The Taking 02: Hover

by Melissa West

  I watch him curiously, but no one else reacts to the recited definition. What is that about? A nervous tick or some strange thing he does to maintain internal peace?

  His lips press together into a hard, disapproving line. “It’s always refreshing to hear the judgmental idiosyncrasies of the human mind. For how different you pretend to be, on the inside you are all the same—small minded and closed off to anything different from the norm.”

  “Grandfather,” Jackson says, a careful edge to his voice.

  Zeus smiles. “Very well. We openly welcome you to Triad. Please know there are laws, as is required of any operating civilization. There are many, and while we do not pretend that you could memorize all, please note the following: honesty, magnanimity, and pride. These words, mere sentiments in your world, are the backbone of ours.”

  My jaw tightens. At some point, my over-opinionated head is going to blow. I have pride, loads of it—for humans. I glance nervously to Zeus, cursing myself for not controlling my thoughts better, but he doesn’t respond. They can’t expect me on the first day to toss aside my loyalties in favor of theirs.

  This time Zeus refuses to remain silent. “You forget, you are no longer human. At least not fully. Testing revealed fifty-fifty. I suspect by yearend your body will have fully transformed. Before we begin, do you have any questions?”

  An image of the T-screen back home filling with Zeus’s face crosses my mind. We were shocked to hear his offer to allow all infected humans to come to Loge to be healed. At first, it seemed generous, humane, but now that I’ve spent time here, I know that nothing about Zeus is especially kind. I hold his gaze. “Yes. Where are the other humans?”

  Jackson tenses noticeably beside me, but the question is already out and as stupid as it may be, I refuse to spend my time here afraid of Zeus. Besides, if he wanted me dead, I would already be gone.

  Zeus taps his fingertips together and peers over them as though I’ve broken some line that I didn’t know existed. “They are being acclimated to Loge. Not everyone is blessed as you are with an inside ticket to our world. We need to know that we can trust those we’ve allowed to come here. Jackson vouched for you. Please don’t give me a reason to doubt his judgment. Now, is there anything else?”

  The question that repeats over and over in my mind swims to the surface. I draw a breath, pushing aside my fear. “Why didn’t you respond?” I ask.

  “Respond?” Zeus gives me a quizzical look, and then reading my mind, replaces the look with a grin. “Ah, I see not all has been disclosed.” His eyes flicker to Jackson, then he stands, addressing the crowd. “Our new resident wants to know why we didn’t respond to the attack on our kind.”

  Everyone erupts in laughter. Everyone except Jackson, who turns to me, pleading. “I was waiting to tell you until we got settled at home. I didn’t want to upset you while your body was trying to heal. His plan—the strategy…” I look from person to person behind me, all of them enjoying some hidden joke at my expense. I eye Jackson, and then seeing the obvious, that he has once again kept something from me, I take a deliberate step away from him, anger raging in my chest so intensely I have to grit my teeth together to keep from screaming.

  “Now, now,” Zeus says, “you cannot blame him. He only just learned.”

  “Learned what?” I spit out.

  Zeus smiles. “Do you know how many deaths we suffered?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Zero,” he says, his smile widening. “And the humans? Well, the numbers reported continue to climb. Our kind has inveigled the humans for centuries. Nothing we do is ever by chance.”

  Nothing by chance. Those were Emmy’s words when I’d first woken in the Panacea and asked about my becoming an Ancient. But it isn’t like Zeus knew how many humans were healed over the years. Or did he? My eyes rise to his. Did you?

  Zeus tilts his head in a calculated way, his mouth set like a relaxed predator, waiting for the kill. “Inveigle: to entice, manipulate, bait.”

  I lunge forward. “You sick, piece of—”

  “Don’t.” Jackson grabs me.

  I glare at him, fighting to free myself from his grasp. “Do you even know what it means to tell the truth? So much for honesty. Let me go. Now.”

  Zeus tsks. “Testy, testy. We shall see how long it takes to remove the wild within you.”

