The Gender Plan

by Bella Forrest

  “We made a decision,” I announced.

  Owen’s head snapped up, his eyes searching my face for any sign of his fate. Then he sighed and nodded. “I’ll go get my things. I’ll be out of the camp before the move is fully finished. Don’t worry—I have no idea where you all are going, but even if I did, I wouldn’t follow you.”

  I shook my head and held up my hands, the urge to correct him compelling me forward a step, my knees brushing up against the bench. “We’re not exiling you, Owen.”

  Owen froze in the middle of his step away from me, a resigned expression coming over his face. “Yeah,” he said bitterly. “I figured I’d never get off that easy. So I guess Amber’s suggestion of execution was the popular vote, huh?”

  I blinked, his statement hitting me like a stiff jab in the face. “Um, Amber never advocated execution. No one did.”

  Owen’s confusion deepened, and I felt pity for him, and irritation at myself. This was an important moment to Owen, and I was fumbling through it like an idiot, dragging out his torture.

  “Oh. I guess maybe that was Amber’s way of…” He trailed off and sighed, crossing his arms against his chest. “I’m talking too much.”

  “I was just about to say,” I agreed, before I could stop myself. Owen met my gaze, his eyes steely in spite of the vulnerability that hid there, and I cleared my throat. “Look, the punishment we decided for your actions is probably one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs we have at the camp. It comes with a high probability of violence, and a strong chance that you will be injured, maimed, and/or killed in the line of duty… I want you to be Violet’s bodyguard.”

  Owen’s eyes bugged, and he blinked, as if disbelieving that I was actually there. “You have got to be joking,” he said—practically shouted. “Why in the world would you ever trust me with her life after what I did to her? How did they even get you to agree—”

  “It was my idea,” I shouted back, shutting him up. “It was. Because… in spite of everything, I know you truly care about Violet, and now that the guilt of what you did to her is chewing you up, I know you will lay down your life to protect her.”

  The look of intense thought on Owen’s face had deepened, as if he were weighing each word carefully, searching for some hint that I was wrong in my estimation of him. I knew he was looking for a reason to get out of this—not because he didn’t want to do it, but because he didn’t believe he should. That was how I knew it would be the perfect punishment for him. It would force him to deal with his guilt and shame, every day, until he got over it. Or until the job actually killed him. It was a possibility we couldn’t ignore.

  “How does Violet feel about it?” he asked after a moment, and I knew he had failed to find something to disapprove of in what I was saying. He was fishing for any excuse.

  “Honestly, she’s fine with it. I think… I think she’s ready to forgive you. She might have already done so.”

  “And you?” Owen’s question was loaded, and I could hear the conflicting emotions there, threatening to strangle out his voice.

  This was my precipice, one I couldn’t begin to describe. “I honestly don’t know. On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn’t hold you to your actions. I know you said not to factor in… what happened to you… but it’s impossible for me not to. On the other hand…” I met his gaze, letting some of the anger creep through. “I really want to punch your lights out.”

  Owen nodded, biting his lower lip. “I don’t really blame you,” he announced. “I deserve it.”

  We both fell silent, uncertain how to follow up. There really was no follow-up to be had. I was just hanging back, out of habit, waiting for him to say goodbye, make a joke, say something pithy. I had almost forgotten that things were different now.

  “I gotta go.”

  Owen’s eyes flicked up to mine at my declaration. “Right. I’ll… uh… get my stuff ready to join you guys in the farmhouse. And, it goes without saying—but I will keep her safe, Viggo.” He held out his hand, stretching his arm across the table. I looked down at it for a moment, indecision raging. Then I accepted his handshake, shaking twice before dropping his hand.

  With that, I turned and walked away, heading back to the car where Jay, and now Cad, were waiting for me.

  I didn’t look back.

  16

  Violet

  “Gregory—I found them. The box shifted behind some of these old crates.”

