Exile

by S. M. Wilson

  Octavius nodded as he scribbled some notes. “Why were you on the lake?”

  She started. “I didn’t say I was…on the lake. I was beside the lake.”

  “Do you always tell lies?”

  She blinked. It came totally out of the blue. Just like that.

  The door to the room swung open and one of the Chief Stipulators walked in. She vaguely recognized him. He’d been in the atrium a few times when she’d been there. She couldn’t quite remember his name but he was the Chief Stipulator of Norden and he had the distinctive white-blond hair of the area.

  “Don’t you know how to knock, Silas?” snapped Octavius.

  Silas ignored the question. He walked straight across the room and looked directly over Storm’s shoulder. She shifted in her seat. She hated someone trying to intimidate her and his large frame cast shadows over her work.

  He scowled, his finger pointing square in the middle of the map. “Why are you wasting time with this?”

  Octavius gave him a pointed stare. “I’m picking the best spot for you to stay when we have Piloria to ourselves.” He gave Storm’s shoulder a nudge. “Storm suggested the velociraptor nest site.” He let out a little laugh. “You’d feel right at home, Silas, you have similar characteristics.”

  Storm was amazed. Octavius was around a third of the size of the Norden Chief Stipulator – in height and weight. But it seemed he was immune to the intimidation that Storm was currently feeling.

  Silas leaned closer to Storm, his body weight pressing against her back. She cringed. He pointed to the upper corner of the map. She hadn’t charted that area because she’d no idea what was there. They hadn’t reached that far around the coastline.

  “What’s up there? Why haven’t you mapped that area?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but Octavius got in first. “What do you want, Silas?” He asked the question as if he were dealing with a troublesome two year old.

  Silas threw Storm a disparaging look, but as he pulled back, his hand caught in her long hair.

  “Ow!” Storm’s hands flew to her head.

  Silas gave her an almost-smile. “Sorry.” He turned back to Octavius. “We need to talk. In private.”

  Storm was still rubbing her smarting scalp. She didn’t like this guy at all.

  Octavius was brisk. “If you have something to say, Silas, then just say it.”

  Silas gave a calculating smile as he looked between Storm and Octavius. “No, it might be more interesting if we wait a few days. Let’s not rush into anything.”

  He strode out of the room without a backward glance.

  Storm pulled her hands away from her head. “What was that all about?”

  Octavius tapped his graphite on the desk. “I’m not sure,” he said in a puzzled tone, “but Silas is someone to watch.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Octavius shook his head. “I think he has designs on being Chief Stipulator for more than one zone. He’s calculating. Has been for a long time.” Octavius’s eyes were still fixed on the door. “Sometimes nothing is quite what it seems.” His eyes flickered back to Storm and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  This place got stranger every day.

  The sky was bathed in shades of purple and violet as he made his way down to the loch. His heart gave a little lurch as he saw the outline of someone sitting on the shore.

  There was no sneaking up on Storm. His feet crunched loudly on the shingle as he walked up and sat beside her. “I’ve been down here the last three nights. Where have you been?”

  She didn’t even deign to turn her head towards his voice, just shot him a steely sideways glance. “I’ve been busy. Some of us have jobs to do. Go away, Lincoln. This is my space, not yours.”

  “I have a job too. One that seems to change on a daily basis.” He shifted to face her better. “Arta told me you were moved to the parliament. That seems a bit of a drastic change. What happened to the hay bales?”

  “Are you going to go away?” she snapped in response.

  “No. I’m not.” Now he’d finally got her on her own he wasn’t going to let this chance disappear. “So, if you want to go for a swim in the loch, I’ll just swim alongside you.” The words sounded braver than he actually felt. Storm had always sworn that this loch was harmless – and there had never been reports of anything untoward. But he still didn’t relish the thought of swimming in the loch at night with unknown marine creatures. “You’re not getting rid of me. So, tell me about parliament.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. And it was music to his ears. Because it meant that she might actually talk to him again.

  He didn’t speak. He just gave her a little space. He knew Storm. He knew she’d need to fill the silence.

  Their time on Piloria had built a friendship he couldn’t forget. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable, her most open. She’d shared with him just how alone she was in this world.

  Her fingers were tracing circles in the small stones. “Funnily enough, I didn’t really get much of a reason for the change.” She lifted her fingers in the air. “Apparently, I scored well in the written test for the Trials. So they moved me to a job they think is more suitable. Octavius said that he asked for me specially.”

  “Who is Octavius?”

  “He’s the Captain Regent for parliament.”

  Lincoln wrinkled his nose. “The what?”

  She sighed. “You obviously paid as much attention as I did at school. Apparently he keeps the Chief Stipulators under control. I didn’t even know he existed.”

  Lincoln gave a half laugh. “Well, it’s not like we hang out in parliament all the time. But this guy. You work for him?” Lincoln couldn’t keep the incredulous tone from his voice.

  “Yep.” She tossed a few stones into the loch, sending little ripples out across the still water.

  “Why did he ask for you?”

  She thudded her hands down on the shingle and turned to face him. “Who knows?” She was frustrated by him. “What do you want, Lincoln? Why are you here? We have nothing to talk about.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Well, actually we do.”

