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Powerless was too weak a word for what Eli felt. The fiery trial of “step one,” as Reggie called it, had been just the beginning. These new experiments were harsher, and though they left Eli feeling stronger each time, he was also exhausted. The cost of the trials on his body manifested in streaks of icy white hair that slowly began to eclipse his once brown locks. Twice more they had put him through the fire chamber, and even as he had gritted his teeth and bore it, his main concern had been his sister. The treatments were short, but how much could she endure? He was able to power through each day, but Mabel was not so quick to recover. Eli’s sole consolation was that her sentence had not been permanent. If she could just stay strong, forestall the progression in whatever way she was able, she would be free of this place. The day of her release could not come soon enough.
During the long periods between experiments, Mabel would no longer come to visit Eli. He would go to her instead, always finding her in her cot, staring into the distance with a blank expression. This time when he entered, he found Shane had beat him there. He was sitting on the foot of Mabel’s bed, one foot tucked beneath him, speaking in hushed tones.
Mabel did not look up at Eli’s approach, though he knew she heard him coming. Shane glanced up and caught his eye. “Hey, Eli.” He looked to Mabel, then back again. “I’ll leave you two alone. I have to get back to work soon, anyway.” He leaned over as he stood, placing a hand on Mabel’s leg and giving a gentle squeeze. “Hang in there,” he told her, his voice tender. Eli watched him go, then took his place on Mabel’s bed. The two of them sat in silence for a long while.
“Lydia didn’t come back.” Mabel turned to look at him, searching his face. “It’s just like Reggie told you, isn’t it? It’s happening again.”
Eli gave a tired sigh. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“I do,” Mabel argued. “I can feel it. I can feel the emptiness where Lydia used to be. And she’s just the first, Eli. They must have stopped these trials for a while, but now that they’ve started again, it’s only a matter of time.” She turned her golden eyes to the ceiling, tipping her chin back until the crown of her head leaned against the wall. “Eventually, it will be our turn.”
“Don’t say stuff like that.” Eli hated hearing her talk like this. It made his chest ache. “You don’t know! We’re going to make it through this. Just because no one did last time, or the time before that...so what? We just give up hope?”
He stood and began pacing back and forth in the small space between the beds. “We have to assume...we have to figure they’re getting better every time, right? That’s what their goal is. They don’t want to keep failing. I mean, the stakes aren’t as high for them as they are for us, but still... they want to succeed. So why not now? Why not with us?”
“And even if they do?” Mabel sounded as drained as she looked. “What will we have lost in the process?”
He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
She reached up, tapping her ear with one finger. “They improve our senses. They make us stronger. They build our endurance. How many more mysteries will they delve into? Twisting and splicing the inner workings of our bodies as they unravel what makes us human...maybe until we’re not human anymore at all.”
He sunk back onto her bed and grabbed her hand, pulling it into both of his and squeezing hard. She winced, and he eased up on his grip, forgetting that he was not yet used to his own strength. “It doesn’t matter,” he told her firmly. And he meant it. “It doesn’t matter what they do to us. You will always be my sister, and I will always be your brother, and we will always be there for each other. Always.”
Her eyes glimmered with tears and she shook her head. “That isn’t enough,” she told him after a moment.
He offered her a weak grin, trying to lighten the mood. “We’ve always been an okay team before,” he whispered.
“Eli, I will always love you. But we aren’t going through this alone. All of these people...we are all suffering together.” She sighed deeply, drawing her legs up to her chest and pulling her hand from his to wrap her arms around her knees. “Before this place...before the incident at the park...you remember when you came in and I told you I was working on something, but I wasn’t ready to share it yet?”
He nodded, thinking back. It seemed like a memory from another life, from someone else’s life. But he could vaguely recall...a green coverlet and a tray of breakfast. Peaches.