  I had to resist the urge to swipe my hand across my face as I spoke. Phantom spider webs were abundant, especially against my still exposed scalp, but with the amount of dirt and grime on my hands, I had made my decision not to try to brush them away, and I was sticking to it.

  “I’ve got it, Violet,” said Gregory, the lanky Patrian man who was in charge of the guards, and I stepped back, allowing him to grab the box that had been lost for the last half an hour. Looking around the barn, I nodded to myself as I took in the vast emptiness of it, save a pile of odds and ends that needed a final inventory and decision on which house to be sent to.

  “Violet! This car is ready to go to C house. Do you want to check the manifest or—”

  “I trust you, Lynne,” I told the brunette woman standing at the entrance to the barn. She smiled and waved in acknowledgment, then disappeared back out the door, presumably to finalize the instructions.

  Eric, one of the other men helping me, handed me a clipboard, and I began to read his carefully handwritten notes regarding the contents of each box. We’d come up with a little alphanumeric code to help track things easier, which was Ms. Dale’s biggest concern about dividing up the teams.

  All in all, I thought we had done a pretty good job of splitting everything up as evenly as possible. Some things couldn’t be evenly distributed, but I was pretty proud of the tradeoffs I had made to compensate for the discrepancies. It would work. And, in a stroke of luck, Ms. Dale’s last and final hunt for weapons, ammunition, and general supplies had yielded something. Several others and I had spent hours inventorying the five thousand rounds of ammo, the boxes of comm devices, a dozen boxes filled to the brim with foil-sealed protein blocks, medical supplies (along with some much-needed antibiotics), fifteen barrels of fuel, and even more guns. The last was an added bonus: it meant we could arm more of the rebels.

  I paused, noticing something on the list. “Wait, are there really… one thousand units of waterproof bags? Why haven’t I noticed this before?”

  Eric turned and gave a little shrug. “Maybe it was in one of the older inventories, and just got overlooked when we redid them? Either that, or they somehow manifested out of thin air.”

  “Show me.”

  Eric led me over to the small pile of miscellaneous items, and opened one of the larger boxes, revealing the compact, packable black bags, each with a large, stylistically blocked ‘A’ emblazoned on the side. “Ashabee Industries,” I murmured. “I guess this must’ve been a gift bag for his clients?”

  “I have no idea,” replied Eric. “You should ask Jeff—I bet he’d know. What do you want me to do with them?”

  I smiled slowly. “Distribute them as equally as you can to each group. This is actually a really good find, considering where we might be heading in a day or two.”

  Eric knelt down and began separating the bags into three piles. I moved around the rest of our pile of miscellaneous items, considering them all and then carefully writing down which base to send them to. Some things I had already separated out, but others were just too insignificant to actually dole out to any one house. However, nothing got wasted until we were sure there was no use for it, so I sent those to the house with the biggest storage room. Namely, the house Thomas would be operating out of.

  I was almost finished when I heard the sound of pounding feet racing up from behind. I turned in alarm, and then relaxed when I saw it was Morgan, Tim hot on her heels.

  “Violet, we need you at the house, right now.”

  I frowned and put the clipboard down on one o
f the boxes, hearing the urgency in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “I saw Cody go into Desmond’s room,” she said.

  “Locked door,” added Tim, his face tense and unhappy.

  A curse slipped through my lips, and Morgan nodded. “I knew I couldn’t break in there, because you don’t want Desmond knowing that the Liberators have joined you, so I—”

  “Did the right thing,” I finished for her. “Do me a favor and go find Owen. Oh, and the car with…” I paused, grabbing the clipboard and quickly shifting through some papers, trying to locate the car and driver with the cargo I needed. “Harry—we need one of those lock-picking devices he’s got.”

  “I’ve got Owen,” said Morgan, whirling and running.

  “Harry,” grunted Tim in reply, keeping pace.

  “Eric, keep working,” I said as I began to jog toward the field as quickly as I dared. Several people looked up at me as I moved, but I ignored their glances, my focus entirely on the house, worry gnawing at my spine. Cody in there with Desmond was not good—who knew what she was saying to him.

