Smash Into You (16 page)

             
"That wasn't her, baby," I assured into her hair. "That wasn't her."

             
"It could've been, Jude." She sniffed, trying to keep it together. "We'll never know which one was her."

             
The woman on the video had been dark olive skinned and my girl was pale and blond like a porcelain doll. There was no way that woman was her mother, but the not knowing was torturing her.

             
I wished to all that was holy that she had let me save her from this by getting on that bus.

             
I stood, scooting her up so I could pass, and went to find the kid. I just knew since the dates weren't as far back that he or she was there. I looked and it didn't take long to match the dark hair and skin to a little Mediterranean beauty below us.

             
She was wearing a plain white smock or hospital gown with no socks or shoes and couldn't have been more than eight. There was no TV or radio or anything in the room. She sat on the bed and sang some song that I couldn't hear. I beckoned Marley to me and she rushed to the window. It was obvious this girl was her daughter and not Marley because of the dates I saw, but Marley was on a mission that was a little different from mine.

             
She wanted to know what happened to her mom to make her throw Marley away.

             
I went back and pressed lots of those folders and links to see if I could find my mom, but couldn't. There was just too many of them and we needed to get to the room with all the information. Files, records, whatever. We got that there was some shady experiments going on, but we needed to know why.

             
The last link I clicked was an older date, a couple years before I was born, and I went to one of the last links in the folder. She was talking to the wall for all I knew. No one appeared to be there, but she was confessing everything. I realized who she was confessing to when she gripped her huge belly and cried as she spoke.

             
"Oh, God…I didn't know. They said they'd help me. They said if I helped them with their experiment, it would all be paid for and I'd be helping people, too. But it's not that at all. I'm so sorry. I've killed you by bringing you here. I've killed myself. They won't let us stay together. You'll be all alone. I'm so sorry, baby."

             
I turned off her mumbling and took a deep breath. That was it, wasn’t it? Mom had gotten pregnant, the douche probably ran like cowards do, and she was all alone. She would never tell me about my dad. They came, told her they'd help her if she helped them. I'm sure they made it sound like a Godsend in her time of need. When she found out what was going on, she ran somehow, got away, and we never stopped running.

             
I took another breath. God…my chest hurt thinking about her doing all that for me. Just so I'd never know what it was like to grow up in a room all by myself like those kids down there.

             
We heard a door and looked up to see a man in a doctor's coat enter one of the children's rooms. We couldn't hear them. I searched, knowing there had to be a way for us to hear them in an observation room, and found a button that turned on the speakers.

             
He told the boy, "…and the test will begin just as they always do. We'll poke your finger, put the blood on a piece of glass, and then we'll take a hair sample and a swab from the inside of your cheek. And then if that works, then…tomorrow they'll come and take a little marrow."

             
"No!" he yelled and backed away from him. "Please don't do that. It hurts."

             
"I know it hurts," the man placated, "but don't you want to help people? Don't you want to save people's lives?"

             
"Yes, but why do I have to be awake when you hurt me?"

             
The man cleared his throat. "That's the only way it can be done." The boy wiped his eyes, clearly not happy. "And they won't do any more tests on you for a week. How's that?"

             
The boy didn't answer and I imagined myself in the room below, waiting to be harvested for bodily fluids. I felt my eyes sting with angry tears.

             
Then the man left and went a couple doors down to another boy's room. He went through the same spiel as he had with the other boy except he looked at his chart and instead of taking bone marrow, they were taking his spleen.

             
His freaking spleen.

             
Marley was keeping her soft cries to herself as she covered her mouth.

             
I turned away. I couldn't watch anymore. I searched the room and the computer for anything new that might help us, and when I found nothing, I towed Marley into the hall.

             
She was quiet, as was I. I didn't want to think about those kids being down there for another second, but first, we had to get our evidence. The hall twisted and turned and I tried to remember which way we'd gone so we didn't get lost. We never saw a soul. I started opening doors and looking in them to see what was what.

             
We found more rooms with beds, but they were empty, a lab with humming machines and hospital beds, a small nursery...

             
Finally, we came upon a room full of computers, file shelves, and desks. It wasn't labeled, but we assumed it was the records room.

             
I sat at one of the computers while Marley got to work going through files. "These are patient charts, Jude."

             
"Oh, good," I said. "That will probably be great for-"

             
"No," she said, panicked. "Jude…these are patient charts." Her voice shook and I followed her eyes, gulping. The wall was lined, floor to ceiling, at least ten feet long with files for patients. So many people… How did no one know about this? How did they justify all those missing people?

             
I cursed and closed my eyes. This was bigger than some company with a couple offices in the city. This was…an operation.

             
She started tearing through them, looking for anything. But again, we didn't even know exactly what we were looking for. "These were all pregnant, Jude," she muttered softly.

