by Ellery Kane
My mother tossed the flash drive to me as two more Guardians rounded the corner, already firing their weapons.
“Go,” she implored me.
Her voice left no room for debate, but turning from her felt unnatural. I felt riveted to the floor, rooted to my mother. It took the zip of a bullet to compel my legs to move toward the third door on the right. Quin and Edison approached from behind me, their footsteps urgent.
“Eddie, go with Lex,” Quin directed. I started to protest, but Quin had already vanished into the other room, along with my mother.
Edison quickly accessed the control room with his fingerprint, the door’s keypad lighting up in a familiar green. Opening the door with one hand, he cautioned me with the other. Inside the room was a girl crouched under the table. Fear had drained her face of color. She had a Guardian tattoo.
“She’s been injected with Resilire,” I told Edison. “She’s afraid. Look at her.”
Edison ignored me, jamming the door closed with a chair. Instantly, the door shut out the alarming sounds from the hallway behind me. General Ryker’s barking voice and hurried footsteps were cut off by stony silence.
Edison considered the girl.
“Give me your gun,” he demanded. She handed it to him gingerly as if it might explode. He secured it in his waistband.
When Edison spoke again, his words were pointed and razor sharp. “If you move from that spot, I’ll blow your head off.”
The girl nodded, curling herself into a tight ball.
Inside the room, along the wall in front of us, were at least thirty monitors, each displaying a different room within the building. I easily spotted the screen displaying the debriefing room. At least three hundred Guardian Force members and recruits shifted anxiously in their seats. They did seem restless.
“Lex, the drive,” Edison called to me. He was standing in front of a sprawling desk, an oversized computer in front of him.
I handed it to him, and he inserted it into a port on the side of the computer. With a few clicks, he opened the file.
“It should be playing now,” Edison announced with one final keystroke.
I directed my attention to the debriefing room, observing as one by one, the Guardians became still and focused. Their eyes were turned upward, watchful.
Edison rushed over to me, pointing to another screen with urgency. “Turn on the audio,” he instructed.
I flipped the switch, General Ryker’s voice suddenly booming from the screen.
“It’s quite ironic, don’t you think? Seeing both of you here?” As he considered my mother and Quin, I watched Ryker’s usual expression of harsh disdain morph into a twisted sneer.
My mother was standing a few feet from Quin. There was a scrape on the right side of her face, her eye swollen shut. Quin held his right arm tightly, his fingers bright red with blood. Behind them, one Guardian pointed a gun barrel at their heads, while another lay lifeless in the corner.
I felt a searing heat rising in my throat, burning its way into my mouth. I gagged, my stomach riding waves of nausea.
General Ryker addressed my mother first. “It’s been a while, Doctor Knightley.” He pronounced her title, mockingly. His contempt sounded personal as if they had met before, though my mother had never mentioned it.
“You are the very reason that we are standing here today. Am I not correct?” His question wasn’t meant to be answered. “We have you to thank for Emovere.” He paused for dramatic effect as if he was performing a scene. “And yet, here you are, trying to destroy the very thing that you gave birth to.”
“This is not what I intended. You know that, Jamison.” My mother addressed him by name in a surprisingly familiar way. Now I was convinced. They knew each other.
The room began a slow, lopsided spin with pinpricks of black exploding across my field of vision. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, hoping to reset myself.
“Lex, we have to do something.” I heard Edison speaking from behind me. “He’s going to kill them both.”
I murmured in agreement and tried to stand, but Edison stopped me as I stumbled.
“Lex.” He evaluated me with concern. “You’re bleeding.”
I’m bleeding. The thought set off a siren of pain that had been silent until then. Instantly, my fingers went to the wound just along the side of my abdomen. My shirt was warm and sticky with blood.
Edison ripped a section of his shirt and held it tightly against my side. “Keep putting pressure here,” he instructed. “I’ll be right back.”
Feeling helpless, I watched Edison leave the room. Then I felt the earth shift beneath me. One thousand one, one thousand two—and it was over.
