The Athena Effect

by Derrolyn Anderson

  ~

  She dreamed she was with Calvin, walking hand in hand through endless museum galleries. He bent down with a smile to deliver a toe-curling kiss that sent her heart pounding and her blood pumping. She woke to find herself tucked into a fetal position on a thin mattress, fighting a losing battle to return to her dream before reality set back in.

  Caledonia felt the girl arrive before she saw her, and she sat up to watch the door open, revealing Layla standing anxiously in the entrance, two guards directly behind her.

  “Excuse me,” she said timidly. “But I brought you something to eat.” She held a covered dish on a tray in her outstretched arms, “May I come in?”

  Caledonia scowled at her. “Did he send you to try again?”

  “No, I asked if I could see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk.”

  “Sure you do,” she scoffed, rubbing her eyes defiantly.

  “Please?” Layla begged, her eyes intense.

  Caledonia looked at the tray, and the big man standing behind the nervous girl. She knew that she’d better eat. She couldn’t afford to weaken if she expected to fight him again, and one way or the other, she knew that she’d be fighting him again.

  “All right,” she agreed.

  Layla stepped into the room and turned back to Max. “Can you leave us alone?”

  “You have fifteen minutes with her,” he said, closing the door on them.

  Layla handed the tray to Caledonia, stepping back to smooth her skirt and sit on the floor with her legs folded under her. “Don’t worry, I won’t try anything.”

  Caledonia shrugged, lifting the lid over the plate to reveal a sandwich. “Do I look worried?”

  Layla smiled wryly. “He did ask me to try and change you again, but I know that it won’t work. You’re just as good at it as I am … Maybe even better.”

  Caledonia looked up with narrowed eyes; she could tell that Layla was being truthful. She gestured to the camera with a toss of her head. “He’s watching us, you know.”

  “Yes, but he can’t hear us. Please don’t frown. He thinks I’m trying to make you relax.”

  Caledonia scrutinized her, and she could see that beneath her nervous anxiety lay a burning hunger. She wanted something. Bright red hair floated all around her shoulders like a flaming cloud; her yellow curiosity made her look as though she were on fire.

  Layla cleared her throat, not sure of how to start. “Caledonia … That’s a pretty name.”

  “You can call me Cal … I mean, Cali,” she answered. “Why are you here?”

  Layla leaned closer, her voice intense. “What do you know about my mother? Please tell me.”

  “First I need to know where we are … What city is this?”

  Layla looked surprised. “San Francisco.”

  Caledonia sighed with relief. At least she hadn’t been taken too far. “Do you know how to get to the deYoung Museum from here?”

  If she could only make her way to someplace she’d been before, she felt certain she could find her way back to Calvin’s house.

  “Um, I’m not really sure … We have a driver take us wherever we go.”

  Caledonia chewed her lip, frowning.

  “Please … What do you know about my mother?” Layla’s eyes were blazing.

  “Do you have a computer?”

  She nodded yes, her curly red hair bobbing up and down.

  “It’s on the internet. Why don’t you just look it up?”

  “Michael and I are only allowed on educational sites. Teddy says that there are a lot of bad things on the web, and he doesn’t want us to get any misinformation.”

  Caledonia cringed at the sound of the Professor’s nickname. “My parents were afraid of Professor Reed. They hid me from him my whole life.”

  “Why?” she asked, her gold and green eyes honestly curious.

  “Because of what he did … to them and to your mother. They were afraid he was going to come and take me away.” She drew a shuddering breath. “They were right.”

  Caledonia thought about how brave and resourceful her parents had been. She had a newfound respect for the way they had struggled for their sanity, feeling a surge of pride at the way they’d handled themselves. They were far better people than Professor Reed would ever be, and echoing his twisted sentiment, she vowed to make sure that their sacrifice would not be in vain.

  “Teddy says that you belong with us,” Layla said. “He says that we’re the only ones who can really understand you.”

  Caledonia shook her head, thinking about Calvin. “That’s a lie. I wouldn’t believe anything he says.” Her empty stomach growled and she reached for the sandwich, unable to wait any longer. She opened it and sniffed suspiciously, but started eating.

  Layla watched her somberly, deep in thought. She could see that Caledonia was speaking honestly, but Teddy also believed that what he said was true. She was confused–how could they both be right?

  “Teddy told me that my mother wanted us to be with him.”

  Caledonia was disgusted. “I seriously doubt it. He stole you … just like he’s trying to steal me.”

  She could see Layla’s mind racing, and taste the bitter green doubt setting in as the horrible truth occurred to her. She felt sorry for having to break the news to her, and when Layla looked at her with worried eyes, she recognized Cali’s kindness, and was touched by her pity and regret.

