Page 99 of The Order

“This must be some joke,” Kai starts, pointing his finger at Mark.

“You think it's funny to walk around with something like this that could incriminate my whole family?” Kai questions, standing on his feet while forcing the contents back into the leather wallet.

“Has Andrew truly made you that naive, Kaiden?” Mark blurts out, using my brother's full name. Kai stops in his tracks, put off by the man's sudden change in attitude.

“H-how did you know my full name?” Kai questions.

“We live in a web of too many secrets,” Mark says, glancing at me once more. “And it all starts with your father and ends with her,” Mark finishes, giving me a look I know too well. A look I have only seen paint my father's expression.

“Forest, what does he mean?” Kai questions, the gears slowly turning in my head.

Same nose, same eyes. Both men have a downward smile and freckles that hide within their eyes.

“You're his father,” I whisper, finally finding clarity in the importance of such a small photo.

Mark closes his eyes for a moment, drawing in a shaky breath.

“That's not possible,” Kai starts, running his hands through his hair, “Dad is-”

“An Unfortunate,” Mark finishes, both of us gripping our seats. “An Unfortunate who turned his back on everyone, all for the sake of a cause he thought was greater than us all,” Mark says, my throat burning with my final question.

“What cause?” I question, my hands shaking from anticipation.

“You.”

The tram had become silent moments after our revelation with Mark. Years of coming and going off this tram, looking past the old man who had to watch his grandchildren look past him as if he were nothing and no one. My father never spoke of his family, saying they passed away early on in his life. However, there is no scenario in which I thought he’d stand by and watch his only father be berated and used by our people daily. I rack my brain over our countless interactions, cringing at the thought of how I treated him. Kai has had a blank stare for several minutes, only letting out exacerbated, inaudible sounds as words catch in his throat each time he tries to look or speak to Mark. The old man tried to ease our shock, telling us he didn’t blame us. It only seemed to make it feel that much worse.

“If Officials find out what we're doing, any Unfortunates who helped us are as good as dead,” Kai finally says after a few moments, biting his nail beds.

“Not just Unfortunates, but us too,” I mutter, covering my eyes with my hands, no longer having the energy to stomach my reflection.

“You know they never harm Untouchables-”

My eyes are already on him, stopping that thought pattern before he can continue.

“Am I wrong?” he questions. He’s a prisoner to the chip inside his mind.

“You should tell him,”my reflection mutters next to my ear, my voice an angry mess.

“Get out of my fucking head!” I yell, slamming my hand against the glass closest to me. Kai flinches away, his eyes growing wider.

“Who are you talking to?” Kai questions. It's evident in his tone he thinks I’m going insane.

“No one…. No one that matters.”

“Keep telling yourself I’m not there. That clearly is working out great for you,”the other version of me hisses. I wanted to slam my head into the window again the more she talked.

“Did something happen that night at the screening?” Kai questions, landing his hand on my leg to return my attention. “I lost time that day, and ever since, everything has felt… different,” Kai mumbles. Mark listens in on the conversation, unsure of what to say.

I reflect on that night. The night that turned my whole life upside down, all in a matter of minutes. Every moment of my life had felt staged until that moment, only feeling real in the small moments I was near Fallan, even if all he felt for me was hate. They took that girl's life, all for being like me—someone who doesn’t fit into societal norms and conventional categories for our people.

“There was a girl,” I start, as he shifts in his seat, not expecting me to have answered. “A girl whose life was stolen becauseourpeople feared her. She walked and talked like me and you. She was an Untouchable,” I say, touching the back of Kai’s ear. “And they killed her. They killed what scared them and made you all forget,” I whisper, watching his eyes grow more distant.

He takes several moments to compose himself, grazing the back of his ear with his finger.

“If that's true,” Kai starts, shakily drawing in a breath. “Why can you remember, and I can’t?” he whispers.

I laugh at the remark, biting my lip in anticipation.

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