Creators (22 page)

Lockwood held up his rifle as we climbed over the debris that blocked the entrance to where the fail-safe was kept. “You really think James and Robert will just let them end their kind?” he asked me as he slowly moved the gun from left to right and back again.

“I think either they don’t fully comprehend what the fail-safe does, or, yes, they’ll let him,” I replied, a coldness slipping down my throat to the very center of my soul.

“But why?”

“Think of everything they’ve seen, Lockwood. Everything their kind has been responsible for.”

“Yeah, but the council was responsible for that. Not them.”

“
But how does one take down the council?” A chill was spreading from my center to the tips of my fingers and toes. “You show someone enough darkness, and they either become consumed by it or do anything to bring back the light.”

Abrams. That was what Abrams had taught me.

James would do anything to keep me safe. I just had to locate the fail-safe and destroy it before he had the chance.

“I think we’re here.”

I nodded and placed a finger over my lips. We stealthily moved down the hallway to where a door stood open. I could tell by the numerous arms, legs, and various carnage strewn across the floor that we had come to the right place.

Lockwood counted down from three. As he mouthed each of the numbers, my heart beat a little faster. Once the countdown was done, he whipped his rifle around the corner. When he held up the all-clear sign, we both moved deeper into the room. The lights flickered above our head to reveal a seemingly bare white room.

“Damn it. I think we’re in the wrong place,” Lockwood said.

I walked to the wall and placed my hand against its surface. Three times. Harper had knocked on the wall three times to reveal the training chosen ones. A seemingly simple hiding trick. So simple no one would guess it. I lifted my hand and knocked it against the wall three times.

The marble crackled and changed under my touch, revealing a huge glass window and a door. Inside the observation room was a series of machines I had only ever heard about. It looked like a violent symphony of lights and buttons, flashing me code I didn’t know how to break.

Four men stood in front of what I had been told was called a computer. My father. George. Robert. James. I ran for the door only to find it locked when I reached for it. I pounded on it frantically, but none of the men turned to look at me.

“It’s soundproof,” Henry said from behind me. So he had made it through the chaos.

I immediately snatched Lockwood’s gun from his shoulder and pointed it directly at Henry. A large gash cut across the side of his head and blood trickled down his neck.

“Open. It,” I demanded. My hand clutched so tightly around the rifle that my knuckles turned white.

“You’ll have to shoot me,” he challenged, moving deeper into the room.

I didn’t hesitate. I remembered what Eric had told me. Remember my stance. Steady my aim. Focus. I emptied a bullet right into his leg. Henry dropped to the floor, screaming in agony. I shifted the gun so it was pointed straight at his head. “Open. It,” I repeated.

“Tess! You can’t be serious. What are you doing? He’s your friend,” Lockwood said.

“No. He isn’t,” I choked out. I narrowed my eyes at Henry. “You have three seconds. One. Two—”

“I don’t know how to. I swear. They didn’t tell me that much,” he yelled, holding his palms up in surrender. Lockwood scrambled over to him, placing his hands over Henry’s wound to stop the bleeding.

“What did he tell you?” I hissed.

“Abrams. He put a device in every chosen one ever created. He told the creators it was for tracking, like the one they put in us. Each device is connected to that system in there. Once they enter the code, the device implanted in the chosen ones will release a toxin. At first they’ll feel lightheaded. Then, it will slowly paralyze them. Finally, it will stop their hearts.”

I staggered away from Henry. I spun around on my heels and pointed the rifle straight at the glass. I pulled back the trigger and shot. I had to get their attention.

But whatever the glass was made of stopped the bullet from penetrating; it ricocheted off and lodged in the wall above my head.

“Let’s…not try that again,” Lockwood said shakily.

I stumbled over to the window and pressed my forehead against the glass. I reached up and touched my fingers to it, and I prayed. I never really knew if I believed in God. Wasn’t he just another creator who abandoned his people? Made them think they were special only for them to realize how expendable they really were?

But I prayed to him in that moment.

Let him turn around.

Let him turn around.

Let him turn around.

My father bent forward and typed something onto the keyboard. Then he stepped away from the system and turned his back on the chosen ones who were taking their destinies into their own hands. He turned and saw me. I banged with all my might against the window. I screamed and yelled for him to let me in, but he just sat there and stared at me. He glanced at the door once. Only once. He gave me just enough hope to show me that he could just as easily rip it from me. Then, he bowed his head and turned away.