  I can’t find the will to say anything in return. Because this means everything is orchestrated, everything a lie. Zeus intentionally had the Ancients heal humans, so when the neurotoxin released it would backfire on us, killing our own kind. I may be safe, but what about my family and friends? How will they survive when the enemy is always one step ahead? They won’t, unless…

  Jackson gives me a knowing look, his face otherwise blank, but in that brief glance, that brief moment, I read his intent. This war has just begun. He doesn’t agree with Zeus. He plans to fight. But after everything he’s done, how can I trust him? I can’t, I won’t. For now, I’m on my own.

  I wait as Zeus studies me, his head tilted to the side as though he’s trying to puncture through my thoughts. “If nothing else, then step forward for the assignation.”

  I hesitate, sure that if I edge any closer to Zeus I’ll attack him and end up dead.

  “Not now, Ari,” Jackson whispers.

  I dip my head and draw a long breath, then step forward. The female healer seated at the furthest right side stands, motioning for me to come to her first. She is younger than Emmy, much younger. Her eyes are sharp and her face is free of wrinkles. Her hair is a deep red that is almost blinding to the eye.

  I stand before her, my head higher than I feel, and wait for instruction. She looks at me, and I look back, and for a moment I fear that I’ve missed something important. Maybe I’m un-assignationable. Then she reaches out her hand to me, and I extend my own. She takes my hand in hers, as Emmy often does, and suddenly I know this must be how they “read” us. All those times Emmy took my hand I had assumed she was just being motherly. Now I know she was checking for herself what I refused to say—how I was feeling, what I was thinking. Emmy has held my hand every day of the twenty-one days that I have been on Loge, and all the while I felt I was shadowing my true intentions. I underestimated her, and for whatever reason, this makes me appreciate her all the more.

  The female healer doesn’t speak as she holds my hand. She doesn’t introduce herself or smile or even hint that we are in close proximity. Instead, she stares into my eyes and I hers, and then she nods to me. “Thank you,” she says, before returning to her seat, and the next healer beside her stands. I move from healer to healer, each holding my hand for all of five minutes before sitting, and when I’m done I return to my place beside Jackson, feeling confused and exposed. What did they see within me? Back home, I would have liked to be a Chemist, like my mom, if I weren’t set to become the commander of Engineers, like Dad. But here, I’m not sure. Maybe school work.

  The healers each pass a sheet of paper down to Zeus, who reads them in turn, then stacks them and sets the pile in front of him. His eyes find mine and I can tell that he isn’t happy with their consensus. “It is a majority decision that you, Ari Alexander, will become an RES upon completion of internal analysis and implantation. Gildan will escort you,” he says, pointing to a male Ancient to his left.

  I release a shaky breath. RES. Of course I would be an RES. And now I’m going to train to kill humans. An overwhelming feeling of nausea swirls through my stomach, and I have to swallow several times to keep myself from getting sick. My eyes find Zeus and I’m surprised to see he looks as disappointed with this assessment as I am. If he doesn’t want me to become an RES, why not just say so? I start to ask him as much, when my thoughts stop on what he just said. “Wait—implantation?” I glance from Zeus to Jackson and back.

  The corners of Zeus’s mouth curl, and I realize he gets pleasure out of making people uncomfortable, pushing them mentally. “You are a member of my army now.” A haunting laugh floats fr
om his throat, circling around the room, fear on its wake from the other Ancients in the room. “Welcome to Triad.”

  Chapter 3

  I lay flat against a cold table, cringing as the healer beside me—the scary one from the Lexis incident earlier—shoves needle after needle into my arm, each one causing me to drift further from reality.

  I can’t remember how I arrived here. Stairway or elevator, a single door or a passageway, I’m not sure. I remember leaving Zeus and then lying on this table, undressed except for a makeshift cloth covering the important parts of my body. Zeus had dismissed everyone in the room except Jackson and me, his eyes on me while the other Ancients left. Then once the door closed behind the last Ancient, he walked over and shook my hand, as though we were old friends instead of enemies. I expected his skin to be cold, something about his look and attitude demanded cold skin, but nothing like this. It felt dry, the cold biting, like jumping into a stream during the winter. And the look on his face, a dare of some sorts, a checkmate, like he had me in sight and was going to enjoy watching me squirm.