“Did you feel that?” I directed my question to the fearful Guardian hidden under the desk.
She nodded, and I knew. The bombs had detonated—their impact conveniently resembling an earthquake. I wondered if anyone would suspect otherwise. On the screen, I saw my mother glance furtively toward Quin.
General Ryker’s soliloquy was suspended, his face quizzical. He addressed the armed Guardian positioned behind Quin. “What was that?” he asked, breaking from his theatrics.
The Guardian shrugged. “Earthquake, I guess. It felt like an earthquake.”
“Initiate the security protocol,” Ryker commanded, pointing to a red switch on the wall, “just in case.” He refocused his eyes toward Quin and my mother. “I want to be sure we aren’t interrupted.”
The man depressed the switch, and I heard a click from the door inside the room. After taking a few breaths to steady myself, I approached the door and tried the handle, jiggling it at first, then depressing it frantically with all my strength. It was locked. My side was screaming at me—the blood had soaked through Edison’s shirt. Through the muddle, my thoughts sluggishly assembled themselves.
I was trapped. In here.
Quin and my mother were trapped. In there.
With Ryker.
General Ryker resumed speaking, still addressing my mother. “Yes … well, you never could quite make up your mind about what side you were on. After all, you ran from Crim-X straight to Zenigenic. Did you honestly think you were taking a step up the moral hierarchy?”
“It was always clear what side you were on,” my mother responded, her words dripping with disdain.
“You’re right, Doctor. I am nothing, if not loyal,” Ryker turned his eyes to Quin. “Speaking of loyalty …”
Quin tensed. His fists clenched into tight balls, his jaw set and hardened. I desperately wanted to protect him. My breath quickened. I couldn’t let this happen. Think. I willed myself to quiet my mind.
On the screen, I could see Edison frantically trying to get inside the other room. Just like my door, it was locked— the keypad apparently deactivated.
The keypad.
Edison fired his gun at the door, the bullet blistering the doorframe. It didn’t go through. Even so, General Ryker turned, firing several return shots before continuing.
I ran to the door, banging on it to get Edison’s attention. The keypad. I repeated the words in my mind. Then I said them aloud. Then I screamed them. It was useless … he couldn’t hear me.
Ryker’s voice taunted me from the screen. “Legacy 243, Quin McAllister. I consider you a personal failure—a traitor, of course, just like the good doctor, but worse. Does the doctor here know about the things you did? The people you hurt? All to set up the fall of the Resistance, the very group you now claim as your own. Without Legacy 243, the city of San Francisco would never have been evacuated, the Resistance never forced underground.”
Quin said nothing in response. His face was stilled, unchanging.
I was breathless, defeated. I collapsed by the door, my wound burning. From inside the room, the Guardian spoke in a meek voice. “If you press the intercom for the hallway, he can hear you.” She gestured to one of the buttons near the screens.
As I struggled to my feet with my eyes fixed on that button, Ryker con
tinued, “That’s not even the worst of it. You were one of the finest recruits the Guardian Force has ever seen. You were made for this, Quin. Don’t try to tell yourself otherwise. When you left, you spit in the face of everything we both worked so hard for.” Ryker was shaking his head at Quin, his condescension evident, even under his mask of pretend hurt.
Quin answered Ryker, his voice clear and strong. “I’m not made for this. You’re right—I was good at it—but you convinced me that I didn’t have a choice—that I had to be like my father … that I had to be like you. Now that I know I can, I choose something else.”
I didn’t wait for Ryker to reply. “That one,” the Guardian directed me. Depressing the button, I yelled, “Edison, take off the keypad!”
I watched the screen with desperation. At my direction, Edison crouched by the door, pulling at the keypad with ferocity.
Ryker was silent, but the expression on his face made my brain buzz with alarm. Up until then, he seemed angry, yet disinterested, almost bored. Now his eyes were lit from within—dark windows offering a terrifying glimpse of the fire raging inside him.
