Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
For a while afterward I sit in my car, trying to breathe as my mind races with everything I just learned, and the worse truths that I suspect.
I found what I came for, though the knowledge feels more like a burden than a boon.
Cain told me his mother never explained her comment about what he is, so I assume he doesn’t know any of this.
And how am I supposed to tell him? That his mother was working with the cult?
That I suspect his father was Satan, and his birth was due to a deranged cult ritual?
It was planned. It was intentional. I always wondered if the preacher—my father, I force myself to think, though it always makes me sick—truly believed in his own teachings, or if he was just a sick man on a power trip. But the truth is so much worse than either.
My father didn’t merely predict the end of the world. He tried to cause it.
I suck in a shaky breath, pressing my face into my hands.
I went on this journey hoping to help Cain, but this only makes the situation more dire. He didn’t ask for any of this. He doesn’t deserve this. He has so little hope left, already.
I slam a fist on the steering wheel. “Fuck,” I whisper, and wipe my eyes. Then I begin the drive back to Ash Valley.
I’ve just entered the town limits, slumped exhausted over my steering wheel, when the first drop hits my windshield. I mechanically turn on my wipers—and then blink as it leaves a smear of dark red across the glass, obscuring my vision of the road ahead.
“What?” I mutter, slowing.
And then the downpour begins in earnest. I slam on the brakes, gasping, as my car is pelted with droplets. It feels and sounds like rain on the roof of my car, but leaves the glass coated in red, red, red.
I gasp, sinking down in my seat, as the downpour continues.
The windshield wipers try frantically to clear it away, to no avail.
Unable to see, unsure of what lies ahead or behind, all I can do is sit and gape until the red rain slows and then stops.
I wait a moment, hands shaking on the wheel, before I push my door open and step outside.
The squelch of thick liquid beneath my boot makes my stomach turn.
I stare down at the red-coated asphalt, at the red-stained sand, and then up at the storm clouds above.
The stink of copper is thick in the air.
Numb with shock, I swipe a finger along the roof of my car, collecting the viscous substance, confirming what I already fear.
Blood. It just rained blood in Ash Valley.
For a moment I can only stare in dumbfounded shock. Then I whisper, “Cain.”
I shrug off my jacket, frantically wipe off my windshield as well as I can, and then speed toward the MRF.
I’m aware of every agonizing minute it takes me to reach the MRF. Nearly an hour to drive from the outer limits of town to the MRF on the other side. An hour in which Cain is trapped within an episode. No one will be able to reach him.
Everything I pass is covered in blood. The roads, the cars, the buildings. A downpour of red has swallowed Ash Valley.
Every channel on the radio plays the same dire warning. Stay inside. Shut your doors and windows.
I’m still supposed to be on leave, but the guard at the gate waves me through anyway. Maybe it’s because he recognizes me—but he also seems rattled, distracted. Blood soaks his uniform, though he doesn’t seem injured; he must have been caught in the downpour.
Inside, the lobby is in chaos. My gaze jumps from a cluster of scientists evacuated from the inner building to a guard slumped against the wall with gashes on his cheeks. A doctor is tending to the woman next to him, who bears a bloody, smashed nose and a distant look in her eyes.
I walk directly to Barnes, who is speaking quietly with a woman I don’t recognize.
“What is it?” I ask. “What happened to him?”
Barnes nods at the woman next to him. “Thanks again, both of you,” he says, though only the woman is standing near him.
There’s a grim set to his jaw as he steps over to speak to me.
He doesn’t try to tell me I’m not supposed to be here, which causes my already racing pulse to jump higher.
He just places a hand on my shoulder, urging me toward the doors into the main building.
“He’s stable now,” Barnes says, but his tone is dark. “There was an incident.”
“Another episode?”
“Yes,” he says. “We eventually subdued him.” He glances over his shoulder. “Had to call in a favor with some outside help.”
I follow his gaze toward the woman he was speaking to earlier. She’s pale, with long blond hair tied back to a bow. She’s standing alone now but still talking quietly, her eyes fixed on the empty space beside her.
Fucking creepy. But not important right now.
