THURSDAY: Chapter XXVII

"What happened next?" I asked breathlessly, and for a moment, Scout seemed pleased to finally have caught my full, undivided attention. Then his smile dropped from his face and it was stern again.

Echo's records in particular caught my attention," he told me. "She had four particular strands in her DNA that put her in the file, but she was also the youngest, which ruined my theory that the genes had died out at some point. I decided to do more research into her case, and that was when I discovered something else…"

He pushed off the tree stump and walked past me before turning around to pace back

"While looking into her, I found something more I wasn't expecting... or someone, rather."

I watched him for a minute, pacing back and forth, the knife clutched in his hands behind his back and his eyes glued to the ground.

"What was it?" I asked him.

Brought back to the present, he stopped abruptly and looked at me.

"It was you." he said with a bit of a smile, and then it dropped off and he came and stood beside me, his hand dropping onto my shoulder. "You, Nova, had not just four.. you had nine. Nine was the number of strands we'd been altered to have, and it was the ideal makeup for countering the virus. I had to look into this, so Madeline travelled to Seattle and met with Echo. She explained everything to her: the virus, the genetic strands, and her own DNA. In return, she threatened to reveal who we were."

I'd heard this part of the story before from Madeline, but Scout continued anyway.

"Madeline blackmailed her into silence," Scout said with a bit of a smile, "and eventually, Echo stayed silent of her own accord. It was then that I met her, and together, we revealed your significance to us, and Echo told us more about you."

"What sort of things…?" I was almost nervous to ask.

"She told us you were the bravest, strongest person she'd ever met," Scout told me quietly. I felt him watching the top of my head, but refused to meet his gaze, my eyes fixated on the ground I sat upon.

"She told us you managed to pull the highest scores of all the children in all your classes," Scout went on in the same monotone. "She told us you were an incredible fighter in multiple weapons… and then she told us about your family. She said it seemed you were never quite one of them, and that you pretended you weren't bothered by that, but you were. Your sister could do no wrong, she said, but you were the middle child, in every definition of the phrase. But most importantly, she told us about your brother, who was the only reason you could pull it all together day, after day, after day..."

It was getting hard for him to speak. I heard it in his voice as his words came to a choking halt and he knelt beside me, taking my chin in his hand and directing me to look at him.

"I looked, Nova. I did. I entered your brother into the system no less than ten times. I wanted so much for him to be one immune to it, but it all came up blank. I tried to steal another injection for him, but I was unsuccessful. I was almost caught that day, and after that, we decided not to say anything to you yet. I requested a transfer to Seattle while I tried to redevelop the serum. I thought, or rather hoped, I'd gotten it at last and sent it to you a few days…"

"It didn't work…" I murmured unhelpfully, and he winced.

"What happened next?" I asked him, changing the subject away from my brother. "You showed up in Seattle four years ago acting like a complete and utter jerk!"

He had the nerve to chuckle, but then he turned serious again.

"I used that time to develop the serum, a waste of time, I now know. I kept an eye on you, praying a solution would come to me. Madeline warned me about getting attached and becoming obsessed, so I treated you the way I did, hoping to sever any attachment I may have developed to you."

"It failed…" I met Scout's eyes, attempting to read him, "didn't it?"

He nodded.

"I figured if you hated me, I could hate you. It didn't work that way. There was always more time, I told myself, but I was wrong. I knew we were running out of time. I knew it would all fall apart and our chance would be gone. I knew something would go wrong… and that ended up being the only thing I was right about."

"Then why didn't you tell me?" I asked softly. "Why didn't you come to me, and explain things, and let me try and help?" I was begging for a reason.

"It was Echo." came a quiet murmur from the behind us. Madeline stood leaning against the doorframe, and she made no effort to move.

"Yes, it was Echo." Scout went on tiredly. "She begged us not to say anything. Said it wasn't time... it was never time, for her... and then the laboratory blew up, releasing the virus to the world, and there was nothing we could do. I was sent to the laboratory in Saint George where there are currently five hundred people in an airtight cellar."

"Are they-" I started, and then cut off. He nodded.

"They are the only people left alive who are not immune to it." Scout said softly. He reached out to Madeline and she moved forward to take his hand, squeezing it gently.

"What do we do now?" I asked them. The words were spoken with the trust that I found it impossible not to feel toward this man who held held me, comforted me after the death of my brother. He had poured out his entire story to me, putting himself in somewhat the worst light he could. He'd been honest with me.

"We're going somewhere safe," Scout told me. He straightened up and lightly kissed Madeline. "We're going somewhere safe, and then we're going to try to fix things."

"It's one-hundred-and-some against the government," I pointed out, to which he grinned like a wolf in return.

"That, Nova," he told me, "is why this is going to be fun…"