The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson

  Jenna doesn't blink. She is staring into Kara's eyes like she's looking for something hiding behind them. "I'm sorry for what you've been through, Kara. I am truly sorry."

  Kara stands there, her face calm and blank, not even breathing, just staring back at Jenna. She leans closer. "You will be," she whispers.

  Jenna's eyes ice over, as cold as Kara's, and that's what does it. I don't plan it. I don't even realize what I've done until I see the chair flying across the room and crashing into the wall.

  "Stop!" My voice echoes off the concrete walls.

  They both look at the cracked wall and shattered chair, then turn to look at me. I stare back, not trying to hide whatever they're seeing in my face. I don't care. I just want the nightmare to end. Kara tilts her head slightly like she is processing my reaction, and I watch the slow arching of one eyebrow, the shimmy of her hair at her shoulders as she nods, and then she lunges at Jenna, holding her tightly, her lips pressed to Jenna's ear. Her shoulders shake, and I hear hoarse sobs.

  She pulls away and shakes her head. "Jenna." She chokes down another sob. "I'm so confused. It's been so hard." She pulls close to Jenna again and sobs. "Forgive me. Please. I need to rest. That's all. I've said horrible things. Please, forgive me."

  Jenna returns her hug and pats her back, but I see the cool, dry distance in her eyes. "Go rest. You're right. You need to rest."

  Kara steps back. "You forgive me?"

  "There's nothing to forgive."

  Kara nods. Her tears are real. Her worry seems real. But the mask is back. Her face is a thousand blank planes, each one like the next.

  Kara.

  She glances at me, but that's all I get. No words. Nothing else.

  "I'll walk you back to the house," Jenna says.

  "No." Kara wipes at her eyes. "I know the way. I'm just going to go lie down for a while. I know I'll feel better after some rest."

  Jenna nods. "Of course."

  I step toward Kara. "I can walk you--"

  "No, Locke. I just need some time. Really." She walks up the stairs, her feet heavy and shuffling.

  Jenna watches the stairs even after Kara is gone.

  "Are we--"

  Jenna lifts her finger to her mouth. "Shh." There's a tiny sound, like a string of beeps, and then it fades away. "She's gone." She sees my confusion and adds, "We have sensors outside the greenhouse." She doesn't explain further but quickly moves to the back wall and places her hand against it. A door seamlessly appears, and Jenna races through it into another room, calling for me to follow. Once I walk through the door, it disappears behind me. It's just like the door I saw at the train station when I arrived. Jenna hurries to a Net Center that is spotless and fully operational. She presses her hand to the table, and a screen appears.

  "Allys," she says. Nothing happens. "Hurry." She leans forward, impatient, but it is only about twenty seconds before Allys appears.

  "What's up?" Allys asks.

  "It's Kara. She's on her way back to the house. To rest. Keep an eye on her."

  "That's all?"

  "Yes, just keep an eye on her."

  Allys nods and then looks at me standing behind Jenna. "Close your mouth, city boy, before a BeeBot flies in." She winks and signs off.

  I look around the room that is five times the size of the one we just came from. It is clean and well stocked, and there are three small rooms with real beds on the perimeter, a kitchen, a curtained area that looks like it's for medical care, and a fully furnished living area complete with couches. The Net Center wraps around in a half circle with four stations.

  "You're full of surprises, Jenna." I walk over and peek inside one of the rooms. "So ... the other room's only a decoy, just in case you're found out. It makes you look like a shoestring operation that's out of business, when"--I turn around to look at her--"you're obviously still very active in the Network."

  "Yes and no. Yes, it's a decoy. The other room's been dusty and broken down from the day it was built. There's a good chunk of the Fox fortune invested in this room. We keep it functional just in case. It would be stupid to totally abandon it, but we haven't used it for years. And no, it was the truth when I told you I quit."

  "Except for emergencies like this. To alert Allys."

  "I need to talk to you, Locke. Let's sit down."

