13

R oman fetched me from the rehab center at lunchtime. I had one hour to finalize everything and pack up my life.

“What’s the rush?” he said as I climbed into the truck. “Daniel was only admitted last night. If we panic, that’s when things go wrong.”

Roman had always had more sympathy for Julian than me. I hadn’t wanted to break the news to him over the iComm.

“Drive,” I said. “We’ll talk on the way. I only have an hour for lunch.”

His gaze locked mine for a beat, then he slammed the truck into reverse. “Start talking.”

“Julian Edgar was released this morning but before you get excited, they’ve performed a procedure on him.” The words rushed out of me. “A laser lobotomy, I think they call it.”

His grip on the wheel tightened until his knuckles whitened. He didn’t look at me, kept his eyes trained on the road.

“I know I said we’d have two days once Daniel arrived at the rehab center, but I no longer trust that,” I went on. “We can’t risk it. If you’d seen Julian, you’d understand.”

“You saw him?” Roman’s voice was gravel, hard.

“Whatever they’ve done, it’s left him in the same state as Miriam.”

The air inside the cab chilled as we drove in silence, punching through the Quantum Zone and skirting the town square.

“Say it,” I said.

His jaw firmed, his profile set in granite. He still refused to look at me, and he wasn’t saying it.

“I got what I wanted,” I spat out bitterly. “I wanted Julian to suffer. I wanted to obliterate everything that made up the man. I hated him. I hate him. My insides roil with disgust and rage when I think of him, when I think of any of the councilmen.”

Roman’s gaze slid to me. He was looking at me now, seeing through my rant and straight to the heart of me. “I thought you didn’t give a damn about what happened to Julian Edgar. What has changed?”

“I don’t give a damn,” I said. “That’s the point. I don’t give a damn. As far as I’m concerned, Julian can spend the rest of his life walking through hell and then he can burn in it for eternity.”

His gaze bounced between me and the road. “I don’t get it.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten what I wanted.” I turned my head from him, looking out the window. We were skirting the town square now. “I’m entitled to my feelings, Roman. I should be allowed to rage and hurt and hate. But, maybe, that doesn’t mean I should have the power to destroy a life just to fuel my own revenge. When I saw Julian, it didn’t feel right.”

When I saw Daniel’s pain, I knew it wasn’t right.

“You don’t have that power.” Roman’s hand landed on my thigh. He waited until I rolled my head his way, until my eyes met his. “As much as you wanted it, this decision wasn’t yours.”

“No one person should have that power,” I said to him. “Especially not Geneva.”

He took his hand back, his attention on the road. “The wardens have a tribunal system. And in the old world, they had the jury system.”

“What’s a jury system?”

“If you were accused of a crime, you were given the opportunity to defend yourself. The jury was a panel of twelve impartial people, brought in from all walks of life. They heard both sides of the story, weighed all the evidence and made the final decision.”

“Geneva would never allow that,” I muttered.

Daniel hadn’t even committed any crime. He was a potential threat, some elusive danger that had to be contained at all costs. The council weren’t any better. Replace Daniel with women in general. We were a necessarily evil to be monitored and leashed in the name of the greater good.

“That’s why they also had an elected government in the old world,” Roman said.

Old world politics was a vague concept to me. That wasn’t the kind of talk encouraged in Capra, and especially not in female circles. “How exactly did that work? Who elected the government?”

“The people.” Roman glanced at me. “The citizens of the country voted on who to put in power, and held them accountable. And every five or so years, they could change their minds and elect someone else.”

That didn’t make sense. “But if someone was in power, why would they just step down voluntarily when the people changed their minds?”

Roman took his time to formulate a response as we approached Parklands. The barrier was raised, the guard house standing as empty as the many vacated council homes.

“It was another time, another way of thinking, another kind of life,” he said. “Citizens had more rights and no one questioned it, not even the elected government.”

There was a tone of finality in his voice, in his manner as navigated the rutted dirt lane through the woodlands. That was the way it was done then, this is the way it is done now.

I shook off my speculative mood as our rustic cabin came into view. A wave of nostalgia came over me, but I shook that off as well. Accommodating time for the ride back to the rehab center, we had less than half an hour to prepare for tonight.

