Seeing for the first time in eight years the exact state I had been in while his youngest child was struggling for life was enough to tip him over the edge. He slapped me, backhanded me, slapped me, backhanded me. I refused to cry out, but I did spit my blood at him once enough had filled my mouth.
“STOP IT!”
Maura's desperate scream, barely powerful enough to break through her sobs...
What in the world made her think that I needed her to save me?
“Go! Get out!” She found whatever small amount of strength she had in her to pull him away from me and push him towards the door.
“Don't you coddle her, Maura. If you do, we're done.” My father told her breathlessly before storming out of the room.
“Don't coddle me, Maura. If you do, you lose such a swell man.”
Even in such agony and through a swelling mouth, I could still find my inherent sarcasm. I would not succumb to vulnerability now.
“Darling... my darling...” Tears were running down her cheeks as she came around to my side of the table. She knelt in front of me, put her hands on my face and pulled me forward to kiss my forehead.
I shook her off furiously. If my hands had been free, I would have slapped her. What made her think that I needed her? She had been kind to me in random spurts throughout the previous eight years. When she wasn't being kind, she was ignoring me. It took several alcoholic beverages coursing through her system for her to find the courage to be out-and-out cruel.
“I'll help you, sweetheart. I will convince him that this is ridiculous. You're just sick. We'll find a way to make you better.”
For the first time, I realized that I did not want to be better. If the new being existing inside of me was an illness, then I didn't want to be cured. Part of that sudden acceptance was a realization that there was no stopping the change. But the larger part was a thrilled acknowledgment of the fact that Maura, my father and so many others had not been “chosen”, we'll say, and as a result, were terrified of me. To put it in blunt, perhaps misleading words, I was suddenly gifted with a tremendous manipulative power, not just an enhanced physical strength.
“I'll make my own way from now on, thank you so much.” I replied as a grin spread across my puffy lips.
“I love you, Brynna.” She kissed my forehead again before pulling away to look at me. “I know things have been difficult but I love you and I'm sorry. I can make it up to you right now. I can make things right. I'll talk to him. I'm so sorry, Brynna!” As another fit of tears took her, she threw her shaking arms around my neck. I grimaced in disgust.
I knew things that were impossible to know. Still, I did not know if she was genuinely remorseful or if that was merely another moment of random, untrustworthy affection. Her mind yielded no clear answer. After she pulled away from me, I turned the blood over in my mouth, narrowing my eyes as I studied her appearance for some hint of her true motive.
“Just let me help you, sweetheart. Let me talk to him for you.”
I turned my head and spit the blood onto the concrete floor.
“I do not need your help.” I told her bluntly. “I do not want it, either. I would very much appreciate it if you would just leave the room. I ask for the kindness of your abandonment. That is all.”
“Please don't do that. Please don't start with that. You only do that when you're pushing someone away. Please don't push me away, Brynna.”
Now that rage that made shocking, sudden appearances blasted towards her in a delightfully terrifying display.
“You think you can push me away for years and that I should not be allowed to do the same to you!?” I bellowed as I lunged towards her. Even though I was handcuffed securely to the chair, she still jumped back. She had not been expecting the sudden change in my mood. “I do not want or need your help! I have never forgiven you! I have never forgotten what you allowed your husband to do to me!”
Her role in what Michael had done to me had never been addressed openly, at least not by me. My words broke her. She buried her face in her hands, whispering something that even my newly heightened sense of hearing could not decipher.
“Speak up, Maura, or I will just read your mind!” I ordered in a furious whisper.
Blood was dribbling out of my mouth and my cheek was swollen on one side. She pulled her hands away from her face, reached up, and tried to wipe the blood away but I shook her off, lunging forward again, needing so desperately to hit her. She cried into her hands for another annoyingly over-emotional moment.
“I said that I was afraid!” She whispered tremulously. “I said that I'm sorry but I was so afraid of him...”
I laughed somewhat maniacally, I'll admit.
“I didn't help you then but I can help you now, Brynna.” She implored me softly before reaching out to touch my face again.
“Stop trying to touch me!”
For a long moment, she stared at me, awaiting an answer that I refused to give to a question that I barely realized she had posed. What she wanted from me was a chance to make up for her cowardice and ignorance that had allowed her husband to claim my innocence. I would never allow her to achieve that peace of mind so easily. I would never allow her to believe that all was forgiven. In fact, I firmly believed that what had occurred would never be completely erased between us.
After that long, dreadful silence that stirred her very soul, she turned to leave the room.
“Maura...” My voice was back to its normal volume. She turned back to me, a look of pathetically desperate hope in her eyes.
I spat my blood at her. She covered her face and the wad of blood and saliva splashed onto the backs of her hands before dripping down her arms. It was gloriously disgusting, I will admit.
“That is for covering your damn ears. Now get out.”
Quinn
The story of Brynna Olivier was twisted and contorted in a fashion that would rival the abilities of the press at home. Although, I sincerely doubted that even the most ridiculous of tabloids would believe that she was a Pangean spy placed on Earth to gather our secrets.
