“Once we land, we don’t need to go to Ashwood. We can go anywhere, try to find the other Loric …”
“I know,” she says. “You’re doing this to try and save me, to find some way to keep me alive. You think if you go back, you can
She’s right. But I don’t have a choice: without One, I’m nothing. Even a 1 percent chance of succeeding is worth pursuing.
In the cab on the way to Ashwood Estates, my fear is like a fist in my stomach, pushing upwards. We’re getting close, maybe ten minutes away.
Nine minutes. Eight minutes.
I feel bile churning. I ask the driver to pull over to the side of the road and I rush out to the tall grass at the edge of the highway and throw up what little I’ve eaten since leaving Kenya.
I take a moment. To breathe, to look out over the grass to the open fields beyond. I know this is it: my last chance to run.
Then I wipe my mouth and return to the cab, grateful that One isn’t around to see me like this.
“You okay, kid?” the driver asks.
I nod. “Yeah.”
The driver just shakes his head and gets us back on the road.
Six minutes. Five minutes.
We enter the suburbs surrounding Ashwood Estates. Fast-food-glutted intersections give way to middle-class townships, then to upscale gated communities indistinguishable from Ashwood. The perfect hiding place.
From above we’re just another suburb: no one would imagine the strange culture inside those tastefully bland McMansions, the world-destroying plans being hatched below. In all my years living at Ashwood we’d never fallen under even a moment’s suspicion from the government or the local police.
As Ashwood’s imposing gates loom into view up the road, I find myself darkly amused by the irony that a walled fortress has been such an effective way to deflect suspicion in suburban America.
I tell the driver to let me off across the street, passing him the last of the money that Elswit was kind enough to give me to get home.
I approach the front gate’s intercom system, glad I threw up back on the highway: if I hadn’t then, I would now.
There’s no point being coy. I step right in front of the security camera and press the buzzer for my house and look right into the camera. Every house has a direct feed to it. I will be identified immediately.
“Adamus?” It’s my mother. Her voice cracks on the second syllable, and at the sound of it my legs almost give out.
I know she’s a monster. She wants nothing more than the destruction of the entire Loric race and domination of this entire planet. But the sound of her voice hits me hard: I’ve missed her. More than I realized.
“Mom,” I say, struggling to keep my voice from breaking.
But the intercom line has gone dead.
She’s probably pulled an alarm. Notified the General. Within minutes I’ll be on a rack, or thrown into a piken’s feeding pen …
“Adamus?!”
Her voice again. It’s not coming from the intercom.
I step around the intercom panel to see my mother in the distance through the gate. She’s run out of our house at the top of the hill. She’s in a sundress, the kind she wears when she’s baking, running down the hill barefoot. Running towards me.
“Adam!” she cries, getting closer and closer, her bare feet slapping against the asphalt. Before I know it she’s swung open the pedestrian access gate and has pulled me into her arms, hugging me, crying.
“My sweet boy, my fallen hero … you’re alive.”
I’m stunned. She’s not greeting me with anger. She’s greeting me with love.