  She turned away again and fixed her gaze on the water.

  At least he’d made some progress. For the last few weeks, on the rare occasions they’d crossed paths, she’d refused to meet his eye, let alone talk to him. He’d been so worried about Arta, and felt so guilty about betraying his friends, that he’d accepted the silence. Arta’s health had been his ultimate goal. But things weren’t working out quite as planned.

  “Like what?”

  Her voice cut through his thoughts.

  He shifted on the shingle so that he was facing her. She might not want to look at him, but he was going to look at her. “There’s been a complication.”

  Furrows appeared in her brow. “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “Blaine’s family. They approached me in the street.”

  “What?” Now he had her full attention. She spun around to face him. “What on earth do you mean?”

  He met her violet gaze. She had her hair down tonight. It hung in straight glossy sheets. It made her look different. More like a girl. Most of the time they’d been in Piloria her hair had been tied in a knot on top of her head.

  He licked his lips. “I mean, they approached me in the street. I didn’t know who they were at first. The woman – her name is Kayna. She had the boy with her – Caleb. He looks around the same age as us. It took me a few moments to recognize her from the sketch in Blaine’s hut. They were desperate, Storm. I didn’t know what to do.” He chose his next words carefully. “Have you told anyone about Blaine?”

  “No!” The words came out of her mouth just a little too quickly. Then she started to hesitate. “Well…not really. Not intentionally. But the Stipulators already know about him anyway. What difference does it make?”

  Lincoln nodded. “They know he exists. They know he’s alive. But they don’t know we met h
im. They don’t know we spoke to him.”

  “What did you tell his family?” Her voice sounded sad.

  Lincoln sighed. “I told them part of the truth. I told them that he mentioned them – that he loved them. How he’d asked about them, and wanted to come home and the Stipulators had refused.”

  “How did that go down?”

  “About as well as you can expect.” He picked up some of the shingle and let it run through his fingers. “When they asked me if anyone could survive on Piloria, I just couldn’t lie to them. I couldn’t pretend we hadn’t met. But I wonder if telling them did more harm than good.”

  Storm pushed herself to her feet and folded her arms. He’d forgotten what being in her company was like. He’d blocked from his mind how connected they’d felt. How she’d seemed to sense when he was struggling with things, and how he’d been the same with her. He glanced towards her folded arms and had a flashback to the ship. The two of them, sitting in the dark near the engine room. She’d just told him about the scars on her back. How she’d fallen out of the boat on the loch with no one apparently noticing, been knocked unconscious and dragged under. How she’d woken with Milo, the plesiosaur, resting his head next to hers at the side of the lake and realized that he must have rescued her. How alone she was. And they’d sat for the longest time, leaning against each other with their hands intertwined. This was harder than he’d thought.

  “So you couldn’t lie to them – strangers. But you could lie to me and Leif. The people whose lives all depended on each other?”

  He sagged his head forward into his hands. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this again. How much longer can we fight about this? You know I feel like crap about it all.” He pushed himself up onto his feet too, stepping forward until they were only an arm’s length apart.

  She was still angry. He could practically see the flash in her eyes, even in this dim light.

  “You’ve seen Arta. You know exactly how sick she was, how sick she is. Tell me, if she was your sister, that you would have done anything different. Tell me.”

  She stared at him. Almost willing him to look away. But Lincoln was steady. He put his hands on his hips and stepped even closer.

  “You can’t, can you? I think you’ve connected with my sister more than you meant to. She talks about you all the time.” He let out the biggest sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. “But we’ve let her down.” He shook his head. “All that way. Megalodons. Raptors. T-rexes. Pterosaurs. All that way to Piloria and we completely ignored the one thing that looks as if it might actually help. Maybe if we hadn’t concentrated on the dinosaurs… Maybe if we’d spent more time exploring our surroundings, we would have found out the things that are most important.”

  The tension in his muscles released. He hadn’t told his mother any of this.

  “What do you mean?”

  He held up his hands. “The ointment. The sludgy ointment that Blaine gave me for my wounds and your feet. I found it again and gave some to Arta. Her skin – it healed it. But by the time I realized how important it was, there was barely any left.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean it really could be a cure for the plague?” She stared at him for a moment, then she let out a long slow breath as her shoulders slumped. “Oh no.”

  He hadn’t spoken to anyone about this huge cloud of guilt that was currently hanging over his head. Only someone who’d actually been to Piloria could understand how overwhelming it had all been.

  “We missed it.” She sagged back down onto the shingles.

  “We missed it,” he said too as he sat down beside her.

  For a few moments no one spoke. They just both stared out across the rippling loch.

  “I miss it.”

  “What?” His head shot up.

  She licked her lips. Her voice was a little shaky. “I miss it. I miss the green. I miss the smells. I miss seeing the mountains in the distance with not a single building anywhere. I miss the colour. I miss finding different things to eat.” She looked out over the loch. “But most of all, I just miss the place.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “And I don’t understand why I feel this way. I spent half my time there plain terrified.”

