Resilient (27 page)

“Meet me at my house as soon as you can sneak out. He said we have forty-eight hours. We’ll figure something out by then.”

“What did Stevens want with you?” Dad questions as we drive home. “He was there for you, wasn’t he?”

“He was there to tell me the truth. He didn’t have enough time to tell me everything, but he told me enough.” Dad looks at me and frowns. “I know I’m not your son. I know you traded your dead baby for me.”

I watch Dad’s face bleed of any recognizable emotion and he stares over the steering wheel. “I didn’t have another choice. I did what I thought was best for you and our family.” He looks at me again, tears filling his eyes. “That man was not you father. I ran a DNA check on him when he brought you in the hospital. I thought maybe he had kidnapped you. I looked at the police database and I didn’t find anything. The only thing I knew was that you weren’t his son and he was in a lot of trouble, so I took you.” His gaze is pleading. “If your mom knew her baby had died, it would’ve been the end of her. We saved her life.”

“You had no right!” I exclaim. “I grew up thinking I’m someone that I’m not. What about me? You didn’t care to look for my parents? I must have a mother that was looking for her son, the son that you stole!”

“Adam, please! I gave you the best life you could have asked for. I loved you as if you were my own. You’re part of this family, and it would break your mother’s heart and I would go to jail if you said otherwise. Please, son, let it go.”

I cradle my head in my hands, weighing my dad’s words. I don’t want to break my mother’s heart. I don’t want my siblings’ lives to fall apart because their father goes to jail. But I sure don’t want to look in this man’s face for the rest of my life and pretend that what he’s done doesn’t affect me.

“I’ll do as you say,” I practically growl, “on one condition: you’ll call me as soon as Stevens open his eyes. I’ll be allowed to see him before anyone else.” I look at my father and he nods stiffly.

“You have a deal.”

We get home and I shove open the car door. “Adam?” Dad calls out.

“Yeah?” 

“You are my son, and I love you.”

I shut the door behind me. My heart races as I run into the house and I just wish time would roll backwards—to me leaving the football game victorious, to me going to a party with Livia and all our friends. I stumble into my bedroom and I see Kyle sitting on the couch. I’d texted him while waiting for Livia at the police station. 

“Livia’s uncle is in town,” I say. “I overheard him telling her father that he was going to get her car from the school parking lot. I need you to follow him.”

“And if he comes back to her house?”

“Then you can go home.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” he says and walks up to me. “You’re in deep, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I am. But let’s not worry about me, all right? I’ll figure a way out of this.” I smile at him in effort to keep him calm. 

“I’ll see you later, then,” he says, hugging me. He gives me an extra pat on the shoulder as he leaves.

After Kyle’s gone, I shower and change while I wait on Livia to show up. She’s scared and I wish I was with her right now. The man, Aaron, said we have forty-eight hours, but he didn’t exactly give me a reason to trust him. In fact, he made a good job of doing the exact opposite. Stevens was right. We need to leave town tonight. 

I pace around my room, checking out the pictures Mom hung on the wall. If I look closely, I can see that I don’t belong. All of my siblings are redheads like Mom. I have brown hair and dark eyes like Dad, but I don’t have his features. All those years, I never really felt like I fit in, but Dad is still right. He has always treated me the same way he treats my brothers and sister. He might not be a present father, but he loves me in his own way, I guess. I love him, too—very much so, all of them, and I can’t let myself imagine never, ever coming home to them again. 

I hear a noise coming from the outside. I open the patio door and Livia is approaching. She walks straight into my arms and I close my eyes, taking in her sweet scent. 

“You took a while. How did you get here?”

“I ran over here through the woods. I had to wait on my parents to go to sleep. I didn’t want to take the risk of them checking on me and not finding me in the room.”

“We need to leave town, Livia,” I say bluntly. “We’re not safe here.” 

She pulls back and stares at me. “I can’t just leave my family, Adam. And where would we go even if we did?”

“I don’t know, but if we stay here we’ll be putting our families’ lives in danger, and eventually Aaron will come and take us.” She nods and sits on my bed. The idea of leaving town isn’t an easy one, but if we want to keep our loved ones safe, it’s the only way. “Livia, did your uncle come back to your house?”

