The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

“Why would Thomas give that to you?” I asked.

She looked over her shoulder at me and sighed, turning back to the door. Blue lines were pulsing on the data chip, and she stood up and crossed her arms over her chest, watching it.

“Thomas and I had a very frank discussion before we left for this mission,” she announced softly. “You know that we… developed contingencies.”

“I know that,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Unless… Were there other contingencies, not just the ones that we all discussed? Why? What for?”

“Keep your voices down,” Morgan whispered, and I turned to see her at the entrance of the tunnel, peering out into the mist, her posture alert and wary.

“Sorry,” I said, lowering my voice. “That still doesn’t change my question.”

“Violet…” Ms. Dale said, her voice tired. “We didn’t want anyone to be unduly concerned. We just figured when things went wrong, we’d need to control where the pieces landed.”

“What were you expecting to go wrong?” I asked, but I was afraid to know the answer.

Ms. Dale looked at me, and then smiled.

“I’m proud of you. You know that, right?”

I blinked at her, baffled by the way the conversation had shifted. It unbalanced me.

“No,” I said, deciding to turn into the skid. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Violet, you were one of my best students. You trained harder than the rest, had more fire and determination in your eyes, and I knew that you would be a great warden one day. But the girl who stands before me makes the Violet I trained pale in comparison. You’re fierce, yes, but more than that—you care. You care so much and so deeply that sometimes I hurt for you, knowing the burden that rests on your shoulders.”

She paused, and I could tell she wasn’t finished, so I waited.

“I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to keep you and Viggo safe. So that when this was all over, you and he could be together, in love. In order to keep that promise, I realized the odds of your survival were far greater apart than together.”

I was taken aback by her words, but it still didn’t make sense to me.

“What does that have to do with anything? Viggo and I are a great team.” I’d assumed that she and Henrik had asked us each to do separate parts of the mission because of our specific skills—not because of some secret strategy discussion about us endangering each other.

Ms. Dale ignored the question as she moved around me, and I turned and realized the data chip was now glowing a bright green, a four-digit code in the door glowing. She hit a button, and then began turning the wheel.

“That’s very true,” she said. “But the chances of us surviving and accomplishing our mission also dictated that you needed to be separated.”

“I know that,” I grated. “There’s no reason to be secretive about that. But you’re acting like… You’re acting like you guys planned for one of us to die. Without talking to the rest of us.”

She pulled the door open and called to Morgan, and I stepped into the airlock, feeling a bit dazed. Morgan stepped in behind me, and Ms. Dale came around the door, tucking the data chip back into her sleeve.

“We had to consider possibilities, Violet,” she said evenly, but her eyes only met mine for a moment. “I know I should apologize for not being straightforward with you both.” I turned around as she talked and grabbed the hand wheel, pulling the door closed to seal us in. “I considered it for a long time. But with your marriage… Thomas said newlyweds were thirty-two percent more likely to sacrifice their own lives for each other, and predicted you and Viggo were actually at a higher percentage of doing so, as if all of us didn’t know that already. But he had a—OW!”

My head snapped up to see Ms. Dale slapping her forearm. The door was still a few inches open, and as she pulled away her hand, I saw the crushed body of a green fly pressed against her suit. She shook her arm, dislodging the body, and then quickly pulled the door shut, sealing us in.

Immediately, all thoughts of annoyance at Ms. Dale for withholding her reasoning from us fled my mind.

“Let me look at it,” I said, but she brushed by me and hit the button on the door, pressurizing the airlock.

“Let’s get inside first,” she said, her voice unconcerned as she stared at the blinking red light on the door. As soon as it turned green, she was rotating the wheel and moving inside the darkened lab.

I quickly moved in behind her, checking the room for any sign of movement and finding none. The small room was constructed similarly to the last one—workstations in the middle, forming a circle, screens lining the outer walls. There was only one door this time, still sealed. Pulling off my bag, I opened it and began searching the contents for my first-aid kit. I pulled the egg out and sat it on a workstation. It was so cumbersome, things had a tendency to drop under it.

Ms. Dale rolled up the sleeve of her uniform, a knife already clenched between her teeth. The bite mark was visibly red and swollen, and Ms. Dale, barely flinching, ran the knife over the top of it, opening it up. Immediately a thick yellow pus ran from the wound, tinged red with blood, and I felt an urge to gag as I watched it.

“That’s never a good sign,” Ms. Dale muttered as she grabbed the kit from my hand and opened it up.

“You know, I couldn’t be certain the intruders down below were you, especially after Maxen gave that delightful little speech about coming to take me down. And you were so clever about overcoming the locks and the cameras that I never would’ve known… until this last