The Violet Awakening (The Elementum Trinity Book 2) (15 page)

Kayla didn’t say goodbye to Sarah. She made one last attempt to change her mind, to convince her that the Elementums were unnatural, and that she shouldn’t have anything to do with us. But when Sarah expressed her excitement to be a Violet, to help us and learn from us, Kayla’s eyes went blank, and no further words passed her lips.

Lily had strongly suggested that Bryant stay in the Eden. At first, he’d put up a fight, and nobody could blame him. He wanted to be there when we found Nadia, to see her for the first time. But Lily said her body might be too weak from being in a coma for so many years, and bonding could be detrimental. Not only that, but there was no way of knowing what obstacles would cross our paths. Taking time for them to bond would only slow us down, and put us in more danger. After Bryant reluctantly agreed to stay in the Eden, Lily had asked Lakin to stay behind ‘in case he was needed.’ It was obvious that she’d only asked him not to join us because he was the weakest, and had the least to offer our mission. But Lakin wouldn’t have it. He refused to leave my side, and Lyla opted to stay in his place, where she and Bryant would keep Sarah company while Reagan helped her to understand her new abilities as a Violet.

We walked in silence along the dark tunnel. Kayla and Emmy kept their distance at the back of the group, as if all of my kind carried a plague. 
In reaching the end of the passageway, Lily nodded, signaling that Patrick’s generation was to hide us all from sight. Mattie stood between Lakin and me, taking our hands. Patrick, between Lily and Joseph. But Emmy and Kayla nearly fell over themselves when Jason reached for their hands. Lily sighed and confronted them.

“Whatever your concerns about us are, you need to suppress them.” Her words were short and sharp. “Slate’s men are going to be out there. As much as I’m sure you’ll want to jump for joy at the sight of the first human you see, thes
e men will take down anyone they think came from the Eden. They’re not going to differentiate between you two and the rest of us. Even if they did, what happened at The Facility should be enough to tell you that they wouldn’t care. Now, take Jason’s hand, and keep quiet.”

Lakin and I stared at Lily, in shock. We had been getting glimpses of her temper for the last few days, but we’d never seen her go off on someone outside of her generation. Part of me wanted to applaud her, and the
rest of me wanted to hide under a rock, where she could never get mad at me for anything.

When Kayla and Emmy finally gave in, Lily dragged her hand across the stone, checking to see if the coast was clear. And, of course, it wasn’t. Bodies in black suits populated the forest, kneeling to check for tracks, and scanning the area with binoculars.

A couple of men stood at the bank of the now-frozen stream, which led to the waterfall that concealed our rocky-doorway. They pointed at what looked to be a shoeprint in the mud, then pointed to the other side of the stream. Clumsily, they made their way across the ice, and disappeared into the trees.

Lily cautiously opened the stone door, and, hand-in-hand, we slowly made our way to the land, heartbeats racing every time someone’s foot slid unintentionally across the frozen surface of the water. Once our feet were firmly and safely on the forest-floor, we treaded as lightly as possible in the direction of Abigail’s house.

I clapped a hand over my mouth, accidentally letting out a gasp as my eyes fell on the wondrous sight of Freedom Pond, totally iced over. Sunlight beamed off the surface, making the entire pond appear a blinding orangey-yellow. We all stopped in our tracks, glancing around to make sure nobody had heard my gasp. We seemed to be all right, but my jaw fell open. I stood as still and frozen as the pond at our side.

“Are you getting anything, yet?” a nameless man in a black suit asked, scraping mud from the bottom of his shoes against a tree.

Dr. Helmsworth stared straight ahead, but it was obvious—to me, at least—that he was not checking out the newest attraction of Freedom. His eyes, filled with a teary regret, were locked on mine. My grandfather was still alive, and he was standing only a few short feet away from me, yet I couldn’t hug him. I couldn’t speak to him. I couldn’t even punch him on the shoulder for never telling me that we were related. I could only stare. I wondered if that was what my life had become; seeing the faces of those I loved from only a distance—in photos and in silence.

“No,” Dr. Helmsworth whispered, coughing as his voice caught in his throat. “No. Nothing.”

And, with that, he looked to his feet and kept walking, making certain to lead the guard in a direction other than ours.

‘What do they want with him?’
I thought, knowing Lily would be inside my head.

‘They think he’s a Violet,’
her voice echoed in my mind, as we continued our trek.
‘They think he’ll be able to help find any of our kind who might be outside the Eden.’

‘He could see us…’

‘Generational gifts have no effect on the recycled,’
she explained.

‘Will I ever see him again?’

