To the Well-Organized Mind

Chapter Thirty-Nine

[Nia]

I was born in the Barrens.

They say my mother couldn't produce milk. Instead, I first fed on my mother's blood and tears and that's why I'm so bitter and unsympathetic. I never absorbed the valuable nutrients to make me develop healthily.

They say it took me twenty-odd years to learn what compassion is, and empathy. They say it was the ferals themselves who taught it to me, the very beings who have no humanity.

But they can say whatever they want. It's probably true.

I started this journey looking for you, but I found so many others instead—including myself. I thought my life was going to be cut short, but I was given a second chance.

This time, I can try living instead of just surviving.

-Nia

***

Not all of the feral gang can be cured. After Tavelin administers repeated doses, there are about fifteen who show no sign of change. A couple of others show just partial improvement, but not a full-fledged return like Cookie and Lake.

The children are their own predicament, as I already suspected. Even if they are cured from feralism, they are still socialized as ferals. Some of them have parents who remain feral and others who are now cured. In the end, we leave the children with their mothers, regardless whether the child could be raised non-feral or not. It works out well in that the parents who make a recovery have the younger children with a chance of learning human socialization.

Still, it will be a difficult, slow transition to teach the children language and social cues.

Fen leads the gang out of Asis the morning after they tore Gregg to pieces. But to my surprise, the citizens of Asis turn up to see them off. And even more surprising are the family and friends who approach a loved one and draw them aside—whether to see if they can be cured or just to offer a farewell of sorts. Perhaps the citizens of Asis are also learning how to survive with the ferals instead of just against them. Without Gregg's voice muting them, they can make their own decisions.

But by far, the biggest surprise are the volunteers who offer to help make a shelter for the ferals, so that they have protection and even a wall of their own.

We can't risk putting it inside Asis itself—plus, all the property is already used for farming or houses or other necessary setups. But we create it outside the front gate. Close enough so they know they are still part of us, but distant enough so they have the freedom they need to be themselves.

Once the ferals have vacated Gregg's house, we begin to clean it up. It comes as no surprise when we discover the cases of broken vaccines the ferals shattered on the floor during their trashing of the place. I suppose we'll never know if Gregg was using them or not, but hoarding them is bad enough.

***

When Ridge awakes in the infirmary, two days later, I am there to calm him down. Vitch had given him sedatives thus far, but we have a finite supply of them, and it won't do to have Ridge out of it longer than he needs. Still, he's hard to deal with fully awake and functional. Now that he has healed some and rested, he's clearly uncomfortable indoors. He tries to leave the bed, and any time another person shows up, he is tense and jumpy.

"It's okay," I tell him for what seems like the hundredth time. "They're not going to harm you. They're not even going to touch you."

Keeping Tavelin away from Ridge is the hardest part, especially when she learns he is Dr. Joshua Ridge, an associate of her father she had known as a child.