𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬

CHAPTER 19: THE DEATH CURE

"It was my arm, not my neck," she said. "And your father taught me how to play dead,"

I sighed, watching my breath on a cold night at the roof of the hospital. They agreed to let me stay there for a night before I left. I had decided to talk to my mother instead of ignoring her for hours straight.

"I had killed him, I was right in front of you," I said. "Why you kept playing dead?"

It was her turn to sigh.

"Your father said that if people came looking for me or you, we'd run away and find him at another place. But I didn't want you to keep living like this. Always hidden, always alone, always in danger," she kept going. "So I let you go, you had enough training to survive, and cold blood to kill. I thought you'd go looking for your father, but instead, you just settled somewhere else. I never found you again. And when I found your dad here, with a bullet in his head, I knew I had made a huge mistake,"

It was too much to take in. My situation was completely different now. There was no cure, my mom was alive, and I left my family alone in this apocalyptic world. The first thing I'd do after leaving that place was going looking for them.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked. "There's no cure, there's no me, there's no dad,"

"I was hoping you'd... let me go with you, but I can see you got your father's temper, so it'll take a little while before you forgive me if you forgive me," she answered. "I think I'll just stay here. These guys are what is left of the real Cicadas. Pandora converted the rest into her psychotic cult,"

That talk remembered me of something else.

"She's your sister...," I said. "That caught my attention,"

"I was adopted," she started. "Before the Furfall. Her family took me in when no one else would. They took care of me as her own daughter. Our relationship was perfect. They loved me, and Pandora was my best friend in the entire world until... it happened. Our parents died and we were left alone in our house. Two seventeen-year-olds, not knowing what to do to survive. Until we met two Sphinx cats. Your father and his brother,"

"Dad had a brother?" I interrupted her.

"He did. Older brother, as intelligent as your father was. They were twenty-five at the time and took us to a military base. I never saw brighter boys in my entire life. They made scientists mad with their knowledge, they frustrated the trainers with their combat abilities. It was as if they were unbeatable in every activity. Until, of course, they took off to different paths. Marthio was friends with other boys, and I sat with them to pass time. Apparently, he was a biology teacher, and the three young people were his students. I still remember the sadness in that wolf, as if he had lost his world. His brother, however, was friends with... the wrong type of people. Pan was crazy about him, and that craziness got us arguments every day, but she never showed her interests outside of a locked room, that's how she got everyone to trust her as well. Marthio wanted to fix the world, his brother wanted to recreate society in this one. This fight ended up destroying that base, and any relationships any group had with the other. The brother died shortly after, never to be seen again. And the groups grew to be the Cicadas and the Roaches you know today,"

"They really changed the world, didn't they?"

"Yeah,"

She took a sip of coffee and then a deep breath. They gave me warm and comfy clothes, and it was then that I realized how bad I used to dress. These were much more warm and comfortable. I could almost sleep standing.

"But what about you?" she asked. "What have you been doing these years?"

"You care?" I asked.

"I wondered every single day,"