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I offered a wide smile. “I’m not leaving him behind, either.”
I squeezed my body through the gap in the iron fence. Eleanor’s voice reached my ears. “Meddling in things that are none of your concern again, I see.”
“Like your dearest son?”
Once I finally breached the cemetery grounds, I dusted off my dress and adjusted my sleeves. Well, the air wasn’t toxic at all. I couldn’t fathom why that officer had insisted I hold my breath.
“I think you’ve misunderstood something,” she said softly. “He isn’t my son. I’ve never had a child.”
“If you’re about to tell me Raymond is actually an immortal alien, don’t bother. I’ve hit my surprise quota for the day.”
“No. He really is Eleanor’s child. I’m just her assistant.”
“Seriously, you need to drop the act. Everything’s out in the open now. You have the exact same face as the woman in the video.”
The color drained from her face, she lowered her head. “Eleanor made me. She assigned me to take over her affairs in case she ever died. I’m her secret assistant.”
“What do you mean made you…? Were you born in a laboratory? Like a clone?”
“Ever since Eleanor died I’ve been living under her identity. Only her closest allies know about me, but I’m happy. I just want to be able to help Eleanor and her son.”
“Your rescue attempts have been a bit questionable, to say the least.”
She fell silent, then released a quiet sigh. “I was just trying, but I think I’m not enough. So I’m glad you’re here. Eleanor was right when she said you were the key.”
It was the first time I had heard her voice sound so sincere. I cleared my throat to keep my emotions at bay. So she wasn’t Eleanor… yet a strange warmth emanated from this woman. Under normal circumstances, my heart would have ached for her fate.
Someone born only to replace another… was she truly happy? I wanted to sit and listen to her talk for hours. We probably wouldn’t have had much in common, but I would have hung onto her every word, babbling back whenever the moment felt right. I would have tried to make her like me.
If only the circumstances had been different.
I brushed the last traces of dirt from my clothes and flipped my hair back.
“Did she really love her son?”
“She wanted to. But to her, love was a weakness. Her sole dying wish was for me to protect him. That’s why I’m here.”
“I see.” I murmured. “In that case, we’ll be allies for a while.”
She inclined her head, smiling. I glanced around us.
“So? What’s the deal with this cemetery? Everyone kept warning me to stay away like it was cursed. If this was a horror movie, I’d give it a one out of ten.”
“The white soldiers are here, that’s why everyone is scared.”
“Right. Everyone being obsessed with Raymond is starting to get on my nerves.”
I couldn’t take anything seriously. When everything is pushing you toward madness, you might as well enjoy the ride.
“If the transport operation fails, they’ll execute him on the spot,” she warned. “And even if it succeeds, they’ll still kill him.”
“Not on my watch.”
Even though I couldn’t see anything through the fog, I pressed onward into the endless navy haze. The sound of her footsteps behind me brought relief.
Before long, the mist around us began to thin out, shielding us from outside eyes while opening our field of vision just enough. A deafening rumble roared from above, making us both look up at the sky.
The familiar blue canvas dotted with soft white clouds—the only sky I had known since birth—had transformed into pitch-black rocks drifting through the air. They tore apart and reshaped like a mass of dark dough. It was as if an invisible hand were hurling them across the atmosphere, whipping them into swirling, interlocking rings…A flash of lightning cracked with a sound so immense I squeezed my eyes shut and closed my hands over my ears.
