by Lizzy Ford
Niko was not normally this talkative. If he had a purpose in revealing this information to me, what was it?
The army commander said nothing more and left the gym floor for the locker rooms. I wiped sweat from my brow and hopped down from the boxing ring, my legs wobbly. I snatched my clothes off the floor as I crossed to the door. My escorts were waiting.
We all trekked back to the villa that was mine, and I entered alone, passing the other guards stationed just inside my doorway. As I reached my bedroom, I caught sight of Leandra, my servant and longtime classmate from the forest where we’d both been raised.
Was Niko warning me about Lantos’ fate because he thought I’d tell Lantos? Was it a warning for me to behave?
Or … did Niko give me false information because he suspected what Leandra was – the head of a spy network created by the priests who knew my fate? Leandra was my connection to Theodocia, the leader of the insurgency. If Niko or Cleon ever found that out, I’d be on the wall where Cecelia was now, and Leandra would probably be dead.
The beautiful blonde girl my age was nibbling on the afternoon snacks she had placed on the table near the bay window in my room. If anyone would know what Niko was up to, it was Leandra, who was trained in human intelligence.
My eyes went from her to the tall, wide wall opposite the door. Despair unfurled within me, along with a sense of being completely overwhelmed. On the wall, I’d handwritten the names of everyone I murdered the night Cleon ordered me to destroy a five block radius in DC. The area was completely filled with writing, and I’d started adding the names to the adjacent wall as well.
It was a reminder of what I could be, of my power, of those who suffered the moment I stopped trying to fight the fate Cleon wanted for me. The names were the first things I saw in the morning and the last before I fell asleep. They watched me slumber each night, and I imagined the spirits of those I’d killed hovering around me.
I had nightmares every night, and it was rare when I didn’t fall asleep crying.
My power had so much potential to do good – and evil. The memorial had become my motivation to resist Cleon’s directives and subdue the depths of my magic, so I never unleashed the flood that could finish off what the gods started when the Holy Wars began five years ago.
Dropping my gaze to the floor, I swallowed hard and refocused on what I needed to talk to my only remaining friend about. “Hey, Leandra. Something weird …”
Dizziness washed over me. My feet grew hot, and the air around me sizzled with the scents of charred metal and burning flesh. The brilliant white daylight pouring into my room melted away, replaced by the dark night sky. I was somewhere else completely. The ground beneath my feet was stone and resembled the area atop the walls I’d seen once before.
Heat rolled over me and stung the inside of my nose. I covered my nose and mouth and blinked ash out of my eyelashes, unable to understand what was happening. Turning to face the source of heat and light, I shielded my eyes and stepped forward.
DC was on fire. Every last bit of it burned, and gaping holes punctuated the cityscape where there was no fire. The walls on which I stood were black, with much of them crumbled. I took in the destruction, awed by its scope, and began searching the ribbons for signs of life.
There were none. The fire gave off three ribbons and everything else two, as if the entirety of the population had been destroyed, along with the buildings.
This can’t be real. I turned away, towards the darkness stretching outside the walls of DC as far as I could see. Smoke gagged me, and I moved towards the outer edge of the wall. My attention followed the twisting smoke towards the sky.
No moon.
No stars.
The skies were filled with nothingness I’d seen once before in my life, in a vision of my past.
“What’s happening?” I asked aloud, praying someone would answer.
No one was left alive to respond. I turned all the way around again, and then I froze when I saw someone else before me.
Adonis. His form was ghostly, faint and varying shades of black, white and gray. He stood a meter from me, not moving, watching with sadness in his gaze.
Brilliant light spread across the distant horizon, bright enough to draw my gaze. Orange flames arced into the sky from the earth and began to spread, devouring everything in their paths as they raced towards the city. Behind it, nothingness swallowed the ashes, chasing the flames and consuming everything.
“Mismatch!” I cried, facing him again.
His ghostly form was gone. I was completely alone.
DC burned behind me, and ahead of me, the rest of the world was exploding into fire.
Chapter Two
“Come back, Lyssa.”
The words were soft, and unfamiliar energy tugged at the swaying magic in my blood. Too horrified by what was ahead of me, I barely registered hearing the voice and definitely wasn’t going to take my eyes off what was coming.
“Lyssa. Come. Back.”
The tug became stronger, and I was dragged away from the fire, into an in between place where I felt I was part of neither world, before I was then yanked out of the dream completely.
My vision cleared to reveal the ceiling of my room.
Bewildered by the idea I was right back where I had been, lying on the floor with Leandra’s worried face hovering over me, I had the sense I was floating, not fully released from the world of fire and darkness.
I snapped into a seated position and grabbed her hands, needing to ground myself with physical sensation. Her hands were soft and warm. The marble flooring beneath me was cool and solid, and no trace of flames or nothingness remained. I became aware of panting, and the sweat that coated my body. I shook from the intensity of the premonition – my first, which I’d been waiting for since learning I was supposed to have them.
“Gods, are you okay?” Leandra, who had bullied and tormented me in school, was concerned. She took my face in her hands and forced me to focus on her. “Lyssa. Are you okay?”
