“Green and yellow,” I say. “That’s the color in the center of the Silence pod’s insignia.”
I feel like I’m standing outside of my body, trying to catch my breath as the monster’s eyes stare straight into mine. I wasn’t a child. While humans don’t tend to know their exact ages anymore, I was probably twenty or so. I couldn’t be mistaken as a child.
Why did he leave me behind? He should have killed me like they did the rest of my family. From what I’ve been told, the monsters of the Silence pods have no moral dilemmas. They’re just as willing to hurt children as they are adults, so it wasn’t me protecting my young cousins that made him spare me.
Notto gently squeezes my neck and rests his forehead against the side of my head. “I’m proud of you for remembering,” he murmurs. “I’m sure that was difficult for you. We’ll find them.”
“Did they kill my parents?” I ask.
“I think it’s probably best if you believe they did,” he answers.
The alternative is torture that I don’t want to imagine.
It occurs to me that maybe I don’t want to find the pod after all. If I find my parents alive all these years later, it won’t be a good thing for them. Maybe I’ve been chasing them for a different, less vengeful reason.
Maybe I’ve been chasing them because I should have died that day too.
“We’ll find them,” Keary repeats.
I want to tell them that we can turn around. We can go the other way. My mission has been misleading. It was me walking toward death. Chasing it.
Survivor’s guilt. I should have died that day too. Instead, I stayed where my mother hid me with my little cousins and watched them kill my family like a coward.
Keary wraps around me, holding me tightly. “What’s happening right now, precious?” he murmurs in my ear. “Why are you breathing like that? What are you thinking?”
“I should have died that day,” I whisper. “They left me alive. They left my little cousins alive, but we should have died too.”
“You feel guilty,” he guesses.
Bile rises in my throat, and I close my eyes as I nod.
“You know why they left you alive?” Notto asks. I shake my head. “Because you were meant to live. You were meant to find your family.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but not even you believe that,” I say.
Keary laughs. “Called you.” He shoves Notto.
“You know what I think?” Drystan asks. Once again, I shake my head. “I think that not everyone who’s involved with Silence—then and now—agrees with what they’re doing. Some have morals, even if they are few and far between. I think he saw you with those kids and decided to let you go becausehedidn’t believe in hurting children. He didn’t bring anyone’s attention to you because they didn’t share his same morals, so he left you where you were.”
“That doesn’t excuse the bad he’s done,” Keary says. “Drys isn’t suggesting that. But he’s probably right. You can belong to a certain group of people because you believe in their bigger picture. That doesn’t mean you support every stupid decision they make. That’s the difference between being a blind sheep who follows the herd and having your own damn thoughts and opinions.”
“There was a woman scientist,” Drystan says, “when I was little. I remember she’d come in and rock us all. She’d apologizefor our existence and what we were going to face. At the time, I didn’t understand, and I probably still don’t fully understand. But I think that maybe she agreed that some species were too dangerous to exist—the bigger mission of Silence. However, she disagreed with the methods they were taking to reach it and their practice of messing with genetics to create more monsters. Maybe she didn't agree with what they had planned for us.”
I take a breath. Keary’s right. It’s not an excuse, even if it might sound like one. Supporting bad people makes you a bad person. It makes you part of the problem because it gives them power instead of taking it away.
Even if they spared my life, they’re just as guilty of the crimes as their associates. They need to die too. I want to be the one who looks into his eyes as he dies, so he knows that I don’t forgive him for sparing my life because he still took those of my family.
NOTTO
If they’re bad people, kill them. Evil spreads faster than good.
Rainer remains quiet as we begin tracking this particular pod. It’s likely not the same pod that killed his family, but taking care of this pod might be something he also needs to see.
More than anything, I think he needs to see that these pods are being disposed of. Monsters made the mistake of looking the other way once, thinking that Silence wasn’t going to get out of hand. No one is going to let that happen a second time.
Unlike humans, monsters aren’t complacent enough to let history repeat itself.
We step onto the outskirts of Fillee, which happens to be the direction the pod was heading with its victims. At first glance, the city doesn’t look destroyed, but the closer you get, the more you see. The deeper within the city, the greater the destruction.