  She pulls me over to the living area and sits, waiting for me to do the same, but I can't. We stare at each other, each of us trying to read the other's thoughts. I feel like everything we ever were is slipping away. I cave first, hoping I can make sense of what just happened. "Is this what you were talking about? That she'd vent and throw things? At least she didn't throw anything."

  "And yet..." She leans back and crosses her arms. "I have a broken chair and smashed wall only a few feet away."

  I sit down on the couch opposite her. "I'm sorry. It was just so hard watching you two. It was like I was losing you both all over again."

  "And you think it isn't hard for me?" She flops back against the couch. "Locke, she was my best friend! But that didn't seem like Kara venting to me. I felt like I was staring at someone I didn't even know."

  "What about at the bazaar? I saw you smiling with her."

  She stands, hugs her arms to her chest like she's cold and paces the length of the rug between us. "Sometimes, the way she talks, I can almost believe..."

  I watch her mind race, trying to justify everything, trying to believe the logic I practically yelled at her this morning: It's only eyes, Jenna. They aren't even hers. Gatsbro made them for her.... How can you judge someone by something made in a lab?

  She shakes her head. "But there's still something wrong. None of us are who we once were. The accident was a turning point. It changed all of us, but..."

  She is still talking. I see her lips moving, but I only hear the word accident.

  It changed all of us. None of us are who we once were. It always comes back to that. I'm sorry. But those words are so pathetically inadequate, I can't say them out loud. What have you done, Locke? I told Kara I was sorry over and over again when her words came at me in the darkness. And when she shifted blame to Jenna, I didn't argue. I was relieved. I knew it was the coward's way out, but it didn't seem to matter then. Now it does. I can't keep ignoring the truth.

  "I'm sorry, Jenna," I blurt out, cutting off whatever words were on her lips.

  She stops pacing. "What?"

  "None of us would be here now if it weren't for me."

  "What are you talking about? Of course you had to come here. It was the right--"

  "No. The accident. That's what got us to this point. That's what started it all. It was my fault. I'm sorry. If I could die three times over for you and Kara, I would. I'd do anything to take it all back. I'd spend the rest of eternity in that hellhole if it could have spared you." I sit there, my mouth still open, my breath trapped in my chest.

  Her brows pinch, and her arms drop to her sides. "You? You've thought it was your fault all these years?"

  "It was my idea, Jenna."

  "Locke, we all made the same choice. Kara and I wanted to go just as much as you."

  "That's not how I remember it. You didn't want--"

  "Locke, listen to me! Guilt does terrible things to our memories. It was my car. I could have said no. I knew Kara hadn't been driving for long. I have more than my share of guilt. And think of Kara. Look what she's had to live with all these years. She was driving. She was the oldest. What has guilt done to her?"

  "She never admitted any guilt to me."

  "That doesn't mean it's not there."

  But what if it's something else besides guilt? The words don't have to be spoken. I see enough in Jenna's face to know she's wondering the same thing. What if Kara didn't come through this okay? What if, during all those years trapped in a black box, little pieces of her dissolved away? Were those environments really meant to hold anyone for that long?

  I think about my dark thoughts--just as dark as anything I saw in Kara's face.
What if I'm missing something too, only no one has noticed yet? Maybe the ten percent really does make a difference. My joints ache, and I suddenly feel weak, like every biochip in me is surrendering at the thought. "How far is too far, Jenna? Where's the line between miracle and monster?"

  Jenna sits down across from me, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to her chest. She shakes her head. "I don't know, Locke. You'd think after all these years everything would be black and white for me, but it's not. The world keeps changing, and so do my thoughts about it." She sets the pillow aside and leans forward. "All I know is that no one wants to die. As long as people can think up new ways to preserve life, they will."

  "With varying degrees of success."

  She nods. "Yes, but then, even people who are whole wear their humanity with varying degrees of success, don't they?"

  I stare at my feet and think of Gatsbro. He flunked Humanity 101. I'd take Dot over him any day. I look back at Jenna. She may not have answers, but at least I know I'm not alone in that department.

