Goldilocks Forever

Chapter 60

Walton, New York

March 2043

Beau sat up despite the dizziness and the weakness in his limbs. The words he wanted to say held him upright, yet he stumbled on them. His tongue was too dumb to keep up with the steady stream of thoughts churning in his mind.

"I...you..." He stopped and concentrated on his words. "She was the leader of the New York society."

Toby nodded. "For thirteen months, she and she alone ruled."

Beau shook his head. "I can't believe this. I mean, I don't know why I'm surprised. It's just...all this is a lot to digest." Toby nodded solemnly. "How is the society now? Did she improve things?"

"She was the reason for a lot of good things. She negotiated a deal with the Montreal society to bring medication back to the society and brought money into the coffers. And some of her ideas ended up being pretty good. Not all of them, but still..." Toby leaned forward. "She made history as the first woman leader the society has seen—to this day."

Beau shivered and moved closer to the woodstove. He held his hands out in front of it. "She never went back to California?"

"No."

"How did Sabian react to her being the leader?"

"I have no idea. I wasn't there."

Beau stole a quick glance at Toby's face. He was becoming easier to read. Beau smirked and turned back to the fire until it made him dizzy again and he had to walk away. "You don't like him very much."

"Nope."

"Who's the leader now?"

"Wes...ehh, I'm not going to tell you his full name."

"He any good?"

"Depends on who you ask."

"What's your opinion?"

"Yeah. He's okay. From what I saw and heard, he and Anna figured out how to work together." He ran his hands through his hair. "I know there were times they disagreed and argued, but they figured it out."

Beau settled back down on the sofa. He drew a blanket around his shoulders and shivered.

Toby added another log to the fire even though he had hours ago removed his sweater and now wore a t-shirt. As usual, he was barefoot. The jeans he wore were thin in the knees and stained with tomato sauce. "Anything was an improvement over Max. He and his followers were ruthless. You wouldn't believe the stories we heard."

"I bet I would. I've seen my share of evil—occupational hazard. How do you know what you heard actually happened? Wouldn't Max stand to profit from people's fear of him?"

Toby's voice and eyes dropped. "We found mass graves." Beau could tell the discovery still haunted him. He knew the feeling. "Anyway," Toby gave a small smile, "I was right about Anna. Because she was infected by her twin, her body created antibodies against the virus. The effects were limited, yeah, but they at least kept her better off than E.T."

"What happened to her, anyway?" His aunt. He never had an aunt, couldn't imagine what it would be like to have one. His knowledge of such relatives came only from the experiences his friends had. What kind of aunt would Casey have made?

"I'll get there." Toby frowned. "No, now is the perfect time to tell you this. It's the perfect example of the shit Max's people were famous for. Un-fucking-believable shit like what she did to you."

"To me?" A shiver passed through Beau. He drew the blanket tighter.

"You must not remember. That's a good thing."

"What?" His body continued to shake. He couldn't get warm.

Toby hesitated. "About a year after the election, this would have been 2013—you were six—Montreal finally had enough of supplying New York with drugs. They couldn't keep up with the demand of two societies, so to compensate, their leader tried to jack the price. Wes was having none of that. Flat refused. Anna wanted the society to be self-sufficient, but they didn't have the manpower, equipment, or cash for that. She was the only one in town who knew first hand about the good stuff Hematech cranked out in L.A. They were the only ones creating more than one prescription, tailoring it to the strain of the virus. They only had three, though—nothing like the diversity in New York."

"Why was that?"

"Most people in SoCal were infected by Sabian or Eduoard, and they shared the same source, so any mutations occurred naturally. New York was the proverbial melting pot of sources. Max wasn't the progenitor, he only clawed his way to the top."

Beau nodded his understanding. "So Anna wanted to recreate their own version of Hematech in the society. Did she?"

"It's not as easy as it sounds. Do you have any idea how much money it takes to develop drugs on that scale?"

"How did you and my parents do it?"

"I hacked into Las Vegas's network and stole their formula. With a few small tweaks courtesy of Cleo, it did the job." He smiled.

Beau shivered again, not out of cold, but out of anxiety for the rest of the story. He felt his time running out, seconds elapsing. "What did she do?"

"One of her big ideas was to get all the society leaders together in one place. She thought that if they all knew each other and communicated with each other, the Assassinations of '06 could have been prevented. Plus, she figured they could help each other out. To everyone's surprise, she and Wes actually pulled this off. They organized this big society leader conference thing, although the IDF officially hosted it—for neutrality's sake. Even Julien up in Montreal wanted in on it. He finagled an invitation instead of his usual highway robbery." He smirked. "Their plan was to throw around their weight around and then ask for help. Anna wanted to make a deal with Sabian."

"Did she?"

Toby frowned. "Nothing went as anyone expected."