The Tower (47 page)

Terry was again in the closest cell. She stood quietly as I entered. My eyes met Terry’s for a split second, and then I looked down at the concrete floor. I had only seen Terry for a brief instant, but I couldn’t help noticing the stump below her left elbow.

I heard Terry say, “Back from the dead, Adrian? It’s about time.”

“Hi,” I said quietly, unable to meet her eyes.

“Hi,” Terry replied evenly.

“Hi,” I said again to the floor.

“Anything else you wanted to say?”

I shook my head and mumbled, “Um... I
–
I think I’m just going to stick with ‘Hi.’”

“Are you okay?” asked Terry.

The question threw me for a moment.

“Me?” I asked quietly. “Sure. I’m okay.”

“Good,” Terry replied crisply.

“Terry...” I began, still looking down. “I... I don’t know what to say.”

“That much is obvious, Adrian.”

“I was so panicked that night, Terry,” I said. “I never really thought about what I was asking of you. All I could think about was Cindy. And Alia losing her mother. I never once thought about your brother... about Gabriel.”

Suddenly Terry shouted, “Adrian Howell, I am not angry at you!”

I looked up at her. Terry looked into my eyes and said quietly, “Don’t blame yourself for Gabriel, Adrian. It was my choice. In a way, I was always kind of hoping you would unlock that memory before I got the codes
. I thought I could choose, Adrian. I thought I could choose my brother over you and Alia and Cindy. I thought I could do it, but I couldn’t.” Terry sighed and turned her back to me. “But I couldn’t choose you over my brother, either. They were slowly cutting him up. You were right, Adrian. Some things are beyond choice. The truth is, I was very conflicted, right up to the last minute.”

“That’s why you insisted on going aboard the boat,” I said slowly. “You didn’t want to wait for the Guardians because you were thinking about handing Alia and me over to the Angels.”

Still looking away, Terry nodded heavily. “The thought did cross my mind.”

“If they hadn’t attacked us...”

Terry turned toward me, and I noticed that her eyes were a touch watery. “I don’t know, Adrian,” she said. “I don’t know anymore what I would have done. Mr. Baker is probably right to keep me here.”

“I’m so sorry this happened, Terry. I’m sorry for everything.”

“Save it, Adrian!” Terry said harshly. “I got what I deserved.”

“You didn’t deserve this!” I insisted. “You were right, Terry. I might have done the same!”

“You couldn’t betray your family, Adrian. You couldn’t betray one for the other.”

I nodded and said softly, “Neither could you, Terry.”

We looked at each other silently. It soon got too uncomfortable for me, and I broke the silence, saying, “So what are you doing down here every day?”

Terry gave me a slight smile. “Studying, training, sleeping...”

“Training?” I asked, noticing the dumbbells on the floor of her cell.

“Sure,” said Terry. “I only have one arm left. I’ll need it to be twice as strong.”

“I’m sorry about your arm, Terry,” I said. “I wish there had been another way.”

Terry shook her head. “Don’t be sorry, Adrian. You saved my life. I wasn’t sure you’d have it in you, though.”

I scoffed. “I had just
killed
someone, Terry. Believe me, cutting your arm off was not that big of a deal.”

Terry laughed, and I did too, but it was short-lived and somewhat artificial.

“You know,” said Terry, “I hadn’t killed anyone until that night either. I always thought it would be harder than it was.”

“I hoped it would be easier,” I said quietly. “I guess we’re still a world apart.”

“Don’t take it too hard, Adrian. I think you did wonderfully. It’ll be easier for you next time.”

It surprised me a little that I didn’t mind hearing Terry say that. In the past, that kind of comment would have quickly escalated into an argument. But now, I merely nodded quietly.

I asked, “Just out of curiosity, why are you the only one in jail here? I thought the Knights caught the pyroid that tried to burn Alia. And there must have been a battle when they caught up with Cindy.”

Terry explained, “Well, I wasn’t there, but I heard that the Knights didn’t actually capture the pyroid. They followed him at a distance to Cindy’s escort. The Knights outnumbered the Seraphim three to one, but they weren’t about to take any chances with Cindy.”

“So they killed them all?”

“Yeah,” said Terry. “I guess I got off lucky.”

“Not that lucky,” I said, glancing again at her severed arm.

“You know,” said Terry, raising her left stump, “it’s been a couple of days now but i
t still feels strange. I had heard that amputees could sometimes still feel their missing parts, but I didn’t know what that meant until now. How about you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I could never feel my ears in the first place.”

We laughed again. It was suddenly just a bit easier to laugh with her.

“Have you seen the news article about us?” asked Terry.

“Article?” I repeated, raising my eyebrows. I remembered Mr. Baker talking about the cost of keeping us out of the news.

“I have the clipping here. Want to see?” Terry passed me a sheet of thick white paper through the bars. It had a small cut-out newspaper article glued to it, and I stared at the headline.

“Girls Steal Police Car,” I read aloud, trying miserably to keep a straight face.

“Should’ve worn that jacket I gave you, Adrian,” said Terry, laughing.

I skimmed through the article. There were no names, and no detailed descriptions. It just said that a group of three young girls shot two police officers and took a short joyride through the city streets before abandoning their stolen squad car near the river. I was happy to learn that both cops were expected to make a full recovery.