  "So what about Kara?" I ask. "Where do we go from here?"

  "Kara," she says. Her eyes scan an unfocused space between us. I feel like I'm watching her version of a lapse, like she's walking through all the years she and Kara shared, maybe even through years and people who have been in her life that I will never know. She leans back into the couch, looking small and fragile, and yet there is so much more to her than the timid girl I once knew. She's someone who has built hidden underground rooms, changed laws, and saved strangers. She finally focuses on me again. After a long pause, she says, "For now, we'll assume she vented. And you threw things."

  There's still worry in her face, but loyalty won. We had only a year and a half together, but that year and a half was the beginning of who we are now.

  "I'll keep a close eye on her," I say. "I promise. Maybe she just needs more time."

  "That might be something we don't have a lot of."

  "You heard something?"

  "That's why I wanted to come straight here after the bazaar. So Kara would know where to go too. The Network spotted Gatsbro in LA this morning."

  I lean forward and dig my fingers through my hair. "So he's not in Mexico." I know I should be worried, and maybe part of me is, but I almost want to see him again. I want to crack his skull the way I should have in the first place. I want to pay him back for everything, for pretending he cared about us when all we were to him was product, pay him back for cracked ribs and for hitting Kara, pay him back for calling me son. I am no son of his.

  "I don't know if he's on his way here or searching the streets of LA, or even on his way back to Manchester. But he's definitely not in Mexico. I have some people keeping an eye out at the San Diego station. If they see him, they'll contact me right away. That will give us time to hide you down here."

  I'm not hiding from him anymore. I'm not hiding from him ever again. I may not have lived three lifetimes like Jenna, but I feel like I've lived a whole lifetime this past year, and another one this past week. My reality has flipped so many times I can't keep count. From here on out, I'll make my own reality, but I don't tell her that. I've already given her enough to worry about. Instead, I turn to her and grin. "You don't really expect Kara to stay down in this hellhole, do you?"

  For just a moment, the apprehension on her face disappears and is replaced with a smile. It's a small thing, but it feels like I've given a gift to her. I look into her eyes. Her father made them exactly like I remember them--nothing added, nothing taken away--still the beautiful glistening blue pools they always were. No wonder he made the Bio Gel blue. I'll never think of my BioPerfect as the color of an exotic frog again, but the color of Jenna's eyes, and that makes all the difference. I feel stronger, like blue is a completely natural color for the inside of a human to be.

  Chapter 72

  When we return to the house, Allys tells us that Kara did just what she told us she would do--she went to her room and rested. When I ease the door open to be sure, Kara is lying there still as stone, her face serene, her chest rising in gentle puffs. Sleep of the angels, my mother called it.

  Since I promised to keep an eye on her, I thought I should stay nearby, but Jenna says as long as she sleeps, there is no need, so I offer to help with some chores in the garden. Jenna had been right the other day when she had me help dig ditches. The physical labor does help drain the brain--at least for short bursts--and that's better than nothing.

  I stay busy the whole afternoon, hauling rocks to build a retaining wall for another herb garden and driving stakes and stringing wire around another garden to keep BeeBots away. Jenna and Allys prefer the real kind of bees that can sting. I guess I do too.

  In the late afternoon, I spot Kara out on the porch. She is wearing the new shirt and pants she bought at the bazaar. I'm about to put my own shirt back on and return to the house when Jenna gives me a signal that it's unnecessary. I keep an eye on the porch as I work and see Kara help Allys bring groceries in from the truck and then sweep the jacaranda petals from the porch. She lifts the broom and sweeps away a few cobwebs too.

  Jenna brings a bottle of cold water out to me and reports that Kara seems to have recovered from her venting episode. She is doing everything she can to be helpful. Jenna's voice is hopeful, and that fills me with hope too. When she leaves, I attack one last row of rocks. My back aches from lifting the fifty-pound rocks, but it feels cleansing too. I never thought I would say that about such dirty work, and now I wish I had helped my dad and uncles gut our house on Francis Street. Sweat pours down my chest. I stand back and look at the wall. It is straight and sturdy. My dad would have approved.

