The Innocent (Clan of the Woodlands Book 2)

by V. K. Ludwig

  Incoherent mumbles grew into words like unity and bond.

  What an odd thing to say for a defender. Or a killer.

  Footsteps shuffled across the stone floor, and Max took my hand into his.

  Each time the male voice spoke up he squeezed harder. And harder.

  I had the sudden urge to pee, but I didn’t dare squeak a word. Left alone breathe. But Max’s breath grew faster and faster, pumping his face into a state of fury red.

  He dropped my hand and jumped out of hiding.

  “I knew it,” he shouted, his finger pointing at someone, ready to fire.

  Chapter 20

  Max

  That familiar voice rang in my ears, making my anger go from zero to ninety in a single breath. I jumped out of the sacristy, purged from sacred vessels and parish records, and pointed my finger at the old fool. “I knew it! I knew it! When I saw those ink spots on your hands, I knew you were still active.”

  He startled and shoved the woman next to him behind his back, but the lines on his forehead soon straightened out a bit. “Maxi! What are you doing here?”

  “No, dad.” I took a step toward him and deliberately pushed my chest out to bring my rage across. “What are you doing here? If the council finds out you are still doing this shit, their next judgment will exile you.”

  “Ah, ah, ah, careful now.” He wiggled his finger in front of my nose, oblivious to the fact that I had outgrown him my a foot more than fifteen years ago. “You are in the house of God, and I won’t tolerate your potty mouth here.”

  “Potty mouth?” What the…”

  The cheeks of the woman behind him rose and trembled, dad’s shoulders doing little to hide her amusement. But what made my face tingle like a box on the ears, was the muffled snort coming from the sacristy.

  “Besides,” dad continued, “there is only one judgment I have to care about, and the council has no authority over that.”

  Then his eyes drifted off to something across my shoulder, his posture softer and the corners of his mouth rising higher and higher. “Who is she?”

  I didn’t need to turn around. The fact alone that she stood behind me made my heart beat faster, raising my core temperature by at least two degrees.

  “Hey,” she said, the tone of her voice something I’ve never heard before: shy. “My name is Autumn, and I am —”

  “She is the clanswoman from the interview,” the woman said, her nose scrunched and her eyes cold. “We can’t trust someone like her. She is nothing but a traitor to her own clan.”

  Autumn’s voice shook. “N-no, it’s… it’s not like that. They tricked me.”

  “It’s true.” I turned around and waved her to me, taking her shaky hand into mine. “The interview was nothing but a farce. Torn apart and glued back together so it will suit the council’s needs.”

  Dad’s eyes wandered to where our hands had intertwined. They rested there for a long while, contemplating, trying to make sense. Then they wandered back up and locked with mine, sending shivers down my back.

  I expected a grin. Perhaps even a snarky comment.

  His eyes filled with tears instead, and he turned away for a moment, conjuring a blue tissue from his pocket. He wiped his face with it and turned back to us, reaching one hand out to Autumn. “Of course they did, but where are my manners? I am William, Max’s father, and this is Anna. She came here to see the chapel where she will get married next week if God permits.”

  “Married?”

  Autumn’s cheerful voice cut through the stale air and my soul at the same time, making my insides sob and cry out. She wanted the whole traditional package: husband, wedding, bunch-o-kids.

  At the first two things, my brain had waved the white flag the moment we kissed. I’d marry her in a heartbeat. Holy shit, I’d pray the rosary thirty times while whipping myself bloody in penance, if only I could make her my wife.

  But my sensible scientist kicked back into gear the moment my thoughts mentioned a child. I wasn’t worthy of procreation. Neither were my parents.

  “I thought marriage is outlawed,” Autumn said.

  Dad gave her a reassuring glance. “The union between a man and his wife isn’t from this world, and the council has no power over it.”

  I gave Autumn’s hand a squeeze before I let go and climbed into one of the white pews, watching the lecture unfold in front of me.

