"Basem!" Nawell chided from the door. "Come inside and stop showing off."
"She just jealous because it isn't as easy to lift her," Basem whispered as he lowered me to the ground.
"Oh, hush," she snorted.
Nawell swatted her brother playfully while I chuckled to cover the painful tug in my heart. I missed my family. Uncertainty and apprehension had punctured a hole in my chest that was widening with every reminder of what I'd lost.
Inside, Nawell added our crocks of snow to the stove while Basem and I changed into dry clothes for lunch. She'd set out a pair of sweat pants and a long-sleeved fleecy top on the bunk I'd been using to sleep, which made me smile.
Nawell was a caregiver, a mother hen, just like my mom. I grabbed my outfit and hustled over to the rustic water closet off of the living room to change.
I caught sight of myself in the rust-speckled shaving mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom's door and nearly cried out in shock. My eyes were hollowed-out shadows almost as black as Cyrus' and my cheekbones were jutting out of my skin like two austere mountain ranges severing the north and south sides of my head.
Basically, I looked like the picture parents and teachers use to scare kids into making better life choices.
"What exactly is Spam?" I asked, wrinkling my nose as we took our seats for lunch.
"It's like Scions," Mac supplied, heaping a pile of steamed rice with large pink chunks of something that didn't look like it was found in nature on my plate. "No one really knows how it works, but it's magical. Try some."
I picked up a plastic spork to prod at one of the gelatinous chunks of mystery meat. "Mine's not ripe yet," I complained at the rosy mash of flesh.
"Just eat it, prissy pants," Mac ordered through his distended cheeks. "It's not like we've got a lot of choices."
I stuck a lump of rice and meat into my mouth to chew slowly. It wasn't half bad (if you like eating salt right out of the shaker). If there was any flavor other than sodium, my palate wasn't discerning enough to find it. Then again, it wasn't raw lizard tail (a rare desert delicacy I'd endured while on the run last year.)
"Are we going to try again this afternoon?" I asked the group around my mouthful.
"Maybe you should take some time to rest," Nawell suggested gently, sharing a look of concern with her brother.
"But you said-" I tried to argue.
"We don't actually know if what we're doing is working, Ella," Mac interrupted me. "I'm afraid we're depleting your already drained resources. Nawell is right, you need time to recover."
"Time?!" I cried, tossing my spork at my plate in disgust. "I'm trying to get my powers back to save my family, not have a spa-week in the Appalachians! We don't have time!"
"You're right," Mac nodded seriously. "We don't have time, or answers, or a full team, or your powers, or a plan. There's a lot of things we don't have right now, and your shitty attitude isn't helping with any of it."
The energy in my cells began to hum a low frequency that got my blood pumping.
I wanted to hop up and toss my plate of food at Mac's head. Blistering tears pricked my lashes while I desperately tried to hold back the string of nonsensical insults I was about to unleash.
"We are going to help your family as soon as we figure out what's going on with C.E.," Mac continued, talking in an overly rational tone that boiled my brain. "You need to-"
"I need to what, Mac?" I challenged him, springing to my feet so fast I almost pushed the bench over. "I need to just sit back, relax, and wait for the government to ruin or murder everyone I love, like you?"
I didn't need Nawell's stunned gasp or Basem's horrified expression to tell me I'd stepped over the line with that last comment. It flew out of my mouth before I could consider how much damage it would do (as usual.)
To avoid the acute guilt already clouding my thoughts, I huffed out the door and slammed it behind me.
The physical barrier did little to assuage my anger or the shame threatening to smother me. Pacing the length of the slippery wood deck, I mumbled and pouted.
My blood and emotions were rushing at a frenetic pace, thrashing around my body like a tropical storm about to rip up a coastline. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the energy, trying to push the warmth building in my chest out to my extremities.
The latch of the front door split my attention, dispersing the power before it had a chance to amass.
Nawell offered me a tentative smile but didn't say anything as she stepped outside into the afternoon light creeping down the porch.
"Look," I explained before she could start talking. "Mac knows I'm practically a professional asshole, I'll apologize to him. I just, need a minute."
Her footsteps whispered until she was standing next to me at the railing. Nawell leaned against the wood to cast her clear blue eyes out at the lake, taking in the beauty of the snow-dusted mountains.
"I don't remember the genocide that forced my family out of Algiers," she began in a hushed voice. "And, I don't remember the men who killed my father on the walk to Tunisia. Val used to tell me I was lucky for that. I don't even recall the inoculation that wiped out everyone in our refugee camp."
"You don't?" I gawked at her stately profile.
"We were only four," she replied unassumingly. "I remember being very afraid when were brought to London because we didn't look like anyone else. Varun read us stories every night to help us learn English. Cyrus and Valentina already lived at the lab, and they helped us acclimate too. A few years later, a malnourished baby named Isla came to live with us."
I didn't how to respond, but Nawell wasn't looking for validation or sympathy. She wanted me to understand where she was coming from.
I may have the emotional intuition of a brick wall, but even I could sense that. The memories stirred the pools in her eyes until they darkened into churning seas.
"I know it sounds odd, but for a long time after that, we were happy," she continued, unprompted. "Varun was good to us, and we were excited to live in the United States, a place we'd all seen on television, but we never thought we'd go. We were one big happy family...Until we found out the truth."
"How did you, you know," I stumbled over my question "find out about what you are?"
"Cyrus," she answered, her expression wrapped up in a memory she wasn't willing to share. The profound sadness in her tone was crushing. "Our father always told him he was too smart for his own good. For years I wasn't able to tell what was more painful, the truth or the lie."
"I'm sorry," I murmured.
"Don't be," Nawell instructed as she clasped my frigid hand in hers. "Anger and regrets almost consumed my family, but we survived because, in the end, we have each other. I cannot imagine having to go through all of this alone, like you and Mac. I don't blame you for being anxious. If it were my family in danger, I don't know what I'd do."
"But your family is in danger," I argued. "You are putting yourself in harm's way just trying to help me. It's going to get worse if you try and stop C.E. You know that, right?"
She nodded with a knowing smile.
"Why are you willing to do all this?" I whispered.
"Because the men who made us, will stop at nothing to get what they want. Nothing," Nawell replied. I couldn't help but notice that she was not-so-subtly lumping her adopted father in with Hamm and all the rest on the forsaken project that started this. "If no one else is willing to stop them, we must."
My new friends were all too familiar with drawing the short straw when it came to life experiences. We were the fractured shards of other's mistakes. Anyone associated with Project Scion was condemned to a life of this terrible paradox.
Don't you just love Nawell?!? I do!! Not only is she a powerful Scion in her own right, but she's also a self-possessed and nurturing woman who focuses on the needs of others. Basically, she's who I wish I could be ;)
Also, if I could be ANYONE, I'd be the Armorer from the Mandalorian OR Sabine from Star Wars Rebels. Who would you be?