Taken (19 page)

“What about the truth?” I call out to him.

“Oh, we’ll get to that eventually. You need to clean up first. Eat.”

“But . . . you said . . .”

“I promised you answers, Gray, but I did not say they would be instantaneous, nor did I say they would come directly from me. Talk to your father. Get to know him. Visit your brother in the hospital. These things should be more important anyway.” And with his carefully formulated wave of guilt working over me, Ryder, too, exits.

My father shows me to my room. I’m lost immediately, overwhelmed by the various tunnels and burrows that snake off the main valley area he refers to as the Basin. Each passageway looks the same, each turn identical, but he promises I will pick it up in time.

I want to ask him about Harvey, about the Laicos Project and why the Rebels are working alongside a monster, but the details don’t add up. Word in Taem was that Harvey was gathering followers, and yet, I haven’t seen him once since arriving, not even at my vote, which seemed to include influential Rebels. Maybe Frank’s records are wrong and Harvey’s not in charge. Maybe Harvey isn’t even here at all.

Pushing the questions aside, I tell my father about my journey. I start with the letter I found and climbing the Wall. I tell him about Emma and her jail cell and my ordered execution. He is silent until we reach my room, a tiny thing set in the middle of a tunnel that looks like all the rest. There’s a simple cot and a dresser and a painting on the wall that shows sunshine and blue skies in the way a windowless room within rock never could.

“Your mother, Sara. How is she?” he asks. I pause, unsure how to tell him. He’s practically a stranger, and yet I know it should be personal, delivered softly and with care. I think my silence says enough.

“No,” he mutters in disbelief. “When?”

“We were fifteen. Pneumonia. Carter tried everything, but she couldn’t save her.”

I watch as a thin sheet of water builds in his eyes. He so clearly loved her. It makes me wonder if he hated the slatings the same way I do, if he ever murmured that word to my mother despite its weight.

“Blaine’s a father,” I say, desperately trying to distract him from the oncoming tears. “Her name’s Kale, and she’s the cutest thing there is. Not even three yet.”

He sits on the edge of my cot and runs a hand through his hair exactly as I do when I’m anxious. “I barely got to be a father myself,” he says. “I can’t imagine being a grandfather as well.”

It’s odd to see him lost. I guess I always figured a parent should have all the answers. When I got hurt as a child I ran to Ma. When I needed comfort or advice, she always had both. To see my father confused and conflicted is somewhat startling. He shakes whatever parental concerns he’s dealing with aside and looks back up at me.

“I’m assuming you know about Sara’s experiment,” he says. “It’s why you climbed, right?”

I nod.

“I was seventeen when she had the two of you. I came to see her that day after I finished hunting—because we’d agreed to continue slatings together—and you were both there, bundled up on her lap. She pulled me to her side and told me you didn’t exist. Blaine, yes; but you, Gray, you were a ghost. With the exception of Carter and me, no one was to know that you had even been born, at least not until the following year. It was Sara’s way of challenging the home she could never accept.

“You have to understand that even though I loved your mother dearly, I thought she was losing her grip on reality. She hated Claysoot and the Heist. She was always telling me about how unnatural the place was, sharing her doubts and suspicions and making me promise to not repeat her words.”

I’m shocked at how little I knew about my own mother. She never expressed any of these feelings to Blaine or me, not in all the years leading up to her death. It’s like we were raised by a different person.

My father swallows heavily and continues. “She was the only one obsessing about these things. No other villager questioned the Heist, including me. And I wanted to spend my final year with
both
my sons. I wanted to be able to carry you both outside, through fresh air and sunlight. I didn’t want my only time with you, Gray, to take place inside, hidden away from the world.

“Sara won, though. Above anything else, I could not bear the thought of her being unhappy during our last year together. She was so sure the experiment would prove something. I thought she was crazy.” He rubs his knuckles and looks up at me. “Turns out, she was completely right. Claysoot is unnatural and the Heist is so much more than a standard part of life. It’s been a giant scheme all along, and she never even got to see that.”

