Falls the Shadow (35 page)

“And I thought that was it,” Jaxon is saying. “When I watched you walk up the basement steps. I thought that was it.”

“I didn't want to leave you,” I say, after he's repeated
that for the fifth time, and I finally manage to stop wondering about the fate of the clones long enough to look him in the eyes. “I never wanted to leave. I went to find Seth, to find help . . .”

Seth
.

“What happened to Seth?” I ask. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks to your sister.”

“My sister?”

He nods. “Apparently, she managed to barricade him in the attic before she went after your clone. He's pissed about missing all the action, of course, but to be honest, she . . . she probably saved his life.” His voice trails off toward the end, and his cheeks flush a bit as he fidgets with one of the bandages on his arm. “Anyway, he was in here earlier. He was worried about you, too—don't tell him I said that—but you know how his attention span is. He went to find something to distract himself with, I think.”

I try to smile, but now my mind is slowly getting back to a functioning calmness, and I find myself with still more questions, each one more painful, more terrifying to ask, than the last. What happened to Violet? My parents? Is anything left of my home now? Where am I supposed to go?

What am I supposed to do now?

None of the questions make it to my lips. I'll ask them soon enough, I know. I'll have to. But right now I want to keep them close to my heart, and instead I want to focus on just this—on the sound of Jaxon's voice, and his touch,
and the way the bed sinks a little under his weight when he leans in to kiss me again.

His lips are still hovering close to mine when someone clears their throat from the doorway. Jaxon slowly leans back, and I see his mother standing in the doorway, watching us from beneath raised eyebrows.

“I see she's doing much better,” she says. Not unkindly. She sounds relieved, almost—even if it is in a reluctant sort of way, and I'm guessing she's actually more relieved for her son's sake than for mine.

I sit the rest of the way up. I move as slowly as I can, but the motion still makes my head spin. Jaxon offers me his arm; I take it and he helps me to my feet and then across the room to his mother, who seems to be making a genuine attempt to smile at the two of us being so close to each other. She's not quite pulling it off, but at least she's making the effort. I'll take that as hope for the future.

“There are a couple of people who wish to speak with you, Catelyn,” President Cross says.

“Who?”

“You'll see” is all she says, and then she turns and disappears into the hall. I follow slowly, my steps shaky and my head still swimming.

Once I'm in the hall, I start to see things I recognize, and I realize I'm back at the CCA's headquarters. Things look a lot different from the last time I was here, thankfully. No dead bodies this time.

The president leads me to a small room with mismatched furniture and a handful of generic paintings
slapped onto the cream-colored walls. It looks like an uncomfortable family room, put together by someone who had no concept of family. I sit on the stiff couch. President Cross leaves and insists that Jaxon go with her.

And as they're walking out, my parents walk in.

Because I guess sometimes life has a way of forcing answers on you, even if you're too scared to ask the questions.

I'm glad to see them. I'm glad they're alive. Of course I'm glad, and I run straight to my mother—who's obviously been crying—and I throw my arms around her, and then I even start to cry too. And I don't flinch when my father kisses the top of my head, and I don't complain when my mother hugs me tighter and tighter still, until I can hardly breathe.

But there's an emptiness between us now, even if my mother leaves no space between our embrace. And I'm not sure what to fill it with. Anger is the simplest filling. So that's what hits me first. I'm angry about what I had to do, about all the blood that's ended up on my hands. About everything me and Violet had to go through. I'm angry and I don't understand, and so instead of
I love you
or
I'm so glad you're okay
or anything like that, when I find my voice this time the first word I think of is “Why?”

My parents stare at me for a long time after I ask the question.

It's my mother who finally moves first. She doesn't speak right away but instead takes off the jacket that hides those strange marks on her arms. She looks sadly at the
bruised, mutated flesh, like I've seen her do so many times in the mirror. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “We never could have guessed that it would come to something like this.”

She clears her throat and tries to force her expression back to unreadable, unbreakable stone. When she can't manage to do that, she focuses intently on pulling her jacket back on and buttoning every button, even though it has to be eighty degrees in here.

“Desperation,” she finally continues, “can make a person do unthinkable things. And war can make you unbelievably desperate.” She pauses, tugs on the hem of her jacket, and tries to flatten away wrinkles that are hardly there. “By the time you and Violet were born, we'd already seen too much. We'd watched too many people die. Too many children. Too many people we knew. Nothing felt certain about the future anymore—originally, we weren't even going to have children because of that, and we were told that we probably wouldn't be able to anyway”—she rolls up her right sleeve just enough to uncover one of the marks—“because of this.”

She tries to keep going but chokes up. I feel like I should interrupt the silence in some way, but I don't know what to say or what to do with this new version of my mother who's suddenly talking and actually explaining herself. If I say the wrong thing, is she going to go away again? I want to just wait, to stay here a little longer and try to understand.

“But then we managed not one but two miracles,” she finally says. “And then
Huxley came to us and told us they could guarantee that no one could take those miracles away. So what do you think we did?”

She meets my eyes then, and we're the only two in the room, and suddenly I don't want to be angry anymore.

My father puts an arm around her, but she twists away and goes to stand by the door. Her face stays tilted away from us. I can tell she regrets choking up like that and crying over the memory of Violet's sickness and everything else. A few days ago, I would have gotten mad all over again at the way she's gone silent and stone faced. I would have wished desperately for her to lower her defenses, for her to let the rest of the world in. To let me in. But now I see that it's never been about keeping everyone out. It's been about keeping herself together.

All she's ever tried to do was keep us all together.

The only problem is that sometimes, when you hold things too tightly, you end up crushing them and losing them anyway.