My chest heaved. I felt so much emotion I thought it might cause me to explode, taking down the window with me.

Let him turn around.

I continued to pray.

Let him turn around.

I stared daggers into his back, and then he started to shift. It was a slight movement at first. He reached up and scratched the back of his neck. It was enough to make my whole world freeze.

Let him turn around.

Then his fingers twitched by his side.

Let him turn around.

His head turned slightly to the left. And then he was staring right at me. He rushed to the window. Sobs shook my entire body. He smiled through the tears that streamed down his own face. He reached up and placed his hand against mine through the glass. Despite the barrier between us, I could feel him. Every touch he had ever given me rushed through my body.

I would get to keep him.

This wasn’t the end.

But then I realized he hadn’t made a move to the door. I started to pound on the window again. “You don’t have to do this. We can make it. We can fix it,” I screamed. I knew he couldn’t hear me, just as I knew the promises I made were empty. I didn’t know how to fix this world.

Suddenly, James jumped. He turned to face the men behind him. I followed his eyes to where George lay seizing on the ground. Blood pooled under him. The gun in my father’s hand was still smoking.

My father had shot George right in the chest. I couldn’t hear what he yelled over George’s twitching body, but reading his lips, it seemed to be something along the lines of:
this is for my daughters.

Apparently, my father did care. Just not in the way I needed him to.

George wouldn’t get to decide his ending after all. He had become the thing he feared most—powerless.

My eyes darted to James. My father’s action would be the final proof that he needed. Another reminder of what his kind did to mine. He could only see the bad. I could only see the good. Neither one of us entirely right. Neither one of us entirely wrong.

Robert turned around and nodded toward me. A wordless good-bye. I knew that he was thinking of his promise to Emma. He had vowed to keep her sisters safe, and this was the best way he knew to accomplish it. If he took away the council’s army, their power would be gone. We could run without being chased. We could search for freedom. The naturals would have a chance. Even if it was the smallest of chances.

I continued to pound on the glass until my knuckles bled. Robert said something to James, who nodded in response. It was going to happen. James walked back over to the glass and pressed his forehead against mine. Or at least as much as he could with our two worlds separated.

Please live for us. We’re worth living for
, I mouthed.

I love you
, he mouthed back.

His eyelids began to flutter. He buckled slightly as the toxin spread its way throughout his system. Despite falling to his knees, he kept his hand firmly pressed against mine. For as long as he could. When the poison made him fall completely back, I looked down at him. My eyes didn’t leave his. I blinked away the tears, furious that they temporarily took his image from me.

“I love you,” I cried out as his body slowly stilled.

And as he stared up at me, the light gone from his eyes, a smile on his face, I realized that to him, there was something worth dying for.

Us.

It had been a year since all of the chosen ones from the western sector had ceased to exist. Soon after the destruction of the chosen one army, news spread of the rebellion. The eastern sector was on its way to attack the lands where my people once lived, and the men of the council, fearing for their lives, knowing they had no chance, ran. Cowards.

They chosen ones of the west were only memories now. Except most of them would not be remembered. No mothers. No fathers. No loved ones. That was the way the creators wanted it.

So many gone and forgotten.

Not Robert.

Never James.

They lived inside my mind, my heart, my soul every single day. I understood why they did what they did. They felt like they didn’t belong. Science had messed with things they never should have meddled with. By pushing that button, Robert and James were taking the power from the people who abused it. The people who controlled them.

Sacrifice.

It didn’t dull the pain that throbbed inside of me. The pain of an unknown future. There was no way of knowing if I would have had a future had they not enacted the fail-safe. The council would have limped on as long as they could have. Hell, maybe they would have found a way to fight off the eastern sector.

That’s what haunts me most—the possibilities.

I never would have made the same choices that Robert and James had made that day. I wouldn’t have sacrificed the few for the whole. Maybe that made me selfish. I didn’t know. I just knew that they didn’t do it out of malice, or even hate of their own people; they did it because they hoped.

That didn’t make looking at my father any easier. After he managed to get Lockwood, Henry, and me back to the community’s temporary camp, I let myself get lost in the crowd of lost people. No home. No government. No place to go.

We had nothing to do but wait for the Eastern army to come for us.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into a year. And still, they did not come for us. Rumors floated around that word of our uprising spread to their people. Civil war erupted. Now that those in chains knew it was possible to break free, they were fighting.

