Demitria Lunetta - In the End

“Amy, I’m so sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I’ve been—” He stops and stares at me. “I couldn’t get away. And also, I’ve been scared to come.”

“Scared?” I ask in a soft voice.

“Yes. I missed you so much. . . . It really freaked me out. When you left, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. So it took me a little while to find the courage to get over here.”

I don’t know what to say. These past months I’ve thought about Rice, about the moment I would see him again. Now he’s here, and it doesn’t feel real.

“Does that make sense?” he asks softly.

“I’ve . . . I’ve been waiting here. Not knowing anything. And you were too scared to come?” Did he think telling me that would make me feel better?

“I know, I’m so sorry. Please, Amy. Can you forgive me?”

Instead of answering, I take a step forward and tentatively reach out to him. Before I know what I’m doing, I wrap my arms around him. He’s thinner than I remember. I can feel his ribs. Everything I missed about him comes racing back—his solid reasoning, his quiet nature, the way he always makes me feel safe. I always feel right when I’m with Rice.

He runs his hands softly through my short hair and, taking my face in his grasp, he brushes his lips against mine—tentatively at first, then pressing more firmly.

He’s kissing me. And suddenly things no longer feel right—they feel horribly wrong. I break off our kiss abruptly and back away from him.

“I’m sorry, Amy.” He looks confused and under that, exhausted. “I just can’t believe you’re here,” he says.

“You must have known I’d come back.”

“Yes, of course you would.” He looks at the floor. “Baby’s here.”

“Yeah, Baby and . . .” I trail off, embarrassed. I’d thought about him so much, but what was truly between us? He helped me and promised to help Baby.

Baby.

I move away from him to peek out the window. No one’s out there.

“Rice, I saw a video of Baby. Kay brought it to me. It was awful. What are they doing to her?”

“I haven’t been able to get her away from Dr. Reynolds,” he says, pulling me from the window to sit on the sofa.

“Well, you have to try harder,” I tell him. Frustratingly, tears are starting to well up. I wipe them away angrily with my synth-suit-covered hands.

“I’ve tried, Amy,” he says gently. “It’s not a simple thing.”

I look at Rice in his lab coat and glasses. He’s so different from Jacks. It took some convincing, but once Jacks was on my side, he was there. He wouldn’t hesitate to help me break Baby out. He wouldn’t think about it.

I take a breath, collecting myself. Jacks isn’t here. For all I know, he’s dead.

“Have you been working with Dr. Reynolds, testing Baby’s blood?”

Rice seems again confused by my cold tone. “Yes, of course. It’s my job, and it lets me keep an eye on her.”

“Right. So you can watch them hurt her. Watch them brainwash her. How could you let this happen?”

“Amy—”

“You promised to protect her.” I’m taking out my frustrations on him, but I can’t stop myself. “If they needed a test subject, you should have volunteered yourself.”

Rice looks at the floor, his face pinched. He’s gripping one hand with another, but they’re both shaking.

“Dr. Reynolds doesn’t know, does he?” I ask him. “He has no idea that you took the original vaccine, too. Were you part of the original experiment? Were you a test subject?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “After my parents died, Dr. Reynolds took me in. He kept me out of the foster care system, out of the group homes. I . . . I helped him with his experiments, but only because I didn’t know what kind of a man he really was.”

I flinch away from him, horrified by his admission.

“Amy, he was like a father to me,” he tells me, desperately wanting me to understand. “When the original infection broke out, I was scared, and I injected myself with the vaccine. Reynolds never knew. Before you, the only person to know was Katie . . . the girl I told you about. The one who died setting up the emitters with me.” He looks up at me, his eyes haunted. “I would’ve told him if I thought it would make a difference. Just because I injected myself with the original vaccine doesn’t mean that I’m immune. Do you know how many times we’ve tested it since then? How many people we’ve sacrificed?”

“Rice, I really think there was something about that original batch that was different. Something that got into the mixture or wasn’t accounted for.”

“It was created in a lab, Amy, not some guy’s basement. We’ve replicated it thoroughly. We’ve modified the original, and still nothing. I’ve tested my own blood, and I can’t see anything in it that would suggest I’d be immune. Should I let myself get infected on the off chance that it will work, like it did for Baby? If I were gone, who would help her?” he asks quietly. “And besides, I don’t even know if Dr. Reynolds would let me take her place. He’s been training me since I was a child. He’s invested too much time and effort to let me go. He sees me as an asset ,” he hisses, as if he hates the word. As if he hates himself. “He’d make me continue to test her and probably test myself as well.”

I feel my anger dissipating, like air leaking slowly out of a balloon. I’m left feeling guilty and ashamed of questioning Rice’s motives. Rice’s eyes are filled with hurt.

I reach out and take his hand. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I know you’ve done everything you can.”

“Maybe,” Rice replies after a few moments. “Maybe I could speak with your mother, tell her you’re here.”

“No.” I shake my head slowly. “She can’t be trusted. She sold me out to Dr. Reynolds, left me to rot in the Ward.” Even as I say it, I know it’s not as straightforward as that. My mother also told Kay where I was, and tried to protect me from Dr. Reynolds for as long as she could. “It’s better if she doesn’t know.”

“What about Dr. Samuels?” I ask. “He got you a message when I was in the Ward. He gave Kay Dr. Reynolds’s key card to break me out.”

“I don’t know, Amy. I don’t even know if I can approach him without being found out. Everyone is so afraid of being put in the Ward or simply getting expelled. Dr. Reynolds went overboard after your escape, questioning everyone’s loyalty.”

“But not yours?”

“No. He thinks of me like a son.” His voice is full of bitterness. “More like his trained monkey.”

“Rice? What happened? What made you start to doubt him, and then . . . help me?” I almost said betray him instead of help me . “Was it Marcus hauling me away to the Ward?”

“That was part of it, but before that I found something. . . .” He stops himself, rubbing his hands, hard, over his face. “I found evidence that Dr. Reynolds . . . had my parents killed so he could adopt me. So he could use my brain in whatever twisted way he saw fit.”

His hands have fallen from his face. His eyes are huge, his face a mask of such pain and self-loathing that I want to forget all the resentment I feel for him and wrap my arms around him again. But then the horror of what Rice has said sinks in, and I place my hand over my mouth in shock. It shouldn’t be surprising, the lengths that Dr. Reynolds would go, but I can’t imagine the pain that Rice must have felt when he found out. I place my hand on his shoulder, trying to be a comfort.

“I don’t know how I ever thought he was a great man,” Rice says quietly. “Now he just seems like a madman.”

A madman who has Baby . I pull away. “Are you sure I can’t get in to see Baby?”