  Caledonia groped for something nice to say, “I liked your mother’s name–Alastrina. It’s pretty.”

  Layla looked surprised, “Alastrina? Teddy said her name was Trina.”

  “Oh, that must have been her nickname.” Caledonia remembered the group picture, and how the smiling girl with the mop of curly red hair had stood out from the group. “You look a whole lot like her… You and your brother both have exactly the same hair as she did.”

  Layla was shocked. “You saw her?” she gasped.

  “I saw a picture. Don’t you have any pictures of her?”

  She looked down, “No. Teddy doesn’t like us to talk about her. Sometimes I think I remember, but it all seems so far away … so hazy.” She pulsed with a deep blue melancholy, and the ache in Layla’s heart felt all too familiar to Caledonia. She gulped down the last few bites of the sandwich, pushing the tray away.

  Layla broke the silence, wringing her hands together in her lap. “Please tell me everything you know.”

  Caledonia pressed her lips together, and finally started explaining what she had discovered about the professor’s research project. She reluctantly told Layla the awful stories of the suicides, and how her own parents suffered for years from the aftereffects of the Athena drug. She told her that the professor admitted to selecting people with little or no family connections because he knew exactly how dangerous the research was.

  “He knew, and he didn’t care,” Caledonia spat out bitterly. “He kept giving it to people even after the first deaths!”

  “That doesn’t seem like something Teddy would do,” Layla said, perturbed. “He says that he wants to help mankind … to make people better.”

  Caledonia shook her head sadly. As damaged as her parents were, at least she had been brought up by people who loved her, and not a cold manipulator who only saw people as subjects for his self-aggrandizing experiments. She had a sudden rush of sympathy for the girl who had been raised by a monster.

  Layla felt Caledonia soften and she brightened up a little. “Why don’t you at least try and stay here with us? We can be friends, and maybe after a little while it won’t seem so bad.”

  Caledonia shook her head sadly. “I can’t stay. I have to get out of here.”

  Layla looked disappointed. “But why? Your aunt’s house really wasn’t a very good place to live.”

  Caledonia looked into Layla’s eyes, noticing the flecks of gold that ringed both of her green and tawny brown irises. They were so strange, and yet somehow so familiar. She could see honesty in them, a
nd so she returned the favor, speaking the truth.

  “There’s a boy … and I have to get back to him.”

  “Oh!” Layla gasped, because she could feel Caledonia’s powerful emotions as surely as if they were her own. “Do you love him?”

  Caledonia thought of Calvin with a fresh surge of longing that made her want to cry. Layla couldn’t stop her own heart from aching with the pain of lovers torn apart; her eyes welled up with involuntary tears.

  “Yes,” Caledonia answered with absolute conviction, “More than anything else in the world.”

  Layla was speechless, feeling the passion flowing straight through Caledonia’s eyes deep down into her own soul. She had never known anything so real, or so moving, in her entire life. Before she could recover, two men in glasses burst into the room and ushered her out, slamming the door behind them.

  Hours passed, and Caledonia paced, thinking. She wondered what would have happened if she’d never met Calvin. She wouldn’t have known anything about the professor’s amoral experiments, and she would have gone with him willingly, relieved to get away from Phil. She shuddered to imagine how she might have tried to fit into the professor’s weird little family, unaware of the tragic past.

  Ignorance truly would have been bliss.

  But that was then, and this was now; there was nothing anyone could do or say to entice her to stay. She would sacrifice everything she had and crawl through broken glass to get back to Calvin. She straightened up, steeling her spine with renewed determination and pacing away her anxiety.

  The minutes crawled by like hours, and eventually the door opened again and Layla was back with another cloche-covered tray. This time she came in without asking, and the door was immediately closed and locked behind her.

  “I talked him into letting me come back for tea,” she said, her eyes darting nervously to the camera.

  Caledonia smirked, “He’s big on tea, isn’t he?”

  Layla sat down on the floor again, lowering her voice. “If he thinks you’re calming down he’ll let you out of here. So smile.”

  She removed the cover from the tray, revealing a teapot shaped like a cat, cups, and a plate of little brown biscuits. Layla poured some tea from the pot and handed Caledonia a flower shaped cup on a saucer shaped like a leaf. Caledonia looked down at it and back up at Layla, bursting into laughter she didn’t even have to fake.

  “Cute,” she said, “Let me guess–he picked these out.”

  Layla laughed too, even though she wasn’t really sure what was so funny. Caledonia sipped the tea and picked up a little cookie, looking at it critically.

