Pendulum

by Ciara Knight

  Darkness replaced by swirls of gold and brown. I was in a cavern. The slave’s bloody hands covered my naked chest. I burned from the inside out.

  Next surfaced a haunting nightmare. A silver-blond haired little girl huddled in a bolt hole, her doll clutched to her chest as she sobbed for her mother. A hand clamped over her mouth. An unseen and unknown woman ordered her and her father’s presence. Her mother refused to exchange her life for theirs. The woman laughed. A muffled thud, then the sound of something rolling.

  For the first time, I saw my loneliness reflected in someone else’s expression.

  Stop! I beg you! Stop! His heartbroken sobs reverberated in my mind.

  For a second, I almost broke. Then my determination stiffened. We had yet to resolve whether I’d be released and rejoin my friends. “Have you discovered in your tour of my mind if I’m a spy or traitor to your people? Am I wired to kill the one person the queen hates more than me? I can certainly show you more if you’re still unconvinced.”

  “Stop and think, Semara. You were brought here so we could learn if you’re a threat to the rebellion. Do you want to unknowingly endanger thousands of men, women, and children because you’re hurt and angry?”

  “I wonder why I’d feel like that. Could it be that in the past two weeks I learned my memories of us together in the Resort Territory were all a lie? Or could it be the discovery that my beloved, perfect father hadn’t died but allowed the queen to take me?”

  His face remained blank, displaying nothing. “You’re wrong about…She kidnapped you. I tried to save you.”

  I nearly snorted. “So you say. But regardless of whether I was kidnapped or you abandoned me, the fact is you left me in the care of my aunt for ten years. If we had indeed been linked mentally the entire time as you said, then I didn’t need to show you my memories. You already saw everything as it happened.” I couldn’t suppress my sneer any longer. “Yet, it was Ryder who rescued me. Not you.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the window’s frame, his stony expression giving nothing away.

  “You got what you wanted. Having me unknowingly spy on the queen for you. And now you have the Triune.” I held his unflinching gaze with mine. “If you expect me to lend you my power, the power of the Triune, I suggest you release me.”

  He stared at me a moment as silence descended. Then he faced the corner of the room, his lips moving but I could no longer hear what he said. As he strode from the room, the glass darkened again until all I could see was my reflection.

  Before I could cross the room to melt the door, it flung open, hitting the wall with a loud thud. Tall, proud, and powerful, my father stood in the opening, a few meters from me.

  Ten long years I’d believed he was dead. Now, we stood in the same room. Relief and joy grappled with my earlier bitterness and pain, until finally exhaustion won out.

  I moved sluggishly toward him, halting a few inches away. “I’d like to join my companions.”

  “We’re not leaving here yet.” Harrison pivoted and crossed the hall to another room as Major Stevens ushered me forward. Minutes later, we sat in wooden chairs, facing one another across a solid, oak table.

  Grinning, I rapped my knuckles against the surface. “Worried?”

  “No, but I also didn’t want my chair melted out from underneath me.” His smile surprised me. Maybe he was more than an emotionless husk of a Neumarian.

  He tipped his chair back and motioned the guards from the room.

  “But, sir?”

  “Leave us,” he commanded. Once the door closed behind them, his chair slammed back down onto the floor. Resting his elbows on the table, he met my gaze. “We’re alone now. I know you have questions, so ask them.”

  Where do I begin?

  “Why does the queen hate you…us?”

  Harrison pinched the bridge of his nose then sighed. “From our first meeting to the day she died, I thought your mother was the most beautiful woman who ever walked the Earth. She was also the kindest and most loving person I’ve ever known.”

  “Wouldn’t Aunt Mandesa have been happy for you? That her sister was happy and in love?”

  “Yes, you’d think so. Unfortunately, I met Mandesa first while we were in college. To me, she was a lab partner, nothing more. Maybe that’s why I didn’t realize she’d built a fantasy world where we’d be together for life.” He shook his head. “After I met Lanena, all other women ceased to exist for me. But Mandesa couldn’t accept that I loved Lanena and not her.”

  “Jealousy? She hates us, killed Mother, and tried to wipe out the entire Neumarian race, destroying the planet in the process, because she was jealous?”

  He raised a hand. “You want me to tell this story or not?”

  I sighed and waved my hand toward him. “Continue.”

  “After your mother and I married, I wanted to return to my family home and teach science. But she was driven to discover a cure for the genetic defect that had caused her mother’s death during childbirth and…I couldn’t refuse Lanena anything.” He dropped his gaze to the table. “I didn’t learn the truth until some months later. Mandesa blamed her for their mother’s death and tormented Lanena incessantly, never letting her forget her guilt.”

  For several long minutes, he was silent, his gaze distant, as though he’d gotten lost in his memories.

  “Harrison?”

  He jerked. “Sorry.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.

  When he opened them again, pain unlike anything I’d ever seen stared at me. I felt the urge to reach across the table and gather him into a hug, to let him know I understood. But my lingering bitterness from our discussion in the interrogation room held me back.

  “Mandesa’s biological mother was a drug addict,” he continued. “When your aunt was a few months old, she was removed from the hellhole her mother lived in and adopted.”

