Chosen Ones (14 page)

Chapter 20

Tess,

It is wrong to hate your own country?

What does allegiance mean? Should allegiance be to your family first? To God? To your homeland? What about to your self? I am choosing myself, Tess. Please forgive me.

Right around the time Louisa was born the council noticed a sharp increase in the number of deaths during childbirth. But they never really stopped to think what it meant. Our country was still struggling. People were still starving, and threats from the Eastern sector seemed more prominent than ever. We had other things on our minds.

Did you know we haven’t had a single successful childbirth in our sector in years? Louisa is a miracle, one of the last naturals born. I know she’s not like you, Tess, but she’s so precious.

Is it possible the council has something to do with this? I feel crazy even writing it, but it makes sense. Once we are gone, they can recreate the world as whatever they want it to be. There are new cries to ban more and more books. What if they get rid of it all? The end of the naturals, no books, no written history of us.

We never existed.

It’s not possible.

God, I’m losing it.

Today I watched a creator beat a chosen one senseless. Even though the teenager could have easily killed his oppressor, he just stood there and took it. Perfect obedience. I cleaned up the blood afterward.

The young chosen one was being punished for asking a question. The group of teenagers to whom I am assigned watched a video about the towers today. Years and years back a group of men flew airplanes into two massive buildings in a place called New York. They showed video of people falling from the sky.

It was horrendous.

The young chosen one asked how the government had failed the people. The creator told him it was humanity that had failed.

They killed two more chosen ones today. Sick. Something called the transformation sickness. That’s seven we’ve lost since I have been there. I’m not supposed to talk to them. I’m not allowed to talk to them.

But there is one who speaks.

And it breaks my heart.

He whispers. He asks me about life on the outside. I have shown him pictures of you and your sisters. He thinks Emma looks kind. He wishes he could meet her.

The council will one day make this boy hate your sister.

One day she’ll hate him in return.

The propaganda monster is in full swing. Every day there is some new report or pamphlet published discussing our need to hold tight to our morals. Beneath the words, I fear there is a pretty nasty tone toward women. The breakdown of the family. The failure of motherhood.

How can I protect my daughters from this? I think I may have given up on you, my girls. I can only fight for myself now.

Jacobson introduced me to a group of men.

I think we’re going to do something.

If I were a good father, selfless, I would stay with you till the end.

I just can’t.

Chapter 21

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you aren’t looking so good,” said a girlish voice that shattered my trance. It pulled me from my numbness, the only thing keeping me from screaming.

The crowd was tense. It had taken hours to transport everyone to the square, an abandoned airfield used in the early days of the war. Most of what lay outside of the compound was rubble. The heat was wretched. There was little water. It smelled of death.

I was saving my strength for when I would need it. Standing up for Julia had reduced the torture to a simple death by decapitation.

And my new slash mark burned. It had taken everything in me not to cry when the searing metal was placed against the back of my neck as the entire compound watched. They had to take Henry out of the room because his protests over the action became too loud and violent. He fought for me, but not for Julia.

Unlike when I’d received the mark for my sister, this new mark, the mark for Julia, was excruciating.

That’s what I got for allowing myself to care.

Robert had found his place next to me after the wrangling. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head, and he placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. It was getting harder and harder to ignore him. He was all I had left of Emma.

I felt the sun burn my cheeks. I would welcome the rawness of my skin later. The sun could char me straight through if it so desired, and I wouldn’t move to shade myself.

“I thought they would be here at least,” the same girlish voice repeated.

“Who?” I mumbled.

“The boys from Templeton.”

Louisa. Always looking for something or someone to love. I was so wrong—Robert wasn’t all I had left of Emma. Louisa looked more and more like her every day. Louisa had always been a little sickly, but there was now a fresh blush to her cheeks. Her blue eyes seemed to become brighter and brighter. She was with me. Alive. My sister. How could I have been so blind?

I cleared my throat. “The chosen ones aren’t what you think they are.”

She rolled her eyes in response. “Says the girl who gets to spend all day with them. They’re perfect, Tess. They protect us. And they seem loads more interesting than the boys around here.”

“Perhaps we can save this conversation for another time?” Robert said in a gentle tone.

Yes. I would need to have this conversation with Louisa. I would tell her the things that had never been discussed with me. I would protect her. She would never go to Templeton. Ever.

My head had started to hurt from all the noise. I sat there listening to the conversations of those around me, refusing to take part.

“Tess, what’s the matter?” Henry asked suddenly, a note of true concern in his voice. Where had he come from? It was as if he appeared from thin air. And in that moment, I didn’t know if I wanted to hit him, yell at him for his actions, or fall into his arms, glad he was safe.

