Creators (20 page)

“Wipe that blood off your face, girl.”

Terrance.

He stood before me. Above me.

“What the hell do you want?” I asked, forcing the fear down somewhere deep inside me. Hoping, praying, that it would stay hidden. I was pretty sure my life depended on it.

“Is that how you talk to a man? Is that how you talk to your master?” he leered.

“I don’t see either,” I spat. Terrance opened his mouth to berate me, but I cut him off. “What are you going to do? Tell your daddy on me? I don’t think he’d like how you treat your toys.”

I had to keep him talking. Robert and my father had been right. There were some weapons more powerful than a gun. The longer I talked, the longer I lived. The longer I could wait for someone to find us.

Of course, a gun would have been pretty helpful in this moment, too.

“Why do you think my father got you for me? It’s all pretty clear what he means for me to do with you. And I’ll do so much better at the job than he did. You know how much I’ve despised that man? And here he bought you for me because of what you can do and didn’t even tell me.” Terrance laughed bitterly. “Maybe he didn’t buy you for me after all. Maybe he wants you for himself.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, glancing around the room for something, anything I could use to attack him.

“But
he
told me.
He’s
always telling me things. I heard about how they were going to get rid of you. The council. They were going to say you ran off into the big, bad woods. And when you never came back, they would tell your people the Isolationists got you.”

What I could do. So he knew that I could give birth without dying. Bile ran up my throat, and I wanted to throw up again. Had his father purchased me to continue his line? Was I meant for him or his sons? And did that mean Regan was like me as well? Wasn’t it all pointless now that the whole damn world was falling apart?

“Who told you? You said your father didn’t, so who?” I asked.

“There isn’t anything that goes on here that he doesn’t know about,” he replied, taking a step toward me.

I scrambled a few feet away from him using my elbows. The rug burned painfully against my skin. “So, what? You’re here to seduce me? Doing a pretty shit job,” I challenged, looking desperately toward the door.

James. He had seen this. Which meant he would know. He would come for me. I just had to stall and give him time.

“I don’t need your permission,” Terrance said, bending forward and grabbing one of my ankles. With a growl, he yanked me across the floor toward him. I yelped, trying in vain to claw my nails into the ground for traction.

Terrance was on top of me in a matter of seconds. His breath whipped me in the face, and I could faintly detect the smell of shine on his lips. I squirmed and thrashed, but he was so damn heavy. I curled my arms around him and clutched my hands into fists. I hit him as hard and as long as I could. Terrance reached back a hand and slapped me brutally across the face. My mouth tasted of blood.

“You think you can walk in here and not pay a price for the freedom we gave you?” he grunted.

Freedom? He, or his kind, had never even let us say the word. I screamed again. I screamed for the girl I found stabbed, bleeding out in a closet as Henry and I ran from the council. I screamed for Louisa. I screamed for Stephanie. I screamed for myself. I screamed with everything I had inside of me.

His hand clamped over my mouth, silencing me once more.

I grabbed the edge of his hand using my lower teeth and bit down hard. He cursed and pulled away. I had just enough time to scream again before he brought back his bloody hand not over my mouth, but wrapped around my throat. I moved my hands from his back to his wrist, pulling with all my might.

I could see the blackness dancing around the edges of my eyes.

It was calling for me once again.

Waiting.

Predator.

Prey.

But I couldn’t let it take me, because if I did, I was pretty sure I was never coming back from it.

“You were brought here for one reason and one reason only. And it’s about time you start paying up. It doesn’t have to be like this, girl. It could be so much nicer,” he whispered.

My vision blurred again. And then it was no longer Terrance who was holding me down but George.

You don’t actually think you can refuse me, do you?

I can have whatever of yours that I want.

You’re more foolish than the rest of the girls if you think you have any say in what happens to you here.

Now, now, Tessie, stop fighting and I will let you go.

George. He had been the one to tell Terrance. But why? How did this play into his plan?

Blackness clouded my vision. If I just stopped, gave up, shut down, would he let me go? I felt myself go still. I looked back up at the moon shining through the window, except the moon was no longer there. A cloud had covered it against its will. Only shadows remained, and I felt them running over my body without permission. They pulled my shirt off over my head, not bothering to apologize as my head hit the ground with a thud. They began to unbutton my skirt, tugging it off me, cursing when it got stuck on my ankles.

It would be over soon. He promised that it would. If I gave up, he promised I would be all right.

Just like the other Tess.

My namesake.

Except she wasn’t all right. Not ever again.

No.

No.

No.

NO!

I screamed again and began to twist and turn my body as violently as I could. I punched the side of his head with as much strength as I could muster. Terrance’s hands grabbed onto my wrists and pinned them to the ground. I lifted a knee into his groin, and he rolled over, holding onto himself and moaning.

