The Sowing (26 page)

“I had to tell someone,” I say, embarrassed. “I thought I could trust you.” There’s a slight edge to my voice, a feeling of betrayal.
I can’t lose Jeremiah, too.

“You can.” He laughs, almost barking, an awkward, uncomfortable laugh. “It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. I’m not about to throw away my life like that. I’m just worried about what happens next.”

“Next. Shit. I don’t know. I can barely process what’s happening now, let alone think about what happens next.” I stare at him, conscious of the fact that I still haven’t told him the full story. He doesn’t know about the Resistance, the raid, Remy and Soren, or the fact that my mother almost had them killed, too. I haven’t gotten that far yet. Technically, Jeremiah only has first-level security clearance for his engineering work, so he’s not supposed to even know about the existence of the Resistance. I know word’s gotten around a little bit among some of the Sector workers, but Jeremiah has never mentioned them to me, and I know I’ve never spoken about them openly in front of him.

Damn the security clearances.

“Look, Miah, there’s something I haven’t been telling you, because under Sector security authorizations, I’m not allowed to.” He looks up at me curiously from across the desk. “But you need to know, because there’s a piece of the story I’m leaving out. There’s a group of, shall we say, rebels, former high-ups in the—”

“Are you talking about the Resistance?” he interrupts sharply.

“I—what?” I sputter. “How did you know?”

He laughs bitterly. “I think my father is one of them. He left his job in Ellas about six months ago when one of his friends was killed in a freak accident. He didn’t think it was an accident and he couldn’t get any answers he liked. So he sent me a note and disappeared.”

“He sent you a note and said he was joining the Resistance?” I ask, incredulous.

“No, of course not. He didn’t say anything about why he was leaving, just that now that I’m a grown man, I need to make my own choices—and watch my back.”

“Damn,” I whisper.

“I hadn’t seen him in a long time anyway, only a couple of times since I came to the Academy, so it wasn’t a huge loss. My parents divorced a long time ago, and we were never very close. But I put my ear to the ground and asked the right questions, and I found out about the Resistance.”

I stare at him, speechless. Once again, I realize, I have underestimated my friend. I’ve relied too much on my mother’s judgment. But how will he react to what I have to tell him next? I clear my throat nervously.

“Okay. You know about the Resistance. Did you know that the Seed Bank Protection Project was just a cover-up? It should be called, ‘The Resistance Annihilation Project,’” I say with a forced, desperate laugh.

“No way,” he whispers, leaning forward. “So that’s why you’ve been spending so much time at the Military Complex with good old Aulion. You’re preparing to take on the Resistance.”

“Yeah,” I say, looking down at my shoes. “Something like that.” There is a long pause as I weigh the things I’ve done over the last year, in my training and preparation for my new position, and the steps I’ve taken recently as a commander. “So, anyway. The reason I have to tell you about this is—” I take a deep breath “—I recently led my team on a raid interception. It was a hostage-capture mission at one of our seed banks we had reason to believe the Resistance was interested in.” Jeremiah’s eyes go wide as he listens, whether with awe and intrigue or disgust, I can’t quite tell.

“We were supposed to nab Elijah Tawfiq—you remember him, brilliant researcher, one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Long story, but he was a perfect target. He was slippery, though, and too quick for us. But we came back with Soren Skaarsgard and Remy Alexander.”

Jeremiah lets out a low whistle. He stares at me, sizing me up. I force myself to hold his gaze and accept whatever judgment he may pass.

“My former best friend. And your former girlfriend.”

“She was never my girlfriend—” I protest, but he lets out a low chuckle and a smile creases his bearded face. I know then that he doesn’t hate me, that he’s not going to judge me.

“She may not have been your girlfriend, but you can’t deny you were in love with her for a long time. Maybe
still
in love with her.” He tosses me a grin. “What a strange coincidence that she should have made it back to the capital with you.”

“You think I did it for love? Oh, that’s hilarious. Let me tell you about how my mother almost had my ‘girlfriend’ and your best friend killed.”

