Folsom (End of Men, #1)(72)

I think of Laticus, the same as I do every day. Of his lifeless body in the helicopter, the medic unable to revive him. We’d barely been in the air for five minutes when he died in my arms. I’d wanted to die right then. Die instead of him, die so that Gwen could be flying to safety, instead of me. I’d done this to him, brought him into the world only to die right before his sixteenth birthday. And the woman I loved was in danger, her belly swollen with another of my sons. Sophia, who saw the look on my face as I cradled my son on the floor, started to cry. I could tell she was scared out of her mind, but she lowered herself next to me and put an arm around my shoulders as I sobbed. I lost everything in one day.

I hear my name yelled from the cabin and I run, jumping over a fallen tree and skidding down an incline. When I reach the doorway, Sophia is standing in the kitchen holding a pot, a puddle around her feet.

“It’s time,” she whimpers. She’s panicked. I can see it in her eyes.

“Hey,” I say.

She looks up at me wide-eyed. Her toes lift off the ground to avoid the mess.

“We know what to do. We’re ready.”

She nods, but she doesn’t look convinced.

“Sophia,” I say firmly.

“What?”

“We’ve got this.”

What starts out as a smile ends in a scream. She goes down on one knee, her face contorted. I scoop her up and carry her to the bed. Then I get the towels, the scissors, the water. We’re prepared. The doctor told us what to do.

“What if something goes wrong?” She leans up on her elbows, sweat already dampening her hair despite the chill in the air. Sophia is not blond. She has two inches of dark hair on the crown of her head. The same color as Gwen’s. I look away quickly.

“The house is a mile away. I’ll take the quad and get help if we need it.”

She nods and falls back down into the pillows. She opens her legs and I check to see if she’s crowning.

“I was making dinner,” she says, breathless. “In the oven…”

I nod. Once a week the doctor brings us supplies, boxes of food. Sophia, who is restless and bored, has taken over the task of cooking, though what she makes is barely edible.

I jump up and run to the oven, turning it off. Before I leave, I peek inside. Looks like bread. Black bread.

“Did you save it?” she asks when I come back.

“Yes. It looks delicious. You need to push.”

Twenty minutes later and I’m holding my daughter. She screams louder than Sophia, and she has a full head of dark hair.

“Is she okay?” She lifts her head, worry along the edges of her voice.

“Yes.” I try to hold back the things I’m feeling, the awe at what I just witnessed. No wonder they outlasted us, their contribution to human race eclipsing ours in its magnitude. A body able to grow another body. I am in awe of the process. And something else…a connection to the child. I didn’t just deliver a baby, I delivered my flesh and blood: a nose, and eyes, and coloring handed down from generation to generation. I hand her to Sophia.

“Her name?” I ask.

“What would you like to name her? She’s your daughter,” Sophia says.

An offering.

If I name this child, she is mine in body and mind. I excuse myself. Stumbling outside, I walk away from the cabin, the wet grass hitting my knees. The sky is luminous as the sun sinks behind the trees, a bright blue with streaks of pink. I think of Gwen, and like always when I pull her to mind, something begins to ache behind my ribcage. I rub absently at my chest as I stare at the sky. I’ve lived numb for so long that every time I feel something I want to identify it, give it a name. For Gwen it’s love. I don’t know if she’s had the baby, or if she’s safe. Once we left the Regions, we were cut off from any news, secluded out here in the woods. Dr. Hein, who lives in the main house, reached out to her contacts, promising me she’d find out what she could. But so far there has been no news of Gwen. The Red Region was unusually quiet after we escaped, Governor Petite only emerging once to make a statement about the rebels and how they’d be reprimanded in due course. Before we crossed over to Canada, Laticus’ body was sent back to the Black Region, to his mother. I wrote her a letter to tell her how her son had died, though I doubted it would ever reach her. The Black Region blamed the Red for his death, the Red blamed the rebels, and the Society blamed me. I don’t really know who is to blame, perhaps all of us.

I pull a piece of Laticus’ shirt from my pocket and hold it in my fist. This has to end. I was unsure before, but now I know. Gwen is alive. She’ll find a way, and she’ll protect our boy with her life. I will protect the people I love. I will fight for them like they fought for me.

I say their names out loud: Gwen, Jackal, Sophia, Kasper, my daughter, and my son.





THIRTY-SEVEN





GWEN


The pain is gripping. It holds my body tense as it works its way through my lower abdomen and back, a dull knife sawing through tendons and muscle. I roll onto my side and scream, holding onto the bedpost as people rush around me. I’ve been tucked away in dome six at Genome Y with doctors I don’t recognize. They hover, never giving me a moment’s peace as I progress through labor.

“Get her legs up,” I hear someone say.