The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children (29 page)

I swam harder, away from it. The tears washed from my eyes and I could see it clearly. It was a lynx! Oh, God, did those eat people? It looked small, but my vision was too blurred and my senses too wired. The fears I had lying in the forest materialized in the lake. Maybe Lake Superior had some kind of haunting. Maybe it showed delusions or granted your worst nightmares. If so, how was Dan doing? The thought of him brought tears to my eyes again. And the lynx swam faster than me. Weren’t cats supposed to be afraid of water?

If only Dan had been able to use his abilities on me. I would have made it to the shore. My mind would have taken over my body completely and ensured that I got there. Now, I didn’t know. It wasn’t possible.

The lynx was just a few feet away from me. It moaned and I panicked at the horrible sound, no longer able to swim further. I loved cats and all, but this was no fur ball. I splashed water in its face. It just moaned again, a low guttural sound that gave me more shivers than the lake. And then I heard a scream. Not a horrified scream, more like a yell. I jerked in its direction. It was the only thing that could take my mind off the lynx. The voice of a child. A girl. She stood at the cliff above the beach and waved her hands. My God…it looked just like…

The lake was cursed, I knew it. But the distraction made me forget the lynx, until I turned toward him and saw that he didn’t come nearer, just floated there. I looked back to the girl. She waved again. It wasn’t possible…

But I knew. It didn’t take a coin toss. The girl wanted me to grab onto the lynx. This small, unpredictable animal that could bite my hand off. He’d get me to shore. I laughed out of nerves and absurdity. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. I was dreaming. I was already dead, lying at the bottom of the lake.

I grabbed onto its thick wet fur, just at the base of it skull. If anything, that was the only thing that could tame a house cat. Maybe it was the same with wild cats. When he didn’t attack, I wrapped my arms around its neck. With me on its back, it swam to shore. Its body, one-quarter the size of mine, could still drag me with the help of buoyancy, and even gave me a bit of warmth. Not enough to stop my shivers or relieve the ice water that washed over us both, but enough to hope. I could feel its funny oversized feet paddle under me.

I couldn’t believe it when he began to walk, the water shallow enough. I immediately detached myself from him and ran to shore, laughing all the way. This had to be some kind of miracle. But, no. There was the girl. I looked up at her. The sun blinded her figure. There were others up there, a group with her. Who? Who had saved me?

The girl waved again as the lynx stalked up to me and then looked at the cliffs. He leapt left, then right, left twice more, and then got to the top. No way. Did he want me to follow him? It did seem feasible.

Just a few minutes ago, I was afraid I’d be killed, then I was afraid I might drown, and now a lynx was rescuing me? I shrugged and laughed again. The probability of this was so ridiculously low not even I believed it. Still, in my half-frozen state, I chugged through the sand, climbed the first rock, and followed exactly where the lynx had leaped. All the while, I squinted and looked up until I could tell the identity of the girl. Then I thought I hallucinated. A single Narcissus flower fell from the sky, carried by the wind, right past me. Before I could see her, I heard her.

“Donna! Donna, you’re alive!”

“Oh my God, you were right, Lisa!”

“It is Donna!”

“Sis!”

“That’s fantastic!”

I should have heard wrong. I was surely dead. But those voices sounded exactly like…

The sun could no longer blind my eyes. Staring down at me were Lisa, Mom, Dad, Torrey, and Eva! What…? How?

I then remembered the letter I’d sent them.

I wrote one specific request: Find Evalin Surrontez.

CHAPTER SEVENTY—Guess

“T
hank you, Mr. Lynx!” said Lisa, and the lynx moaned its awful moan, a cross between a howl and a growl, and stalked back to the woods. Lisa! My five-year-old sister whose ability let her talk to animals had tamed a wild cat! Lisa Paw never sounded like a more fitting name. Haha, I’d never been more proud! Or more numb. My muscles had frozen to the extent that my arms stuck out at weird angles at my sides.

I didn’t have the voice to speak from my stiff throat, but the warmth of the bodies that clobbered me instantly defrosted me. All cried out in victory and kissed my cheeks and forehead.

