“I don’t know where to begin,” I whispered.
“Of course you do,” she whispered back.
I closed my eyes briefly, then pulled forward the image of Emma. I let the moment of her death play inside my mind. When I opened my eyes, it wasn’t so scary to look at her anymore. “I want to know about the women,” I replied, my voice steel.
Abrams raised an eyebrow. “The women?”
“I want to know what you did to them. Why they can’t give birth. Why they had to d-die,” I stammered. I could feel my hands shaking. Not out of fear, but out of something else—something darker, feral. Something more lethal.
If this was the fire that Henry walked around with inside of him, I didn’t blame him entirely for giving himself over to it. It buzzed and burned inside of me, killing the fear. But I couldn’t let it consume me. If I did, I risked becoming like my father, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was so different from the villain tied up before me.
Abrams sighed and leaned her head back against the tree. “And I thought you had a good question for me. I do get so incessantly tired by these mundane ones.”
Something inside of me broke. I flew at Abrams and snatched her by the collar of her shirt, pulling her tight against the ropes that kept her entrapped. My father had taught me how to kill, and I had never felt the desire to do so burn so brightly inside of me. “You listen to me, you maniacal monster! I know it was you and your kind! You did something to them. Put some damn chemicals in the water supply or poisoned them with those damn vaccinations. But I know you did it. I want to know what you did.”
“Look at those tears,” Abrams purred. “Such weakness.”
I hadn’t even realized I was crying. “Shut up,” I yelled, slamming her head against the tree. Part of me expected my father or his men to intervene, but they all stood by and watched.
Abrams chuckled. “Do you want me to shut up or do you want me to answer your question?”
I slammed her head again. Her eyes rolled up to the back of her head. I unclenched my hands from her shirt and staggered away, then paced back and forth. My hands clutched onto my hair to keep from wringing her neck. Never before I had felt anything like this. The fire was getting strong, burning out of control.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” she managed to squeak out between coughs.
“What are you talking about?” I kept my feet moving. As long as I was pacing, I wouldn’t resort to violence.
“It’s not how but why.”
It’s not how but why. I had always thought the council could be responsible for the death of so many women, but to hear it confirmed, to know my sister’s death could have been avoided, was staggering in its simplicity.
I fell to my knees. “Why?” My head dropped into my hands. I couldn’t look at Abrams; it was one thing to dream of confronting your enemy, but it was entirely different to do so in person. This weak, deathly ill thing had taken my sister from me. My enemy was human.
“They were already sick.”
I lifted my head, narrowing my eyes. “You mean you didn’t make the women like this?”
Abrams gave the slightest shake of her head. “No, we didn’t do this, but we didn’t do anything to stop it, either. Actually, I had very little to do with the illness that plagues the women. My father, and men like him that made up the council’s team of scientists in the early days of the war, noticed that more and more women were dying during childbirth. Dying at alarming rates. They searched out the reasons everywhere. Maybe it was the effects of the nuclear war. Maybe it was a biological attack from the eastern sector. Maybe it was something in the water.”
“So, what was it?” I asked. My heart picked up speed. It was as if I were at the edge of the mountain, and whatever Abrams said next would send me to the bottom of the ravine or save me. Was it possible that I could absolve the council of this?
“Rubella.”
“What the hell is that?” I looked over my shoulder to find my father towering over me, glaring at Abrams.
“You see, child, I find it much nicer to talk to you than him. He beat me for hours trying to get me to talk, but he should understand that a woman never does anything she doesn’t want to do,” Abrams said with a sly smile and a wink.
With a growl, my father aimed his gun at her. “My daughter Louisa almost died! Now, answer Tess’s question!”
Abrams’s eyes lit with delight and she gave a lazy shrug of her shoulders. I got back onto my feet and placed a hand on my father’s shoulder. His gun trembled in his shaking hands, and I knew, without a doubt, despite his questionable ways, my father had feared for Louisa’s life. He dropped his gun, taking several steps away from Abrams.