by Leyton, Bisi
Both the boys were covered in sweat.
“Vic’s worse than you,” Garfield declared. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“I don’t know why I thought archery would be a good idea,” Vic lamented jokingly. “I’m going to stick with firearms.”
“And when the bullets finally run out?” Garfield mocked. “You’ll throw your gun at the biters?”
Vic and Garfield laughed.
Wisteria tried to join them with a weak laugh.
“I doubt that will happen any time soon though,” Vic responded. “Bullets are currency and are still being shipped out of Russia, as we speak.”
“Russia!” Garfield looked amazed. “How do you know that?”
“It’s just a rumor,” Vic replied.
“Rumors?” Garfield laughed, “You heard the one about Luton Airport?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to leave because my mother’s going to have kittens if she learns I’ve skipped school again!” She dragged Garfield out. “We’ve got to try and at least make the last lesson.”
Getting to the front door, she saw Rupert and Brenda talking with Blair. She was slightly comfortable knowing they wouldn’t do anything to her with one of the soldiers around. This was reinforced as a couple of the people who lived on that road were also in their front gardens. Needless to say, they rushed away from the Fletchers.
“Find anything?” Garfield glanced back after they had walked a while.
“Don’t look back,” Wisteria begged. “They might be watching.”
They kept walking until they turned a corner.
“They’re going to kill me and Mr. Cheung,” she announced.
Her friend looked at her blankly and bent over with laughter. “Nice one.”
“Garfield!” She shook him. “This is serious. She called someone on her phone and they—”
“And they have phones too?” he retorted sarcastically. “Are these magical phones powered by the wishes of pixies or garden fairies?”
“They are killers. I heard Brenda say that they came to get me and they have to kill Cheung because he knows how to cure this disease.”
“First, there’s no cure to Nero and second, how can Vic be part of it? He’s only seventeen. I highly doubt they would take their child along on their assassination adventures.”
“I found these.” She showed him the golden rings.
“You robbed them? Are you kidding me? If they go to the soldiers—do you have any idea what Coles can do if he doesn’t like you? They drag you out of your home in the middle of the night.”
“My mother has a ring just like this.”
“You said she was a teacher?”
Yes, her mother had said that. “I don’t have the answers. Maybe Vic’s twenty-five or something. Or they stole the rings from actual Red Phoenix.”
“Wisteria, the rings don’t prove anything.”
“Listen, I don’t want to debate this.” Glancing around the corner, she saw that Rupert and Brenda were still talking with Blair.
The woman pointed at the two and rushed back into the house. Rupert stood on the front steps watching them. Blair looked over at them, confused.
“What have you gotten us into?” Garfield asked. “Just give them back their rings.”
“I’m sorry, Garfield. Please, find someone’s bunker, don’t tell me whose. Take my brother and hide there, until you hear the siren.”
“You’re going to set it off?”
“Garfield go, go now!” she pleaded. “Don’t go home, don’t go to work. Find a friend or something, but please get David too.”
“No, come with me.” He held her arm. “We’ll hide together.”
“No, I’ve got to find Cheung. Make sure my brother’s safe!” She ran off.
* * * * *
Wisteria reached her class as the students were leaving for the end of the day, rushing out to freedom.
“You’re back from the dead, Wisteria?” Hailey sneered as she, Karen, and Yvette blocked her path. Hailey sported a large black eye from where Wisteria had punched her earlier.
“Hailey, I don’t have time for this,” Wisteria warned.
“You know you can’t take us all,” Karen whispered.
“Hailey, that’s enough.” Steven emerged from the class with Gareth. “Just let her get into class.”
“Steven, stay out of it,” Hailey replied. “This is none of your business.”
“You’ve made it my business by attacking my friend.” Steven stepped up to the group. “What’s wrong with you, Hailey?”
“You’re friends with that?” Hailey glared at him.
Wisteria used the girls’ moment of astonishment to slip through. She searched through the rooms, looking for Cheung.
“Wisteria, wait!” she heard Steven call after her.
“Not now, Steven.” She brushed him off.
“I’m sorry about Hailey.” He blocked her path, making it hard for her to pass around him. “I didn’t know she would react that way because of the bunker. When she heard it, she assumed the worst. I shouldn’t have let it get that far.”
“Steven, right now you and Hailey are the least of my worries. I’ve got something I need to do and I really don’t care.” She tried going around him to get down the hall.
“I want you to care about me!” Stretching out his arm, he blocked her path. “I want things to be different between us.” His blue eyes looked sad.
She spotted Cheung walking up the stairs. “I’m in a lot of trouble right now, Steven, and I just need to get through it, so please let me pass?” she implored.
“Let me help you.” He lowered his hand and brushed his fingers against the side of her face.
“Help me by staying away from me.” She rushed toward the teacher while moving past Steven. “Mr. Cheung, Mr. Cheung!”
“Wisteria Kuti, I’m glad you made it after the final lesson,” Cheung remarked dryly as she approached.
“Are you Edmund Hu?” she asked, out of breath.