  Then without another word, I was escorted away by his guard, Jackson at my side. They must have forced Jackson to leave, because I’m alone in the room except for the guard by the door and the scary healer next to me. She bears the same green dress as before, another long needle in hand. “Calm your mind, child,” she says, brushing one of her hands easily over my eyes. For the briefest second, I want to open them back up, but then a thick fog spreads over my brain, seeping down my neck and through my body. Warmth and relaxation move over me. I don’t feel or hear anything else after that. No light, no fear, no worry. I feel at peace for the first time since arriving here, and that’s when I realize what I must be experiencing—sleep. Peaceful sleep, void of the nightmares that have plagued me for weeks. I let my body succumb to it, grateful for the moment of serenity.

  But then I wake.

  Chaos reigns inside my brain in overload. Intense feelings—fear, worry, happiness, love—then words, jarring me from my rest and into the unknown. I feel the hardness of the table on my back, yet everything is spinning. I reach out for something to help steady me and feel a warm hand wrap around mine.

  “It’s okay,” Jackson says close to my ear. “It calms down. Just breathe.” And it’s too much. I feel him, Jackson, his every single thought toward me. He’s worried. No, he’s sad. Afraid. Worried. Sad—I can’t process it. I can’t think. His feelings mingle with my own, one orange, the other yellow, shades of the rainbow, one beside the other, never mixing, yet so close it’s difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Then a third slips into the color spectrum and I want to throw up—I’m going to throw up. Red. Hate. So much hate. There is no other word to describe it. A tear traces down my face, the sudden change in emotion so overwhelming if I could speak I would beg for relief.

  Jackson wipes away the tear. “Breathe. Just breathe.”

  I suck in a jagged breath, while tears continue to run down my face, pooling under my neck, wetting my hair. I want the red to leave. Please make it leave.

  “Leave now,” Jackson commands, the color coming off him changing from orange to black.

  “You are in my building, lest you forget,” Zeus says, and I feel him near, but not just his presence. His emotions, his thoughts, all of them directed at me. I open my eyes to see him leaning over me, a smile on his face, while waves of hate continue to lap through me, suffocating my mind and senses. “Pain is an object of the mind, like feelings. You were taught to ignore pain, yes?”

  I don’t respond, though of course he’s right. Dad taught me at a young age to release pain from my body, especially when exposed to it for long periods of time. He used to place weights in my arms and make me hold them out to my side, like a T, until my arms shook from the burning. If I admitted to the pain, I had to hold them for thirty minutes longer. If the weights dropped from my grasp, the time doubled the next day.

  I focus on Zeus.

  “You do the same with this. Learn to shut it out, commanding it to the surface when you want it to work, silencing it when you don’t. Otherwise, you will become a statistical void and will be handled. Superior minds are my specialty. The mind is beautiful and complex. It must be shaped into form like a muscle.” His gaze rests on mine, the hate now doubling, swarming through me, threatening to pull me under. “Have no doubt, Commander Alexander, I will shape you, too.”

  Jackson straightens, anger coiling from him into me. “That’s enough.”

  Zeus smiles. “Very well.”

  I close my eyes as he leaves, allowing the hate to dissipate from my mind before I reopen them. “I have the implant now, don’t I? The one that detects feelings and stress.”

  Jackson’s eyes turn cold, never leaving the door where Zeus just left. “Yes. You’re officially an RES now.”

  …

  An hour later, Jackson helps me find my clothes and after I’m dressed, we leave, him telling me we’re going home. Thankfully, there is no one on the streets outside. I’m not sure I could walk if a bunch of Ancient emotions hit me all at once. Jackson’s are enough, though I find he’s shadowing some of them from me, controlling them in my presence—or maybe in everyone’s presence.

  We head down the main central road, brief flutters of emotions hitting me as we walk. I’m guessing the closer someone is the stronger the sensation. Here, with no one in sight, I feel curiosity hit me—light blue. Happiness—pink. And an emotion I can’t put my finger on, though the shade is a deep gray. Something so ugly can’t be pleasant.

  “Are you okay?” Jackson asks.

  I shrug, unsure of what exactly I am. “It’s just…different.”

  “Triad or your new gift?”