“Yes, Claysoot is one big experiment and you go working hand in hand with the man that started it. What a great way to honor her memory.” I feel bad as soon as I say it. I only want to confirm that Harvey is in Crevice Valley, but my father’s in mourning and I still can’t be decent for five minutes. If Blaine were here, he’d shoot me a disapproving big brother look for sure.

“Harvey is a very influential man. Powerful. Smart,” my father says. So Harvey is here after all. “We need his help.”

“I think the only help you need is someone with the guts to torture answers out of him. So that we can get everyone out of Claysoot. So they can be free.” Blaine would be glaring now, but I wasn’t expecting this sort of loyalty for Harvey. Especially not from my father. It doesn’t make any sense.

“It’s not that simple,” he says.

“Then tell me why you’re working with him, because I don’t get it.”

“It’s only going to make adjusting harder. Maybe you should rest, visit Blaine in the hospital, take it easy. I’m not sure turning everything upside down is a good idea.”

“No, it’s an excellent idea. I need to hear it.”

“I’d feel better if you settled in first.” I cross my arms over my chest. He looks between me and the door and adds, “What are the chances you let me leave this room without giving you any details?”

“Slim to none.”

He sighs. “I should have known you’d demand answers immediately. I was the same way.”

I lean against the dresser and wait. He kneads his palms together. Stares at the floor. It feels like hours before he speaks again.

“Harvey didn’t start the Laicos Project. Frank did.”

TWENTY-FOUR

MY LEGS FEEL WEAK.

“Whatever you’ve heard in Taem, it’s not true.”

“But there are wanted posters,” I say, “and a list of crimes.”

“He was framed, Gray. Harvey wasn’t gathering followers. He wasn’t killing soldiers or selling information or plotting the downfall of AmEast. He was running from the Order because he is innocent.”

I slide up onto the dresser because my feet can no longer support my weight. “How can you know that?”

“Elijah brought Harvey in a few months ago, and Harvey told us the whole story. Said he wanted to help us, too.”

“What if he was lying?”

My father laughs lightly. “He’s fifty-five.”

“So?”

“So Claysoot has been around for nearly fifty years. If Harvey was responsible for the Laicos Project, he would have been a child during its inception. It’s impossible.”

Harvey’s age had been listed with other Operation Ferret details; I just hadn’t realized what the numbers meant. I kick myself for this. Had I noticed, maybe Emma and I would have left the room sooner, avoided Marco. Maybe she’d even be with me now, instead of in a jail cell.

“But why would Frank blame Harvey?”

“It serves him best. The more crimes Harvey has committed, the more people are on the lookout for him.”

I remember Frank’s words in his office that first day I arrived in Taem:
He uses fear as a weapon
. Frank wasn’t talking about Harvey . . . he was talking about himself. Everything he’d told me was a twisted version of the truth, the version that he knew would earn my trust.

“I don’t get it. The Heists, the entire project. What’s the point?”

“It’s a very long story.”

“I have time.”

We are in too deep to stop, and my father knows it. He barrels ahead. “Any details Frank mentioned regarding the war were probably accurate. This country suffered greatly in the wake of fighting, which happened long before the project. Even still, AmWest remains a threat. Most of its people live in ruins, like the communities do outside Taem. They have one organized force on the western shore, and right now their attacks are sporadic and uncoordinated. But put them all together—the people living in poverty and the people actively attacking—and they are many. So many. Frank knows that if they united themselves long enough to cross the borderline, claiming back land and freshwater, he couldn’t stop them.

“The only way to ensure that won’t happen is with greater numbers. Frank wants more soldiers, an endless supply. He wants good ones, too, physically fit and mentally strong. And what better way to get tough and stubborn and resourceful individuals than to make them grow up in the harsh conditions of a place like Claysoot?”

“That seems incredibly inefficient,” I point out. “Having to wait eighteen years to Heist a single soldier.”

“We are a means to an end, Gray. He is not after us, just our qualities. It’s the Forgeries he cares about.”

There’s that word again. I know what it means in the blacksmith shop where Blaine would forge new spears and axes, molding and shaping them to his liking. But in this context, I think it means something more.

