To the Well-Organized Mind

Chapter Thirty

[Hale/Nia]

I have done it. At last. My life's work accomplished. All this time, it simply needed a host to foster it in for it to mature successfully. Now I just need to tell her. She will—

-from Gerald P. Anagnost's logs, cut off

***

[Hale]

He didn't know when he had decided to kill her. He just knew that she had taken his meaning of life from him, killing him, and now he was going to do the same thing to her. But he also knew the proper time had not yet come, so he waited and watched, trying to plan the best moment to carry out his master stroke. Just like last time, it was as though an internal voice were coaxing him to wait, be patient: the right time has not yet come.

She had become his entire purpose to life. In this world, you had to have something direct to live for, or you might as well go out to the Barrens and become a part of them. But he would never be first in her eyes, not like she had promised back in the bunker while he was recuperating. As he had recovered, he had seen how work took more and more of her time. How her own father just used her for his own means—and she had no qualms about it.

And now, after escaping that hell, she was back to the same routine. Every day she didn't focus on a cure was a day wasted to her mind. Until he was a distraction, a period of diversion before she resumed the main purpose in her life.

But he had never shifted, never allowed anything to become more important to him, not even his life. He would sacrifice others in a blink, for her. He had before.

This time, he was ready to sacrifice even more. It was the only way they would be together forever.

***

[Nia]

Meeting someone who nearly killed people at least twice (whether intentionally or not), in the hope that she knows information that could save me, leaves me disgruntled to say the least. Like with Tavelin, everything in my being wants to hold onto a petty hatred of her, even though logically I know they both hold invaluable information and skills.

Seeing Jessi sitting up in the infirmary bed serves to humanize her, at least. She no longer looks feral. She is easily a child more than a young woman, eyes wide and traumatized. Her hair has been cut—probably too snarled to salvage—but it is clean and combed and frames her face, making her bare neck seem vulnerable and slender. She's bathed and in new clothing, which hangs off her half-starved frame. As she sits on the bed, knees up, she taps each knee with either hand.

Perhaps meeting me is as tumultuous for her as it is for me.

"I think she's seen the feral you're looking for," Tavelin says lowly to me, as if I could possibly be here for some other reason. To Jessi, she urges, "Nia here needs to hear about the strange ferals, just like you told me." She nods encouragingly. "You remember Nia? You can trust her."

"She's not six," I retort. "And I'm not that forgettable." I'm sure she harbors plenty of resentment for me after the way I treated them in the Barrens. Not that I regret it.

Fen and Jaden sit on a cot behind me somewhere, and I can hear one of them sighing. Probably Fen. Jaden should be nodding in approval since she raised me to be this way.

"Jessi," I say, trying to forget our time from before this moment. "I'm looking for a gang of ferals, one for sure who acts oddly—more human and with different skills than most ferals. Have you seen someone like this?"

She stares at me without speaking. Then, slowly, she nods.

I smother a sigh of my own. I try to think of Elsie and how slowly I had to work with her so that she would start using language again after living with the ferals. Surely I still have a smidgen of such patience left in my being that I can tap into.