I blinked rapidly until the final wisps of the heat were gone, and only the cool air conditioning grazed my skin. Leandra’s pretty blue eyes were glowing eerily, and a strange tingle of electricity flew through her fingers into me. Just as quickly, both were gone, but I felt more grounded, as I did sitting with the Oracle in our cavern.
Leandra’s shoulders dropped, and she released me as she relaxed.
I touched my cheeks, where her fingertips had been. The lingering vision playing on a loop in my head captured and held my attention.
“I have to go.” I climbed to my feet and darted towards the door.
“Lyssa! Wait!” she cried.
Ignoring her, I raced by my assigned guards before any of them could react. While I would never be faster than Adonis, I was lighter on my feet and more agile than anyone else I’d ever meet.
I ran, trusting my instincts to guide me to where I needed to go. Vaguely aware of those chasing me, I bolted across the mall, through puddles and mud, and back to the tiny shack situated on top of the Oracle’s cavern.
One of the two guards moved forward to challenge me. They were under orders not to harm me, but even if they weren’t, I was too possessed by fear and horror to care. I punched him and maneuvered away from the second. Darting into the building, I whirled and slammed the door closed with my magic then used my power to bring a table and chair to life and ordered them to corner the startled guard.
I rode the elevator to the caverns.
The powerful scent stopped me in my tracks and yanked me out of the crazy state I was in. I breathed them in, becoming self-aware once more. I trembled, and sucked in air as if I’d been underwater for two minutes.
“Cecelia!” I hurried across the caverns to her. “My gods … something … something terrible is going to happen! I had my first vision, and it …” I trailed off, gazing at her, waiting for her response.
Unlike usual, her eyes were closed. The machines and computers keeping her alive
were all functioning, and her life signs read as normal.
I sensed, more than saw, something was different.
Leaning across the railing separating her bubble from the rest of the chamber, I pressed a hand to it.
“Cecelia. I need you right now,” I whispered. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
She didn’t respond.
Was she non-responsive, because I didn’t share my power with her? Was this my fault? My panic started to form again. The vision was crisp in my mind, too vivid for a dream. It had been as real as I was standing before Cecelia, waiting for her to wake up and help me interpret what I saw.
Five minutes passed. She didn’t move. I lowered my hand, struck by the sudden sense of being utterly alone with power I couldn’t control to prevent the fate I had glimpsed.
“You’re well?” Lantos asked from somewhere in the room behind me.
“Leave me alone,” I replied.
“Niko’s on his way. If he has to break the door down, he’s going to take it out on you.”
Unable to steady myself fully, I didn’t exactly want another ass beating by Niko or to be sentenced to my room for the rest of my life.
“If you’re lucky, he won’t mention this incident to Cleon.” Lantos joined me at the railing. One of his unique powers was the ability to turn into a shadow and travel unseen through the world. He’d made it down here when no one else could, because of this ability.
His handsome profile was relaxed, despite the words. There were no real consequences for him to be here, or anywhere, when he could easily disappear. It seemed fitting that he stood with me in this very spot. The charming politician had been the person who introduced me to Cecelia, and my fate, months ago. Of all the reasons I despised him, foremost in my mind was the fact he alone was probably the only person on the compound who could help me understand what I was going through, and I didn’t want him to.
“Her mind is quiet,” he said, lifting his chin to indicate Cecelia.
My gaze returned to her. “I don’t know what that means.”
“She’s in what I’d call a coma. She’s barely alive. I can read secrets and shadows in one’s mind, but hers has neither.”
I gripped the railing, my heartbeat soaring. “She can’t die,” I whispered, stricken.
“Not that I mind seeing Cleon upset, but what happened that caused you to set off the alarms?”
Any other time, when I wasn’t terrified I’d just seen the end of the world, I would have ignored his question. But I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t dismiss the vision in my head.
“I saw something,” I replied.
“Saw something how?”
“A … vision. My first.”
“What was it of?”
I shook my head. Even considering voicing it left my throat too tight to speak and my mouth suddenly dry.
“That bad, huh?” he asked, looking at me for the first time. “Oracles have visions. It has always been this way. Is it the vision itself that alarms you or the experience?”
“The vision. Do they always come true?”
“No. That machine there,” he pointed to one of the many panels of lights behind Cecelia, “is a quantum computer. It helps Cecelia interpret visions and how they might, or might not, come to pass.”
“But she doesn’t always know the answer.”
“We have free will, and even a quantum computer can’t calculate what billions of people will choose to do every second of their days. Either that, or she doesn’t share what she knows. Cecelia holds much more power than anyone knows,” he said. The dark note in his tone drew my gaze.
“You don’t mean what I think you do, do you?” I ventured. “You think she’s hiding things from us? From me?”
“You’re learning to read between the lines. If you pay enough attention, you, too, may experience an illuminating moment when you realize all you knew was wrong,” he replied with one of his dazzling smiles. “Soon you’ll be able to keep your own head above water instead of relying on the little spy in your household.”
I flushed, irritated the master of secrets had discovered Leandra. If I knew anything about Lantos, he would keep that knowledge safe and quiet, until he needed a favor from me.