“It's ridiculous, Quinn! He's her father!” Alice told me in a rage that I couldn't quite match. “Do you know what I heard today?”
She didn't wait for me to ask what it was exactly that she had heard.
“I heard that he's going to turn her over to the natives as a peace offering. His own daughter!”
“Maybe it's just a rumor. I doubt anyone could do something like that to their own kid.”
By instinct, though, I knew that I was mistaken. If it meant that he and the people he wished to survive would see many days, he would sell his entire family. I knew that Daniel Olivier was that evil, but I didn't want to scare Alice by relaying that belief to her.
“It isn't a rumor! We can't sit by and let that happen!”
“Whoa...” I held up my hands to stop her from continuing. “We can't get involved in this. The last thing we need is to get exiled and be on our own.”
“We are on our own! He's starving people! Who is to say that tomorrow it's not our food that he's keeping!?”
“You are really upset about this.” I was staring at her in disbelief.
“And you're not? You're not upset that this man has pretty much appointed himself our leader and that he's cruel and evil? He's letting people die, Quinn, after we fought like hell to get here and live! She's not like him. She walked out of the ship first. She's brave.”
“That doesn't mean that she's not like him. It just means that she's brave. We don't know anything else about her besides that.”
“You're just saying all of this to make me change my mind about helping her. I know that you believe the same thing I believe. After last night...” Alice's voice was trembling now as the memory of the attack on us took over her. “I was right there when she attacked that guy. You should have seen the way she took him down.” She laughed slightly as she remembered it. “It was amazing. He was after her brother. I would pray for whatever came over
her to come over me if it was you that was about to get eaten. They ripped people apart, Quinn. One of their people, a woman...” She grimaced slightly, “She ripped into this guy and there was so much blood...”
“Hey...” I stood up and embraced her, “Let's not think about this right now.”
“They're going to come back. Someone at the top let it slip that they're going to take ten of us every night until we leave. We have nowhere to go so they'll just keep coming back until there's no one left. They'll kill us all.”
“So what do you think we should do?”
“I told you what I think we should do. We need to help Brynna! Don't ask me how I know that's what we're supposed to do. I just know. The same thing came over us when that thing broke into the house. We could see in the dark, we could communicate without words. Don't you see? We're mutating!”
“Mutating?” I asked her as though the word had been spoken in a language I had never learned.
“I've told you this before. Our bodies are doing what they need to do in order for us to survive. We're getting faster, stronger, and smarter. We're learning to fight off threats, almost like how animals do. That's my theory, anyway. I think it's pretty reasonable.”
“It is reasonable.” I sat down on my sleeping bag, pondering what she had just said only to realize that it made absolutely perfect sense. “That would explain everything!”
“It has a magical element to it, though, doesn't it?” She sat down next to me. “It's not completely biological.” She paused and looked thoughtful for a minute. “There's something miraculous about it. It's not just science, you know?”
“I guess.”
“Daniel Olivier is afraid of her. He's not mutating the way that some of us are. We'll be next, once he realizes it's happening to more than just her. You know, I've heard his other kids are doing it, too.”
“Yeah, I heard someone saying that the other day. So what is he going to do? Hand them all over to their leader?”
“I know he will. He thinks they're sick. He thinks they're infected with something. But you and I both know from what happened to us while we were still on Earth that it's not a sickness. It's a response to a threat, right?”
“Yes.”
“Quinn, I know this is what we're supposed to do. We have to get her out. We have to help her escape. It has a significance to it that I don't really understand yet. But then, maybe I'm not supposed to understand right now. Maybe we're just supposed to take a leap of faith.”
There was that word again: Faith. It was still a challenging idea for me, even after everything we had overcome since that psychic dream. However little I believed in the divine significance of our escape and continued survival, I did believe in Alice. I also knew that wherever she went, I was going to follow. So if she believed that we needed to save Brynna, then we were going to do it. We were going to fight together, for better or worse.
“Alright,” I nodded and looked up at her, “Do you have a plan?”
“I have the beginning of a plan. We need to get her brother alone. He's the closest to her, from what I've seen. So he'll be the one that will want to help her.”
“How are we going to get him alone?”
“We live in tents, Quinn,” She laughed, “Breaking in isn't exactly difficult, is it?”
XXX
It was three hours until nightfall. Thus, it was three hours until the natives returned for their dinner. We had three hours to escape the campsite. Suddenly, the two-day rush to the launch site didn't seem as time-sensitive as it had in the moment.
Alice led the way over to Elijah Olivier's tent. The woman with the dark red hair who had accompanied them was sitting behind it, her face in her hands, sobbing. Somehow, I knew not to sympathize with her.
I gripped the zipper of the tent in a shaking hand and began to pull it delicately. Inside, there was only silence. For all we knew, he wasn't even there. Perhaps that was for the best; we would sneak in, close the tent and signal for him to be quiet when he returned. Then, we would explain to him what we were trying to do as quietly as possible.
