by Melissa West
Emmy nods. “That the Taking Forest, though it not been used in some weeks now. Zeus have it monitored.”
I remembered Madison mentioning it yesterday, but it was dark when we passed and I was too tired at that point to care. “What is that beside it?” I ask, pointing to the fenced in square structure to the right of the forest. It is smaller than the houses here, but no more than ten or so Ancients could fit inside. It has the texture of wood, but the sun reflects off it as though it were metal.
“That the Earthly port. It link to the main ports on Earth.”
My pulse speeds up. “You mean that takes you to Earth? Is it operational?”
Emmy gives me a concerned look. “It dangerous, child. Guarded all day, every day.”
I see what she means. Standing just inside the fence are two guards, both armed. “Right,” I say, but inside my mind is churning. Two guards. That’s nothing. I could—
Emmy stops, her expression serious. “Not here.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Not here,” she repeats.
“Okay.” I follow Emmy down the center path that cuts through the Juniper Gardens, forcing my thoughts to remain on the scenery—and not on the plan already developing in my mind.
The flowers are wilder looking than the ones back home. No petunias or roses. These are huge with flowing petals, all rich with vibrant colors—deep purples and bright pinks and yellows that rival the sun. I stare up into the sky and smile. Jackson had said the sky was purple and he was right, though the simple description doesn’t do it justice. The sky is a very faint lavender mixed with teal blue, so it looks more like something someone painted than a reality in front of me. There are clouds in the sky, but very few and the ones that are there are wispy. For the most part it is a clear, beautiful day. The sun is present, as it is on Earth, and that similarity brings me tremendous comfort, even though I know I’m staring at a different sun than ours.
“How you feel, child?” Emmy asks, and now that I’ve met several Ancients, I wonder why her accent is different. Most of the others sound like me, but Emmy sounds as though the language is new for her.
She chuckles lightly behind me. “We hear you too, child,” she says, motioning to her ear. “We hear much more than that device of yours detects.”
I turn to her, studying her to see if I can feel anything from her, but all I see is the same wrinkled woman in front of me and no emotions or stress moving from her to me. “Why can’t I feel you, Emmy?” I ask, hoping I don’t sound rude.
“It’s not our way. We see you. No one sees us.” She gestures further down the path. “Walk with me. I rarely get to walk.”
I nod my head and she takes my hand, shaking it lightly in hers, a smile on her face. Her demeanor is so different out here, not at all concerned or riddled with fear as I remember her from earlier. Finally, the path we’re on dead ends into another path that runs perpendicular to it. Emmy halts beside me and I look over to find her head high, her expression now morose.
“Emmy…?” I follow her gaze straight ahead to the dark and ashy land beyond the wall. , “How does that happen, Emmy?” I ask, shocked at how the gardens, so beautiful, can lead to something so sad.
She draws a breath. “That what happens to us if we stay here.” Her hand twitches in mine and for the briefest second I feel her emotions—worry and sadness run through her.
She reaches out to the tip of a dying flower on the wall in front us. In its younger day, I imagine it was a deep blue or maybe violet. Now, it’s brown and yellow and every other shade of death. I expect Emmy to pluck it from the wall, pruning as I’ve seen my mom do so many times in our yard, but instead she closes her eyes, cradling the flower so she’s barely touching it. Then suddenly, the brown in the flower’s petals recedes, replaced by a vivid yellow. The wrinkled and broken stem straightens and twists until it looks like a freshly grown flower, young and beautiful, without the slightest imperfection.
I’m in awe.
“So it’s true…” I whisper.
Emmy tilts her head. “We the reason we live.” She turns to me, her hand still in mine. “Twenty-five of us responsible for an entire species. But we dying, child. And there are no more born.”
I realize she isn’t telling me all of this to be informative. “What can I do, Emmy? What are you asking me to do?”
Her expression turns urgent and she jerks me toward her roughly, again shocking me with her strength. Her face is inches from mine, her eyes wild, as she says, “Get us off this planet.”
I shake my head, at a loss for how she could think I could do anything. “But…how? I’m not—how?” I study her eyes, searching for anything that could give me hope because I want to go home more than I want anything else in the world.
She steps back. “You find a way. I see it in you. I see strength and”—she tilts her head again, squinting up at me as though she’s trying to figure out a complex puzzle—”plus something else. You special, child. I feel it. And soon you feel it, too.”
She turns back to the wall and takes out the set of beads she keeps in her pocket, running them through her fingertips again and again as she walks from flower to flower, healing those that are less than perfect.
I replay what she’s told me, hoping to find something in what she said that gives a deeper explanation. The planet is dying, that much is clear. Beyond the beautiful wall in front of me is nothing but rock, leaving no hope of life. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I can help.
All I know is that the look on Emmy’s face said one thing—Loge is dying and we’re running out of time.
…
I don’t wait for Jackson to come back for me. Instead, wanting time to myself, I walk out of the Panacea and take the path that runs along the river. A few Ancients pass me on the way, and each studies me with curiosity. I keep my head even and my expression blank, not wanting to engage them, not now when I have no idea what I’m doing and all I can think about is how I’m supposed to kill their leader.
