Marked
Chapter 45

“Rachel, I know it’s a lot to take in.”

“That’s an understatement.” She replied. She ran her hands over the length of her face. This was a never-ending nightmare as if she’d fallen asleep sometime while they’d been planning an attack on the capital and hadn’t been able to wake up since.

“You can take as much time as you need to think everything through. I’ve arranged to have a room fixed up for you. Would you like me to take you to it now?”

“Wait a minute.” She held up her hand to stop him. “You’re talking to me like I’m your guest but we both know that— “She paused, realization dawning on her. “You’re not letting me out of here, are you?”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he gazed into the other room as if there was suddenly something there of great interest.

“Cover the walls for me, Corina.” He said.

“Yes, Mr. Wilson.”

The walls around here slowly moved back into place. Now she felt more trapped than ever, as if the walls were the closing gates of a prison cell. The resounding thud of the last wall echoed through the room.

“Why not?” She asked, refusing to let him avoid the subject.

Strands of his hair blew under the air coming from the vent above him. His entire demeanor was drenched with warmth. He was a kind jailer. Because that’s what she was to him, his prisoner, no matter how much he tried to sugar coat it. “I think you’ll like your new room. It’s got--”

“If you care about me as much as you say you do,” she interrupted. “Please just let me go. I have no place here.”

“I’m sorry, Rachel but now that I’ve finally found you I can’t let you go running off and getting hurt. You’ll be safer here with me.”

“I will never be happy here, Nicolas. I will never see eye to eye with you, never condone the things you do here—I will never see you as my father.”

“That’s fair enough, I suppose.” He nodded his head, his lips pinched together. “But I will always see you as my daughter. If Ruth had given me the chance to raise you, I suspect our story would have been a much different one.”

“Please stop changing the subject. I can’t stay here. I-I’ve got someone, on the outside, that I need to replace.”

“Tell me who it is and I’ll bring them here. All I want is for you to be happy.”

Rachel’s mind was spinning. Her eyes darted to the doors they’d used to come in through and then to the hovering gadget, Corina, who only responded to Nicolas’s voice. There was no way out. She’d bet her life that the chairs they sat on were glued to the floor and that the walls around them were impenetrable.

Hysteria began to build in her throat, the tips of her fingertips tingling with numbness. She was doing it all wrong. She had to make him think she was his ally.

Stop messing this up with your emotions. Get a hold of yourself.

“His name is Hector and he’s the reason I’m still alive.”

“Well, where is he?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.” She replied.

“Did he come here?”

“Yes,” She swallowed, unsure if she was ready to replace out what had really happened to him. “When I got sick with E-91 Abby sent him here with a small group to supposedly retrieve antidotes from the hospital. She wanted to get rid of him so she gave him a Mark that didn’t work. I haven’t heard from him since.”

“If I replace this young man for you—you’ll stop fighting me?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

Nicolas nodded his head as if mulling her words over in his mind. “What is his full name, then?”

“Hector Hernandez.”

“Corina, please look up Hector Hernandez in the database.”

“Searching.”

The little gadget released a few beeping noises before it jerked away towards one of the walls and began to project a screen that flitted through faces with blinding speed.

Finally, the pictures stopped moving and came to rest on an image of Hector. It was a profile shot, not particularly clear. It looked like it had been taken by a surveillance camera. He was standing in front of an armored car, near a guard post, it appeared to be. It must have been taken shortly before they’d discovered his fake Mark.

“Hector Hernandez, nineteen years old. Unmarked. Current status unknown.”

“What does that mean?” Rachel asked. Her feet carried her closer to the wall that held Hector’s picture. She resisted the urge to reach up and touch his face.

“It means...” Nicolas paused. “That he is either not here or that...”

“Or that...?” She prompted.

“Or that he is dead and his death records have not yet been processed.” He held up his hands as if that would be enough to stop the panic bubbling in her chest. “But listen, before we jump to any conclusions, just give me a chance to look him up thoroughly. If he’s here, I will replace him and bring him to you.”

She sat down, unsure that her legs could hold her up any longer. The plastic of the chair beneath her bit deep into her thighs and back. She tried to steady her breathing, didn’t entertain the idea of Hector being dead, not if she wanted to continue functioning.

Hector was alive. Somehow, somewhere. She had to believe that...

“Okay,” She whispered. “Okay. Now what about Jed? My brother. When can I see him?”

“Rachel—about Jed— ”

“Is he okay? I want you to take me to him, please.” She grabbed Nicolas’ arm and squeezed. It occurred to her that she might get to see her brother again. A thought that she’d only entertained in her wildest dreams. But if Nicolas had gone to these lengths to make sure she was taken care of, surely he’d done the same for Jed.

Nicolas looked away.

He sank slowly into the chair next to her, the action making him look like an old man trying to regain his balance.

“Your brother is no longer here.” Nicolas said in a low voice. His eyes were glued to a frayed thread on the wrist of his blue shirt. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Well where is he? What did you do to him?”

“Your mother never told me she was pregnant, you know?” He whispered.

“Answer my question!” Paranoia was beginning to claw at her chest, making her feel like a giant weight was descending upon her ribcage.

“I didn’t know I had a son,” He whispered again. Rachel saw a single tear slide down his cheek. A realization came over her and she lost it. She stood and so did he as if shocked by her sudden movement. Her hand cracked against his cheek like a whip.

“You killed him didn’t you? You killed your own son!”

“I didn’t kill my son; I never would have! I had no idea I even had a son!” He shouted back. It was the first time he had lost his composure around her.

