Power Divided (The Evolutionaries Book 1)

by s. Behr

  She rubbed my cheek. “I can’t change the past. I can only hope one day you will truly understand.”

  My anger dissolved into guilt. “I am sorry. I do understand. I know how much you and father love me. I know I am lucky to be in this family.” I nodded, sniffling. “I just want to make you both proud.”

  She gathered me up in a gentle hug. “You do make us proud.” She squeezed me. “Every day.”

  I held on a little tighter. “I will do my best today.”

  My mother pulled back and looked me in the eye. “It’s all anyone can ask.” She pushed my hair back into place. “Now, chin up. Shoulders straight. If you believed in yourself even half as much as I believe in you, then you would know that you can do anything.”

  She kissed my hair and turned to leave. At the door, she gazed back at me. “Violet, as for the Hg-1, they may not have our abilities, but they do have their own unique skills. Even if they don’t think so, the first-generation humans are still like us in many ways. They have hopes and struggles, lives they live. They are real people. They are not to be used as a punchline. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded grimly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. I will see you soon.” She gave me a small smile and left.

  I watched her shadow disappear with a heart full of guilt at my outburst. My parents had always protected me. Some days I resented it, but mostly it was a relief. And despite everything, whatever their choices were, I had never doubted I was their priority.

  Lily was an expert in court gossip, and anytime I felt sorry for myself, she was quick to remind me, “They always make time for you. No other prince or princess in Amera can say the same.” I crumpled into my chair, disgusted with myself. My parents deserved a better daughter. I stared at the tiny tomato plant sitting next to my bed, recalling the hours of failed practice, and as if it was embarrassed for me, the plant sagged more.

  With a growl, I stood and stomped across the room until I came face to face with my little nemesis. I began scooping up the dried failures when I saw the unused seeds in a small pile hiding behind a vase, almost as if they were afraid of what I might do to them. I swept the dried seeds into the vase, and chose a random seed from the pile and decided to try one last time before I made my way downstairs. Taking a deep breath, I focused on the steps I had memorized when I was only three years old.

  Isolate nutrient molecules and charge them into the seed. But as usual, instead of making something grow, my head began to ache from the strain of staring at a seed in my hand. Minutes passed, and my brow beaded with sweat. I could feel I was on the verge, but as usual, there was something in me that felt bound like my mind was shackled. Finally, a sliver of a crease appeared in the seed, a seam that made me concentrate harder, but eventually, the radical seemed to just stop like all the others.

  My preliminary alarm sounded, startling me from my frustration. “Thirty minutes until departure,” my com announced. The words lingered in the air, and my insides felt like they were churning a mile a minute, making me dizzy. Despite all of Ameli’s hard work, I scrambled for the washroom just in time for my breakfast to make its reappearance. My body clenched and heaved till there was nothing left, and after a few more spasms, with my stomach empty, I trembled from exhaustion and fear. Slumping back against the wall, my hand clenched like a vise around the vase filled with last night’s spent failures. “What am I going to do?” I thought inwardly. Then, despair and panic sank in when my inner voice remained quiet.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m here,” he answered gently.

  “This is going to be a disaster.”

  “Take a deep breath, Violet. This is nothing new, you’ve done it before.”

  “But it never turns out the way I want it to,” I replied, squeezing my eyes and shaking my head trying to clear away the dull ache in my brain.

  After a long silence, I heard my com chime again. “Five minutes to departure.”

  “It can’t be time already?” I thought miserably. “What were my parent’s thinking?” Without an answer, frustration boiled over in my chest, and I hurtled the vase at the unsuspecting wall.

  The memory of glass breaking shattered my slumber as I bolted up and hit my head with a hearty thwack.

  “Crocus,” I muttered.

  While I dreamt of my last morning with my mother, the sun had set. My eyes worked to adjust to the dim light of the full moon fighting valiantly to break through the clouds as the memory of her face and the taste of creamy cocoa faded, stealing the remaining warmth in my skin. My fingers were shaking either from the cold or the dream, I wasn’t sure. Rubbing my face, I tried to remember how I ended up here.

  A groan of agony escaped me when I remembered. All the pain and guilt of everything that happened this morning hit me like the flash flood I had barely escaped. I laid back on the soggy ground, wishing that this was the dream and I would open my eyes to discover I was safe back in my room waiting for Ameli to wake me in her special if not abrupt way.

  My sobs slowed as the sound of the rain grew louder. Sitting up carefully, I stretched my arms and felt for the tree limb above me. “I’m pretty sure you were scrawnier before I passed out,” I accused the tree as if it was to blame for the welt I felt expanding on my temple, but the tree ignored me.

  Twisting around to face the opening, I banged against another limb. “Ouch!” I exclaimed, followed by very uncourtly cursing. “Tree, if you hit me one more time!” I threatened, then deflated, “it will just hurt more,” I mumbled.

