Hope for Us (NEWT) [COMPLETED]

Ch 80 - All Debts Come Due

~A/N: Okay, I have to say this. This is my favorite chapter in this entire book. It is also the longest chapter as this is now the climax of the story. A LOT will happen ;)

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~Sara~

It didn't really connect with them at first.

Sara threw her arms around her cousin, and Margaret squeezed her in a hug, both remaining like that for a few seconds.

"She doesn't look too dead to me," said Minho, and Sara glared at him.

When they pulled back, Sara was at a loss for words, confused with everything she'd been told about Margaret's fate in the past. "H—how—?"

"It's a long story, trust me," Margaret interrupted her. "I'm here to help you, that's all that matters. Now where are you all headed?"

"My room. There's a flat trans there," said Sara, but that matter suddenly wasn't the most important one at that moment anymore.

"Great, let's go."

Sara still couldn't shake the uncertainty off her shoulders so she stopped her cousin by grabbing her arm. "Maggie, I thought you were dead. I spent half my time here trying to find you and our moms... until I was told Janson killed you all. My mom went to look for you both, and she never came back."

Sara was overjoyed to see her long-lost cousin was alive, but that simultaneously saddened her.

Margaret underwent atrocious moments if she was alive, and to see what she'd become was frightening. She was basically a mercenary for The Right Arm. The way she spoke with confidence with Gally, as if she were behind a whole operation. And the fact that she was the one person Vince cared about and listened to—knowing what kind of person Vince really was—Sara couldn't even imagine the kind of things he'd made Margaret do for him.

But Vince listened to her. If it weren't because Margaret knew Sara was the one who spoke with her through the transceiver, she wouldn't have convinced Vince to delay the explosions. Sara, along with the entire crowd of Immunes, wouldn't be alive.

Margaret did look uncomfortable after Sara's words. "Your mom went to our house that day of the raid?" she asked, and Sara nodded. Margaret sighed. "I'm sorry, but she sealed her own fate. My mom was already dead, and I... well I wasn't quite dead yet, but..." She shrugged.

Sara couldn't believe how cold her cousin's words sounded. "My mom would've died either way. My parents and aunt Anne died all because Janson wanted to get to me, okay? He's kept me here, and he lied to me, making me think he'd rescued me that day. He brought me here and promised he'd find you guys."

Margaret furrowed her eyebrows, but then she made a face, like she caught on to something. "You're one of the six, huh? Well, I guess seven now. That's why. He only wants the pot of gold in your genes." Sara nodded, corroborating everything. "But who told you the truth? 'Cause he really had you fooled."

All of a sudden, Sara remembered what Gally had told her about her cousin, when she thought May was someone different. "Rebecca. She was like a mother to me." She hoped she could clear that issue up; it was scary to think Margaret was willing to have Vince kill her.

Margaret grimaced, inhaling deeply. "Rebecca, huh?" She sounded cunning, especially when she squinted her eyes.

"I heard you wanted her dead," Sara told her, giving her cousin a skeptical look.

Margaret looked like she wanted to laugh, and Sara was genuinely scared of the kind of person her cousin had become.

"You think I can't hate her?" asked Margaret. "I've been keeping up with news of my dad." Sara wasn't quite understanding where Margaret was going with that. "Sara, he has history with her, even before the raid, okay? He was cheating on mom and got so tired of her complaints that he killed her. And I was there to watch, so he had no other choice; I'd seen too much. But it didn't work with me."