Henry didn’t wait for my response. He never waited for me. He grabbed my arm and started to pull me along with him through the crowd. I vaguely heard Robert and Louisa protest.

It was then I realized he was walking me away, carrying me from the square. A guard asked where we were going, and I heard Henry explain that I was sick. My vision blurred and I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. Henry rushed me through the crowd.

Amid my pain, I began to hear the pain of others. I heard the crowd gasp and some begin to cry. It was happening.

Please! Please! Please!
My voice made no sound. A wave of nausea hit me.

They were asking Julia for her last words. As the sound of her voice settled over the crowd, everything inside of me stopped.

She began to speak: “I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.”

The crowd fell silent. The words from James’s book? What nonsense was she speaking? I didn’t understand the meaning of her words, but it sounded like blame. It felt like blame.

No, I was stronger than this. I wasn’t completely useless. I tried to focus on Julia. My hands gripped Henry’s shoulder, and I blindly hit him as hard as I could. The shock of it caused him to drop me to the ground. This brought on another round of nausea. I fought to hold it back as I scrambled to get up, trying to make my way through the crowd. I didn’t get far.

Henry grabbed me from behind, one arm around my waist, holding me in place. I knew I didn’t have much time. Two naturals were lowering Julia to her knees. She slowly, gracefully held out her arms. They, her own people, people forced into this position by the chosen ones, serving out their punishment because they had no female to speak up for them, tied her arms behind her back. She kept her eyes forward. They brought out the blade. She seemed ignorant of this, almost peaceful. Her gaze wandered over the crowd.

Then everything went black. Henry had forcefully placed his hands over my eyes.

“No,” I managed to say weakly.

The crowd was screaming, a mixture of sadness and anger. It chilled me to the core.

I tried to struggle, but Henry was too strong. He forced me to the ground. He stayed there next to me, hands never leaving my eyes.

The crowd was suddenly silent and I heard the
swoosh
. It was followed by a
thud
.

Then screaming, unstoppable screaming.

It filled my ears. It electrified my pores. I then realized it was my screaming. And I couldn’t stop.

“Why?” I whispered when he finally let me go, the crowd bumping against us as they headed back to the compound.

“I knew you would feel guilty. You’d blame yourself. And this has nothing to do with you,” he replied stoically.

“Doesn’t it? I told you how. Dear God, Henry, what part in this did you have?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he replied, a note of frustration creeping into his voice.

I felt my stomach drop. “You
did
have a part in it. How could you let her die for you?” I charged.

Henry ran a hand over his face. “She didn’t die for me. She died for something greater.”

I took a step away from him. “I don’t even know you.”

“Maybe you never did.”

Chapter 22

I was to serve thirty years at Templeton, one for every young chosen one killed. I didn’t have anyone’s sympathy. They all wondered why I’d stood up for Julia—they couldn’t understand that I didn’t approve of what she’d done. My people were still happy to go along with the whole ruse the council had created. They weren’t ready to rebel.

The more I thought over my punishment, the more I wondered about the Isolationists. What was it like in the wild, living in the destruction of the Middlelands, caught in the middle of a war between Easterners and Westerners? Had they found a way to be free?

It didn’t matter. Maybe before I could have managed at least an attempt to run off, but the council would be watching me now. I couldn’t earn another slash mark; I didn’t even know what happened when you did. I also had to protect Louisa. And somehow, I knew if I earned a third mark, I’d be leaving her alone.

I was to live at Templeton now. I would only be allowed to return to the compound on Sundays.

It didn’t really matter.

On my fist day back at work my supervisor met me. They were going to make an example out of me. “You’ve really done it now, child,” Gwen said, shaking her head.

“Be quiet,” I muttered, unable to take another minute of her damn superiority. She was nothing. Just some sad, pathetic natural who was stuck here, same as me.

“What did you say?”

“Let’s get this over with.”

Today’s assignment?

We were to get rid of the bodies.

They had been transported to deep in the woods behind Templeton, where a huge hole had been dug. My supervisor and I, along with the newly bruised and battered creator, were to pull the bodies from the transport and place them into the mass grave. There would be no words spoken over the dead. No pretense of religious ceremony.

It took hours to move all thirty bodies into their new home, their eternal resting place. While my supervisor had given me a mask to cover my nose and mouth, the stench of decay was overwhelming. The bodies were heavy. I tried to convince myself the children were simply sleeping, but they weren’t. They were death personified. I felt the softness of their skin, the vulnerability of it. They never had a shot at life, never felt a thing. They never knew what it was like to be touched. They had no mothers or fathers to weep over them.

