Creators (21 page)

“I definitely deserve to win the friend of the year award,” boasted a gun-toting Lockwood as he entered the room behind Henry.

My lips pulled into a grin at the sight of him. Lockwood hugged me. “Louisa sends her love,” he said.

“Is she okay?”

“Demanding as ever but doing well.”

“Being demanding is a family trait,” Henry joked.

“I still don’t understand. Were you following us?” I asked Lockwood.

“Yep. Seems your sister didn’t trust your father either. I was an hour behind you. When I found Henry here nearly bled out, I used some of the things Sharon taught me and stitched him up. He’s the biggest baby in the world, by the way.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, I believe it.”

“As much as I’d love to sit and watch this happy little reunion, we have a revolution to start,” a third new voice said as he entered the room.

My father.

“I can’t believe Charlie trusts the bastard,” Henry told me as I led him down to the basement where the incubating chosen ones were kept. My father had sent the two of us to guard the room, to make sure that once the council found out we had infiltrated their headquarters, they wouldn’t send someone to wake them.

So far, my father’s arrival, along with that of several of his soldiers, had gone undetected. George had set up a rendezvous point several miles outside of the headquarters. After putting into motion his plan to have Terrance attack me, George met with my father, using his knowledge of secrets, codes, and pathways to sneak in my father, his men, and Henry and Lockwood. I couldn’t figure why George would convince Terrance to attack me…except that it had turned James into a killer. And maybe that’s what he needed him to be for his plan to work. He was a genius when it came to manipulating people.

“I don’t think my father trusts anybody. He just doesn’t pass up an opportunity for destruction when he sees one,” I replied, constantly looking back over my shoulder as we walked down the corridor to the basement.

“You’re being too hard on him,” Henry countered.

I stopped and spun around to face him. “He almost got you killed. He knew those chosen ones wouldn’t take you to the headquarters. He used you to make the story believable.”

“He used me to start the revolution. I would die for that a thousand times,” he said urgently, passionately. The fire that lived inside of him was in full rage now.

I rolled my eyes. “While your pledge to die a thousand times is noble, you only die once.”

“I know about what happened to Stephanie,” he said quietly.

I licked my suddenly dry lips. “I’m sorr—”

“She would have wanted to die for the cause,” he interrupted, blinking away the tears that pooled in his eyes. I did the only thing I could do for him in that moment; I pretended I didn’t see them. I kept what I knew about Stephanie’s final moments to myself. That my father’s cause was no longer hers during those final days. Watching Henry die had changed something for her. She gave up her mission to save all to save one.

But Henry wasn’t Stephanie. Even the news of her death didn’t change his need for revenge. I could tell him how she died for something purer, something worth dying for, but he would never see it that way. That’s when I realized that more than his love for her or me, he loved revenge best of all.

And I felt sorry for him.

“I don’t have a key card for this,” I admitted, turning my attention back to the door.

“Good thing I do.” He grinned, pulling George’s card from his coat pocket. Of course he did.

Once we unlocked the room, Henry surveyed his surroundings, making count of all the incubating chosen ones to ensure none had been removed from their cases. He pressed his face against one of the chambers, his reflection mixing with that of the very thing created to destroy him. “What were they thinking when they made these things?”

I shrugged. “They probably thought what every man thinks when he attempts to control the world—they’re making it a better place. I don’t think anyone truly intends to harm people when they go about this, destroy them for joy. I almost feel sorry for the creators,” I admitted. Maybe Abrams wasn’t so different from me—a girl betrayed. Maybe if she knew love, she would save the things she wanted to destroy.

“You care too much. You want to think the best of people. That’s a weakness.”

“You know who you sound like when you’re talking like that? The damn council,” I said.

Ignoring my insult, Henry walked past me and pointed to the control panel room. “Is that how I end this? George said you had the code.”

I felt sick. That was why my father had sent me down here. Not to take count but to end the lives of the incubating chosen ones. George had planned this moment long ago. He knew I wouldn’t kill them on my own.

He should have known I wouldn’t kill them now.

“I’m not telling you anything. So if you want to kill them, you’d better go find George and tell him to give you that damn code,” I spat.

Henry sighed. “I really don’t want to make this more difficult than it needs to be.”

He was right. This was more difficult than it needed to be. George knew me. He knew how I worked. That was part of the reason he had made my life so difficult. He knew I would fight Henry over the codes.

“He’s trying to distract me. Keep me busy,” I said slowly.

“What are you talking about?”

I raised a shaking hand and pointed it at my best friend. I would love him forever, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t shoot him. He couldn’t help my father take James from me again. “You’re going to tell me what my father’s doing, and you’re going to tell me right this second.”

Henry opened his mouth to protest when the alarm bells began to blare throughout the entirety of the headquarters. I clamped my hands over my ears to protect them from the painful noise. Henry, obsessively focused on the mission at hand, stalked over and dragged me to the control panel.

“The code. Now,” he ordered.

I shook my head furiously. “I’m not giving you anything. You can go to hell,” I snapped.

“We don’t have time for this,” Henry warned.