Henry left when he heard these whispers. He needed a war to fight. I wondered what he would do when they found their fail-safe. How would he fill his empty life then?

I hadn’t talk to him since the day I shot him. Not once.

I spent most of my time with Louisa and Lockwood. It brought me a certain measure of peace to know they found happiness within each other. It was good to know that despite all things, happiness could still exist. We would still have to worry about her future if she ever decided to try for children. There were still answers to be found.

It’s what kept me going.

It was only three months ago that I found the map. Searching for a book in Lockwood’s tent, I came across McNair’s copy of
Twelfth Night
. I thought I had lost it back when Stephanie and I were taken. Lockwood explained that he found it when he came across Henry wounded in the woods.

As I flipped through the play, I became more and more engrossed in the story. It was a comedy, and I couldn’t help but wonder if James would have found the comedy of errors as amusing as I did. That was another way he continued to live for me as well. I constantly found myself wondering how he would feel about things, reminding myself that James died because he believed that by doing so I would go on feeling them.

I wouldn’t ever stop feeling again. You couldn’t feel the joy of life without the pain, and the joy was overwhelming. I heard it in the laughter of Sharon’s children. I saw it in the way Louisa and Lockwood looked at each other. I saw it in my own daughter’s eyes. The mismatched eyes she shared with her father.

I didn’t know what the future held for baby Jane. Would she possess superhuman powers like her father or would she be “natural,” like me? Only time would tell. And for once, not knowing was something beautiful. Either way, I knew she would be loved.

I had wondered if miracles still existed, and I had gotten my proof. Not in the way I begged for, but things never tended to go by plan.

When the map fell out of the book, I hardly knew what I was looking at. Scrawled across the top was a note:

Tess,

I hope that one day you are brave enough to seek out a brand new world.

~Robert

I ran to Lockwood’s tent and showed it to him immediately. “Is this real? Could this be an actual place?”

Lockwood ran a hand across his chin as he stared down at the map. “I mean, it’s one of the latest versions I’ve seen. See how the border crosses here,” he said, pointing down. “That was only after a battle that happened last year.”

“So, this place could be outside of eastern control? It could be a place to start over?” I asked, a lightness I hadn’t felt in a long time glowing inside of me.

There would be no guarantees. We could travel to this new land and there could be a whole system of people there waiting to enslave us with their strict laws and customs. It could be a barren wasteland. There was no way of knowing. All we knew was that it was a place Robert had circled. A place he dreamed of us going.

A place to start again.

As we gathered our group of explorers, a hodgepodge of men and women with a variety of skills we felt necessary for starting a new settlement, I made the arrangements the best I could. The list was extensive. We would have to find a boat. We would have to gather enough supplies to survive the voyage. Which meant that we would have to travel into occupied lands.

Only thirty people from the community agreed to go. I didn’t blame them. It was a gamble, a risk. But it was better than waiting around. The group included Sharon’s children and Lockwood and Louisa.

As we loaded the wagons and hoisted our bags over our shoulders, my father stood directly in my path. “You’re going to need a steady hand on your trip. You could find nothing but wild men where you’re going.”

“I have everything I need,” I replied.

“Let me go with you, Tess. Let me help you protect these people. Protect your girl.”

I crossed my arms on my chest. “I don’t like your way of protecting people.”

“You don’t like how, but you like that I do. Look—”

“Enough!” Everyone stopped and stared at the voice that boomed louder than anyone could ever imagine. “I have had enough of you,” Louisa continued. “You made a choice when you walked away from our family. Maybe you did it because you convinced yourself you were making the world a safer place for your children. But I don’t give a damn. You left, and there are consequences for that.”

I had never been more proud of Louisa than in that moment. I stalked past my father, not caring that I knocked my shoulder into his.

“Tess—”

I spun around. “I’m done with you,” I replied, staring up at my creator. “You want war. It’s all you know. It’s about time we try peace. I’ll fight if I have to.” I looked over the people who were following me into the unknown. “But I won’t search it out. We’re looking for a new world, and that world has no place in it for you. So, if you open your mouth one more time, I promise it will be the last time you do so.”

My father raised his eyebrows. Disbelief and amusement flickered in his eyes.

With a snap of my fingers, ten guns pointed directly toward him.

That was the last time I ever saw my father.

…

I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know that I’m making the right choice. I just know that the thing that made the last year of my life nearly unbearable is the thing that drives me now:

Possibility.

…

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