“If you want to,” I say absently.
She’s looking away from Leonardo in the artwork, focused on something else. It’s the way I dissociate when Lochlan is wheezing and grunting on top of me.
I thought I could only feel close to my family in the woods, surrounded by nature. But that first night I agreed to sit in this dining room and eat with Lochlan, more than a month after I was brought here, I saw Ginevra.
The painting’s title,Ginevra de’ Benci,translates to Ginevra of the Benci family. My heart raced into overdrive when I saw it. My father loved the painting because Ginevra means “juniper”, and that’s the middle name my mother gave me.
Juniper is a plant that’s part of the cypress family. It’s resilient, surviving and even thriving in conditions that kill other plants.
In harsh, windswept climates, juniper gets twisted and gnarled into what Germans call “krummholz”—stress-sculpted beauty. Though it looks damaged, it’s very much alive and deeply rooted.
The painting was the sign I needed. It was my parents’ way of telling me to endure. There will be a time for retribution. I just have to hold on until then.
He can do whatever his sick mind thinks up with my body, but Lochlan Murphy will never break me.
32
“My son wants nothing to do with me, but he must be protected. I want him assigned to a leadership position where he’s out of harm’s way. After all I’ve done in support of New America, I expect this request will be granted.” – Electronic message from Aldous Thatcher to New America Present Soren Whitman
Marcus
Island Four is an underground maze. The tunnels here are watertight, some made of concrete and others lava tubes created by a volcano a long time ago.
Cress and Briggs, the man beside her during my questioning, are coleaders here. When the virus came, she was a dance instructor and he was in a motorcycle club. I didn’t press him on how that paid his bills. They insisted I stay the night here so we can talk more.
It’s clear they’re not sharing everything with me. This island is geographically huge, and whatever experiments Whitman had people doing here were done underground. The jungle providesa canopy that makes this island perfect for the ILF to sell as contaminated and uninhabitable. From every visible angle, this place appears deserted.
In reality, it’s a hive of activity. We passed through a room of people using computers with big screens, and it reminded me of an air traffic control center. The mood was serious and tense; everyone focused on their work.
It was clearly surveillance. I suspect that with a satellite, the ILF is monitoring far more than just Blue Arrow Island. Seeing and hearing about this place gives me hope that the ILF is organized and strong enough to bring down New America.
We’re in the camp’s cafeteria for breakfast now, bright white light on the ceiling helping compensate for the lack of windows. This space looks like it was built to hold hundreds of people, and there are more than a hundred in here now.
My plate is stacked with pancakes, eggs, sausage, and toast. I’ve got coffee and orange juice to drink. There’s even syrup, which I haven’t had since before the virus.
“We’ve been trying to find Thatcher’s son foryears,” Cress says. “But we were searching the mainland. We never considered he might stash his kid on one of the islands.”
“If you can spare a drone to drop a bomb on him, that would be great,” I say.
“So he’s as much of a dick as his father?” Cress scoffs. “Shocking.”
“What’s Aldous Thatcher up to these days?”
Cress looks at Briggs, who responds. “He’s Whitman’s vice president. Thatcher’s a mastermind, unfortunately.”
“Yeah, his IQ’s like one hundred sixty.”
Briggs grimaces. “He’s smart and shrewd. You wouldn’t think the skills it takes to become a billionaire are also clutch in the apocalypse, but you’d be wrong.”
“So he’s in Carson City? Same as Mae?”
Briggs shakes his head. “Whitman and Thatcher are always on the move. They never stay in the same place two nights in a row.”
“Makes them hard to catch.”
“Watch us do it anyway,” Cress says.
I’m still stunned that Mae is married to Lochlan Murphy. Briggs said she was forced into the marriage shortly after Briar was convicted of taking birth control. Briar will be devastated when she finds out.