Lily’s silence ran through me, freezing my veins and heart as it went. I was an Oracle, now. I could have figured out how to get inside her head and see what she was thinking. But I didn’t need to. Her silence was my answer.

We managed to make it the rest of the way to Abigail’s house without incident, though Lakin had come very close to sneezing in front of a guard. Fortunately, I was a quick thinker, and pinched him on the arm. The pain was enough to distract him from the tingly feeling in his nostrils. It was also enough to get me a very angry glare.

The old porch groaned threateningly beneath our weight, as we all huddled around the front door. Lily knocked, but before anyone could answer, the door creaked open just enough to glimpse the gory scene.

Kayla choked on a stray sob behind me, as the disastrous view of Abigail’s house peeked out at us. The couch lay on its side, torn cushions strewn about the floor, the clouds of fluff clinging to anything they could. Thick dust filled the air, stirred up from the mangled surfaces on which it had previously rested. And at the kitchen table, Abigail’s body sat hunched over, a pool of blood seeping through the blanket of dust that surrounded her face.

“Oh, Abigail,” Lily whispered
as she let go of Patrick’s hand.

Following Lily’s lead, eight other bodies popped into view for any lingering eyes to see. Emmy comforted a very emotional Kayla, and I wondered if she would have been so
sensitive had she known that Abigail was a Violet.

I wandered selfishly to the wall of photos, wanting t
o look at anything other than another lifeless body. In the last few days, I had seen far more death than most people would probably see in a lifetime. I didn’t want to see more.

Lakin joined me, as I picked up the cracked photo of our parents’ generation from the floor. My eyes blurred with tears at their smiling faces. During our fir
st visit to Abigail’s house, I’d paid little attention to the others in the photo. I had noticed only the eyes of the people standing behind our parents. At the sight of a familiar face, my stomach felt as if it were trying to escape through my throat. A much-younger Paula grinned at me, but she was not the only person I knew from the back row. Lily and Patrick gathered around Abigail’s body, the reflection of her glittering, floating ashes gleaming faintly from the cracks of the photo in my hand. I wouldn’t have recognized him, had I not been so focused on Paula’s face at his side. His hair wasn’t the slicked-back salt-and-pepper I had always known. It was dark and fluffy, and tousled by the ocean breeze. His eyes were gray, but lacked the unsettling clarity of the Violets’. They were the kind of gray that glistened like every villain I had ever seen in movies.

“Are you certain you want us to leave you here?” Lily asked, slamming the van door behind Emmy and Kayla. “If you give us some time, we can help make arrangements—”

“You have done enough,” Emmy said coolly. “We’ll be fine.”

Kayla looked around with wide eyes, taking in the civilization that was Waterville. Lily had said it would be too dangerous to leave them somewhere in Freedom, that William’s men could be anywhere. But Emmy insisted on remaining close, hoping she would be able to find her son.

Lily nodded calmly, before reaching into her pocket with a gloved hand and retrieving a roll of money.
Emmy eyed her outstretched palm with concern.

“Please take it. You’re going to need something to get you started,” she said, trying to sound as comforting as possible.

Emmy took a cautious step back as Lily moved toward her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Lily muttered, forcefully grabbing Emmy’s hand and shoving the wad of cash into it, before retreating back to the driver’s seat of the van.

The others had remained in their seats. There was no reason for them to say goodbye. They didn’t know Emmy. They hadn’t been raised in her home. Which was why my heart shuddered and ached when she stepped away from me, as I tried to give her a farewell hug.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, “please.”

I bit my lip, nodding as I tried to ignore the tears that were determined to make their presence known. I held my breath as I opened the door behind me, and returned to the van. Perhaps it was because my vision was slightly blurred, but upon my last glance into the deep blue depths of Emmy’s eyes, I saw something I had never noticed before; the tiniest flecks of gray. Had I never looked closely enough at her? How could I have not noticed the eyes of the woman who raised me? Maybe it was just a glare from the hazy-sunlight.

“Did you know that Abigail knew William?” Lakin asked from the back seat, after we had been southbound for nearly an hour.

Lily sighed, giving me the smallest startle as she removed one hand from the steering wheel to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked.

“Would it have made a difference? We
already told you that Slate met your parents in Maine.”

“What if she was working with him?” he said accusingly.

“She wasn’t.”

“How do you know? You said Violets could put a block—”

“We’ve known Abigail for many years,” Lily snapped. “If she’d been working against us, don’t you think something would have happened before now?”

