Fox Forever (31 page)

I planned to tell her in the cab, to prepare her, but she keeps rattling on, filling the silence the way Miesha has always been prone to do. I keep waiting for the right pause but it never seems to come.

“Miesha, I need to tell you something!” I finally blurt out awkwardly, interrupting her midsentence. She stops. She sees the magnitude of what I need to say in my face; I see the painful expectation in hers. I never thought telling her something like this would be so hard. Now time is running short. We’re already driving down the alley.

“Miesha, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this before, but I just didn’t know how things would play out. I didn’t want you to be hurt all over again.”

Her chest rises in slow careful breaths. “What are you saying, Locke?”

The cab stops in the courtyard. Xavier and a small crowd are waiting, standing close to the bonfire in the middle for warmth. Miesha looks out the window, and then her eyes dart back to me, suspicious. “Why are we
here
?”

“This is what I was trying to tell you—”

The cab doors swing open. Miesha steps out and I run around to the other side to help her. I hold her arm as she walks slowly toward the group. “Miesha, the Favor they brought me here for was about saving someone. Someone that you—”

The crowd parts. Miesha stops walking. There’s nothing left for me to say.

Karden stands there staring at her.

I feel Miesha lean harder against me, like her joints have gone slack. “What kind of trick is this?” she says, her voice a shaky whisper, but Karden hears it just the same.

“No trick, Miesha,” he says and steps closer, hobbling on a crutch. “I’ve been a prisoner. Your friend rescued me.”

Hearing his voice, her knees buckle. I grab her around the waist and she straightens her legs. Her whole body stiffens like she’s forcing strength back into it. She steps away from me and walks silently toward Karden until they’re face-to-face. They stare at each other for the longest time, a space of time that makes the rest of us grow uncomfortable, like they’re both taking in the lines and toll sixteen hard years apart has brought. Finally, they whisper words to each other that none of us can hear. My fear that there would be nothing left between them vanishes. He reaches up, touching her face, and she melts into him.

The rest of us step away to the other side of the bonfire, giving them space, the moment too intimate even if it’s in the middle of a courtyard, but even through the crackle and hiss of the fire I hear Miesha’s sobs, something I’ve never heard from her before. And just that quick, suddenly the Favor is not about me trying to find a life, not about justice or a resistance, or anything large and global, it’s about something as basic as air and gravity, something as basic as the love between two people.

I look up and see Raine’s face in the window of Xavier’s home. Waiting. I see the fear in her eyes. Meeting Miesha is different from meeting Karden. She loved her adoptive mother and for her entire life had been told that her birth mother was an animal. I can’t make Raine wait through this any longer.

I walk back over to where Miesha and Karden are standing and I tug on her arm, turning her to face me. “There’s someone else you need to meet,” I say softly.

I intend to walk her inside the building but when we turn, Raine is already standing in the doorway. Miesha spots her. I hold her tight, waiting for her to breathe again, fearful that this final shock might make her collapse completely, but something else happens instead. She takes a deep breath, visibly becomes stronger right before my eyes, her chin lifting, pulling away from me, seeing the utter terror in Raine’s eyes just as I do, and for her child’s sake she keeps it together, becoming the steel-strong mother who plunged her arms through a window and into a burning building trying to save her baby so long ago.

“Her name is Raine now,” I say.

Miesha nods. “Raine,” she whispers to herself. She swallows. “Let’s go inside and meet, Raine.”

* * *

The four of us, me, Raine, Karden, and Miesha, sit in Xavier’s modest living room for an hour. At first I talk, telling Miesha about the Favor, then Karden talks about his time in prison, the Secretary taunting him with stories of his wife and child that nearly broke him. Miesha keeps it together, the only clue that a storm rages within her is whenever the Secretary’s name is mentioned and the knuckles of her fist whiten. Finally Miesha asks Raine if she remembers anything about her and Karden.

Raine shakes her head.

“No, of course you wouldn’t,” Miesha says apologetically. “You were too young.” For the first time her voice cracks. She takes a shallow clattering breath. “And your adoptive mother? She was good to you?”

“Yes,” Raine whispers.

