FIFTY-FOUR

Was it Emelia?” Caitlyn asked softly. “Did she tell you?”
“Listen to me and you decide,” Razor said. “More than two decades ago, before the Wars, Jordan was head scientist in a military lab. Genetic experiments. Women served as surrogate mothers.”

Caitlyn clenched her jaw. That’s who she was. A genetic experiment. Named after the woman who died giving birth to her. Jordan had told her this, but not at any time while raising her in Appalachia. Only in their last moments together. After he’d betrayed her.

“Jordan wanted out,” Razor said. “He wanted to help one of the women out too. He had a colleague and close friend who agreed to help. Hugh Swain.”

Swain! Caitlyn hadn’t told Emelia about the letter. There was only one way Razor could have known. The letters he’d found in the elevator. That he’d handed her walking out of the kitchen, up in the highrise.”

“You read the letter Jordan gave me.”

He nodded.

“And his instructions on how to find a surgeon I could trust. Hugh Swain.”

“Think of my point of view. What I needed to know.”

“What do you want from me?” she asked, using coldness to contain her rage.

He must have understood the intensity of her question. He blinked. Hesitated nearly thirty seconds before answering. “At first I thought I wanted your magic trick. How to soar. How to hide the wings. But now I know it’s not a trick.”

“What. Do you want. From me.”

“It’s obvious now that whatever this is, it’s so big that I’m going to be on the run for the rest of my life unless you get out of this,” Razor said, still choosing his words with care. “I don’t know how to do it, but I want—no, I need—to figure a way out. And I can’t do it without knowing as much as possible about the situation. So what do I want? Help. Answers.”

Caitlyn concentrated on controlling her breathing. Slow and deep. Since fleeing Appalachia, she’d been on hair-trigger rage. “What you’re telling me was not in either letter.”

“I visited the surgeon,” Razor said. Razor described how he’d done it. “Swain. He was expecting you. He got me instead.”

Caitlyn wanted to flail out, but curiosity held her in check. Jordan had promised her that Swain was a surgeon she could trust. Who would finally make her normal. Sure, by cutting through tissue and muscle and sawing through bone. Removing her wings. “Swain. And he gave you answers?”

“I told him that you wouldn’t visit unless you trusted him. And that you wouldn’t trust him unless I had answers to bring back to you.”

“You didn’t ask my permission for that.”

“You wouldn’t have given it to me.”

It was Caitlyn’s turn for silence.

Why was she so determined not to accept help from Razor? Because he was cocky to the point of arrogance?

No. It was something else. Something she didn’t want to admit to herself. But she couldn’t keep fighting it. If she allowed herself to be truthful, there was something more about him that bothered her. Yes, he was deeply attractive. But for all the wrong reasons. He wasn’t strong and gentle, like Billy in her memory. He wasn’t deep and consistent, someone who would carry her through all storms. Still, if she let herself, she could sense an excitement that would make the risk of danger so worthwhile. Or maybe it was the risk of danger that would lead to excitement.

Yes. It was time to admit instead that she didn’t want help from anybody. If she were to be truthful, that’s why she wasn’t with Billy and Theo. She’d found a reason to abandon them, not even wanting to place any faith in the strong yet gentle, even the total acceptance that Billy offered. Maybe Emelia’s comfort had opened her eyes to this. Jordan, the rock of her entire life, had proven to be nothing more than shale, easily shattered. The lesson she had learned was trust nobody, trust no illusions, fight for herself, and protect herself with the satisfying yet paradoxically empty rage that came with distrust.

Time to admit that she needed help. This was a strange, strange world. Razor was correct. She didn’t understand it, and sooner or later, even without pursuers, it would end her. Her pursuer was no longer Mason, but an enemy with unlimited power. And she only increased that enemy’s power by remaining ignorant. What hope did she have alone?

But did she have any hope with Razor?

“What did Swain say?” she asked. Curiosity had won over anger and caution. She sat back, no longer on the edge, ready to fight or flee.

“That you shouldn’t have lived,” Razor said. “They’d been running the program for five years. Hundreds of pregnancies had ended in deformities, often didn’t make it to the third term or never lived more than minutes beyond birth. It was one of the reasons Jordan wanted out and one of the reasons Swain agreed to help. It came to a point, before you were born, where it was too monstrous for them.”

Monstrous. Caitlyn felt the full implication of the word. But she’d felt it her entire life.

If Razor understood the pain he’d inflicted, he didn’t show it as he continued. “Jordan and Swain planned it carefully. They found a way to hack the computers, to steal and hide all the research data. In effect, it would end the experiments. But there was only a small window of time before it would be discovered. Jordan agreed he would take the blame because he was fleeing to Appalachia anyway. Swain, who would be left behind, would appear innocent.”

The words from Jordan’s letter of confession to her echoed in her head.

We had agreed—the woman I loved and I—that as soon as you were born, we would perform an act of mercy and decency and wrap you in a towel to drown you in a nearby sink of water.

Since the shock of reading the letter weeks earlier, Caitlyn had consoled herself that, at the least, Jordan’s actions in protecting her had been motivated by a father’s love for his daughter. Decimated as her soul had been to discover it was Jordan’s genetic manipulation that had created her as a freak, she still clung to the hope of his love.

Now she had to wonder.

When she was born, did Jordan clean and dry her for a reason other than overwhelming love? Did he choose to spare her life because of scientific curiosity, because she was the first experimental fetus, among hundreds of failures, to live?

Cold anger once again strengthened her resolve to survive, to fight.

“Jordan raised me in Appalachia,” Caitlyn said. She wanted to speak in short, clipped sentences that would hide her emotions. “I knew nothing about this until an agent from Outside began to hunt us in Appalachia. Jordan helped me escape. He’d found a way to reach his old friend Swain, to arrange surgery. He promised it would allow me to live invisible and unhunted.”

“How long since you escaped?”

“Six weeks. Seven. Eight. Not sure.”

“But you didn’t go to Swain for the operation.”

It was an unspoken question. The answer was that Caitlyn couldn’t choose between freedom and flight. That, in a way, she was defiantly proud of what made her different. It wasn’t the answer she would give Razor though.

“I have friends,” she said. “We were going to find a way out.”

“Where?”

“Parts of the world where the government wouldn’t look for us.” Vague but true. She didn’t have to tell Razor the specifics of her plan with Billy and Theo.

“You do know what the government wants, right?”

This was another tipping point. The angry and defiant Caitlyn would not admit ignorance. But she could not survive this alone.

“What I do know is that the government wants me because they can unlock the genetic research from my body.”

From her eggs. Another thing so hideous she couldn’t say it aloud.

“There’s more,” Razor said.

“The funding that that was diverted when they hacked the computers?”

“More.” Razor paused. “Swain wouldn’t tell me. He said only you could know.”