  Autumn’s lips parted and came back together in a delightful standoff between curiosity and decency. Curiosity won, and it bubbled right out of her. “But… I mean… if you drink the water and have no physical attraction to each other, how come people want to get married?”

  Dad smiled at her question. “Just because there is no physical attraction, doesn’t mean there is no love. Granted, it’s a different kind of love. It requires the conscious choice of committing yourself to someone each day anew, for the rest of your life.”

  She let her finger trace along the carved swirls of the pew, her brows furrowed underneath all that thinking. “So, how did Max come to be?”

  Dad took a deep breath and released it in an even more profound sigh, his face a telltale of brought back memories. “The walls weren’t as tight thirty years ago as they are now, and my wife and I, Max’s mom, had access to an old dug well. He is one-hundred-percent natural.”

  “Not to mention one-hundred-percent flawed. Thanks by the way,” I added.

  He grabbed his bible and flung it at me, missing me by half an inch. The book bounced against the pew, fell to the ground, slid across the aisle and stopped right at the sacristy. “Don’t listen to his pitiful jabber, he is perfect in my eyes, and even more so in the eyes of the lord. Anna, why don’t you take Autumn here for a spin? Show her the grounds, and answer her questions.”

  “Great idea.” I sat up straight. “I wanted to show her —”

  Dad flung himself into the pew. “A word with you… Max.”

  Oh boy! Autumn turned to look at me, but I gave her a quick nod, and she disappeared together with Anna, leaving me behind like a wolf before the trapper.

  We sat there for a few minutes, silent and with miles of pew between us. Perhaps he said a silent prayer — most likely for my soul. But eventually, he leaned back and folded his hands in front of his chest. “Do we need to step into the confessional, or do you think we can do it right here?”

  My legs went numb. “I’ve got nothing to confess.”

  He chuckled, his lungs making his arms bounce up and down in something that sounded an awful lot like a taunt. “You gotta do a lot better than that son if you want to fool your old man. I’m not like those coworkers and friends of yours. I’ve known love and desire and —”

  My hand flung up like a pop-up sign. “Yeah, that’s kinda not stuff I want to hear from my dad. But I get the idea.”

  He leaned back and tapped his fingers against his sides, each beat driving the numbness of my legs higher into my thighs.

  “We, um…” I stalled. The taps of his fingers grew louder, though they didn’t increase in speed nor force. I wanted to just get up and leave, but my legs wouldn’t listen. “I… um… we, well the truth is that we had sex together.”

  I held my breath and closed my eyes. Fully expecting a hard slap to hit the back of my head at any moment now. When it didn’t came, I opened one eye. Then the other.

  Dad stared at me, the biggest grin stretched across his face like an epidermis. After all, I had never seen him that happy before, so the mouth must have belonged to someone else at some point.

  He gave me a manly pat on the back and nodded his devoted approval. Then his stare returned to the altar, his mouth turning from smiles to pouts to contemplating lips.

  “Now I’m confused,” I said. “You always told me people should get married first before something like this happens.”

  “Ha!” Another chuckle bounced from his lungs, this time shaking his entire body… and the pew right with it. “Son, considering that God is dead to most of the people here, I rea
lly won’t get all nit-picky with the fine print.”

  He released one of his arms and gave me a gentle fist bump into my shoulder, like a welcome-to-the-club kind of ritual. Like paddling, I guessed, but reverend-slash-dad style. “I take it you went ahead with that trial of yours, and failed terribly.”

  I let out a laugh. “Yup, I failed alright.”

  Another silent minute passed, Anna’s and Autumn’s jolly chatter coming from outside being the only audible noise.

  Dad shoved around his seat, his pants riding up on the white paint. “Do you love her?”

  “Huh?” The numbness spread from my thighs toward my core, paralyzing the entire rest of my body. I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t turn my head. All I could do was stare straight and remind myself to keep breathing.

