Unfortunately, they both underestimated the strength of said forces that would perpetually be against them.
Girl didn’t know that she would find the knife in her hand until it was much too late.
Boy didn’t know that he would find the knife in his neck until it was much, much too late.
They had both seen it, but they hadn’t believed it.
Girl had loved boy. She had, she truly had.
And boy had loved girl, which made it all the worse when he fell.
All the worse when she rose in the aftermath.
Theirs was a love story that was and wasn’t meant to be. It always ends the same. It always will.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Jacob Tertium knew how his daughter’s story was supposed to end.
Years ago, after Richard Dubose had sat him and his wife down and told them the truth of the building, Jacob had thought he could change things. He’d thought he could make a better life for his family, outside of the prison that he knew the Eschatorologic would be for them.
So, they all stayed away.
And yet. And yet his wife still did not survive. Still, he was left alone, looking after a daughter who could never know what had happened to her mother. Jacob did not relish this burden, or the secrets it necessitated, but now he had only her, and he would never risk losing that.
He did not tell his daughter about the building. He did not tell his daughter what had happened to her mother. He did not tell his daughter what was special about her blood, her bones, her very self. He didn’t tell her anything.
And for a while, it seemed to work. He knew how it was supposed to go, had gleaned enough from his brief time being part of that world to understand that she should have left already. She should have found the building on her own by now. So, he thought maybe this time they had done it. Maybe, if she never even stepped foot inside, she would be safe in the ways that her mother hadn’t been. Maybe it would all turn out all right.
But then the headaches started—about a year before her twenty-fifth birthday. They were just like her mother’s had been, right before . . .
Not long after that, Jacob received a letter, slipped under his door with no signature at the bottom. It didn’t matter; Jacob knew who had sent it.
The time is drawing near. You know it is. You need to make a decision, soon. Come and visit me—you remember the way, I’m sure. I think you know what has to happen.
It was all happening again, the exact same as twenty years earlier. And he couldn’t—he couldn’t lose her too.
Even after all these years, Jacob remembered the way. He remembered how to spot the building his eyes never should have seen.
He thought he was protecting her.
He thought he could find a way, a way where it could end differently than before.
He thought he could make a difference, a change, anything that would keep her from that place, from the path he never wanted her to have to face.
Little did Jacob know, that wasn’t the reason Dr. Richard Dubose had called him to the Eschatorologic. Jacob, Richard understood, would be too strong a tether to the outside world for Everly. She might still come to the building, but he’d never be able to convince her to willingly stay there if her dad was still out in the real world for her to return to. So, Richard decided to take matters into his own hands—or rather, into the hands of a tall man dressed in red, with sharp knives in a white room.
And just like that, Everly’s final tether to the outside world was severed.
Jacob Tertium never stood a chance.
But with his sacrifice, Richard would have claimed, Everly Tertium just might.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“Leave us,” the Warden said to both Jamie and the runner who had been restraining Everly. As soon as the runner moved away from Everly, she collapsed to her knees, breathing deeply to halt the nausea that roiled through her. Her mind was cracking, splinters of images and thoughts dissipating through her head. Caleb in that red room, dying but not dying. Caleb propped up and unseeing—Caleb but not Caleb. Her parents dying, though she hadn’t actually seen either of them die. Luca dying, even though she hadn’t seen that, either.
(Yet.)
A baby being taken from her arms and sent away.
Person after person after person with bloody strips on their arms and lacerations on their scalps and screams vibrating from their throats.
Everly, in that white room, that terribly, terribly white room, with the blood and the pain and the screams.
Sometime while Everly had been hunched over, the Warden had approached her, and now stood looming over her.
“It’s time, you know.”
“No,” Everly said, the word starting to lose all meaning. Nonetheless, she lifted her head; through burning tears, she met the eyes of the Warden. A version of herself whom she refused to become. And in one final stance against the voices filling her head, Everly climbed slowly to her feet. “I might not be able to stop what you do here, and I might not be able to take back anything you’ve already done. But I will never play that part.” Everly now stood toe-to-toe with the Warden—both women the exact same height, but for a moment, only a moment, Everly felt taller. She felt stronger, and so she took that strength and placed both hands against the Warden’s shoulders, shoving her so that the other woman stumbled back a step. The Warden’s face remained stony, not flinching, but Everly’s resolve remained.
“And then there’s Michael,” Everly said loudly, jabbing a finger in the Warden’s direction. “Your son, right? Not that you’ve ever treated him that way. Oh yes, I know all your dirty little secrets. The things you did that you weren’t supposed to, all the ways you went against what all the other Wardens before you had done.”
She knew this because she could see it now. Without intending to, the story of this Warden’s life, as well as all those who had come before her, played like overlapping movies in her head, showing her everything. So, she knew everything about them, including the child the Warden had given birth to, who never should have existed.
She also thought she could see how it had happened. How Michael had come to be. She could now see the threads where this Warden’s life had diverged from all the others. Earlier, she’d mentioned how Everly’s mother had been a friend to her. Mary Dubose had always been a friend for Everly Tertium. Until suddenly she wasn’t.
Mary Dubose was supposed to come into the building, and she was supposed to stay, and she was supposed to befriend Everly Tertium, and somehow that factor was usually enough to keep all the Everlys and all the Lucas from going too far. Maybe Mary was a voice of wisdom, showing Everly that there was no real future to be had in a building like this. Or maybe with Mary, her friendship was enough, and Everly never needed to go searching for more.