With a grunt, I managed to get to my feet. Terrance was quick. He was already pulling himself up on his knees. I grabbed a vase from the mantle and, whipping it back, let it slash across his face. He cried out in pain.

I had to move. Now.

I didn’t know where I would go, but I started running through the hall in nothing but my cotton slip. I didn’t get very far. Terrance tackled me to the ground before I got ten feet, knocking me down face-first. He grabbed a clump of my hair and shoved my forehead into the marble floor. Then he flipped me around, his knees pinning my arms. “You are a pathetic excuse for a human being,” I howled, angry tears streaming down my cheeks.

Terrance leaned back and grinned. Sadistic. I turned my head to the side to escape his sloppy kiss. That was when I saw the lamp had fallen over from the hallway table during our scuffle. The second Terrance took the pressure off my arms so he could adjust himself, I snatched the lamp.

With a guttural roar, I hit him in the head. I hit him over and over and over again.

I didn’t stop. Not when his body went limp. Not when he fell to the floor. I kept hitting.

It was only when his blood splattered onto my cheek that I ceased. I looked down at Terrance’s face, shocked that it was no longer recognizable. I lay back and tried to catch my breath. I brought both hands to my face and sobbed.

“What did you do?” a girl’s small voice squeaked.

I managed to pull my hands away from my face long enough to see Regan standing above me. The sight of her caused me to start crying all over again. How long after he was done with me would he have waited before going after her? Did she even know it was wrong what he would take from her?

When had men been told this was all right?

When had this become acceptable?

“Is he dead?” she asked, slowly backing away from the body.

“Yes, he’s dead,” I replied, my voice hard, certain.

“Murderer!” Regan screamed at the top of her lungs.

I was doomed.

Drawn by a combination of my screams and Regan’s cry, a slew of chosen ones broke down the door to the Harper living quarters. When they entered, the normally stoic chosen ones, creatures built to keep their emotions at bay, stared at me in shock.

I, a girl in nothing more than a tattered slip, had killed Terrance Harper—son of the head creator of the council itself. Grandson of Abrams. There would be no arguing my way out of it. No explaining that it was he who attacked me. The council never cared what I had to say anyway. I was a natural. Despite trying to decide every aspect of my life, they had never bothered to ask my opinion about anything. They had locked my people away, waiting for us to die, and in some cases, when their patience ran out, killed us themselves. I was surprised one of the guards didn’t snap my neck right then and there.

I held my head straight as I walked to my would-be jailers. I didn’t feel ashamed of wearing nothing but my torn slip. I didn’t glare at Regan, who sat simpering in the corner. I only felt pity for her. She had no idea what I had saved her from; she didn’t know she could be saved from such a fate. She didn’t have the people in her life that I had had. I had been blessed with people who told me it was okay to fight back.

When I had a daughter, I would make sure she knew.

That was the only time I hesitated on the long walk to the center of the council itself. A daughter. It was the first time I had ever realized that I might want a daughter one day. I might want a future that I could help make better.

But I would never see it.

There was no getting out of this.

As they shoved me into a small room with nothing but a wooden table and chair, I waited for the remorse. The guilt. But I didn’t feel any of it. I placed my hand against the chair, and I remembered the start of my story, the events that led me to this very moment.

When the door opened, I didn’t know who I expected, but it certainly wasn’t Mr. Harper himself. The leader of the council. The father of the boy I had killed. It was odd to see him in person. I had only ever glimpsed his face in the posters that covered the walls of the compound, propaganda meant to make us feel safe when all it did was keep us trapped.

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.”

“You abandoned your sons,” I blurted out. I didn’t know where it came from or why I said it, but once out, I couldn’t stop myself from continuing. “That’s where you creators went wrong. You were the most brilliant men in the whole world, and you tried to will our problems away. To cook up some solution in a lab. But the easiest solution is not always the best one. Your sons needed you, and you abandoned them. I’ll never do that to my children.” He had inherited this trait from his mother. She had abandoned her children, too.

“That’s what all creators think.”

“No, just the terrible ones,” I countered.

Harper sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. Not like any of it matters now. I am sorry for what my son did to you. It’s odd; I almost understand what Abrams must have felt like when he created the fail-safe. It’s strangely comforting to know my disappointment is no longer running around this world.”

“What
is
the fail-safe?” I asked, the blood pumping too loudly in my ears.

“I really shouldn’t say, but considering there is a chosen one outside this door waiting for my command to rip your limbs from your body, I might as well. You did do me a favor. The fail-safe is a way to kill all the chosen ones.”

