My father came to a stop, pointing his finger toward a scrunched up, haggard creature tied to a tree. Its head was covered in a burlap sack.
Abrams.
“But how? Isn’t he supposed to be dead? He’s like a billion years old,” I said. Even seeing it, it was still hard to believe.
“Come on, Tess, we both know there are no bounds to what science can do,” my father replied.
“That’s what those creatures were looking for? That’s why they were in the woods. And why they attacked the community?”
My father nodded grimly.
“How did they know where we were?” I demanded. My father had put the whole community in danger by bringing this man there, but it still didn’t explain how they found us.
“I’m not entirely sure. I can’t figure that one out,” he admitted, wrapping his hand tightly around his gun, an edge to his voice. “Right now, all you need to know is that we have him. And we will get what we need from Abrams: the knowledge we need to take the council down. For good. I never thought they would find us in the community. I brought Abrams there because I needed a place to try and get the information. Somewhere safe. Somewhere off the grid.”
I remembered the bloodied man who had run toward Sharon only days before. The blood hadn’t been his. Had my father attempted to torture Abrams as well?
I stepped gingerly closer to his prisoner. I lifted my hands toward the bag. I wanted to see him. I wanted to put a face to the pain I had felt all my life. It would be so much easier to hate one person than an entire government.
As my hand met with the rough texture of the bag, my father’s voice halted me. “You sure about this?”
No. But there was no turning back now. There wasn’t time for that anymore.
I grabbed onto the bag and pulled it off.
All the air rushed from my lungs.
Abrams was right before me. Tied to a tree like a prisoner of war, bruised and bloodied, was one of the men responsible for almost every dark and twisted thing I had ever seen.
Except it wasn’t a man.
It was a woman.
…
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. How was this even possible? The council despised women, blamed them for everything that was wrong with the world. Claimed our emotions and natural-born wantonness weakened the men, leading the country to ruin. Was I to believe that this creator, one of the original masterminds behind the creation of the chosen ones and the downfall of the naturals, was a woman? The very thing that the council warned against had given birth to the council itself?
“Are you going to stare at me all day?” Her voice was quiet and wispy, like the leaves that crackled and crunched under your feet as you walked through the woods.
Her age showed in every crease and wrinkle that covered her face. And there were a ton of them. She was the oldest woman I had ever seen. Decrepit. Sandpapery. The blues of her veins broke through her skin like some sort of beacon, calling to whoever was looking for her. Bright curves of color against her alabaster skin. A bit of drool mixed with blood slipped out of her mouth. Her eyes, which once might have showcased color, were covered with a milk white slip of film.
Something so weak had destroyed so many.
I had a thousand questions for her. But at the mere sight of her, I lost all my power again. She was like the villains of stories living only on the pages. Except this villain was far more dubious than I could have even begun to imagine. It was hard to believe that she could actually be real.
“You have five minutes,” my father reminded me. I nodded numbly as he moved to stand behind me. He didn’t bother to explain away my shock. He simply held his rifle pointed at the woman he had hidden within the community. Apparently, despite the ropes and men who stood guard in the tree lines, my father didn’t trust her. Of course, she had fooled an entire country, so I could understand his fear.
“She looks like you,” Abrams said to my father. “Your daughter, I’m assuming?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but his voice cut me off. “Don’t you tell her anything about yourself. If you have questions, you’d better ask her. You’re running out of time.”
I closed my mouth and stared at the enigma in front of me. Even broken and weakened, the woman spoke with such an air of authority that I was half ready to follow her every command. It wasn’t the way a woman was taught to speak.
There was a part of me that liked the way it sounded.
“Ask away, child.” Abrams grinned. The whispery static of her voice caused me to shudder. Under the power lay the threat, and while I would never give up fighting for my own rights, I would never take my power at someone else’s expense. Yet she seemed to enjoy it.