Dissident

by Lisa Beeson

  After carefully picking out the twigs from the tangles, she attempted to smooth her hair back away from her face with her dirty, sweaty hands.

  She had overheard Hugo joke the other day that she was becoming feral. Skylar didn’t know exactly what feral meant, but she figured from the context that it must mean something like wild. She liked the idea of becoming wild and living in the woods with the animals, like Mowgli or Tarzan. That suited her just fine.

  Once her hair was sufficiently away from her face, she used her hands to push herself up in an attempt at a handstand. Unsuccessful yet again, she stood up straight and wiped the dirt from the ground on her bright pink tank top instead of the new cheetah print leggings Ellie had made for her. They were her favorite out of all the clothing Ellie had given her. She was sure they made her run super-fast like a cheetah – not as fast as Ari could go, but fast enough to outrun anything else. You never knew when you needed to be fast.

  As she was about to take off to go exploring for more treasures, one of the crows cawed right before Armand, screeched “Alva-ro” from his branch.

  This was the first time Armand had spoken since Enzo died, so Skylar figured it must be important. She brought her small binoculars up to her eyes to search the property for Alvaro from her vantage point on the hill.

  Noah, Jamie’s soldier boyfriend, had given them to her. They hung perpetually around her neck for occasions such as this.

  She scanned over the fenced in area on the other side of the pond, where the trailers and RV’s that served as temporary housing were parked. Then she swept over to the barn buzzing with activity, her eyes flitting from one face to another, but Alvaro wasn’t there either. Sadie and Ellie were chattering away as usual.

  Skylar couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy whenever she saw Ellie and Sadie together. She had been friends with Ellie first.

  Moving on, she noticed George and Kauri parking Jamie’s pick-up truck in front of the house. The back of it was filled with supplies and gardening stuff from town. Finally, she spied Alvaro and Hector rushing from the back of the main house heading past the barn towards the stables, which had all the satellites and antennae-thingies on top that they had taken from Scion’s Keep.

  Maybe he had a vision about Soren…

  Skylar absolutely needed to find out what was going on. Dropping the binoculars, she scampered down the hill, her wild hair floating around her head like a fluffy, tangled halo. She ran past the nearest side of the pond, towards Jamie’s field of sculptures.

  Before the Scion’s Keep folks even got there, they had moved them outside of the stables when they started renovating the building.

  Ever since Skylar had first seen Jamie’s patchwork metal creations, she wanted to explore and climb all over them. But someone always seemed to be around to shoo her away. They were afraid that she’d cut herself on the metal or some such nonsense. Pfft… As if I’m not the careful-est kid ever.

  She moved swiftly through the tall grass, going from the shade of one sculpture to another. Even though she was sure that she was leaping and dodging around the creations with greatest skill and care, her wristwatch dinged against the tail of a strange metal creature. Skylar froze and went invisible, searching the faces by the barn to see if anyone had heard. No one was looking her way, except for an adorable, fuzzy face that popped up from behind a stack of potting soil bags.

  Sadie’s dog, Mulligan, eagerly sniffed the air, then seemed to look right where Skylar was frozen amidst the sculptures. Animals and Ari seemed to be the only ones that could see Skylar when she went invisible. Normally, Skylar would eagerly welcome Mulligan as a companion, but the dog’s presence would ruin the stealthy-ness of her mission.

  No, Mulligan, you silly dog. She put up her hands, motioning for the dog to stay.

  Mulligan panted with a curious tilt of her head as she continued to study Skylar. Then her head abruptly turned towards Hector and Alvaro as they passed by the barn on their way towards the stables. Interested, Mulligan started to follow them, and Skylar saw her opportunity to get into the stables without getting caught.

  Maybe you aren’t so silly after all …

  Keeping herself invisible, Skylar quickly followed Mulligan as she followed Hector and Alvaro. Skylar knew she wasn’t supposed to go invisible, but it was the only way she’d be able to get close enough to get some information. Nobody ever said anything interesting when they thought she was around, and whatever had Alvaro and Hector making their way to the stables so quickly seemed important.

