Chapter Two

Gannon sat on the window seat in his bedroom staring out at the grounds. The afternoon sun was slipping lower in the sky but he knew that there was still plenty of time for him to be out in the greenhouse working on the plants that he had been cultivating since just a few days after their arrival at Nana’s house. The plants were his refuge, his comfort, and the way that he was able to escape from the thoughts and memories that tortured him when he allowed them to slip into his mind. Now, though, it wasn’t thoughts of the facility or of Ryan that were forcing their way into his mind and causing the wave of emotion that was pushing against his chest and making him feel almost breathless.

Instead, it was the image of Willow that was still so clear in his mind that he could see every detail of her lovely face and the brightness of her smile. He could still see the strands of her coppery hair that trailed along the side of her cheek and the way that her long, slim fingers ran back through the rest of her thick mane when she was talking to them. He was drawn to her in a way that he had never been toward anyone else, and the feelings were both new and strange. They had come over him the moment that he turned and saw her, and they seemed to only get stronger with every moment that he spent near her. Even now that they were not near each other, the feelings were pounding within him, making it impossible for him to get her out of his mind.

He wished that he could go back down into the greenhouse, but he knew that in order for him to do that, he would have to go through the back door of the kitchen, and the ladies were sitting there drinking tea. As much as he would like to look at Willow again, the emotions that he was already experiencing were confusing Gannon and he didn’t know if he would be able to handle being that close to her again so soon.

The longer that he sat there thinking of her, the more he wondered if this tightening, pulling feeling in his belly was anything like the emotion that drew Jonah and Aubrey together. Though he hadn’t known either of them for very long, he had known Jonah for longer than he had known Aubrey, giving him the opportunity to recognize the difference between the man when he was on his own in the basement with Gannon and the others, and now that he was with Aubrey. There was a distinct change that had come over him in just the few weeks that he had been with Aubrey, something so powerful that it had led them to get married in a very brief time. The idea of marriage was something that he didn’t understand. He had never heard the word and he never would have considered the idea of people coming together and choosing to share their lives together.

Watching Jonah, though, he had seen the powerful change that came over him when he was able to be with Aubrey. The man seemed stronger and more determined, happier and more optimistic even when he was facing incredibly difficult moments. The two of them seemed to fulfill in each other something that was missing and now that they had been together for some time, Gannon had a difficult time imagining them without each other.

He wondered if what he was feeling now could be like that draw that had brought the two of them together and that had empowered them to bring the survivors out of the laboratory building and here where they had been safer and more comfortable than they ever had in their lives. The thought was thrilling. This was his chance, an opportunity for him to live the life that Ryan had taken from them from the moment of their birth. These feelings were his and his alone, something that no one had forced him to have or could control. In these feelings he was able to experience something that was totally within himself and that was another step in living a life outside of the facility, outside of Ryan’s grasp. Though he didn’t know if he would ever be able to understand the feelings that he was having, or act on them even if he did, just experiencing them showed him that he was more than just the living machine that Ryan had seen them as. There was more to him and he was beginning to find it.

As exciting as this was, though, Gannon also felt afraid. Breaking free of Ryan’s control and being rescued by Jonah and the rest of those who had come down into the facility was the turning point in his life. While lying in the reprogramming chamber, suffering the extreme consequences of the mistakes that he had made in the battle that they had fought in the main corridor of the laboratory building, his mind had spun with thoughts of what had bought him into this position yet again. He tried to think through the battle that they had fought and the efforts that he personally had put forth. He had struggled to understand what mistake he could have made, what order he didn’t follow, or what misstep he could have possibly made to cause him to be among those who were captured and forced into the brutal reprogramming. As he had thought about it, he realized that he had done the same thing that he had always done, putting him through the same horrifying paces that he always did when training, drawing the same blood, pushing himself into the same exhaustion. He knew that he had been chosen purely for the purpose of the Valdicians earning the favor of Ryan.

Ryan relished the idea of the hybrids going through reprogramming. He said that it made his soldiers stronger and more effective, but Gannon believed that he simply enjoyed the power that came from administering the suffering that came from the torturous process. As he lay there in between sessions, waiting for another wave of the pain and grotesque images that would be forced into his mind, he had felt himself changing. He felt a sudden surge of realization, an awareness that he had never experienced before. When Eden, Pyra, and the others had come into the room and released them, ushering them down into the basement and showing them concern and kindness, that awareness increased and he committed to himself that he wasn’t going let his training control him any longer.

Forcing their way out of the building was the first time that he had fought with the conviction that was within his soul rather than the training that had programmed him for violence and brutality. He had fought against the Valdicians and those hybrids still under the control of Ryan with everything that was in him, fueling himself with the anger and bitterness that had built up within him over his years of captivity, though he had never allowed himself to be fully aware of it until then. Gannon felt that he was in control of himself for the first time, as if he were starting to experience what life really was.

Now that he was thinking about Willow and the powerful feelings that were starting to brew within him, though, Gannon worried that that wasn’t enough. He had been transferred with the rest out of the facility and into the basement, then watched as those who were able to leave were brought out and onto the ships that would transfer them off of Earth. When they were ready he had followed Aubrey and Jonah’s guidance out of the basement and here to Nana’s home where they had been recovering and learning what it was to simply live. That didn’t mean, though, that they had been living real life. They had been living in a protected, controlled environment that allowed little to influence them. Though he had been able to start processing the emotions that he was experiencing and explore what it was to live without the tremendous controls, Gannon worried that he hadn’t yet experienced enough of the real world to challenge the training that was so deeply ingrained within him. He was afraid that there would be a time when something would happen and the training that he had undergone since he was just a child would rear back. There was a chance that he wouldn’t be able to control the impulses the training had created, and that if he was ever able to get close to Willow, he may hurt her. The thought was unnerving and he didn’t know how he was going to move forward.