“The Forgeries are the point of the Laicos Project,” my father says. “When a boy was Heisted, he went into the labs, where Frank tried to replicate him. He’s achieved some level of success, just not the kind he craves. Harvey told us Frank can make one Forgery off any given boy. His end goal is of course limitless copies: one Heisted boy who can be replicated one, ten, a hundred times over. If Frank had that sort of army, he could wipe AmWest out in a matter of days.”

I sit there, stunned. Just a few days ago I trusted Frank, felt at home in his presence. And now . . . this. Harvey is innocent and it’s all Frank. Frank, who is grooming the perfect soldier. With Claysoot as his mold. And the Outer Ring, the smoke—that’s him, too. The dead climbers weren’t victims of a self-functioning piece of Harvey’s experiment. They fell to Frank, who burned anyone that threatened the future of his project by trying to escape it. Emma and I were the first to be saved because . . . of Maude! I told her I was Blaine’s twin as I ran from her house. Maybe it was Frank she was talking to that night. Maybe she told him what I said and Frank had Emma and me saved because he wanted to know how I tricked the Heist.

“I just . . . I can’t believe I bought all his lies,” I stammer. “How did he get away with locking a bunch of children up? And how did no one stop him? How did
no one
question him as the Wall was raised?”

“It’s stamped with Quarantine on the outside,” my father says. “AmWest released a virus that killed thousands back during the war. Claysoot was passed off as a quarantined community still suffering from that illness, and people happily avoided it.”

My knuckles have gone pale from squeezing the edge of the dresser. Frank put his arm on my shoulder. I trusted him. I think about my trip to the infirmary to be Cleansed, the tracker implanted in my neck. I wonder what else happened to me when I was there, if a piece of me now sits in some vial in his labs.

“We have a little documentation, if you want to see it with your own eyes,” my father adds. “Ryder got his hands on some partial research records when he ran years ago.”

“It’s an extremely interesting read,” a voice says from the open doorway. Bree is standing there, holding a clean set of clothes for me in her arms. “Full of surprising details.”

I look to my father, suspicious that he’s withheld information.

“I’ve told you the basics,” he says, and I believe him. His voice is steady, and I have a feeling if he were lying, I’d be able to sense the quaver, the way I can with Blaine. “But I’m sure Bree will show you to the library if you’d like to read them yourself.”

She shrugs, uninterested. “Yeah, I can do that sometime. I’m heading to the Basin now though, for dinner.”

“Good idea,” my father says. “Gray needs a proper meal.” He eyes the state of my Order uniform and adds, “It wouldn’t hurt to stop by the washroom beforehand, either.”

Bree drops the clothing on my cot and turns to leave.

“You’ll wait for him, Bree,” my father says. “He doesn’t know his way around and I need to head to a meeting.”

She eyes the door. “But I’m starving.”

“You’re waiting for him, and that’s an order.”

Something in his tone snaps Bree to attention. “Yes, sir.”

Owen nods curtly and after telling me he’ll see me in the morning, excuses himself. Once he’s out of sight, Bree exhales dramatically and flops onto the cot. “You have five minutes.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll conveniently become too busy to take you to the library after dinner.” She keeps her eyes on the ceiling, smirking.

I grab the clean clothes and leave in a hurry.

The shared washroom at the end of my tunnel is small and modest, but it feels good to soak my skin. I lather quickly, rubbing a bar of soap over my arms and head. To my satisfaction, I find the once brittle hair on my scalp to be softening ever so slightly.

The clothes Bree has provided are simple but comfortable. A cotton tunic and linen pants. Clean socks. I almost feel I am back in Claysoot when I slip them on. I return to my room and stuff my Order uniform into the dresser.

“You look semitolerable now,” Bree says. I roll my eyes at her but she’s already turned her back on me. “This way. Dinner’s in the Basin.”

Back in the Basin, beyond the market and crop fields and near what appears to be a rudimentary schoolhouse, is a large building that Bree refers to as the Eatery. The layout reminds me of the dining hall in Taem, large tables and crude wooden benches filling the space. There’s an open kitchen at the far end of the room, and we join the line of people waiting to get food. The angry eyes that greeted me earlier are nowhere to be found. I blend in seamlessly in my drab clothing.