He gripped her wrist to keep her from striking him again. His eyes were brimming with tears and she wanted to punch him. How dare he cry over Jed? How dare he even pretend to have loved him?

Rachel yanked her hand away, wrapped her arms around her body and shook with sobs that wouldn’t escape her throat.

Up until that moment, Jed’s death had been unconfirmed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d allowed herself to pretend he was still somewhere in this world. Marked, unmarked, it didn’t matter. She just knew he had to exists in some form or another.

But the truth was now evident in Nicolas’s expression. Jedidiah was dead. Her baby brother was gone, killed by the hand of his own father.

“How?” She whispered once the anger had subsided. All that was left now was a deep sadness; the will to fight had left her. “How did he die?”

Nicolas rubbed his temples. His cheek where she’d struck him was red and angry, her fingers printed against his skin.

“He was arrested at the city gates. As protocol called for, he was sent to one of our doctors for an evaluation and so that he could be Marked.”

She saw him visibly swallow. “As soon as the doctor found out that Jed came from a bigger community he tried to get him to talk, to tell us where he could replace the rest of his people and in turn gain more soldiers for our city—” He shook his head. “I didn’t know of Jed at the time, I couldn’t have possibly known.”

Nicolas slammed his fist against the wall. Sweat left a sheen across his red forehead.

“He killed him because Jedidiah was sick—his preliminary exams showed he was in the beginning stages of leukemia—that made him damaged an unfit to be a soldier in the doctor’s eyes. For that reason he decided we shouldn’t waste resources on him. But if I would have known, if I would have known...” Nicolas sucked in a ragged breath.

She said nothing and he pushed on. “I only found out about him because I’d made it mandatory for everyone’s DNA be examined for a match to my own. I was searching for you, I never stopped searching, never. But Jed wasn’t a female so his DNA wasn’t examined until he was already gone.”

“Did he suffer?” Rachel asked in a tiny voice.

Nicolas didn’t respond for several minutes. The silence stretched out in front of them. Rachel picture Jed, his smiling face, his daydreaming eyes, no longer on this Earth.

“Yes...” Nicolas finally admitted as he placed his face into his hands and sobbed.

Rachel felt empty inside, like everything good within her had died along with Jed.

“I never meant for that to happen. I never meant for people to be killed that way, you have to believe me. After that incident I only allowed unmarked doctors to treat patients. By the time I found out about him, it was already too late and I have suffered every day because of it.”

“Good.” She whispered. “You deserve to live with this. Just know that Jed isn’t the first child whose death you’ve caused.” Her jaw clenched and unclenched in order to keep her from crying. “Tell me, how does it feel? How does it feel to know your hands are drenched in the blood of your own son and there is nothing you can do to change it?”

“I didn’t know I had a son.” He repeated stupidly.

“You’re a monster,” She replied. “A serial killer.”

“I am not a serial killer.”

“Oh please!” Her voice rose. “Just because you don’t kill people with your own hands doesn’t mean you are free of guilt. You know what the Mark does to your soldiers, how it makes them kill indiscriminately and you do nothing! In fact, you create more of them. So yes, you are a serial killer. You are a demon dressed as an angel. Nothing you say can wash away all the blood on your hands, Nicolas. Nothing.”

Rachel didn’t hate the hurt look that came over his face, in fact, she basked in it. She enjoyed knowing there was a way Nicolas could suffer as much as she did and that was by denying him her forgiveness, her love.

Nicolas remained silent. They stared one another down; his blue eyes were exact replicas of her own. Looking into them was like looking into a mirror. How could it be that this man was her father? That this crazy, misguided human being who had been responsible for the deaths of her loved ones somehow shared the same genes as her?

“I’m sorry that you think that of me.” He finally said after long moments of silence. He composed himself, dried his tears. “I cannot change your perception of me and I cannot change what happened to Jed, no matter how badly I wish I could. What I can do now is ensure that my last remaining child is safe. I hope with time you’ll come to understand that everything I did, I did for my family.”

“Ask Jed how well that worked out for him.” She spat.

She turned away from him. She was still trying to process everything when a shrill beeping erupted from Corina. The circular object twirled in a circle, emitting some type of warning.

“Infiltrators located within the city.” She announced. Rachel’s ears perked up. “Orders needed to proceed.”

“Who is it? Show me.”

“Suspects unidentified. Gas present within the city streets. White house locked and secured. Beginning lock down and air filtration systems now.”

“Show me the streets.”

Nicolas drew a rectangle into the wall with his fingertip, a screen appearing. Images flashed by of the streets outside. The infiltrators wore masks over their faces, making it difficult to make out their features. But one thing was clear: they were heavily armed.

The poachers around the city were collapsing like flies, the sedating gas spreading like fingers hoping to trap them.

“Close off all vents to the city and shut down the gas pump immediately. How in the world did they get the pump going in the first place...” He mused.

He studied the images on the screen with a deep calm that unsettled her. He seemed pretty confident in his odds of winning and she could see why. The empire he’d built seemed nearly indestructible. But whoever those people were, this was her chance to escape. The enemy of her enemy was her friend, after all.

“I want them detained and brought in alive, if possible. Please deliver the message to everyone, Corina. Rachel, you--”

Except he never got to finish his sentence. Rachel plucked the flying camera out of the air, gripped it tightly in her palm and slammed it into the side of Nicolas’s temple.

His eyes flashed with surprise before they shut off like lights and he crumbled to the floor.

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A/N Who are these mysterious infiltrators and what do they want!? Leave your predictions below in the comments! Love you all <3