A long conference table with chairs sits in the middle of the room, and lining the walls are several hanging televisions. The table is empty, yet like an alternate universe, I envision an older table full of women and men turning to see me. Kilon, Sassi, Leigh, Briston, and Arek are all there, among others that are not familiar.
Without thought, I swipe my hand to the right, expecting good old-fashioned light switches; instead, sensors immediately turn lights on. Across one entire wall are several cork boards and white boards, one rolling and one hanging, next to monitors plastered with maps, pictures, and x-rays. My feet are hugged by the plush carpet, and it doesn’t take long to get close enough to see the maps of San Francisco with different colored pins, pictures of unfamiliar people, and many more cities mapped out. Yet it is the bookshelf near the table that catches my eye.
Remona Landolin is printed along the edge of a file. Remona Landolin? As in Briston Landolin or Landolin Enterprises? It is an instinct to check the room and make sure it is still empty, so once I do, it takes only seconds to pull the file. At least two inches thick, a couple of pictures fall out when transferring it to the table—one picture is of my mother from San Francisco.
Several more papers slide quietly along the smooth table when I open the file. School report cards, vaccination records, emails from people that I’ve never heard of, yet they are discussing Willow—or Remy. Even a copy of my, Willow’s, birth certificate is in the pile. The most interesting thing, however, is MRI pictures of the head of what seems to be a baby labeled Willow Union at the right-hand corner.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
But the voice that answers back startles me. “I should have known you’d search. How did you get in here?” Arek looks tired, as though he’s just woken up.
I shrug, “It seems my fingerprints are in your computers. Why?”
His eyebrows raise as he shakes his head. “I didn’t have the heart to ever take them out of the system. You seem to be hell bent on not believing that you are Remy. If anything can make it clear . . .”
I lift the MRI pictures. “Remona Landolin? Landolin as in Briston Landolin?”
Arek hesitates, but then realizes this discovery changes everything. With surrender he walks to the table and takes the MRI out of my hand. “After years of searching, we found you.” He sets the MRI down on the table and then points with his forefinger to a small round spot. “Do you see this?”
“That small circle?”
“That small circle next to the hypothalamus is the only thing that makes us different. You kill that, then you kill us. This mark on your neck,” he runs his fingers along a birth mark on the back of my neck that I have been aware of since I was a young child, “told the Velieri department in the hospital that you needed testing just to make sure. One blood test and one MRI told them who you were . . . so your father called me.” He sits down knowing perhaps that this will catch my attention.
“My father?”
“I don’t think I need to tell you.” He stares into my eyes.
After a moment, it becomes clear. “Briston.”
He nods, “You are the heiress to Landolin Enterprises.”
My fingertips push papers this way and that trying to find the meaty information, something that will tell me everything I want to know, yet part of me realizes there is no such thing. My heart has picked up speed, sending blood to my cheeks and making the cool airplane feel stuffy.
“This,” he points to maps, pictures, and everything else within the file, “is everything that I have saved over the years.”
“That’s why Briston is so familiar,” I whisper. Yet when I push a couple of printed emails aside, I reveal a death certificate for Remona Landolin. I drop my forehead on to one hand, digging my elbow into the hard table, as the fight to ask everything all at once rages within me. It takes an immense amount of discipline to hold back. “You’ve made it clear what I can’t know—”
“You’ve made it clear there is no way I can stop it,” he relents.
“Who is Briston? What is he?”
Arek stretches his neck before replying. “He’s the Monarch of the Electi.”
“What does that mean?”
“His lineage is the longest lasting. That means that everyone from his bloodline lives the longest and is considered the most Elite of all Velieri. The Landolins have always been Electi.”
“And he is my father?”
“Yes.”
“Why this?” I lift my death certificate.
“You were charged with a crime and sentenced to death.”
His words never falter, but I can’t say the same for my heart. It is too much. However, I can’t stop my curiosity. “What crime?”
“Don’t ask me that. You can’t ask me that.” But after a moment he breathes out, “I never believed them.”
“Who?”
“Anyone who said you were guilty.”
He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest as a small whirring sound creates white noise to fill the silence. My toe taps the soft floor.
“If this . . .” I run my fingers along the death certificate. “. . . then why am I here?”
“We don’t know.” He thinks for a moment. “It happens to some. So we have teams of the CTA in all hospitals to identify those who return. Who knows the reason. If you ask my grandmother, she’ll tell you that God had more to do. Others say old superstitions of one’s great power. We’ll never know some things.”
“I dreamed of my arrest.”
“What?” he says quickly.
“Leigh came in with his men when we were sleeping. Why? Why didn’t he just arrest me at a normal hour?”
“He knew he had to do it when we weren’t prepared.”
“Why?”
