Page 53 of Fire
Come. Fetch. Kneel. Beg.
Alice flinched away from the memories of the video, and Tobias’s eyes grew tight and sad.
“You could just resign,” Jake suggested, with a twist of his lips. “Go off the grid. Let them fuck themselves.”
Alice swallowed. “I’ve considered it, but I have this position and I want—need—to use it. This is my line and I will not cross it.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Jake said. “Tobias?”
After exchanging a look, the Hawthornes went to their sleek black car, slamming the doors in smooth unison. Then they pulled out of the lot.
Alice watched them until the Eldorado was not even a black dot on the outskirts of town.
“Fuck,” she said.
* * *
“Fucking Dixons.”
Tobias couldn’t disagree. Alice Dixon was a different type of Dixon from the hunters he’d known in Freak Camp, but he still felt chills remembering her steady gaze on him, how easily she’dfoundthem. His worst fear for the last six years come true: the ASC had tracked him (them) down, proving that Tobias would never truly be out of their grasp. Only the surprise of what she’d had to say—not a threat, but a plea for assistance—had kept him from shutting down completely after the encounter. The nightmares had gotten worse, though.
Two days had passed since Alice Dixon had cornered them in the Montana diner, and Tobias and Jake were hiding (taking a well-deserved vacation with some goddamn privacy, in Jake’s words) in the Wyoming wilderness, far out of range of cities or even cell towers. It gave them both time to come down from the shock of the confrontation and to do some serious thinking.
“D-do you think any of it was true?” Tobias asked tentatively.
They hadn’t tried the USB drive she’d passed them yet, unwilling to risk their laptop with it and needing more privacy than most public computers offered. Tobias had noticed more than once Jake considering tossing it out the window on their drive out of Montana, but he still fiddled with it, spinning it on its keychain around his finger while he lounged on the bed in their cabin.
Jake snorted skeptically. “Let me think for a sec. Yeah, no.”
Tobias had doubts, remembering how she’d locked eyes with him and told him that she’d seen the Director’s tapes. He shuddered again.
Jake hadn’t asked about the tapes she’d mentioned. Tobias was grateful for their unspoken understanding that if Tobias wanted to explain, he would, and if he didn’t, Jake wouldn’t push.
“I think some of it could be true,” Tobias said slowly, “but she’s gotta be insane, or think we are, to invite us to go after the A-A-ASC.”
“That’s how you know it’s a trap,” Jake said dryly. “I’m just hurt she thinks we’re that stupid. Like we’ve gotten this far on our own by being dumb as bricks.”
Tobias remembered the desperation in her eyes beneath the tight control in her face. He still couldn’t totally buy that she had been lying about all of it. He knew the look of someone utterly trapped.
That didn’t change the fact that whatever crisis Alice Dixon was tangled up in wasn’t Hawthorne business. She had all the power, resources, education, and influence to figure it out. For Tobias, proximity to any Dixon was tantamount to voluntarily re-entering Freak Camp.
Jake caught the USB drive between his fingers, and Tobias looked over to see if Jake had finally decided to get up and chuck it in the toilet. Instead, Jake tossed it into his open duffel at the end of the bed. Out of sight, if not out of mind, like many other things.
Tobias knew that Jake was pleased to be off-grid because it also meant no more of Tobias’s constant monitoring of the news. Tobias himself didn’t mind that loss as much as he would have, before Congress had voted down the bill to close Freak Camp.
Tobias had known the bill never really had a chance, of course. Everyone had said so. The Cleveland massacre, all the angry protests and heartfelt testimonies across the country, changed nothing. Ultimately, no one could deny the reality and danger of freaks, and (as Alice Dixon had so persuasively argued to the cameras) only the ASC had the knowledge to keep the country safe. If they didn’t, who would? Was the public really willing to risk that?
Still, seeing the official outcome two weeks before their meeting with Alice had done something to Tobias’s head; he’d wanted to go straight to bed, but doing that in the middle of the day would’ve alarmed Jake. Since then it had been harder to lift his head up, to look reals (no,people) in the eye, to smile and act like he belonged here, the way Jake had spent years teaching him to act. The occasional nightmare that Tobias could shake off as soon as he woke had become frequent, brutal dreams he couldn’t hide from Jake, especially when he woke up choking from a phantom collar for the first time in years.
He really shouldn’t have watched the Director’s personal testimony to Congress.
The final vote was narrower than expected, which was the only real surprise. Freak Camp would stay open and the ASC would maintain complete control, although the next budget bill hadn’t offered the same blank check it always had before, and there were rumors of an oversight committee or an audit sometime before the next election cycle.
But the senator who had been the harshest critic of the ASC announced her retirement at the end of her term. And Jonah Dixon remained in charge.
* * *
As she eyedthe racks and racks of VHS tapes, Kayla decided she was a lucky bitch.