And I had helped kill them.

I had told Henry where they were kept.

I destroyed these unlived lives.

When we finally finished, I was covered in sweat and dirt. There was a noticeable chill in the air and the sky had become cloudy and dark.

“Am I done?” I asked dully.

“Yes.”

“May I stay here for a while?” I didn’t see why it would matter if I did. My shift was over but I couldn’t really leave. Templeton was my new home.

My supervisor nodded. I could almost detect a look of understanding on her face, but it was too brief to be sure.

I waited. Staring at the bodies, waiting for the sky to open up and cry.

Then, it was pouring. Every inch of me was covered with it. I sat on the ground, my knees clutched to my chest, shivering. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the rain and cold or the guilt over what I had done. I’d stood up for a murderer. I’d helped a murderer.

I had allowed myself to feel and hope.

And this was my punishment.

For a few crazed moments, I contemplated laying myself down within the hole. Needing them to bury me with the rest of the rejects.

I heard a twig snap. I wasn’t the only one here. Who dared to enter this space?

It was James.

His face showed apprehension. Did he really think he could fool me into thinking what we once had still remained? He must hate me. I had chosen Henry over him. I had chosen to align myself with the naturals. Before, I had begun to think neither the terms
natural
nor
chosen
could describe James and me; we were outside the council’s definition. Not anymore. We couldn’t run from who the council needed us to be.

It was ridiculous of me to think I could be anyone else.

Don’t feel.

Don’t feel.

Feel.

Feel.

It would always be chosen versus natural. The council set it up that way.

He would destroy me.

“What are you doing here?” I snarled.

“Tess.”

“Don’t you dare,” I warned. “Don’t you dare say my name. You have no right. You have no right to any of me.” Some small part of me knew he wasn’t the enemy, but I couldn’t yell at the council. And God, I needed to yell. My hands were shaking. I was losing it. I was on the verge of an attack and didn’t care if I could fight it off.

James stepped forward.

I would not back down, regardless of the consequences. I held my ground. This seemed to scare him, and he paused. I took two quick steps closer to him. We were inches apart.

“We need to talk about this. I did what I had to. She was a killer.”

I slapped him as hard as I could. I did it without thinking—it was pure instinct. It stung my hand. It thrilled me.

I saw him flinch. Shock crossed his face, but he said nothing, did nothing.

This made me even angrier. “Don’t you feel
anything
?” I screamed. I knew in the back of my mind I was no longer talking to him. It was as if the panic, the fear had finally found its voice.

“I wish it had been you. I wish it had been you they took! You deserve it! You’re the villain, the monster. You made Julia and Henry do those horrible things. He was such a sweet child. You took everything from him; you left him with nothing to want. And when you are left feeling like that, you fear no consequences.”

“What are you saying, Tess? Let’s talk about this.”

“Don’t stand there staring at me as if you can understand my pain. You’re not even
human
. You feel nothing. You are nothing. You think it means something, you reading that book?”

His hand twitched.

It was too much; I was suffocating. I felt my eyes begin to water. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I would explode.

I was sobbing hysterically. I was being ripped open, and I wasn’t sure when or if the flood could stop. Everything flashed before my eyes—my father being taken, my mother holding the bottle of discount liquor to her chest, the way Robert looked at the funeral, how Emma held out her hand for me to take, the loneliness I felt when Henry had abandoned me, the day with the piano and James,
Jane Eyre
, the evil way George had grinned, the laughter of the Templeton boys, the excruciating pain of receiving my second slash mark.

I sank ungraciously onto the dirt. I wanted to crawl inside of it. In the quickest of moments, James was on his knees, reaching for me.

“No!” I shrilly screamed, blindly lashing my arms against him. “Don’t you touch me!”

I could faintly see a devastating look of pain on James’s face, but I didn’t care. I curled myself into a ball, letting the emotions take me where they willed. I could sense that James was still there and I had no idea why.

Suddenly, I felt extremely tired.

“Just do what you want with me. Have your fun and get it over with. I can’t take any more. I won’t scream. There isn’t anyone now who would care. It’s what you want, isn’t it? I know what it means to be a Templeton girl,” I managed to gasp through the tears.

I heard him inhale sharply, and I could feel him move away from me. But I knew he was still there, somewhere.

I closed my eyes. They were burning, dry, unprepared for the exercise they had performed. But something was different; my heart, it purred. Fluttered. I slowly sat up, my body sore from my crumpled position. I felt the sheen of tears dried to my face. My hair was wild, untamed. I searched for my ribbon. I saw James holding it in his hand.