The creases fanning out from the corners of Miesha’s eyes deepen and her lower lip trembles. I watch the sixteen years that she missed with her own child race through her eyes, precious years that she can never get back and for the first time I think it’s possible for her sixteen lost years to be far more than the 260 that were lost to me.

Miesha bites her lip to stop its trembling, and her head tilts to the side slightly. “May I—” She blinks, trying to force back tears, but one trickles from the corner of her eye anyway. “May I hold you?” she asks.

Raine nods, and Miesha leans forward, holding her daughter for the first time since she was a baby cradled in her arms, her shoulders shaking, her eyes squeezing shut. Raine’s eyes close too, her lashes wet. I watch her fingers curl into Miesha’s sweater, at last gripping the mother she searched for in her late-night walks.

I look at Karden, and even for someone as wiry and tough and self-disciplined as he is, someone who has survived years of isolation and who knows what else, this proves too much for even him and he looks away, tears flowing down his cheeks.

Xavier appears in the doorway and knocks softly on the wall. “Sorry,” he whispers. “But their car is here. It’s not safe for them to linger too long.”

Time. It seems there’s always too much. Or not enough. But we know we have to deal with what we have.

Miesha seems to understand this too. We explain to her where we’re going. A safe house in New York. It’s a good town to get lost in for a while. And we need to get good and lost, at least until the money can start helping us, opening some doors and closing others. Plus, there’s someone else there, someone who needs a Favor. Xavier’s promised me it’s nothing of the magnitude of this last Favor, just enough to keep me “out of trouble,” as he describes it. Karden will be staying here and recovering until he’s better able to travel. It’s not safe for him to stay in Boston either.

We walk outside and Xavier points to a narrow place between two buildings where a truck is wedged, almost hidden from view. The plumbing truck. “One last thing before you go. We need to do something with them. Did you decide?”

I think I decided almost the minute I saw them. I just needed to be able to do it myself. I finally understood Jenna’s long-ago actions in that moment, knowing why she threw our copies in the pond. Until we face an impossible decision ourselves, we don’t ever really know for sure what we would do. I know now. A life gets one chance, maybe two if we’re lucky, but a hundred chances reduces what is precious to a product—a product whose only purpose for existence is to replace that which is lost.

Not everything can be replaced. Kara’s gone. If anything’s left, it’s only her shell, the one Gatsbro tried unsuccessfully to fill and use for his own greedy purposes. No one will have that chance again.

One by one, I disconnect the cubes from their battery docks and pass them to Xavier, and others who quietly offer their help, and they take them to the bonfire. Cube after cube labeled with
LOCKE
or with
KARA
, a hundred Lockes, a hundred Karas, one by one, gone. No more wandering through an endless, timeless void. No more searching for doors that don’t exist. Finally, I come to the last cube, but it’s labeled differently from the rest.

Gerald Gatsbro.

My blood runs cold and I hesitate. Xavier waits, his hand outstretched, ready to carry it off with the others. I stare at the cube, a second chance to give Gatsbro what he deserves. I’m inclined to keep it, walk away to one of the many abandoned buildings that surround us and tuck it away into a dark corner. Leave it there. Let it sit for centuries. Or longer.

Raine appears at the rear of the truck. “Locke, are you okay?”

I inhale sharply, focusing on her face, her eyes bright, ready to leave her past behind. I look back at the cube, my last chance for revenge for everything he did to me and especially to Kara. “Yes,” I answer. “I’m fine.” I disconnect Gatsbro’s cube and hand it to Xavier.

The copies are finally all gone, their journey over, and now only one Locke remains, the Locke reaching for Raine’s hand, ready to begin a new journey.

We walk across the courtyard to the car the Network has given us for our Escape, a beat-up wreck but still an extravagance by Non-pact standards. Xavier shows me the basics. I tell him that I never learned to drive, but he assures me there’s nothing to learn. The car will do it all. “But if you ever need to break the rules—and I have no doubt that you will—a simple Override command will take care of it.”

I see the weight in Xavier’s eyes. He had tried to talk me out of taking Raine.
This isn’t a life she’s used to,
he had told me.
There are other places we can hide her.
What he doesn’t know is it’s not a life I was used to just a short time ago either. But life changes. We adapt. We have no other choice.

