Verde

Chapter 21: What Are We Doing Here?

     "He was the second to die," Jayden confided.

     They were back at Lev's house, sitting in the kitchen upstairs while the rest of the trainees were in the basement. Elle and Dan had left Cassidy alone to talk to Jayden.

     "I'm remembering so many things now," Cassidy explained. Just seeing her father's face had been enough to trigger memories for her, but finally knowing what her father had been doing that kept him so busy in the years after she was born was like finding the final piece of a puzzle - one that fit right in the middle. All the other parts seemed to make sense all of a sudden.

     "What sort of things do you remember?" Jayden asked.

     "Moving," Cassidy said. "I remember moving from Europe, and it seems so strange that I couldn't remember something so huge until now, but I feel like it's always been there, in my head, but I'm only seeing it now."

     Jayden nodded slowly. "You were young. Some things might come back to you, but don't try too hard - it doesn't matter anymore."

     Footsteps sounded up the stairs just then. There were at least four people coming up the stairs.

     "Well?" Chase asked, entering the kitchen. "What's our next step?"

     Obviously, Cassidy thought to herself as Elle, Dan, and Alison came up after him, my 'alone time' is over now.

     Jayden was looking at Cassidy expectantly. Somewhere along the way, she had become in charge of the entire endeavor. 

     "Well," she started deliberately. She had thought hard about this on the way back home, and she was sure of her decision. "Now we tell the rest of the world who we are, where we are, and what we want." As she said the sentence, she listed off the points on her fingers. 

     Cassidy honestly hadn't been expecting for the others to be so surprised. She herself had been long resolved to her decision, and it was really the only step left. It was a logical progression of events.

     "What?" Elle asked. "Now?"

     "Yes!" Cassidy exclaimed. "There's nothing else to do. What did we travel across an ocean to get here for?"

     She had meant the question as a rhetoric, but she was met with a daunting silence. The answer wasn't as obvious as it seemed.

     "What did we come here to do?" Elle asked. She slid into a seat at the kitchen table, and Dan and Chase followed suit. Chase ended up next to Cassidy.

     How does he make it so casual? She wondered. Dan and I have been friends for so long, yet it seems natural for Chase to sit next to me instead of him.

     She had to shake the thoughts from her head, though. There were more pressing questions she had to think about.

     "Cassi," Elle said. "Why did we even come here?"

     Cassidy took a deep breath before she answered. "We came here because Quarantine was an accident. No one can live like that - it's wrong. We came here because we are still alive, and we deserve better than what we had on that island. Quarantine was a prison, but, most of all, it is proof. The Pulse was not the end of us - we pursued. The Pulse mutated, leaving us more and more secure in our immunity, and we lived. It just wasn't worth it. We didn't live valuable lives - residents of the Neighborhoods practically lived in filth. So did we, before we applied to the Verde facility! We didn't know it - we didn't even realize it at all - but we were desperate. That is why we came here - we knew the Pulse didn't mean the end, even when we thought we didn't know what we wanted, we were really searching for a cure."