“How do you know that name?” All the blood drained from his face as he led her to the nearest classroom and closed the door. “What do you know about Edmund Hu?”
“I know because Red Phoenix is in Smythe and they’re after you and me. I heard Brenda Fletcher talking.”
“There’s no way Red Phoenix could track us down here. They were all killed in the Czech Republic.”
“No, they are here. Vic Fletcher and his family are Red Phoenix.” She showed him one of the rings. “I found this in their home.”
The man grabbed and examined it. “These could be fakes.”
“Then at best we’ve people who are pretending to be Red Phoenix, looking for you. Why is that any better? What is going on?”
“Talk to your mother.” He fidgeted with the ring and it fell to the ground.
“I would if she’d believed me. Let’s go together and tell Coles. Then it won’t matter what she thinks.” Wisteria scurried to pick up the fallen ring.
“I thought I left that world behind, even before Nero. Wisteria, sometimes I think I deserve whatever those animals do to me.”
“Please let’s talk to Coles. You can’t just do nothing,” Wisteria begged.
“I shouldn’t have survived, when so many people died.”
“Are they after me, because of you? What did you do?”
“To you? To everyone else…or to myself?” Cheung slowly sat on the nearest chair. “Ever wonder why there are so many scientists, doctors, laboratory technicians, and engineers on this island? Or the military, for that matter? Thirteen hundred people live on the island. Half are geneticists, neuroscientists, or pharmacologists. We have virologists, biotechnologists, biochemists, statisticians, and people like your mother. We worked for RZC Biotechnologies.”
“I thought we were just lucky. My mother isn’t a scientist. She taught English in a primary school in Lagos.”
“Teacher? Yeah, she’s a teacher like I am. She’s a behaviora
l psychologist, so she studied how people act and their patterns. She specialized in the learning behavior of the Family. But she worked as part of Red Phoenix and was more of a soldier.”
“No, that doesn’t make sense. I visited her all the time at the school where she worked,” Wisteria maintained. “I asked her about Red Phoenix; she never heard of them.”
“That’s because your mother is a liar. You ask Lara, or whatever your mother calls herself now, if the sky is blue and she’ll lie. But the point I’m making is that we didn’t all end up on Smythe by accident. Maureen Hindle, the Minister of Health, saw this coming and started planning the community.”
“So you all made the disease that killed everyone and then ran here to hide? How could you do that?”
“We weren’t trying to make a disease. We were trying to stop the Family. Nero Diesease was an accident.”
“The Family, you mean, like Bach and Felip?”
“So you do know about them already. If the Family wants to rule our world, we can’t stop them. The only thing preventing them is that they don’t want to. We needed a way to be prepared in case they became interested. Nero was supposed to make us stronger, faster, and safer from their mind control.”
“Mind control? You mean the renewal?”
“They can control ninety-seven percent of us. With the blue light, their pulse.” Cheung waved his fingers. “They turn us into sleepwalkers. Empty shells who just desire to make them happy.”
“Why didn’t you warn anyone?”
“You think some of us didn’t try? I sent at least fifty emails to the CEO of RZC in New York. In the end, they burned down my house and killed my family. It was a miracle my sister Poppy and I survived. I tried, just as many of us working on Project Darwin did, but most went missing or died before Nero. Not all were as lucky as your mother to get this far with both her children.”
“And you’re saying my mother was part of it? My family would never—”
“Do you know what your father did?”
“He worked at RZC, but he led a project that was developing a malaria vaccine. He wasn’t making biters!”
“He ran the Lagos office of Project Darwin. They worked on many things in Project Darwin, but malaria wasn’t one of them. Wisteria, you’re here for the same two reasons I am. You were part of Project Darwin and you managed to escape the plague.”
“I would’ve remembered.”
“No you won’t. Your memories have been removed. Do you remember your eleventh birthday?”
“Yes.”
“That was the year you went to the beach in La Tropicana? You were in a boarding school in Awechi State Secondary School. Your mum surprised you and drove you to La Tropicana.”
He was right! “That proves nothing. My mother could’ve told you that.”
“Your best friend at school was Tolu, but you two fought when she started dating a boy you liked. His name was Yinka Daniels; you called him Danny Boy.”
No one knows about Yinka or that I called him Danny Boy. Not even her best friend.
“When Yinka told you he didn’t want to even be your friend, you wept for weeks, but you couldn’t tell your Mum because she forbade you from ever having a boyfriend.”
“How do you know that?”
“Most of what you remembered from your eleventh year was planted there. I helped your mother come up with certain scenarios, but I didn’t implant them.”
“Why did she do that?”
“We were trying to learn about a very special boy and how his people interacted with us. Your father was eager to start. They needed a boy, his own age or older, but they couldn’t find one. You were the only person available at the time.”
“Was my brother part of this?”
“Your father didn’t want to experiment on his son. I don’t know why.”
“What did they do to me?”
“Nothing, they just watched you play games and become friends while they ran tests on both of you. But being with him, you were changing, both of you were becoming increasingly agitated when separated. To the point that you wouldn’t eat when you weren’t together. They ended the observations and you fell into a depression.”
