Creators (13 page)

“Yes, Tess. According to Stephanie, they didn’t even know you were here. They’ve been tracking your father.”

I sat straight up and stared right into Henry’s eyes. “Stephanie told you, didn’t she? What my father is hiding?” I reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me. “What the hell was worth the death of all these people?”

Henry gently removed my hand from his chin. “One of the original creators. Your father kidnapped him.”

My mouth fell open.

I stalked past the many victims of my father’s actions. I ignored the countless protests that Henry hurled at me from behind. He had to have known they wouldn’t have stopped me. Once I had recovered from the shock of finding out that my father had kidnapped a creator, the creator who had been talked about for years, more bogeyman than man, more legend than human, I wasted no time in hunting him down. We needed to talk.

One of the last things Sharon had told me was to talk to my father, and it wasn’t too late to listen to her. He had to answer for her death.

He had to answer for a lot of things.

And then there was the other reason I sought him out—I wanted to see the man responsible for hurting and nearly destroying everyone I ever cared about—natural and chosen one alike. My father had held one of the creators in the community for weeks. A man who possessed the answers to so many questions, including questions about Louisa, had been so close. When I thought about it, and the fact that my father kept it from me, knowing how I worried for her, I could rip his head off.

I had been so stupid for placing even the smallest bit of trust in him.

I had pried from Henry where my father had set up camp. Not that it took much to figure it out. I just needed to follow the line of mindless soldiers who held their guns like compasses.

My father stood amidst his army, and I pushed through them without any attempt at civility. Upon seeing me, my father nodded. “Would you all mind giving me and my daughter a few moments?” he asked the men and women who helped him wipe out the community. It may have been the council’s chosen ones who initiated the event, but it was my father’s bombs that killed Sharon.

Bombs had been a staple of the resistance during its early stages. My father’s letters had mentioned how desperate men and women strapped makeshift, dodgy explosives to their children in some horrific symbol of their anger at the many failures of their government. It made me sick even now to think of it.

Were there any limits to the things people would do?

Neither side seemed to care much about collateral damage.

The men and women mumbled to each other as they went off and busied themselves with the next steps of my father’s master plan. “How’s the head?” he asked casually, like he was talking about the weather.

“Compared to most, I’m just dandy,” I replied bitterly.

With a groan, the first sign of his age I had seen or heard since he placed himself back into my life, my father sat down on the ground. “Yeah, I heard you lost some people. I’m sorry about that.” He pulled his rifle into his lap and began to clean it.

I balled up my fists. “That’s all you have to say? You’re sorry?”

My father wrinkled his forehead. “What else would you like me to say? Because I feel like we keep having this same conversation.”

Father and commander. He seemed to slip into each role effortlessly whenever it suited his needs.

He was right. There was nothing he could say that would stop me from wanting to yank that gun from his hands and aim it straight at him.

“Need me to show you how to clean one?” he asked. I frowned, unsure which part of my short speech had given the impression that I wanted to learn anything from him except the location of the council leader. “You’re staring at my gun,” he explained.

I crossed my arms and stared him down, trying, in vain, to regain my composure. My father knew exactly what buttons to push. Instead of yelling, he retained an air of stoniness during our conversations, and it always drove me mad.

He squinted, then sighed. “You’re thinking of using this on me. Aren’t you?” There was a slight air of amusement to his words. It seemed like everything I did or said reminded him of some inside joke he had forgotten to tell me.

“I wouldn’t be wrong if I did.”

“Some anger is good, Tess. It can fuel you. Give you purpose and determination when things seem impossible. But too much anger and you’ll implode. It muddles your brain.” He went back to cleaning his gun.

“I’m not here for a damn lesson,” I snapped.

“Then what are you here for?”

I lifted my shoulders back and stood straight. “I want you to take me to him.”

“To who?”

“Abrams.”

“Who the hell told you?”

“Does it really matter? I want to speak to him.”

