sick to my stomach to see her drool all over Damian like that. What is it that he has that is so
important to her?
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “No matter what she did, you still need her. Your plans cannot come
to fruition without her.”
“But she’s so reactionary, Damian.” She pauses to study his face. “Do you like this name? It is a
strange sound in my language.”
“It makes no difference,” he says. “Call me what you want.”
The Empress takes a step closer to him and reaches over to touch his face. “I haven’t made up
my mind yet,” she says. “I can’t help but think she will find a way to wreak havoc again. That’s all
she knows how to do. How many more people do you think should suffer because of her?”
“She’s not a threat anymore,” he says. “You made sure of that.”
“I’m not so sure. She’s quite resourceful. You should have seen her performance in Plantation-8
when she brought Kroll in to destroy me. Kroll! My most loyal servant!”
She turns her eyes on me and the viciousness I see in them is deeply unsettling. But then they
change back to their indifferent state as if she has made up her mind finally. To kill me or to heal me, I do not know.
“We are here now,” Damian says. “Let’s concentrate on that.”
She turns to him. “I thought we had an understanding you and me,” she says. “I explained to you
who you are and what you can do and you liked it. I even went as far as to give you additional
abilities and skills. And what do you do to thank me? You run off with her as soon as you see her. I
guess the human part in you was much stronger than I thought. You will always revert to
sentimentality and delusion.”
“Heal Freya and we can start all over,” he says.
“I am an old creature. It is very hard to lie to me.”
“You have the upper hand,” he says. “There’s no one out there capable to come to our rescue,”
he says.
The Empress scratches her long dry nails against Damian’s shirt. “In my long life, I have learned
many things. For one, there is always someone out there to oppose me,” she says. “Ultimately, it will be up to Freya.”
She turns to me and this time I see contempt in her eyes. “What do you think, Freya?” she says in
a friendly tone. “Will you be a good girl if I save your life? Will you help to replenish my kind? Or will you try to escape and force me to kill you? If that’s the case, I’d rather spare us both the trouble.”
“Go to hell,” I say, slowly spelling every word out.
“Hell?” she says. “I know of no such place, but I understand the concept. I can tell you this,
every place I have traveled since my own planet died seems like your hell to me.” She walks around
my bed. “So, how would I say that? I am already in a hell of sorts, Freya. You could help free me
from my nightmare or I could send you to your own hell.”
She slips a sensory receptor onto her hand from within the folds of her long black cloak. “Turn
her over,” she orders Damian.
“I will be watching your every move,” he says.
“If you all only realized how your threats humor me, you would not please me so,” she says.
“You have forced yourself to believe you care for her because you can’t accept you are no longer
human. I will show you how your evolution hungers to leave the human side behind.”
She turns the receptor on and I have but one moment to stare at the familiar white light before
Damian gently turns me on my stomach. She has decided to preserve me. Who knows what price she
will ask for it.
I feel a burn all along my thigh when the white light hits me making me want to scream. I bite my
tongue and squeeze Damian’s hand. It’s the first time I’m on the receiving end of the healing energy
and I had no idea it could be so painful. Maybe she wants it to be painful.
But then the burn and the pain both subside and are gradually replaced by a feeling of euphoria
and wellness like calm waves caressing a relaxed body lying on the beach.
I feel my strength returning little by little and then an idea enters my head. I close my eyes and
try to focus on the energy that my body is receiving, allowing it to travel along my nervous system.
Then I turn suddenly on my back and order the receptor to come to me.
The receptor becomes unstable in the Empress’s hand. The white energy is interrupted several
times and the receptor itself vibrates uncontrollably. She tries to stabilize it and then changes the energy from white to blue. She turns the beam on me and Damian barely has time to put himself
between me and the force field.
The Empress quickly retrieves the blast and looks at him angered. “You see what I have to deal
with?” she growls.
“It won’t happen again. You have my word for it,” he says and takes a syringe out of his pocket.
Before I have time to ask what he’s doing, he sticks the needle in my arm. He’s brought sedatives
along. Almost as if he knew. Of course he did. He knows me better than anyone else.
I fall back on the bed. My energy is drained out of me but I refuse to go to sleep. The Empress
goes back to work until I’m properly healed, I guess. Good as new. A new slave.
“I did my part,” she tells Damian. “If you avoid your part, I will kill all those you pretend to
protect.”
My tongue feels like paper and sand all at the same time but I have to ask. “How did you set us
up?” I say. “Who betrayed us?”
“No one ever betrays you more than your own self,” she says and moves quickly out through the
door.
I nod and it only takes Damian a second to give me a second little dose in my arm. I feel a tear
roll down my cheek before I doze off.
*
I AM BY MYSELF. I’ve been locked up in a cell without windows since I opened my eyes. A
prisoner in a tower of shadows.
