“To force her to agree,” Asher says, and I shift my attention to him. He’s looking at Evangeline. “Right? She gave you what you wanted, then threatened to take it away if you didn’t do what she wanted.”
Tears fall from Evangeline’s eyes, but she nods. “Yes. Exactly. When she told me that she wanted me to breed with Father—” She looks at each of us in turn. “Not Couple,” she clarifies. “Coupling would mean she would have had to give him up. And there was no way she was going to allow that. No, she only wanted him to breed with me. Anyway, when she told me, I refused. I said that I was Coupled and that I wanted children with Nathaniel. So she threatened me. She told me that Nathaniel was sterile. A failure. He wouldn’t be able to breed, but she had allowed me to Couple with him anyway, because he would make an excellent father to the child she wanted to create. Since Father wouldn’t be there to be the dad, somebody else would have to stand in. And because of my genetics, I would make the perfect mother.
“So I had a choice. I could either allow her to artificially inseminate me and keep my mouth shut, letting Nathaniel think he was the father. Or I could refuse and Nathaniel and I would disappear. She’d take what she needed from me and ‘gift’ some other woman with being the mother to the perfect Enforcer. She gave me twenty-four hours to think about it. I didn’t have any choice but to accept. The next day when she came, she brought the doctor with her.” She shrugs. “She knew I’d accept. We started treatments and a few months later I was pregnant with you.”
“So,” I say, anger boiling up in me like a volcano, “I was … just a means to an end.” I look between Eli and Evangeline. “For Mother I was … the beginning of a perfect race of assassins. For you, Evangeline, a way to stay alive, and for you, Eli? What … what was I to you?” My voice gets higher and louder with each word. But I don’t let him answer before asking, “I was never wanted? None of you wanted me? Only Mother?”
“Oh hell,” Asher says.
“It wasn’t like that, Evelyn, you have to understand—” Evangeline starts to say.
“I understand perfectly. No one wanted me except Mother, and she only wanted me for my … DNA.” I swipe my palms together as if to clean them. “I’m just a bunch of spare parts waiting to be assembled into something better. What a terrible inconvenience for you all that I turned out to be a real person!”
“No, no—” she starts to say.
“Evie—” Eli starts to speak but I cut him off with a glare.
“You’re the worst of them. You knew what she was capable of and you let her do it anyway. To your own daughter.” My chest aches and my eyes burn miserably. “You didn’t even care, did you?”
“Don’t answer that,” Gavin says to my parents, then turns to me. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter the motivation of any of them. Look at me.” He peers into my eyes when I do. “I love you. I want you. And no matter what you were created for, that will always be true. Okay?”
His words are like a balm on the open wounds Evangeline just broke open, and I nod, but it doesn’t stop me from needing to know the answers. I turn back to Evangeline, who is watching me.
“We loved you, Evie. Me. Nathaniel and—”
“Me,” Eli says, and I jerk my head around to look at him. “I loved you, too. We still do.”
“But you still sent me to her. Sent me to be an Enforcer. Let them”—I search for the word Gavin used—“brainwash me. If you loved me, how could you do that?” I look between the two of them. “How could any decent human being do that to anyone? You’re despicable.” The burning in my eyes melts into tears, but I refuse to let them fall.
They glance at each other and I can almost see them asking each other how to answer the question. I push myself up to my feet, but stagger when the blood rushes from my head. Both Gavin and Asher rush to catch me before I can fall. My parents exchange another look.
This, of course, makes the volcano of anger boil over and I shout, “Answer me!”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Evangeline finally says. “Being an Enforcer was … is a privilege. Mother’s most prestigious designation. We didn’t know what would happen.”
“Bullshit!” Gavin says.
“Watch your tongue, boy,” Eli says. “She wanted answers, she’s getting them.”
Evangeline looks at Gavin. “We did know about the Conditioning.” She turns back to me. “But we didn’t know that your brain would be able to fight it. If we had, we might have done things differently.”
“What?” I demand, crossing my arms over my aching chest. “What would you have done?”
She shakes her head. “I—I don’t know. Something. Anything.” She meets my eyes and takes my hands in hers, frowning at them. “But you have to know—I loved you. Love you. Very much. It didn’t matter to me why you were here, just that you were. You were always my daughter, even when she thought of you as hers.”
“But you gave me up! You didn’t fight for me at all! You let her take me. I lost myself before I even knew who I was! How could you do that?” My voice is a whisper. A husk of itself.
“You’ve seen her,” Eli says. “I know you’ve seen her in those memories. Even if they don’t all make sense at the moment. You know what she’s like and you also know she’s the one who did this to you. And you’re not the only one. You’re not even the last. But if you want this to stop … you know what has to be done.”
“What?” I ask, sniffling and running a hand under my running nose.
“You have to eliminate Mother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ELITE ENFORCER TESTING REQUIREMENTS
In order to pass training, an Enforcer must:
• Lift 8 times her own body weight (minimum)
• Master all forms of martial art techniques
• Be able to name, repair, and correctly use all weapons modern or archaic, while also adapting easily to new technologies
• Endure emotional, pain tolerance, and healing tests, while being able to make snap judgments that benefit the whole, even if sacrificing the few
• Demonstrate knowledge of all computer skills including but not limited to: extensive knowledge of all operating systems (past and present, and adaptation to new technologies), coding, software for the express purpose of “hacking,” forensics, and electronic bypassing
Evie
I push myself up to my feet. “Absolutely not. I can’t kill someone.”
Eli keeps his gaze on mine. “You’re the only one who can, Evie. You’ve had Enforcer training—”
“I don’t remember it!” A lie. Bits and pieces of those memories crowd my brain, making me dizzy. But it’s all jumbled, just like all the rest.
“Your body does, even if you don’t.”
I flash back to the path in the woods, how I tore the birds’ heads from their bodies without even batting an eye. The attack on Asher. And then again when I knocked Gavin out.
The blood rushes from my head, and I have to sit back down. He’s right. My body does remember what to do. But still … “I can’t kill her. Then I’m no better than she is.”
Gavin squeezes my hand. “Of course you can’t kill her.” He glares at Eli. “How can you even ask that of her?” He stands, pulling me up with him, and I let him. I don’t care that I just found out who my parents are, I just want to get away from these psychotic people.