Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
I brought my eyes in line with the two red lasers so they could read them. I had to force myself not to blink as the red flashed across my pupils. They started to water from keeping them wide open. After a moment it flashed green and the voice rang out again, asking for the four-digit password.
My fingers hovered over the keypad. I had no clue what the password might be. Major wasn’t the type to use his birthday. Maybe some random numbers? But that would probably go against Major’s sense of order. And would he really be that careful? Would Major expect anyone in headquarters to have the audacity to walk down here and try to break in? Without access to his fingerprints and eye shape, there weren’t many people that could have done it. Actually, there was only me. I rested my fingers on the keys and then entered 1948, the year when the FEA was officially founded. I held my breath while processing flashed on the screen, and released a sigh of relief when the green light flashed and I could hear the lock open.
I walked into the storage room and closed the door behind me before I turned on the light. Dust tingled in my nose and the smell of old paper and musty staleness filled the air. There were rows over rows of gray metal file cabinets in the room. A fine coat of dust covered everything. An aisle maybe three feet wide was left in the middle for walking. I ran my eyes over the tags on each drawer, lingering on one named “Mallard”. That was Tanner’s last name. I didn’t recognize the others, but it seemed the drawers weren’t sorted by alphabet. Almost at the end of the aisle was one with Abel Crane written on a tag and the one immediately next to it was labeled Heather Crane. I did a double take. Heather was my mother’s name. I stared at the tag for a moment. Crane. Was that my real last name? My mother and I had changed our names so often, I didn’t even know my real last name. She’d always refused to reveal it to me. Tags with different last names followed after those two drawers—various names my mother and I had used over the years—with the estimated period of time when we had used them. So the FEA had kept tabs on us—on me. Sure enough, the last drawer in the line was labeled Tessa Crane.
I was about to go straight to that one when I noticed the fine print under the names. Below my mother’s name was a tag that said Volatile. I couldn’t move. Volatile? That was a term used to describe Variants who were labeled a risk because they were either prone to mental illness or because they’d lost control of their Variation. I’d never seen my mother display any kind of extraordinary talent and she had never mentioned anything to me—nor had Major, even after I’d directly asked him about my father. Another lie—or as Major would probably call it, an omission.
I opened the drawer and pulled the first file out. The cardboard was soft and creased from use, as if someone had held it and opened it many times. I cracked it open and peered down at the yellowed pages. My eyes flew over the letters, drinking it all in. It said that my mother’s Variation was regeneration. I had to pause for a second to let that sink in. My mother was a Variant just like me. And yet she’d hated me for what I was.
Regeneration. Her cells could repair themselves. She didn’t ever have to grow old. It had been more than two years since I’d seen her, but I knew that she’d had wrinkles and crow’s feet. My eyes scanned the page. It said she’d joined the FEA when she was fifteen and had lived in headquarters for twenty years following that. That didn’t make sense. She’d been in her mid-twenties when she’d had me and I definitely hadn’t been born at headquarters. That could only mean she’d used her Variation to make herself appear younger.
What had happened then? Had she joined Abel’s Army? Did Abel’s Army even exist then? Or had she and my father lived together as a family? I was about to pull out the next page and read what was written there when a distant noise made me pause. A soft whirring; like the sound of the elevator. It was moving up. Someone had called it. If someone was looking for me, that didn’t give me much time, and I still hadn’t looked into my father’s and my files. I slid the file back into its slot and closed the drawer before I moved on to the one with Abel’s name on the front. My hands shook as I pulled it open and for a moment, I was scared to take a look. But the thought of helping Holly gave me strength. I needed to find out as much about Abel’s Army as possible.