Terry said, “I’ve got the article about the boat sinking too, somewhere around here. Mr. Baker made sure the media didn’t make any connections between the two incidents.”

“What’s the story on the boat?” I asked.

“Vandals,” replied Terry. “It’s a weak cover, but nobody cared about that boat anyway.”

We stared at each other through the bars for a moment. This time, Terry broke the silence first.

“Adrian?” she said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“It’s good to see you alive.”

“It’s good to see you too, Terry,” I said, smiling.

“Will you come down here sometimes so that we can talk?”

“I’ll come here every day,” I promised. “You’re the only friend I have in New Haven, you know. Aside from a few adults, anyway.”

“I haven’t been much of a friend,” mumbled Terry, looking away.

“You’ve been a great friend, Terry,” I said, knowing how embarrassed I was making her feel and enjoying it immensely. “You
are
a great friend.”

I sat with Terry for a while longer before bidding her goodnight and returning to 3502. It was still my first day on my feet since my short death, so I spent the rest of the evening indoors. Our beds and dressers had been moved down from the penthouse, and Alia and I were sharing a room considerably smaller than the one upstairs. Alia had retrieved her unicorn from the healers’ office, and Cindy teased her about not telling me its name.

That night, as I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling and listening to Alia’s soft breathing, I couldn’t help but reflect upon how much things had changed since I had started living in New Haven last summer.

On the day of my arrival, I had told Cindy that I had had enough fighting for a lifetime. That was true then, and even more true now, but one thing was different: If the occasion called for it, then I was no longer unwilling to fight. There’s nothing quite like getting part of your head blown off to put things into perspective. A fight can come to you regardless of how you live, and you have to be ready and willing. That’s how people survive in the real world. When they need to, they fight.

Even kill.

Last year, I had told Mark that I didn’t believe self-preservation automatically justified killing. I realized now how naive I had been. I had almost been killed for my self-indulgent philosophy. I might have gotten Alia killed. It was stupid of me to put my pacifist ideals above reality. The moral argument ends the moment someone tries to hurt the people you love. I still felt sorry for the people we had killed, but I no longer felt at all sorry that we killed them. In the end, it really was either us or them. Given the same circumstances, I would kill again. I sincerely hoped that there would be no next time, but if there was, I suspected that it would be easier.

As I opened my eyes the next morning, I was quite surprised to discover that I had made it through the entire night without waking up screaming, even once. And the next night was almost as peaceful, as was the one after it. My nightmares had, for the most part, abated.

Even so, over the following days, my waking hours were invaded by a number of what-ifs that kept popping into my head at odd times.

What if the light-foot’s pistol hadn’t jammed? I’d be dead right now. What if Terry had killed the pyroid? The Knights would never have found Cindy. What if I had had my way and left Alia in the holding block? She wouldn’t have been there to heal us. What if Alia had been killed by the pyroid? What if I couldn’t find anything to cut Terry’s arm with? What if there hadn’t been a water-breather among the Knights on the boat? What if? What if? What if? Terry had once said to me, “Luck will only get you so far before it gets you killed.” Had we merely been lucky?

It took a while, but I eventually pulled myself clear of these what-ifs. I was never one to believe that all things happen the way they do for a reason. But things do happen the way they do, and that’s that. In the end, there’s little point in being obsessed over what might have happened, so I stopped.

“Alia
tells me that you haven’t had any nightmares this week,” remarked Cindy over lunch one day, and I was surprised to discover that it had already been a full week since I regained consciousness in the healers’ office.

“Actually, I’ve had a few,” I admitted. “I just haven’t woken up with them.”

“That’s still much better.”

“It is,” I agreed. A little PTSD wasn’t nearly as bad as being haunted by a memory.

“You seem happier these days too,” said Cindy.

“I am,” I replied. “I think I finally found my place here.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

I explained, “My problem, Cindy, was that ever since we arrived in New Haven, I’ve been trying everything I could to live a normal life.”

Cindy shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s impossible!” I laughed.

“That’s not a very cheerful thought, Adrian,” Cindy said with a frown. “Sure you want to give up?”

“It’s impossible,” I repeated happily. “I’m a psionic destroyer. I live with the Heart of New Haven. I share my room with the weirdest nine-year-old alive. The kids in this town treat me like a rabid dog, and the only friend I ever made is in jail.”

“When you put it that way, it does seem impossible,” agreed Cindy.

“It does. But you know what, Cindy?”

“What?”

I looked into her eyes and smiled. “Impossible is fine. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Cindy, Alia and I continued to live on the thirty-fifth floor. The renovations to our penthouse were taking much longer than we had expected. How long did it take to replace a few windowpanes, anyway? While we weren’t particularly inconvenienced in the smaller 3502, it certainly had its downsides. Cindy grumbled about the lack of kitchen space we had here compared to the penthouse. Alia missed splashing around in the huge Jacuzzi bathtub. For my part, I missed the pool table and the view from the greenhouse windows.

But most of all, we missed our friend. The one and only thing that really frustrated me these days was that the Guardians were still keeping Terry locked up in an underground prison even worse than the one Alia and I had once been in.