Creators(76)

He wasn’t what I expected, but, then again, Abrams hadn’t been, either. Harper was old. Weathered. Worn out. His eyes nearly bloodshot. His stringy salt and pepper hair combed to the side in an attempt to convince himself it was worth salvaging. He shared the same plump cheeks and large head as his eldest son.

Harper slumped against the wall and crossed his arms. “You’re the girl who killed my son?” There was no anger to be found in his voice. Just exhaustion. Everything about him screamed tiredness.

I pushed my shoulders back. “Yes, sir.”

Harper chuckled. “Yes, sir?” He ran a hand though his perfectly parted hair. “He do that to your face or was that the work of the chosen ones?”

I reached up and touched my cheek. It was covered in bumps, bruises, and cuts. Until Harper mentioned them, I hadn’t felt the pain. But now that he had, my face smarted and ached something fierce. “Your son did it.”

Harper nodded. “That little shit.”

My eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“I never did know what to do with either of my children. My wife was always the one who took care of them. But then she died like all the other mothers. I tried to keep them busy with nannies and pretty little girls to amuse them while I worked, but they were always causing problems. I was trying to create a better world for them, and they just couldn’t keep out of the way.”

Pretty little girls? Naturals he plucked from their families to pacify the sons he didn’t have time for. If Terrance hadn’t been a real monster, we might have found we had a lot in common. Our fathers had chosen lives of service to great ideas rather than to be the parents we needed.

“Your son was under the impression you purchased me so that he could continue the line,” I explained. After all, if this was my trial, I might as well testify. “When I wouldn’t give myself to him, he tried to force me.”

Harper wrinkled his forehead. “How did he know about that? When I bid on you and the other girl, I did it with that in mind. But things out there are so bad, I didn’t bother telling him. Not till I was sure it was a war we could win.”

“Is it a war you can win?” I didn’t worry if my question was impertinent. I didn’t have a lot of time left. I wasn’t going to let anyone own my voice in my final moments.

Harper squinted, staring me down as he tapped a finger against his lips. He turned his back to me and knocked three times on the wall opposite of where I sat. Suddenly, the marble transformed into glass. I sat straight up in my chair.

“We keep the observation room cloaked,” Harper explained. “So none of the unauthorized can see inside.” One of the cloaked rooms on the map.

I understood why. Peering through the glass, I could make out nearly a dozen chosen ones training in a larger, nearly all white room. Filled with every weapon imaginable, from knives to spears to guns, the room was an oversized gym. The things I was seeing were impossible to imagine. One man flashed into existence and then disappeared, camouflaging himself to hide in plain sight. Another chosen one touched the boy who stood next to him and took on his appearance. While yet another one pulled the paint from the wall with a simple flick of his hand, morphing the flakes of white into a solid sphere.

“When Abrams and the other men first created these things, they saw a chance to remake the world. Make it better. More honest. Us humans are messy equations. We corrupt so much. Rarely do we make a damn bit of sense. It was only a matter of time before we or something else took out the entire species. I’m sure you’ve been told what it was like back then. War. Famine. Homegrown terrorists popping up in every state. So, Abrams decided to create a new master race. To mold them into something greater than what we are. That’s what all creators want—to see their work exceed them,” Harper said, moving so he stood behind my chair, staring at the master race Abrams had designed.

“But what all creators, all people who seek to control the uncontrollable, must learn is that perfection can never be obtained. So, we create only to hate what we created. We watch as the very things we made in our very best image become everything we hate about ourselves.”

“That’s what Abrams meant. Robert was right. He had abandoned them,” I said to myself. I gritted my teeth. I knew Abrams was a woman. I knew Abrams was, in fact, his mother, but revealing my knowledge would let Harper know that I had aligned myself with the Isolationists, destroying the story I created in the woods when the chosen ones found me. I couldn’t put my father, evil or not, in danger just to make a point.

“Abrams stopped caring long ago. Even with the creation of his superhumans, he would lose. The other side created, too. And even if they hadn’t, after we were gone, the chosen ones would simply turn into us. He saw that in the end. He always kept ranting and raving about a fail-safe.”