When the tent was opened enough that I could see in, I saw that Elijah was inside and looking right at us. Like idiots, we ducked from his view but by then it was too late. He ripped the zipper down and pulled us both inside with a strength and rage that stunned us both into terrified silence.
“What do you want?” He hissed at us with a fistful of our shirts clenched tightly in his fists.
“Calm down, man,” I whispered as I held up my hands in surrender, “We want to help your sister!”
He released us and turned back to whatever it was that he had been silently working on. Alice and I looked at each other in horror when he pulled out a gun and began loading it with bullets. We were not worried that he would shoot us. We were worried that he would shoot his way through anyone that stood in the way of the path to his sister. A massacre of his father's people would not spell peace for the rest of us. We would all suffer for it.
“Listen to me,” Alice reached out to grasp his wrist but he shook her off, “Elijah? That's your name, isn't it?”
“That's me. Elijah Olivier. That name is becoming quite the stigma around here, isn't it?”
“It is,” I replied honestly and Alice cast me a scathing look, “Sorry.”
“Don't apologize. I'm not deaf. I hear what people are saying. They're right, though. That's the sad thing.”
“You can't do anything completely insane, okay?” Alice reasoned quietly. “Going in there all guns blazing is completely insane!”
“Well, he wants to sell my sister off to those freaks that came in here and killed ten of us. I'll kill every last one of them before that happens. I'll kill my own dad before I let him hand her over to that guy, whoever the hell he is.”
Alice looked like she wanted to argue his point but instead, she forged ahead with detailing our plan.
“You're going to need help. We're going to help you break in. I had another dream last night. She's at the bottom of the ship. I saw the number three. Does that mean anything to you?”
“There are storage compartments down there that are numbered. I don't need you two to go with me. You've just helped me more than I could ever thank you enough for.”
He loaded the clip into the gun quietly.
“Have you ever even shot a gun?” Alice demanded crossly.
“Nope. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Point and pull the trigger, right?”
“You're angry. You have every right to be.” I jumped in to aid Alice's quest of calming him down. “But if you get yourself killed, you're doing her no good. Do you think he'll tell them not to kill you? If you go in there, shooting the place up, do you think he'll tell them to bring you in alive?”
“I don't care what he does to me.”
“If you get yourself killed, you won't be able to save her!” Alice whispered in frantic irritation. “We'll go with you. We'll help you fight them off.”
“Are you telling me that you two can fight the same way she did the other day?”
“We can.” Alice answered, “There was this thing on earth. It was sitting outside of our window at night. And when I let it into the house, it tried to kill us. We fought it off. I shot it and killed it. It was my...” She stopped, closing her eyes for a minute to steady herself, “Let's just say that we both know what it is to lose someone. We also know that there's nothing wrong with Brynna. She doesn't deserve to be handed over to them. Whatever it is that’s happening isn’t just happening to her.”
“I know that because it's happening to me.” Elijah looked up at us, his eyes burning, “My first plan was to show him how my eyes turn red every time I look at his face. Then, I can only hope that I would have grown fangs and been able to take him out the way Brynna took down the native that was after me.”
“What he's done to her and to everyone else is awful. But he's still your dad, Elijah.” Alice tried to reason with him, “If he is mea
nt to die, it shouldn't be you killing him.”
His expression darkened as he looked up at her.
“If he's looking to hurt my sister, then it's my job to kill him.”
“We aren't going to kill anybody,” I chimed in again, “We're going to go fight some people and we'll win because they're not changing over the way we are. We're going to get her out of there before the natives come back tonight. We're going to leave camp. It's not safe here anymore.”
“Is there anywhere that's safe?” Elijah stared into the lantern that was burning away in the corner of his tent. “It doesn't matter. Anywhere is better than here. Brynna and I won't leave my sisters. My sisters won't let us leave Maura behind.”
“Is Maura that woman outside?” I asked. My tone displayed my distaste for her. I had never spoken a word to her but still, I didn't like her. More importantly, I didn't want to be responsible for her.
“Yeah. I don't trust her anymore.” He put the gun in his back pocket. “I was considering joining the Marines for awhile. Doesn't every kid dream about that?”
“I know I did.” I smiled slightly despite the situation. I didn't quite see how his aspirations to join the military had anything to do with the situation. But the memory of being a little boy and pretending trees were helicopters that I was jumping out of and play-fighting with my dad like we were in combat brought a flicker of joy to me that I hadn't been expecting.
They were memories I had long since forgotten.
“This is kind of like that. Like a bad-ass mission, you know? Breaking in, fighting through people, rescuing someone. God, if she heard me say, 'rescue…' Brynna doesn't need to be rescued. She's never needed me to protect her but she has always let me think that she does.” I watched as tears rushed into his eyes. He assumed we weren't paying enough attention to see him swipe them away. “I'm not rescuing her now, either. I'm helping her save herself. She wouldn't have it any other way.” He cleared his throat and looked at us. “Before we do this, what are you names?”
We told him.
“Alright, Quinn and Alice. I don't know why you're so ready to do this with me. But you said you know that it's what you're supposed to do. I understand that and I'm not going to question it.”
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 30