“I should’ve been here,” I say, turning back to Barnes. If I had told him about my background earlier, if I had argued more to stay— If I had stayed in town instead of leaving to pursue Cain’s history, I could’ve been here in half the time—
“You’re right,” Barnes says. “I never should’ve asked you to leave when his episodes have been escalating like this.” He shakes his head. “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon. And I didn’t think he’d try—” He cuts himself off with a grimace.
“Try what?” A sudden fear grips me. I reach out to grab his arm when he doesn’t answer, pulling him to a stop. “What’d he do, Barnes?”
“We weren’t expecting him to act out,” he says. “He’s been doing so well lately, we let security slip. But I think he waited for you to be gone. He knew none of us could get close enough to stop him. None of us can even watch the camera for long, it took us a while to realize…”
There’s a sick twist in my stomach. Cain knew. I told him no one but me can watch the cameras. “Stop him from what?” I ask, my voice trembling.
Barnes finally meets my eyes. “Hurting himself.”
My throat is tight as I take my usual seat in the observation room, pausing for a moment before I raise my eyes to look through the window.
Cain’s room is a mess. Furniture overturned, books and papers and writing instruments strewn all over the floor. Blood splatters and clumps of dark feathers are scattered over the white tile.
Cain is a dark mass huddled in bed, the blanket curled over him. At first I think he’s sleeping, but when he turns over, his eyes are open. They’re completely red now, irises overtaking the whites.
I stare at him through the observation window, chewing on my thumbnail, as Barnes comes in to discuss his status. It’s hard to focus on what he’s saying, but the main points reach me, and each one is a new rock in my stomach.
Physical symptoms progressing.
Rapid escalation.
No effective treatment.
“At this point we have to consider the effect he’s having on the staff and the other subjects,” Barnes says.
“Today was bad. Really bad. And that rain…” He shakes his head.
For the first time since I started working here, I see a flash of fear in Barnes’s expression.
“Like I’ve said before, we’ve never dealt with anyone quite like Sixteen.
His episodes can’t be contained within his cell, and they’re starting to interfere with the progress we’re making with others, in addition to the damage he’s done to the town itself.
” He pauses. “We’re going to have to relocate him. ”
I finally look up at that. “Relocate him where?” My heart sinks as I see the pity in his expression. “Not the place you mentioned before. In the mountains. You said you wouldn’t, Barnes. You said he didn’t deserve that.”
“I said I didn’t want to,” he says. “But we don’t have much of a choice, Willow. He’s too dangerous. We need to keep him separate from the other subjects, farther away from the town.”
“You’re talking about solitary confinement.”
He sighs. “It’s not a punishment, Hawkins. It’s for his own safety, too.”
I put my head in my hands, shutting my eyes. “There has to be another way.” When I raise my head to look at Barnes again, I’m expecting him to argue with me, to tell me I’m being stubborn or that I’m too deeply involved in this.
Instead, his eyes are full of sympathy, and that’s far, far worse.
“This isn’t the ending that any of us were hoping for,” he says.
“But we’re out of options.” He tilts his head toward the observation room.
“What we’re doing here clearly isn’t working for Sixteen, either.
Look at him. Every time something goes wrong, every time someone gets hurt because of him, it’s just another weight on his shoulders. What do you think he would want?”
I swallow, turning back to the glass to stare at Cain where he’s curled on the bed, wings drooping, face covered.
I know, deep down, that Barnes is correct.
Cain would agree with me. Is it right for me to think I know better?
To make a decision for him when I know he’s been denied that chance time and time again?
And yet… I remember our conversation. How willing he was to sacrifice himself. Asking me to kill him. Sometimes I think I care about him more than he cares about himself.
“I’m not giving up on him,” I say, my eyes trained on his slumped form.
Not even if he’s giving up on himself.
Barnes hesitates, like he wants to say more. But after a moment he just clasps my shoulder and squeezes silently. Perhaps he intends it as a reassurance, but it feels more like an apology.
“We barely had time to bandage him before the sedative wore off,” he says. “Would you mind checking his wounds?”
I nod, but there’s a hollow feeling in my chest, because I suspect the real reason he’s asking is to give me a chance to say goodbye.
Cain is still curled up in bed. He doesn’t look up as I step through the door to his room with fresh bandages, a bucket of water, and a first aid kit.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, when I take a step closer. Even his voice sounds flat. Fatigued. Defeated.
“I need to check on your wounds,” I say. “Show me, Cain.”