“It was Bach, wasn’t it? He was the special boy?”
“All I know was the boy wasn’t human. He was a Famila. I didn’t know Bach was one of them until a few days ago. If it was him, how would he find you?”
“Because of our Mosroc,” someone said. “The bond can never be broken. I will always be able to find her.”
Turning, she saw Bach standing in the doorway. She had to look again because she wasn’t sure about what she was seeing. He was dead. Her mother told her he was shot by the soldiers.
“Colista-Bren.” The words rolled from her lips without her conscious permission.
* * * * *
“You’re dead.” Wisteria appeared baffled as he walked into the classroom.
Bach was out of breath and tired from his fight with his brother and the journey here. He still had not fully regenerated, but hearing her speak just part of his true name renewed his strength. Then he felt completely numb as he realized he’d gone through Mosroc with her.
His first instinct was to run away, but even she looked hesitant, like she didn’t want him there.
“Bach.” His name left her lips. In seconds, she was in his arms and he held her tight.
He knew he had to get her out of there, but he needed to savor the moment with her—finally.
“Where were you? They told me you were dead,” she whispered, while breathing into his neck. She wrapped her arms around himand buried her head to his chest.
Leaning down, he found her soft lips and kissed her.
“Get away from him, Wisteria!” Her mother entered while armed with an assault rifle. “You just could not stay away, Bach?”
“Mum, you knew all along that Red Phoenix were real. You knew about Bach and you lied to me! You knew he wasn’t dead and you still lied. You stole our memories!”
“You may not have agreed with what we did, but it was for the right reasons!” she defended.
“What were your reasons?” Bach demanded. “What gave you the right to play with our lives? I did nothing to you.”
“How can I believe anything you say?” Wisteria asked her mother.
“My life doesn’t revolve around you believing me or not. And we don’t have time for this,” her mother announced.
“Red Phoenix is out there looking for Wisteria and me. We can’t stay here. I’m a teacher and she’s a student; it won’t take them very long to check the school,” Cheung warned.
At the news, her mother slowly lowered her rifle and she looked very pale.
“You have seen them?” Bach asked.
“The same ones who broke into the penthouse,” Wisteria explained. “I thought they were looking for you, but they’re not.” She recounted what she’d heard at the Fletchers.
“Come with me,” Bach urged. “Felip has found a place for you to hide on the island, until we find them.”
* * * * *
Bach took them to an unused house a half a mile from the school. During Bach’s mapping of the island, he noted most of the unoccupied houses. This house was rundown, but the bunker was solid, according to Felip.
They weren’t spotted while passing through a labyrinth of side roads, trails, and gardens. The house was in the same condition as Bach’s old apartment when he lived on the island.
“Welcome.” Felip ushered them into the bunker he’d secured while Bach tracked down Wisteria.
Bach had wanted to just take her back to Jarthan, but Felip had suggested they wait until they knew what condition she was in. They’d reasoned that she might’ve been injured and unable to travel or be renewed.
Now that he was truly aware they had gone through Mosroc, he couldn’t renew her against her consent. This made him glad. No Famila could renew her against her will either. They would have to convince her to yield. If anyone in
the Family tried, they would lose their mind.
“You,” Mrs. Kuti said bitterly when she saw Felip. “Another one?”
“I do not expect you to thank me for helping to save your life, Lara,” his steward said. “Just do not try to kill Bach.”
Bach watched as Lara passed Felip without a word.
“That means throw out the strangle weed you have.” Felip grabbed Mrs. Kuti’s wrist. “Please let us have it.”
“Felip, stop it,” Wisteria called out to him.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Mrs. Kuti replied.
Felip smiled at Wisteria and let go of her mother.
“Leave her with it,” Bach told him. “It will help her trust me.” Mrs. Kuti needed the poison to feel strong and secure around him. She didn’t trust him or Felip, and Bach didn’t trust her, but they both trusted Wisteria and that was enough.
“Are you okay?” Wisteria asked Bach as they settled in the bunker.
She was in danger, but she still was asking after him.
He took her aside. “We are going to get these Fletcher people,” Bach said to her in a low voice. “We will have to find your brother first.”
“I should go with you.” She frowned.
“No, since they are looking for you. It might be better if I go. With any luck, they will not be expecting me.”
She rested her hand on his arm. “Is that what you should do? They hurt you before.”
“But I was not with him then,” Felip interjected.
“So you’re going with him?” she asked, somewhat comforted.
“And you really think we’re going to be safe down here?” Cheung asked.
“Honestly?” Mrs. Kuti cocked her weapon. “I don’t know. But Bach’s right. You and Wisteria need to keep a low profile. And your brother is locked down tight by Coles. He’s not getting mixed up in this.”
“I don’t see the benefit of you going either,” Wisteria argued. “My mother’s notified the army. Coles will look for the Fletchers and since David’s safe, you should stay.”
“Then Bach and I can help them,” Felip suggested. “We are pretty good at hunting animals.”
