Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
The next evening, I walk into a night shift at the MRF with a new purpose. I asked another guard—a new guy named Cliff—to swap with me, and he was only too happy to surrender an overnight.
Despite the buzz of anticipation in my veins, I carry out my duties like normal. I make sure nothing is wrong with the other subjects and that the other security guards have gone home for the night. I’m alone with the cameras.
So I shut off the one connecting to Sixteen’s cell and the attached observation room.
I pause outside his door in the hallway, tempted to slide my key card and walk inside.
Part of me wants so badly to be together, actually together, while we have this conversation.
But…the MRF must have logs about which key cards are used to open cells.
And besides, it would be inappropriate, being in his cell in the middle of the night with the camera shut off.
I hate that part of me likes the idea. I shake it off and walk into the observation room instead.
Sixteen is in bed when I lower the shutters, tossing and turning under his sheets.
It feels odd watching him, like I’m intruding on a private moment.
Normally, I’d turn my attention elsewhere and let him get some rest, but I need to talk to him in private, and I don’t know when I’ll have another chance.
I hit the intercom button. “Hey, Sixteen,” I say softly. “Are you awake?”
He sits up quickly, hair tousled. “Yes.” He rubs his eyes with one fist. “Is something wrong?”
There’s a pang in my chest at seeing him with his guard down. He looks so…normal, for once, shaggy hair covering his third eye. Vulnerable on the verge of sleep. Then he shifts and the blanket falls away, revealing his bare chest. Pale skin and dark veins, hard to look away from.
I wish I had gone into his cell. I’m also grateful I didn’t.
A tug-of-war between my conscience and my desires.
In the end, guilt overwhelms my other feelings, as it so often does.
That goddamn Christian guilt, ingrained in me at such a young age that I still haven’t shaken it.
If God is always watching, not even my thoughts are free from judgment.
But that’s exactly why I have to talk to him today. My past. The cult. The day that seemingly binds us together. I don’t know how he’s going to react, or if our relationship will ever be the same afterward. But I need to tell him the truth.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I assure him. “But I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.” He blinks at me, clearly trying to wake up fully and give me his attention.
“The cameras are off. I’d like this to stay between us.”
“Oh?” He pulls one knee up, an uncertain tilt to his head, nerves making him appear boyish. “Of course. What is it?”
“A couple days ago, we spoke about your birthday.”
He nods. “You seemed off,” he says.
He’s always too observant. “You didn’t. It wasn’t about you at all. But…that day has a special significance for me, too. It’s…a bad day for me, too.”
He waits, watching me through the window.
I take a breath. Time to tell the truth.
More truth than I’ve admitted to anyone since I was a child being forced to talk to policemen, therapists, and doctors about my past. “When I was young, I was in a cult.” I shift in my seat, lowering my gaze to my lap, chipping idly at my black nail polish.
“I guess I should say my parents were in a cult. I was very young, too little to really understand. It was only later that I learned about how…extreme…their beliefs were.”
I pause, clearing my throat. X-16 doesn’t say anything, but he nods, encouraging me to continue.
“It was a doomsday cult. They believed that the world was going to end soon. When I was six years old, the preacher saw a sign. He gathered everyone—children included—in the chapel to pray and say our goodbyes.”
I glance up and see Sixteen’s eyes widen as if in recognition.
“It was normal for everyone to drink the sacrament together at the end of our prayer,” I say.
I’m rambling, but I can’t stop; if I stop, I don’t think I’ll be able to start again.
“But that day, it was poisoned. Cyanide, I found out later. A lethal dose. And it was lethal…for everyone but me.” A deep breath.
My voice is getting shaky. I’ve never told this story before, not like this, not to someone like him.
I’ve worked so hard to bury it that I’m unearthing old, old emotions along with it.
“Though technically, I did die. My heart stopped. But I woke up again. I was the only one who woke up again.” I finally lift my eyes to the window and let myself look at him.
“That was twenty-six years ago. The day you were born.”
“Willow…” Sixteen’s face is heavy with sorrow as he meets my eyes through the window, like he feels the echo of my pain. “I’m so sorry.”
I can tell he means it to be more than an expression of sympathy. He feels responsible for it. I shake my head, rising to my feet, pressing my fingers to the glass.
“No, listen, Sixteen. I think that’s the reason that I’m immune. I died and came back on the same day you were born, and we must be tied together, somehow.” I shake my head. “Whether it’s by the cult, or by…something else.”
“Something else?” he asks, brow furrowing. “Like what?”
I can’t even bring myself to voice it, but the answer rings in my head: like fate.
I discarded my faith in God long ago. But even when I tried to tell myself it was all bullshit, some part of me clung to the idea that there must be something out there. Some greater force or higher power. Some reason that I must have survived the massacre when no one else did.
And my heart is pounding with an intoxicating hope right now.
“I was the only one who survived that day,” I whisper.
“I’ve always carried that weight. Wondered how and why it was me.
I always felt that…that I had to prove that I earned it.
That maybe there was a reason I survived other than pure, dumb luck.
And perhaps you’re that reason, Sixteen. Maybe I was meant to save you.”