  Hearing droplets of rain pitter-patter in every direction, I realized I was mostly dry and that no rain was falling on me. “What is this?” I whispered into the dark. Reaching out, I skimmed the bark of the limbs with my fingertips and realized this wasn’t just a course of stray branches. This was so much more. I ran my fingers along the bumps in the pattern. These branches were braided together, and I was completely covered in this makeshift den. Scooting closer to the opening in the dim moonlight, I studied the weave. It was tight and thick with leaves, keeping the rain from pooling up around me. “Where did you come from?” I whispered with wonder.

  My inner voice was silent. But then I froze, realizing I was not alone.

  I listened through the rain, focusing between the darkness and the droplets hitting their target. It was useless. If someone were out there, I wouldn’t know it unless they were standing two feet from me, shaking my hand.

  “Where are they? Who would do something like this?” I asked the boy living inside my mind. But he didn’t answer.

  “Where are you?” I wondered agitated at his silence. “Fine, ignore me,” I thought pointedly. It wasn’t as if I heard his voice all of the time; his disappearing acts had no schedule or forewarning. It could be hours, sometimes even days, although he usually answered me when I was afraid or spiraling into dark thoughts. Since I was literally in the dark, and afraid, I didn’t understand why he wasn’t here.

  With each second that passed, another frightening scenario passed through my mind. Finally, I told myself, “Do not panic.” But by the way my fingers were shaking, it was clear the only thing I succeeded at was ignoring myself.

  Just then, I heard a twig snap in the distance, and my head jerked to the right as I held my breath, trying to see out of the opening through the darkness. I sat up, ready to make a run for it if I had to. Chaotic thoughts cluttered my mind, so I began counting the seconds.

  Somewhere between one and two hundred, my left foot went numb, and at three hundred, I lost feeling in the right. The risk of being seen shaking out my legs did not outweigh the reality that if I was going to make an honest effort to escape, control of my feet was imperative. I stretched until the tingling was gone and running was possible.

  The rain slowed to a drizzle, and the moonlight brightened as I began counting again. I didn’t make it to ten before I heard another snap, then another quickly followed. The sounds heading directly toward me made my heart race.

  Fiv
e pumps of blood later, a red blur bounded across the opening of my hiding spot. The ball of fur was wobbly as if its feet were too big for its legs. Surprised by a baby fox, I fell out of the opening in the den, face forward right into the mud with an unceremonious, “Ooof.” The fox froze when it heard me curse into the wet dirt.

  Pushing myself up slowly, staying low, and as unthreatening as I could, I asked in a quiet voice, “Where did you come from?” The kit stared at me like a statue trying to hide in plain sight. It was tiny for a red fox, and despite the rain, it had shoots of crazy baby fur fluffed in every direction, and even in the dim moonlight, it was adorable. “Why are you out here all alone?” I wondered, scanning the area for signs of its mother.

  My entire body uncoiled as I crawled the rest of the way out of the den. “You scared me, little one,” I whispered, closing the gap between us.

  It sat still with its eyes trained on me, leaning forward with curiosity, its head tilting a little to the left, its nose sniffing in my direction. It sat there, showing no fear of a teenage runaway covered in mud.

  While continuing to search through the dark for the person who conjured this den, I saw no signs of another living creature.

  Keeping my voice soft and unthreatening, I asked the kit, “Are you lost?” Suddenly, its ears pricked, and its spine straightened as it looked past me.

  “What is it?” I whispered, following its gaze. The thought that the royal guards had found me blossomed in my mind, but there was something else about the air, and it made the hairs stand on the back of my neck. But after a full minute, I saw nothing but misty rain in the trees.

  The fox sat in the same spot, its back arched, and what hackles it had were up. Something had this little puff of fur on high alert, staring into the darkness behind me.

  A low grumble came from the fox, causing my heart to pound as a sense of dread fell over me. Following its gaze, I searched the darkness until my head ached, and a twist of nausea washed over me. I fought to stay calm, squeezing my eyes shut, but a grinding heat burned behind my lids like I had dipped my eyes in vinegar and dirt.

  My hands covered my face when the little fox squeaked a tiny yowl. My eyes snapped open, and I fell on the ground scrambling to make sense of what I was seeing.

  “What in the—?” I gasped. The world that had been dark and gray just seconds ago was now bathed in a kaleidoscope of colors. I shook my head violently, making myself dizzy. Everywhere I looked, from the trees to the ground and even the fox was shimmering with glowing hues of every shade in a rainbow. I could make out each plant across the river, from the weeds to the blooms on the branches. Looking up, the clouds in the sky seemed alive with billions of individual dots of red, orange, yellow, and green. It was as if I could make out every molecule in the universe, and each had its own hue. The rain was a micro mesh net of colorful droplets falling to the ground. The river shimmered in shades similar to the clouds, but more intense, as if the air had been squeezed out and what was left had been poured into the flow of the current.

  I was both mesmerized and terrified. Rising to my feet, I turned around. Everywhere my gaze landed was beautiful and strange; a world that was familiar, but new and spectacular.

  I heard a distant rumble of thunder that made the fox jump, and above me, the colors in the sky began swirling rapidly. It was if they began vibrating on some atomic level I couldn’t see, then in an instant, a charge of white plasma burned its way across the sky.

  “Lightning?” I gritted out just as the pain made my eyes feel like they had been lit on fire and I fell backward. When my head hit the rocky ground, darkness engulfed me.

