Fox Forever (Jenna Fox Chronicles 3)

“Why do you keep calling him the Secretary? The Secretary! He’s my father, for God’s sake!”

I stand and step toward her. “No, he isn’t! And you know he’s not! Not even in the loosest sense. And that’s another truth I didn’t want to tell you. He’s your captor, Raine. Your warden. You weren’t a piece of trash. You never were. He didn’t save you—he stole you. You once had two parents who loved you. He threw them both in prison, burned down their house, and then took you like you were a piece of confiscated property because he thought you might have information he needed. That’s what all those scans have been about. He wants the account numbers just like the Resistance does.”

She puts her hands over her ears. “You’re lying! Stop! It’s all lies!”

I grab her hands and force them down. “You’re going to listen, and you’re going to listen to it all.”

Her hands tremble.

“Your mother’s name is Miesha. She has scars all across her arms from where she shoved them through a window trying to save you from the fire. They told her you were dead and threw her in prison for eleven years for being part of the Resistance.

“Your father’s name is Karden. Everyone thinks he’s dead too. He’s the one who’s being held by the Secretary in a secret location. That’s how I was hurt. Not cats and stairs. I went looking for him, but there are animals down in those tunnels that the Secretary counts on to keep people away. They nearly killed me. That’s what I was looking for in his office. A safer way in.

“Your father—” I shake my head, not sure she can even fathom the importance of what I’m about to tell her. “Your real father was the leader of the Resistance. Without him to lead it, the Resistance died. People need him. Like all those Non-pacts you visited. Non-pact children who laugh and play and cry and have dreams and hopes just like any other child. Children just like the child you would have been.”

I watch everything in her struggling to maintain control, from the faint tremor of her fists, to her frozen pinpoint pupils. “Rebecca,” I whisper. “Your real name is Rebecca.”

I watch her eyes change, her pupils growing to large black circles, like she’s been drugged by the memory of another time when that name was whispered in her ear. A sound that’s vaguely familiar. She shakes her head and brushes past me, stopping at the arbor, almost hanging on to it, and then she turns, slowly sliding to the seat as if her legs will no longer support her.

I step back, wondering how I’ll tell her the rest, but it all has to be said.

She looks up at me, defiantly, waiting, like she’s regained her footing, found her way back to the old Raine who believes in nothing but distance, who has found a way to survive by not believing in anything at all. “Your time’s almost up,” she says.

“You wanted truth, Raine. And this is the rest of it. I don’t want you to say anything. I don’t want you to respond. I just need you to listen, because I may not get another chance to say it. I’m telling you all of this because—

“Because something went wrong. Something happened. Something I never planned or anticipated. I was only traveling from one side of the country to the other trying to find a life. Trying to rebuild a life that was stolen from me. Because there’s another secret about myself that you need to know, maybe the biggest reason I never told you the truth, the thing I’ve always been terrified to reveal because I was afraid it would change your feelings about me.”

I pull the Swiss knife from my pack and pull out the largest blade. It’s the only way she’ll ever really believe what I’m about to tell her. I yank up my sleeve and swipe it across my arm, first blood, and then blue BioPerfect trickles from the wound. I hear her gasp. “This is the real me, Raine. Illegal in every possible way.”

Her mouth opens but she doesn’t speak. I tell her the whole story, my prior life, my years trapped in limbo, my new body, Kara, Jenna, being on the run, and Dot, who had more humanity in her than most humans I know. I tell her how I was trying to come to grips with my old life that had vanished, and understand the new one I had to live, the life I was trying to find here, until I finally come full circle, back to where I started. “But something went wrong.” I go well beyond my allotted ten minutes and she never moves, never blinks. I wonder if she’s even hearing me anymore, but when I finish she closes her eyes like she’s blocking me and the world out.

“Raine,” I whisper. I step closer, like I’m pleading for my life, pleading for us. “I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even want it. It was the worst possible thing that could happen, but it did happen. I fell in love. With you. That part of me was never fake. That’s probably the only real thing I have. I love you, Raine. I love you.”

She opens her eyes. I look at her face, every angle, every eyelash, every muscle struggling to hide what she’s feeling, but I still see it, so much pain, so much anger and fear, such a whirlwind of emotions that I can’t tell if there’s anything left in her for me. Her eyes glisten. I step toward her but she puts up her hand to stop me and shakes her head, unable to speak. Like if I take one more step she will crumble.

“I know I blew it. That’s a phrase from my time that means that I ruined the best chance I ever had of being happy, but that’s because even though I have BioPerfect beneath my skin, I’m still not perfect, just like I never was, and never will be. But if I could do everything over again, I would. Almost everything. Some things I’d want to stay exactly the same.”

I stare at her, waiting, hoping. Her eyes are fixed on mine, seconds passing, a tightrope, a lifetime of decisions churning in them.

She looks away, and my throat swells. It wasn’t the answer I wanted.

I walk over and grab my pack from the ground. “I’m still committed to what needs to be done. I’m not going to live my entire life on the run. I’m going down in that tunnel tomorrow night, with or without the information I need, with or without your help.”

“You might be killed.”

“That’s right. But time’s running out and there’s a man down there who believes in the same thing I do. We all have to believe in something, Raine. Even if it means there’s a risk. But our risks have to matter. If the only risk you ever want to take is walking on the ledges of rooftops, I guess that’s your choice.”

“How do I know everything you’re saying right now isn’t a lie too? Just to get what you need from me? Like before?”

I look in her eyes and shake my head, hoping she’ll look long enough and deep enough to see something in me that isn’t artificial and manufactured. More than anyone else in the world, I need her to see that. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know how you can know anything for sure. It’s a risk. Something only you can figure out. If you don’t believe me, call the Secretary. Turn me in. Maybe I won’t even make it off this rooftop tonight. But at least I tried. I gave something I believed in a shot.”

I reach in my pack and throw her the eye of Liberty. Her reflexes are still fast, like the trained athlete she is, and she catches it. “Keep it,” I say. “It’s yours. I don’t want to find the other one without you.”

She doesn’t say anything, just grips the piece of glass in her fist.

“I guess my ten minutes are up,” I say.

“Yes,” she agrees. “They are.”