All the oxygen was sucked from the room. I staggered away from Harper, clawing at my skin. It felt too tight. My father was going to kill all the chosen ones. He was going to kill James. I pulled in air through my noise. I couldn’t fall apart. Not now.

“How? How the hell does one do it?” I knew I only had seconds. Seconds to know how to destroy the fail-safe, because there was no way I was going to let anyone kill James. No way.

Suddenly, the door to the observation room banged against the wall. James. He had come for me. We would always be there to save each other.

I took a step toward him, desperate to wrap my arms around him. To make sure, absolutely sure, he was still with me.

But Harper’s voice halted me. “I wouldn’t suggest you do anything rash here, James. You make a move toward me, and it won’t save her. They’ll find you, and then they’ll just kill you both.”

“He’s right. Just leave. You can’t help me here.” I needed him to survive. Even if I couldn’t.

“Let us go,” James said. “We’re only two people. We aren’t rebels. We just want to be free.”

“That’s just it, isn’t it? You want what I could never give you. None of us have ever been free,” Harper replied sadly.

And then James snapped his neck.

…

James slammed the door to the observation room shut, grabbing the wooden chair and bracing it against the handle to keep it closed. Once the momentary shock wore off, I rushed to James and threw myself in his arms.

“Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right,” James breathed into my neck, wrapping his arms tightly around me.

I brought my head back so I could look at him. Seeing my bruised and battered face, he clutched onto my arms. “I’ll kill every last one of them,” he growled.

“Sssh, I’m fine. Are you okay?” I asked. It was difficult to find my voice. He had just killed a man. The world I lived in made me increasingly immune to watching the death of others, but seeing the boy I loved kill, that was never something I would get used to.

James’s face paled, and it was only then that I realized he was trembling. He had committed murder for me. I knew what that meant for him. He had been created to be a killer, and he had done everything he could to run from that destiny. What he had always feared about himself had come true: he had become a monster.

I reached up and took his face in my hands. “It’s going to be okay. You’re still you.”

James shook his head. He was no longer looking at me but past me. Searching for something bright in what now felt like a dark and desperate future. “I’m not sorry I killed them,” he said.

My stomach tightened. “Them?”

“Harper and the chosen one waiting outside the door. I killed them both.” James had stopped shaking, his body rigid with the memories of what he had done. He swallowed. “I didn’t see it, Tess. Any of it. I think they messed with my gift. Re-wired it when they tortured me. I can’t see anything when it comes to you. I can’t protect you from them. I heard they had taken you, and I came here. I killed them,” he repeated.

“I killed someone, too. Terrance,” I replied, my voice frantic. We probably only had minutes before the army of chosen ones descended on us. They would kill me on the spot, but my mind reeled thinking of the torture they would put James through before ending his life.

He had betrayed everything he was created for.

The battle between creator and created. Had it always existed?

James placed a hand under my chin and lifted my face so his eyes could dance with mine. Perhaps for the last time. “You did what you had to do, and I am glad you did.”

“You did what you had to do, too,” I said weakly.

James merely nodded, and I knew he would never see it that way. He had done the one thing he had promised himself he would never do. He had killed—and killed mercilessly. I stood on the tips of my toes and pressed my desperate lips against his. It took a moment before he responded, but when he did, his anxiousness matched my own.

James sighed, pressing his forehead against mine. “What kind of world does this? Makes us into these things?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wish there was a way to fix it, go back, but that’s not possible.”

Hadn’t Abrams said these very things to me? Hadn’t the world, a dark and twisted place, made her into a mirror image? She had found a way to go back and fix it—to simply let it die out.

James didn’t speak or move. He simply stared at me. His eyes were darkened by the thoughts that lived inside of him. I hesitantly walked closer and pressed my lips against the scar on his chin. “We’re not just this,” I whispered.

His eyes began to water. “Not just this,” he repeated. He took my head into his hands and kissed me softly on the forehead.

The door wailed and moaned. They had come for us.

James managed a simple smile. He leaned forward and lightly brushed his lips against mine. Despite the way my heart thrashed about my chest, every cell in my body lit up at his touch.

James walked to the door and removed the chair. His shoulders squared and his hands in fists by his sides, he readied himself for whatever would come next. He opened the door.

“There you two are! We got a damn battle going on out here, and you’re in here making out.”

My mouth fell open. Standing before me was Henry.

The air rushed from my lungs and my eyes grew wide. How was it possible?

“Henry!” I screamed, running to my best friend and embracing him.

“Easy there, Tess! I did get impaled with a stick in the neck.” He laughed.

I untangled myself from his arms and reached up gingerly to touch the bandage at his neck. “But how? They killed Thomas and Harry. Everyone from the compound was dead. Who helped you?”