I pace back and forth from the bed to the door trying to regain strength. Above me there’s a
single white light bulb and I have no way of turning it off. I lost track of time long ago.
My cell must be located somewhere in the underground network. I can’t help but think back to
the time when Finn and I wandered about the subterranean depths of Plantation-15 to rescue Damian.
A guard has brought me food and water four times now. He never replies to my questions or
even acknowledges the fact that I’m talking to him. I conclude he’s either got very strict instructions or he has no capacity to hear.
I have so many questions in my head, so many things I need to know but am afraid of the
answers. I sit down and breathe deeply. One, two, three times. In and out until I calm down a little.
All my training in meditation and relaxation techniques would help me right now if it weren’t for the fact that I believe I don’t deserve serenity.
The door opens and in walks the guard with the stupid face. “I was beginning to think you had
forgotten me,” I say.
To my great surprise he responds, “Follow me.”
We walk outside into a dimly-lit tunnel. I try to remember if I have been through here before but
nothing rings a bell. If we are in the underground network we’re in a part that doesn’t seem familiar.
At the end of the tunnel there’s a wooden staircase. The guard urges me to go up and he follows
soon afterward. A thought enters my mind. I could turn and grab my guard’s hand and squeeze
it in
mine. Then he might be bonded to me and become my protector like the others.
Of course a lot of things could go wrong with my plan. For one thing, if he has been chosen to be
around me it’s probably because he knows what I am and also knows how to avoid my touch. Or he
could have been altered like Damian and have no imprinted loyalty for me in his skin, heart and brain.
What’s worse, if he reported my misconduct to the Empress, she might decide to do away with
me after all. And I can’t afford that. Not until I know what happened to my friends after Damian and I escaped the crater.
When I reach the top of the stairs I go through an open door to enter a courtyard. It doesn’t look
like I was kept in the underground network after all. Most likely a simple basement.
My guard leads me through another door and I find myself in a spacious office with open
windows through which the sunlight flows into the room with a harmonic fluidity.
He points at a chair and I sit down quietly. I peep outside the windows at the charming
courtyard. If you didn’t know what the plantations stand for, you might mistake this place for a place of worship and peace.
A breeze rushes in through a slightly open window and I feel it caressing the skin on my face and
arms. I recall the days of practice out in the forest or the days I followed Finn to the river where he liked to fish. I’ve tried so hard not to think of Finn during my time in isolation but now that my senses are slowly awakening I can’t help but wonder about his fate.
I get a pang in my heart and a lump in my throat. I can’t cry anymore, not in here, so I stop the
tears from coming by biting my tongue until it bleeds.
Two Sliman guards walk by the windows outside. A third trails behind. That one is old enough
to be their grandfather. It’s him, Zolkon, hunched over feebly with gray hair and an uneven stride.
Blood goes to my head and I start to see red. I rush to the door determined to kill Zolkon with
my bare hands. My guard makes no attempt to stop me. I figure that’s exactly what they expect of me
and maybe they brought me here just so I could come upon Zolkon. But I don’t give a dime about any
of that.
“You!” I yell at Zolkon. “You did this!”
I attack him with fists and nails but my revenge is short-lived. The guards grab my wrists and
pull me away from Zolkon. My feet are kicking in the air and I start spewing curse words at the
ancient Sliman.
“Well,” he says as he cuts circles around me. “Quite a temper as always. I’d be careful
employing it around here.”
“You thought I’d die in the dead jungle, didn’t you?” I shout at him.
“The dead jungle,” he echoes me. “Go on. This is getting interesting.”
His eyes sparkle with amusement and irony. He enjoys my humiliation.
“You are a pathetic old man,” I say through tears. I can’t control them anymore. Shame stings as
much as defeat.
“Maybe I am old, but not a man. Did you really have to come all the way to this hellhole just to
tell me that? What are you up to this time? Won’t you tell an old friend?”
“Drop the act,” I say. “We both know what you did. I let you live and you repaid me by sending
me to my death. Is that all there is in you? Have you no conscience? All that crap you told me about
the worlds you had seen, your years of traveling, your planet, your parents, your wish for death, was it all a lie? That’s what you are, that’s what your life is. A miserable, pathetic lie.”
He gets annoyed. “Keep your judgments to yourself, little girl.”
My guard takes me by the wrist and starts pulling me back to the office.
“You betrayed me,” I yell. “You took advantage of my forgiveness just to become a wretched
slave again. I’d watch my back if I were you. Cause I am going to finally make good on my promise
and kill you.”
He narrows his eyes. “You’re forgetting who’s the slave now.”
The guard forces me to sit back down on the chair. Zolkon stares at me through the window. The
confusion on his face would almost be believable if I didn’t know that he likes to pantomime human
emotions.
