by Alex Leopold
“Which is?”
“To turn your back on the prophecy. To grab the people you love, and run.” He replied with a pained expression then dropped his head to his chest and began to weep.
A part of Cooper had secretly always wanted to see him like this, to see him as fallible as she was. She thought it would make her happy but as she looked down at her father as a broken man it only served to highlight how much she needed him to be strong. Without another thought, she dropped to her knees and wrapped him in her arms.
“I made a promise when your mother died to never let happen to you what happened to her.” He said quietly. “I did what I did to keep you both safe.”
“I know.” She replied.
“I don’t think I know how to do anything else anymore.”
“I know.” She agreed. “But I do.”
She knew exactly what to do. She was going to help her father fulfill his prophecy and win the war against the Directory. When it was over she was going to find the Archon and make him understand that it was because of her that he’d been beaten.
Then she’d kill him.
“We’d better get moving.” She told him standing. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
44
The damn bird was continuing to be a distraction. Perched on the horn of her saddle, he'd been gabbing on without interruption for the past three hours all the while puffing out his chest in an attempt to appear more intimidating.
“Filthy kitty!” It squawked every time she came close. “Bad cat!”
She’d considered silencing the bird’s taunts with an arrow but she'd promised the mutt the parrot would come to no harm. Besides for the time being she needed him.
“Do Cooper.”
Placing a thimble full of nuts in front of him she watched as Goose eyed it nervously. His caution made her smile; the bird knows it's not beyond me to poison him. Yet, when he realized it was his favorite snack, he began whooping and shrilling with excitement.
“Bravo! Bravo! Lovely Kitty! Lovely Kitty! More! More!”
“Do Cooper”, she repeated, “then more.”
Acquiescing, he did what she'd asked.
“Too pretty for chores. Too pretty for chores.” The grey macaw said mimicking Cooper’s voice almost precisely.
Mayat placed him on her shoulder. Then as he whistled to her, she climbed aboard the wagon and guided it down to the workshop at the bottom of the lawn.
Focusing on her work felt good to Mayat, liberating. Sekhem weren't trained to be guards nor glorified nannies. They were hunters and assassins and for too long she'd suppressed her true nature in order to fulfill an agreement she'd been obligated to make. Now alone, she was free to transform herself back into what she was meant to be.
Except, as she reflected on it, she realized that person didn’t exist anymore.
As much as she refused to acknowledge it, she’d been changed from her time with the anomaly and his children. Changed by such a degree she could no longer remember who she’d been before. It created a dilemma within her, one that would require an answer and soon.
On one side, there was her debt to Quill. He’d saved her life and as repayment she’d made a promise to protect his children. A job like any other when she’d first accepted it, it had turned into something much more over the past five years. Like it or not, she cared deeply for these people now, and liked being part of their family.
Then there was the other side of her obligations. There was her loyalty to her brother, Khnum, and this one wasn't just part of Sekhem code, it was law. He’d been her superior and she’d disobeyed him. In her culture that was a crime punishable by death. Until she faced him she'd remain an outcast from her society. The Falcon on Earth would've branded her a traitor and crossed her name off the list. If she were to die like this, she’d be barred from entering the promised land that lay just beyond life.
This morning, Quill had freed her from his contract after she completed one last task for him. Though she still felt bound to Riley and Cooper, the simple matter was one contract had been terminated, so the other had to be fulfilled. She had to face Khnum. And he was coming.
In the cottage she opened a trap door in the floor and made her way into the cellar. It was empty save for a large lead box.
“What’s that?” Goose asked.
“A welcoming present for our guests.” She responded.
“Woo, I love surprises.”
The box’s lid was heavy and it took considerable effort to lift it. Once it was open she found a space built within the box to hold two devices, each the size of a football – the accumulators.
One had been taken by Quill that morning. She removed the second and carried it back to the wagon which had been loaded with over a dozen barrels of gunpowder.
“We’re going to have some fun with these, right Goose?” She made a knocking sound against a gunpowder barrel.
“Give us a cuddle, sweetheart.” He replied and blew her a kiss.
She gave him a look of disgust. Yet, when she remembered no one was around to see her do it, she began stroking his head.
“I must be the only cat in this nation with a bird for a friend.” She said laughing at herself.
“Come on, we have work to do.” She added as she lifted the macaw onto her shoulder.
Watching the sunset a few hours later when everything was ready, she listened to Goose mimic Cooper.
“Too pretty for chores. Too pretty for chores.” He said in her voice.
Beneath her head-cloth and dark goggles, Mayat allowed her mouth to break into a grin as she was taken back five years. Back to when she’d only been at the Great Inventor’s ranch a few months and still had that stray cat look about her. Back to when she preferred to remain invisible and hadn’t even introduced herself to the twins.
By then, the physical wounds on her face and body had healed but the mental ones remained. Each night she rode alone through the woods paralyzed with the fear that Khnum would appear from the shadows and finish what he started.