“I thought she was kidding when she called the lynx!” Mom cried.

“I can’t believe we found you, Donna!” said Dad. He held a Narcissus bouquet. So that’s where the flower came from. It wasn’t even my birthday. But, in a way, I had been born again. 

“And you didn’t want me to come!” Lisa huffed.

“
I
can’t believe any of this!” said Torrey.

Eva simply wept.

I wished I could ask them the millions of questions I had. Instead, when they released me and Dad pulled out a camping blanket from the van parked behind them, I rigidly brought out my palms and then pointed at myself to ask them how they’d found me.

Eva came up to me and grabbed my wrist, where her bracelet hung. Her stomach was swollen. Don’t tell me…she had finally carried through a pregnancy? Dread and happiness filled me at the same time. Dread because I thought her far too young to have to deal with this; happiness because I thought back to that horrible night with the blood all over the bathroom floor. I didn’t want her to have to relive that ever again. But who knew what the future would bring?

Eva finally explained, “Do you remember Mr. Presley? He gave me a small tracker to place on any object that could be connected to my cell phone, and his. He said if I ever went missing, he’d know my location. He suspected the kids at the Institutes were being taken somewhere. So I put it on this bracelet, hoping you’d wear it. When your mom found me, we began to work immediately on tracking your signal. Torrey, here, turned out to be quite the sleuth at technology.”

Torrey grinned and blushed. “Well, we had to find you, Sis, so I did what I could.”

I beamed as much as my frozen cheeks would let me. I then looked at Mom questioningly. “Y…You disappeared,” I managed to say.

She shook her head. “When I was on my way up to LeJeune, I took a wrong turn and got caught in a snow storm. Didn’t have phone service. That’s why no one heard from me for a few days. When I finally got there, I saw some men move students from a van to the train. I thought that was odd, none of the kids were supposed to leave the Institutes. And they were bound as well, their hands tied. So I decided to investigate before I tried again. Then we got your letter. I filed a lawsuit against the firm that kept Eva in their laboratories. They released her immediately, not wanting the press or the university on their tail.”

So much joy flooded my chest at these words, I thought I might burst.

“And you’re…expecting?” I said to Eva, who had the same mixture of feelings displayed on her face as I had felt when I saw her.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “It’ll be okay. Things will get better now. There are ways to control it.”

“Plus, I’m gonna help raise the baby.” Torrey pointed his thumb into his chest. Eva laughed.

Mom and Dad rolled their eyes. “But then who’s going to raise you?” said Dad and we all laughed.

We got in the van, where the encased warmth defrosted me even more. They all wanted to hear what happened to me after Eva left, yet understood I had to overcome my hypothermia first. As we drove along the edge of the lake and put some miles between us and the Institute, I said, “Do you mind if we stop right here for a sec?”

I hadn’t exactly regained feeling in all my limbs yet, but I needed a moment alone. Mom and Dad exchanged a glance and then nodded.

“You guys can stay in the van,” I told the others. They seemed to understand and stayed back. I took a single yellow flower from the bouquet before I left.

I shuffled towards the edge of the cliff to look out over the lake. It was paved in silver, like a large brush stroke over the surface. Light clouds floated above it of Easter hues.

I breathed. In and out. In and out, exercising the lungs the lake had nearly overcome. I felt like a champion standing over it now, looking to the horizon, as though it couldn’t ever touch me again.

My hand rested on my stomach. Empty. For an instant, I understood Hailie’s need to have a piece of the person she’d grown so close to over the years inside of her, or to at least believe it.

And I wondered. I wondered if there was any way for me to know if Dan was alive, and if he’d be able to help Lenora change the ways of the Institutes, and maybe even bring back the kids that had been sold overseas. Then I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

Overall probability?

I looked down at the flower in my hand, ripped off the stem, and let the wind carry the petals. From a distance, it looked just like a canary. 