“So you foresaw something terrible and came here.” His focus returned to Cecelia. “I don’t think she can help you, Alessandra. If she could, I don’t think she would choose to, either.”
“She’ll always help me,” I countered. “She just has to wake up.”
“I don’t see that happening.”
“You don’t know that!” Nothing scared me more than the idea I was alone to prevent an apocalypse and had no insight into how it came about. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked in general, not expecting Lantos to know the answer.
“Interpret what you saw from every perspective you can. From my experience with Oracles, every vision has multiple meanings and just as many subtle clues hidden within it as to what might lead to its occurrence as foreseen.”
I listened, torn between gratitude and anger that, of everyone who might help, Lantos was the one to step up.
“Niko’s coming,” Lantos moved away from the railing. “It wouldn’t be wise for me to be caught here.” He shifted towards the shadows edging the room.
Now was not the time for my pride to win this battle, and I quelled the indignation in favor of accepting his limited assistance. He began to fade. “Because you helped me, I feel like I should help you,” I said grudgingly. “Niko thinks Cleon’s going to get rid of you soon.”
“Yeah. I know. He’ll try.” Lantos winked.
“I think we should talk.”
“I’m always open to a dialogue. Come by tonight.”
Too distressed to say more, I returned to Cecelia. Silence filled the space behind me, indicating Lantos was probably gone. Seconds later, the elevator door dinged and slid open. I tensed, sensing Niko before he exited the elevator car.
“Five seconds before I tranq you just for shits and giggles,” he called.
“Something’s wrong with Cecelia,” I replied quickly. I waited, shoulders hunched, for his reaction. Sometimes, Niko didn’t care what my reasoning was. My first two weeks on the compound alone, he had shot me with a tranquilizer gun ten times.
After a moment, he approached and paused beside me at the railing. The tranquilizer gun was in one hand, in case I decided to use my magic in a way that was not approved by Cleon, or in the common circumstance where I became too uncooperative. Niko and I both knew he could beat me into submission, and I wouldn’t use my power against him out of a damning sense of honor. I was pretty sure he liked shooting people, especially me.
Niko went to the screen on the wall nearest him and tapped through the commands, paused to read, then placed the tranq gun in its holster at his thigh. He was dressed in his urban fatigues featuring his appointed rank of a four star general, armed to the teeth, and smelling lightly of soap.
“I’ll let Cleon know,” Niko said. “You have somewhere to be soon.”
I didn’t want to leave, in case Cecelia suddenly woke up.
The sinking feeling in my stomach, however, led me to believe that wasn’t going to happen. My worst fears were all happening at once. Cleon could use my magic, and I was alone to prevent the apocalypse.
Niko glanced at me, and I stepped back from the railing. The Oracle catnip of the chamber was calming me, giving my world a surreal feeling, though nothing was ever going to scrub the vision in my mind away.
After two months here as a semi-prisoner, I was accustomed to feeling as if the ground beneath me would collapse at any time. The new sensations tearing through me were so much worse than being unsteady, for one reason only.
I was powerful enough to stop anything that came my way. So … in the future I foresaw, why hadn’t future-me prevented what I witnessed firsthand in the vision? And how did I ensure this particular future never happened?
Shouldn’t I, potentially the mos
t powerful person on the planet, know what to do?
“Whatever happened, fix yourself before dinner,” Niko said firmly. “You look like you ran into a drunk and horny Zeus in a dark alley. If you don’t want Cleon suspecting anything, fix this shit.” He studied me.
I didn’t like his too intent gaze. He suspected something. Niko was an enigma, someone who saw far more than he let on, and who was smarter than his roughened edges indicated. If one person here could force me to talk, it would probably be Niko. Not because I trusted him, but because he spoke to me in a language I understood: that which Herakles had taught me. Fighting, survival, physical strength over mental agility.
Maybe that was the real reason I asked Niko every day if he had reconsidered helping me. There were parts of him that reminded me of Herakles. Niko suppressed a lot of my acting out; this much I knew. He dealt with me on his terms, but he didn’t tell Cleon when I was disobeying the Supreme Magistrate’s direct orders, or I’d spend more time locked up.
A small part of Niko was looking out for me. Or perhaps, since he was so selfish, he was hedging his bets and keeping the door opened in case I did become the person I was supposed be.
Either way, I enjoyed a level of leniency I wouldn’t, if someone other than Niko were overseeing every second of my day. It was this that convinced me to do what he wanted when I would have preferred to challenge him.
Turning away, I went to the elevator. Someone had disabled the office furniture I ordered to contain the guard, and I plucked the green ribbons from the objects to render them inanimate again. The door to the building had been smashed through, probably by Niko.
No one challenged me as I left. My escort was waiting, along with Leandra, whose eyes were large. She breathed an audible sigh of relief when I joined her. As my personal servant, she couldn’t speak to me openly in public, but she fell into step behind me as I hurried back to my chalet.
Only when we were alone in my room did she break the silence. Far from the obedient, docile type, Leandra smacked me on the back of my head.