  Maybe it will all work out like Jenna said, if we just give it enough time. I hoist another rock from the pile.

  I saw and heard and knew at last ...

  I drop the rock and spin around. Kara is a few feet away. She stares at my bare chest and raises her eyebrows.

  "I didn't hear you walk up."

  She remains silent. Her gaze slowly crawls across my body.

  Soon, Locke. Soon.

  Soon? What does that mean? I step toward her. "Kara, what are--"

  "I just came to tell you that dinner will be ready soon. Jenna says you should come in and clean up. Soon."

  She smiles and walks away.

  Soon. I finish the last row of rocks, wondering if I have too many loose words floating inside my head, wondering if I am hearing things that aren't even there. BioPerfect? Far from it.

  The rest of the evening is calm. Kara helps with dinner and afterward cheerfully offers to do the dishes with Miesha. I even hear them laugh together once. Later she plays a game of tic-tac-toe on the floor with Kayla. Jenna and I watch her, and I think we both feel a loosening in the room, like a net that has been pulled tight over us is finally unknotting.

  Soon. But when I crawl into bed and turn out the light, the word still floats in my head.

  Remember this, Locke. Someone has to pay. We deserved more than we got.

  And still other words haunt my dreams.

  Chapter 73

  "Locke!"

  Something pounds on my chest. My eyes shoot open to an explosion of light and sound and the tearing away of sheets and blankets. I sit up, my arms out in front of me, ready to defend myself. Jenna's eyes are wild before me. She is yelling. I grab her arms. "What?"

  "Kayla! She's gone!"

  I am stumbling down the hall, trying to pull on my pants as I run to search rooms. We're all yelling, Allys, Miesha, even Dot, as we're in motion. I know it before I even hear the words. Kara is gone too.

  Jenna runs out to the porch. I follow on her heels. She yells Kayla's name three times. Every silence between her calls is thunder. Last, she screams Kara's name. Focus, Locke. Think. Where would Kara go? We both turn to run down the porch steps, and that's when we see it. Sitting in the rocker at the end of the porch is Kayla's pink bear, a small white envelope propped between its legs. Jenna is sobbing as she races to it and tears i
t open. Her hand shakes so badly I take it from her so we can read it.

  We've gone for an early picnic.

  You're invited to come along.

  That is, if you can find us.

  I hope it doesn't take you 260 years.

  Jenna leans over and clutches her stomach, and a strangled moan comes from her throat. The sound is more desolate than anything I've ever heard, and my own knees weaken. But in almost the same moment, she becomes fire racing through the house with me chasing right behind her. She grabs the keys to the truck from a hook in the hallway, and at the same time is shouting orders to Allys.

  "Find Bone! Tell him and the others to search the property! And Father Andre! Tell him to watch the station! Miesha, check the greenhouse! Dot, search the road! I just checked on them both an hour ago. They can't be far!"

  I grab Jenna by the wrist. "Where are you going?"

  She breaks loose and heads for the back door, still barefoot and wearing her thin white nightgown. "The park! The meadow! I don't know! Anywhere they could have a picnic!"

  "That's a hundred different places!"

  She throws open the back door, and we're halfway to the truck before we even see the black car parked near it and someone standing just a few yards away. He aims a tazegun at us.

  "And we didn't even have to knock," Gatsbro says.

  Jenna and I both freeze. We hear the footsteps of Miesha and Allys stopping close behind us and their inhaled breaths.

  He stares at me. Takes in my whole length. My face, my arms, all the way down to my feet. I know what he's looking for. Damage. How has his product fared? How much will he have to repair to have me showroom ready again? He smiles, pleased, and the hatred inside of me boils. Only Jenna and fear for Kayla keep me from flying through the air at him.

  Jenna takes a step toward the truck, and he raises the gun to show he means business. I edge closer to him, and his squadron of goons steps forward, Hari among them. I stop.