I reach Jackson’s house—my house—and slip inside and to our room without seeing any of the others. I have twenty minutes before I need to be at the Vortex for RES training, and I want to take the time to think. I go into the kitchen for some water. It’s kept in a circular dispenser beside the refrigerator, along with various different fruity extracts that I could drop into the water to give it flavor. I’m examining the various different packets, when Vill sits down at the bar in the kitchen, his handiwork etched into every inch of the wood.
“Ari, can we chat?”
I turn to face him, nervous, though he doesn’t give off any peculiar vibes. I wonder if he’s controlling his feelings or if he keeps his true feelings guarded all the time. Or maybe, he’s just so mellow that no hint of emotion ever creeps into his aura. “Sure. We didn’t get a chance to talk much last night. I love your work,” I say, motioning around the kitchen. The walls are a continuous painting of grass growing at different stages. It’s a little strange, except for the detail, which is impeccable. He shows a healer pressing her palms into the earth and then as though on a reel, the scenes change around the room until the final scene is nothing but a valley of green grass.
He scratches his head, looking uncomfortable again at my mentioning his work. “Thanks. I can’t really help it. It’s a part of me, like breathing.”
I nod. “I can imagine.” My eyes drift around the room and then back to him when I realize he’s waiting for me to look at him.
“Just like Jackson.”
“Sorry, what’s just like Jackson?”
Vill leans back in his stool, lacing his fingers in front of him as he releases a long breath. “You don’t know him. You might think you do, but you don’t. Not the way I do.” He holds up his hands at the expression on my face. “And I’m not saying that in a threatening way. I’m saying that so you understand that he is what he has been ingrained to be. Sure, he fights it. Sure, he wants to be different. But he can’t change that tick in
side him, no more than I could stop painting or sculpting. No easier than you could stop leading.”
At this I take a step back. “Leading? What? And I don’t know what you’re talking about. What tick inside him?”
Vill ignores my last question. “You are a leader, Ari. You were born a leader and you will die a leader. It is who you are. Everyone who meets you knows it. And you know it, even if you question it. You react like a leader, thinking ahead of time so you know your actions are properly directed.” He stops to watch me, and I know I must look uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable. This isn’t at all the conversation I thought we would be having. I look away and then down at my feet.
“I used to be a leader. Now, I’m…I don’t know what I am.”
“You’ll find yourself again. Before you know it, you will be leading again. But you need to first see Jackson, really see him, for who he is, instead of what you thought he was or who you now believe him to be.”
My eyes drift up to his. “To be honest, I don’t know how I see him now.” I think of the boy I knew on Earth, and now the man I see here. I can’t make the two fit together.
“Then do me a favor. Try to imagine what it would be like to be petrified to think or act freely. Not just worried that you will disappoint, but literally afraid that you or someone you love would die if you ever thought or acted of your own accord. That has been Jackson’s life. So before you start judging him for not telling you who he is, maybe you should consider his motives and consider that perhaps, for someone like him, he put everything on the line for you too and you pushed him away.”
I open my mouth to respond, but no words come out. My life is built on simplicity—truth or lies, right or wrong— so much so that it’s impossible for me to imagine a gray area. That maybe someone could lie and it could be righteous, or someone could do wrong and that could be brave. I can’t wrap my mind around it.
Vill gives me a half smile. “Think about it.”
“I will,” I say, realizing that if Vill knew me on anything close to the same level he knows Jackson, then he would know he gave me no choice but to think about it. Because now, I’m left wondering if I know Jackson at all.
I’m about to slip out of the kitchen, when Jackson rushes into the house, never stopping to look at us. Vill and I exchange worried looks and both follow Jackson down the hall and to our room.
“Are you all right?” Vill asks from the open doorway.
Jackson jerks his shirt over his head, exposing his bare chest, and tosses it in a rumpled mess into the corner. “Oh, you know, same old. I’m over at my grandparents—visiting Mami—when he comes home. He of course accuses her of being too easy on me and they get into an argument, which she quickly admits her wrongdoing and apologizes, then he sends her to her room like she’s a child. I can’t stand it. I hate him. I hate him.” He yanks on his hair and drops his arms in a long, defeated sign. And that’s when his eyes find mine. He hadn’t realized I was there. “Great. Thanks. I thought we talked about this.” He shoots Vill an annoyed look, then says to me, “He’s requested to see you. You’re skipping RES training today. We have ten minutes,” before shutting the door in our faces.
I take a step back, my mind reeling. In all my time with Jackson, I have never once felt he acted his age, instead always appearing together and organized. He has a demeanor that says he feels childishness is beneath him, especially here, where he exhibits control over others. But this…this was like watching a little boy unravel.
Vill nods toward his room and shuts the door quietly behind us. The room is like an explosion of Vill-ness. The walls are all carved or painted. The floor has splattering of paint here and there, all different shades, all likely belonging to a different project. “See what I mean,” he says to me, motioning to a chair in the corner of the room for me to sit. It’s an animal of some sort, with the head of a lion as the back and giant wings as the arm rests. A cushion covers the wood in the seat area and as I near I realize it’s handmade as well. The words, “One world, one being,” are sewn into the top of the cushion.
