Furtive

Truth Revealed

Chapter 8

It was late afternoon when I heard familiar voices outside. I sat upright and Jax took his arm off me. Maddy’s feet appeared on the windowsill. She climbed into the room and sighed. She first saw Jax’s hand, and then my shoulder.

“Are you two okay?” she asked as she rushed over to us.

“Yeah yeah, we are fine,” said Jax as he stood up. Maddy offered me her hand and she pulled me up quickly. She saw how dazed I looked and then remembered I was still semi-concussed.

“Sorry!” she squeaked. Everyone climbed out of the window and onto the side street again. We began walking slowly down to pavement. Jax handed the papers to Rhett. After a few minutes, Rhett passed them onto Maddy. Her jaw dropped as she read through the document.

“Tayka is going to freak!” exclaimed Maddy, “She’s gonna think it’s Cady!”

“No she won’t,” denied Rhett, “Cady has been with us this whole week, she had no way of telling the Double A. Besides, she’s Favoured, she wouldn’t work for them.” They talked about me like I wasn’t there. It made me a little bit unhappy.

“It wasn’t me! I’m not like that, this is just a coincidence!” I objected.

Somehow, we had ended up at the garage door of the base. It opened a crack and we all squeezed under it. When we got inside, Rhett handed the papers to Tayka and we all went into the bedroom. I sat with Maddy on my bed and Rhett and Jax sat opposite us on Rhett’s bed. Jax recounted everything that happened. He got to the part about the cabinet:

“The first note I read was about Cady,” he gave me a sympathetic look, “it was a whole thing about her and her ‘progress’ in a Double A household. They knew she was Favoured. That’s why her parents adopted her, it was an experiment.”

The word ‘adopted’ echoed in my head. I buried my head in my hands.

“I’m sorry Cady,” whispered Jax.

For the second time today, I began crying. Maddy cuddled me but I told her that I just wanted to be alone. Everybody left me in peace. I was just an experiment conducted for the benefit of the Amendment fucking Administration. I screamed into my pillow and cried uncontrollably. I’m lucky I chose to leave. I bet my ‘parents’ didn’t even love me, they just treated me as some ‘guinea pig’ all part of their stupid Double A business. Then I wondered about my sister. No, she was my parent’s daughter. I was about 11 years old when my mother was pregnant with her. I couldn’t stop thinking of little, innocent Elizabeth. She didn’t know anything yet, and she did not have to mental capacity to understand it anyway. I wanted to destroy the Double A more than ever, and I wouldn’t even care if my parents died.

I got off my bed, wiped the tears from my eyes and went to the main room. The team was waiting in there; Rhett was cuddling Maddy on the sofa, I could see tears in Maddy’s eyes, Zander and Tayka were talking quietly in the corner but Jax, I couldn’t see Jax. Maddy got up off the sofa and ran over to me, embracing my and crying into my shoulder. I hugged her back and my tears began to fall again.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” sobbed Maddy.

I patted her back. She needed to know it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Everyone slowly approached me. As soon as I stopped hugging Maddy, Zander was right in there, wrapping his arms around me. He was a lot taller than me and my face just buried itself into his chest. Next, Rhett came over and hugged me.

“You’ll be ok with us,” he whispered into my ear. His comment made me sob even more. Tayka walked over to me. I could tell she wasn’t the hugging type because she just held my shoulder and gave me and apologetic look. At least they weren’t angry at me, at least they understood. I heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs in the garage. Jax walked through the kitchen doorway and went straight into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Everyone just stood there, shocked.