Z 2134

excuse to fuck like rabbits, even if they weren’t allowed to conceive without a voucher.
    Jonah closed his eyes, thankful for the memories, even if they were painful reminders of all that he’d lost.
    He could still remember the moment he’d opened the door to the end of his life as if it were yesterday.
    He’d been working on an endless stack of forms to be filed when he got the call — Ana was sick and needed someone to pick her up from school. Molly wasn’t answering the com at home, and he figured she was likely sleeping since she’d stayed home from work with a virus and was feeling like hell that morning.
    So Jonah left work early, grateful for the chance to care for his baby girl — for both of the women in his life. Ana was growing too fast, and time was flying by. Before long, she’d be married and starting her own family, so who knew how many more father-and-daughter moments they had between them?
    Jonah thought about pulling Adam out as well, but knew Academy wouldn’t like it, even if his rank as a Watcher kept them from argument.
    By the time they were halfway home, Jonah had managed to make Ana laugh several times, even though she insisted her stomach was hurting and kept begging him to stop. It felt good to have a rare moment alone with her, and he couldn’t remember the last time it had just been him and her. Hell, he hardly remembered the last time it had been he and his whole family, what with his busy schedule.
    “I’m glad you got sick today,” he said, as they walked down the hallway to their apartment. “Well, you know what I mean.”
    “Me too, Dad,” she said, smiling back at him.
    He opened the door to the apartment, still laughing, and called for Molly to see if she was awake. Molly wasn’t in the kitchen, family room, or anywhere else in the front part of their small apartment. It wasn’t until Jonah made his way to the back of his apartment that he found Molly — crumpled in the doorway to Jonah’s office, face down in a river of blood.
    In reality, they screamed at the discovery together, but when The Watchers arrived on the scene, Ana’s story changed, and she swore that her father had bashed her mother’s skull in with his shock stick.
    The Watchers, sure enough, found the bloody shock stick in his office and arrested him immediately.
    Though Jonah had known he could get caught working with the Underground, he never thought the government would murder his wife, frame him, and somehow implicate his daughter in the cover-up. The only explanation that made any sense in the insanity was Duncan’s theory — the City had somehow planted false memories in Ana’s head via a chip implanted in her.
    In all his years as a Watcher, he’d seen, and done, many illicit things in the name of justice, but he’d never seen a false memory planted.
    And yet it was the only explanation that made sense. Someone had discovered him helping “the enemy,” and rather than expose him as a traitor and admit that one of their best and most trusted had been compromised, they set him up for murder.
    And if The City could do that, what else were they capable of? What lengths would they go to in order to preserve their power?
    Now his wife was dead. His daughter, and likely his son as well, hated him.
    If they could get Ana, of course they could get to Adam too.
    But now Ana was in The Games. Had she discovered their deception, he wondered? Perhaps the false memories weren’t permanent, and now they had to clean up their mess before it got ugly.
    They couldn’t reveal him as a traitor to The State. It might embolden their enemies, or worse, it might cause other Watchers to question their allegiance. If a kind, trusted man such as Jonah Lovecraft had turned his back on The State, perhaps there was a good reason.
    But to set Ana up as a traitor was easy. She was young, and young people were easily implicated because the older people feared them, feared change. Plus, she had legitimate reason to be angry with The State. It had, after all, locked up her father, even if he was supposedly guilty of murdering her mother. It seemed plausible that she’d be angry with those who put him behind bars.
    So they set her up, sent her off to die. No more witnesses to their lie.
    Except they hadn’t killed him.
    And Ana wasn’t dead…yet.
    He had to find his daughter and reveal the lies the government had crafted. As he began to drift off, he wondered how long his children had pledged allegiance to