Then one evening she was invited to attend the twins' twelfth birthday, and told they wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Sitting bolt-upright in her chair she could've been a statue and made a point of ignoring all of Riley’s attempts to engage her in conversation.
As it was with nearly all of their dinners, the bird was standing on one of the mutt’s shoulders and, in exchange for nuggets of food, he’d entertain them with his ability to mimic their voices.
“Do Riley!” Cooper demanded while holding out a small nut.
“You’re an imbecile.” Goose said in a snappy tone and Cooper began to giggle.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing, I was talking to you at the time.” Riley pointed out to Cooper. Then Riley bribed the bird to do her sister.
“Too pretty for chores. Too pretty for chores.”
Another memory crept into Mayat's mind and she held them both in her head at the same time. In the second memory she was pointing her rifle at her brother's chest.
“They’re just children, Khnum. Let them go.” She pleaded with him.
“We've been paid to kill everyone. No exceptions.” He replied through his face scarf as he placed his knife against an eight year-old boy’s throat.
“I won't let you.” She said and cocked the firing hammer.
Releasing the young boy, Khnum watched on in silence as Mayat ordered the boy and his siblings to run.
For a moment the four children looked at their dead parents laid out on the ground. Then, grabbing each other's hands they fled into the woods. She watched them go and knew their chances of survival were slim, but there were better ways to die than by the knife.
The moment they were out of sight, Khnum walked directly toward her, straight down the barrel of her gun. She knew if she wanted to survive she'd have to pull the trigger and kill him, but she couldn't will herself to do it.
As if he didn't have a care in the world, Khnum place
d his chest against the mouth of the rifle. Slipping his hand around the barrel he yanked it out of her hands. When he swung it back down, he cracked the butt against the side of her head.
“The stinkier the food, the better my mood.” Goose said doing Redtail perfectly, and the girls laughed so hard they could hardly breathe.
Each time Khnum ordered her to stand up and each time he knocked her back down. Eventually, almost chocking on the blood flowing down her throat, Mayat hadn't the strength left to move. That’s when he pulled off her head cloth and goggles, and dragged her along the ground by her hair. Her body limply complied as her eyes were blinded by the sun.
When he reached a tall tree he roped a noose around it. Then he slipped it over her head and began pulling her off the ground by her neck.
“You breathe to do as I command or you don't breathe at all.” He hissed as her feet struggled to find purchase on a ground that was intentionally kept just beyond reach.
“Do Mayat! Do Mayat!” The twins begged and as the Inventor's children waited for Goose to speak, she sat looking mortified.
“It's 'cause you never say anything.” Riley pointed out after an uncomfortable silence had passed.
“Say something so he can repeat it.” Cooper chimed in.
The felisian kept her mouth shut.
“Come oooonnnn!” The twins begged.
“Okay ladies, let's not harass our guest.” Their father said.
“She's not a guest.” Riley answered back curtly and then quite unexpectedly reached for Mayat’s hand. “She's family!”
“You’re mine to do with as I will.” Khnum told her.
Then he left her like that, left to spin in the breeze. She remained like that for two days, when the Inventor found her on the brink of death.
“Yes, she’s part of our family now and this is her home.” Cooper agreed.
“Bird is loud! Bird is loud!” Goose mimicked her as he stepped on her forefinger and rode it up onto her shoulder.
“You are loud.” She concurred revealing a treat in her gloved hand that he quickly attacked.
She hated herself for admitting it, but she was grateful for his company and was glad she hadn't been left alone.
Looking around her one last time she confirmed that the board was set; now all she had to do was wait.
“We're family.” The parrot squawked at her as she walked toward the tree line. It was what he always said when he was trying to garner sympathy in the hope that someone might feed him.
“I know. She said as she thought about the twins. “We’re family.”
But that didn't stop what she had to do.
She had a contract with her brother, and it was time she honored it.
45
As the night drew in, their father led them off the highway and onto a track that snaked around a mountain. The twins rode at the back of the group, wanting to keep to themselves as they grappled with what they’d been shown in the connection that morning.
“What are you thinking about?” Riley asked her sister after Cooper had remained unusually quiet for the past few hours.
“Me, I can’t seem to get my mind off food.” She added, trying to be humorous. “I know with everything that’s happened, you’d think I’d be less focused on my stomach. But, I swear, if the Archon was here right now and offered me a bowl of hot beef stew in return for a lifetime allegiance to the Directory. That’d be something I’d have to consider.”
Cooper didn’t so much as crack a smile.
“You know, it’s usually me who likes to keep my thoughts to myself. Don’t tell me we’re about swap personalities, I’m not ready to be the stupid one.”
That made Cooper bite her lip to stop the smile from spreading across her face.
“You’d never be good at it.” She replied quietly. “It takes years of dedication to act the fool.”
“Exactly. So talk to me quick, before you start exhibiting some of my other qualities.”
“I was thinking about the clouds.” Cooper replied nudging her head at the dark rolling clouds on the skyline.