  “Adopted? I thought my mother was her younger sister.”

  “She was, though not by blood. Mandesa was six when her adopted mother, Marie, got pregnant. Five months into the pregnancy, her doctor ordered full bed rest. She was high risk for having a premature delivery, so keeping her calm and inactive was the only way they could ensure she made it full term.

  “A few months later, Mandesa’s biological mother showed up on their doorstep, demanding money. It didn’t matter how many times George sent her away or how much money they gave her. Finally, the harassment became too much for Marie. She went into premature labor and died while giving birth. George blamed Mandesa, saying she was poison.”

  A part of me felt sympathy for that lonely, helpless child. But still… “That’s no excuse to murder countless humans and Neumarians.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Was Mother human?”

  “No. Earlier on, I’d suspected that Lanena was also gifted, so after we were married, I told her the truth about my gift, making her swear to keep the secret, especially from Mandesa. From childhood, we were taught to only share the knowledge of our gifts with those we trusted.”

  “Then how did Mandesa learn about Neumarians?”

  “That was my fault. In the community where I grew up, we used our gifts to help people. Because mine deals with manipulating the mind, I was able to cure some mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. I thought if I could heal Mandesa’s insanity, Lanena and I could return to my family home. I was desperate to free her from Mandesa’s torment.” His hand clenched into a fist and hammered the table’s surface a few times before relaxing again.

  “Telling Mandesa about my therapy work back home, I convinced her to do a session with me.” Leaning back in his chair, he exhaled heavily. “I should’ve known when she insisted we talk in her office, something wasn’t right. I was so stupid.”

  “What happened?”

  “I attempted to replace her childhood memories of hostility and neglect with ones of love and security.”

  “I take it that it didn’t
work?” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

  “Worse, without my knowledge she filmed the entire session. The more times she watched it, the more incensed she became.”

  “I can see why she’d feel violated.” Hadn’t I felt the same just a little while ago in the interrogation room? “But wouldn’t that just make her hate you, and possibly, Mama? Why does she hate all Neumarians, and believes them to be dangerous killers?”

  “She doesn’t. It’s all just a ruse. She wants our powers for herself. Unbeknownst to your mother or I, Mandesa had been watching us, and suspected we were different. You see, the only thing that makes us genetically different from humans is the presence of a special gene that Neumarians pass down to their children.

  “Knowing Lanena was desperate for a baby, Mandesa convinced her that her only hope for having a child was to find a cure for the defective Neumarian gene. She used your mother like a guinea pig, running tests and taking blood samples.” Again, his hands clenched into tight fists. “I’d never trusted Mandesa, so one night, I snuck into the lab. But I was too late. Mandesa had already gotten the data she wanted and Lanena was pregnant.”

  His eyes grew distant. “She was so happy when she told me that night.”

  Silence spread between us as he got lost in his memories again.

  “What happened after you found out Mama was pregnant?”

  His gaze locked on mine. “I told her the truth. That Mandesa had only been using her, everything she’d said was a lie. Playing dumb, we continued to work in the lab with Mandesa. I had to know what she was planning. Several months later, Lanena woke in a cold sweat and demanded I swear upon my family name that, should the worse happen, I’d choose our baby’s life over hers. In hindsight, I believe her gift allowed her to see her own destiny, she was to offer her life to save yours.”

  He took in a long breath. “I convinced her we had to leave immediately. Within days of us going into hiding, Mandesa released the video she’d recorded of our session to the world and funding poured in for her research.” He nearly laughed.

  I tilted my head to the side. “Research?”

  “So she called it. She convinced people that Neumarians were the result of a genetic defect. That we were the trash of the human race and the problem needed to be rectified. If left unchecked, the Neumarians would run rampant, exploding in uncontrollable aggression and killing everyone we met. She insisted we needed to be put down like the rabid animals we were.”

  “But,” I leaned forward, “why did the public believe her? I mean, Neumarians were everywhere. If you didn’t have one in the family, you knew one, right?”

  “Fear. She released dozens of fabricated recordings to prove her claims and her lies took on a life of their own. People committed unthinkable acts against, not only Neumarians, but other humans they suspected of carrying the gene.” Harrison closed his eyes and sighed. “I’ll never forget the day I witnessed a small child being murdered by his own father.”

  When he opened his eyes again, they were glossy with unshed tears.

  “Mandesa had just released a clip to a news station. In it, a young boy burns his parents and siblings to death. But no matter how realistic she made it seem, I knew it wasn’t true. There’s a strong bond between Neumarian parents and their children. Not only that, but a child couldn’t hurt their own family even if they wanted to. Their abilities are too undeveloped at that age to cause any harm. However, humans, in their ignorance, would believe anything.”

  Harrison buried his face in his hands, as though trying to hide from the images that haunted him.