             
I started going through files on the computer, financial records, contributions, donations, some people had even donated their body to the organization for scientific purposes. I'd never heard of this company, but in the scientific and medical circles, it was obviously a big deal.

             
Then, under the financials was a payroll listing. I found a USB stick already in the computer and started to put the most important things on it, that being one of them. If we made it out of this, the cops would have a list of all the people who worked there, all the people that they needed to arrest for murder. There was no way someone worked there and didn't know what was going on.

             
The job titles were all these medical professions that I couldn't even pronounce. Then I started putting the list of
Test Subjects
on the drive, too. I was sure there were plenty of missing persons cases this could help solve.

             
Then there were some company files, mission statements, meeting dictations, all sorts of things that I didn't have time to weed through. I didn't put those on the drive for fear of me finding something else more important that needed to fit on it.              

             
I went back to the
Test Subjects
file. Then I gritted my teeth at what I found. A subfolder titled
Terminated
. Inside, the list was long and next to each name was a letter—a room letter I assumed—and then it said either
Deceased
or
Terminated
. I knew what the difference meant. I searched for my mom's name. It said
Terminated
by it. I clicked on the JPEG beside it and there she was. All vibrant and alive in a way that I never really knew her. And I felt like that little boy again, watching her die in front of my eyes.

             
Then I let my eyes search for Marley's mom's name, I prayed it said deceased. But it didn't. They had killed her like they killed my mom. The date for her death was when Marley would have been three years old. I looked at her and she knew.

             
"You found something about her, didn't you?"

             
"How old were you when she…gave you up."

             
"Three years, two months, and nine days. But who's counting?" She smiled sadly. "Just tell me."

             
I waited. I clicked on the picture of her and an older version of my Marley popped up. Her hair was longer, her skin somehow paler, and she was giving this little, shy smile. I closed my eyes and hated this. "Come here, sweetheart."

             
She came slowly and when she saw her mom's face for the very first time, I watched as her world shattered. I was sure it was nothing like she pictured her. She covered her face, everything but her eyes, and stared at the woman who gave her up to save her.

             
As she sobbed and realized her mom had loved her so much that she died for her, I held her tightly. She wrapped her arms roughly around my neck and held on. I soothed her the only way I was learning how to, by being there. I let my hands say what my lips didn't know how to and pressed her to me, rubbing her skin in circles under her shirt.

             
I wasn't sure how long we stood like that, but we needed to get moving. I hated to interrupt her when she needed this time to grieve, but I had to. I lifted her face, smoothed her cheeks of tears, and hoped to hell that she was going to be all right. I knew what guilt looked like—I'd had years to deal with mine—but hers was just now hitting her full-force. "I'm so sorry, baby."

             
She nodded. "Me, too."

             
"We've got to go."

             
She nodded again. "I know."

             
I turned back to the computer and printed the picture of her mom off for her. I took it from the printer on the back desk, folded it, and stuck it in her back pocket for her. I kissed her once.

             
"Thank you for finding her," she whispered.

             
I didn't feel like I deserved any thanks. On our way out, she stopped me and said that we should take our mothers' files with us. We looked, but couldn't find them. They were in order of date, so we looked for our birthdays, but that didn't match up. Then I realized it wasn't their birthdays or ours, it was by their
Terminated
date. Sure enough, we found both folders that way.

             
Marley stuffed them both into the back of her waistband and let her shirt cover them. That was a good thing because as soon as I opened the door, we came face-to-face with a man that didn't look happy to see us there.

             
"How did you get in here?" he asked, truly perplexed.

             
I reached for my gun slowly and told him, "You were the guy in there with that little boy."

             
His eyes widened and he huffed. "How long have you been here? How did you get in?" He reached for something in his pocket, but I was faster on the draw.

             
"Nuhuh, big boy. Hands up."

             
"Are you a terrorist?" he asked, glancing down the hall nervously. "Our anthrax isn't the kind you can weaponize, you know."'             

             
"I'm not here to steal your anthrax." I pushed him to the wall, the gun under his chin. I saw a ring on his finger. "Married? Got kids?"

             
"Yes," he stuttered and seemed to get an idea. "Yes, I have three beautiful, talented little girls who would miss their daddy very much. Please, let me go."

             
I scoffed. "So because your kids are
talented
you're worth more than other daddies? Is that what you're saying?"
              Marley stuck behind me, her fingers gripping my shirt.               "No…yes, maybe. I don't know!" he roared. "You've got a gun in my face!"
              "So you would never want anything to happen to them, would you? Like being put in a room for the rest of their lives and harvested for organs! Or plasma and blood." My lividness reached maximum capacity. "You sick bastard!"

             
I reared back and punched him with the fist not holding the gun. It was my left for crying out loud, but he went down like a sack of onions and cried like he'd been chopping some, too. I jerked him up by his collar. "Get up. We're going for a walk and you're going to tell us everything."
              "Everything about what?"