“You’re right. We don’t. George could have given you the code, but he needed you to keep me busy. He’s always playing games,” I muttered, walking past Henry toward the exit. Before I could get far, Henry grabbed onto my elbow.

“You can’t win,” I told him. “You do know that, right? Every chosen one up there now knows the building is being attacked. How the hell do you expect to beat them?”

“We don’t have to beat them,” he yelled over the noisy warning system. He opened his jacket to reveal a makeshift bomb attached to his chest. “We just have to slow them down.”

I felt dizzy.

Lightheaded.

He used me to start the revolution. I would die for that a thousand times.

The fail-safe.

My father was going to kill the chosen ones. All of them.

I tried to yank my arm from Henry’s grasp but he wouldn’t let go. “You can stop fighting me. I’m not letting you leave this room. We came here for a reason. Now give me the code!”

I hated him. I hated my best friend. He had always been this person, and I was too blind to see it. Henry had been right when he said that I wanted to see the best in people.

“45981,” I mumbled.

“Good. Now, hold this,” Henry said, shoving his rifle into my hand. Once he turned his back to me to punch in the code, I knew what I had to do. Trust was a mighty powerful weapon in itself.

I whipped the rifle back and let it fly against the side of his head. With a grunt, he crumpled to the floor. I hadn’t killed him. He’d wake up. It was something.

“Don’t ever call me weak again,” I shouted over his body. I wouldn’t help him commit murder. I wasn’t like him.

The headquarters was under lockdown. The chosen ones were alert and ready to fight. I had George and my father trying to wipe every chosen one from existence.

But it didn’t matter.

I ran as fast as I could. Straight into the danger.

I had to save James.

…

Complete and utter chaos had erupted on the main floors of the council headquarters. I ducked my head as I ran through the mass of people that seemed to be everywhere doing everything. Like the roaches that scurried across the bathroom floor of the compound when the lights were turned on. There was a group of creators who worked together to pull free several paintings nailed to the wall. I wondered if they were trying to save the works of art for the sake of the art or steal them for themselves. Hidden amongst the clumps of men searching for a purpose were the natural girls forced into service. I watched as one girl pulled on another girl’s arm who lay curled in on herself in the corner, crying and wailing that the end had come. Several chosen ones ran past me in formation while creators huddled in corners arguing over strategies and best laid plans.

I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t know what the fail-safe entailed, so I didn’t know what to look for. I just ran as fast as I could through the halls, hoping to see my father or George, but mostly I searched for James. My father had taken him and Robert along.

That was the part I couldn’t wrap my brain around. Why would he have taken three chosen ones with him to activate the fail-safe that would kill them?

“Now, if you want the council gone, taking out that army is the first step.”

George wanted to die. He wanted to ruin the council so badly that he would sacrifice his own life for it. Like Henry, he was willing to die for his revolution. My father would certainly have no qualms about killing the entire chosen one species, including his son-in-law and the boy his daughter loved, but George must have lied about what the fail-safe did to get Robert and James onboard.

As I rounded the corner, I practically collided with three chosen ones who formed a barrier in front of the offices of the inner circle. If there was a place to start looking for a fail-safe, it would be here.

One of the chosen ones grabbed me by the shoulders. “This area is off limits,” he warned.

I swallowed back my fear. “I…I was just looking for Richard Harper. I was assigned to his family, and I can’t find him anywhere. I need to make sure he’s safe.”

“He’s not here. Now move along,” he commanded.

If the chosen ones were still guarding the main offices, it meant that either my father’s men hadn’t reached them yet, or the fail-safe was located there. Or both. I mumbled an apology and turned to walk away. I would have to find a way past those men.

Suddenly, standing in front of me was a man I recognized from my father’s army.

“How many times do I have to repeat myself? This area is off limits,” the chosen one screamed at my father’s man.

The chosen one didn’t know. How would he? My eyes darted to my father’s solider as he opened his jacket, revealing an intricate maze of wires. I bolted. As fast and as hard as I could. I wasn’t far enough away to miss what he yelled at the chosen ones who stood before him. “You’re done telling me about my limits!”

I pulled open the door closest to me, throwing myself in.

That was when the first explosion went off.

The bells were back. Ringing so loud inside my ears that each time the blasted noise rang, the sound clutched onto the vertebrates of my spine, separating and smashing them back together, paralyzing me with pain.

But I didn’t have time to waste.

I pushed against the door, desperate to get out, but it didn’t want to budge. I figured that debris from the soldier’s makeshift bomb was blocking the way. I rammed my shoulder into it harder, but it still stayed shut. Locked. Trapped. I thought of all the times Terrance and Richard forced me into the small, cramped room as punishment. With a howl, I ran my shoulder into the door over and over again until I was quite sure it was going to fall off.

And that’s when I hit the door again.

I wouldn’t stop.

Not for anything.

Finally, the door gave. It wouldn’t open all the way, but just enough that I could squeeze through. Once I was out, I realized that several bodies tossed over each other from the force of the blast had been why the door wouldn’t open.

My father had begun his revolution, and these were its first victims.

