The Test

Thirty-four

"Mom, what are you doing?" I run to her, slamming down the barrel of the gun so it clatters on the floor. "Why are you here?"

Luc takes a gun out of his pocket and levels it at her.

"What are you doing, Luc?" I shout, turning on him desperately. His face is pained but resolute.

"Don't kill her. What are you doing? Why are you trying to kill her? She's my mother!" I plead. "What has she ever done to you?"

"This is the only way." he says, his face unchanging.

I turn back to my mother, failing to understand his meaning.

She smiles, a cold smile that does not belong on her face.

"We did it to protect you. We thought you'd be safe there. But you have been corrupted by them. The abominations." Her voice turns steely. "My daughter is not an abomination. She is the family's pride."

She turns to Luc. Picks up the gun.

I go still.

"Are you one of the Genetics?" She asks him. "One of the abominations?"
He nods. "I am one of the Genetics, though I think 'abomination' is stretching it."
My mother smirks, wearing her usual disapproving expression. The one she wore on the day she kicked me out. Did she ever really believe that she could save me? Did she believe I was an abomination the whole time I was at her house? How did she find me anyway? How did she know those at AntiGen that came to take me away, although I didn't know who they were then.
Has she hated me all this time?
She couldn't have faked kicking me out.

I don't understand.

Does she hate me or not? And what of my father, sitting stoic and silent beside her?

Then my mother raises the gun and says the five words that so compliment those I saw on that Testing screen so long ago, the words that both destroyed and renewed my life.

"You are not my daughter."

She fires the gun.