Legacy of the Lost

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Closing in on the reinforced door, I picked up the pace, full-on running by the time I reached the stairs.

  First my mom, and then Emi—with all of the secrets and lies, I didn’t know what to think anymore. Reality wasn’t making any sense, and I could no longer count on the people I had trusted my whole life.

  I fled to my bedroom, Tila close on my heels. I slammed the door behind me and leaned my back against it, sinking down to the floor as I stared ahead at nothing.

  Tila danced in place for a moment, but quickly sensed that my mood wasn’t playful and fell still. She lay down on the floor beside me, resting her heavy head on my thigh.

  Idly, I scratched her along her neck. This morning everything had been normal. My life had been shitty, but at least it had been predictable. Familiar. Known.

  Now, I didn’t recognize the world around me.

  I didn’t recognize the home I grew up in or the people who raised me.

  I didn’t even recognize me.

  7

  Cora,

  I hope you never read this. I really do. I’ve made so, so many mistakes where you are concerned. I just wanted to give you a normal life. I wanted to be the loving mother you deserved. I wanted to keep you safe—from them. From the world. I wanted so many things for you, ordinary things, but now I realize that you were never meant for ordinary. You’re destined to be extraordinary.

  Emi and I have long suspected there’s more to you than we can see or detect, but it wasn’t until last week, when I attempted to enroll you in kindergarten, that we realized just how different you are. How much more you are—and how much more you deserve from us. I just wanted to give you a chance to be a kid, at least for a little while. You’ve only been around the two of us and Raiden for so long, and in a few years, once you’re older and understand your birthright, well . . . I wanted to give you some fond memories to look back on. I wanted you to remember what it felt like to be one of us.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. My name—my real name—is Diana Crane, and this is the story of how I became your mother.

  I suppose it all began when I was eighteen years old and they first started recruiting me. I was enrolled at Oxford, a London orphan armed with a full-ride scholarship and a passion for the past. I was smart and ambitious, and coupled with my lack of familial ties, this made me a prime candidate. A professor of mine, one of their recruiters, picked me out and submitted my name without my knowledge. Once I was approved as a recruit, again, without my knowledge, I was offered a position on a top-notch excavation in the Egyptian Delta run by the Vatican, along with a full scholarship for the experience. How could I turn that down? It was the definition of too good to be true.

  The grooming began that summer, during the excavation. I still didn’t know anything about them—I didn’t even know they existed. But they planted the seed that would one day make me desire to join them. I finished the summer believing there was only one path forward, only one way to fulfill my dreams to become the greatest archaeologist of my time, and by the end of fall term, I’d been accepted to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where I would be guaranteed access to some of the best excavations and most exclusive artifacts, and where I would learn under some of the most renowned archaeologists, classicists, and historians in the world.

  I joined a small cohort of enthusiastic students, all specializing in different disciplines. Emi was one of those students. We did everything together. We even lived together. We became a family. It was everything I’d ever wanted, and I loved every minute of it. I would rather have died than give it up. Which was exactly what they wanted, what they’d been waiting for. I was in too deep. I couldn’t go back to who I’d been before—a nobody with no one. Once they knew they had me, they revealed themselves to me, and I officially became one of them.

  They’re called the Custodes Veritatis—Guardians of the Truth—or simply “the Order” by those of us on the inside. Though the name sounds mundane, their purpose is anything but. They are an elite secret order under direct Papal authority with the sole directive to guard one specific truth—to hoard it from the rest of the world. Because if the world found out, the Catholic Church, along with all of the world’s religions, would be seen as they really are—bearers of lies. And in the wake of the revelation of that terrible truth, civilization would crumble.

  We aren’t alone in the universe, and we don’t need a space program to find extraterrestrial life. It’s already here. It’s been here for thousands of years, before humans ever even considered the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe. Before we were even aware of the universe, at all.

  We don’t know where they came from or why they came here, to earth. According to legend, their home world was destroyed, and they had to flee. Earth was already populated by a species of hominids similar enough that they could blend in, so they sought refuge here, where they could hide in plain sight, longing for their broken world. A world called Atlantis. At least, that’s what legend says.

  What happened to the Atlanteans after they arrived is the real mystery – they built two massive labyrinths, and then they vanished. We have a few Atlantean artifacts of theirs, but the objects are so technologically advanced that we have no idea what they actually are, let alone how to use them.

  Maybe those higher up in the Order know more about the Atlanteans, but neither Emi nor I ever made it beyond middle management. The Liber Veritatis is said to hold all of the knowledge gained by the Order over the centuries, with each Primicerius adding to it during his reign, but the book was lost decades ago. We know so little about the Atlanteans, but then, we don’t need to know much beyond the fact that they exist. That simple truth alone is enough to shatter our understanding of our place in the universe.

  As an initiate in the Order, I was trained to believe I was protecting the world. Chaos and disorder would wash away the refinements of civilization should the truth ever get out. My education in Rome went beyond academics. I was trained to fight. Trained to protect myself and the mission, no matter the cost. Trained to kill. Trained to die.