That took Riley by surprise. “Okay. Not what I’d have guessed you’d say. Can I ask why?”
“There’s a warning in Nakano’s book about dark clouds capable of destroying cities.” Cooper responded. “I’m trying to think what it means.”
“You read the book?”
Cooper nodded. “All the way through. And you thought you’d never see the day I’d read anything cover-to-cover.”
That made Riley smile and the two were riding close enough that she could playfully punch her sister in the arm.
“Anyone tell you, you hit like a girl.”
Riley hit her again, a little harder this time.
“Oww! You put a little crink power behind that one?”
“I just wanted to make sure my idiot sister was still in there somewhere. I’ve been worried about you over the last couple of hours, Coop. I can’t remember the last time you were so silent.”
“Just needed time to think.”
“How’d that go?”
“I really didn’t like it.” She grinned.
“Did you figure anything out?”
Cooper gave a helpless shake of her head.
“I got nowhere. Except, I hate being angry and I hate being scared, and that’s all I’ve felt for the past twenty-four hours.
“So all I’m going to focus on is getting us to the resistance. I know when we get there they’ll make sense of everything for us.”
Riley had to hand it to her sister, it was probably the most logical thing she’d ever come up with.
“That sounds like a good plan to me.” She agreed.
“I’m also going to believe in the last prophecy.” Cooper added surprising Riley. “I’m going to believe the visions in Nakano’s head will lead us to the Key and that with it, father will have the power to defeat the Directory and destroy the Archon. Because that’s what I want to happen.”
Cooper squared her jaw and Riley saw a fierce look of determination in her eyes.
“I want to bloody the Directory’s nose, Lee.” She declared. “Did you see in the notebook where it says father will order three generals in the resistance to attack a Directory city not long after we hand them the prophecy?”
Riley had. “Nakano thinks it’s because they discover where the first part of the Key is hidden.”
“Well, what Nakano didn’t see is that I’m going with them.” Cooper stated. “No matter what father says, I’m going.”
“What about me, can I come?” Riley asked, trying to keep things light-hearted.
Cooper grinned. “Only if you promise to keep me alive, and stop me from doing anything reckless.”
“That’s a tall ask, Coop. Everything you do is reckless.”
Her sister liked that, and gave a happy nod of admission.
“Okay, how about you just promise to keep me alive?”
“I can keep going if you can.” Riley agreed and struck out her hand for Cooper to shake.
“It’s a deal.” Cooper said in a deep voice as she pumped Riley’s hand with mannish gusto. Then she let out a great sigh and shook herself as if she was trying to excise a bad spirit.
“What do you think, Lee”, she began. “Is this really happening to us? Or is this just some crazy dream?”
“It’s real, Coop. I can feel it.”
Cooper looked at her critically.
“You mean that gravity thing that happens when you focus on your vision of the future?”
Riley nodded. “It’s getting stronger.”
Indeed, the further eastward they rode the more Riley could feel the pull of destiny tugging her toward it, toward Varick. It was almost magnetic, as if she could close her eyes and simply follow it to him.
“It’s not much longer now.” She added. “No more than a day until the future I’ve seen becomes the present.”
“Then maybe it’s time we told father about Varick.” Cooper sug
gested.
Riley shot her sister an accusatory look. “You promised, you’d say nothing.”
“I won’t. But what’s the harm in telling him now? We’re following your plan aren’t we?”
“Picture trying to explain to our father the reason I saw this vision is because it involves a man I’ve never met before but whom I believe I’m destined to fall in love with. Is there any part of that conversation he’s going to take well?”
“Yeah.” Cooper chuckled. “Might be better to wait.”
“You think?”
They had to end their conversation at that point.
The track they’d followed had rounded a blind corner and suddenly they found themselves confronted with the mouth of a tunnel. It was man made, cut into the mountain with the kind of precision that had to be the work of great ancient machinery. It looked like someone had stuck a knife into the rock, the way a person might a cake, and removed a slice.
“It’s an old marble quarry.” Their father explained. “Inside the mountain you can use your abilities without snoopers or predictors able to detect it.”
“You want us to use our powers?” Cooper asked.
He nodded. “It’s time I trained you.”
46
A half-mile into the mountain, in a massive marble cavern, their father showed them how to begin to master their abilities.
He taught them how to throw the spark from the palms of their hands as if they were throwing a knife from their belts.
He helped them find the secret door that existed deep within their minds. When they opened it, they found they could switch themselves from one spot to another instantly.
He trained them how to shift objects from one place to another without touching them. To pull a gun from an enemy’s holster, to levitate a rock, then hurl it at someone’s head.
And he showed them how a rush of energy exploding from their bodies, could be as powerful and as destructive as a cannonball fired from a cannon.
The spark. The switch. The shift. The rush. With their father’s help, they learnt how to use them all. Even though they wielded them with the awkwardness of someone discovering a skill for the first time, they still felt the ability come to them naturally.