“I was trying to come up with a plan. For the corporate orphans. I was tired of the way things were. The way Val Int had us all pushing others away, scrambling to protect ourselves instead of realizing that we were stronger together.” She looked at him and gave him a long, sad smile. “We might not be corporate orphans anymore, but it’s the same as it always was. You’re trying to protect me, protect us, and you’ve failed to see that the others are just as worthy of that goal.” She let go of her knees and leaned forward, bringing her face close to his. And in her eyes, Eli could make out a spark of the old Mabel. The one with a zest for life and an unquenchable thirst for joy. “Eli, the other volunteers...you can’t shut them out. This is our family now. They’re all our brothers and sisters. I want you to promise me that you’ll see them that way, too.”
Eli wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t reply. It was a strange, almost alien idea for him. Mabel was right, of course. He’d always had their own best interests at heart. Self-preservation was the way of the world.
No, he realized. Self-preservation is the way of Val Int.
“You’re right,” he said, understanding at last.
She smiled again, a deep sigh of relief escaping from her as she closed her eyes, pleased to have finally gotten through to him.
“These are our people now. We have to look out for each other. Our first order of business is to never harm each other, no matter what.”
Eli frowned at her, confused and defensive. “I’ve never hurt anyone here.”
She gave him a knowing look.
“There are more ways to wound than just the physical. Pushing people away, that hurts, too, you know.”
Grimacing, Eli nodded. “Okay. I get it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Promise me, Eli. Promise you’ll give others the same consideration you’ve always given me.”
He thought about Reggie in the hallway, how it had wrenched at his heart to feel the tiny frame of the boy’s body racked with sobs. How he had wanted to hurt the people who had caused that child to suffer so. “I promise,” he told her. “But even so, even if we can join together with the others in solidarity, Mabel, it doesn’t do much good. It may be a small comfort, but we have no real power here. They do what they want with us, when they want. Use us and toss us away. People are going to die here.”
“Yes. But they don’t have to die here.” Mabel pressed a finger against his chest. “We’ll honor their memories, and make sure they live on in whatever way we can.”
They talked for a long time, Mabel introducing Eli to the few others who happened to be in the dormitory at the time, and sharing stories about what little she knew about Lydia. It wasn’t much, but it was something. When some of them, including his sister, began to yawn and cast hints in his direction about their desire to sleep, Eli excused himself. Returning to room 12, however, he realized that he wasn’t tired at all. He felt energized. Glancing around, he found the room much as he had left it. Several of his roommates had dozed off, quiet snores emanating from beneath thin blankets. But Linus, who always seemed the most reticent to surrender to sleep, was again propped up on his pillow, reading in the dim light of a table lamp. Eli made his decision in an instant. Striding over to Linus, he plopped himself down on the empty cot beside the boy. Linus’ green eyes flashed nervously, avoiding Eli’s gaze.
“So,” Eli said, realizing with a twinge of guilt that this was the first time he’d ever spoken to Linus directly, “Linus. Tell me about yourself.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Linus pushed a stray dreadlock from his face, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Sorry?”
Eli shrugged. “I just realized, that I haven’t really gotten to know you, that’s all.”
Linus looked down at his arm. Eli followed his gaze and was sickened to see a thick scar circling the boy’s wrist, shiny and raised against the otherwise smooth ebony skin. Linus held the arm up, and it took Eli a moment to work out that he was not trying to showcase the scar, but the tattoo just beneath it. “This is me,” Linus said, his voice tired.
Eli shook his head. “Who were you before this place?”
“Before?” Linus said, gazing toward the door, his nose crinkling as he pondered the idea. “I don’t remember a before, really. I mean, it must have happened, I suppose. I think I see bits and pieces of it in my dreams. But it’s fuzzy. It’s hard to tell which parts are real, and which I made up.”
“Well,” Eli said, feeling determined to honor Mabel’s wishes, “maybe I can help. Let’s remember together.”
