Burn (Pure #3)(112)

Partridge shakes his head. “No, your granddaughter.”

The old man looks at him confused. “Where am I?”

“It’s okay,” Partridge says. “It’s okay.”

“Where’s my wife? Where’s Pressia?”

“Your granddaughter,” Partridge says.

“I don’t have a granddaughter. How could we when we couldn’t even have our own children?”

Partridge looks at the others.

“He’s disoriented,” Peekins says. “Maybe it’s temporary.”

“This happens sometimes,” the nurse says.

Partridge walks to a wall and leans against it, trying to clear his head.

“Where am I?” Belze says.

“You’re in a hospital,” Peekins tells him calmly. “You’re going to get well.”

Partridge says, “He wasn’t her real grandfather. He found her after the Detonations and took care of her as his own. He must have named her after his wife. She was like the child they never had.”

Peekins is explaining things to the old man. “You’ve been through an operation, and you’ve been in a kind of coma, but you’re going to be okay.”

Beckley says, “He’s here but he’s gone.”

Partridge stares at the floor. He’s not finished here. He walks out of the room and down the halls. He’s running even though he feels dizzy. With one hand along the wall, he pushes off of it as he makes a turn.

Iralene and Beckley are following him. “What’s going on, Partridge?” Beckley shouts. “Where are you going?”

“Partridge!” Iralene calls.

They know where he’s going. He keeps running jaggedly down the halls until he comes to the high-security chamber—the one that’s all locked up and waiting for Partridge to figure out some code, some password.

Partridge stares at the door, breathless, as Beckley and Iralene catch up. “What you got in there? What have you left for me?” He’s speaking to his father directly. He’s everywhere; he’s inside of him.

“Maybe you don’t want to know,” Iralene says.

“Maybe you can’t know,” Beckley says.

Partridge turns around and shoves Beckley. “Pressia’s grandfather doesn’t remember her. I brought back her grandfather—but part of him is still dead. You try to hand that over to Pressia as a gift! You try it.”

“Easy now,” Beckley says, raising his hands.

“What if her father’s in there? Hideki Imanaka is the person my father most hated in the world. My father loved his little relics. He’d have kept a relic of Imanaka if he could. And he could do anything just about, right?”

Beckley walks up to the heavy metal door.

“I’ve done everything I could to make progress. I need this to be Pressia’s father. I need this.”

“We’ve tried a lot of combinations, Partridge,” Beckley says. “We can’t get it open.”

“Blow it up.”

“Your father made sure that this wasn’t about a show of force,” Iralene says. “It was about a secret. Something that maybe only the two of you would know.”

Partridge runs his hands through his hair. “My father and I didn’t share secrets! We didn’t share anything.” Not even love, Partridge thinks. His father didn’t even love him. That’s what Partridge said to him before he killed him. You’ll never understand love.

Does his father want love?

Partridge looks at Beckley. His hands still hold the memory of compressing Odwald Belze’s ribs. They’re shaking, like his father’s once did. It’s like the old man won’t ever leave him. It feels for a brief moment like his father got his way, that he transferred his brain into Partridge’s skull and is inside of him forever. He hates his father more than ever, and he knows what his father wants now—what he’s demanding.

“I have to know what’s in there, Beckley.” He grips the sleeve of Beckley’s lab coat. “I have to tell him I love him.”

“What?”

Partridge knows that his father wants it to come from Partridge’s own mouth. “There’s a speaker,” Partridge whispers, his back turned to the sealed door. “He wants me to say it.”

“You sure that’s it?” Beckley sounds unconvinced, but he doesn’t know Willux like Partridge does.

Iralene puts her hand on the cold metal of the door.

“The room inside the war room was filled with old pictures, love letters—written to each of us. All the things he never said. Because he never said them, he never heard them back. I know what he wants. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.” Partridge knows it because his father is inside of him—a haunting from within. That’s what he can’t tell Beckley.

“Say it,” Iralene whispers.

Partridge turns toward the door. He walks up to the small speaker. He clamps his mouth shut and shakes his head. He won’t say it. He can’t. He wants to say, Leave me alone. Is this what happens to all murderers? His body is a prison. Partridge slams his fists on the wall over his head.

Partridge tries to think of someone else. He can fake it. But his father is there in his head—his curled, blackened hands, his hissing breaths. A wretch in the end. And then, he’s not sure where it comes from, but he says, “A wretch like me.” There’s a song about being a wretch, about the grace of God. He wants to tell his father we’re all wretches. We all need saving. He puts his mouth to the speaker. “I love you,” he says. “You’re my father. I always loved you. I had no choice but to love you.”