  She’d been really good about not going invisible since she’d gotten to Paradise Glades, so that had to count for something.

  Once the two older boys got to the doors, Skylar made sure to stay close enough to Mulligan so that she could squeeze in right behind her when she used her paw to stop the door from closing.

  As she slipped in, Skylar heard Maia’s voice saying, “…I was able to back up most of the files before destroying the hard drive…”

  “Cass,” Alvaro shouted while waving his sketchbook in the air. “Cass, I had a vision! It’s important!”

  I knew it, Skylar thought, feeling completely vindicated.

  Cass, Maia, and Stacy looked over from a station of computer screens. Joshua and Jack were towards the back, where Jack was just getting off a treadmill. Skylar had overheard that with Tess’s help, Joshua had put the nanobots, that they had used with Ari, into Jack’s spine to help him walk again. The brace around his waist and legs helped to stabilize him while his leg muscles got stronger.

  “Don’t let that dog in here,” Maia shouted at the older boys.

  While Alvaro rushed over to Cass, Hector grabbed Mulligan by the collar and ushered her back outside with a quiet, “Sorry girl. Go find Sadie.”

  With an eager wag of her tail, Mulligan rushed off to find her favorite human friend.

  As the doors closed again, Skylar remembered to take off her shoes so they wouldn’t make squeaking noises when she walked on the cement floor. She was sure Nina had picked out the squeakiest shoes she could find, just to make sure Skylar couldn’t sneak around. After hiding her shoes in a safe place close to the door, she looked around in awe. She wasn’t allowed inside the stables and now she knew why. The place was filled with all kinds of expensive looking computers and machines that she knew she’d never be allowed anywhere near in a million years. There were so many enticing buttons to push and switches to flick. But the sight that took her breath away was the giant moving solar system attached to the ceiling. The planets were all wrong, but it was the coolest thing she had ever seen.

  Almost tripping on a bundle of wires, Skylar quickly regained focus and made her way over to where Alvaro was showing Cass a drawing in his sketchbook.

  “…the black rose means she’s dying doesn’t it?” Alvaro asked Cass with a desperate look in his eyes. Skylar could feel that he was sad and scared, which made her scared.

  Val can’t die, she’s just a kid.

  “It could…” Cass said as she continued to look at the drawing, but she didn’t seem convinced, making Skylar feel a bit better. “Was there was more to the vision?”

  Alvaro nodded. “I had to split it up since the pages are so small. It starts at the dog-eared page.”

  Joshua and Maia came to look over Cass’s shoulders as she turned the pages.

  Skylar noticed Alvaro’s hands getting twitchy as she felt his anxiety rise, as if he was uncomfortable about so many people looking at his sketches. He folded his arms in an attempt to keep them still.

  When Cass turned the third page, Joshua’s eyes went wide and he stabbed his finger at a drawing. “That coin…” His voice sounded hoarse with disbelief. “You saw that coin in your vision?”

  Alvaro nodded. “It was part of a montage of flashes right before I saw Val.”

  “That’s my mother’s coin. My brother, Eric, kept it after she died so he could see her face whenever he wanted to.”

  “Uh…,” Hector said after
coming closer to look at the drawing. “The two faces are a bit confusing, but that’s definitely a dude, man.”

  “No, my mom’s face,” Joshua said, with an impatient shake his head. “When Eric touches a metal object, like a coin, in his mind he can see the last couple people who’ve touched it.”

  “Are you certain that this is your mother’s coin,” Cass asked softly.

  Joshua nodded with a grim certainty. “My Grandfather was in the military and when Hugo and my mom were kids they lived Germany. Uncle Hugo found the coin by some old train tracks and gave it to my mom for her tenth birthday. It was so unique and special, my mom always kept it with her as a kind of charm. I’d know it anywhere.”

  “So what does Alvaro seeing it mean?” Jack asked as he walked over, reaching out for the sketchbook so he could look at the drawings as well.

  “It means,” Cass said, as she handed it over to him. “That Eric may be one of the prisoners being held at The Facility.”