Getting to know the others in Ward Three turned out to be a blessing over the next months. Eli found that those he saw every day were from many different backgrounds and had arrived there under varied circumstances. Very few were actually volunteers, but they did exist. As Eli progressed through the next stages of treatment, he often awoke in his bed not to silence and despair, but to new friends waiting to comfort and help him. And it seemed easy and natural to do the same for them in return.
They would drift in and out of each others’ dormitories, something Reggie informed him had not been very common in the past. Mabel’s wisdom proved correct in every way. None of these kids wanted to be alone. They were all frightened, all suffering. But most of all, they were lonely. When Eli and Mabel had extended their hands in friendship, they had been well received, creating an overwhelmingly grateful response from the others.
It wasn’t always easy. They lost four more volunteers over the next three months. Shane had offered to look into the circumstances of their disappearance, wanting to give them whatever closure he was able even at risk of stepping out of line. But his efforts had been rebuffed at every turn. Whether the others had died, been transferred, or suffered some other yet unknown fate, they might never know. But Eli had made a promise to Mabel, and he would keep it. Each night he closed his eyes and repeated their names in his head, conjuring up the image of their faces in his mind, remembering the details they’d shared about their lives before Cedar Grove.
It was all he had to offer. It would have to be enough.
For Eli, the trials came fast and thick now, with little time to recover in between. Though nearly all of the volunteers were involved in the same set of experiments now, they were all at different stages of the process. Only Eli and Linus had progressed as far as “step four” as Reggie called it. Mabel was still in limbo somewhere in the second stage, unable to progress. She didn’t have enough information to offer a reason why, though she told Eli that she’d heard several of the technicians discussing something about “incompatibility.” Eli was just grateful that she had at least passed the fire chamber. Stage two had involved a sensory deprivation chamber which, while unpleasant, had been much more to Eli’s liking than the excruciating sensation of being burned alive.
For his part, Eli wasn’t sure what they were doing to him, nor did he much care. His main focus was on surviving. He knew his physical abilities had grown by leaps and bounds. Endurance and stress testing, as well as frequent hand-to-hand sparring matches with Linus, had proven to him that he had surpassed what he had once believed possible. His sensory acuity was now so heightened that whenever he found himself alone in the dorm he would turn out the lights to escape their overwhelming glare. He’d considered complaining to the technicians, letting them know how uncomfortable everyday life had become for him, but thought better of it. Eli did not want to risk being segregated from the group, or from his sister. He would endure the discomfort of his newfound abilities just like he endured everything else here. Quietly.
Twice more, Eli had glimpsed the masked figure. When he asked the others about it, however, no one knew what he was talking about. Even Mabel had shrugged him off, suggesting the man was perhaps a figment of his imagination, an effect of the myriad drugs the lab technicians were now pumping through his system.
“No,” Eli had insisted. “I saw him that first day, when I was in the fire chamber.”
Mabel shuddered. “How could you see anything during that, Eli? It was unbearable.”
He bit his lip, for a moment questioning his own memories. “No. I know what I saw.”
Mabel sighed. “All right, then I believe you. But I don’t know anything about him.”
Shane had proven equally unhelpful, as seemed to be a running trend with him. “Sorry, Eli. I’ve never seen anyone wearing a mask. Unless you’re talking about an Enforcer? But, I haven’t seen many of them, either. Only when new transports come in.”
“No, not an Enforcer,” Eli mused. “This was different. It was kind of like a helmet, metal, and it wrapped around his head.”
“Sounds stuffy,” had been Shane’s simple reply. “And uncomfortable.”
Eli had all but given up on ever finding out any more about the mysterious masked man. Often times he wondered why he even cared to know more, chalking it up to a desperate desire to have some sort of control over his life. Knowledge was precious here, and there was very little to go around as far as the volunteers were concerned.
He was once again lying in bed, torn between blocking out the world and making an effort to go speak with Linus, who had just returned from one of the labs a little while ago. Eli hadn’t bothered to look up to gather this information; he knew by the rhythmic cadence of Linus’ footfalls, and the sterile scent of the lab that lingered on his friend’s clothes and wafted through the dormitory like a distasteful perfume.
