“Therese?” Gabi whispered.
Cleo shook her head, pressing her lips into a firm line. “No, your real mother. The woman who gave birth to you at the Care Center in Alder.”
“You knew her?” Gabi’s voice was a strangled squeak.
Cleo looked startled. “Wait, you know about her?”
Could Gabi trust her? Was she the ally Gabi had been hoping to find? Why did Cleo consider Burton Ames an enemy, and what was she doing out here with a bunch of gun-toting demons when she was supposed to be a pile of ash?
“I found a letter she wrote me,” Gabi said finally. “My Gram had it.”
“Well, that saves us a lot of time,” Cleo said, her gaze roving the perimeter of the clearing. “I was worried how you would take it, and I’m not very good at playing therapist.”
“Well, I don’t need one,” Gabi bristled. Nothing made sense, and she didn’t have a clue what was going to happen once the Witnesses found them, but she was tired of being underestimated. She’d been through more trauma in the last three months than most people experienced in a lifetime. Walker had no idea how much she could take.
“Good,” Cleo replied. “You’re strong, then, like your mother. I was with her when she died and promised her that as soon as we were able to liberate the interior, I would find you.” The familiar way Cleo spoke of her birth mother caused Gabi’s heart to leap into her throat. She was terrified that the opportunity to learn more might slip away, given that Apostle Walker was clearly preoccupied with confronting Ames.
“What was her name? Why did she give me up? Who is my real dad? Is he still alive? Is she? And how are you even here? You died in a fire!” Gabi could only mouth her last words as her voice failed and her lungs screamed in protest.
Cleo shook her head and urged the canteen back up to Gabi’s lips. “There will be time for questions later, I promise. There’s a lot to tell. Your mother’s name was Artis. She was a scientist for the FCC.”
“What’s that?”
“The Free Coastal Confederacy. It’s made up of all the former United States territories unclaimed by Unitas, which includes everything east of the Appalachians and west of the Rockies.”
“But that’s… I thought almost everything was Unitas, except for a few remote villages along the coasts.”
Cleo’s face grew thunderous. “That’s what all the fellows have been programmed to think, and it was almost true. Fuel supplies crashed during the Strain. Air travel was cut off, and the flooded coastal cities made access impossible by sea. People tried to get through, but there was too much debris and building wreckage to navigate without sonar. The fundamentalists had a huge advantage when the Strain hit. They had hoarded so many resources and packed the government with their own. People were traumatized by watching things fall apart, my family included. They were immigrants, Somali Muslims, and they gave up everything to stay alive.” Walker’s voice caught.
“What happened to them?” Gabi asked tentatively.
“Someone saw my father doing wudu, his ritual washing before prayer, in the men’s room at work and turned him in. He was taken from our house in the middle of the night. My family and I were transferred to Alder and never saw him again. I became a Witness to protect them.”
“Wait,” Gabi interjected, “so you never really believed, but you managed to become the most famous Apostle in Unitas history? How is that possible?”
“Turns out I had a knack for Witness work. Not the conversion part, but the expeditions. I wasn’t afraid, but the more I saw of what lay beyond the branches, the more convinced I became that Unitas was just a false front for using religion as a means of control. By the time I knew for sure that I was right, I had opened up a lot of territory for the Witnesses to move into. The people they call ‘Tribes’ trusted me, and I betrayed that trust to keep my own family safe. I might never be absolved, but I’m willing to die trying. I almost did.”
“The fire?”
“Yes,” Cleo said, turning up her palms to reveal the shiny pink skin covering them like hardened plastic. “Worth every scar.”
“But what does any of this have to do with me or my real parents?”
“I met your mother during my last mission. She was working at a field station on the outskirts of the capital.”
“You mean Babylon?”
Cleo’s face tightened. “There is no Babylon. The FCC is divided into bioregions, and each has a capital to govern it based on its unique sociopolitical needs and ecology. When the waters consumed the coastal cities, those residents who didn’t flee to the interior were relocated to the mountains, along with those who left the fellowship when they saw what Unitas was up to. The survivors held out until the ports could be dredged and the first shipments of foreign aid made it through. That was about twenty years ago. By the time I met your mother, the FCC had just gained its footing.”
“All this time?” Gabi said numbly. “How could we not hear about it?”
“Unitas’s hold on the population is strong because it exists beyond reason, at the level of faith. There was no denying the devastation of the Strain, and it looked a whole lot like the Apocalypse. People believed, and that belief was used against them. That’s where your mom came in.” Gabi gathered the animal pelt closer around her, straining toward every word. “Your mother was convinced that since the fellowship manipulated people with faith, that was where the battle had to be fought. The doctrine hinges on people believing in a literal translation of the Bible. Your mother’s mission was to disprove that literal translation, which she did by taking on the