I feel my father's hand on my arm, and it gives me the strength to ask the question I've been the most afraid of since I woke up.

“How is my sister?”

He gives me a gentle squeeze. “I don't know if now is a good time for you to see her.”

One day, I might tell him everything that's happened these past few days, in detail, and maybe it will convince him to stop trying to protect me from everything. Probably not. But maybe. For now, though, I just give him
the most reassuring hug I can, and I head out to find the answer for myself.

*  *  *

I run into President Cross a few minutes later, and she takes me to the room where Violet is resting. Her eyes are closed, her breathing slow, her body completely unresponsive when I touch her arm. She has computers and IVs and an assortment of other equipment all hooked up to her.

“Physically, her body seems to be doing fine,” the president says. “These clones really are something, biologically speaking.”

“But mentally?”

“You were with her when she was shot, weren't you?”

I nod.

“Her CPU was fried, melted and destroyed beyond repair. We can replace it, I think, but most of the data on it isn't going to be recoverable. Huxley had backup copies, I'm sure, but in a bit of an ironic twist of fate, the stunt she pulled probably means they were reduced to ashes along with the majority of the rest of the lab. If there are any surviving copies, tracking them down won't be easy.

“So, if she manages to pull through, physically speaking, she will not be the same Violet. She won't even remember her name is Violet.” She hesitates. “Nor will she remember you, or anything else about her past life. Or lives, as it were.”

I sit down on the little bit of bed that isn't taken up by Violet, or any of the life-giving apparatuses attached to her. For a long time I watch her breathing, stare at her
eyelids closed in what I assume must be dreamless sleep. “But will she be able to function?” I ask. The thought is bittersweet, I admit. I want her to live, of course. But what will it be like when she looks at me as if I'm a stranger? Somehow, I think that would be worse than all our fighting. Like indifference would be worse than any of the hate that existed between us.

“That's what we're working on,” President Cross says, motioning to the computer monitors surrounding the bed. “We're not Huxley, but we do have a few brilliant scientists on our side too—including yours truly. And this is something we've been developing for years—we've been trying to create a fully functional brain module like the ones Huxley uses. But in our case, the brain is more or less a blank slate with only the more basic human functions programmed in.”

“A blank slate?”

“To start with, yes. But our programming will allow more room for it to grow, for the clones to develop into something more human—something that Huxley was trying to prevent. We're embracing it, though, and in this way we hope to take back the lives that Huxley stole.”

“Why?” I can't help but ask. “I thought you hated clones. Why are you helping Violet? Why are you worried about giving her any sort of life at all?”

“You simplify our ambitions,” she says. “To let her—or any clone in our possession—die would be to lose a very powerful potential ally in the fight against Huxley. She's essentially a superhuman—a marvel of biology. You've witnessed that firsthand, haven't you?”

“So you want her to fight for you.”

“If she chooses.”

“You're honestly going to give her a choice?” I spit the words, poisoned with doubt, from my mouth.

“She attempted to burn Huxley's laboratory to the ground.” She tilts her head toward me, looking almost amused. “It would seem she's already made her choice.”

“She didn't do that for you.” I may not ever know exactly why she
did
do it, but I know it wasn't for the CCA.

She smiles tactfully, pulls out a keyboard from beneath one of the monitors, and starts typing. “Nevertheless,” she says offhandedly, “I feel like we have the potential for a mutually beneficial relationship. And you could be included in it if you like. Because, after all, I'd be lying if I said the scientist in me wasn't as interested as Huxley was in your relationship with your sister. You're what kept her human—I believe that was their hypothesis, and it's mine as well. And of course now I'm wondering; how will things work out between the two of you when she wakes up?”

She stops messing with the keyboard and slides it back into place. “Besides, I can't help feeling like my son would be glad to have you around more,” she adds, turning to leave. “So think about it, won't you?”

*  *  *

And I do. For at least an hour I stay by Violet's side, thinking about it. I'm still thinking about it when I leave the headquarters and go back to the parking garage and find myself a spot to sit on a concrete wall overlooking the city.

It's unnaturally quiet. The lights are off, the cars are
parked, the sidewalks all but empty. People are scared, I guess. And confused. I wonder what's on the news, and how sensationalized the story of what happened between Huxley and the CCA has already become. I wonder what's happening to other families like ours. Jaxon told me that a lot of clones have been reported missing—retreated with Huxley, they think. But what about the ones who didn't? Maybe, with the destruction of so much of the lab's equipment and files, there's a chance that some of the already active clones will now be able to live without having to worry about Huxley interfering with their thoughts and memories.

They'll still be clones, though. And after everything that's happened, in the aftermath of all this violence and the fear it's sent through the city, it will only be worse for them.

So maybe they'll all stay inside forever, hiding. I wouldn't blame them if they did, because I'm only just getting used to this new skin myself, to the Catelyn Benson who doesn't want to hide from all this. And even as I'm sitting here, I think of getting up and going to find my parents, of telling them we should pack up and leave it all behind. To move out of the country, even. Away from the CCA, away from Huxley, away from everything that's happened here. Part of me keeps wishing I knew of a place where none of these things could find me.

But I'm still sitting on that wall when Jaxon shows up what might be minutes, or maybe hours, later, for all the attention I'm paying to time right then.

“I was afraid you'd already run off on me,” he says.

“I'm trying out this new thing where I don't run and hide anymore.”

“How's that working out for you?”

I meet his eyes as he sits down beside me. “It's going pretty good, now,” I say. Now that he's here, staying doesn't seem all that bad.

“It's strange to see it so quiet,” he says, turning his attention to the cityscape in front of us.