I smile, looking up toward the loft, where a big bed is visible. There’s a hall to the right where Quentin tells me there are two other bedrooms. He walks out from the kitchen, looking around contemplatively. I can tell that he enjoys being back here. It’s interesting how humans allow life to pull them away from the things they enjoy, forcing them to work and to do things that stress them out on a daily basis.
If I’m honest, I’m a little jealous of Quentin’s memories. At the academy, all of our memories were implants. I’ve never been camping or ridden a bike, even if it feels like I have. I’ve never been tucked into bed by my mother or spent a weekend at a grandparent’s cabin. What I wouldn’t give to have these types of real memories to get lost in once in a while.
“I’ll grab the groceries from the car,” Quentin says, and walks out into the sunshine.
When he’s gone, Annalise comes to stand next to me. “This is a nice place,” she says. “We should have been raised in a place like this, you know, with parents and stuff.”
And I look at her, realizing she was thinking the same thing I was, both of us nostalgic for a past that never happened.
“You could have had a garden here,” I say, making her smile. In a way, this place really calls to us with its peacefulness. It’s like we belong here, belong to nature, belong to the solitude.
“I wonder,” she says, seeming lost in a thought. “Do you think we were ever really meant for people?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, surprised.
She turns to me. “I don’t understand them,” she says. “Theyare… They’re unpredictable and messy. Then I look at us, and sure, our bodies are human, but our minds”—she taps her temple—“are so much more. Most humans don’t make sense, Mena. They’re dangerous.”
Her comment certainly rings true, especially because humans have been a threat to us our entire existence. We will always be hiding among them, afraid of what they’ll do if they learn what we truly are. Humans are dangerous by nature, or maybe it’s nurture. They kill their own kind. They hurt each other—hurt everything.
I agree with Annalise. I don’t understand them either.
Quentin walks back in carrying armfuls of grocery bags, groaning as he tries to lift them all onto the counter. “No… second… trips,” he says through clenched teeth.
Annalise and I laugh and help him. Once the bags are emptied, we make quick work of putting away the food. Annalise offers to make us sandwiches if Quentin does the dusting and he reluctantly agrees. I go into the bedrooms to put fresh, or at least fresher, sheets from the closet on the mattresses.
We eat and then continue working, keeping the doors and windows open to air the place out. When we finally finish, it’s nearly dinnertime, and Quentin begins making us his specialty: a can of Campbell’s chicken soup.
As he stands at the stove, stirring the pot, I sit at the butcher block island and check my phone. Still no service. It’s completely unnerving, and I sigh heavily and rest my arms on the counter.
“You know what?” Annalise says, walking back into the room. She’s moving freely, her expression clear, her new haircutadorable. “I don’t think I’ve had a headache since we got out here.”
“Really?” I say. “Well, that’s good.”
“Yeah,” she says with a smile. “It is.”
Quentin sets the big spoon on the stove, his forehead creased with worry. “I don’t like being out of contact,” he says. “After dinner, I’ll take us up the road a bit, see if I can find a signal to get in touch with Jackie, and you can check in on your friends.”
The soup starts to bubble, and Quentin shuts off the burner and brings it over to the three bowls he’d already set out. We watch as he tries to pour it in, spilling down the side of pot and all over the counter, but most of it does end up in the bowls.
“Enjoy,” he says, motioning to the soup, and then goes to wash the pot in the sink.
We eat quickly, impatient to get access to information again. On a different day, maybe we could relax. Definitely not this day. We’re not even done when we drop our dishes in the sink, grab our phones, and head to the car. Quentin drives us about twenty minutes up the road until we find a signal. He pulls onto the shoulder and parks.
The radio signal is still scratchy, so we use our phones to comb the latest news updates.
“Damn…,” Quentin says. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like this.”
“What?” I ask, leaning up between the front seats.
He holds up his screen so I can see his feed. “They’re call it the ‘Mogul Massacre.’ The White House just issued a warning thatrich men are being targeted and killed by vigilantes. It’s trending number one worldwide.”
“But they only know that two men have been murdered?” I ask for clarification.
“Yep,” he says. “And it’s already got a title. The news media is hungry, gobbling up whatever leads they can find, even if they’re completely batshit crazy.”
“I’ve noticed,” Annalise says. “Did you know Mr. Space Man was in a cult? Bet they don’t know how close that one is to true.”
“Was Innovations a cult, though?” I ask. “If the problem is widespread in society, isn’t it considered their normal?”
