The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)

Owen kept his head down. He avoided most human contact, although Lynne and Morgan managed to get close to him from time to time. Never for long, not even for a meal, but it was there. In some ways, I was grateful for it. I hated the idea of him going through everything alone, trapped with the awareness of what he had done.

And then that silent anger would return—rush into me like a whipping whirlwind or the backdraft from a fire. It set a violent edge to my teeth, made me strain for air while my heart pounded hard against my ribs, as if it wanted to break free from my chest and throttle Owen itself. During those moments, I wanted to scream at him. I had put my trust in him, and he had used it to stab me, Violet, all of us, in the back. Because his selfish need for vengeance had overwhelmed his common sense.

I wasn’t objective enough to decide whether he needed to be punished. I couldn’t make up my mind.

So I worked through it, spending my time doing all the manual labor I could get my hands on. Helping with the latrine work or splitting cords of wood. I washed dishes and clothes with some of the women in the camp, listening in on the snippets of conversation, letting their words provide a distraction from the ongoing problem of what to do about Owen.

And when that stopped working, I turned to physical activity, waking up early to run around the camp and through the guard posts, just to keep them on their toes, before returning to our tent and running through sit-ups, push-ups, and various other strength-building exercises. It was a good distraction, and a familiar one.

In spite of everything I had been doing around camp, there was one thing above all that I both dreaded and looked forward to: my daily visits with Cody, the surly kid who’d made a habit of challenging my authority ever since we’d met back in The Green’s facility, and whom we’d brought back to our base along with Ian’s corpse after the incident at Desmond’s death camp.

We’d been keeping him in the barn. Its doors had been thrown wide open as I approached now, and several tables piled with equipment sat in front of the building. People were performing various tasks around the tables, from divvying up the inventory into three separate groups, to dissembling the guns for transport—there wasn’t anyone sitting idle. We were starting to divide the supplies, as it grew more and more likely we were going to have to splinter off into smaller groups for the winter.

I stepped around the chaos and into the barn, the old boards under my feet sagging slightly. It was several degrees cooler inside the barn than outside, since it didn’t get any good exposure from the sun. Inside, the smell of mold and musk filled the air, marking the old age of the structure.

Here, more of our people were fast at work, but it was an organized chaos, easy to navigate around. I headed for the back of the animal pens, to the largest one, where Cody was being kept. It had undergone some serious renovations since we had brought him there, in order to make the area feel more like a room and less like a stall in a barn.

I didn’t like that we couldn’t find some way to bring Cody into the house, but with Henrik’s convalescence (and his risk of infection), we just didn’t have the room. Which was why we had renovated this space, covering the walls with thin boards to prevent the draft and give him some semblance of privacy. I pushed open the door, the hinges creaking, and stepped into the lantern-lit room, a smile on my lips.

Dr. Arlan was in the middle of giving Cody the booster shot for the mild muscle relaxant we were administering to him. There had been a lot of debate on how to handle Cody when we had rescued him, and it had been a hard sell all around. Violet and I were adamant about giving him some semblance of freedom, but Ms. Dale was adamant about keeping the members of the camp safe. She wasn’t wrong to insist on the measures—at the end of the day, Cody didn’t want to be with us. From his perspective, we had kidnapped him, and we were the enemy. So, compromises had to be made, and in order to circumnavigate his enhanced abilities, we had agreed to drug him.

I hated it, but I understood that it gave people—not just Ms. Dale, Amber, or Thomas, but the entire camp—some peace of mind when it came to Cody. I just wished that translated into people being more open and less guarded around him.

“Hey, Cody,” I said with a wide smile. “You ready to go for our walk?”

Dr. Arlan pulled the needle out of Cody’s arm and set it down on the tray balanced on his knees. “All done,” he said affectionately, as he stood up and moved over to the small desk in the corner. I watched him go, smiling at the painting hanging on the wall just over it. The walls were a bit worn, and honestly, sad-looking under the dim glow emitted by the lanterns distributed about the room. Jay or Tim must’ve found it in the stuff we had taken out of the den to make room for Desmond, and hung it up for Cody.

There was a rap at the door and then it pushed open, revealing Jay, Tim and Samuel the dog, who barked when he spotted me and bounded over, his tail wagging. I knelt, and immediately Samuel lay down and rolled over onto his back, presenting his belly to me. I scratched his stomach a few times and looked over to see Cody staring at me, a sullen expression in his eyes.

“I don’t want to walk,” he said.

I smiled at him. “That’s okay. We can play a game. I’m pretty sure there’s a deck of cards floating around.”

“It’ll be fun,” added Jay, leaning into the room. “Although the forest is beautiful right now—the trees have all pretty much lost their leaves.”

Cody’s eyes flicked between us, and he gave a reluctant sigh before standing up. I watched him put on his jacket from my position on the floor, still rubbing Samuel’s belly. He zipped his coat up and then walked past me, burying his hands in his pockets. Jay and Tim stepped aside to let the young boy pass, and then turned to follow.

I lingered a moment, slowly rising to my feet. “He asked about Desmond today?”

Dr. Arlan sat down his pen, and sighed. I turned to see him leaning back in his chair. “It’ll pass,” he said after a moment. “Honestly, I don’t even acknowledge the question anymore, and neither should you.”

Frowning, I nodded, and turned to follow the boys, thrusting my own hands in my pockets. I trailed behind them as Jay and Tim cut through the chaos outside and toward the house, aiming for the bit of forest resting just behind it. Dr. Arlan’s recommendation didn’t sit well with me—but then again, it could have just been personal for me. It was hard to tell.