“What do you mean ‘murdered’? You always told me it was an accident.”
The lines around Sam’s mouth deepened. “Therese’s death wasn’t an accident, honey.”
“What? You mean you lied about that too?”
“It was a car accident, but it wasn’t weather-related. She was hit by another car while she was bringing you back from an appointment at the Care Center. Ben told me there was evidence that the crash was Tribal retribution for us having adopted you as one of our own. He said they wanted you back but fled the scene because they heard sirens before they could extract you from the car. He said the Tribes would do anything to take you from us. From me. That’s why I agreed to put you on the medication, Gabriela. Nystrom set the scientists to work on it as soon as he realized you were Artis’s child and that we were determined to keep you. He told me the pills would suppress your birth defects—” Gabi opened her mouth to object, but Sam continued.
“That’s what we thought they were, honey. And the pills worked. You were a little weaker, but your, um, pouches closed up quickly. We didn’t know about the other thing, the vomi… vemer….”
“Vomeronasal organ,” Gabi supplied tersely.
“Right, we didn’t know about that, but I’m guessing it was affected too. It wasn’t until Cleo brought you back and the FCC troops moved in that I found out Nystrom had been the one who orchestrated the crash. He wanted you dead so you would never be a threat to Unitas. I had no idea.” Sam’s face crumpled for an instant before he regained his composure and went on. “Ben was like a father figure to me—overbearing at times but always there, especially after Therese died. When I think of how he deceived me all those years….”
“Did you know they were using me?” Gabi asked quietly, the fight gone out of her as she realized Sam was telling the truth. “Did you know that every time you brought me in for a checkup or an oxygen treatment that they were drawing my blood for DNA samples to use as models for their cannibalism experiment?”
“No. Oh God, no.” Sam disintegrated, burying his face in his hands and sobbing into them. Instinctively Gabi rushed around the table to lay her hand on his heaving back.
“Shhh, Dad, shhh. I believe you, okay? It’s okay.”
After a few minutes, Sam raised his head, wiping his face on the long sleeve of his jumpsuit, but he wouldn’t look at her. He just stared brokenly across the table where she had been a moment ago.
“I deserve whatever the FCC throws at me. I knew that FCC communities were being reestablished along the coasts, but I believed in the vision of Unitas, of bringing people together in a way that would end all wars rather than making the same mistakes of the past. And it did, didn’t it? For a time?” Sam turned to Gabi with a childlike expression that melted the last of her defenses.
“But people died, Dad,” she said gently. “The advance teams were violent, and a lot of people didn’t come willingly. They were coerced by fear and starvation and lies.”
“If I had known,” Sam said, laying his hand on top of hers, “I never would have gone along. The only reason I was voted onto the council in the first place was because Ben wanted to keep an eye on you. He never thought people would respond to me the way they did. It surprised me too.”
The security guard poked his head inside the door, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, Brother Lowell, but visitation is over. I’ll have to escort the young lady out. I’ll give you a few minutes to say goodbye.” He closed the door again, and to her astonishment, Gabi began to cry. Not silent, dignified tears, but the panicked, sloppy tears that she had cried when her father dropped her off for her first day of school. She’d clung to Sam’s trouser leg when he set her down in the classroom, wrapping her thin arms around his knee and soaking his pants with tears and snot. As he had then, Sam drew her close, palming her curly head. “Honey, it’s going to be fine, I promise.”
Gabi raised her mottled face to his. “Cleo said you can request that your trial be moved to FCC headquarters in the Pacific Northwest since the jury here would be biased. Put in the request, Dad, please. I’m going out there, and so is Mathew. If you’re tried at headquarters, you’ll serve your sentence there, and we can visit you. Mathew wants to go to a training academy out there so he can work with Cleo and her taskforce, and the FCC scientists want me to help them with some studies. Turns out, there are other people like me out there—people who are showing signs of physical adaptation to the effects of the Strain and climate.”
“They’re going to study you?” Sam asked incredulously. “Like you’re some sort of—”
“No,” Gabi interrupted. “I’m going to work with them, and in exchange they’re going to pay for me to study marine biology at a university. Whales, Dad.” The two smiled at each other, and Gabi’s love for her father came surging back. He had lied to her, yes, but that didn’t change the fact he had done it to protect her. “Whales aren’t actually extinct, did you know that?” Gabi continued, her eyes alight. “They’re still out there! The oceans are pretty wrecked, but marine life is adapting too. Whale fins and flippers are starting to split. It’s like the whales are trying to go back to having fingers and toes because it’s less toxic on land right now.”
Sam shook his head. He was still adjusting to a world in which the doctrine wasn’t the ultimate truth. His beliefs had been the foundation of his existence, and he was a long way from relinquishing them.
When the guard came to lead Gabi
