EPILOGUE

They’d been waiting for Caitlyn’s shoulder to heal from the knife wound and for a clear, moonless night, with wind coming off the eastern slope of the high ridge that overlooked the perimeter fence of Appalachia.

Unlike the climb a few weeks earlier near Cumberland Gap, on this night there was no mystery in climbing to the tree-stunted top of this mountain. Caitlyn knew exactly where they were headed and why.

During the ascent, the silence between Caitlyn and Jordan was as strained as it had been since Billy had pulled her from the river. The wind helped them up the western side of the mountain. It wasn’t until they reached the narrow ridge that its force seemed malevolent, with a strength set on pushing them into the abyss, down into the orange glow of lights that marked the perimeter fence, a long line snaking around the base of the mountain and disappearing miles away.

It also seemed as if the wind tugged at Caitlyn’s soul. A wind much colder than this summer air. During all the days since the pursuit had ended in the waterfall cavern, days without the adrenaline of fear to distract her, she’d endured long, long hours with the words of Jordan’s letter to haunt her.

“We had agreed—the woman I loved and I—that as soon as you were born, we would perform an act of mercy and decency and wrap you in a towel to drown you in a nearby sink of water.”

He stood silently beside her. She had no doubt what he wanted. Absolution from her. A single word of forgiveness or love.

They were poised at the moment of separation. On the other side, she might never see him again. She could sense how badly he wanted to speak.

An abyss stretched in front of them. One also lay between them. The numbness that Caitlyn used so effectively for survival against Mason Lee would not leave.

“The letter you gave me near Cumberland Gap, it doesn’t tell the whole story, does it?” Caitlyn asked.

Jordan’s legs were braced against the wind, and he steadied himself.

When he didn’t answer or even look at her, she continued. “You led Mason away from me and expected to die or to be put in a factory. Even then, you avoided all of the truth in the last words I might get from you.”

“Yes. There is more.”

She couldn’t see his face. It was too dark. On a moonlit night, or one with a low cloud bank reflecting the orange lights, the chance that a guard looking upward might see her outlined against the sky was too great. Tonight was perfect for escape.

“Even now…are you going to keep it from me?”

“Since the river, each morning I would tell myself that ‘Today is the day I will tell her the rest.’ But I could never find the right moment. Or the courage. We seem like strangers. When you look at me, all I see is a silent accusation. When I tried to talk to you, I mean really talk to you—you’d find an excuse to change the subject.”

“I’ve had a lot to think about.” The numbness now felt like ice. “I’m sure you can understand that.”

“I could see the transformation coming. I had to get you out of Appalachia. But if you went by river, the Outsiders waiting to help would have turned you over to the government. You would have been caught.”

He gestured at the abyss in front of them. “The only way out was this.”

“You could have brought me here. You could have explained what was happening to my body. You could have helped me fly over the fence without using me as a decoy.”

Caitlyn shuddered at an image of Mason Lee and the knife poised over her belly. It had been the evil as much as the threat that terrified her.

“Don’t you think I agonized over that? The risk to you against the certainty that the Clan would eventually be destroyed?”

“You hid all of that from me.” She’d wanted to voice this accusation since surviving the waterfall. It seemed to explode from her, as her wings had.

“The risks for you to reach Brij were meant to be minimized by my capture. I had the information for Mason on a vidpod in my pocket. He was supposed to take it to Bar Elohim so they could set up a trap for you in the valley. I was the one at greatest risk. Not you. I was prepared to die.”

“Even that was selfish. You could have told me.”

“And what would you have done with the knowledge?”

“You made me a decoy. You and Brij talked of freedom, but you didn’t give me a choice.”

He tried to touch her shoulder, but she stepped away. “You learned of it when you reached Brij. You didn’t go into the mines without knowing you were the decoy.”

“How could I refuse at that point?”

“Others would have.” He was shaking. It took her a moment to realize he was weeping noiselessly.

She wanted so badly to let go of her pain and anger and comfort him. But she couldn’t. The betrayal had been too great.

“Finally, tears for what you did to me?”

“Bar Elohim was going to destroy—”

“No! What you did to me.” Only a couple of feet separated them, but to Caitlyn, the abyss seemed infinite. “Do I need to show you my wings to remind you?”

Despite the dark, she could see him fight to get control of his emotions. “I’ve lived with it every moment since you were born. I knew watching you leave would be difficult, but my heart didn’t understand it until now.”

Caitlyn felt like her own face was as cold and rigid as the bare stone of the precipice. “I’m so angry. I wish I wasn’t, especially now. I want it like it was between us.”

“It can’t be the same. You have to go over the fence. You have no future in Appalachia.”

“I want it like it was before I knew that you were the one who did this to me.” She prayed he would deny it, but only the wind across the rock made any sound.

“I know what Mason wanted from me.” She’d had days to think about the letter. About the silver canister. She became almost savage. “My eggs. He wanted to cut me open and harvest my eggs like I was an animal. That’s what they wanted from me. The Outside. My eggs.”

“Enough.” His whisper was barely audible above the sweeping wind.

“Am I right?”

“The research used was destroyed. You are all that remains. Your genetic code would almost be enough to bring the project back to where it was. With eggs, all it would take is fertilization and surrogate mothers.”

“And more freaks would be born?”

“Caitlyn…we have all been designed to soar with angels. Our souls will someday leave the prisons of our bodies and return home. In one way or another, God allows us to fly.”

“Do you know how you sound?”

“I don’t know how I sound. But I feel like a broken man.”

“Would you prefer to be a broken angel? When I was born, you should have drowned me.”

“Caitlyn…”

She knew how badly she was hurting him. She couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to flail, to strike out. Anything to lance her own pain.

Jordan reached out for her again. She took another step away. “You couldn’t tell me who I’d become, because then I’d ask how you knew. Because you were the scientist who did this to me. Are you going to deny that?”

“You know what’s waiting for you on the other side and how to get there,” he said. He seemed calm again, the Papa of strength that she so desperately wanted to love without reservation. “Once you have the surgery, you won’t be—”

“Should I say it again? A freak.”

“You have no reason to forgive me. Just know this. I love you as big and forever as the sky. That will never change.”

Their childhood game.

This was the moment she could erase all the anger. Just one word would do it.

Papa.

Instead, in cold, blind anger, she leaped into the abyss, stretching out her arms and wings, letting the wind pull her away.

Her memories of flight in the waterfall cavern had seemed like a surreal dream, blurred by the terror inflicted on her by Mason Lee.

But here it was again. The instinctive adjustments of her wings, so like the hawks she had watched with such envy as a child. She too trusted in the same fabric of nothingness that let them soar.

She exulted in fierce joy, and in that moment, far above the ground, weightless, flying, she realized that this was her destiny. In the womb she’d been designed for this freedom.

That joy and that flash of realization shattered the numbness, tore away the anger, let the love warm her again.

“Papa,” she cried.

Then the backdraft rushed against her, carrying her away, and it was too late to turn back. Caitlyn was over the fence.