I wanted desperately to hate him, but I knew that I never really could. He had a part of my soul. And as much as I wanted to claim it back, I believed I wouldn’t. How long could I survive through this, the slow destruction of my being?

James walked over to me, stopping a short distance away. He crouched down so his face was on my level and gingerly held out the ribbon. His face was emotionless. The rain continued to whip me in the face as I took the ribbon, turning my back to him, trying to tie my hair into some sort of order.

My knees seemed wobbly as I stood up, but I somehow managed it without falling. I walked past James without a second glance. Part of me wished he would just leave, but the other part didn’t, and that’s the part that hurt the most.

“I know I betrayed you. Why are you out here pretending you care?” I said, my back still toward him.

He laughed, slightly losing it himself. “It’s
all
I care about. You were wrong—I believe someone
can
have all of your soul. Don’t you see? You have all of mine.”

I wanted to tell him that was impossible, that he had no soul. But I couldn’t. I turned to face him quickly. Too quickly. I felt dizzy and closed my eyes to try and stop the world from spinning out of control. I couldn’t put the words together.

His eyes found solace on the ground. “I had to do what I did. Maybe they would have grown up to be these things you detest, but they were just children. They knew nothing of what it means to be human. And if I refused to help bring in a natural, they would have guessed my secret.”

“Secret?”

“George. He suspects you. He suspects me. He can tell.”

Did James somehow know of my run-in with George?

“Tell what?”

James hesitated. “He can tell it is…that we aren’t normal. This, us, it scares the other boys.”

He was near me in an instant, his hand reaching for my face. I froze; he did, too. James dropped his hand slowly to his side. “They know that you have power over me.”

“Power? I don’t even have that over myself.”

The tears were coming back. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.

“I’ve already caused the other chosen ones to suspect me. If I made a big deal about the wrangling, they would realize you don’t mean to me what the other girls are to them. I don’t know what would happen to me then. Which I don’t care about, not really. This isn’t much of a life anyways. But I had you to think about…”

“But—”

“You have to believe me. I can’t go on knowing you think that I could willingly hurt you. This is who I’m supposed to be. What choice did I have?”

I took a step closer to him. “How can I trust you? How can I trust
anyone
who belongs with them?”

I knew the us-versus-them argument was illogical. I had seen too much to pretend it could be boiled down to these simple components. I just needed to hear that I was right about him.

James shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t belong with the chosen ones. Sometimes I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. Except maybe with you.”

I felt the honesty of the words as if they were my own.

“You say you see me differently than the other boys? The other Templeton girls? I saw one of them, James. I think she may have been forced…”

His jaw clenched. “Yes, I heard of it. George. It’s why he wasn’t chosen either. The council, Templeton, they don’t care if we…if one of us has…with a Templeton girl. It doesn’t matter because—”

“We’re dying anyway. Because they think we’re worthless.”

He nodded. “But George made a scene. He wasn’t even secretive about it. He stalked this girl and then took her. Secrecy is essential. It’s the only thing that keeps this horrid world together.”

I was feeling dizzy again. I was falling. James’s hands were there to steady me, one on each of my arms, my support. My body heated up instantly despite the chill in the air. I could smell him, could feel his breath on me. He was so close, and for once I didn’t care. I wanted him to be closer. I don’t know how long we stood there—a minute, an eternity. It didn’t matter. Everything was so disjointed, I couldn’t see sense, could only barely control the surge of emotions running through me.

“I am sorry,” he whispered.

I didn’t know what I was doing. It was as if some force was alive in me, controlling me. Maybe I was finally losing my sanity. I slowly raised my hand to his face, hesitating before placing my palm against his cheek. He sighed and closed his eyes. I closed mine, too. The rain had slowed, but I could hear the wind picking up, hear it howling, moaning. Strangely, I didn’t feel it. All I knew was my palm against his skin. How strange that such a small gesture could cause such emotions.

Such feelings.

This wasn’t just about the need to touch anymore. It was so much more than that. The council called it weakness, but I didn’t
feel
weak.

James leaned forward and gently kissed my forehead. “Tess,” he breathed against my skin.

God, I loved how he said my name.

I couldn’t answer. I was overwrought with the sensation of human contact.

“Tess,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry, too. There is no right side. But you’re not the enemy. The council is.”

He tugged me toward Templeton. “Let’s go home.”

I offered a short laugh in response.

“James?”

“Hmmm.”

“What do we do now?”

He wiped the remaining tears off my face with his thumb, his hand resting on my cheek. “I have no idea.”