  Opening my eyes, I saw red.

  Red fur, brown eyes, and a wet black nose. The colored landscape of before felt like a waking hallucination that had simply vanished. The world now looked as it should, dark and gray with a hint of dawn lurking at the edge of the horizon.

  My chest felt heavy. “You’re still here,” I remarked with surprise at the kit sitting on my ribcage. I lifted my head, instantly regretting it when a sharp pain bloomed at the base of my neck. “Ouch!” I winced. “Watch out for that rock; it has a temper.”

  Dazed, turning onto my side, the fox slid off me as I sat up, rubbing my neck, wondering if what I had seen was even real. The landscape around me emerged as the haze of the morning light started to lift the last shadows of night.

  I let out a slow breath of disbelief. The river was unrecognizable. When I crawled out of the flash flood I was certain I had placed a dozen feet of earth between me and the water. But now the current was within arm’s reach. The gray soil from the Wild Steel Mountains shimmered with morning dew mixed with rainwater, making it look like a sheen of glittery oil had coated the dirt.

  “Cut it pretty close, waking me, don’t you think? Or were you planning to leave me here?” As I pushed myself up, the soil stuck to my fingers, thick clumps like unmolded clay. As I wiped my hands on my jacket, the clouds rumbled, and I flinched, expecting bursts of lightning, but none came. Gingerly, I sat back on my heels. The world spun twice, then settled.

  “I just need a second,” I whispered to myself and the fox. The kit tilted its head with a knowing look when another rumble in the distance caused it to grow still.

  “Do you see something?” Following its gaze, I held my breath as we listened carefully but heard only more thunder. “Doesn’t sound like the storm is done.” I frowned, glancing upward. Over my head, the sky was dark gray with shades of silver and thinning patches revealing the colors of the sunrise.

  In the dim light of the waking morning, the overly full river looked like a stripe of water between two sides of the terrain that were as different as night and day. Across the water, the forest was thick and green, both ancient and new at the same time. The side the kit and I sat on had a few trees that were twisted and stunted, scattered here and there along the jagged zigzag base of the mountains.

  Pictures from my Neyr geography lessons didn’t do the real Wild Steel Mountains justice. The landscape varied with no rhyme or reason. There were gently sloped hills in some spots, and in others abrupt and sharp, tall rises, many that still resembled the ancient buildings that had once dominated this area.

  The fox and I stood in a thin valley on our side of the river between two peaks. The one on the left was more of a hill while the other on my right was double the height. The taller hill had a pocket of caves above a line of boulders with a tree growing almost sideways just below the bottom lip of the cave’s mouth.

  “We might want to seek shelter that isn’t so close to the river,” I said to the fox just as the den I had hidden in the night before caught my eye. Seeing it for the first time in this light, it was taller than I expected, but more surprising was the style of braiding. It was advanced, evidence that whoever had conjured it had skills that bordered on art. It required precision and perfection, neither of which I was capable of.

  “Who would have done this and just left me here?” I had no clue. Then, before I could dwell on any theories about the den, another rumble sounded even closer, dread raced down my spine.

  At the edge of my vision to the north, I began to see movement in the trees. I rose with caution. “I think it’s time we moved on,” I whispered to the fox. Scanning the mountainside for options, a low and tiny growl came from behind my ankles. The fox hiding behind me was rigid, her eyes intensely focused upstream.

  “What do you see?” I asked as another thread of thunder shook the air. The fox began to tremble, slowly backing up. The rumbling grew louder, and the sound of branches snapping caused me to crouch in alarm.

  Dawn had arrived, and with it, I could see a line of trees across the river bowed and bent pointing directly at us. “This is not good.”

  The fox was already running when I realized that the river was not done with me yet. It was as if the dam had broken, and the full force of the Great Lake was rushing unchecked and crushing anything in its path.

  In my frantic sprint for the mou
ntainside, I caught up to the fox who was darting from rock to rock in a steady climb upward.

  “This way!” I called to the fox who paused for a blink to see me heading for a tree under the caves.

  We reached the tree at the same time and wasting not a second more, I scooped up the kit, tossing the fox so that it easily bounded the last few feet of the slope and peered over the edge as I hoisted myself through the tree limbs. I had never been so glad to be raised in a city where climbing trees was second nature. I pulled my legs up onto the ledge of the cave just in time to turn and see the crash of a ferocious wave plunder through the ravine and swallow the river whole.

  Water in its purest form was beautiful. Refreshing. To most living things on the planet essential. It was the chameleon of elements, coming in every shape and form imaginable. It could enhance or transform the everyday into the extraordinary. Morning dew could be a net of twinkling lights in an open meadow at sunrise. A placid lake at sunset could transform into a mirror reflecting the stars emerging to claim the night sky.

  Below us, the water was a monstrous and cruel enemy, showing no mercy and invading every crack and crevice it could reach. Waves toppled trees while my stomach churned watching the boulder that had saved my life wash down the muddy river as if it were no more than a pebble. In seconds it disappeared along with twenty feet of land on either side of what had been the Fifth Riverbank.