Broken Angel (24 page)

FIFTY-ONE

T
here,” Jordan said. The beam of the flashlight showed Caitlyn’s ankle stuck in the webbing of the rope bridge. Her head dangled only inches above the water.

Billy still cradled Jordan, like a child in his arms. They had thundered through a series of short tunnels to the base of the waterfall, Jordan giving Billy directions at every turn.

Billy set Jordan on his feet. He didn’t need instructions.

When Billy stepped onto the rope bridge, it sagged with his weight. He wished he’d left the life jacket on, instead of throwing it off back in the other cavern.

Jordan kept the flashlight beam on Caitlyn. Her eyes opened.

“Don’t move,” Jordan urged Caitlyn. “Don’t panic.”

It was obvious that if she shifted slightly, her weight would pull her loose from the bridge. As it was, she was slipping incrementally.

Billy tried to tiptoe forward, but the bridge kept swinging. One of the slats that formed the floor of the bridge snapped. His right foot slipped through.

Think,
Billy told himself,
think.

If the slats couldn’t hold his weight, he knew the rope could. That left one option.

He slowly pulled his foot loose and backed up the half step to the end of the bridge and found solid land.

“You’ve got to go,” Jordan said. “She can’t hold on much longer.”

Billy grunted. He moved to the side of the bridge, squatted, and leaned his upper body precariously over the swift-moving water. If he fell in, he’d drown. It was too far to the open cavern on the other side, where Pierce and Theo and Gloria had been sent floating down the river in life jackets.

But he had no choice.

With one hand, he grabbed the lower rope of the bridge, where the slats were attached. He allowed himself to fall forward.

For a moment, the water threatened to suck him loose, an angry monster determined to steal its prey.

But Billy managed to secure his other hand on the rope. Now he clung with both hands. He scuttled sideways, hand over hand, toward the center of the bridge, his legs and waist in the current, dragging at him with malevolent power.

He dared a glance over at Caitlyn. She hung upside down, arms at her side, making no movement that would pop her loose from the rope webbing that held her by the ankle.

Hand over hand. Hand over hand.

As he got closer, she slowly reached for him.

They were inches away, pinned in the beam of light that Jordan held at the edge of the river, when she fell.

Billy gave it no thought. He let go with his right hand and clutched for her wrist. His fingers closed over her lower arm. Her body jerked as her feet fell toward the water.

She gasped and their eyes met.

Neither said a word. Billy was concentrating too hard on keeping his grip on her arm. And on the rope bridge with his other hand.

The current pulled too hard, and her arm began to slip through his fingers.

“No!” Billy roared. He’d never felt anger, not like this. He roared at the river as if it were a living creature. “No!”

Her wrist slid into his fingers, and he tightened his grip. But that was all he had. Her body was deep into the water. Almost to her neck. He only had one arm to pull her loose. If his grip on the rope bridge broke, both of them would be swept away.

“No!” he roared again. He fought the river, inch by inch, getting her closer and closer. Finally, her legs pulled loose, and the tremendous strain on his shoulders and arms lessened.

“Arms around my neck,” he panted. He needed both hands to fight his way back.

She reached around with one arm, then the other. Billy never knew arms could feel so good.

He also knew the river wouldn’t win now.

Hand over hand, he brought them back to safety.

The chopper was in the air. Brij and the others were all in plastic handcuffs, captured and transported.

Brij had never seen the valley from this perspective. He also knew it would be his last view of it. He had no doubt that he and the two dozen other Clan members would be sent to the factory. Some might be executed by stoning, but with such a large group, they would be valuable as slaves in the factories.

Brij wore a wan smile.

They’d sacrificed themselves to save the rest of the Clan, but it was a sacrifice with even more meaning. The survivors would be sent to the factories, a chance to be among the poor, the desolate, and the hopeless who lived there.

Caitlyn had helped the Clan more than she could imagine. She’d been a decoy, bringing soldiers to a decoy headquarters. Bar Elohim would believe he’d found a way to destroy the Clan’s ability to remain hidden in the mountain.

But the others were safe and would continue what the Clan had already been doing for a generation. Eventually rumors would reach Bar Elohim, and in a few years, he might understand that he’d failed yet again.

In the meantime, it would be that much easier to help Appalachians reach Outside, where they had freedom of choice and belief. With Bar Elohim convinced the underground railroad had been dismantled, it would operate in far greater safety.

Far more than that, however, was the chance to end the desolation and hopelessness in the factories.

For years, Brij had been wondering how to smuggle faith inside, but Bar Elohim would be doing it for them, unaware that the choppers were the ultimate Trojan horse.

“You have wings,” Billy said. He had his life jacket on again. His voice was filled with awe.

Caitlyn had spread them to let them dry after their time in the river. They were back in the cavern, downstream from where they’d nearly drowned at the rope bridge.

“I have wings,” Caitlyn said, simply. They covered her arms as if wings and arms were one unit. Nothing seemed strange about it. As if this had been the destiny of her body and she’d finally reached it.