Out of all of the other boys in ward, Eli had found himself most drawn to Linus. He had been a tough nut to crack, but after Eli had nudged him into opening up, the stories Linus had told had resonated with him. He’d been born in England, the birthplace of Values International. His parents had been high up in administration. When their son began to exhibit signs of a sickly disposition, they’d sought out Cedar Grove’s Advanced Modification program. Unfortunately, Linus had not been a good candidate, instead landing in Ward Two. He’d been alone, unable to return home, unable to contact his parents. They’d done terrible things to him, once going so far to remove his entire hand as punishment for his willful disobedience.
“After a few months,” Linus had told him with grim matter-of-factness, “they returned it. Called it a reward for my ’markedly improved behavior.’” He scowled down at his wrist, flexing his fingers one at a time. “They kept the damn thing frozen. I was walking around with a stump instead of a hand while a part of me was sitting in a lab freezer somewhere.” He shook his head, still looking down at his palm. “I’m sure they could have done a better job putting it back. I think they just didn’t want me to forget. Like I ever could.”
Linus hadn’t told Eli yet what they’d done to make him a candidate for Ward Three, and Eli hadn’t pushed. If the boy wanted him to know, he would share.
“Eli!”
Shane burst into the room, looking pale and breathless. Eli sat up, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. He knew something was wrong, and his thoughts naturally went to—
“It’s Reggie,” Shane burst out. “I saw them wheeling him out of the ward. I don’t know what happened, but I overheard them. I think he’s suffered some sort of heart attack or something, Eli. They said something about cardiac arrest.”
“You have to take me to him,” Eli said at once, already at the door. He doubted he could help, but the thought of little Reggie, frightened and alone, was more than he could bear. “Where is he?”
“I think...” Shane’s eyes roamed the room wildly as he cringed, “I think they’re taking him down to Ward Two. I’m not sure.”
“I’ll go with you,” Linus offered, coming up beside Eli.
Eli shook his head. “We aren’t supposed to leave the ward,” he told Linus. “You’ll get in trouble.”
Linus raised an eyebrow and offered a half-smile. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked wryly, raising his arm in the air.
“Come on,” Shane said, leading the way. A head taller than Eli, the older boy had a long stride, but he was no match for Eli—not anymore. Reaching the first set of double doors several agonizingly long seconds before Shane did, Eli tried the handle despite knowing it was locked. “Hurry!” he said, frustration and fear fighting for his attention.
“I really shouldn’t,” Shane muttered, even as he input his access code. They burst through together and hurried down one long corridor after another, stopping to confirm Shane’s code at intervals. When their next door opened on a wide metal stairwell marked by a small sign stating Ward Two Access, Eli hesitated for the briefest of moments. It seemed to him as if an invisible wall existed here, a thick curtain of deep foreboding. Linus seemed to sense his reticence.
“Come on,” he urged. “Reggie’s down there.”
Eli nodded, forcing himself onto the first landing, then taking the stairs two at a time. Reaching the door at the bottom, Shane grimaced. “I’m going to get it for this.”
“We won’t tell,” Linus offered quickly. “We’ll just say we followed you or something. Caught the doors as they were closing. If anyone in Ward Three could pull it off, it would be me and Eli.”
Shane peered through the small window and, finding the coast clear, pushed open the heavy door. It creaked, and Eli flinched. “Which way?” he asked Shane, keeping his voice down.
“Just keep going straight till the end of the hall. Then head left. There are signs. There’s a room where they deal with emergencies. You won’t be able to go in, but with your crazy hearing I think you can listen at the doors all right. Just...do your best to stay out of sight. Once they catch you, they’re going to send you right back up. Make it worth it, okay?”