  “In a home near Chicago,” he continued in a muffled voice, “a young family happened to see the clip, along with Mandesa’s speech about what they’d just seen. As bad luck would have it, a little boy came into the living room just then to show his daddy how he could make fire. The child wasn’t even a Neumarian. He’d been working on a magic trick from a book.” He dropped his hands away and shook his head. “When the little boy struck the hidden match near his baby sister, his father picked up a bat and hit him in the head. It was a gut reaction. The father didn’t mean to do it, but that’s what Mandesa had created, a rift between human and Neumarian. One that started with my ignorance and carelessness,” he said, shaking his head again. “Within a year, the rift between humans and Neumarians had grown out of control and war had begun.”

  “Wasn’t your fault,” I muttered. If we were going to point fingers, Mandesa’s adopted father or her addict mother were to blame. Perhaps Harrison had made some mistakes. Perhaps things could have been different. But regardless of how the past had played out, my aunt still made her own decisions. She, alone, was responsible.

  I said nothing for a long time, my silence the only comfort I could give him at that moment. Then, finally, I asked, “Where did you go?”

  “We had a small cabin at the base of an isolated mountain. I’d thought we’d be safe there, but Mandesa was obsessed with finding us.”

  “Why?”

  “Lanena was her only family. George never did forgive Mandesa for what happened to Marie. And I think he suspected her in the death of his son, Lanena’s half-brother, as well. He refused to have anything to do with Mandesa after that, so Lanena became her whole world, until I took Lanena from her.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table top, his chin in his hands. “In her delusional state, Mandesa believed if the pregnancy was terminated, Lanena would return to her side. By the time you were born, I think she realized Lanena would never leave us, so killing you and me became her obsession.”

  As Harrison’s story unfolded and each piece of the puzzle fell into place, it only led to more questions. “Why’d she kill Mother if she wanted them to be together?”

  “When Lanena chose me over Mandesa, she’d committed the ultimate act of betrayal in Mandesa’s eyes. I think some part of Mandesa believed Lanena would eventually see reason and come crawling back to her. But when she finally found us and your mother refused to give us up…” He broke off, rubbing tears from his eyes.

  “How did she find you?” I asked softly. I felt a ping of guilt for forcing him to stay trapped in the memory but I had to know.

  He cleared his throat then took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “While your mother and I were in hiding, Mandesa used her newly acquired authority and funding to create test labs and facilities where terrified humans sent their children for reconditioning. And we could do nothing but watch in horror as the nightmare unfolded.” He looked at me pleadingly then. “Please understand, Semara, for us to do anything else meant risking you.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. Seeing the years of guilt etched in the lines of his face only made my own more unbearable. How many countless lives had been destroyed or drastically altered because of me? How would the world have turned out if I’d never been born, if my mother had never conceived?

  My existence was at the root of everything.

  It was a cruel irony. As part of the Triune, Fate had given me the chance to end the evil the queen had brought to the world because of me.

  I swallowed around the lump in my throat, and nodded for Harrison to continue.

  “In the months after we fled, I learned a friend was being held in one of Mandesa’s prisons. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing any longer. I got him out and together with his wife, and several others, we created an underground to help Neumarians escape persecution. But one of Mandesa’s spies infiltrated our system, decapitating our friends and other innocent Neumarians. Only one survived. He tried to send word to us, but it came too late. Mandesa had already stormed our cabin with her personal guard.”

  Pain and guilt sagged his broad shoulders.

  Though we were practically strangers, we’d both been through so much. Both lost people we cared about. And for the first time, I felt the desire to let go of my hurt and anger, to find a way to forgive the man before me.

  As I started to reach across the table to grab hi
s hand, to feel his warmth for the first time in over ten years, a knock sounded on the door behind me. Across the table, the man who’d just bared his soul disappeared, replaced by the stoic, proud general.

  “As you said, Semara, you’re part of the Triune and the key to transferring the power from the Kantians to the Neumarians. You, Raeth, and Ryder are our only hope if we are ever going to be free.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Take her to a room,” Harrison ordered the guard standing at attention in the doorway.

  “In the Arc, sir?”

  “No.”

  I shot Harrison a glare of barely restrained fury then slowly stood, focusing on controlling my anger before more luminaries exploded. Spine rigid, head high, and without argument, I followed the guard with the same regal dignity I’d displayed when paraded before the council. We stopped before a cell two doors down. I’d barely cleared the threshold when the door was slammed shut and locked behind me.

  I took quick inventory of my abode—a single mattress, a sink, and off to the side, a tiny space with a toilet and bathing cubicle. Not much, but I’d lived in worse. Unsure if I was under supervision, I ambled to the bed and lowered myself on the mattress as if it were a throne.

  As much as I wanted to scream and rail at this injustice, to melt the door and locate Ryder, I didn’t. The cost was too great, not just to my pride but, more importantly, to my credibility with Neumarian Triune believers.

  Settling back against the wall, I reflected on the past hour. While we shared the same pain, I knew that if I was to ever have a relationship with my father, I’d have to accept that the man didn’t love me. He just wanted to use me. If not me as a person, then my gift and what my being part of the Triune could bring him.

  After our emotional bloodletting, I was beyond exhausted. But I’d finally accepted that he’d leverage whoever and whatever was necessary to destroy his nemesis, Queen Mandesa. Not for the freedom of his people as he claimed. No, it was for a far more prosaic reason. Revenge. And that I understood and would support with every fiber of my being.