  For nearly a decade, I drank the Kool-Aid. I may have had moments where I struggled to fall in line, but in the end, I always ended up dutifully following orders. The repercussions of not doing so were too terrifying. The Order didn’t respond well to treachery. Part of me doubted what we were doing, especially when I saw the brutal violence the Order was capable of, but another, stronger, more desperate part of me truly believed that what we were doing was right. For the good of humanity, and all that. I needed to believe it, because I needed the Order. I didn’t have anything else.

  But one day, that all changed—the day you came into my life. You were such a tiny thing then, an embryo visible only through the lens of a microscope, your DNA almost human, but varied in the slightest, strangest of ways. You see, you’d been preserved in a miniature cryogenic stasis pod that fit easily in the palm of my hand. It was one of the Order’s most prized artifacts, dated at over ten thousand years old, though it had only been in the Order’s possession since it was discovered by Percy Fawcett in Brazil in 1925.

  As one of the Order’s science prodigies, Emi was the one to discover the stasis pod’s true purpose and the nature of the embryo contained within. Genetically, the life form’s DNA was a close enough match to human that Emi and her team believed it would be compatible with a human surrogate mother. This was a few years after the world’s first successful IVF birth, and as soon as the leader of the Order realized there was a way to bring a real, live Atlantean into the world, he leapt at the chance. Not even the Pope’s direct order not to use IVF could stop the Primicerius. He was too desperate for the chance to study you. To learn from you. To use you.

  It was fairly common for Order members to develop an obsession with the Atlanteans. I was no different. The Atlanteans were all I could think about. I wanted—needed—to know more about them. I was excited about the prospect of an Atlan
tean child being born to a human woman, and I wanted to be that woman. The child would be alone, like I’d always been alone. I could be its family. I could raise it. Learn from it. And unlike my beloved Order, I wouldn’t simply want to use the child—I would love the child, with all my heart.

  The Atlantean embryo was scheduled to be implanted into the surrogate mother’s uterus in three months’ time. That gave me plenty of time to work on Emi, to convince her to swap out the embryo and instead implant the Atlantean child within my womb. She was resistant, at first, but I played on her fears for her young son, and gradually she warmed to the idea. Even so, I couldn’t get her to commit. I’d all but given up, when we received word of an attack on the Primicerius—the leader of our order was fine, but several members of his guard had been killed. One of those men was Emi’s husband, Kai.

  Kai’s death triggered something within Emi, and two weeks before the implantation procedure was scheduled to take place, she came to me in the middle of the night, eyes red and swollen from crying and lack of sleep. She wanted out—she wanted her son out—and she wanted me to help them escape. To run with them. She knew the only way to get me to abandon the Order would be to offer me something bigger, something I wanted more. So, she offered to do the procedure on me. Then I wouldn’t have any choice but to leave.

  I didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. Emi procured a second, human embryo, and the night before the implantation procedure was scheduled to happen, we swapped the embryos, implanting the Atlantean child within my uterus. I still have nightmares about the other child—the poor human child—what his or her life must be like, growing up a ward of the Order, and as the Order’s greatest disappointment. But it had to be done. I had to save you.

  The scheduled procedure happened as planned, and while the Order’s attention was focused on the chosen surrogate, I feigned illness, resting in bed to give the Atlantean embryo as good of a chance to take hold as possible. It was touch and go there for a few days, and after a full day of spotting about a week in, I was sure we were going to fail. But we didn’t. The embryo implanted successfully. And nourished by my body, it started to grow. You started to grow.

  Now, we faced our largest hurdle—escape. Much like with a violent street gang, few people ever made it out of the Custodes Veritatis alive. Once you were in, you were in it for life. You couldn’t retire out; you either died serving the Order, ran and hid, or were executed for betraying it. But I had a way out. An older gentleman had been sniffing around my excavations for years. He was good—very subtle, very sneaky, very smart. His name was George Blackthorn, and he only approached me once. He hinted at knowing about the Order and suggested that there were others who knew the truth—others who would be willing to share more of that truth with me than the Custodes Veritatis had during my years with them. He fed me just enough information to make me want more.

  By the time I was carrying you, I’d been secretly communicating with George for two years. He’d heard enough from me to read between the lines—to know of my growing discontent with the Order and their brutal ways, and that I stayed not just for the chance to continue to study the Atlanteans, but for the sense of belonging I felt in the Order. He’d offered a safe place, should I ever find myself in need of somewhere to hide. A place to call home. No strings, save for one—bring him one of the Atlantean artifacts.

  It took months to devise and plan our escape, and the execution was fraught with peril. But when Emi, Raiden, and I finally showed up on George’s doorstep after a grueling week-long, back-and-forth journey halfway across the globe to his family home on Orcas Island, Blackthorn Manor, I brought him something far better than any artifact. I brought him you.

  I assumed the identity of George’s niece, Diana Blackthorn. George was something of a recluse, and he was old enough that none of the Island’s residents remembered he’d been an only child. Nobody suspected a thing. It was perfect. I just wish he’d been in better health. He passed away shortly before you were born.