Quin saw it too. Ryker was on the verge, teetering right on the edge of explosion. Turning swiftly, Quin lunged toward the Guardian and rammed him into the wall. Stunned, he loosened his grip on his weapon, relinquishing it to Quin’s hand.
Quin fixed the weapon on Ryker as he removed my mother’s gun from the Guardian’s waistband, striking him forcefully in the face with it. The man staggered and fell to the ground. My mother looked on, dazed—her face pale and vacant.
“Are you really going to shoot me, Legacy 243?” Ryker asked, considering Quin with condescension. “I don’t think you have it in you anymore.”
“Put your gun down, Ryker,” Quin ordered.
Ryker’s high-pitched laugh sounded maniacal. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a stalemate, Doctor,” Ryker announced, glancing toward my mother. “Maybe I should just shoot you first.”
Ryker pointed his gun toward my mother, then back to Quin, then at my mother again. His lips curled in a fiendish grin, toying with them, a devilish game of cat and mouse.
Edison had pried one corner of the keypad loose, but the rest wouldn’t budge. Feeling panic pressing down on my chest, I pushed the intercom button again. “Hit it with your gun! Hurry!” Edison began striking the fixture repeatedly with the butt of his gun.
Suddenly, I was overcome by exhaustion. I looked down at my side and felt queasy. Half of my shirt was drenched red.
From behind Quin, the limp Guardian began to stir. I watched in horror as he rose on wobbly legs and plodded toward him.
Look behind you. Look behind you. Look behind you. The words pressed insistently into my throat, but I didn’t have the strength to say them aloud. For a brief moment, I came up for air, the scene crystallizing in front of me. As if my entire world was only this, I saw everything happening clearly, but not until several moments after it happened. It was as if my mind was on a tape-delay, taking its time to catch up with my senses. It was a feeling of reverse clairvoyance.
I saw Quin fire his gun just as the Guardian struck his arm, sending the bullet careening wildly toward Ryker, striking him in the shin.
I saw Ryker recoil in pain. His eyes were narrowed and unforgiving. He held tight to his weapon, the muscles in his arms taut like wire.
I saw Quin’s eyes widen ever so slightly. A pall of fear passed across them like a shadow. His mouth opened—suspended in an “O.”
I saw Ryker’s finger depress the trigger—how quick he must have moved, and yet how slow, how deliberate. Each millisecond, each millimeter, a decision point.
I saw my mother take a step, walling herself between Quin and Ryker. Her arms were outstretched toward the screen, pleading.
I saw the bullet make impact, my mother’s chest a firework of red. She clutched her hands toward her as if holding a small child. Her face contorted in the agony of realization.
I saw my face reflected in the screen in front of me. I knew it was me, but those eyes, they were my mother’s.
My own face was the last thing I saw before I saw nothing.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
HOW?
I DREAMED THAT MY MOTHER died. I simply knew in the same way that old bones can sense a change in the weather. And yet, there she was, next to me.
“My mother died,” I said, speaking to her as if she was a disinterested observer.
She only nodded.
In my dream, I began to cry. My tears felt hot. They burned like acid.
My mother spoke, her voice removed. “You have to go on without her.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course, you can.” She turned to me. On her chest, a small rosette of blood was blooming. I considered it in horror.
“How?”
There was no answer.
I awoke in a strange bed, my head pounding and a machine marking the continuous beeping of my heart. I instantly knew Quin was there. His arms contained me and I breathed him in. Lifting my head slightly from the pillow, I groaned. It hurt.
“Quin?” my voice sounded far away from me as if it had come from someone else.
I knew I needed to speak, to ask a question, but the words I wanted to find were out of reach. He pulled me tighter to him, smoothing my hair from my face, and some of the words came.
“My mom? Is she … okay?”
Quin shook his head “no.” Though he didn’t speak it, the word echoed in my mind.
“Lex, she died yesterday.” He paused, waiting for my reaction. “She was shot … so were you. Do you remember?”