  I climbed the stairs of the porch, the muscles over my ribcage spasming painfully, reminding me that, yes, I did still have bruised ribs. It riled me that I couldn’t comfortably run yet. I could have been there in seconds, rather than the minute it took me to cross the yard. I threw open the door to the house, my feet thudding heavily on the aged floorboards as I entered.

  Lynne was pacing nervously just in front of the door, rubbing her thumbs across the side of her knuckle. “Violet,” she said softly, stepping over to me. “Thank God you’re here. He was playing hide-and-seek with some of the other children, and I lost track of him! He must have found out about the key’s hiding place somehow—I can’t get him to open the door.”

  “I got this,” I said, stepping past her and moving over to the door. “Cody!” I shouted, pounding on the door. I pressed my ear against it and listened, but could only hear the faint sound of voices.

  “Violet!” came Owen’s voice from behind me, and I automatically stepped aside, making room for him. Owen dropped to one knee and inserted his lock-picking tool into the lock, the mechanics inside whirling. “Tim went to find Harry like you said, but they were looking in the wrong place. Luckily I remembered where they wound up.”

  I looked at Morgan, who was crossing over to Lynne, taking the brown-haired woman’s hands and patting her on the shoulder.

  “You both should go,” I said quietly. “We can’t risk her seeing you.”

  Lynne’s face grew tight, her lips thinning in displeasure. I could tell she didn’t want to leave. Morgan, however, laid a hand on Lynne’s arm. “She’s right. Let’s go.” Lynne hesitated, and then nodded. I watched as they both left, leaving Owen, Tim, and me alone.

  There was an audible click as the mechanism finished manipulating the lock, and Owen stood up, slowly opening the door. I slipped in, my heart thudding against my chest, prepared to see the worst.

  Cody stood mere feet away from Desmond, his back to me. I could see Desmond from my slightly elevated position, her eyes on his face, in spite of my noisy entrance.

  I paused, trying to assess the situation. Cody looked over at me, tossing his hair. He stared at me, and then looked back at Desmond. “Goodbye,” he said, and Desmond gave him a beatific smile.

  “Until next time, dear Cody,” she said, extending one shackled hand.

  The movement broke me out of the state of surprise I was in. Cody hadn’t done anything to try to break Desmond out. That was… decidedly odd. “Don’t touch him,” I ordered as she continued to stretch her hand toward him, and I took a step into the room. Desmond froze, and then sighed, slowly lowering her hand back into her lap.

  “Cody, can you please come to me?” I said.

  Cody licked his lips, hesitating. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Not if you come to me right now.”

  He hesitated another second, and then crossed over to me. I held out my hand, and he took it, allowing me to push him toward the door and out of the room, where Owen was waiting. I moved to leave, when Desmond’s voice stopped me.

  “I was beginning to think you’d never come visit me,” she said.

  This was an obvious barb, one designed to get my defenses up, but I wasn’t in the mood to play. Turning, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Tell me about the boys,” I replied.

  Desmond gave me a kind smile. “Are you still going on about that? My, my… it’s like you people have nothing to do!” I shrugged and turned to leave, but her voice stopped me yet again. “Are you not visiting me because I shot you?”

  “You missed,” I lied, and she gave me a knowing look.

  “Tut, tut, Violet dear. Don’t waste your lies on something as absurd as that. You are such a capable liar. I really did have high hopes for you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have set up my friend,” I replied tartly, thinking of Owen and the bomb she’d had him carry into Matrus.

  Desmond laughed at that, and shook her head. “You mean the friend who led you into a trap with me? Pray tell, where is Owen? Did you have the guts to execute him in the basement?”

  I bit back my response, realizing with my last one I had fallen into Desmond’s trap. “Tell me about the boys, or I—”

  “Violet?” Jay cut me off, and I turned as the young man sprinted into the room. “What happened with Cody?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “Jay?” Desmond’s voice held a slender note of hope, making me turn back to her.