  “You are putting both yourself and her at risk here, and I guess I’d like to hear where all this will lead to. I buried one of my children. Not gonna do it a second time.”

  An awakening settled down on me like a dagger between kidney and liver. With Kenya dead, possibly murdered, the risk never tasted sharper.

  But something else played tug of war with my innards as well.

  A question.

  What the hell was love — other than a decommissioned fairytale?

  “Not sure how much it matters,” I said, dipping each word in false confidence. “She wants children, and I’m not the one who can give that to her with a clean conscience.”

  “She said that?”

  “I said that, dad.” I let out a deep sigh, my breath smelling of pity-party and a hint of onset agony. “She ran our genetic profiles and, sure enough, the red warning popped up. Maybe she’s a carrier, too. Didn’t check the risk percentage but, fuck… everything greater than one percent is just too much.”

  For the first time in my life, dad disregarded my potty mouth with no reaction at all. He shook his head, fast at first but then in a slow, steady rhythm, and pointed at my leg. “It’s a good thing Nathalie isn’t here with us today because she would kick your shins full force.”

  “Dad, it's not funny.” I pushed myself up and slipped out of the pew.

  Pacing in front of the altar.

  In each step hiding a prayer.

  In exchange, hoping for an epiphany.

  “No, you’re right. It’s damn sad,” he said, and I flinched at damn. “If anything, Nathalie’s death should have taught you that life is precious, and you shouldn’t throw yours away like that.”

  My pacing stopped as if I had stepped on glue, an inferno lighting up my chest. “She didn’t die to show me how precious life is. She died because you and mom refused to join Newgenics. Refused to inseminate. Refused to scan the embryos.”

  The way he sat there, calm and with unshaken confidence in his words, pissed me off beyond belief. Not sure what bothered me more though: the fact that he believed what he said. Or the fact that I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.

  “Her death doesn’t erase the fact that her life was precious, and that she enjoyed it at the fullest while she could.”

  Anger burnt me alive from the inside, rising from my chest onto my tongue. “And what about the heartbreak it left behind? She was my sister, and I spent every day of my life with her from the moment of our conception till the day she rasped her last breath,” I shouted, backing against the altar and letting myself slip down onto the cold stone.

  My vision turned into a blur, showing me nothing but the outlines of dad’s shaggy cotton frock.

  He stretched out his arm, took hold of my hand and pulled me up into his embrace. “My heart never cried as much for her as it is crying for you right now. You are pushing away everything she stood for, replacing it with hatred and finger pointing.”

  “She was my sister…” my voice came out a breath, barely alive and dying quicker at each sound. Old and unshed tears welled up behind my eyes, making me blink and blink until they finally rolled.

  “You can have a perfect child die in your arms, stolen from you by something we have ten medications for. Death and heartbreak are an entitlement, Max, because it means you and those you love are alive.”

  I nestled my face against his shoulder, taking in the scents of English Breakfast, cider, and moths. For the first time in a long while, a sense of family returned. With it came something serene. Something that relieved my chest of years-old weight.

  “I can’t prove it, but I believe they had Kenya killed,” I said.

  Dad pushed me away from him while still holding onto my arms, taking me in for a moment. Within seconds, he aged five years and the wrinkles on his face turned deeper and darker.

  “You’re certain she’s dead? We haven’t heard any of it.”

  A quick nod satisfied him, and he returned to ponder. “She always held the majority of the votes against gene editing. With her gone…”

  His voice trailed off, and he turned away from me, brushing his hand over his stubble which scratched audibly across his palm. “God help us.”

  “But she was the one who wouldn’t give permission for a trial of my formula,” I said. “Why would she have done that, if she voted against the editing?”

  “I don’t know.” Now he was the one pacing, walking back and forth between pew and altar, counting the stone tiles on the ground. “There’s only one hint of wisdom I can share with you, Max, and that is that nothing is ever as it seems. Especially not with the council.”