I heard Quin’s words, but it took a moment for the impact to reach me, like the gradual fallout from a bomb. My mother was dead. I had been shot. Did I remember?
I nodded to Quin. No matter how much I didn’t want to, I remembered.
“Ryker?” I asked. “Is he … dead?”
Quin’s voice was gentle. “No, but he was wounded. Edison shot him in the stomach through the spot behind the keypad—just like you told him to. Admiral Bennington’s team disarmed the Guardian Force and arrested him.”
Still feeling groggy, I propped myself up against the pillow, surveying the room. Edison, Elana, and Max were standing in the corner, watching me with worried eyes.
Quin whispered to me, “You saved me Lex … you and your mom.”
“And Edison,” I added, trying to muster a smile, even as my eyes welled.
“And Edison,” Quin agreed. His tone was begrudging, but he and Edison shared a conspiratorial grin.
“I thought it was a dream,” I told Quin. He didn’t say anything. I was glad.
I turned my face toward his chest, burying it in the crook of his arm. The tears came.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
EASIER, NOT BETTER
THE NEXT MORNING, MY FATHER arrived from Boston. Admiral Bennington had personally arranged his travel. I was sitting on the hospital bed, flanked by Quin and Elana, when he arrived. Somewhere inside me, I felt excited, but my exhaustion was so overwhelming that the feeling was muted, colorless. My father was different than I remembered, and yet, so much the same. His sandy colored hair, now peppered with gray … soft lines around his eyes.
“Lex.” He said my name deliberately—like a pronouncement he had been practicing for years.
Elana quickly excused herself from the room, giving me a tiny wave before scurrying out.
“I should go,” Quin said, glancing nervously from my father to me, but he didn’t move.
“Stay,” I commanded, latching onto his forearm.
“You must be Quin,” my father said, extending his hand.
Quin nodded. “How did you know?”
“Well,” my father began, sitting on the side of the bed and taking my hand, “Lex’s mother told me about you.”
Both Quin and I raised our eyebrows in surprise.
“You talked to Mom? When?” Saying Mom aloud induced fierce pangs of longing for her.
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My father sighed. I noticed his eyes were red and swollen at the edges. He had been crying. “She telephoned me a few days after you. She said there were some things she needed me to know. I got the sense that she was about to do something dangerous. Your mother was nothing if not practical.” He smiled to himself.
“What did she tell you?” I asked.
My father looked at Quin. “For starters, she said that you were awfully fond of my daughter.”
Quin beamed. “Yes, sir,” he replied, looking at me affectionately.
My father continued, “And she told me that she read my letters, every single one of them—not that I was surprised. She said it made her feel close to me, even though she was still angry with me for trying to take you away.” My father looked at me, his eyes moist. “That was never my intention, Lex. For a long time, all I wanted was for us to be a family again.”
I nodded. “Mom loved you,” I said. “Still.”
My father pulled me in close to him, holding me. Though I couldn’t see his face, I could feel him unraveling. “I, uh, want to … talk to the doctor … and find out when we can get you home. I’ll see you in a minute.” He stood and quickly left the room, his hands shielding his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Quin asked, after a moment.
“I guess. I just … I can’t believe my mom. She kept so many secrets. Why didn’t she just tell me?”
Admiral Bennington had confirmed that General Ryker and my mother had worked together on the Crim-X project. Now this. My mother’s withholding still hurt. It made me wonder if I had ever really known her at all.
Quin put his arm around me, and I nestled in close to him. “Not everybody is as good at talking as you, Ms. Knightley. Just keep that in mind.”
I laughed, but tears came to my eyes. “Is this ever going to get any easier?” I asked. More than anyone, I knew that Quin understood.
Quin nodded. “Easier, but not better.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
HEROINE OF THE RESISTANCE
“YOU’RE LUCKY,” THE DOCTOR SURMISED as he re-bandaged my side. “You lost a lot of blood, but the bullet went right through muscle. You should be as good as new in about six weeks.”