“What is rubella?” I asked.
“I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. For hundreds and hundreds of years, most naturals received shots to protect them from it. Nothing more than a case of measles that science learned to control. But here’s the thing that man always forgets about nature: it’s a real smart bitch. She’ll wait. Hide until you think you’re safe. Morph into a new beast while your back is turned, and just when you’ve almost forgotten her power, she’ll come back for you with a vengeance.”
“So a virus killed my sister?” I asked. “Not the council?”
“Yes and no. The virus mutated, becoming almost an entirely new beast. It held many of the same properties of its original parent. With the primary strand, sometimes people didn’t even know they were carriers. Our rubella shared this trait, showing no outwardly signs. Seemingly harmless. But its real threat, even back then, had been to unborn children. It caused birth defects, premature births, and even miscarriages. Some children survived back then but not with this new strand. It kills the baby, taking the mother with it,” Abrams explained. Gone was the glee that oozed from her as she talked about the power of science. Her eyes took on a far-off look.
I knew that look.
“Who did you lose?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.
Abrams blinked as if her eyes were pooling with tears, but there was nothing there. An old habit, perhaps. “My mother. I watched as my father wept over her body for days. He and I had never been close before then. He had always belonged to the council; he had never been a father. Always off in a lab doing God knows what. In those moments after my mother’s death, I saw his human side. I thought we had connected. It was years later that I discovered what a monster he had become, and that was when I discovered I would have to become an even bigger monster to survive.”
I swallowed. My throat still burned because I knew Abrams wasn’t done with her story, and I knew it would only get worse. “You said the council didn’t stop it. But could they?”
“I don’t know. All I know is they didn’t try. The whole world was falling apart. Nuclear war happened because the government couldn’t control its people. People—that’s always been the variable the scientists couldn’t predict. And here was a virus that promised to wipe them clear off the earth. They had already begun attempting to create life—chosen ones as you have called them. The originals were disasters. Deformed. Monsters, really. They had no idea what they were doing.”
With a shudder, I thought about the creatures that attacked us in the woods.
“You’ve seen one?” Abrams asked, reading something in my facial expression. “I heard my son had used my father’s plans to create an army of exterminators. I haven’t seen them myself. Not since those early days. I always liked my creatures a bit prettier. What can I say.”
“You liked them prettier?” I asked, unable to stop myself from walking closer to Abrams. I knew I was way past my five minutes, but my father, seemingly entranced as I was, failed to stop us.
“I was four when my mother died. After that, I spent every waking moment in the labs with my father. Watching and learning as they created life. When I wasn’t with him, I studied everything I could get my hands on. It’s a hard thing for a man to see his daughter become smarter than he is. Especially when he and the rest of his simpleminded chums went around blaming the whole lot of the world’s problems on female existence. But he didn’t understand—that was the way genetics, science, had made me. It wasn’t my fault. I was fourteen when I found the fault in their formulas. I was fifteen when the first chosen ones were created based off my work. Back then, we could create and awaken a fully grown chosen one in three years. Three years. That was a mistake; I rushed it. They weren’t ready. That was my mistake. We all made mistakes back then. My father was underestimating me. He never saw it coming.”
“Why would you let the council use them against us? Why would you make the world like this?” I desperately grabbed onto her shirt. Abrams pressed her lips together and avoided meeting my eyes. “Please! I have to know.”
“I fell in love with one of them,” she said quietly.
I froze, my hands falling from her shirt. “A chosen one?”
She nodded. “But he betrayed me in the worst possible way. He said he loved me, and yet he knew about the women. He was my father’s right-hand man. He watched them die and came to me in the night. Both he and my father used me to get what they needed, all the while teaching the world to hate who I was. Watching as we all died. My father had always told me they had tried to find a cure, and I had believed him. But fathers lie,” she sneered, darting her eyes toward my father.