  “It means that he’s still alive,” Joshua said as he closed his eyes as if he was trying not to cry. “And that he’s still fighting. Maybe that’s why Eric‘s name never came up on any of the manifests. Wyatt said that the troublemakers get their identities wiped when they’re sent to The Facility.”

  “…where they become guinea pigs,” Maia said under her breath, sounding worried. Her eyes widened when she realized they had all heard her and she quickly mumbled an apology to Joshua.

  Skylar felt Joshua’s spike of fear and dread that matched her own. Is Soren a troublemaker? Are they doing experiments on him?

  “Uh, sweet job on the details, Alvaro,” Jack said, in an attempt to change the subject.

  Alvaro grimaced self-consciously and shrugged off the compliment. “It’s all kinda rough. I had to do it quickly before the details faded in my mind.”

  “That’s Janus on the coin, right?” Jack asked.

  Joshua and Alvaro nodded.

  “Who’s Janus?” Hector asked.

  “He’s the Roman God of beginnings and endings, duality, transitions, time, passages, doorways, and gates,” Alvaro said, helpfully. “He’s said to have two faces because one is looking towards the past while the other is looking towards the future. He’s also thought to represent war and peace.”

  Cass nodded thoughtfully.

  “Do you know what that could mean?” Alvaro asked.

  Cass’s eyes narrowed as she looked down at the sketch. “Possibly… but not completely – not just yet.”

  Skylar wanted to get closer so she could see too, but everyone was bunched together and there was no way she could squeeze in without touching somebody or knocking into something. Then she saw an empty space on a table near the group. Carefully and quietly, she made her way over and climbed on top of it. Standing up, Skylar was able to glimpse a bit of the sketchbook in Jack’s hand. She saw part of the head of a man with two faces, who was supposed to be some god named Janice. Skylar scowled in confusion. She always thought that Janice was a woman’s name.

  “This symbol embedded in the first couple sketches, with the little flowers around it,” Jack said as he flipped back through the pages and pointed to the symbol on each, “is for the Roman goddess Diana. I’ve had to use it before in a web page I designed.”

  Skylar quickly put her hands over her mouth to keep from blurting out that Diana was her mommy’s name.

  “Diana is Skylar and Soren’s mom’s name, isn’t it,” Joshua asked.

  Yes! Yes, it is, Skylar thought while vigorously nodding her head, excited that he had said what she was thinking. She had always liked Joshua. He was super smart.

  She inched forward to the edge of the table and stood on her tiptoes to try to get a better look at the symbol.

  “Yeah, Mara’s daughter,” Maia answered. Skylar could feel that she still felt guilty about her earlier comment.

  “And some theories link Janus and Diana together as the origin of divine twins,” Alvaro explained. “Kind of like a sun and moon, summer and winter solstice sort of thing. Which brings us back to duality, and the beginning and ending symbolism.”

  I’m a twin! The coin’s gotta be about me and Soren too!

  Maia pointed to the sketch. “The flowers look like rue…”

  “It is,” Alvaro said. “And rue usually represents regret, sorrow, and repentance.”

  Does this mean that Mommy is sorry for being bad?

  “Do you know what kind of bird this is, Stace?” Jack asked his fiancée, holding the page up towards her.

  Stacy turned from what she was reading on the computer screens to look at the sketchbook. “Um, it looks like a mocking bird to me.”

  The doors burst open with a flood of natural light, and in walked Noah. Skylar flinched at the sudden sound, but was able to keep her focus to remain invisible. The big man held up his phone in front of him, looking at the screen as he strode purposefully forward.

  “What’s the matter,” Cass asked Noah, as he walked straight towards the group without a word.

  Right when he was level to where Skylar was standing on the edge of the table, his arm shot out to wrap around her waist, eliciting a startled yelp as he lifted her off her feet.

  Knowing she was caught, Skylar allowed herself to become visible again as he placed her gently on the ground, and she heard startled intakes of breath.

  “You can fool our eyes, but you can’t fool our cameras,” Noah said to her, as he pointed to his phone. He swiped the screen with his finger and the feed from the security camera began playing on a large floor to ceiling monitor on the wall.

