Daughter.
The word hovers in the chasm between us, while everything else falls away. Once again, it's just Dove and myself and all I can do is focus on the blue of his irises, and how similar they are to mine. The smile lingering on his face adds to my disbelief. Was he hopeful? What for? Did he think I would embrace him on the back of such a preposterous lie? My mouth opens and closes but no words slip out. Dove's smile eventually vanishes.
O'Mallory chuckles. "Her expression's priceless."
Daughter.
Dove's daughter.
I shake my head. "That's impossible." The hard edges return to Dove's features. "You can't be..." My hands grasp at the air, trying to find something tangible to latch on to.
Dove's hand rests on my shoulder -calm, steady, fatherly. At his touch, I'm roused from my daze and wrench myself free. A thousand words bombard my mind and I can't spew them fast enough. "You're not my father. My mother would never choose you. She hated the Law." Dove's hand falls back to his side. "She hated this world you helped create. She wouldn't let you breathe the same air as she let alone touch her."
"I loved your mother," Dove says, his voice small and frail. Before, when he' speak his voice could quiet a stadium, but now his words are little more than whispers.
I turn toward him, rest my gaze on his face, search the wrinkles and bones for the parts of him that could have made up half of me. "You what?"
He tenses. "I loved her."
"Don't say that." My curls fall in front of my face, shielding me from whatever expression he now wore. "Don't stand here and try to feed me lies. I know how you operate." I slash my hand through the air and let a laugh escape. "I was trained and tortured into being the next you." Tears blur my vision. I grit my teeth, desperate to keep them from falling.
Dove steps toward me and in a knee-jerk reaction I step away. "It's not a lie, Allison," he says in the same tone one would use to silence the ramblings of a madwoman. Is that what he thinks of me?
I erupt into a fit of hysterics. "Allison?" My cackling echoes off the barren walls. Dove frowns. "I think you're the one who's insane here." I point to myself. "My name's not Allison and if you'd known my mot—"
"She called you Pearce."
His words steal the last of my laughter. I turn toward him, breathless. "How'd you—"
"She'd wanted to name you that before we'd decided on Allison. After she stole you, she probably decided to give you the name she ought you should have." Something akin to sorrow flashed across his gaze but that had to be a hallucination. Why would he ever feel sad? Especially about someone's life he helped destroy?
"Allison was the name of a woman near to my heart." The corners of his lips turn upward. A smile pushes to the surface. "I'm sure your mother wanted to erase all trace of me so she stripped you of your name, but believe me when I say you are Allison Dove."
I flinch at this kast part. Allison Dove, a Councilman's daughter.
"I'll never be--"
Dove's shoulders go rigid as he stands to his full height, the very air around him changing. Darkness creeps onto his face. "Your little rebellious routine is getting tiring, Allison." I shirk from his reprimanding tone. "You are my daughter and despite what you have been taught, this situation does not allow for you to create your own truth."
I gulp. He was right. When our eyes meet, I was staring into my father's face.
Dove turns, hands clasped behind his back, sunlight highlighting his profile. "All Councilors are clones of their predecessors. There have always been ten of us and there always will be." He shoots me an over-the-shoulder glance. "We were created to lead, Allison. All of us raised in labs until the day we would graduate. You're the exception. I chose to be with your mother and to have you. I gifted you with something no other Councilor has ever experienced."
"So then what? You get sick of her and instead of messing with her memory, you had her killed?" I whip around, stride toward him and slam my fist into his chest. He braces but doesn't bother to avoid my clumsy punch. "I was with her when your Militia came. I witnessed everything! Her last moments..." I ram my other fist into his abdomen. He flinches, his mouth twisting in pain. "I've never stopped seeing them."
"Your mother," Dove pauses as if pulling the right words from the depths. "Was not well. She knew you were to go into the program so you could fulfill your purpose. She got paranoid and took you away from me. I had no choice but to—"
"Kill her," I hiss. "You had her killed!"
"And I've carried that burden ever since."
His words freeze my anger. "I have done a lot of things," he says. "For the greater good. Shed a lot of blood and I do not regret those, but I regret how I handled your mother." He tenses. "I should have seen the warning signs. I should have—"
"Fuck you," I whisper.
