Page 70 of Brood
“Just blurt it out. Is it…?” His voice cracks slightly. “Is it about me? About us?”
“No! Of course not.” I touch his beard lightly with my fingertips. “I’m…I’m scared.”
“I know you are. But I’m right here. I’m the one you tell about anything that scares you. And right now you’re scaring me too.”
That’s enough to propel me into speech. “I’m sorry. I was talking to Bella. Did you know…did you know she’s my mother?”
His thick eyebrows lower slightly. “I suspected. She’s got the same mouth and eyes as you, and she’s always treated you… I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected. Has it really upset you?”
“No. I mean, yes, but I’m glad to know. But that’s not the…the thing. She told me… You know Trevor, her spouse, works in Provisions? Well, a few months ago, he told her things. Things he wasn’t supposed to tell her.”
Will is frowning now. This is obviously not anything he was expecting to hear. “What did he tell her?”
“He told her that the ingredients for our protein blocks…don’t come from here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They don’t come from here. The soybeans do, but you know the quantity of those we grow. They’re not enough to adequately feed all of us down here.”
“The pre-War protein powder…”
I shake my head. “It ran out at least fifty years ago. They…they get the extra provisions we need from…the surface.” I say the last two words in no more than a whisper.
Will has frozen. Grown completely still. “No,” he says at last. “They can’t.”
“Bella says it’s true. Trevor told her all the details about how they open one of the exterior air locks, trade with the surface dwellers, and bring down the animal meat they need to manufacture the protein blocks. That’s why they taste slightly different each batch—because they’re made with different animal meat.”
“I’m on the council.” His face doesn’t reflect any sort of emotion, but I know he’s feeling it. He’s as upset and derailed by this piece of information as I was. “I would know.”
“No. Most of the council doesn’t know. It’s like you said. There’s that core group—that secret network that handles all the real leadership, and the rest of the council just does the visible stuff. Only a few people who are necessary for the process know, including Trevor. It’s top secret, but it’s true. The surface isn’t uninhabitable. They aren’t all ferals up there. There are real communities. And maybe they’re rougher and wilder than we’re used to down here, but they’re not animals. There’s a stable, secure community not far from our exterior door that we’ve been trading with for decades. They call it the Mill, Bella says. It’s…it’s livable up there.”
“Fuck,” Will breathes out.
We stare at each other under the covers for a long time. While Will has never been able to find any cameras in our quarters, it still feels safer to have this conversation with the blanket and sheets over our heads.
“So we could…” It’s like his voice gives out. He clears his throat. “It’s livable up there? We could…we could leave this place?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I scoot closer, overwhelmed with jittery anxiety again. “Maybe.”
He wraps his arms around me, and we hold each other for several minutes. Then he asks, in a tone closer to his normal voice, “How much does Bella know?”
“She knows everything. Trevor told her how to get out. Just in case something happens to him and she needs to get away. He even told her how to get to that community. She said he’d be willing to help us if we need to escape. He’s…he’s my father.”
He still doesn’t look surprised by Bella and Trevor being my parents. The suspicions he mentioned must have been strong.
“So this could really happen?” he asks.
“Maybe. We would need a plan. And I’m not going anywhere unless we can take Bun with us.”
“Of course not! We would never leave him. This is going to take a while to make work. We don’t only need a plan. We need exactly the right time. And we need to be ready to survive up there. It might not be a hostile wasteland, but it’s going to be dangerous. Maybe just as dangerous as it is down here.”
“I know. But at least…at least we’d have the chance of being free.”
His arms tighten around me. “Yes. It’s never been more than a dream, but maybe…”
All the restless nerves I’ve been living with for months now are still there, but they’ve taken a different form. Something that looks and feels a lot like hope.
Hope.
