
Dad hadn’t said a word, but stood in the doorway in silence. I couldn’t help but ask the question that had haunted me since they disappeared.
“Where have you been all these years?”
He clenched his jaw and looked away, lips pursed and hands balled into fists. I thought I saw tears in his eyes, but it seemed I got my fear of expressing emotions from him. His nostrils flared as he fought to maintain his composure, and only after a few moments of steady breathing did he look at me again.
“We gave ourselves up to keep you from ending up in a place like this. It seems that was in vain.”
Mom pushed herself off the ground and then helped me up. She ushered me into their room, never taking her hand off the small of my back.
“Come in, come in.”
Their residence was meager. Much smaller than Alice, Sari’s, and mine for sure. It was more of a studio; their living room was a single, overused couch that had patches of all kinds of fabrics and designs on the once brown suede. A pile of boxes sat behind the couch with chairs pushed up to them, which is the only reason I realized that it was their kitchen table. A single burner sat plugged into a generator in the corner, and off to the side of the small room was a doorway. I peered into the room and saw that a single sheet was the only privacy they had for the “bathroom.”
My stomach lurched at how vastly different they were living compared to Riggs’s students. Were they prisoners? It certainly seemed like it.
I shook my head as I took it all in and returned to Mom. “How did you get here?”
Mom smiled sadly. “We’re prisoners of war.”
“But they said the war was over …”
“It’s not.” Dad said sharply. His eyes were far away as he gazed out of their single, small window across the room. “It’s never been over, and there will never be a winner. Not as long as people like the ones here exist.”
“Cole,” Mom said in a warning tone.
His comment made me uneasy. “What do you mean, ‘people like the ones here?’”
“The Elementalists. The ones willing to continue the rebel cause. All we wanted was to restore the world. Restore peace. To be rid of these infernal domes.” He looked at me with icy blue eyes, sadness etched in every wearied line of his face. “We wanted you to have a normal life. Not for you to wind up being a test subject like your mother.”
“But I am like mom, if she’s an Elementalist. Is that where I got it from?”
Mom sucked in a gasp and looked at Dad. “So you were right.”
Dad leaned against the barren wall with his eyes closed. You would have thought someone had laid the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Of course I was. Did you think I would have been so willing to leave if I wasn’t sure she was?”
Mom didn’t say anything, but turned to look at me. She shrank away from me as she spoke. “Are you…are you with the Resistance?”
The accusation sent me reeling. “Am I with the Resistance? Seriously?” I laughed from the sheer incredulity of it. “My friends and I are trying to find a way out of here; we don’t want to be part of the Resistance. I’ve carried your picture around since you disappeared.”
I paced the small area as I rambled on, tears welling in my eyes and spilling over. “I kept your steel teapot, Mom, even after someone ruined it. For all these years I’ve wondered what it would be like to see you again, worried that you hated me…”
“Hated you?” Mom’s voice was an octave higher. The pain in her eyes made me feel bad for voicing my thoughts. “How could we hate you?”
“I’ve missed you so much,” I said. “This whole time…I wondered if you were dead. I searched for you as much as possible. I’m so sorry for everything.”
She spoke her words into the crook of my neck as she held me tight. “You’re sorry? Avery, you’ll never know how hard it was for your father and I to leave.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
Mom glanced to the bedroom door, where Dad stood silently. She sighed. “Your father knew the radiation had tainted us. For some reason, he wasn’t affected. We were all so sick when we first arrived at the Dome. Don’t you remember? You and I got the worst of it. Somehow we became capable of manipulating the elements. We saw you do it once, but never again. I, on the other hand, couldn’t control it. The Resistance caught wind of my ‘gift,’ and came for us. Your father fought at first, but gave in to keep you safe. Keep you out of the Resistance’s hands. We thought if we went willingly, they’d leave you alone. I’m so sorry you’ve been sucked into this. All over that awful vacation to Indianapolis. Not a day goes by I don’t regret it.”
“Why can’t everyone who was exposed to the radiation control elements? Why just certain people?”