Eli and Linus both nodded their thanks, following Shane’s instructions. There were indeed signs posted at every intersecting hall, and finding the emergency operating room was simple. The halls were deserted, the footsteps of the few technicians that were wandering around gave the two all the warning they needed to duck into an empty room or around a corner to wait until it was safe.
Eli pressed his ear to the cool metal door, holding his breath. Inside, there was a cacophony of sounds. Cold, dispassionate voices called out to one another, issuing orders or reading off numbers that meant nothing to Eli. Beeping and buzzing and a long, high-pitched tone from various medical equipment assaulted him as he struggled to make sense of what was happening without the benefit of sight. He watched Linus instead, who was also listening intently, trying to see if the boy who’d had so many terrible experiences down here had any insight into the goings on inside. Linus’ face showed no indication that this was the case.
“I’m calling it,” one of the calm voices said from inside. “Time of death, eleven fifty-two.”
Time of death. No, that couldn’t be right. Linus’ wide eyes mirrored Eli’s own horror. He felt glued to the door now, for the first time in his life hoping with all his might that someone else, anyone else was dead inside. Anyone but tiny, bright-eyed little Reggie. He waited for them to call out a name, give some indication of the poor soul’s identity. Instead, the sounds of machinery went silent one-by-one as they were disconnected.
The approach of wheels and footsteps forced Linus into action, grabbing Eli by the wrist and pulling him away from the door. But Eli didn’t want to go.
There was the sound of a latch disengaging, and the door swung out into the hall, nearly hitting Eli, who stood frozen in place.
“Hey! What are you two doing?”
The words were lost on Eli. He was entirely focused on the gurney. A white sheet covered a tiny figure from head to toe, but one small, familiar hand stuck out. The fingers dangled over the edge, as if holding on.
“Eli,” Linus said urgently, tugging at him.
“I said, what are you doing here? How did you get out of your ward?”
Eli felt something inside him snap. All the instances when he’d done exactly as he’d been told, for Mabel’s sake. All the times he’d let them poke and prod him. The switch had been flipped. He was through listening to these monsters.
He paid no attention to the orderly’s accusing questions, nor to Linus’ insistent grip. Eli turned and ran.
There were fewer locked doors in Ward Two. Most likely because all of the subjects here spent most of their time incapacitated. It didn’t matter. Eli raced down the halls with no sense of where he was heading. He wanted to be sick.
Reggie was dead. They’d known he wasn’t ready to progress, they’d told the boy as much. But they’d tried again anyway, and now Reggie had paid the price for their stupidity. Eli didn’t know where he was going, couldn’t gather the strength to stop and read the signs. He just wanted to get out. He just wanted to escape this awful place, where children suffered and died for the sake of...what? What had Reggie died for? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Eli slammed his whole body against a door that would not yield. He felt a wave of rage coursing up from deep inside, spilling from his mouth in an ear-splitting roar. He grasped the handle of the door and pulled it upward, surprised at how easy it was. Something inside the door’s mechanism cracked and strained as he wrenched at it. He could hear someone approaching from behind him, and lost no time in dashing up the now exposed stairwell.
Reaching the ground floor, he found two exits. One was labelled Ward One Access, the other unmarked. But a sign was unnecessary. He could smell it. The outside. He could smell the air, so different than the sterile, vile scents they were forced to breathe in here. He treated this locked door with all the regard he had given the other one, but this time, he tore it from hinges.
And that was it. He was out of Cedar Grove. He stepped from the bright white light of the stairwell into the darkness, marveling at the stillness of the night. The cold was intense, but welcome. Eli didn’t want to feel anymore. He walked further out into the dark, the chill piercing his flesh but doing nothing to numb the pain in his soul.
“Eli?”
Linus had appeared beside him, his arms clutched against his chest in a tight hug, shivering beneath his thin white tunic.
“They want to bring light to this place,” Eli told him quietly. “They want to brighten the sky and make it into a paradise.” He looked up at the stars. “How can they bring light to a place as dark as this...where they have allowed so many lights to go out?”