“Are you going Outside too?” he asked. Jordan sat in the wheelchair again, out of earshot, giving them privacy.

“Not by river,” she said. “They’ll be watching for me.”

“Oh.” Billy gave the implication some thought. “But you will be going Outside. Another way.”

She nodded.

He was losing his breath again, the way it had happened the first time he saw her. Her face. Her eyes. He wanted to tell her how looking at her made him feel, but he didn’t know if he could put it into words, not even for himself.

And he was big. Too big. Too slow. Too stupid.

She was exquisite. Beautiful.

He was a lumbering creature of the earth. She was of the sky.

He didn’t deserve to even dream about her, so he said nothing. Only let that feeling of not being able to breathe grow and grow. He hoped he would remember this Outside.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Theo’s already gone into the river. Mrs. Shelton says she’s going to be with us Outside. Will we see you again?”

What he didn’t dare ask was something more direct.
Will I see you again?

“William,” she said, “thank you.”

“William?”

“Stop calling yourself ‘Billy,’” she said. “People call you that because they want you to stay like a little boy trapped in a man’s body. Outside, they won’t know who you were. Don’t let them believe you are less than you are.”

Billy nodded. He wanted to remember this too.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I’ll look for you on the Outside. William.”

He stepped into the current. Faster than he could have guessed, it took him into the passageway that led to freedom.

That was the final picture of Appalachia for him.

Her. In shadows. Wings outstretched. Beautiful.

In the new millennium, when scientists completely understood the human DNA code, advances in medicine became astoundingly rapid. For the wealthy, embryonic screening eliminated every hereditary disease; embryonic stem-cell technology led to an industry of organ cultivation, and the extremely wealthy were able to extend their lives by purchasing new hearts and livers, custom ordered from a laboratory.

It didn’t stop there.

Understand that at the one-cell stage, an embryo is much like an egg. The outer cell wall is like the shell. The nucleus at the center is the yolk, containing the DNA that programs the growth of that embryo. Soon, the one cell divides into two, then four, then eight, and continues to divide.

Different strands of DNA are coded to become active as cells begin to specialize. Scientists learned early to take advantage of this. They first learned to create flies that had up to fourteen pairs of eyes, simply by adding a snippet of DNA into the nucleus at the one-cell stage.

Because every cell contains the entire DNA code for that organism, any changes inserted into the nucleus at the one-cell stage will be replicated in the nucleus of every new cell created. Once the embryo matures to adulthood and reproduces, it will pass these changes to the next generation of its species through its offspring. Thus biotechnology and the funds and the secret blessing of certain military agencies literally gave scientists the power to begin to reengineer the human species.

In your innocent childhood, you were unable to comprehend what science had given to you. And stolen from you because of the solitude and loneliness inflicted upon you with a single injection of a DNA strand into the single embryonic cell which became your being…

EPILOGUE

T
hey’d been waiting for Caitlyn’s shoulder to heal from the knife wound and for a clear, moonless night, with wind coming off the eastern slope of the high ridge that overlooked the perimeter fence of Appalachia.

Unlike the climb a few weeks earlier near Cumberland Gap, on this night there was no mystery in climbing to the tree-stunted top of this mountain. Caitlyn knew exactly where they were headed and why.

During the ascent, the silence between Caitlyn and Jordan was as strained as it had been since Billy had pulled her from the river. The wind helped them up the western side of the mountain. It wasn’t until they reached the narrow ridge that its force seemed malevolent, with a strength set on pushing them into the abyss, down into the orange glow of lights that marked the perimeter fence, a long line snaking around the base of the mountain and disappearing miles away.

It also seemed as if the wind tugged at Caitlyn’s soul. A wind much colder than this summer air. During all the days since the pursuit had ended in the waterfall cavern, days without the adrenaline of fear to distract her, she’d endured long, long hours with the words of Jordan’s letter to haunt her.

“We had agreed—the woman I loved and I—that as soon as you were born, we would perform an act of mercy and decency and wrap you in a towel to drown you in a nearby sink of water.”

He stood silently beside her. She had no doubt what he wanted. Absolution from her. A single word of forgiveness or love.

They were poised at the moment of separation. On the other side, she might never see him again. She could sense how badly he wanted to speak.

An abyss stretched in front of them. One also lay between them. The numbness that Caitlyn used so effectively for survival against Mason Lee would not leave.

“The letter you gave me near Cumberland Gap, it doesn’t tell the whole story, does it?” Caitlyn asked.

Jordan’s legs were braced against the wind, and he steadied himself.

When he didn’t answer or even look at her, she continued. “You led Mason away from me and expected to die or to be put in a factory. Even then, you avoided all of the truth in the last words I might get from you.”

“Yes. There is more.”

She couldn’t see his face. It was too dark. On a moonlit night, or one with a low cloud bank reflecting the orange lights, the chance that a guard looking upward might see her outlined against the sky was too great. Tonight was perfect for escape.