  I looked over at the entrance of the chapel, where Autumn traced her finger along the carved scriptures of the wall. “Makes me wonder where it will end. Maybe in twenty years, we will have onboard night-vision or something.”

  Dad chuckled, his voice a strained kind of jolly. “Babies with gray and translucent eyes.”

  “Yeah, shooting laser beams. Pew, pew,” I added, a strange feeling rummaging through my stomach. “Wait, what did you just say?”

  He stopped pacing and looked at me. “That nothing is as it seems?”

  “No, the other thing, with the babies.”

  “Gray hair,” he said. “Gray hair and white eyes, or translucent eyes. Don’t remember exactly.”

  The strange feeling now poked on my insides, making me stand at attention. What sounded like a science-fiction movie ten seconds ago, soon pulled the ground away from underneath my feet. Gray hair and eyes the color of old bone — I knew someone just like that!

  “Dad, I’m sorry, but I gotta go right now.” I gave him a pat on his shoulder and sprinted along the aisle. “Autumn, we have to go and talk to Ruth.”

  She swung around, her red hair cascading over her arm and settling on her shoulder. Damn! She never looked prettier than at that very moment.

  As if a veil had lifted.

  Not sure if from her face… or from my eyes.

  “Actually, I wanted to chat with William a bit, hear some embarrassing stories about you eating your boogers as a kid.”

  I held my hand out, and she took it without hesitation. “One day you will hear all those stories over a cup of orange blossom tea. But trust me, this is more important right now.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Yeah, something’s been happening for the past fourteen years.” I gave Anna a nod and stepped outside the chapel, Autumn following my every footstep. “I was just too blind to realize it.”

  Chapter 21

  Autumn

  The red seconds' timer kept chipping away on the clock above the lab’s door, each tick adding to the lump in my throat. I knew I said I’d come here and kick ass. But shit, breaking into the server room?

  Ruth sat on her desk, her legs crossed at the ankle and swinging back and forth. “Not trying to meet trouble halfway guys, but what if Max is wrong? Svea might be a bit, um, different, but saying she’s the product of gene editing is a bit much. Don’t you think?”

  “Have you ever really looked at her?” Max stared out the window and pressed his forehead against the glass as if he needed to cool off his brain. “Her hair is gray, a
nd there is no other visible color close to the roots. I’ve never seen such eyes before either.”

  “I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her headaches,” I chimed in. “But the comments she made are telling me he knows more than she lets on. And the only way to find out is to go through her file. Her entire file.”

  Max walked over to me and placed the whisper of a kiss on the crown of my head, the tip of his nose pushing through my hair, taking in my scent. “My plan is rock solid, and there is a minimal risk we will get caught,” he said. “I have the fake access card Anna made. In and out. Twenty minutes tops. We just have to be careful not to draw any attention. No rash decisions.”

  “Interesting.” Ruth activated her holo-band and swiped a quick note into the air.

  “Did you just write down that he kissed my head?”

  She smiled a curious mind hard at work dancing behind her eyes. “No, I wrote down that he smelled you. Probably to stimulate sexual arousal.”

  “You’re weird,” Max said.

  “I take that as a compliment,” she said. “So let me run this down once more. You want me to pretend that I am fainting when the guard steps out of the elevator?”

  Max scrunched up his face. “I never said anything about the elevator. Autumn, did I mention the word elevator in the last thirty minutes?”

  My eyes darted between the two. “Ummm…”

  Ruth wrapped herself in her arms and slipped off her desk, shifting from one leg to the other. “It’s not my fault that you are making this so complicated. I mean, do we really need a whistle code and three alternative escape plans?”

  “Just throw yourself to the ground,” Max said, underlining each word by swinging two fingers through the air. “He will be distracted and call for a medic, which should buy us another five to ten minutes. We won’t need it though because my plan is —”