“We should go back,” Linus urged. “There’s nothing we can do. And there are going to be consequences for what you did back there. Don’t make them worse.”
Eli shook his head. “I don’t care.”
A familiar voice called out from behind them. “They said there was trouble, but I wasn’t expecting you. Good to see you again, Corp Orp.”
Eli had no interest in engaging with Miles, though a small part of him longed to finish what he’d started that day at the park. He cast the briefest glance back at the recruit, who was approaching with a rifle held lightly in his arms, cradling it with an almost maternal familiarity. Then he continued speaking to Linus.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” he said. “Go back to the ward. I’ll be back soon.”
“Hey!” Miles said, getting closer. “I’m talking to you. You aren’t going anywhere except straight back where you belong.”
“You sure?” Linus said, ignoring Miles completely.
“Yeah.”
“Hey!”
“It’s cold out here,” Linus noted, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. “Don’t stay out too long.”
Linus began walking back toward the facility, and Eli turned to watch him go. Miles was staring back and forth between them, slack-jawed indignation illuminated by the cool light of the lamps. He stepped back as Linus passed, and watched him enter the building. Then he turned back to Eli.
“You too,” said Miles, regaining his voice. “Let’s go.”
Eli turned his back on the recruit and began to walk away.
“You need to come with me right now, or I swear...”
Miles did not finish his threat. Eli didn’t care what the recruit wished to do to him. Miles was no concern of his. The snow crunched under his feet, an almost pleasant sound that would have delighted him in the past. Now he only thought about how Reggie would never hear this, or any other beautiful sound, again.
“That’s it!”
Miles came at him at a jog, his boots hitting the earth with a heavy, rhythmic sound that drowned out the crunching snow. Eli frowned, listening to the rapidly approaching recruit with indifference. He continued walking.
Miles’ hand grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and tugged. “I said, you’re co—”
Eli brought his arm forward and then drove his elbow back, digging it into Miles’ gut and causing the recruit to double over. Eli watched the pitiful sight for a moment as the winded recruit struggled with his gun, evidently struggling to find the safety. Reaching down, Eli plucked the weapon from Miles’ hand with ease. He studied it for a moment, unsure how to get the bullets out. When the answer did not become readily apparent, he grasped the magazine and pulled it sideways. It came away with a satisfying crack, and Eli tipped it upside down, giving it a little shake so that the rounds tumbled to the ground, tinkling against one another as they landed. Then he tossed the gun aside, where it skittered across the ice and out of the reach of the floodlights, lost in darkness.
Eli left Miles there, still gasping and choking, and walked away.
He wasn’t sure where he was going, but it didn’t matter. After a few minutes a large outcropping of rock caught his eye. He climbed up and sat atop it, gazing out toward the invisible horizon, wondering which way was home.
Wondering what home was.
He didn’t hear anyone approaching, but someone had appeared on the ground beside him. He turned, irritated and ready to tell Linus that he just wanted to be alone for a while. No one else would have been able to sneak up on him like that.
The masked man, not Linus, stood beside Eli’s perch. “May I join you?”
The voice resonated against the mask, distorted. Eli considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure.”
The Mask did not climb up beside Eli, but rather leapt, settling down beside him in such a relaxed way that it seemed as though they were just two old friends, lounging by the seaside.
“I thought you were a figment of my imagination,” Eli said in an off-hand sort of way. Eli had been in too much pain during their other encounters to really take a good look at the mask. He studied it now, noting how it was not really black. It shimmered with a rainbow hue...like the crow had. The Mask chuckled.
“Ah, if only it were so. I expect being a figment is much less of a burden than being a person.”
A day ago, an hour ago even, Eli would have had so many questions to ask The Mask. None of them seemed to matter anymore. Reggie was dead. More would follow. What good would it do to know more than that?
“Sometimes, the end justifies the means,” The Mask said after a time.
