Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy) (39 page)

“Now wh
o’s got the big gun, pendejos? Nice job, Fi,” he said, smiling down at her “Now what do we do with the ones who surrendered?”

“I’ve got that covered,” Asher said,
waving a handful of cable ties. “Game over, boys. Time to have a seat, with your hands behind you, of course.”

Fi smiled as Asher secured the wrists and ankles of her captives.
He’d listened to her.
Every kill he made was given a choice first, and each one who surrendered was a victory, as far as she was concerned. One less soul on her love’s conscience.

The smoke in the air was clearing and the sun had risen high enough that the entire scene was now visible.
A cheer rose from the Army of Eden when they saw José standing on top of the shed, the mortar array hoisted over his head. All over the settlement, soldiers, Army members, and determined Seekers were cleaning up the last Lobo combatants. As Asher had suspected, the mortar was the lynchpin. Any Lobos with fight left in them gave up when they saw that it had changed hands.

“
Now for the finale, Fi,” Asher said quietly, and she nodded. She waved goodbye to José.

As she and Asher made their way across the settlement to the radio room, they passed the barrier line of the Army of Eden.
She hadn’t given it proper credit in the darkness. The “Great Wall” formed a giant ring three people deep. They held hands firmly, man, woman, and teen alike, and Fi saw that the ring continued down the hillside and around the lake, where the Eden colonists formed its southern boundary. The huddled Truthers inside were a mixture of terror and outrage.

“What do you want with us, Liars?”
A man screamed into the passive face of a thin, older man wearing a headband with Eve in its center.

The Army man didn’t blink.
He didn’t budge. “We only ask that you listen.”

“What?” the Truther wailed.
“Why do you keep saying that? What does it mean?”

“We only ask that you listen,” the Army member repeated, as did the women and men to his left and right.

Suddenly, a voice rang out over the settlement’s loudspeakers.
Carter’s voice. Only it wasn’t the warm honey to which Fi had grown accustomed. This was a frightened screech.
“Let me go! This is an outrage…”

The Truthers looked up at the speakers, their eyes wide.

“Showtime,” Fi said, pulling Asher forward.
“We have to hurry before they get too restless.” They headed toward Carter’s cabin and found a broad-shouldered older man in uniform, flanked by two soldiers, barring the door.

“Mrs. Grey.” The older man saluted her, and held out his hand. “General Zelinski. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”

Fi’s mouth dropped open.
Though she’d known the General was here, meeting him in person snapped her imaginings into stark reality.

“I believe there’s someone else who has yet to meet you both,” he said, with a glint in his eye.
He opened the door behind him, and Carter’s protests burst forth as Fi slipped through.

“I’m telling you, the followers won’t tolerate…”
Carter stopped. “Marie?”

Fi
heard the name ring out over the loudspeakers behind them just before the General closed the door. She shivered. This day had been a long time coming.

------------- Fi ------------

“Hello, Carter.”

H
is mouth dropped open when he saw the gun in her hand. “Marie…What? Who?” His eyes widened as his gaze shifted to Asher and his sword. “You!” He turned back to her, his face twisting. “No! No, Marie! You’re a Truther. You can’t be one of the…
Seeders
.” His voice dripped with disgust. “How could you betray me like this? After I was so good to you and your sister? Wait, is she even your sister?”

Fi saw his mind racing and
let him work it out. Asher fingered the edge of his sword, his eyes narrowed.

Carter
Lawson’s eyebrows lifted. “The girl with the daggers. Of course. Tall. Dark hair. Sara’s the girl with the daggers, right?”

Fi nodded and
he slumped against the wall. “I can’t believe it.” His voice was plaintive for just a second, and then he straightened up again. “Well, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who you and your rabble really are. The followers are going to rise. They will defend me and the settlement. We can call upon people from far and wide, and believe me, we will rise.”

Fi circled him, placing the radio array at her back.
She took a quick look, just to be sure. It was definitely turned to broadcast. She slid one hand behind her back and turned the volume up.
Perfect.
“I don’t think so, Carter. You see…they’ll only rise if they believe in you, the head of the Truthers…the man who speaks Truth and not Lies, right?”

Carter
blanched to nearly the color of his beard. “They’ll never believe you. Everything that you say is lies,
Marie
.”

His sneer sent a fresh, white-hot spike of rage through her.
He thought he was soooo clever.
Her .22 shook in her hand and she startled, surprised to find that she still gripped it. Without a thought, she raised her weapon, training it between his eyes as she’d imagined so many times.

“Fi.”

She ignored Asher’s warning.
Truth be told? She didn’t even hear it. She didn’t hear a thing once she raised that weapon. It was just like her dream.
It was all happening.
“You know how many times I’ve imagined this moment, Carter?” She cocked her head. “Maybe you should do the math. How many days has it been since your men took our people…took my
sister
, away?”

Carter was silent.

“How many days?” she shouted.

“Ninety-four,” he murmured.

“Then I’ve imagined this moment ninety-four thousand times. You know how it always ends?”

She strode forward and centered the barrel of her gun against Carter’s forehead and he
squeezed his eyes shut.

“Fi!” Asher’s warning snapped in the taut air.

“Open your eyes!” she commanded.

“Fi, don’t.”

Her hands began to shake, desperate to pull the trigger. This sniveling, whimpering, lying sack of shit was the cause of all this trouble. People had lost their homes, lost their hope, lost their lives.
He’d nearly taken her life. And Kiara’s. And Luke’s.
She breathed hard, pressing the gun barrel into his skin. “I said, open your eyes, Carter.”

