Chapter 3

Isit on the edge of the bed as Greg answers the door. I knew they’d send someone to find me. I might be a coward for hiding away, but I’m not ready to talk to anyone yet. They didn’t want to listen to me before, so now they can damn well wait. Yes, I know I sound like the child they think I am, but I don’t care.

A child. Me. I snort at the idea. If a child is defined by their age, then sure, I guess for another few days, I’m a child. But if being a child is defined by their experiences, then I am positively ancient.

I lie back with a huff. I can hear the muffled voices, but I can’t make out what’s being said. Part of me is tempted to creep closer and listen in, but the other part doesn’t want to know. I’ve found out the hard way that listening in on someone’s conversation can cause more harm than good.

“She’s defective. How does someone with a gift as strong as mine produce a dud? I don’t understand. Are you sure she’s mine? Perhaps there was a mix-up with the samples used.” I hear my father’s voice and feel my heart break.

At ten, I’m already well aware that he is nothing like the fathers I see on TV. To him, I’m more of an inconvenience than anything else—someone who’s easier to ignore than interact with. Still, deep down inside,there was a part of me that thought he might love me in his own way.

And now I know differently.

I stare at the ceiling as the memory drifts away, wondering where I go from here. Technically, I’m a minor. If I ran and was caught, I’d be returned to my father. If I stayed, these guys could be brought up on kidnapping charges. However, with the younger kids here, they must have considered that already.

It’s not as easy as going to the police and filing a missing person report or pursuing kidnapping charges when my father would have to explain who these children were and why he had them in the first place. It’s more complicated for me. There’s a record of the others. They were all born in hospitals that would have registered their births. Which means they’ll all have birth certificates. I have nothing. Not a birth certificate. Not a social security number. There is no record of my birth now that the lab has been blown up. I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.

If people don’t know about me, they can’t hunt me down. But how do you live in a world that doesn’t know you exist? How do you make connections, get a job, or buy a house? How would you get married?

I feel the tendrils of panic start to set in. Running away isn’t an option. I can’t survive without using my gift and doing that isn’t something I’m comfortable with. I don’t want to end up like my father.

I jolt at the sound of knocking on my door and lift up onto my elbows before it’s pushed open a little, and Greg pokes his head in.

“It was Wilder. He wanted to talk to you, but I told him you didn’t want to see him. He’s gone now, but he’ll be back. Won’t hurt them all to stew a little,” he tells me as I sit all the way up, thankful that he took care of Wilder for the time being.

“Are you doing okay?”

I nod before shaking my head, feeling tears fill my eyes.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says as he rushes over to me and sits on the bed next to me, grimacing in pain, but that doesn’t stop him from wrapping his arm around me. “It might seem hopeless right now, but things have a way of figuring themselves out.”

I lay my head on his shoulder and let the tears fall, trying to remember the last time I was held by someone. I draw a complete blank. How pathetic am I? I’m on the verge of adulthood, and where other girls my age are barely able to keep their hands to themselves, I’m touch-starved.

“You’ve had a lot happen in the last week. And well, I can only imagine what life was like for you before. I just want you to know I’m here for you if you need me. No strings attached. You just look like you could use a friend. And lucky for you, I happen to be a pretty damn good one.”

“I don’t have a very good track record with friends.”

“I find that hard to believe, Lara.”

I smile through my tears. “It’s hard to make friends when the people you come into contact with never stick around.”

“What about school or boyfriends?”

I lift my head and look at him, wiping my cheeks. “I didn’t go to school. I had tutors, and I sure as heck wasn’t allowed to be alone with any boys?”

He turns to look at me and frowns. “You were homeschooled?”

“Homeschooled implies there was a home involved. I was born and raised at the Division, Greg,” I tell him softly.

His sharp inhale of breath has me reaching over and squeezing his hands.

“I was alone sometimes. Sometimes there were other kids, but most were either much older or younger than me.”

The look on his face has me snapping my mouth shut.

“What about your mother?”

I dip my head and bite my lip.

God, when I was little, how I used to pray for one of those. As I got older, though, I found, in a strange way, that I was grateful not to have one. No mother meant I had one less person to manipulate and use me. One less person to lose, one less person to make me feel completely expendable.

“I never had one in the truest sense of the word. An egg was harvested from a gifted one. It was fertilized in a test tube with my father’s sperm and then placed inside a surrogate. I was born in the medical ward there, and the rest is, well, history.” I shrug.

He looks dumbfounded and, if I’m honest, a little sad too.

“I’m okay, Greg. I’m here, safe and sound. I made it out alive and relatively unscathed. Not everyone was as lucky as I was.”

“Only you would consider that lucky.” He pulls me to him again. This time, I sense that it’s more for his sake than mine. What I said has upset him, but I don’t understand why.

“How about we head over to your place and grab some of your things? Tomorrow, I’ll take you into town for breakfast. After that, we’ll pick up some things to girly this place up a little and maybe get you some books or something. Girls like books, right?”

I feel myself getting choked up once more. “This girl does,” I whisper. Books have, at times, been my only solace.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“Okay, but I’ll go get my things. You need to rest for a little while.”

He brushes me off. “Oh, I’ll be fine.”

I look up into his eyes. “Right now, you’re the only friend I’ve got. Please. Even if you just do it for me.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “Hmm… You’re gonna be trouble, I can tell. Next thing I know, you’ll be making me eat healthy crap and insist I take my medicine.”

I smile. “Maybe.”

Given that I only have the items that were purchased for me since I arrived here, it takes me next to no time to shove everything into a plastic bag.

I glance at the pink bunny lying on the pillow next to mine and picture Delaney’s hair spread out on the pillow, snuggling with it. She doesn’t sleep well alone, so she’s been sleeping with me. I hope she’ll be okay with the others.

Picking up the bunny, I hold it to my nose and breathe it in, ignoring the pang in my chest. I’ve never lived with a family before, yet I’ve never felt lonelier.

I place the bunny back on the bed, grab my bag, and walk out of the room and down the hall to the next one. Standing in the doorway, I look inside. The room has two beds sitting side by side, separated by a small table between them with a lamp set upon it. Each bed has blue bedding. One is meticulously made, and the other a balled-up mess.

Noah and Alfie couldn’t be more different, but Alfie is protective of Noah and has taken him under his wing. I hope that it will continue in my absence.

At the Division, gifted people were so often seen as commodities at best and monsters at worst, but we were all simply human. As children, before everything had been beaten out of us and stripped away, our humanity was our greatest gift. They didn’t seem to understand that we were not born monsters. We became what they forced us to be.

I stare around the small cabin that had felt more like home than the Division ever did and close my eyes against the onslaught of emotion and unshed tears.

It takes me far longer than I hoped to calm myself down. Longer still to bury my resentment and anger. I try not to let negative feelings like that consume me, but I’ll admit that some days it’s so much harder than others.

Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes and head for the front door. It’s silly to mourn for something that doesn’t have a heartbeat. But then, I suppose, in a roundabout way, homes do have heartbeats because they hold the people we love. And now, this place is nothing more than an empty shell, holding only tiny fragments of memories that, for a moment, made the biggest impression.