Sophie Littlefield - Rebirth

Cass slipped the darts into her socks as the truck began to move, the only place she had to stash them. As the tires hit potholes, Smoke cried out in pain. A good thing, because it meant that he was still aware, if only dimly, of his body.

The smell of exhaust was strong in the truck, and Cass coughed; she was coughing the first few times Ruthie spoke so it took her a while to realize that her daughter’s voice wasn’t just in her imagination. “Mama.”

Cass looked down to see Ruthie had got up on her knees and was holding on to her arm for support, her face only inches away.

“Ruthie, what-? Ruthie,” Cass said, breath caught in her throat. She didn’t want to make a fuss, to draw attention; she had worked so hard to convince Ruthie that it didn’t matter if she talked, that she could heal at her own pace.

“Is Smoke okay?”

Ruthie’s face was tight with worry, her wide eyes sad, her rosebud lips pursed in concern.

“Oh, baby…”

It had never occurred to her to tell Ruthie what had happened to Smoke. Ruthie had been napping when he left, when Cass said her angry last words to him. She had not been with Cass when she made her bargain with Dor. Cass had tried to make the trip to Colima sound like an adventure, and she had taken care to say that Smoke was on an adventure of his own, but at the time Ruthie hadn’t seemed too worried about him.

And there had been Dor-Dor who was so good with children, who played with her and roughhoused with her, Dor who carried her on his shoulders as though she were as light as a butterfly. Smoke and Ruthie had spent many hours together, but they were quiet hours, walking slowly around the Box or reading together. With a burst of guilt Cass remembered the dozens of times she had wished Smoke had been easier around Ruthie, that he had taken more readily to a parental role. Even his kisses seemed awkward, his arms stiff when he held her.

But now, looking into her daughter’s worried face, she saw how wrong she had been. Ruthie had been damaged, had lost part of herself in her time in the Convent. Smoke had come to them without any knowledge of children, without knowing how to be with her. Together, they started slowly and moved forward hesitantly. But now that she was remembering Cass realized how often she saw them together, not talking, doing little more than sitting. Healing.

She gathered Ruthie into her lap. “Babygirl,” she whispered. “We are going to do our very best to make sure that he gets better. Smoke is hurt, but we are going to help him.”

Ruthie held on.

Moments later the truck ground to a stop.

He thought about checking, just checking one more time. To make sure they were all right. Cass, Ruthie…even Smoke, though there was a darkness to that thought; sure, Dor was glad Smoke had pulled through, more than glad, but things were different now in a dozen different ways.

No. He wasn’t going there now, because all that mattered in this moment was finding Sammi. And it turned out to be a damn good thing he didn’t go to the back of the truck. When he got out and started toward the building, the guard was waiting for him.

“Who are you?” she said, squinting in the dawn light. Her hand rested on her belt, on the holster of a weapon. “I don’t know you.”

“Name’s Wentworth. I’ve come out to take a look at the generator cells.”

“What? No one said anything-no one’s mentioned a service call.”

Please, lady, don’t make this a thing. Dor had only his blade or his gun at this point, and he couldn’t risk her alerting anyone else that he was there. “I was supposed to get here last night, but we had a problem at Tapp and I couldn’t get away until just now.”

She looked even warier as she stepped back. “Look, I don’t mean to be a pain about this, but let me just get-”

She stopped abruptly, her eyes going wide, before she sank to the ground, teetering on her knees before falling forward on the drive. Dor, acting on instinct, caught her before her face hit.

Cass stepped from behind her. “I used a dart.”

“What the hell are you doing out of the truck?”

“I saw her come out. I knew she wasn’t going to believe you…”

“I could have taken care of her.”

“Yeah, by killing her. This way there’s one less.”

He couldn’t argue with that, though he wanted to, wanted to argue with everything Cass said. Since he’d come across her-moments from being violated, Cass who always seemed stronger than everything and everyone, vulnerable like that-he could barely contain his need to protect her, to lock her up tight and take her away from here. It was like those days back in the Box when he saw her wandering across the street to her herb garden, when he held his breath until she was safe again behind the chain-link on the other side. Well, he would protect her now, just as soon as he got Sammi; he’d get them all out of here, back where they belonged. He fingered the silver box in his pocket, his insurance: inside was one of the most volatile explosives ever created, one of the prizes in his extensive arsenal. The second the gel met the powder, it would take out half a city block. He’d been so tempted to use it on the fetid basement of the Tapp Clinic, to blow up not just the two dead men but to obliterate the entire place, every remnant and memory of what had happened. But there’d been others there, innocents, so he’d swallowed back his rage.

He understood Smoke’s quest. If he hadn’t needed to come for Sammi, he would have joined Smoke in hunting down the people responsible for the library raid. He would have been happy to pull the trigger.

“Go back with Smoke and Ruthie,” he said roughly. “That’s enough risk for tonight. I’ll be back before you know it, and I’ll need you to be ready to go.”

She didn’t go right away. She stood shivering, with her arms crossed across her chest, in her thin nightgown. “Take this,” he said, pulling off his own parka.

“No, I can’t,” she said, but when he tossed it to her she caught it.

And because he couldn’t stand to watch her put on the coat that was still warm from his body, he stalked past her and into the building, refusing to turn around. “It’ll just slow me down anyway.”

IT WAS TAKING TOO LONG.

Cass had gone back into the truck like Dor ordered her. Smoke’s chills had subsided; her coat seemed to be keeping him warm. Ruthie sat cross-legged at his side, watching him with a serious expression on her face. Cass stared out the back of the truck; the sky was lightening at the horizon, but no one had come or gone from the building. Nearby, the guard’s unconscious body lay in a landscaping bed behind a hedge of dead oleanders.

For the first time in many months, Cass wished for a watch. It seemed like it had been half an hour, but what if it had only been a few minutes? Dor’s plan had been simple enough; he was going to take the first guard or attendant he could find, threaten them into cooperation, and demand to be taken to Sammi. The rooms in the dorm where she and Dor had spent the night were unlocked. But would they lock the girls in here, to deter them from trying to escape?

But what if Sammi wasn’t here? What if they’d already taken her for… Cass shuddered, not wanting to think about the procedure, the violation of a body, in its own way just as horrific as what had nearly been done to her earlier tonight. Sammi was still a child; Cass had not been a child for decades.

If they had taken Sammi to the Tapp Clinic, maybe she was there on the upper floors, resting, recuperating, being tested. Or maybe she was here, but Dor couldn’t find her; maybe he was going from room to room, taking greater and greater risks.