Surviving Patorum

Chapter 26

"New Mexico? What's in New Mexico?" Jaime blinks at me with her judgemental eyes, making me step back from her.

"My mother," I huff as I rest my hands against my knees. I hobbled as fast as my legs could take me to get back to Paige and Dally to tell them about the picture my mother left on the abandoned house.

"And why does she matter to me?" Jamie spits out before Paige can get a word out of her shocked face. "She's alive?" She says a moment later, completely ignoring Jaime's question.

"I believe so. I mean-I hope so." I say.

"We don't know it's your mother. That spray paint could be years old. Besides," Her index finger points to the sky, and her eyebrows scrunch together into a thin line. "If I'm going anywhere, I'm going somewhere there aren't monster crickets and mile-long snakes." Her eyes shoot to the ground, and a flash of sorrow spreads across her face.

"You can't escape animals, Jaime." Paige scoffs, ignoring the mournful look. She pulls me aside. Her hands rest against my shoulders, and I feel my tummy go warm. "Ethan, we have to go find your mother." Her wide eyes stare into mine.

"I know?" I look at her, puzzled. "Why wouldn't I want to go find her?"

Paige shakes her hand in front of my face. "No, no, no, you don't understand! We need to find her. She has the reanimating serum's formula!"

That doesn't make sense at all. Why would my mother have secret and very guarded information about the unethical human experiments that were going on in the compound? She was just a cook.

"What? How?" I shake my head in disbelief.

"My father gave it to her before we ran out of air." She blinks her eyes again, them full of seriousness. "He thought it would be the safest with her if something bad happened. That's what he did before he found you in the control room."

"That's why it took so long for the guards to find us..." I trail off. The timeline fits. But why is my mother the trusted one? Is it because she and Mr. Smith had an intimate relationship years ago, and he couldn't trust any other associates not to take it and run the second they got their grubby hands on them? I mean, it makes sense. Give it to the person you used to trust, who would never even be a thought to be searched for it. My mother was the perfect candidate.

"How do you know this?" I ask.

"I watched my father do it." Her eyes fall from mine and to the dirt below. "I watched him hand it to your mother after you cut off his hand. He told her you would be killed for treason."

"He told her that? Why would he tell her that?" My last words sway toward a cry. My hands go up to my face, and I have to blink away the tears and breathe away the shudders that want to come out of my chest.

Paige's face twists to sorrow, and she places a hand on mine and squeezes lightly. "I-I don't know, Ethan."

"So the last thing she thought before the riot was that her son was about to be murdered?" It's just hitting me that I've been terrified this whole time about not knowing where my mother's been. The last time I saw her was when we talked after I got released from the lab after I died. I had no idea if she was lying on the floor of our residence dead from asphyxiation, in a pile of corpses that have their heads smashed in from rioters' feet, or currently decaying in the hot sun because those monster crickets killed her. But I know that's her. I feel it in my bones. I must find her again if she made it out of the compound, made it here to this small town, and is returning home to New Mexico.

"I'm sorry, Ethan." Paige rubs small circles on my back while I hunch over, my stomach turning in knots. "But it's okay! She's alive! We can find her! Please, let's go find her!"