He tries to reason with me one last time. “Are you sure you want to take her? It’s not going to be an easy life on the—”

Miesha steps forward, tucking a strand of hair behind Raine’s ear, worry in her eyes too. “She’ll be fine,” she says. “She’s a strong young woman.”

Raine smiles. I know it’s hard for her to say good-bye too. A relationship barely begun will have to wait again. She reaches out, this time initiating her own embrace with Miesha.

Karden reaches into his pocket and holds out his Swiss knife to me. “I hear it’s gotten you out of a few scrapes. Take it,” he says. I look into his eyes, dark and deep like Raine’s, the fire and focus still there, never giving up. I reach out to take it from him and he grips my hand with both of his, squeezing it hard, his gaze locked on mine, an understanding. A nod. A silent
thank you
.

We get into the car and I begin to pull the door shut when a large golden arm swipes through the air blocking me from closing it. Raine and I both suck in startled breaths.

A familiar voice booms in our ears. “You may not shut the door unless Miss Branson is on this side of it with me.”

Xavier grins. “Sorry, kid. Forgot to tell you.”

I turn and look behind me. I face a perpetual stern scowl, but now I know what lies behind it. Something more. “Get in, Hap,” I say. “
Back
seat.”

* * *

Raine and I hold hands in the front seat. We’ve been on the open highway that hugs the coast for an hour now, the windows down, the brisk autumn air blowing through our hair. We both wear our government-issue charity coats for warmth, a symbol of shameful poverty for so many, a symbol of hope for us. Are the odds with us? Probably not. Two kids out to change the world. Two kids being hunted by a still-powerful man. Not good odds. But the odds have never been with me, and yet, here I am.

With Raine.

She spots a wide sandy beach and pulls the frosted green glass of Liberty from her pocket, still in need of its lost mate. “Do we have time?”

Never enough. Always too much.

But now, as I look into her eyes, the time seems just right.

Thirty Years Later

I hear a soft knock and I pause, listening to see if it came from upstairs. Is one of the boys rapping on the wall? Another weak knock but this one is clearly coming from the front door, which seems unlikely because of the late hour and the drifts of snow that are piling up by the minute. Perhaps a neighbor in need of something?

I cross to the foyer, startling as I swing open the door. “What are you doing out there? For God’s sake, you shouldn’t—” I reach out to pull Jenna inside but she steps back and shakes her head. “Jenna, you can’t stay out there in the cold. You know—”

“I’ve been walking all day, Locke. That’s why I’m here. To walk.”

“But you can’t—”

“It’s time, Locke,” she says forcefully, cutting me off. I finally understand what she’s saying. This isn’t just a walk.

My mouth opens, but no words come out. She’s a Jenna I’ve never seen before. The calm, serene Jenna she’s always been, but a very weary one too. I see it in her eyes, still crystal blue, forever stuck at seventeen, but a fire has left them.

She reaches out, smiles, touching my temple where my hair is tinged with gray.

“I guess you were right,” I say. “It’s all connected. The Bio-Perfect got the message that I want to grow old with Raine. It’s making sure I do. I can’t bear the thought of—” I realize what I’m saying and stop.

“That’s the advantage of progress,” she says. “I, on the other hand, have a first-generation Bio Gel that’s never gotten that message—only the survival one.”

“Jenna, please—”

“Kayla’s in Africa with her husband. She’s so happy, Locke. She loves her work there. She called me last week and I saw she has a hint of gray at her temple too.” Her smile fades. “She’s getting older, Locke. Before I have to face the day that—” She shakes her head. “I’m tired, Locke. No one can live forever and it already feels like I have. I’ve outlived Allys, Ethan, everyone I’ve ever known, but I refuse to outlive my own daughter.”

Her gaze drops to her hands laced together in front of her. “My parents couldn’t face it. Neither can I.” She looks back at me, her eyes hopeful. “No parent wants that. I always knew that one day … one day I’d return to Boston for a last walk in wintertime.” She takes both of my hands and squeezes them with icy fingers. “Now is that time. And I want to share this last moment with someone who knows me—someone who knew me from the beginning. Someone who always made me braver. That’s you. Please, this one last time, come walk with me.”