Unforgotten(113)

Zen?

Son?

Alixter’s words drift through my mind as I struggle to find a place where they make sense. Where they fit.

Zen is Maxxer’s son?

Maxxer is Zen’s mother?

Is that what she meant when she told Rio to find him? Was she talking about Zen?

No. That can’t be.

Why wouldn’t he tell me?

Every time I tried to bring up Maxxer or anything relating to Diotech Zen would shut down, switch off, close me out. He refused to talk about the past, wanted me to forget it, wanted to pretend it didn’t exist.

I remember something he said to me on the morning before he got sick, when he came to find me outside. I asked him if he missed his former life.

“I had nothing there,” he replied. “Except a mother who cared more about her latest research project than her own family.”

Was he really talking about Maxxer?

Was that how he got the idea for us to run away into the past? Was that how he even knew about the transession gene? Because his mother invented it?

If all of this is true, then Maxxer honestly did think she was protecting him by leaving Rio those doses. That’s what she was trying to explain to me last night, when I was hysterical. She told me to trust her.

She thought Rio was going to find him and save him.

She had no idea Rio was nearly dead.

And what about Rio? Why didn’t he come find Zen earlier? Why didn’t he heed Maxxer’s request?

The answer comes to me before the question has even had time to fully sink in to my brain.

He did.

He came to 2013. He was looking for me. He found me in that dilapidated barn. He was trying to warn me. And then Zen showed up with the gun and took me away. And Rio never got the chance to accomplish what he’d set out to accomplish.

“Zen didn’t tell you, did he?” Alixter says, clearly reading the bewilderment on my face.

I don’t reply. Although I’m sure my expression gives it away.

Alixter sighs. “Ah, well, I can’t say I blame him. I would be pretty upset, too, if my mother disappeared from my life without a trace. I guess it’s no surprise that he found his solace in something … else.” His gaze drips down my entire body as that nauseatingly creepy smile returns to his lips.

I think about the boy climbing over that concrete wall outside the window, searching for a distraction, for consolation. And finding me.

Apparently he needed me as much as I needed him.

Now more than ever.

But I can’t see how I can help him now.

“So,” Alixter says, gliding his chair past the guards and glancing between me and Kaelen. “You kissed, huh?”

I refuse to look at him. I just sit there, my breath coming out in heavy, angry rasps.

“While your true love lay dying, you kissed another man?”

I bite my lip, breaking the skin. Blood trickles out, joining the flood from my nose. It’ll only be a matter of time before both wounds heal, making my face whole again. But doing nothing to mend this gaping gash in my heart.

He claps his hands together and lets out another one of his sadistic laughs, which quickly morphs into a cough. “You have no idea how happy that makes me!”

I close my eyes tight, trying to block out the sound of his grating voice.

“This calls for a celebration!” he announces jubilantly.

When I don’t respond, he touches another button and his hovering chair moves closer. He leans forward and lifts my chin with his fingertip. His icy-cold hand sends a shiver through me.

“Don’t you see what this means, dear Sera?”

I remain silent. And despite the angle of my head, I still refuse to meet his eye. I focus, instead, on a distant corner of the room.

“It means,” he goes on, unfazed by my lack of enthusiasm, “that my latest experiment was a grand success!”

“What experiment?” This is the first time Kaelen has spoken since Alixter appeared in the room.

Alixter glances up at him. “I’m so glad you asked!” He releases my chin and glides a few feet backward. “You see,” he begins pompously, “you, Kaelen, are very special, as you know. But more important, you are very special to Sera.”

Reluctantly, I drag my gaze up to look at Alixter.

“I was quite moved by your devotion to Zen,” Alixter goes on. “Well, moved is the wrong word. Let’s say, impressed. And I thought to myself, how many people would simply die for that kind of connection with someone? Or rather, how many people would pay for that kind of connection. And a lightbulb went off in my head. I thought, what if we could package it?”

I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up.

“We’d always had plans to create Kaelen at some point.” He grins down at me. “An Adam to your Eve, so to speak. But after that whole debacle in the cave and seeing how far you would go in the name of love”—he pronounces the word with the same degree of disgust that I remember from that night—“I knew that I had to go one step farther. I had to truly make him an Adam to your Eve. Because I realized the only way I was going to overcome that unyielding devotion you have to Zen—that power he has over you—was to manufacture an even stronger force to counteract it.”