“Like hell it doesn’t matter! If I have a leak, I need to stop it,” he countered. He stood and hoisted his gun over his shoulder. “It shouldn’t be too hard to trace. I’ll start with your friend Henry.” With a grunt, he pushed past me.

I spun around. “You owe me this!” I yelled.

My father froze. I watched as every muscle in his arms and back tensed. Temper. Despite trying to hide it from me, it was something we shared. He took a deep breath before turning around to face me. “Owe you?”

“Yes, owe. I don’t even care why you left anymore, but the fact remains that you did. I had to sit there and watch my mother drink herself to death. To watch Emma die in childbirth. To trek through the woods to find that my little sister was manipulated. That she could die. And I did it without you!”

I clenched and unclenched my fists before continuing, trying to ignore how heavy my head felt. “I got your letters. I know that you always wondered if having children was the best idea. But that doesn’t matter because you
did
have children. Children you abandoned.”

“I left because it was the only way to stop—”

“Who? The council? The government that you feel abandoned
you
, right?” I walked toward my father, forcing my anger down, pulling up an emotion that I liked to keep hidden. “You came back here and made me believe you were that person—that man I cried for at night, but you’re not him. Are you?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“No one is who they were back then. That’s how we’ve survived,” he replied, averting his eyes. Maybe he did it because saying it meant acknowledging everything we lost, or maybe he looked away because it was a lie. I wasn’t sure, and I probably would never be sure about his intentions again.

“But at what cost?” I countered, blinking back the tears. When my father couldn’t answer, I nodded. “Right. You brought that man into my home; you risked the lives of everyone I loved to keep him hidden. I deserve to know why.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Five minutes. I just want five minutes,” I said “Show me that all of this has a reason. Prove to me that I wasn’t just a pawn.”

“I…” My father’s voice trailed off, and I could sense that his determination was wavering.

“If you did this for Louisa and me, then give me what I need. And I need to talk to him.”

My father gave a curt nod. “Fine. Follow me.”

…

As I trudged through the woods, I went through my list of questions for Abrams. Questions I feared the most because they would lead me to the answers that changed my world. Would the answers make me feel better? Or was I better off not knowing?

James’s letters had told me the council knew Abrams was missing, and that they were doing everything in their power to find him. Despite his notoriety, he was still important to them. I couldn’t help but wonder why. There was no way he was an active creator; it was some miracle of science that he even still lived. But what would the council want with a man who could only bring them shame?

“How did you get Abrams?” I called out to my father, who walked ahead of me.

“The council kept the monster moving. Always on the go from one compound to another. They kept him gagged, chained, hiding in cellars and basements. Naturals never knew the reason for their damnation lay right under their feet.”

“But why?”

“Why does anyone keep something? Because it has purpose,” he said, looking back at me over his shoulder. “They needed information. Information Abrams refused to give, no matter what they did.”

I furrowed my brow. “What kind of information?”

“The kind that could change the world.” He paused. “We ambushed one of the transports. Killed the captors and took him.”

“Just like that?” I refused to believe that anything to do with my father was so simple.

“Just like that,” he deadpanned.

“I can see where I get my great communication skills from,” I said.

My father came to a stop, pointing his finger toward a scrunched up, haggard creature tied to a tree. Its head was covered in a burlap sack.

Abrams.

“But how? Isn’t he supposed to be dead? He’s like a billion years old,” I said. Even seeing it, it was still hard to believe.

“Come on, Tess, we both know there are no bounds to what science can do,” my father replied.

“That’s what those creatures were looking for? That’s why they were in the woods. And why they attacked the community?”

My father nodded grimly.

“How did they know where we were?” I demanded. My father had put the whole community in danger by bringing this man there, but it still didn’t explain how they found us.