  Jay looked over, and seemed to realize where he was. He blinked at her and then looked away. “I shouldn’t be in here,” he mumbled, making for the door.

  “I did not raise you to be a coward, Jason Alexander Bertrand!” Her voice rose to a shout, and Jay froze in place, his shoulders cringing forward. I saw Tim enter the doorway, an alarmed expression on his face, but I ignored him.

  “Don’t talk to him that way,” I hissed at her. “Or I’ll make Tabitha’s little torture chamber look like something out of a fairytale.”

  “You think you can intimidate me?” Desmond scoffed, her eyes crinkling with amusement. “I’m a mother. Can you even imagine what I sacrificed for him? The lengths I went to in order to get him into that program? And what? He wants to sulk about it?” She tsked in that way all mothers seemed to have, the one that universally told offspring everywhere that they were a disappointment. After a moment, she added a small shake of her head. “I gave him inhuman strength. I did what any good mother should and would do—I gave him a tool that is going to help him succeed and thrive. So you don’t get to sit there on your high horse and tell me how I can and cannot talk to my son.”

  Oh dear God, was Desmond being genuine? If I ignored the angry bite that was directed at me, I found I felt a strange surge of empathy. It urged me to believe in the sorrowful cadence of her voice, the soft remorse, regret, and disappointment painting a picture, not of a monster, but just a woman willing to do anything for her son. Her actions may have been twisted and deplorable, but was it possible that she had been doing what she thought was right for her sons?

  The thought left me feeling uncertain, and agitated. Especially since it seemed to take a toll on Jay. He seemed to… curl into himself a little. His shoulders rounded and hunched, his nose dropping down to point at the floor.

  “C’mon,” I said as I pressed my hand on his shoulder, gently nudging him out of the room. Closing the door, I saw Owen sitting with Cody at the table. He tossed something at me when I met his gaze, and I reached out to grab the keys Owen must’ve gotten back from Cody. I reached out for them, but Tim’s hand snaked out and got them first, and he went back and locked Desmond’s prison door.

  Moving to let him do the job, I stepped closer to Jay, placing a hand on his cheek. “Are you okay?”

  Jay hesitated. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  “That’s understandable. She… She really shouldn’t have said those things to you.”r />
  He shrugged, his eyes drifting away for a second. “I don’t feel like I have a mother,” he said hollowly. “Sometimes I don’t even feel like I have a family.”

  “Brother.” Tim’s hand touched his own chest as he spoke, his fingertips tapping lightly against his sternum. Then he reached out and touched my shoulder. “Sister.”

  I smiled, playfully bumping his hand with my shoulder. “He’s right. We’re your family now, like it or not. If you’ll still have us.”

  Jay gave a halfhearted smile. “Of course I will,” he said, and then sucked a deep breath in, pushing his melancholy aside. “I mean—I shouldn’t have said that last part, about feeling like I don’t have a family. You already are. I was just… not thinking.” Some of his sadness still lingered, and on impulse, I pulled him into a hug. Tim draped his arms over both of us, and we just stood there, holding each other tightly.

  From behind us, there was a choked sound, and I turned to see Owen standing behind us, his eyes tearing up. “Excuse me,” he said stiffly, and walked out. Cody watched him go, and then swiveled around to look at us.

  I took a step forward, realizing that our little session had triggered Owen’s grief, but Jay stopped me. “I got this,” he said, looking even better than before. “And I’ll be okay… after some time. Tim and I will make sure he’s okay.”

  I hesitated, but then nodded. He was right. Things between Owen and me were still too tense. There was an awkwardness, a void of space between us filled with things left unsaid. A part of me wondered if they should continue to be unspoken.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I gotta check in with Cody anyway.”

  Jay flashed me a thumbs-up and then headed out the door. Tim was already waiting for him by the doorframe, twitching impatiently. I watched them go, then moved over and dropped down into the seat next to Cody.