The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(32)

With this weighing on our shoulders, none of us had much free time. But we spent what we had recovering, preparing, planning, and watching each other to make sure none of us broke from the stress.

Violet visited her brother for the first day, and then helped him move into a nearby tent with Jay. She flew the drone around the countryside, looking for signs of the boys or other people to recruit into our small army. But if there were any refugees, she hadn’t found them yet. A part of me was beginning to believe that we wouldn’t find any—Mr. Kaplan was the last civilian I remembered seeing in what felt like forever, and he had been taken away by a Matrian patrol.

Violet had also been spending time with Cad, Margot, and their children. Eating meals with them was becoming a regular pastime for all of us, Jay, Tim, and myself included. It felt good to have those moments—Violet was continuing to strengthen her relationship with them, as we all were, really. Although at times, I found it hard not to think about Alejandro. I was worried about him, and I prayed he was safe. He and Jenny both.

Ms. Dale spent a majority of her time away from the camp, leaving in the early mornings and returning late into the night. She pressed farther each day, searching for a suitable base of operations and coming back with dozens of options, most of them rejected due to their location, lack of power or facilities, size, or proximity to the city. She was playing our move cautiously—not that I blamed her. With winter drawing ever closer, and the threat of snow looming, it was only a matter of time before, more than the Matrians, the weather itself began to threaten the lives of our people.

Amber avoided Owen like he was a plague bearer. She spent most of her time with Thomas, Jeff, or some of the other refugees who were interested in learning how to pilot the heloship. She’d said that she wanted there to be backup pilots in case anything happened to her, but honestly, I believed she cared more about her role being flexible, so she could be free to do fieldwork. I didn’t like it, but there was no arguing with her logic—or with Amber in general—so I let it go.

Between watching the radio channels, strategizing about Desmond and the boys, and keeping all our electronics working smoothly, Thomas continued working on the egg, studying the technology that held the embryo in stasis. Because it was in stasis, according to Thomas’ analysis of the thing. Frozen in time until it could be implanted in a surrogate. That was the highlight of his discoveries thus far, although the fact that he hadn’t learned much else didn’t seem to deter him from handwriting new reports and sticking them in with our personal files three times a day.

I also noticed Thomas trying to coax Owen into talking a few times. There was no telling what they actually discussed in the short exchanges. They mostly started with Thomas coming over, saying something, and then Owen moving away, leaving Thomas standing there with a sad slope to his shoulders. I admired his resilience. He never gave up, never wavered in wanting to be Owen’s friend, in spite of what he had done. He’d forgiven him. I envied that… that unconditional affection he held for his friend.

Owen kept his head down. He avoided most human contact, although Lynne and Morgan managed to get close to him from time to time. Never for long, not even for a meal, but it was there. In some ways, I was grateful for it. I hated the idea of him going through everything alone, trapped with the awareness of what he had done.

And then that silent anger would return—rush into me like a whipping whirlwind or the backdraft from a fire. It set a violent edge to my teeth, made me strain for air while my heart pounded hard against my ribs, as if it wanted to break free from my chest and throttle Owen itself. During those moments, I wanted to scream at him. I had put my trust in him, and he had used it to stab me, Violet, all of us, in the back. Because his selfish need for vengeance had overwhelmed his common sense.

I wasn’t objective enough to decide whether he needed to be punished. I couldn’t make up my mind.

So I worked through it, spending my time doing all the manual labor I could get my hands on. Helping with the latrine work or splitting cords of wood. I washed dishes and clothes with some of the women in the camp, listening in on the snippets of conversation, letting their words provide a distraction from the ongoing problem of what to do about Owen.

And when that stopped working, I turned to physical activity, waking up early to run around the camp and through the guard posts, just to keep them on their toes, before returning to our tent and running through sit-ups, push-ups, and various other strength-building exercises. It was a good distraction, and a familiar one.

In spite of everything I had been doing around camp, there was one thing above all that I both dreaded and looked forward to: my daily visits with Cody, the surly kid who’d made a habit of challenging my authority ever since we’d met back in The Green’s facility, and whom we’d brought back to our base along with Ian’s corpse after the incident at Desmond’s death camp.

We’d been keeping him in the barn. Its doors had been thrown wide open as I approached now, and several tables piled with equipment sat in front of the building. People were performing various tasks around the tables, from divvying up the inventory into three separate groups, to dissembling the guns for transport—there wasn’t anyone sitting idle. We were starting to divide the supplies, as it grew more and more likely we were going to have to splinter off into smaller groups for the winter.

I stepped around the chaos and into the barn, the old boards under my feet sagging slightly. It was several degrees cooler inside the barn than outside, since it didn’t get any good exposure from the sun. Inside, the smell of mold and musk filled the air, marking the old age of the structure.