Shock flickers across his face, but then his expression falls. He looks away. “Or maybe you were meant to save everyone else.”
I pause, the train of my thoughts crashing to a halt. “What?”
“Your cult believed in the end times, right?” he asks. “The preacher thought the end of the world was coming the day I was born. Maybe… Maybe he was right. Maybe he really did see something. Maybe the signs were warning of me.”
My stomach lurches uncomfortably. The idea is perilously close to the dark thoughts I’ve had about X-16—the Harbinger is here—but I refuse to believe in the ravings of the preacher. “No.”
“You’ve seen the same things I have, Willow,” he says. “You know it’s getting worse. I heard about the water turning to blood—”
“No. I don’t believe that. If I’m immune for a reason, then it must be to save you.”
He stares past me, hardly seeming to register what I’m saying. “Or,” he says. “Or… you’re immune so you can stop me.” His gaze fixes on me, the look in his eyes almost feverish. “Maybe it’s because you’re meant to kill me, Willow.”
And rather than fear, pure relief is written on his face.
“What?” I’m so shocked by the statement that it’s hard to find words. That soaring sense of hope is falling now, replaced by confusion and a hollow ache in my chest. “I’m not going to kill you, Sixteen. I’d never do that.”
“Not even if it might save the world?”
I open my mouth and shut it again, unable to do anything but shake my head wordlessly as my stomach plummets.
“This…” He gestures down at his body, his lip curling in disgust. “What’s happening to me…
I don’t know what will be left of me by the time it’s over.
I’ve always known something is wrong with me, but it’s been worse lately, I can feel it.
Something is coming. Something terrible is coming when I finish this… this transformation.”
“We don’t know that,” I say, though my heart is hammering in my ears, my stomach roiling with nausea. He’s voicing things I’ve thought too many times before, and hearing them echoed makes them feel more possible.
“But if it is true, Willow, then killing me would be a kindness,” he says. “Please. Please, if it comes to that, promise me you’ll do it.”
I push up from my chair, stepping back as if putting distance between him and myself can somehow fix this. “No. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Willow…” His voice is pleading, his eyes soft, red gathering at the corners. “I don’t want to die, that’s why I came here instead of—” He cuts off, shaking his head. A tear of blood spills down one cheek. “I can’t do it myself. I’m not strong enough. If it has to happen, I want it to be you.”
“Stop. Please stop talking like that.”
“I need you to promise me—”
“Stop!” I bang a fist against the desk, and Sixteen finally goes silent. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t do that for you.”
He lowers his head, hair falling in front of his eyes. That familiar hunch enters his posture once more, but still, he won’t relent. “You’re immune to me. You might be the only one who can.”
I press my palms into the desk, leaning over it, my eyes sliding shut.
I can’t do this. I don’t want to entertain this line of thinking.
But I can hear the despair in his voice, the genuine fear.
He’s only asking this of me because he’s desperate.
He believes that he might do something terrible, and that I might be the only one to stop him.
“I…” My voice falters, but I force my eyes open and push the words out. “Okay. If it comes to that—if I truly believe that’s the only way—then I promise you I’ll do it.”
“Say it,” he whispers. “The whole thing. Please.”
I take a breath, swallow past a lump in my throat. “If it’s the only way to prevent the world from ending, I promise I’ll kill you.”
His head rises. His lips curl into a small, rare smile. It’s dazzling, and terrible, given the circumstances. “Thank you.”
“But I have one condition.”
His head tilts, a silent question.
“If I’m going to have to kill you, I want to know your name first.”
His eyebrows draw together. “That seems…unwise. It will only make it harder—”
“I’m not going to put a bullet in your head without ever knowing your real name.” I refuse to remember him as a subject, a moniker, an unmarked grave. A question mark in my heart.
He sighs. One hand brushes long hair out of his face, revealing that third eye, unwaveringly fixed on me. “I don’t want it in my file.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Like I said, the cameras are off.” My lips twitch in a faint smile. “I’m the only one who can safely watch the camera feed, anyway.” The words are out of my mouth before I realize it. Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling a subject about a serious flaw in our security.
Sixteen nods once to himself. “As you wish.” He pushes up to his feet, letting the blanket fall away completely to reveal only a pair of loose trousers, slung low on his narrow hips.
I try not to stare as he steps closer to the glass, lowering his voice as if sharing a great secret.
I guess he is, in his own mind. “My name is Cain. Cain Solomon.”
“Cain,” I whisper back to him, savoring the way it feels in my mouth.
I know my Bible stories. Cain. The firstborn son of Adam and Eve. The first murderer, hands stained by his brother’s blood.
A terrible thing to name a child. A curse of a name. Did his mother choose it knowing the fate that awaited him?
“It doesn’t suit you,” I say, forcing a huff of a laugh.
His laugh sounds more genuine than mine.
When I glance up at him, the tension in his shoulders has eased.
He’s more relaxed after my promise—and I am fighting despair at the thought that I might have to go through with it someday.
But when I see him smile through the glass, I have a terrible fear that I may not be able to do what he asks, not even if the entire world is at stake.