Page 1 of He is… Creed: Part Two

Chapter One

Addie

I’m crossing the parking lot of a German research hospital when I shiver with a gust of winter wind, the woodsy, warm depths of which remind me of Creed, and my footsteps quicken.

Nearly two years have passed since that dreaded day when Julian Rain led the rebellion and takeover of Area 51, two years since I last saw Creed, since my heart was shattered into tiny irreparable pieces.

He’s not here, I tell myself.

And I don’t want him to be here.

Sinking deeper into my wool-lined coat, my heels click on the now familiar red-brick path that leads to the building where I’ve worked for eighteen long months. I didn’t just leave Area 51 when Creed left. I jetted out of the country, though that certainly wouldn’t keep Creed away from me, had he actually cared to find me.

But he hasn’t bothered.

A flash of firecrackers splinter in the sky in a blast of yellow, red, and blue, a promise of a New Year’s celebration show soon to follow. My coworkers left hours ago for the New Year’s festivities that I have no desire to take part in. I don’t have the energy for social skills as of late, still exhausted from what felt like months of interest after the Area 51 mess. It’s not like I can date. Something about that mark on my neck seems to make me uninterested in anyone but him. It must not be the same for the male who’s been bonded. I might be cursed to want only the man I hate, to ache with an unexplainable need for him, but I’m certain he’s found plenty of female companionship.

It's a painful thought I shove aside.

None of that tonight.

Tonight, I plan to watch the old G.I. Jane movie my mother loved so much, microwave popcorn, and finish off with ice cream. I don’t want or need a relationship anyway. Alone feels more comfortable after the two people I’d thought I’d known—Creed and my father—have proven untrustworthy. I’d been bamboozled, as my mother would have said. Despite all my clinical skills, I’m incapable of properly evaluating those closest to me.

Even now, I catch myself replaying Creed’s parting words, trying to understand why he’d been so Julianant about hiding the mark we share if he wasn’t trying to protect me. Why wouldn’t he drag me along with him to reproduce, since we now know that’s one of the Zodius movement’s goals: reproduce and replace humanity. That’s the goal that’s circulating. That’s Julian’s intent, and I can only assume Creed’s as well.

It’s the gene mutation, and all I can think is that the mark made him protective enough of me to leave me out of it all.

Already, I’m going down this rabbit hole again, and I shake myself, murmuring a word of frustration. I’m tearing myself up inside with the unanswered questions, trying to make a traitor into a hero.

The few months I’d spent at a Texas Air Force base just after the Zodius uprising hadn’t been far enough away from Groom Lake. I’ve never considered myself a coward, but I’d needed space from what happened, space from Creed. Of course, he could be here in seconds, in a lift of the wind, but the human in me feels safer with space. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak. I’d wanted to forget. I haven’t even asked for updates, and the news is free of the topic of the Zodius takeover.

I’m invisible.

I hope.

A snowflake fluttered in front of me. Another touched my nose. I love the snow, and I hold out my hand and allow it to disappear into my skin the way I’ve tried to make the heartache disappear and failed. On the bright side, I love my job here, where I counsel rather than research. I don’t want anything to do with my prior life, and research feels like the me of then, not the me of now.

I like this new life.

I like the food, especially German pasta—I adore spaetzle. And I like—the wind gushes around me, blowing me a step backward, the snow falling faster, mixed with ice that pelts against the pavement, as well as my body with a jolting impact. Nerves jangle about inside me, and I cast a furtive look around the nearly vacant parking lot, but there is no sign of Windwalkers. No sign of trouble. No sign of Julian. No…Creed, I think, with a stab of pain right in my heart. Will I ever stop looking for him in the wind? Hoping he’ll come to me and explain everything, hoping everything wasn’t as it seemed.

Quickening my pace, I click the locks on the silver Audi that had replaced my Beetle—a little luxury for once, a luxury I decided I deserved. I’m about to climb inside the car when a black sedan with dark windows pulls up beside me. The back window rolls down. “How’s my favorite daughter?”

My heart stops beating for an instant, and I’m not sure if I’m more shocked to see my father—who I haven’t seen since my move—or to see him out of uniform, in what appears to be some sort of designer-looking black suit jacket. “Father?” I ask, questioning the obvious, reeling with disbelief. “What are you doing here?” The wind gushes again, snow and ice plastering my hair against my head and face, reminding me why leaving my hat in the car was a bad idea.

“Get in, sweetheart,” he orders before he too states the obvious. “You’re getting wet.” The door pops open.

He’s right, of course, I am, but still, I stand in place, my feet cemented to the parking lot, and I’m just staring at the door, my heart randomly charging and stalling. Unbidden, tears prickle my eyes—unacceptable tears for a general’s daughter—and I’m thankful for the snow that hides the dampness clinging to my cheeks. I haven’t cried since that first night in the hospital when I’d faced Creed’s betrayal. But my father’s actions were no less brutal, both in what he did to Creed and the soldiers like him he’d experimented on.

In the aftermath, he’d become something I didn’t recognize, nor would my mother if she were here today; someone desperate, when I’d never known him to be desperate a day in his life; a man trying to save himself no matter what the expense, including the lives of the soldiers he’d pushed to the edge; and his relationship with me. But I’d dealt with those things and all the ways they’d beat me up and destroyed me, at least temporarily.

Or so I’d thought.

But I’m no fool, at least not this evening, aware that the emotions expanding in my chest say otherwise, even calling me a liar. The very existence of the pain stabbing my heart right now says I haven’t dealt with anything but rather simply hid what threatened to do me in. I came here. I ran. And running never solves anything, but maybe, just maybe, it allowed me the distance to survive the heartache that the two men I’ve loved in different ways, but with all my heart, created in me.

Time was a gentle friend who allowed me the façade of quiet distance, but its clock has officially run out.

With a slow, calming breath, I force myself to slide inside the vehicle, directly across from my father. He reaches for the door and pulls it shut, brushing the snow away from the jacket of his well-pressed, and, dare I say, expensive, suit.

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