I run him quickly through my disastrous interrogation, Aulion’s injections, and Remy’s words about her sister. I explain that she was the one who inspired me to go hunt down the real reason for the attack on Professor Hawthorne’s classroom, and how when I started to leave my mother’s lab, I overheard my mother telling Chan-Yu to kill Remy and Soren, cover it up, and disappear. Jeremiah’s eyes light up when I tell him how I had to sneak out of the building using the dumbwaiter shaft. When I get to the part where I ran into Chan-Yu and realized it was him my mother had been speaking to, he gasps perfectly.

“Did you kill him?” he asks.

“No!” The thought sounds absurd now, even though I had been prepared to do it—or die trying—when I confronted him in the hallway. “No, here’s where the story gets even more bizarre, if that’s possible. It turns out he’s an Outsider, and he had no plans of obeying my mother anyway. He said, ‘My allegiance lies outside the Sector,’ and I had no idea what he meant until he gave me this.” I pull the pendant out from my pocket and hand it over. Jeremiah picks it up and twirls it admiringly.

“I’ve never seen one of these before.” He turns it over in his hand.

“I hadn’t either. ‘If you should ever find yourself lost in the woods, this may help,’ he said.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jeremiah holds the pendant up to the light, examining it from all angles. “Is it some miniature Outsider food printer or something? A grizzly bear vaporizer? Does it blow up into an airship?” I laugh. He passes it back to me

“Who knows? Anyway, Chan-Yu told me to go home, to get ready for work, and to show up on time, like it was a regular work day. At first I had no idea whether I’d made a mistake and had left Remy and Soren in their cell to die, but when I heard the Code Red alarm, I knew he’d gotten them out. I don’t know how safe they are, but I have a feeling Chan-Yu will take care of them. He’s the stealthiest person I’ve ever met. He’s practically invisible. And if he’s with the Outsiders.…”

“Why didn’t you get them out yourself?” Jeremiah demands.

“I went down there to save them, but I had no real plan … and then Chan-Yu … I’d have been recognized at every turn. Everyone would realize I was doing something crazy. No. It wouldn’t have worked. I’d have drawn way too much attention to them—and to myself. It’s better this way.”

Jeremiah stares at the ground for a minute, processing all of this. He goes still again, and I know he’s thinking. I stare off into the corner of the room as the weight of everything that’s happened starts to bear down on me. My mother, a killer, ordering assassinations in the secrecy of night. My father, possibly complicit. Me, a traitor to the Sector, aiding the cause of the Resistance and freeing government hostages. I rewind slowly, see myself aboard the airship flying to the site of the seed bank for the mission. See Remy injured, Soren trying to protect her, Eli on the roof. How surreal it all feels now, how strange and ridiculous, that I should ever have thought it was a good idea to bring anyone
into our possession
.

“Vale, your mom—”

“I know.” I take a deep breath as the shame rips through me like a rusty razor. “You don’t have to tell me. I can barely think about it.”

Jeremiah looks at me with wide-eyed pity, and I look away, unable to hold his gaze. I’m ashamed. Ashamed of what I am, who I am, what I thought I was. I want to defend myself. How could I have known what they were doing? But I should have been more aware. If the others found out, if they saw through the lies, through the façade, how could I not? And when they all disappeared, one by one, why did I not bother to investigate? And Remy … oh, god. When she disappeared, I was disappointed—no, I was mad because it hurt when she turned her back on me. No wonder she hates me.
Does she hate me?
She has every reason to. I was ignorant, and I chose to remain that way. Regret smolders in my gut like white hot coals, but I can’t change the past.

“Listen,” Jeremiah says abruptly, jolting me from my personal hell. “We have to figure out the next step. What do we do now?”

I contemplate the question. I can’t turn my mother in. I don’t know what she’ll do to me, but it doesn’t matter—no one will believe me. They’ll say I’ve gone insane. I don’t have any proof, anyway; it’s all locked up on my mother’s computer. Besides, the very thought of testifying in front of a court about the things she’s done makes me sick, especially since I now know what Eli went through. I could tell my father, but there’s always the risk that he’s already privy to the gruesome details, that he’s just as guilty as she is. And even if he doesn’t know, who would he believe—his wife or his son? I could confront them both. As the thought occurs to me, I realize I owe my mother a chance to explain herself.

“I have to talk to them.”

“To—to who?” Jeremiah looks at me, startled.