Eli cocked his head at the man, brow furrowed. “My friend just died in there,” he said bluntly. “Is that the ’means’ you’re talking about?”
The Mask gave an almost imperceptible nod and a short-lived burst of rage flared up in Eli’s chest. But all that came out was a scoff. “Val Int must love you,” he said, disgusted. The silence wore on before Eli could no longer contain the accusations he felt inside. “He was just a little kid. He didn’t deserve that, none of us deserve that. He died for the sake of some stupid experiment, and I bet you and your kind don’t even know what his name was. We’re all just numbers to you.”
“Subject designation, W3V2-12,” the Mask supplied, confirming Eli’s suspicions. But then he continued. “Reginald Phillip Clark, aged nine years, known to his friends as Reggie.”
Eli’s mouth worked soundlessly. He had no reply. The Mask sighed again. “Come. I wish to show you something.”
Too stunned to argue, Eli found himself moving away from the rock and walking beside the strange figure in silence. It seemed an eternity before they came to a halt, just short of a precipice that looked out over a pool of blackness so thick that it might have been a still body of water. Yet Eli’s senses told him that it was empty.
“This is where they found me,” The Mask said after a long moment. “I searched for the way home, but it was gone. It took me quite a while to accept that. I’m not sure how long I wandered, alone, through the dark and the cold, before they came upon me. Sometimes, I wish they had not found me at all. That I’d been allowed to die here, and not have the weight of the future thrust upon my shoulders. They were not built for such a burden.”
Eli turned his stare from the emptiness to The Mask. “Who found you? The Cedar Grove people?”
The Mask shook slowly back and forth. “No, Eli. Captain Ross and his crew.”
This elicited a disbelieving laugh from Eli’s lips before he could stop it. “Are you trying to tell me that you are...that’s impossible. That was hundreds of years ago.”
The Mask nodded. “Yes.”
“And I suppose you went back to England with them and founded Values International?” Eli laughed again in disbelief.
“Yes.”
Eli’s laughter died, and he felt his jaw clench. “Why would you even joke about something like that? Why would you even want to take responsibility for the corporation that is destroying our world? Devouring its resources, ravaging its species, killing its children?” He shook his head, disgust writhing in his gut. “To even pretend such a thing, it’s sick.”
“Tell me, Eli Harper,” The Mask said, tilting back to look at the stars. “What would you do to ensure your continued existence?”
The question was odd, but seemed sincere. Eli found himself replying without thought. “I sure as hell wouldn’t destroy everything in my path, that’s for sure.”
“Ah, but that is simply a matter of perspective. Where you see destruction, I see the birth pains of something greater. A new world, a better world.”
Eli shook his head in disgust. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“And yet, here we are. It’s already been decided. You yourself are the proof of that. As am I.”
“You still aren’t making any sense,” Eli told him. He could not feel the cold any more. It seemed as though a fire was burning in his soul, staving off the wind’s bite.
“Let me ask it a different way, that you would perhaps better understand. What would you do to ensure Mabel’s continued existence?”
Eli stiffened. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”
“Not at all. Merely an honest question.”
“I don’t know,” Eli said after a moment. “Anything, I guess.”
“Then I say again,” The Mask concluded, “the end justifies the means. I have done what is necessary to make certain that what has been, will be. I have heeded the call of destiny, and in doing so hope to ensure that my life, and the lives of those I have cared for, are not forgotten to the whispers of what might have been. I am tired, Eli. My path has not been without its challenges...or without its regrets. There has been much to atone for, and yet more still each passing day. But I draw closer to the finish line with every breath. Each day I wake up and find the drive to continue on, knowing that in the end, it will not have been in vain. I must go forward, because I cannot go back, no matter how hard I have tried.”
Eli took several steps back, shaking his head. “This is getting us nowhere. I’m going back.”
He turned and began the long trek toward Cedar Grove.
“Destiny comes for us all, Eli Harper,” The Mask called over his shoulder. “It will come for you, too, soon enough.”