“I’m not entirely sure. I can’t figure that one out,” he admitted, wrapping his hand tightly around his gun, an edge to his voice. “Right now, all you need to know is that we have him. And we will get what we need from Abrams: the knowledge we need to take the council down. For good. I never thought they would find us in the community. I brought Abrams there because I needed a place to try and get the information. Somewhere safe. Somewhere off the grid.”

I remembered the bloodied man who had run toward Sharon only days before. The blood hadn’t been his. Had my father attempted to torture Abrams as well?

I stepped gingerly closer to his prisoner. I lifted my hands toward the bag. I wanted to see him. I wanted to put a face to the pain I had felt all my life. It would be so much easier to hate one person than an entire government.

As my hand met with the rough texture of the bag, my father’s voice halted me. “You sure about this?”

No. But there was no turning back now. There wasn’t time for that anymore.

I grabbed onto the bag and pulled it off.

All the air rushed from my lungs.

Abrams was right before me. Tied to a tree like a prisoner of war, bruised and bloodied, was one of the men responsible for almost every dark and twisted thing I had ever seen.

Except it wasn’t a man.

It was a woman.

…

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. How was this even possible? The council despised women, blamed them for everything that was wrong with the world. Claimed our emotions and natural-born wantonness weakened the men, leading the country to ruin. Was I to believe that this creator, one of the original masterminds behind the creation of the chosen ones and the downfall of the naturals, was a woman? The very thing that the council warned against had given birth to the council itself?

“Are you going to stare at me all day?” Her voice was quiet and wispy, like the leaves that crackled and crunched under your feet as you walked through the woods.

Her age showed in every crease and wrinkle that covered her face. And there were a ton of them. She was the oldest woman I had ever seen. Decrepit. Sandpapery. The blues of her veins broke through her skin like some sort of beacon, calling to whoever was looking for her. Bright curves of color against her alabaster skin. A bit of drool mixed with blood slipped out of her mouth. Her eyes, which once might have showcased color, were covered with a milk white slip of film.

Something so weak had destroyed so many.

I had a thousand questions for her. But at the mere sight of her, I lost all my power again. She was like the villains of stories living only on the pages. Except this villain was far more dubious than I could have even begun to imagine. It was hard to believe that she could actually be real.

“You have five minutes,” my father reminded me. I nodded numbly as he moved to stand behind me. He didn’t bother to explain away my shock. He simply held his rifle pointed at the woman he had hidden within the community. Apparently, despite the ropes and men who stood guard in the tree lines, my father didn’t trust her. Of course, she had fooled an entire country, so I could understand his fear.

“She looks like you,” Abrams said to my father. “Your daughter, I’m assuming?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but his voice cut me off. “Don’t you tell her anything about yourself. If you have questions, you’d better ask her. You’re running out of time.”

I closed my mouth and stared at the enigma in front of me. Even broken and weakened, the woman spoke with such an air of authority that I was half ready to follow her every command. It wasn’t the way a woman was taught to speak.

There was a part of me that liked the way it sounded.

“Ask away, child.” Abrams grinned. The whispery static of her voice caused me to shudder. Under the power lay the threat, and while I would never give up fighting for my own rights, I would never take my power at someone else’s expense. Yet she seemed to enjoy it.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I whispered.

“Of course you do,” she whispered back.

I closed my eyes briefly, then pulled forward the image of Emma. I let the moment of her death play inside my mind. When I opened my eyes, it wasn’t so scary to look at her anymore. “I want to know about the women,” I replied, my voice steel.

Abrams raised an eyebrow. “The women?”

“I want to know what you did to them. Why they can’t give birth. Why they had to d-die,” I stammered. I could feel my hands shaking. Not out of fear, but out of something else—something darker, feral. Something more lethal.

If this was the fire that Henry walked around with inside of him, I didn’t blame him entirely for giving himself over to it. It buzzed and burned inside of me, killing the fear. But I couldn’t let it consume me. If I did, I risked becoming like my father, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was so different from the villain tied up before me.