𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬

CHAPTER 15: UNCOVERING

"What the fuck?" asked Harch, looking at us with a shocked face.

"See for yourself," I said and showed him the Roache book.

He picked it up and looked at it in every single angle possible, convinced it was fake. He opened the book and started reading the lines we didn't have time to, and his eyes widened more and more before his face was filled with despair.

I never thought I would see him like that before. Harch was usually very serious and an overthinker, but this time he had no ground to hold onto. I didn't know what that book meant, but whatever it was, it seemed very serious.

"Where did you find this?" he asked me.

"At her office when I went to report my experiments," I answered.

"Do you know what this means?!" he hissed. "If she knows we have this we can be killed!"

"Why? What is happening?!" asked Nate.

Harch looked around, looking for something, and then pushed us inside an empty room, locking the door and pulling two chairs for us.

"Do you know what Roaches are?" he asked.

"Someone opposed to the Cicadas," I answered. "Only that,"

"Well, they're not 'only that," he continued. "They didn't only kill us, they made everything hard for us. Roaches are the reason we don't have the cure already. They enjoy this world and they want to keep it this way. They were responsible for your father's death AND the destruction of the remaining cure. I'm amazed that you're still alive after revealing that to her,"

"So what do we do?" I asked. "Confront her?"

He shook his head.

"If we try to fight her she can call the entire Roaches here. No wonder why they always knew where to attack when we went in expeditions," he continued. "Your father was right in not trusting her,"

"But you didn't trust my father," I said.

"No, I didn't,"

I sighed. We were clueless on what to do now. Pandora was the leader of both Cicadas AND Roaches, and it was clear on whose side she was on. I needed a way to find out how to keep working on the cure without drawing her attention. I could use the failed attempts as a manner of hiding it, but it wouldn't work for so long.

"No wonder my dad spent months away from home trying to make this cure," I said. "Trying to hide it must've been hard,"

And then Harch looked at me, with visible confusion in his eyes.

"He said he spent months away from here, at home," he said. "Marthio was never here for longer than a week,"

And then I became confused as well.

"Then where was he?" I asked.

"I don't know," he answered. "He always went east after finishing his week here. We never tried to make him stay, we knew Marthio was stubborn as hell,"

It was getting more and more confusing.

"But our house was west from here," I continued. "Wherever he was going, it was not home. Did he used to say that he needed something from another place?"

Harch shook his head.

"He only joked that the CSII was useless sometimes," he said. "But never said anything besides that,"

And that's when I knew. I might not have known my father as much as they did, but if there was a thing I was certain of it was that my father never, ever joked. Not even in funny moments. He was the most serious man I've ever met, and he took everything literally, which meant... the Cell Synthesizer II was, indeed, useless.