“To my parents. I have to give them an opportunity to justify what they did. Maybe there’s something we don’t know. Some missing piece of the puzzle.”

“Vale—” Jeremiah’s expression is shocked and dismayed “—there is nothing that justifies cold-blooded murder.”

“I agree, Miah, but they’re my parents. I have to give them a chance.”

Jeremiah leans back in his chair. He’s staring off into a corner of the room above my head, as though he doesn’t want to meet my gaze. There’s another long pause as he furtively dodges my eyes, though I’m trying to pin him down. He’s shifting so much in his chair that I wonder if his pants aren’t being invaded by a large army of fire ants. Finally, he responds, though his eyes are still firmly trained on the upper-right corner of the room.

“Fine. You talk to them. But we need a backup plan, because I highly doubt they’re going to have a good enough justification for the murder of a classroom full of students and the attempted murder of two of our former friends that will make us want to stick around.”

“Are you suggesting we run?” As the concept rolls off my tongue I contemplate it, visualize it, try to imagine myself fleeing everything I’ve ever known. I’ve already made myself a traitor to the Sector. Even by breaking into my mother’s lab I’ve committed crimes that would result in exile to the Wilds. My eyes linger on the Outsider pendant sitting on Miah’s table, and I wonder if that will come in handy sooner rather than later.

“Yes,” Miah responds definitively. “I’m not planning on sitting around and waiting for your mom to find out I know she’s a killer. I’ve never been high on her list anyway. This puts both me and Moriana in danger—if your mom finds out I know, she’ll wonder if Moriana knows too.” He sighs. “This is deep, Vale. I don’t think we can fight it from the inside. Maybe you can, but I’m hardly in a position of power—and at some point, they’re going to figure you out and take you out of the equation. Remember what happened to Soren’s parents?”

“No, what happened to them?” I sit up, shocked. I met Soren’s parents a few times at official government functions back when Soren’s mother was chancellor, and once or twice after that when Soren and I were at piano competitions together. But after a certain point they stopped showing up, and I never saw them again.

“You didn’t know? Well, I don’t really know either. I always thought they went sort of off their rockers—that’s what the official documents said. You know his mom, Cara, was chancellor when SSD201 went raging through the wheat and corn crops and destroyed a quarter of the food supply. That was in ’95, and there was a mini famine. Lots of people starved. Of course no one in Okaria knew the full extent. We had food rationing, but it didn’t hit in the capital as hard as it did the Farms and factory towns. Anyway, the Corporate Assembly gave her a vote of no confidence. She was removed, and an interim head was appointed before your dad took office.”

“I know, I know all this stuff. I just thought that was the end of it. What happened after that?”

“Well, Cara and Odin kept to themselves after that. They went back to their research, and, in public, just focused on Soren. But they kept publishing papers and making little jabs at the OAC’s research, detailing all the negative side effects of the drugs being used on animals and, in some cases, on humans. They also wrote occasional journalistic pieces about the practices used on the Farms. Nothing revolutionary, but I guess the Sector didn’t like it, and....” He pauses.

“And, what?”

“Sorry. I just feel kind of weird telling you all this. Soren never really liked you, you know—”

“No, really?” I say sarcastically. “You think he didn’t like me back then, just imagine how he feels about me now.”

“It was always complicated, Vale,” Miah says, sounding vaguely parental, as though explaining a concept way over my head. “Anyway, Soren said his parents went off for a vacation one weekend, and when they came back, they were just ... different. ‘Flat,’ was what he said. Barely paid attention to anything he said or did after that, never criticized him, never responded when he was angry or upset. They were emotionless.” Jeremiah glances around the room, looking everywhere but at me.

“His parents were formally removed from their research positions after that and demoted to lab techs, essentially. The OAC reports said that they were demoted because the trauma of losing power in the government made them biased and unable to conduct objective research. Soren never said anything outright, but now that I think about it, it seems pretty clear that he suspected foul play.”

I stare at Jeremiah for a few seconds, trying to process this new information. Soren’s parents, drugged? Tortured? Lobotomized? Hundreds of ideas, each one more brutal than the last, flow through my head, and I feel like a hundred pounds have been dropped onto each of my shoulders, bowing me down, crushing me.