  “Is this supposed to be an elephant?”

  “It might be a bear,” said Layla, “You know how animal crackers are. They don’t always come out quite right.”

  “Oh. These are animal crackers?” She popped one in her mouth and ate it. “Funny, I didn’t expect them to be sweet.”

  Layla was surprised. “You’ve never had an animal cracker before?”

  Caledonia sighed. Even a girl raised by a psychopath in an ivory tower knew more about the everyday world than she did. “My parents did a very good job of hiding me away … from everything.”

  Layla barraged her with questions about her life in the countryside. She couldn’t seem to hear enough about what it was like for Caledonia to roam the wilderness, free to come and go as she pleased. “Weren’t you afraid out in the woods, all by yourself?”

  “Not when I had my knife with me,” she replied, laughing at Layla’s shocked expression.

  “You were just like Karana,” Layla said dreamily.

  “The Island of the Blue Dolphins?” Caledonia smiled. “I love that book!”

  They discovered that they both loved to read, comparing books and finding that they shared many of the same favorites. The more they talked, the more Caledonia realized how much they had in common. Layla may have been brought up with all of the modern conveniences, but both girls had coped with their isolation by escaping into the make-believe world of books.

  Soon they were laughing and joking like they’d known each other for years, and they weren’t even acting for the professor’s camera. They discussed little quirks about their synesthesia, excited to find out how similar they were.

  Layla liked having someone to talk to, someone who understood, and Caledonia wondered if this was what it felt like to have a real girlfriend. Honestly curious, she questioned Layla about her life, reading between the lines and finding out more than Teddy probably would have liked.

  “So he never lets you go out of the house without him?” Cali asked, realizing that the twins were just as much prisoners as she was.

  Layla nodded. “Him or one of the guards. He says that because I’m different, other people won’t understand. He says they’ll think I’m crazy like my mother was.”

  “Your mother was fine before he poisoned her,” Caledonia said angrily. “Teddy’s the one who’s crazy!”

  Layla’s eyes flashed to the camera nervously, and Caledonia plastered on a big fake smile, throwing her head back and feigning a happy laugh. Layla relaxed, smiling at her gratefully.

  Only Caledonia’s eyes betrayed her irritation. “When did he first find out about what you could do–about the colors?”

  “I’m not sure … he just always seemed to know. He said that he expected us to be different. Michael tried and tried, but he couldn’t do it. He had me practice a lot when I was little. Teddy would bring in different people, and he wouldn’t let me and Michael play unless I could change them.”

  “Change them how?”

  “Make them laugh or cry. It was a lot better when he wanted me to make them happy. I always hated to make people sad or scared … I only did it because I had to.”

  “Why? What happened if you didn’t?” Caledonia asked.

  She looked down, wincing. “Teddy would separate us. It was much harder on Michael than it was on me. He used to cry, and beg me not to be so stubborn.”

  “That’s terrible,” Caledonia whispered, tasting her bitter memory.

  “It’s not so bad. I only have to practice on the help once in a while now.”

  Caledonia raised her eyebrows. “The help?”

  “You know, the people who clean and cook for us.”

  Caledonia recoiled. “Don’t you feel sorry for them?”

  Her face looked completely innocent. “Teddy says that’s what they get paid for.”

  “What about that Max guy? And those guards … did you ever try to change them?”

  “No!” she exclaimed, shocked at the very idea, “I only do it when Teddy tells me to.”

  “What about … Teddy?” The word left a bad taste in Cali’s mouth. “Did you ever try it on him?”

  Layla looked down again. “Once, when we were little, but he was so hard on Michael … I wouldn’t ever do that again.”

  Caledonia could only imagine how ruthlessly the professor had manipulated the small children.

  Layla checked the expensive watch she wore on her pale wrist. “Cali, when Max comes back, please be nice to him. Try not to be so angry. If the professor thinks you won’t cause any trouble, he might let us spend more time together.”

  She nodded, seeing the wisdom of playing along. She certainly wasn’t going to get anywhere locked away in a dungeon. She put on her most pleasant face and flashed another enormous fake smile for the camera. “Okay.”

  Soon the men arrived to take Layla away, and Caledonia smiled brightly at Max’s mirrored sunglasses. “We had such a good time. Thank you so much for bringing her by.”

  He drew back a little, scrutinizing her. She could see his surprise give way to suspicion that was tinged with a tiny whiff of relief. It was a small start, but it was all the encouragement that Caledonia needed.

  When the door clicked shut she smiled again, only this time it was genuine.