  I almost laugh at the word “gift.” Is that what they call it here? As though it’s a privilege to know the feelings of everyone around me. I think it’s a punishment, and it isn’t lost on me that Zeus wanted me equipped the moment I was healthy enough to sustain it. There has to be a reason for that, too. I glance sideways at Jackson, realizing he’s waiting for me to answer.

  “Everything,” I say and stare out over the bridge as we cross over it. Everything is odd here. The materials similar, yet different. The bridge is some combination of stone and wood, hard and smooth like stone, but with long lines of texture that remind me of wood. I don’t know what it really is and I’m not in the mood to ask.

  “When did you find out that Zeus manipulated the strategy against us?”

  Jackson looks directly at me. “Right before I came to get you. I wanted to tell you immediately, I did, but not there, where everyone was listening. You’ll learn here that almost everyone reports to Zeus. It isn’t safe to talk openly about things like that. I would have told you the moment we got home. I should have known you would ask.”

  I nod. I can tell from the bright white that slips into my mindthat he’s telling the truth. “So what do we do?”

  He shakes his head and lowers his voice. “Not here.”

  The bridge ends at a road that’s again a new material, this one black with specks of silver in it, that curves around a large building into the first section of homes. We cross over into a neighborhood, all small white homes with yellow roofs. Each home has a front porch with benches on it like everyone sits outside and chats at night. I’m preparing to ask my first question, when Jackson stops at the third house in, left-hand side.

  “This is us,” he says, and then, sensing my unease, adds, “It’s going to be fine. They’re probably not even home right now.”

  “How many are there?” I check from house to house, curious if there is anyone outside, watching us arrive, but the streets are empty. “And aren’t you a little young to be living by yourselves?”

  “We section off from our parents at sixteen here. And there are two of us living here, three including you.”

  Jackson hesitates for a second, and I turn to look up at him, curious to know why he suddenly seems more nervous than I do. Maybe he�
�s worried his roommate won’t like me. Finally, he releases a long breath and motions to the front door, which is a sight of its own right. The door is made of a stained wood, but that isn’t the unusual part. Carved into the wood is a giant face, its expression that of judgment—arched eyebrows, a mouth set into a scowl.

  I point to the door as we pass through it. “That’s…different.”

  Jackson laughs. “That’s nothing.”

  I step through the door and realize immediately what he means. We are in a large common room with wooden walls etched from floor to ceiling with pictorial indentations that seem to tell a story I’ve never heard before. Ancients facing the sun, rays darting out from their hands. Ancients kneeled with their palms flat against the ground. An etching of the Earth with a single word above it: Salvation.

  “They’re Vill’s work,” Jackson says. “He’s worked on every wall in the house.”

  “Vill?”

  “Yeah, my roommate. Here, I’ll show you around.” He reaches for my hand, then drops his back down, causing an uneasiness to settle between us. Jackson points at the hallway, and I follow him out of the room.

  The hallway is fairly short, with two doors on either side. And like the main room, Vill’s marked this area too, though here he’s painted every inch with tiny images that combine to make a larger picture. It’s the sort of thing you could stare at for hours and still not see everything or understand its meaning.

  “The last one on the right is Vill,” Jackson says, pointing to a deep brown door. “And this is ours.” He opens the last door on the left to a room brimming with light. A giant window takes up much of the back wall, and positioned in front of it is a bed twice as large as mine at the Panacea. Instead of cream blankets and linens, Jackson’s are all a deep olive, manly against the almost black wooden bed frame. A hand carved shelf occupies the right wall (no doubt Vill’s handiwork), while the left stands bare except for a beaded curtain, that I imagine leads to a closet. I turn to the wall closest to me, my eyes widening. It’s a painting, the image portrayed so perfectly it looks real. The background is the forest that borders Sydia, but it’s not dark or scary, it’s full of light, life, almost like it belongs here instead of there. If not for the cityscape in the distance, I wouldn’t be sure. I allow my eyes to absorb every inch of it, feeling so homesick in that moment it’s all I can do not to cry. But then my eyes settle on a small figure in the center of the painting, the detail so impeccable I’m sure of what it is—who it is—even before I have to ask.