His eyebrows raise. "Excuse —"
"Fuck. You." I say again, tears falling down my cheeks. "There's no way you loved my mother. There's no way you're troubled by her death and there's sure as hell no way I'll ever," I glare, "ever think of you as my father. You're as dead to me as she is. Worse even - you never existed to begin with, "
Dove's jaw clenches. "Very well." He turns and walks up the steps toward the dais. "Shall we proceed with your punishment?"
"Punishment?" Among all this shit, I'd forgotten. We'd escaped the Facility, eluded his Birds and Sect police. "You're not just going to offer to take us back? Re-train us in the glory of His image?"
Dove shakes his head and grabs something off the table, though I'm too far away to see what it is. "There are always consequences for your actions, Allison."
"Don't call me—"
Dove turns around a gun in his hand. "I'd be a bad father if I didn't let you suffer the consequences of such rash and misguided actions."
Each step he takes toward me is slow, purposeful, the gun raised. It's aimed at my chest,
"Allison Dove," he says, the words making my stomach curdle, "You have been found guilty by those of the Law, and by His mandate, you are made wanton." His finger coils around the trigger. "It brings me no joy to have to do this, but you are beyond redemption. I take solace knowing you may meet your mother again."
He squeezes. I close my eyes. Try to calm my breathing. I would see my mother again. And maybe November. If Mara had been right, then she'd be there, too. Hell, maybe even Keran would make an appearance—
"No!" someone shouts. The sound of scuffling floats to my ears. "What do you think you're doing? Someone drag him back here!"
I peel my eyes open, knowing that whatever I'll see next will be the last thing I see. There's a calm that comes with acknowledging that I'm to die. But at the same time, I'm shitting myself, my heart rampaging inside me, my veins iced over, my tongue thick, mouth dry, my hands clammy.
A flash of pale skin and blond hair crosses into my vision. I think I catch a glimpse of freckles and that off-centered mouth, and then it falls away and a spurt of blood takes its place.
David -- no Jackson -- Jackson lies at my feet, his chest heaving while blood poured from a wound in his stomach. I fall to the ground and clutch at his shirt.
With a feeble motion, he tries to bat my hands away. "Sto-stop," he says. His whole body shudders. Fingers wrap around my wrist. That fire, that warmth graces my skin. His movements sluggish, he reaches into his pocket and takes out a slip of paper. "For you." His voice is pained. I fumble for the paper, my own body shaking as much as his. "David—"
The corners of his lips slip into that childish, awkward grin, though now splattered with blood. He winces. "Even now..." he gulps for breath. "Even now, you can't say it."
I blink and shake my head. "Sa-say what?"
His fingers slip from my wrist. " Pearce," he says my name and exhales.
"No-David?" Someone screams. There's a rustling from fabric and feet. "David?" I clutch the paper he's given me. "Jackson?" I whisper. "Are you—" I place my fingers under his nostrils, hoping for the tickle of breath no matter how shallow.
Footsteps ricochet off the floor.
"David?" Dove's shoes come into view. I hug David's body closer. The bloodstain spreads across his shirt. "Please, David. You can't. You can't--"
Dove sighs. "David, huh?" A tear slips off my chin and treks down David's cheek, trampling across his smattering of freckles. "Sevens were always empathetic to a fault."
"David," I whisper, I plea. "Don't go." Something claws at my insides, tearing and shredding them to bites. I lurch forward.
Dove's fingers close around my arm.
Through the cascade of tears, I can't make out the color in David's eyes, the point where sky and forest met. "You can't die."
A scream wretches free from my lips. Dove's nails bite into my upper arm. "Stop this," he says. "Whatever's happened here is your Truth. You disobeyed and this is the price that you paid. Never forget the blood on your hands."
I blink. My hands are stained red, fingers sticky. Why was there so much blood?
A shadow falls over me as another pair of shoe storms into my periphery. There's a click. Without thinking, I tuck David's note into my pocket and press his body against mine. The end of something hard collides with the back of my head. I fall over, the harsh truth settling over me right as the world goes dark: I'd gotten David killed.