“Why did he get upset at you?” I say as I sit in the chair.
Vill grabs a tiny figurine and a knife from his dresser and begins whittling away at it. “He doesn’t want you to know how bad it is. How can he pretend to protect you if he can’t even protect his grandmother? He doesn’t want you to view him as weak. I tried to talk to him about it, but he won’t listen.”
I’m about to ask him more, when Jackson’s door bursts open and he starts calling my name, aggravation in his voice. I jump up and rush out of Vill’s room, narrowly stopping myself from slamming into him. “Hey. I was in Vill’s room. Everything okay?”
He shakes his head, glaring behind me at Vill. “Perfect. Now, if you two are done, we need to leave. He’s not one to appreciate waiting.” And with that, he storms down the hall without another glance my way.
Chapter 8
“Please, have a seat,” Zeus says, motioning to one of two chairs in front of him. He remains standing, which makes the whole thing all that more awkward.
Jackson refused to talk to me the entire walk here except to say that depending upon what Zeus wanted, I may miss all of RES training today. We left in such a rush, I didn’t have a chance to grab the gun, and we have yet to discuss the new plan. I wanted to question him, force him to tell me what to do, but
the moment we stepped onto Zeus’s floor, Jackson was taken to another room, while I was brought here to see Zeus. I eye the chairs, not wanting to lower myself to sitting while he towers over me. Zeus likes power and control. For him to make others sit while he walks around them is no doubt yet another way for him to show his superiority to anyone who enters his office. I don’t play those games.
I cross my arms. “Thank you for the invitation, but I would rather stand.” Immediately my thoughts go to what Jackson said about his grandmother, and I find myself getting angry with Zeus on her behalf. No one should be treated that way, especially not his wife. The entire thing makes me feel sick. And that’s when I realize Zeus’s stare has turned lethal, his back tense. He knows what I was thinking, but instead of growing angrier, his lips pull together in the tiniest of smiles and he says, “Very well, stand,” as though he were expecting me to say just that. “I see you have appropriately forgotten your boots today.” The smile widens, and I have to draw a breath to keep my stress level in check. He knew. How did he know?
Zeus walks over to the wall of windows in the far left wall that overlook all of Triad. From this vantage point you can see everything in motion—the shops, the people, everything and everyone as busy as ants building a colony. I imagine to Zeus they are ants, tiny useless things that are of no consequence and have no brainpower beyond what propels them through the day.
“You lack self control unlike anyone I have ever encountered,” Zeus says. “I imagined you to be quite disciplined. And I suppose in ways you are. But your mind, it’s a constant, ravenous creature that lacks precision and grace. We will need to right that problem before you take post.”
“And what post is that exactly?”
He turns, the hint of a smile again on his face. “As an RES. Of course.”
I get the impression he isn’t telling me everything. “Is that why you wanted me to become an Ancient? So I could become one of your RES?”
He tilts his head in thought. “I have long since felt the human plan would involve an airborne tactic. It became useful for me to create more of us than of you. And so yes, I ordered the healings, particularly for some of you.”
“What do you mean ‘some of you’?”
“You will see, I am sure. Of course, you were healed for personal reasons. Your father has forever denied coexistence for Ancients. How very ironic that his only child is now one of them.” I start to defend Dad, when his head jerks and he blurts, “Ironic: Happening in the opposite way to what is expected.”
“Why do you do that?” I ask, realizing that my abrasiveness is what a
nnoys him the most. The best way to keep him where I want him is to push it to the max.
He gives a half laugh and walks over to his desk, dropping a tiny brown circle from a wooden bowl into his mouth. “You are the first to ever ask. Can you believe that?”
“Yes. I can. Most fear you.”
“Ah, fear. Humans call it respect. There is no difference.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“Indeed.” He hesitates for a moment then says, “I was the test subject for the transmitter that allows RESs to sense stress. I wanted to know exactly what it felt like, and in my haste, I requested the first trial be made on me. As it sits, it altered my mind in ways the healers cannot undo.”
For a moment I almost respect his choice. Choosing to test the transmitter on himself instead of his staff could be viewed as brave, would be viewed as brave, if I were talking to anyone other than Zeus.
He fixes his gaze on me, the piercing silver look that has always left me with chills, but I no longer worry over angering him. I’m somehow sure that he won’t kill me. At least not yet.
“What is your plan for the other humans? Are they part of your army now, too?”
Zeus goes back to the window, his focus on something far away. “No. They are not part of my army. They will fight for us, not with us. Now, that is enough for today.” And as though he spoke an order to someone waiting, the door opens to his office and a healer walks in. I can tell by the way she’s dressed in the same shapeless smock as Emmy and the others at the Panacea, though she looks much younger, middle aged, where I would call Emmy almost elderly.
“This way,” she says, and I glance from Zeus to her, unsure of who she’s speaking to.