”No, he said he was meeting with someone when Dad dropped him off at the school. He asked if he could use my car for the night. He told us he had a date. I sent him a bunch of texts, but he won’t answer me back.”

“A date? Does he even know anyone on the island?”

“No, of course it’s just an excuse. Even Dad thought it was odd.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I check the incoming call. “It’s Kyle… What’s up, buddy?”

“I’ve been following him as you asked,” he reports. “He went to a restaurant in Freeland, then he left with a woman and they just pulled in at the Coupeville Hospital.”

“Kyle, don’t leave. Wait, and if he gets out before we get there, follow him.”

“So my uncle did have a date, and now he’s taking her to the hospital?” Livia asks in disbelief.

“I’m sure he’s going to see Stevens.” I look at Livia and she’s staring at the floor. “Are you ready for this?” I tilt her face up so she’ll look at me. She nuzzles her cheek against my hand, and I slide closer to her until there’s no room between our bodies. I lean in, brushing my lips on hers, but before I can kiss her, she pulls away. She stares at me in doubt; I drop my gaze. 

Of course; she’s taking this “brother and sister” thing seriously. If that’s true, then hell, what’s left to happen? 

We get in the Jeep and I head to Coupeville. 

“You better slow down or we’re gonna get pulled over,” Livia warns, glancing at me. I take a look in the rearview mirror—there’s a pair of sporty headlights behind us. I can’t make out the car, though.

“I think we have company.” She says as a streetlight briefly illuminates the road and the car tailing ours.

“That’s the car!” she cries. “But a woman is driving it, not Daniel.”

I turn right into the hospital’s parking lot and get a better look at the car as it continues down the road. “It’s not a Mustang. It’s a Dodge Charger. Which one did you see before?”

“That one, for sure.” 

My fingers tap the steering wheel anxiously. “Well, they know where we are, and I have a feeling they’re going to wait ’til we come out.” 

I park and we get out of the Jeep, my eyes on the main road the whole time. We pass Kyle on the way into the hospital and he nods at us. He knows to stay here and wait. We walk down the hallway unnoticed—I guess the staff is used to seeing my face often enough. We reach Stevens’ room, but the door is locked.

“There’s someone inside,” I notice.

As Livia raises her hand to knock on the door, her uncle opens it. A tall, blond woman is behind him. Livia crosses her arms over her chest and cocks her head to the side.

“I thought you said you didn’t know him.” 

“We need to talk.” Her uncle looks from Livia to me. “We should go someplace private, because we need plenty of time.”

We follow him and the woman out of the hospital wing, but I stop him before he reaches the main waiting room. “We’re being followed, sir, so it’s not safe to drive Livia’s car or mine. My friend here can take us.” 

Kyle shows us to where he is parked. The blond woman tells him, “Take us to the Countryside Motel.” 

The car ride is tense and silent the whole way, but when we get to the motel lot, Henry pulls me closer to him and says in a low voice, “It’s not safe for your friend to stay.” The car is so quiet already that he might as well have shouted it.

“You heard the man,” I tell Kyle almost jokingly. “I’ll call you to pick us up.”

Kyle shrugs like it’s all he can do. “I’ll be waiting.”

We’ve walked all the way to the motel room and safely inside, and still no one has said a word. “Who is she?” I ask, meaning the blond lady my uncle has so far refused to introduce. 

“My name is Emily Castro. I’m a friend of Henry’s.” She offers me a hand to shake but I don’t take it. I look from her to my uncle, who sits down on the end of the bed.

“Livia, don’t be rude—”

“I can’t shake her hand. Her emotions right now aren’t very comforting and, lately, I’ve been getting these pictures of people’s lives when I touch them. I don’t really want to see hers.”

My uncle frowns at me, but he’s not confused—he’s surprised and very calm, considering all that is happening. “I assume you and Adam already know about each other,” he says.

“Are we brother and sister?” I prod him. “Did you know that and let me date him anyway?” 

“You two are not siblings.” He regards Adam and me, reassuring us both. Relief washes over me. “Livia, you need to calm down, too. Then I can tell you what you need to know.”

