“You said this was about my father. Is it about what he’s hiding?” I asked. I held my breath while I waited for Henry’s answer. If he told me yes, then everything Eric had feared would have came true. The people of the community had suffered because of my father’s actions. He had never cared about them. The fact that he had planted the bombs proved he knew an attack was likely.
“Yes, Tess. According to Stephanie, they didn’t even know you were here. They’ve been tracking your father.”
I sat straight up and stared right into Henry’s eyes. “Stephanie told you, didn’t she? What my father is hiding?” I reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me. “What the hell was worth the death of all these people?”
Henry gently removed my hand from his chin. “One of the original creators. Your father kidnapped him.”
My mouth fell open.
Chapter 20
I stalked past the many victims of my father’s actions. I ignored the countless protests that Henry hurled at me from behind. He had to have known they wouldn’t have stopped me. Once I had recovered from the shock of finding out that my father had kidnapped a creator, the creator who had been talked about for years, more bogeyman than man, more legend than human, I wasted no time in hunting him down. We needed to talk.
One of the last things Sharon had told me was to talk to my father, and it wasn’t too late to listen to her. He had to answer for her death.
He had to answer for a lot of things.
And then there was the other reason I sought him out—I wanted to see the man responsible for hurting and nearly destroying everyone I ever cared about—natural and chosen one alike. My father had held one of the creators in the community for weeks. A man who possessed the answers to so many questions, including questions about Louisa, had been so close. When I thought about it, and the fact that my father kept it from me, knowing how I worried for her, I could rip his head off.
I had been so stupid for placing even the smallest bit of trust in him.
I had pried from Henry where my father had set up camp. Not that it took much to figure it out. I just needed to follow the line of mindless soldiers who held their guns like compasses.
My father stood amidst his army, and I pushed through them without any attempt at civility. Upon seeing me, my father nodded. “Would you all mind giving me and my daughter a few moments?” he asked the men and women who helped him wipe out the community. It may have been the council’s chosen ones who initiated the event, but it was my father’s bombs that killed Sharon.
Bombs had been a staple of the resistance during its early stages. My father’s letters had mentioned how desperate men and women strapped makeshift, dodgy explosives to their children in some horrific symbol of their anger at the many failures of their government. It made me sick even now to think of it.
Were there any limits to the things people would do?
Neither side seemed to care much about collateral damage.
The men and women mumbled to each other as they went off and busied themselves with the next steps of my father’s master plan. “How’s the head?” he asked casually, like he was talking about the weather.
“Compared to most, I’m just dandy,” I replied bitterly.
With a groan, the first sign of his age I had seen or heard since he placed himself back into my life, my father sat down on the ground. “Yeah, I heard you lost some people. I’m sorry about that.” He pulled his rifle into his lap and began to clean it.
I balled up my fists. “That’s all you have to say? You’re sorry?”
My father wrinkled his forehead. “What else would you like me to say? Because I feel like we keep having this same conversation.”
Father and commander. He seemed to slip into each role effortlessly whenever it suited his needs.
He was right. There was nothing he could say that would stop me from wanting to yank that gun from his hands and aim it straight at him.
“Need me to show you how to clean one?” he asked. I frowned, unsure which part of my short speech had given the impression that I wanted to learn anything from him except the location of the council leader. “You’re staring at my gun,” he explained.
I crossed my arms and stared him down, trying, in vain, to regain my composure. My father knew exactly what buttons to push. Instead of yelling, he retained an air of stoniness during our conversations, and it always drove me mad.
He squinted, then sighed. “You’re thinking of using this on me. Aren’t you?” There was a slight air of amusement to his words. It seemed like everything I did or said reminded him of some inside joke he had forgotten to tell me.