Besides the clothes in my wardrobe, I didn’t have many belongings. I tore through our bedroom, dumping out the drawers and wardrobe onto a heap on the bed.

Roman went to his study first and came through with his precious books stacked in his arms. Amongst them were his Atlas filled with geographic pictures and historical details of a world before our time and beyond our view, a beautiful photographic wildlife journal, and, of course, Amelia’s sketchbook.

I stabbed a look at the plywood chest in the corner, crafted by a grandfather I’d never known, given to me by my mother. I wasn’t leaving that behind. “You can put your books in there.”

It wasn’t long before we’d filled the chest, and I helped Roman carry the chest out to his truck.

He checked inside the lockbox on the back of the truck. “There’s some space in here if you need it.”

“I’m set, thanks,” I told him and returned inside to gather the last remaining scraps of my life into my overnight bag, to erase myself from this cabin as efficiently as Julian had been erased from his body.

Except for the letter I’d written to my parents, folded and lying on top of the chest of drawers. There wasn’t time to deliver it to Jessie now, and I contemplated leaving it here for them to find.

Except Geneva, or the Guard, would probably find it first. Even if they passed it on to my parents, which was doubtful, those words were for my mother, for my father. I’d poured my heart out into that letter.

I tucked the letter into my backpack, then I stuffed the tranquilizer gun and the flat box of darts into my purse. It was a tight fit, but there were no unseemly bulges that gave anything away.

After the whirlwind of the last half hour, Roman stopped me just as I was unpegging my coat from the wall by the front door.

“Hey.” His hands came to my hips, turning me to him.

I looked into his stone-gray eyes, absorbing his calming presence, and the storm inside me quietened. “Hey.”

His gaze lingered on me in a way that pressed warm shivers to my skin. “I love you.”

Tears stung behind my eyes. This wasn’t the end of us. I knew that. But I’d also learned there were no guarantees in this life, and there was no guarantee we’d walk away from this rescue attempt unscathed.

I reached up, my palms cupping his strong jaw. “I love you.”

Heat and something else, something fierce and almost dangerous, glinted in his eyes as he lowered his mouth to mine. The kiss started out intense and grew into desperate urgency as we touched, tasted, fed on each other as if we were ravenous beasts. My bones went weak with temptation to take an extended lunch hour, but we both knew it would be stupid to give anyone a reason to raise questions today, to even look at me too closely today.

Roman pulled out of the kiss, his voice husky, his gaze bathing me in love. “It’s going to be okay.”

I nodded. “It’s going to be okay.”

He breathed in, then stood back from me and flipped to mission mode. “Let’s run through it one more time. The receptionist leaves at five o’clock. The night shift comes on at six o’clock.”

“I’ll hide and wait it out,” I continued. “We’ll give everything an hour to settle. At seven o’clock, I’ll execute the plan.”

“You have ten minutes.” He tapped his wristwatch. “One minute past that, and I’m blowing out the emergency door and coming in for you. Whatever happens, I’m not leaving you inside.”

Once I left my hiding place, the clock would start ticking down to someone or something unexpected catching me red-handed in the act. Our plan relied heavily on brutally quick timing. That had been our biggest hurdle with Ward Red, but that wasn’t a consideration anymore, and Roman had cut our time window in half.

Ten minutes should be enough. If I wasn’t out in ten minutes, it probably meant I’d failed and I was in trouble.

I did not agree about the part where Roman charged in to save me, but we’d already had that argument many times and I’d lost.

“Ten minutes,” I promised. “We’ll be there.”

I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to spend one more moment in his arms, but instead I grabbed my coat from its peg on the wall and we walked out the door.

On the drive back to the rehab center, we went over the plan one more time. Roman searched for new weaknesses, but in truth, our plan was stronger, virtually airtight now that Julian Edgar and Ward Red were removed from the equation.

When Roman dropped me off, I shrugged out of my thick winter coat and tossed it into the rear seat. I couldn’t wear it indoors and I couldn’t leave it hanging in the staff lounge. There was one last lingering kiss, and then I was on my own until ten minutes past seven this evening.