“Even now…are you going to keep it from me?”

“Since the river, each morning I would tell myself that ‘Today is the day I will tell her the rest.’ But I could never find the right moment. Or the courage. We seem like strangers. When you look at me, all I see is a silent accusation. When I tried to talk to you, I mean
really
talk to you—you’d find an excuse to change the subject.”

“I’ve had a lot to think about.” The numbness now felt like ice. “I’m sure you can understand that.”

“I could see the transformation coming. I had to get you out of Appalachia. But if you went by river, the Outsiders waiting to help would have turned you over to the government. You would have been caught.”

He gestured at the abyss in front of them. “The only way out was this.”

“You could have brought me here. You could have explained what was happening to my body. You could have helped me fly over the fence without using me as a decoy.”

Caitlyn shuddered at an image of Mason Lee and the knife poised over her belly. It had been the evil as much as the threat that terrified her.

“Don’t you think I agonized over that? The risk to you against the certainty that the Clan would eventually be destroyed?”

“You hid all of that from me.” She’d wanted to voice this accusation since surviving the waterfall. It seemed to explode from her, as her wings had.

“The risks for you to reach Brij were meant to be minimized by my capture. I had the information for Mason on a vidpod in my pocket. He was supposed to take it to Bar Elohim so they could set up a trap for you in the valley. I was the one at greatest risk. Not you. I was prepared to die.”

“Even that was selfish. You could have told me.”

“And what would you have done with the knowledge?”

“You made me a decoy. You and Brij talked of freedom, but you didn’t give me a choice.”

He tried to touch her shoulder, but she stepped away. “You learned of it when you reached Brij. You didn’t go into the mines without knowing you were the decoy.”

“How could I refuse at that point?”

“Others would have.” He was shaking. It took her a moment to realize he was weeping noiselessly.

She wanted so badly to let go of her pain and anger and comfort him. But she couldn’t. The betrayal had been too great.

“Finally, tears for what you did to me?”

“Bar Elohim was going to destroy—”

“No! What you did
to
me.” Only a couple of feet separated them, but to Caitlyn, the abyss seemed infinite. “Do I need to show you my wings to remind you?”

Despite the dark, she could see him fight to get control of his emotions. “I’ve lived with it every moment since you were born. I knew watching you leave would be difficult, but my heart didn’t understand it until now.”

Caitlyn felt like her own face was as cold and rigid as the bare stone of the precipice. “I’m so angry. I wish I wasn’t, especially now. I want it like it was between us.”

“It can’t be the same. You have to go over the fence. You have no future in Appalachia.”

“I want it like it was before I knew that you were the one who did this to me.” She prayed he would deny it, but only the wind across the rock made any sound.

“I know what Mason wanted from me.” She’d had days to think about the letter. About the silver canister. She became almost savage. “My eggs. He wanted to cut me open and harvest my eggs like I was an animal. That’s what they wanted from me. The Outside. My eggs.”

“Enough.” His whisper was barely audible above the sweeping wind.

“Am I right?”

“The research used was destroyed. You are all that remains. Your genetic code would almost be enough to bring the project back to where it was. With eggs, all it would take is fertilization and surrogate mothers.”

“And more freaks would be born?”

“Caitlyn…we have all been designed to soar with angels. Our souls will someday leave the prisons of our bodies and return home. In one way or another, God allows us to fly.”

“Do you know how you sound?”

“I don’t know how I sound. But I feel like a broken man.”

“Would you prefer to be a broken angel? When I was born, you
should
have drowned me.”

“Caitlyn…”

She knew how badly she was hurting him. She couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to flail, to strike out. Anything to lance her own pain.

Jordan reached out for her again. She took another step away. “You couldn’t tell me who I’d become, because then I’d ask how you knew. Because you were the scientist who did this to me. Are you going to deny that?”

“You know what’s waiting for you on the other side and how to get there,” he said. He seemed calm again, the Papa of strength that she so desperately wanted to love without reservation. “Once you have the surgery, you won’t be—”

“Should I say it again? A freak.”

“You have no reason to forgive me. Just know this. I love you as big and forever as the sky. That will never change.”

Their childhood game.

This was the moment she could erase all the anger. Just one word would do it.

Papa.

Instead, in cold, blind anger, she leaped into the abyss, stretching out her arms and wings, letting the wind pull her away.

Her memories of flight in the waterfall cavern had seemed like a surreal dream, blurred by the terror inflicted on her by Mason Lee.

But here it was again. The instinctive adjustments of her wings, so like the hawks she had watched with such envy as a child. She too trusted in the same fabric of nothingness that let them soar.

She exulted in fierce joy, and in that moment, far above the ground, weightless, flying, she realized that this was her destiny. In the womb she’d been designed for this freedom.

That joy and that flash of realization shattered the numbness, tore away the anger, let the love warm her again.

“Papa,” she cried.

Then the backdraft rushed against her, carrying her away, and it was too late to turn back. Caitlyn was over the fence.