Silence fell over the back seat. Lakin had to know that Lily was right. I hadn’t quite trusted the old woman when we’d first met her, but on what had I based that distrust? She’d seemed kind enough. Lonely, but kind. The Elementums had been her only friends for who-knows-how-many years. Surely, she wouldn’t have betrayed them.

In the quiet, my mind began to wander. Soon, my generation would be whole. We would find the last piece of our puzzle, and we would be complete. Strong, and complete. My brother would have his bond, and we would have our—

Crunch
.

Furrowing my eyebrows, I spun around in my seat. Another crackling sound came from the floor behind the back row, then another, and another.

“What is that?” I questioned nervously, fully expecting the floor of the van to fall out at any moment.

To my great relief, a bag of pretzels popped into view above the last seat, held up by Joseph’s hand from the floor.

“Want some?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said as my stomach rumbled. Lakin and I shouldn’t have skipped out on those sandwiches and salads.

Very much against the idea of unbuckling my seatbelt as we sped down the highway at eighty-eight miles per hour, I reached my hand as far back as I could. Joseph crawled over seats and bodies, apologizing after elbowing Mattie in the chest, and handed me the bag.

“Where’d you even get these?” I asked, grimacing as I shoved a handful of stale pretzels into my mouth.

“There were on the floor,” he said, kneeling between Lily and myself.

I gagged, spitting pretzels that were probably older than I was out the window.

“Are you crazy?” I asked, shoving the bag back into his hand.

“No,” he said. “Just hungry.”

The moment my skin touched his, my eyes clouded over.

“Where are you taking me?
!” Nadia shouted. I could feel her weak ankles dragging along the cold tile of the hospital floor.

“Somewhere you belong,” a stern voice said from ahead.

My throat swelled at the glimpse of slicked back hair, before I opened my eyes back in the safety of the van. Joseph stared at me with surprise. It wasn’t long before I realized all eyes in the van were on me, except for Lily’s, thankfully. Lakin crowded in next to Joseph, trying to get a better look at me.

“We have to turn around,” I whispered, barely able to get out a sound.

Lily didn’t question me. She nodded, and pulled off at the first chance she got.

“What’s going on?” Joseph asked.

“William has Nadia,” I said, leaning my head onto the cool glass of the window. “He’s taking her to The Facility.”

Sounds of panic and protest filled the back seat, but I remained quiet in my little corner of the van. I knew that panicking wouldn’t help the situation at all. I knew that we had to do what needed to be done. But, mostly, I knew that this would be the second time I would return to The Facility, when I’d thought I had left that god-forsaken place behind me for good.

Lily parked the van at the post office, not far from the charred store that doubled as the entrance to The Facility. Freedom was less than a buzzing town, but she insisted that Jason, Mattie, and Patrick hide us from view, until we were back in the prison I had hoped I would never see again.

Darkness. I was growing to hate the darkness more than anything that could have been hiding within it. But we were alone. Migrating down the floors of The Facility, it was obvious that William and his men had returned since our last visit. They had started a few repairs, and the puddles of dried blood had been cleaned.

We didn’t venture any further down than the tenth floor, but the lack of decaying-stench suggested that the bodies had been removed. In their place, a musky, smoky smell that st
ruck me like a flail in the gut; I recognized it from the day of Eddie’s funeral. The scent of the incinerator infected the entire building, like some sort of morbid restaurant that cooked up bits of human in the basement.

Lakin squeezed my hand tightly as we passed by the open doors of the empty apartments—the prisons in which my entire generation would have lived, had William gotten his hands on them.

“He’s here,” Lily whispered anxiously, “I can feel him.”

Before we really understood what was happening, she took off in a race down the hallway, stopping only once she
’d reached the door across from my old apartment. With a teary-eyed gasp, Lily burst through the door.

“Lily!” Patrick half-shouted, worriedly following after her, but stopping in the doorway.

Once the rest of us had finally caught up, a wave of emotions flooded over me. Pain, guilt, rage. Al lay still on a medical table in the middle of the apartment, Electro-Cuffs secured around his wrists, and wires leading from gadgets to his temples. An IV plunged into a vein in his arm, most likely keeping him sedated. My insides twisted and churned as I stared at him, lying motionless on the table with tubes hooked up to him, and bright, green lights glowing from his wrists. A few tears fell from Lily’s eyes as she lowered herself over his chest, shaking him to see if he would wake. Although he was not dead, I couldn’t help but imagine if he had been; another casualty left in William’s wake.

Snagging a pair of unused Electro-Cuffs and a controller from a table next to Al’s motionless body, nobody noticed as I slipped out of the room. With fire in my eyes, I made my way to the third flood. William had hurt too many of people I loved.