Standby (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 2.5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mother.”
    A devilish smirk grew upon her lips. She eased the car door close and took a step closer to me, not even bothered by the fact that we were in a public area in daylight. None of that mattered to her. What mattered was that she brought me back to Vesta Corp as ordered. Dead or alive.
    She held out the tablet towards me, but I shoved her hand away. “Whatever it is that you feel like sharing with me, please, feel free to keep it to yourself. I’m not in the mood for your psychotic blabbering right now.”
    Most people would’ve taken that as their queue to stop talking. Not my mother. For her, that was an invitation to keep going – to plunge the knife in deeper.
    “That boy of yours has turned out to be a valuable Program,” she said. She reached for the car handle and opened the door, but she instead of climbing inside of the car, she turned to face me.
    Plunge the knife in deeper why don’t you? I thought to myself.
    “So what, are you just going to keep him as your new toy now?”
    My mother leaned on the car, her hands crossed over her chest, and her cold eyes locked onto me. “No, of course not,” she answered. And for a second – just a second – I thought that she might’ve had a heart after all, until she said, “He was constructed to lure his sister, and now that we’ve done just that, he will be handed over to the research team.”
    And then he’d be deprogrammed and stored away in a restricted access area, where my uncle Charles would slowly begin rebuilding his collection of Purged Programs. A collection that I was rather sure I’d be joining in no time.
    I had gotten so wrapped up in my thoughts that I’d nearly missed the most important detail in her statement. He was constructed to lure his sister, and now that we’ve done just that, he will be handed over to the research team . “No.”
    It felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to my chest, forcing the air out of my lungs. The pain was surreal. This had all been my fault. I didn’t have the right to be upset, to be hurt, but I was.
    With each passing second, the cracks in my heart grew wider. I’d thought my heart had broken when they hauled Hayden’s lifeless body from the room. That had been nothing compared to the pain I’d felt now.
    I’d done this. I had destroyed the lives of an entire family with one choice, one decision, all because I’d been blinded by my own selfishness.
    “Did you really think she wouldn’t come for him?” My mother arched her brow. “The girl is just as weak as you are. She feels for the boy just as you do. There was no way she wasn’t going to go in search of him; we just helped lead her back to him.”
    I stood there silently, trying to appear composed when, on the inside, I was breaking down.
    This wasn’t how things were supposed to end.
    I was supposed to fix things. I was supposed to keep them both safe.
    “It was rather easy too,” she’d continued. “You see, while Emile wasn’t traceable, the car she’d taken possession of? Well, that was.”
    “We fed the information to the guard’s tablet, essentially giving her everything that she needed to find her brother, and to lead her back to where she belongs.”
    And it wouldn’t have taken much effort on their behalf.
    Programs were aware of the main facility, but they were never given information concerning the secondary locations – a security precaution. Why? While the main facility acted as a body donation center, the other facilities didn’t bother to hide what they were. They were hidden, and difficult to come upon without any sort of knowledge of what to look for, but if a stranger had somehow stumbled inside? They’d know the truth.
    It would’ve been hard to miss the posters my grandfather had plastered all over the walls years and years ago. And it wasn’t exactly like most body donation centers had a plaque displayed with the word Perfecting Our Society for the Future engraved on it displayed on their