“I’m guessing you found Joshua,” Larry said, standing over me with a haughty expression. His gun was lowered but only a little. “Was he dead or alive?”
The fact that Larry didn’t seem to care all that much made me see red. I didn’t answer, only glared until the old man continued, “I’m going to assume he’s alive because you’d be a lot more distraught if he’d been dead.” Larry nodded as if contemplating that development. “Well, good on you. I always knew you were a skilled tracker, though this certainly complicates things.”
“Leave them alone. They won’t cause any trouble. Besides, they’re already on their way out of here.”
“They’re not waiting for you?” Larry asked, eyes canny.
“They have orders to leave without me if I’m not back in the next half hour.”
That should simplify things for him. Without the others here to challenge his word, he could make up some excuse about my untimely death, and the whole town could continue on as if nothing had happened.
Larry nodded, as agreeable as ever. “Well, then I’ve got the time. Mind if I sit?”
“It’s your fucking house,” I snarled.
“Kid, we’ve enjoyed a good working relationship so far. No need to be hostile.”
“Fuck you very much,BrotherLarry. This has been a great learning experience in how not to trust anyone. Too bad I won’t be able to grow from it, since it appears you’re just going to kill me.”
Larry sighed as if he were the one who was being inconvenienced in all this. “I’m not happy about it. I was training you up to be the next me. Aside from your homosexual leanings and the soft spot you have for your mate, you’d make an excellent Chairman of the Health and Safety Committee.”
“What a fucking joke,” I spat. “More like the Human Trafficking Committee.”
“It’s not personal, Cipher, it’s commerce. Like any growing community, our needs outpace our production. There are things we simply cannot manufacture, like guns or gasoline or a neonatal incubator.”
“So you sell off one of your own? You’re no better than a slaver.”
Larry shrugged. “Maybe not, but Joshua’s sacrifice would have benefited the rest of the Fellowship greatly, just like soldiers going off to war. We all have to do our part.”
“They go willingly. They’re not tricked or sold.”
Larry made a clicking sound with his teeth. “Well, now who’s being naive?”
I bit my tongue, seething in my anger and the fact that he now had the upper hand. Even still, I didn’t regret coming here and confronting him face-to-face. The Assholes would get along without me. They’d take care of Kitten in my absence.
“Why him?” I said.
Larry placed the gun on his lap, still pointed in my direction with his finger on the trigger. There were other things I’d rather be doing with my last few minutes of life, like holding Kitten close to me, but I needed to make sense of it all, his duplicity and my willingness to trust someone who was clearly a very bad man.
“He fit the Council’s criteria,” Larry said.
“And what was the criteria?”
“Someone newly arrived, preferably with no parents as they tend to be more difficult to soothe when it comes to losing a child. I told Jeremiah last time we couldn’t afford to give up any more women of reproductive age, which left the four of you. The red-headed one is a hell of an inventor. I mean, you should see the things he’s working on over there in the machine shop. Macon is of sturdy stock and has made known his interest in breeding, and you…” Larry shook his head and gave a rueful smile. “You’re too much of a hellcat. You wouldn’t make for an easy captive.”
“But Joshua would?”
“The kid needs someone to protect him.” Larry nodded, agreeing with himself. “Jeremiah would have done a decent enough job of keeping him alive, if the benefits outweighed the cost.”
I didn’t want to imagine those “benefits” during my last minutes here on earth.
“And what was the plan for me? You had to know I’d have figured it all out eventually.”
“First off, I didn’t count on you finding him. Granted, that was my mistake. Second, I figured your grief would overwhelm any critical thinking you might have about it, and third, well, there’s always the drugs.”
The drugs would have kept me sedated, compliant, and unable to trust my own mind. I vowed then and there that if I ever got away from this motherfucker, I’d be quitting cold turkey.
“With that being said, I’m assuming, since you’ve arrived back here so quickly, that you are now in possession of Jeremiah’s rig? And what has become of the man himself?”
