Ruin - By N.M. Martinez Page 0,26

ask. "So can I ask about the Revolution?"

Maria tenses, her fingers on her glass turning white as she squeezes. "What have they told you about it?"

Angel crosses his arms. "More importantly, what have they told you about the labs?"

I glance at the both of them and shrink back in my chair. The only friendly face turned towards me is Mitchell, but he wears a bit of pity that doesn't make me feel better. "They were run by companies, and they were illegal."

That gets a look from Angel at the very least. As I'd expected. I hold my hands tightly, my throat suddenly dry from the smoke of the fire pit wafting towards me on a cool night breeze.

"That's not exactly right from our understanding." Angel watches me with his eyes narrowed like the sharp edge of a blade. "The Neutrals ran the experiments. On their own people."

I swallow, but there is nothing in my mouth but smoke. It burns down my dry throat, wiping away any moisture left. It's a lie. It has to be. They need a reason to hate Neutrals. It's just gossip, and gossip isn't the truth. What I know I've read in history books and been taught by my teachers who were there in some form and lived through it even if they were young children at the time. And my mom who worked for the government. Wouldn't she have told me the truth if everything I was learning was a lie?

Mitchell quietly clears his throat. Behind him, Angel shifts and uncrosses his arms to lean against the back of Mitchell's chair as he speaks. "We should tell her the bonfire stories."

Maria seems to like that idea. She smiles and nods. "Yeah, that's a good idea."

Eight

"They say that it was a girl who let the First Experiment out of the lab.” Maria looks at me and her lips curve into the tiniest of smiles. "She saw him from far off and felt sorry for him, so one day she opened his cage and let him go."

In school, when we learned about the Revolution, we never really went into much detail. Admittedly, I never gave it much thought myself, but the Revolution had to start somewhere. It's an interesting idea that it started with one man who then freed the others once he got out.

Angel smiles at us. “My favorite is the one about the technician who spilled his coffee on the control panel.”

But these stories aren't real. No one seems to know the exact truth, though Angel and Maria go on sharing these strange stories about the First Experiment as if he were a real human. They even laugh as they recount some of the sillier stories, made up purely for entertainment value. Considering how many people lost their lives in the Revolution and how many people continue to die each day, I don't find it easy to laugh even as I become drawn in by all the possibilities the idea of the First Experiment presents.

"But what's the truth?" I ask them. "Is the First Experiment a real person? Wouldn't he have shared his story already?"

Maria pauses with her glass halfway to her mouth. She sets it down on her knee and looks over at Angel and Mitchell with obvious surprise. "She doesn't know?"

Mitchell has that pity look again, but Maria eclipses it by turning back on me. "You don't know? Brandon didn't tell you?"

He still stands off with his back to us, though he seems to give a little twitch as if he heard his name called. I shake my head. "Told me what?"

Maria takes a deep breath and lets it out in a huff. "Mr. Smith is the First Experiment."

I sit up straight as my gut wrenches painfully, differently from the way it reacted when I saw Gray Eyes murder the man today. This is worse. People died-- a lot of people-- as a direct result of the actions of the man who is supposed to be my father. Did my mother know this when she slept with him?

"That's why we don't talk about it. The truth I mean, if we know it at all," Maria says as she shoves her hair behind her ear. "Because it's his past."

That doesn't help make things clearer, and I give a shake of my head.

Mitchell softly speaks. "People don't talk about another person's past here. It's sort of become taboo here. You don't ask about their past either. When a person is ready and wants to, they'll