A hazy and tar-ish smoke filled the air, making it damn hard to see. Gray-skinned men and women fumbled past me searching for release from the acrid air. I was going the opposite direction of all of them. If my father’s man was instructed to blow up the guards, that meant he needed to get to what was behind those doors.

The closer I got to the scene of the crime, the denser the smoke got. Plaster and marble buckled and fell from every direction. I tried to ignore the nausea that consumed me as I walked by countless limbs torn from bodies.

I kept pushing.

A hand grabbed onto my hair and snatched me down to the ground, flipping me over to my back. I raised my arms in front of my face to protect myself. Two hands grabbed onto the front of my shirt.

“Hello, Tessie.”

And karma paid me back for Henry.

George slammed my head against the floor.

When I came to, George was tying my hands up with rope, fastening me to a railing used by the feeble little man who occupied the office. “Why are you doing this?” I asked groggily, grasping for consciousness.

“Because you’ll get in the way.”

“Of what? Eradicating your species?”

George’s eyes widened slightly. “I see someone has been running their mouth. Let me guess, your other boyfriend? That pathetic little Henry.”

“Harper was the one who told me. You know, the father of the boy you forced me to murder,” I replied between clenched teeth.

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replied, in the same sickly sweet tone he had used during our time together at Templeton.

I threw my body at him, but the ropes kept me constrained. “You told him what I could do, you sick, twisted monster! Why? Why the hell would you do that?”

“That had nothing to do with you. Why must the whole world revolve around you? You’re nothing. Do you hear me? You never have been, and you never will be,” he sang, tugging on my ropes to emphasize his point.

“James. You needed me to make him hate himself,” I fumed.

George chuckled to himself. His laughter was filled with pride. Pride at how he played us all. “That’s why I convinced your father to send you here. I needed you two to reunite. Cast that spell over him that makes him reckless. Throws out the window every damn bit of logic he has been wired to use. And just when he thinks he can have you, I’d make sure he knew he couldn’t.”

“It didn’t matter to you if Terrance killed me or not.”

George shrugged. “Probably would have been easier if he had, but things worked out well anyways. You killed him, and James murdered two people to foolishly try and save you. And better yet, he enjoyed it. Innocent, holier than thou James. And what it must have been like for him to know his saintly Tess smashed a man’s head in till he was barely recognizable.”

What kind of world does this? Makes us into these things?
James’s words haunted me.

I yanked liked a madwoman against the ropes that bound me. George continued to laugh. As he stood up, satisfied there was no way I could get out of the ropes, he patted me on the head. “It’s been fun, Tessie.”

“Why?” I asked. “I don’t understand it. Why would you want to die?” George froze at the door. I could still hear the muffled screams and groans of the injured on the other side. “I don’t know anyone who loves himself more than you do.”

George turned around and walked to where I sat imprisoned. He crouched down so his eyes were level with mine. “That’s the way they made me. To think I was superior. It’s the idea that became both my mother and my father. And then when I shook their hands, found out they didn’t even care, knew I was only a means to an end, that they could kill me with a series of numbers and pushing a button, I made my decision. I would take their army from them. I would let the eastern sector invade. I would prove to them that in the end, I was God.

“And your boyfriend is going to help me do it. I knew once I pushed him to the edge, made him see that in order for you to be safe, he had to let his kind die out, he’d help me,” George said.

“I’m safest when I’m with him. We keep each other safe,” I yelled.

“As long as he lives, the rest live. He’d rather watch a whole species die to give you the smallest hope of finding peace. In fact, he was the one who told me where the fail-safe was. He memorized the map you gave him. I didn’t even need to take the secret from him.”

“Your child died,” I spat out. I needed something, anything to keep him in that room with me.

“Good. I wouldn’t want it to grow up in this world anyway. Would you?”

…

As soon as George was gone, I thrashed and pulled against my ropes. Sweat covered every inch of my body, and my muscles screamed in agony. I yelled for help as long as I could. I kicked at the door, and when that didn’t work, I swung my feet around the small office, knocking anything I could off the walls. Trying to make as much noise as possible.

After a half hour, I lay my head against the railing. I was panting. My legs and arms trembled so hard that my teeth chattered. I closed my eyes and thought of James. All the things I would say to him to not let George enact the fail-safe.

All the ways I loved him.

All the ways he loved me.

How that love was worth living for.

“Tess!”

Someone was screaming my name outside of the door.

“I’m in here! Please! Help me!” I begged.

When the door opened, I had never been more thankful to see anyone in my life. “Lockwood! Thank God! Friend of the year award for sure.” I laughed, near delirious.

“Yeah, I’ll remind you of that the next time we get into a fight,” he replied, bending down to untie me. Once free, he lifted me to the ground. I nearly fell right back down. My whole body was sore from trying to fight against the ropes.

Once I steadied myself, I explained to Lockwood everything that George had told me. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go save your boyfriend,” he replied, punching me playfully in the arm. I nearly fell on my ass again. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, offering his hand for support.

George had been wrong. I
was
a force to be reckoned with. I had a weapon he couldn’t comprehend.

A friend.