  “She came in on the heels of Hector and Alvaro, and was about to fall off that table trying to get a look at that book,” Noah said, as he rewound the feed to play it back for everyone.

  Skylar felt a twinge of betrayal that Noah had snitched on her. Normally she liked Noah. He was usually nearby on her explorations around the property, but he always gave her space and left her alone to explore on her own.

  Why now…, she pouted, I was so close to getting some information.

  The people from Scion’s Keep were used to Skylar’s antics, but Hector, Jack, and Stacy kept looking back and forth between Skylar and the video as if they couldn’t believe it.

  “She was right there and we didn’t even know it,” Hector said in amazement.

  “Skylar,” Cass said with a sag of her shoulders and a disappointed glare.

  With everyone’s eyes on her, Skylar couldn’t speak as she fought back the tears of shame that threatened to fall. Hanging her head, she let her frizzy mass of hair hide her face. Skylar didn’t want Cass, Noah, and the Riley’s to think that she was bad. She was just curious.

  No matter how hard it would be, she knew that she needed to make amends to make it better. It would be what Ari would want her to do.

  Skylar took a big shaky breath, loosening the knot in her chest. “I’m sorry for breaking the rules. It’s just that Armand said Alvaro’s name and I saw them rushing to the stables. I figured Alvaro must have had a vision and I had to know if it was about Soren. I know I’m not allowed in here, so I went invisible…” She sniffed her leaky nose and glanced up at Cass with watery eyes. “Are any of the sketches about Soren?”

  Cass crouched in front of Skylar to give her a comforting hug. Skylar didn’t fight it and let the tears fall as she laid her head on the beautiful woman’s shoulder. Skylar liked her calming presence.

  “It’s not clear right now, baby girl,” Cass said as she rubbed Skylar’s back. “But tell you what, if you promise to obey the rules and continue to be honest, I promise to let you know the minute we find out something definite about your brother. Alright, sweetie?”

  Skylar nodded then leaned back to cross her heart and hold out her pinky finger. “I pinky promise…”

  Cass smiled and wrapped her pinky around Skylar’s little one. “Pinky promise.”

  “…and nothing breaks a pinky promise,” Hector said quietly as he and Jack shared a sad s
mile.

  “But what about Val,” Alvaro asked Cass, his anxiety eclipsing the moment. “It looks like she’s sinking. What if the black rose really does mean she’s dying? What if she’s already dea-”

  “Then,” Cass interrupted, as she stood back up and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “We will do what we can with great expediency.”

  Chapter 9

  Val was in the middle of a barren wasteland trapped in a never-ending circuit on a demonic carousel. Instead of riding on beautifully crafted animals, living nightmare creatures were rising up and down on pikes, grasping, clawing, and tearing at her. Val fought hard against them, but just as she would get away from one, another would catch her up in their painful clutches.

  Over the dissonant twanging of the carousel’s sinister calliope, she thought she heard a familiar male voice echo in the distance of the wretched wasteland. He was yelling. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he sounded angry. He was arguing with someone.

  “Val? Val can you hear me?” The familiar voice asked. It sounded closer, making it easier to understand. Asa! It’s Asa!

  She stopped fighting as she felt a flicker of hope, but then the carousel tipped precariously to the side. The world crumbled and fell out from under her and she plunged into a dark, bottomless chasm.

  Asa let out a panicked curse. “Stay with me, Val!”

  She wanted to stay, but no matter how hard she scrambled for purchase at the rocky sides of the chasm, tearing and scraping her hands and feet in her fierce attempts, she could not stop her descent into the abyss.

  Tingling warmth bloomed in her abdomen and started slowly unfurling outwards to her head and limbs. As the warmth coursed through her, the pain, ever so slowly, began to ebb. The rocky walls dissipated to a black nothingness. She found herself floating in a strange limbo, where she was able to better hear and understand the conversation going on around her, but unable to partake or open her eyes.

  “Go get some Amoxicillin, an IV line, and a bag of LRS, now!” Asa ordered someone. She had a sense that he was standing right over her, his hands on her bare abdomen. She figured that he must have been using his ability to heal her.