  Lincoln didn’t quite know how to react. He reached out with his finger and brushed away her tear. “Don’t.” He couldn’t bear to see her cry. He kept his voice quiet. “How can you miss the terror? How can you miss the fear? How can you miss going to sleep every night and not knowing if you’ll see the morning?”

  He was trying to understand – he really was. He’d been so focused on his family, his one priority, that he hadn’t considered any of this.

  She shook her head and gave a half smile. “Don’t you get it? That’s just it. I don’t miss the T-rex, or the raptors. But I miss the place. The way it made me feel in here.” She pressed her hand against her chest. “The wonder of it. The feeling of space. The feeling of possibilities. And I hate how that makes me think.”

  Something clicked in his brain. Storm had always said she didn’t believe in what the Stipulators wanted to do. She’d questioned it all along. She’d been convinced they wouldn’t be happy to just kill the dangerous dinosaurs, and were more likely to try and kill them all.

  “You’d like to go back to Piloria,” he breathed. “But you don’t want them there. The T-rexes, the raptors or the pterosaurs.”

  She winced as if he’d slapped her. But he was just saying out loud what had obviously been playing on her mind.

  He shook his head. “Come here,” he said as he slung his arm around her shoulder and he felt her relax a little. “It’s the nightmares I find worst. Piloria. It plays on your mind even when you don’t think about it. I’ve had a nightmare every night since we got back.” He sighed. “I have no idea what’s going on right now. Arta, the ointment. We messed up big time. We should have brought more. We should have taken some of the plants. We had the potential cure for the blistering plague right in our hands and just didn’t notice.”

  Lincoln watched the quiet surface of the loch as the sun dipped lower in the sky. “Things at the lab have been crazy.” He licked his lips. “Lorcan’s daughter is sick. She has the blistering plague too. He found out about the ointment. He wants to try and replicate it in the lab.”

  Storm’s eyes widened. “Did you tell him Blaine made it?”

  Lorcan shook his head. “I lied. Trouble is, the lie isn’t too good. I told him we made it from some leaves we found on Piloria.” He lifted his hand. “But I couldn’t give him enough details – because I didn’t know them. I didn’t pay attention to what Blaine was doing, did you?”

  He couldn’t help the hopeful urge in his voice. But Storm shook her head. She grabbed some stones in frustration, squeezing them in her fist. “He was right next to me. Right next to me, making things in that darn clay pot and I didn’t pay attention.” She met his gaze. Her voice quietened. “I wish I had.”

  He nodded. “So do I.”

  “Do you think the lab stuff might work?”

  Lincoln sagged a little. “Probably not. The ointment didn’t come from a lab. It’s a plant. A living thing. Even if we’d brought it here it probably wouldn’t grow. Piloria is so much warmer, so much more humid.”

  “Maybe the next people who go could bring some back…”

  “But that’s nearly a whole year away! It’s too long.” He paused for a second. “You’ve forgotten, I’ve already lost someone to the plague. Once the signs started, my dad didn’t even get a year.”

  She edged a little closer, letting her head rest against his shoulder and reaching her hand across to connect with his.

  Something occurred to him then. He had to ask. “What about your father? Your job at parliament. Do you think Reban Don had anything to do with it?”

  She let out a kind of exasperated snort. “I hope not. I’ve only seen him once, when I had to deliver a message. He couldn’t wait for me to leave again.”

  “He’s been in the lab – fighting with
Lorcan.”

  “He’s what?” She lifted her head from his shoulder and pulled a face. “What did he say? I heard he’s been told to keep Lorcan in line.”

  Lincoln shook his head again. “I think there’s trouble. Between the Stipulators, I mean. Reban said our lab was falling behind. And we are. One minute we’re looking at human DNA samples – they’re using hair, saliva and skin cells. The next minute we’re trying to replicate the ointment. But I don’t know how much Lorcan really tells Reban. Last I heard, they had the basis for some kind of dinosaur virus. They just needed to test it.”

  Storm sat bolt upright. “A virus for the T-rex – or a virus for all the dinosaurs?”

  Lincoln pulled his arm from her shoulder and turned to face her. She still had her other hand in his. It almost felt like it had back on Piloria. When they were connected. When she trusted him. “I have no idea. I put numbers into a machine and prepare slides. I’m far too low down the pecking order to find out any more.”

  Storm looked thoughtful. “The Chief Stipulators have been fighting. Octavius says that one of them is ambitious. He wants to rule more than one zone. I haven’t been there long enough to find out more. But the Stipulators seem to fight all the time. It’s not like what I imagined.”

  “Nothing is what we imagined, Storm.” He was staring across the loch again.

  She finally pulled her hand away from his. He wasn’t sure he’d wanted her to.

  He rested his elbows on his knees. “I somehow thought if we got to Piloria, stole the eggs and got home, everything would be okay. Sometimes I think I’m reasonably clever. Then I realize I’m as dumb as the next guy. I’ve watched people die from the plague. I watched my dad die from the plague.” His voice shook a little as he struggled to keep it steady. “I just never thought I’d have to watch my sister die. I’d do anything to stop that happening. Anything at all.”

  Storm didn’t speak at first. She just followed his gaze, as he looked out over the loch bathed in purple.