The Collective

Chapter Thirty-Five

     Ethan refused to go on a road trip. I tried for years. They were some of my favorite memories growing up. My parents came up with endless games to play, and if I just wanted to listen to my music, they were cool with that too.

     After four hours in the car with Stacy and Chase, I was ready to swear them off for the rest of my life. Stacy hadn't turned the radio down and she and Chase hadn't stopped bickering literally the entire time. I knew more about them than I ever wanted to.

     I looked out the window, humming to drown out the noise. It didn't help. I put my head down, hands over my ears. This was for Sarah. I could do this for her...

     I wish I was that tough.

     "I have to pee!" I shouted. They froze mid-argument, both staring at me.

     "We need gas." Stacy muttered.

     "Yeah, some fresh air would be great." Chase snapped, flopping back in the seat.

     Stacy pulled up to a truck stop. They jerked out of the car, storming in different directions. I rested my head against the seat, enjoying the respite. Apparently, Stacy tried to seduce Chase, too. It didn't work for either of them. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she actually liked him.

     I really did have to pee. I dragged myself out. I shivered. Despite the blazing sunshine, it was still almost below freezing. Whoever decided to settle in the mountains to begin with was insane, but at least I was out of the car.

     The sun disappeared. I glared at the intruder.

     Max held his hands up, gnawing on a toothpick. "Hey."

     "What the hell?" I growled.

     "GPS tracker." He pointed to my shoes.  "You've gotta be one of the hardest people I've ever had to protect."

     I groaned, not as shocked as I should've been. "I'm not leaving. You can't make me."

     He shook his head, leaning against the car next to me. "I know."

     "Why is she doing this?"

     "Stacy? I don't know. Probably feels like she owes him. He pulled her out of a rough spot a few years back. Although, after he rejected her, I didn't think she ever wanted to see him again, but obviously..." he trailed off.

     "Oversight. Her whole business," Or what little I'd seen of it, "Depends on people. If there's no people what she does doesn't work. Why is she letting him do this?" If it was Ethan.

     "Incoming."

     Stacy froze at the sight of Max. She scowled, reaching into her purse. "I will shoot you."

     "Finally, something we agree on." Chase muttered, coming up beside her.

     Max shook his head. "I'm here to help. Cross my heart and hope to die."

     Stacy scoffed. She turned to me. "To answer you're question, my dear Annie, Oversight has somewhat of a checkered past with the human race."

     She spent the next several hours detailing the life of Cora May Foley. She was a young socialite, who had the whole world at her fingertips. She was valedictorian of her class, had several people, male and female, wrapped around her finger, and begging for her hand. Her father was old money, and she was set to inherit it all. People didn't want her, just her money. She denied them all, electing to go on a trip around the world. Alone. Angered by her apparent insolence, her father cut her off.

     Come to find out, she'd been saving every penny since she was a kid. She had a small fortune, all to herself. She didn't need him. When she came home, about a year later, she found out her sister had died. They found her hanging from the rafters in the family's stable. She had been trafficked since she was 12. When she tried to tell someone, her father, the police, they dismissed it as a cry for attention by a spoiled child.

     Cora cut off all contact with her family. She put herself through college and laid the foundations for an international conglomerate, all with the intentions avenging her sister and protecting people like her, people without a voice. She fought like hell to get where she is, and she was finally ready to execute her final plan.

     "Or, so the legend goes." Stacy shrugged, sipping her champagne.

     I leaned back in a plush leather seat. We were back on the plane that brought us to Chase. It wasn't as bad this time around, which could have something to do with the seemingly endless supply of champagne. What little of Oversight's plan that had leaked through the ranks made it sound like a total apocalypse. Yeah, money and status wouldn't matter, but there wouldn't be anybody left to enjoy that fact. And, I wouldn't wish what I went through on anyone, even somebody I hated.

     Chase shook his head, rubbing his scruff. "Ethan is very good at what he does. If this is him, and I'm not saying it is, but if it is, we're all screwed."

     I waited for someone to say that he wasn't, that he wouldn't. Nobody did. And I couldn't bring myself to, either.

     I pushed myself out of the chair. How did I lose him? We were happy, and I remember being able to look at him and feel like I was home. Hearing about this person, this alleged terrorist, made it feel like I'd lost all the very best parts of him, if I'd ever had them to begin with.

     I sank down on one of the couches, safely out of reach of everyone else. Ethan and I fought a lot, especially towards the end. Some of me wonders if he just didn't want to let me go and was trying to simultaneously push me away. If I'd have known what I know now... well, we probably wouldn't have got together in the first place. I liked that my life was ordinary and delightfully, horribly boring.

     But, Ethan came and everything changed. It was hard, and it was messy, and it was exactly what I wanted.

     "What, are you a vampire now?" Max turned the lights on.

     I swallowed the lump in my throat.

      He perched next to me. "Stacy wants you to hear this part."

     I bit back a groan. I didn't trust her. If she knew where Sarah was this whole time, why hadn't she said anything?

     "Max, did he love me?" I hated the words as soon as they slipped past my lips. He'd said Ethan did before, but he wasn't trying to manipulate me anymore. We were more or less on the same team. Or as close as we would ever get.

     He didn't say anything. He stood up, paced, fidgeted with a lose thread on his shirt. Sat down. "You're the only one he's ever been willing to leave the Collective for. I wasn't lying when I said he couldn't. Cora takes the person you thought you were and breaks you down layer by layer until you don't know what you are. Ethan was like that for a long time, and it was nice for awhile. Our stats went way up because he stopped being a marshmallow, but he turned into a robot. He stopped going out, stopped listening to music, stopped everything but work. And even then, everything was by the book. He almost got us killed because it was all about the rules. And the book just doesn't hold up on the field. But, the results were fantastic.

     "And, then, you came along, and you brought him back. I don't know if he wants to kill everyone and everything, but I'm willing to bet you're the only one who can stop it." He squeezed my hand in a gesture that was decidedly out of character.

     "What are you doing here?"

     He sighed heavily. "Truth? I wasn't there when he needed me. I saw what she was doing to him, and I ignored it. Oversight may have raised me, but Ethan saved my life more times than I care to remember. No matter how stupid I was, or how many messes I got us into, he always had my back. I owe it to him to at least try."