Her enemy opened his eyes and stared at her.
Yes
, she thought
. Just like my dreams
. But what she saw there wasn’t the fear she craved. Instead his eyes burned with hatred so raw it took her breath away. And she knew that he saw the exact same thing in hers.

Someone has to be someone
, Ash.
The memory rushed through her, and she gasped and stepped back. Trembling, she holstered her weapon and closed her eyes.
I choose to be someone,
she thought.
I choose life.
“This is the part,” she said wearily, “where you realize that we’re the good guys.”

“
Which begs the question,” Asher jumped in, to her relief, “what are you, Dr. Lawson? You know, I find it interesting that you chose to keep the ‘Dr.’ part. I guess you thought it made you sound like someone who attended seminary. But you didn’t attend seminary, did you
Dr.
Lawson? You got that nice title when you got your Ph.D. in Psychology. Hey, wait a minute…isn’t that a science degree?”

Carter
squirmed, unsure.

“That’
s right, Carter,” Fi said, “we know that you have a degree in science, and we even have proof.”

“So what?”
He fired back, reddening. “So I once had the same ill-conceived notion as all of your precious colonists. I repented. I sought the Truth as God intended it.”

“Really?” Asher interrupted
. “And when did this amazing transformation take place?”

“What?”
Carter was taken off guard. “What do you mean ‘when’?”

“He means,” Fi said,
gritting her teeth, “when was it that you changed your mind, Dr. Lawson? What could possibly cause a man who worked for a decade toward a profession to suddenly change his mind?”

Fi waited, watching
her enemy’s flush deepen as he struggled for words. “It…I…You see…”

“No, I see,” she
interrupted. “In fact, I know exactly when you changed your mind. It was the day that you found out that Diaspora I had cut you from their colony!”

“That’s not true!”

“Oh, no? Then was it the day that you snuck back into the Diaspora colony and opened the seals, scattering your former colleague’s…your former
friends’
lives, and hopes in the deadly breeze?” She was rolling now, her rage finding form in words.

“I…I didn’t.
I…”

“Tell me, Carter, how did it feel to know that you’d made the decision about whether they all lived or died?
Did you stick around and watch them as they struggled and faltered in the Wasteland? Did you grin as they ran to the woods, terrified?”

“No, I didn’t
watch
! I left right after…” He clapped his hands over his mouth.

“
Yeessssss,” Fi hissed. “Now we’re getting to the truth aren’t we? And the truth is that you were a scientist, just like the people of Eden and Diaspora. The truth is that you worked for nearly a decade on Diaspora, planning and making the decisions side-by-side with those you then condemned to death. And when you figured out that Diaspora was real, that the Famine was coming and you’d been cut, you were enraged and you sought your vengeance.”

“Because i
t wasn’t right!” Carter exploded, leaping forward. Asher stepped between them, and Carter grabbed fistfuls of his own hair in frustration. “All that time they’d lied to us, told us Diaspora was a Goddamned think-tank. And then I found the secret plans and I saw the truth.”

“Including the fact that you were cut,” Fi said.

“Including the fact that WE were cut,” he wailed.

He turned and grabbed his Bible, fishing a photograph from between the pages.
He threw it on the table and Fi’s stomach wrenched.
Oh, Jesus…no.

“I begged them to take her, to take Bailey, and cut me
instead. She wouldn’t need many resources. She was just a little thing. All she needed was the medicine and the food…
she needed the food
. It was her only chance. When her mother died of breast cancer, I promised her I’d make sure that Bailey was safe.”

Carter sank back against the wall as angry tears filled his eyes.
“I was all she had. Her father never acknowledged her, and my wife left me long ago. Bailey was my sunshine, my baby girl. I lived every single day just for her. And when she got Sick…” his lower lip trembled as the tears poured down his face.

Fi
felt like she was going to throw up. The photograph smiled up at her, the gap teeth and blue eyes twisting her heart.

“…When she got Sick I made the mistake of telling a Diaspora colleague.
A guy I’d known for nearly ten years. TEN YEARS! It was just a confession over beers, an unburdening among friends. I didn’t know that he’d tell someone else, and that they’d tell someone else…and that they’d CUT ME because of BAILEY! Hell, when I told my buddy she was Sick, I didn’t even know that Diaspora was real, for Christ’s sakes. And then four weeks later, I’m staring at the same papers I’d sent to others, thinking that they were nothing more than a lay-off, a ‘Thanks, but we don’t need your expertise any longer.’ Only by then, I knew it was a death sentence.”

“For you,” Asher interrupted.

“For HER, you fucking idiot!” Carter exploded, punching the wall and then howled at the sickening crunch of his own bones. He clutched his maimed hand to his chest. “You want to know the day that I changed my mind? It was the day I went home to her and she smiled at me despite her bald little head, and I knew that one day soon, she’d be gone.”

Fi’s hea
rt squeezed into her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

“And it didn’t have to be
! It didn’t have to be! I swore that day that I’d make them pay…”

“
Who, Carter?” Fi croaked, the tears welling in her own eyes. “The scientists? Diaspora?”

“EVERYONE!
They all deserve to pay. She was little, but she was strong. She could’ve won, could’ve beaten it, but they didn’t give her a chance. They just decided to write her off to die. And they can’t do that!
I’m the one!
I decide! I DECIDE!
”

He
sank to the ground, sobbing into his hands as his agony poured out of him. Fi felt the hot tears on her own cheeks. She tried unsuccessfully to draw breath. She’d been right all along. All this was about a little girl. His baby girl. Bailey.