  Your gestation took longer than was normal for a human child, both baffling and intriguing Emi to no end. At times, I was terrified of you, especially near the beginning. But as the months passed and my belly grew, I came to love you, deeply. After a little over a year, I delivered a healthy, happy baby girl, indistinguishable from an ordinary human child. You were so tiny, so helpless. You were all alone in the world, the last of your kind, so far as we knew, and you had no idea about any of it. You were an orphan in every sense of the word. I vowed, while first holding you in my arms, to make sure you never felt the loneliness I’d felt growing up. Even if that meant hiding your true nature not just from the world, but from yourself.

  After your birth, your growth and development seemed relatively normal. Emi tested your reflexes and responses regularly, and while you always tested slightly ahead of the curve for your age and were capable of deep emotional insight beyond that of most adults, it was nothing astounding. For all intents and purposes, you were human. So, I raised you as such.

  Which brings us to the disaster of this past week. Initially, when the kindergarten teacher told me how distraught you were during the first day of school, I thought it was just separation anxiety. You had never been away from me before. Your reaction didn’t seem all that abnormal. But the second day was worse. On the third day, I stayed to observe, but my presence only seemed to intensify the problem. I took you home at lunch, and you screamed as I carried you to the car, like my touch was hurting you . . . until you gave in to exhaustion and passed out cold. Something about that setting, about being around so many other people, triggered something within you.

  Later that day, when you were settled in your bed, sound asleep, the teacher called the house and told me she suspected you might be somewhere on the Autism spectrum, based on the way physical contact seemed to set you off. She gave me the names and phone numbers of a few child psychologists who specialized in diagnosing such disorders and advised that I homeschool you until your underlying “mental condition” could be identified.

  Your underlying mental condition. It’s almost laughable. A person can raise a wolf as a dog, but it’s still a wolf. Its brain is still wired differently from the dog’s, and no matter how the wolf is raised or trained, that wiring will always win out in the end. You aren’t autistic, and you don’t have any underlying conditions, mental or otherwise. There is nothing wrong with you, beyond the simple truth: you aren’t human.

  Whatever latent sensory or psychic abilities are hardwired into your brain have been awakened, and now, even the slightest touch sends you into what Emi calls a “psychic overload”—the sensory input seems to get stuck in a mental feedback loop, like when a microphone gets too close to a speaker, until your mind is overloaded and you lose consciousness.

  It happens because you aren’t human. You may look human. You may even act human. But you’re not human, no matter how hard I tried to blind myself to the truth. After the trauma my blindness caused you this past week, I’ve finally come to grips with the reality of your existence. You are so much more—capable of sensing things beyond that of a human—and I’ve done you a massive disservice by ignoring your true, glorious nature.

  But you’re still my baby. I carried you within me for over a year. We may not share any DNA, but my blood flowed through your veins before you developed your own, and after you were born, I nourished you with milk from my body. In my heart, you’re my flesh and blood. You’re my daughter, and nothing will ever change that. I owe it to you to find out more about your species . . . more about your true potential and the remarkable insight you were born with. I owe it to you to give you the quality of life you deserve, not the sheltered, isolated existence you’ll otherwise be doomed to live.

  Thanks to George, I have the means to embark on private expeditions to try to uncover everything I can about you and your people. He invested the Blackthorn fortune wisely, and it’s more than tripled since his death.

  I will not rest until I have the a
nswers I’m looking for. Until Emi and I can find a way to improve your quality of life. You’re such a lively, adventurous child; it breaks my heart to think that you’ll be trapped in Blackthorn Manor all your life, afraid of the world simply because your mind processes more sensory input than ours do.

  You are my daughter, Cora, and you will have the chance to be the remarkable woman you’re meant to be. I look forward to the day when I can watch you step into your own. When I can see you blossom into the beautiful being trapped within your frightened mind. When you can shed your fear and finally, truly live.

  8

  I hugged my mom’s journal to my chest as I scooted lower in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, thoughts spinning. First the video, and now this book—my mom was crazy. Delusional. She’d lost her mind, clearly, but when? How had I not noticed her slide into insanity?

  I rolled onto my side, absently stroking Tila’s flank. The windows were dark, the outside world looking like a deep, yawning blackness.

  Was this why Emi had wanted me to read the journal before talking to her? Had she wanted me to see the full depths of my mom’s delusions?

  I inhaled deeply, exhaling a heavy sigh, and closed my eyes. I would talk to her in the morning, once I’d had a chance to read through the rest of the madness my mom had scribbled on the journal’s pages. I just needed to rest my eyes for a few minutes, then I would get back to reading . . .

  I wake slowly, but as my mind becomes more alert and the memory of the overwhelming terror returns, my eyes pop open. “Mommy!” I yell, bolting upright in bed. I hug JoJo, my stuffed T-rex, to my chest so tightly that his squishy body is practically bent in two.

  My bedroom door bursts open, and my mom rushes in. “Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” she says, slowing as she approaches the bed. “I just stepped out for a minute. I wanted to be here when you woke.”