EPILOGUE

M
y arm had gone numb from the pressure of my head against it. I released it and hundreds of needles may as well have assaulted my veins. Ow. It only distracted me from the real irritation. I felt like a Lieder sat over my heart and judged my every guess. True, false, true, false, with every pump of blood. Within a week, a storm of questions replaced the relief of leaving that awful place and coming home. Was I safe? Would government agents come after me and deport me like some kind of smuggled goods? Or worse, put me in jail for killing Stanley Thorton? Could I go back to school and pretend everything was the same as before? Did I have to lie and pretend I didn’t have an advantage above the other, normal students? I was contaminated. The Institute would never let me forget that.

My gut told me the answers to all those questions. Yes, no, no, maybe, most likely. Some increment of uncertainty would always linger, like my abilities had weakened. But it was just me. My mind had driven me to this state, because I wanted physical evidence.

I’d heard nothing of Dan.

I knew he was alive. A clenched fist sat like a rock in my stomach and told me so. The probability of his death was so low I couldn’t even sense it in my toes. No, he lived. But where, how? Had he explained everything to Lenora? Did she listen? Or had the poison soaked her body to the core?

If only I could hear his voice or pick up his scent, the world would turn upright.

A soft knock came at my ajar bedroom door. Not the kind of demanding knock my mother would give, but soothing and tender. Eva.

Funny, because she was always so blatant. When it came down to it, Eva could always sense how to treat others. She’d make a good mom.

She’d stayed with us, afraid of what her family would say of her pregnancy. They knew nothing of the lab experiments or the Institutes and, according to her, wouldn’t believe it.

“Come in,” I groaned into my pillow.

The door creaked open and her footsteps came nearer. The weight of my bed shifted as she sat on it. More than usual since she carried some extra load. I’d come to terms with it, but it was still odd. Like the pregnant girl in the class was your best friend. It wasn’t like that, yet an awful part of me remembered the rumor mill at school. I didn’t want her to return to that. But if she couldn’t graduate from the Institute, would she ever graduate at all?

“What’s wrong?” she said in a dry tone, like it wasn’t obvious. I sent her a melodramatic pout. She stuck out her lower lip and slouched to copy me, but I already knew that’s how pathetic I looked.

I plopped over on my back and spread out my limbs as far as I could, let out a sigh, and stared at the ceiling. “What should I do, hmm? Tell me.”

“Go back for him.” She said it without missing a beat. I tucked my chin in to look at her.

“Are you serious? Eva, he turned himself in so I’d go free. If I went back, it’d be like a slap in the face to him.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but…can you really live without knowing what happened to him?”

My head fell back into my pillow with a dull thud. A breeze invaded the room through the open window and stirred us slightly.

“Like hell.”

A van pulled up to the house. Rubber tore at the cement. I sprang to my feet and ran to look through the window.

“What’s going on?” asked Eva. She kept her hand on her stomach, not getting up.

My heart went rampant. No, it couldn’t be. But then why did my sense go off like a security alarm and fire up my whole body? I couldn’t see anything over the porch roof. Dammit.

I ran from the room. “Donna? What is it?” Eva called after me. I’d explain later; I had to make sure. A phantom syringe extracted tears from my eyes that had sat inside me all this time. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be…

Dad was coming to the door. Feet away from it, I beat him to it. I slid on my socks and stopped, yet slammed into it. I yanked it open and the breeze stirred me again, this time a hot breath.

The tears that had welled up at the corners of my eyes spilled over without my consent. Damn, he wasn’t supposed to see me like this. Some broken mess. Like that was worth sacrificing himself for.

Dan stood inches away from me, his hand still hovering over the doorbell. The guards from the Institute stood outside the van, both wearing sunglasses with the posture of the CIA.

He slowly stood up right. “D—”

I flung myself against him and held him so tight I thought my ribcage might break. More tears spilled onto his back and soaked his hair. I shut my eyes and rocked him back and forth. He was alive…alive…alive. There are few feelings in the world better than knowing you were right. And when you’re right about that, nothing else matters.

His hand came across my back and cupped my shoulder. He smiled against my collar bone. He felt sturdy, but the heart in his chest raced with mine.

“It’s all right,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. His frame merged with mine felt so tender, so amazing. Not like in the prison room above the Institute or in the icy lake. It felt like home, and I didn’t want to let go.