He has to be the traitor. He knows the code that switches the Dark Legion over to their new
master. He must have started the conversion before he escaped. If I live to see another free day, I will find a way to burn down their world of deception and slavery.
I will teach the Empress about hell. I’ll even take her there.
14
She walks in the office with her hood down and her mask off. I get goose bumps at the sight of
her strange face with the pointy ears and the overarched brows. Everything about her face seems
exaggerated. It does not seem real as if this was yet another mask.
“Have you calmed down?” she asks locking onto my eyes.
“You do not look like the others of your kind,” I say.
“Soon, there will be no others of my kind,” she says and her pupils shrink up in her eyes.
“Do you belong to a different species?”
“I am the one asking the questions today,” she says. “But I would like this to be a peaceful
exchange so I will humor you. I had my appearance altered in an attempt to look more human. Your
species cares so much for exterior appearances.”
“You look more like an elf than a human,” I say.
“An elf? I know this from your stories. Have you ever seen one?”
“Of course not.”
“This is what I am now,” she says irritated. “Comparing me to something that doesn’t exist.
Typical inferior intellect.”
“Would it hurt you to be nice?” I say. “After all, I am the key for your survival.”
“And you think you have been nice in return?” she asks without expecting an answer. She sits.
“And let’s be clear. You yourself are the key to nothing. I am the one who shaped your possibilities
and you are not the only solution.”
I laugh. “It’s not that easy to lie to me either,” I say. “The fact that I am alive and that you waste your time with me still… Come on, I must be the only one that yet exists.”
She walks to the windows and shuts them one after the other.
“Damian has been corrected,” she says. “That problem has been solved.” She turns her face at
me. “Now what to do with you?”
She enjoys the pain I betray. She has destroyed Damian’s soul again.
“You know what you have to do,” I say barely. I feel sick.
“Yes, I do,” she says. “You can cooperate, in which case you will be offered a comfortable life,
or we can force you and keep you chained. You’ve been at this junction before so I don’t see the need to repeat the consequences.”
I stare out the window. She doesn’t interrupt my train of thought. She waits patiently until I make
up my mind.
“I will cooperate,” I say, “as long as you prove to me that my friends are alive and well.”
“Your friends? You mean the ones that call themselves the Saviors?” She laughs wildly. Her
eyes pulse with the screeching sound of her glee.
I say nothing. If I open my mouth, I will say things I will regret. I don’t want to have more things
to regret. I have a crater full already.
“Ah, some control of emotion finally,” she says. “Maybe not all is lost.”
She reaches inside her cloak and produces a communication device not unlike our own
touchpads. She snarls something in her own language that only her
kind and some of her most trusted
Sliman understand.
“I’m really curious to see if you’ll keep your word,” she says. “I won’t hold my breath. Isn’t this
how you say it?”
“I have to hand it to you,” I say. “You knew how to lure me out of safety so you could get your
hands on me.”
“What? You mean the crater?” she says. “I’m afraid you got it all wrong. The crater was not
meant for you. But it was a really nice coincidence that you chose to do research on it yourself. I was actually going for taking your shields down. The ones you raised over Spring Town.”
“You were the one testing the shields,” I say. “And Torik knew all about it, didn’t he?”
“I was only looking for an opening so as to get you out of there safely during one of your visits.
But you made it all easier for me. You and your friends.”
A Sliman guard opens the door asking for permission to enter. The Empress nods and turns to
me. “This should be enough evidence of my goodwill,” she says.
The guard pushes Biscuit into the room. My heart skips a beat but I manage to remain still. He
seems to be unharmed. His hands are tied behind his back and adhesive tape is put over his mouth.
“Is there a need for all this?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “I don’t want him talking to you.”
“Why?”
“I gave you what you asked for,” she says. “He’s alive and well.”
“What about everybody else?”
“I didn’t kill them if that’s what you’re asking.” She turns to Biscuit. “Tell us, little Savior. Did I kill anyone?”
Biscuit trains his eyes on me before shaking his head.
“Take him away,” the Empress orders the guard.
Biscuit’s alive. Is that what he would have chosen if given the choice? Maybe. It is what
Damian chose for me anyway.
“Your turn,” the Empress says. “Since I kept my part of the agreement, am I to assume you will
kindly follow my guard to the genetic lab?”
I shiver at the thought but I see no way out so I nod.
“Good,” she says. “And since you’re being so reasonable, I’ll show you something interesting
when you are done.”
The guard takes me through a maze of hallways and then down a staircase to Level 1 where we
take a familiar elevator. This is the same elevator I took control of when I entered the plantation with Finn to rescue Damian. The lab they’re taking me to is part of the underground network, a place that
beyond the river of time Page 12
