31 NatureNurture #2
“I can return your family to you. If you work with me to rebuild it. I want to love you.”
I want to love you. Not I love you. I want to love you. My mother has never loved me. A truth I knew, but it hurts all the same.
The little voice inside my head speaks, sounding as anguished as I feel. It’s a fleeting thought, flying by like a flower petal on the wind. Pain, so much pain. Pain. Yes, I know, I tell myself; I know.
The small boy is behind me. He creeps forward, tugs on my legs as if he could free me. I nudge him back, stepping backward as far as I can, with Adele still controlling my arm.
“I won’t even make him go back to the dungeon.
He seems well behaved enough. He even seems to like you.
You’ve always had a strange knack for children.
” She’s peering at him with intense curiosity.
“I know of the perfect use for him. I’m sure you will agree to it when I tell you the rest of the story. ” She takes a cautious step forward.
He hisses at her angrily, backing up the steps and into the Winnebago as she approaches. “Beast,” he says.
“Don’t you dare speak of beasts. Don’t you dare,” she hisses at him.
I flinch, but Adele takes my arm almost tenderly.
Peels the Gauntlet off and slides it onto her own arm.
Even she looks surprised that it’s that simple.
Neither of us understands my creation, but while I look at it with fear, Adele holds it up in awe, admiring, twisting it this way and that.
The boy is there again. Tugging me, pulling me onto the steps.
My legs feel wooden, my body numb, and I don’t think to resist him.
“Stay, Regina. There’s so much you don’t yet know,” Adele says urgently. For once, her face looks earnest, unguarded.
A raging blizzard of indecision freezes my thoughts. Facts crystallize, questions I don’t have answers to clamor to hear more. I want to listen; I want to know more. Answers I fear, answers I both desperately want to know and never want to face.
“I want to love you,” she says again.
I can’t leave. Meredith, Zara. My baby sisters. Not my sisters. I’m a clone. My sisters were never better off with me. I’m the very monster they want to run from.
I am Adele. A monster. And I’ve made her a weapon. A weapon I told myself I wouldn’t make for her.
I will die before I let her make me into a weapon.
Luca. He would hate what I’ve become. He would hate everything I am.
Whatever purpose she has for me, I don’t want it. But I’m not dying for it either.
Meredith and Zara.
As soon as I can, I’ll come for you.
I’ll kill them before I let you take them.
I can’t leave them. I can’t go. But I can’t stay.
Who will I become if I stay here, knowing all this, knowing the terrible things she’s sure to make me do?
Who will I turn them into? I should have sent Zara with Luca.
I could have at least saved her. But it’s far too late to save either sister from Adele, from myself.
The boy tugs at my ankle once more.
“I can’t stay here,” I say, backing all the way up the steps.
“So go. You’ll find your way back here, and you will help me. It is nearly time. They are on their way already. It’s in your nature, a truth encoded in every fiber of your being because I made it so. You cannot fight the tethers that will call you home. Can you sense them yet?”
Call, tethers, truth.
My head rings with voices echoing her terrible words.
No, stop, be quiet. I hate her, but I hate myself too as I leave my sisters behind and flee.
Adele doesn’t move to follow me as I step inside the Winnebago, where the door slams shut of its own accord behind me.
The boy darts to hide under the table. Before I can reach the wheel, the Winnebago hurtles toward freedom; the hangar door is already open, guards retreating obediently as we emerge into the night.
I sit in numb shock on the floor as the Winnebago drives itself, trundling across the dark desert, onto dirt roads, and eventually even a highway, where I finally regain some common sense and sit myself in front of the wheel.
The little boy crawls out from under the table and into my lap as I watch the blinding headlights of other cars through the windshield.
“What do I do now?” I whisper. I’m not really asking him, but he answers anyway.
“Run. Hide. Survive.”
He seems paradoxically young and old all at once. He relaxes against me, doesn’t move even when the shock dissipates and sobs wrack my body. I’m not sure which one of us is seeking comfort, which one of us is providing it.
As the first hint of dawn lights up the sky, the Winnebago trundles into a gas station parking lot somewhere in Arizona, farther from the only home I’ve ever known and farther than I’ve ever really hoped to get.
The dull ache of hurt and confusion is winding itself into a tangled ball that I have no chance of unraveling.
I will let myself sink into it and dwell there soon, but first I have a baby to take care of.
I shake myself out of my stupor, dig the emergency burner phone out from where I’ve stashed it, and call in a favor.
The boy never tells me his name. He makes a soft, lyrical noise. Mumbles the number seventy-four. He’s so unreasonably distressed about the question that I don’t press him.
“It’s okay, I’m giving myself a new name too,” I say.
He’s suspicious of me but agrees to my request to lie to Luca, to say I’m going back to Agency 51.
But I’ve made up my mind; I am not going back.
I rationalize that surely it’s only a matter of time before Adele burns herself out.
Surely Meredith and Zara can’t keep her tethered without me.
Why would they, even if they were capable of it?
Then Agency 51 will fall and . . . someone, anyone else will pick up the pieces.
I won’t go to Luca, where I’ll have to lie about who and what I am or tell him the truth.
He would hate me if he ever discovered the truth.
And I can’t bear his judgment for my being a weapon for Adele.
Something he so vehemently rejected that he vowed to die rather than be.
A task I backed down from at the first opportunity.
All those times I chose not to fight her; all those times I used the Gauntlet freely rather than be bothered to fight back.
I spend every spare second convincing myself this is how I save everyone and crushing my doubts under my heel until it’s second nature to think of anything else.
The boy and I spend the week together before I leave him at a busy playground in New Mexico.
I watch from the Winnebago, parked across the street as he deftly blends in with the crowd of children.
Flitting from spot to spot, avoiding attention.
My heart leaps into my throat when an old 1980s Mustang pulls up and a figure in dark jeans and a leather jacket steps out.
The boy’s head pops up from behind the concrete lip of the playground.
He drops the toy car he’s holding and cocks his head in interest.
I peer cautiously through the Winnebago window shades, determined to remain hidden but desperate to catch a glimpse.
Luca. His hair is shorter, his skin tanner, but those amber eyes are the same.
Luca looks around, eyes sliding right over the Winnebago as if he doesn’t even see it, to squint suspiciously at the repair van parked a few houses down.
He frowns but turns his attention to the playground, scans the crowds of children, and his eyes land on the boy.
Luca walks forward a few steps, crouches down to toddler level, and holds out a hand to the boy.
The boy carefully approaches Luca. They talk quietly for a few minutes before they walk back to Luca’s car, hand in hand.
Luca opens the door for the boy, who climbs right in, before surreptitiously looking around one last time.
His eyes pass right over mine with no indication he sees me.
Then he gets into the car and drives off. I am alone.