“And what is that? I knew you were hiding something big from me.”

“What I have to tell you will shatter your world, and I’m sorry for that.” 

That stifles me. I lower myself onto the other bed, and Adam comes to sits next to me. He opens his mouth to say something, but Henry puts a hand up, silencing him.

“First I want you to know that everything I did, I did because I believed it was best for you. I thought that, by keeping the truth from you, I was keeping you safe.” Uncle Henry takes a deep breath, rubbing his hands against his pants. “It’s interesting that you are always quoting expressions. I’ve lived the last eighteen years quoting the same one to myself every day.”

“And what is that?” I ask

“Exitus acta probat.”

“Ovid,” I say. “‘The outcome justifies the deeds.’” 

Uncle Henry smiles. “You tell me later if you agree with it.” I nod, bracing myself for what comes next. “As you both already know, you two have a lot in common, and what I’m about to tell you is the story of both of you.” 

He hesitates. Adam says, “I’m ready to hear it.” 

Henry sighs and begins with hunched shoulders. “A little over eighteen years ago, I was hired by a secret government agency to conduct a classified experiment. They needed a young doctor, fresh out of school and easy to manipulate. I didn’t know what the experiment was about. They kept me on a need-to-know basis and gave me new tasks every day. I had to have a secret identity and I was not allowed to contact any of the other doctors involved in the case.” 

Uncle Henry stands up and paces around the room. “After a couple of months confined in a subterranean compound, I started running into other doctors and eventually we would meet up at one another’s places for a game of poker. Emily was one of the scientists working on the case. When she figured out what was going on, she came to us for help. After her confession, we decided that we needed to look into what was happening in our workplace. Months later, we found out that we were operating on unconscious women, and they were being used to procreate.” 

“Procreate what? Aliens?” Adam asks warily, and Emily chuckles. 

“I see why you would think that you’re an alien,” she says, “but no, they were reproducing humans. The women were implanted with genetically enhanced embryos.”

“So my dad is right. I am genetically modified,” I say, thinking out loud. 

“Kind of,” says Henry. “They were also injecting the experimental group of babies’ brains with an unknown substance. By the time we were certain of what the project was about and what the agency planned to do with the babies, those women were already at the end of their pregnancies. When we had the chance, three other doctors and I performed C-sections and took every single baby with us. Then we burned down the lab.”

My chest tightens, and I’m staring in naked shock at my uncle. “That explains the vision I had when you hugged me. I saw fire and smoke, and that’s why I couldn’t breathe. I was there with you, wasn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“So we were made in a lab, and you killed our mothers,” Adam whispers. I feel sick to my stomach as I take in the solemnity of his words. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed that my uncle was hiding something this big from me. I always knew he had secrets, but I had just assumed they were about keeping my abilities secret from everyone else.

Henry sits back down and looks at me. He reaches for my hands, but I pull away.

“They didn’t even know they were pregnant,” Emily says as if it’s the most mundane fact. “They were women in comas, brain dead, living off machines and abandoned at hospitals by their families. The government kept them alive to run the experiment.”

“Why would they do such a thing?” I ask in disgust.

“They wanted to build an army with special soldiers,” Uncle says. “They made you resilient. You can survive almost any weather, any injures, and you are remarkably intelligent. If you were properly trained, you could easily destroy a government from within. A perfect type of spy.”

“So after burning the place down, what did you do with us?” Adam asks. 

“We drove the babies to separate parts of the country and tried to place them in safe houses,” Emily says. “Henry took Livia to the convent. I took two others with me. One I left at a safe home with parents I knew would love her. The other one I took with me and I raised him as my own.” 

As I listen to Emily talking about the kids she took, I feel this massive pain building in my chest, as if losing something I can’t live without. Her eyes fill with tears, but she’s quick to wipe them away. 

“Did the agency take them?” I ask.

“The girl, the one I left in northern Idaho. I kept an eye on her. I would drive through her town every six months to check on her. She had a good family a good life, but three months ago, they came for her and they took her. It was like she never existed—no school records, and her family didn’t remember ever having her. The agency completely wiped out any evidence of her.”