Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) by Lindsey Fairleigh, Lindsey Pogue Page B

out from under his
feet. She was even stronger than Jason and could probably nullify every damn
Ability in the Colony all at the same time. So why hadn’t she? Why didn’t she
do it after the Virus—the gene therapy—destroyed the world as we knew it and
the General could no longer keep tabs on Dr. Wesley’s family, could no longer
hold their well-being over her head as additional motivation to behave?
    “Before Camille
died,” Mase said, “she overheard a conversation between Dr. Wesley and someone
else.” Mase’s dark gray eyes were wide, imploring. He looked from me to
Camille. “Show her what you showed me.”
    I, too, looked at
Camille.
    Slowly, she
pulled the small whiteboard away from her chest and turned it around so I could
see the words, bubbly and slanted to the left.
    Mase pointed to
the board. “That’s what Camille heard the doctor say.”
    The board said: “ I won’t leave…won’t abandon him. I love
him too much. ”
    My mouth was
filled with sand. With cotton. With bile. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths,
and somehow managed to convince myself not to lash out at Camille. It wasn’t her
fault that Dr. Wesley was an even worse human being than I’d originally
thought…though I did wish Camille had spoken up earlier, so to speak.
    I was now certain
of two things: I could never, ever tell Jason the truth about his mom, and I
couldn’t trust anything that woman had written in her letter to me, not
to mention whatever else she’d included in the “care package” wrapped in a
manila envelope she’d left with mind-wiped Zoe in Colorado Springs.
    I opened my eyes,
swallowing my rage.
    Camille’s pale
gray eyes were locked on mine, and she reached out to take my hand in hers and
give it a squeeze. She let go of my hand and wiped the words off the dry-erase
board with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Hastily, she scrawled, “ I trusted her, too. ” She met
my eyes, then continued writing. “ And she betrayed
me. ” Her gaze flicked to Mase, filling with an
overabundance of pain. “ She promised me that everything would be
okay. She promised to look out for him. ” Camille
wiped her words away again. “ SHE LIED. ”
    I inhaled and
exhaled slowly, then sent a sidelong glance over my shoulder at Carlos. He was
watching the woods beyond the field.
    “Do you know who
she is…I mean, who she really is?” I met both Re-gens’ eyes.
    Camille wrote on
her board, and when she showed her words to me, my heart seemed to plummet into
my stomach. “ Jason and Zoe’s mom. ”
    As I kept an eye
on Carlos, I swiped my fingers over the words, doing a half-assed job of
erasing them. At least they were no longer easily comprehensible. When I looked
at Mase again, he nodded.
    “ How do
you know?”
    “ She told me before I died, ” Camille wrote. “ She said she was
sorry for her part in my mom getting sick and dying ” —Camille snorted, and her letters became sharper — “ not that she told me what her part was. ” She met my eyes, and I could relate to the hatred shining in
their silvery depths. “ And she told me she did it to keep her
kids, Zoe and Jason, safe. ”
    “And apparently
because she’s in fucking love with General Douchebag,” I muttered.
    Mase grunted.
    I met both sets
of eerily gray eyes again. “You can’t tell anyone.” I raised my eyebrows to
emphasize how serious I was. “I mean it— no one .”
    They both nodded,
no hint of reluctance.
    Inhaling deeply,
I sighed. “Thanks for telling me. I needed to hear this…it’ll help me figure
some stuff out.”
    Mase nodded, and
Camille’s lips curved into a humorless smile.
    I rubbed my hands
together and turned to Carlos. “Right, so…about electrotherapy…”

 
    7
    ZOE
    MARCH 29, 1AE
    San Juan National Forest, Colorado
     
    “Whoops!” Sarah chirped.
    Wringing out the last of the wet
laundry I’d just scrubbed clean, I glanced over at her. With one hand braced on
the slim trunk of a pine tree, Sarah began to