It felt like walking directly into his memories as Thomas stepped into his childhood home. The house had been trashed, the door still hanging off its hinges, family photos shattered on the floor. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear his mother’s singing in the kitchen and his brother hammering away at some project in his room. His heart ached as he set about making the house right, sweeping away the broken glass and hanging pictures back on the wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted their neighbor watching him from the window, one clawed hand clutched in the fabric of the curtain. He ignored her.
Thomas started on the living room before moving on to the kitchen. He froze at the sight of the bags of groceries sitting innocently on the counter. Flies buzzed around the spoiled food. The rum cakes his father loved so much were coated with mold like an extra layer of frosting. Rowan probably hadn’t expected on being gone so long.
He swiped a hand over his eyes and tossed the bags and cakes into the trash. Once the house began to look liveable once more, he moved on to Rowan’s bedroom, the last place he wanted to be. He could hear the distant echo of a gunshot, could feel the frantic racing of his heart as he reached for the door. It was already open so he pushed it the rest of the way and stared at the mess. He relaxed at the absence of blood. His eyes strayed to the spot where he’d found his brother’s body, but he swallowed the memories back. Broken vials spread out across the floor. He grabbed a broom and slowly swept them up.
A piece of paper, half hidden under the bed, caught his eye. He bent down to grab it, his heart jolting at the familiar handwriting underneath the diagram for a robotic arm. The paper trembled in his grasp as he blinked back the stinging in his eyes.
“Thomas?”
He jerked at the sound of his name and turned to see Sebastian standing there in a three-piece suit. The captain’s eyes roamed around the room, eyes dull with pain and grief, before meeting Thomas’s. Thomas held out the piece of paper with a half smile. “Found this.” He said, handing it over.
A smile curled up Sebastian’s lips. “He was so brilliant.”
Thomas looked back at the room and saw his brother’s ghost in the corner, watching him. “All this technology,” he murmured, “and we still can’t save the people we love.”
“The person with that technology is probably dead in a ditch somewhere, given our past experiences.”
“Or being brought back to life by their grief-stricken relative.” Thomas turned back to Sebastian. “I wanted to thank you. For letting me stay when I left.”
Sebastian swallowed. “Anything for family. We should probably go. Kenan and Lyra are already at the cemetery with your father.”
Thomas nodded, but he didn’t move. “I actually have a favor to ask of you. After the funeral, you think I could take Alyssa off your hands?”
“...why?”
Thomas shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “I figured this planet’s as good as any for her. Or did you just want to keep her hidden away in your room?”
Sebastian hesitated. “Do you think you could bring her back?”
“Probably not, but at least she’ll have the sun.”
Sebastian agreed, and they walked outside together, Thomas closing the newly repaired door behind them. It would take some time to get used to the echoes of the past whispering in the walls, but it was time to stop running from them. He wasn’t going to let the past win. Not this time. Not when the future had waited so patiently.
“Wait a moment.” Sebastian said and ran to the mailbox. He hesitated, swallowed, then opened it to pull out a stack of letters.
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“Is now really the time?” Thomas asked.
“It’s important.” Sebastian replied as he shuffled through the letters and stopped at one. With shaking hands, he tore it open, tears rolling down his cheeks as he turned to Thomas with a bittersweet smile. “He got in.” He held up the letter, stamped with the Shelley College emblem. “He got in.”
The funeral was a quick and solemn affair, no fancy coffins or preachers this time. Just a small group of friends and a simple box containing Rowan’s body. Thomas thought a speech should be said, but when it came time to speak, his throat seized up. So they buried him in silence. Thomas’s father insisted on being the one to do it, wet cheeks streaked with dirt by the time he was finished.
“I’m sorry.” He said to the wind as Sebastian eased a new tombstone onto the grave, something he’d picked up in town hours before. The inventor fell to his knees before the graves of his son and wife. “I loved you both so much, but I shouldn’t have let that turn me into a monster.”
The ghosts of his wife and son appeared before the inventor who gave no sign of seeing them. Thomas watched his mother wrap an arm around Rowan and smile down at the man she’d loved so much. “There’re no monsters here.” Rowan said, his voice as soft as the rustling of leaves. His steady green eyes met Thomas’s.
Thomas shoved his hands into his pockets and felt the faded paper crumpled inside. He tightened his hand over it and caught the wisp of a figure from the corner of his eye. He turned and saw his neighbor on the outskirts of the old cemetery, beady eyes watching him. Later, he’d make it a point to burn the paper in his pocket, but first, there was one last thing he needed to do to make things right.
Thomas had to wait until his father went inside to lay down before dragging the statue into the empty field behind their house, a gun shoved haphazardly into his waistband. He stopped, breathing hard, then kept moving, the trees alive with a symphony of birds. There were no ghosts out here in the dazzling sunlight, not yet, but there was something dark lurking just beyond the treeline. A figure in a dark cloak, beckoning with a skeletal hand. He ignored it. He continued dragging the statue out into the center of the field then fished out the amulet from his pocket, fingers brushing the piece of paper only briefly.
He stared at the horrific statue of a girl who’d lost everything. The cruel twist of her lips. The snakes of her hair frozen in their hideousness. A true monster by every definition. Cruel to let her live, that’s what they’d say if anyone ever saw her. He clenched his hand around the amulet before pressing down on the eye embedded in the center and pointed it at the statue.
A brilliant burst of light hit the statue’s forehead, the stone melting off like water. Dazed, the girl slid to the ground, the snakes wriggling around her ears. She took in great gasps of breath, her long fingers curling into the grass, before she looked up. Murky green eyes regarded him with a curiosity he wasn’t used to. He pointed the gun at those eyes.
“Are you going to kill me?” The lilt of her voice sounded almost like bells, light and pretty. They’d shot this girl for trying to save her family then dragged her away, brought her back to life themselves, just to experiment on her. To turn her into this. The gun didn’t waver.
“Maybe.” He replied honestly. “I need your help with something.”
“What could you want with a monster like me?”
“I want to change Frankenstein’s law.”
She snorted and looked away. “You want to make it legal for the dead to come back.”
“No. I just don’t want the ones brought back to suffer and die for something they had no say in. Punish the guilty, but don’t condemn the innocent.”
“There is nothing innocent left.”
“Would you have said that about your brother?” Thomas demanded.
She trembled and picked at the hem of her blue dress. “He was just a baby.” She met his gaze once more.
“Exactly. Don’t you want to help the ones like him? The innocent? Rather than have them herded off to be experiments or killed?”
“How can I trust you? You could be the same.”
Thomas fumbled for the paper in his pocket, keeping the gun trained on her. He shoved the wrinkled and torn page in her face, the words smudged and faded but legible enough for her to understand. She went still. “You get to decide if you’re a monster or not. You get to decide if you die here or out there. Maybe, maybe, there’s still a life left for you out there, but you’ll never know if you don’t decide now.”
The snakes slithered around her face, opening their mouths to reveal glittering fangs. Her murky eyes ached with pain, but there was something else shouldering its way past her traumas, and it looked a lot like hope. “I get to decide?”
“You do.”
She held out her hand for him to shake, glittering scales scraping his palm. He gripped her hand tight and pulled her onto her feet. He let her take the gun from him, watched as she gently laid it on the ground between them. “We’re not monsters. Let’s fix the laws.”