Zoe Thanatos

by Cierlak, Crystal

  “Thank you, Julia,” Korina spoke. She dabbed the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin and rose from the table, her head uncharacteristically bent in reverence to Kyra. “It’s time to write your legacy, Your Highness.”

  Chapter 20: Prisoners and Soldiers

  Evan couldn’t sleep. It hadn’t been long since Eva and Zoe left for Last City against his better judgment, and the waiting was nerve wracking. Everything was too quiet, even in the familiarity of his and Eva’s residence. There lingered a sense that things were about to irrevocably change one way or another, and he hoped he and the ones he cared for were on the right side of that change. In the meantime he needed a distraction, something to keep his mind from waiting for any word from Zoe or Eva. With the entire city on lockdown it would be difficult to go anywhere or do anything.

  Every private residence and public area was equipped with an information kiosk that displayed streaming updates of news from the Crown and around Royal City. Since returning to Terra he had not bothered to power on the kiosk in his residence, assured that between his meetings with the Queen and information compiled from firsthand sources he was up to date on the Crown’s goings-on. Yet, something compelled him then to switch the glass panel on, hoping against hope that there was some news, any news to abate the pit of worry in his stomach.

  The kiosk came alive instantly, streams of updates aggregating one on top of the other until the most recent were on top. With his fingers Evan pinched and zoomed in on specific headlines, briefly reading their contents as he moved from one to the next. One piece detailed a partially true account of the King’s kidnapping and how, with the help of highly trained Crown Soldiers, his trusted confidante Evander Nero helped rescue him from danger. There was little mention of the stolen book from the Royal Anthology.

  Another announcement proclaimed the gates had been temporarily closed for maintenance, assuring residents that that it was a routine procedure that would not permanently affect their lives. The newest announcement was that the King’s captors had been taken into royal custody and were awaiting prosecution. There was no mention anywhere about Last City, its residents, or anything about Thea Thanatos and the original family. Of course the Queen would never allow such explosive information to be released by way of the information kiosks. Still, even with the carefully crafted announcements it was obvious that a complete story was not being told. He wondered how the Queen would use information about the recent events to her advantage. Though, he could not imagine she would release any information about Thea or the original family.

  He thought about Thea locked up behind closed doors guarded by Crown Soldiers, waiting on the Queen to decide her fate. Like Eva and the King said, everyone had a part to play, but what was the outcome meant to be? If Zoe regained the memory of her birthright what would she do next? Challenge Kyra for the Crown? The Queen had her own personal army and Zoe was a virtual stranger to everyone in Terra, excluding the few who knew of her existence. If taking back the throne was her plan how would she do it?

  Evan looked up at the information kiosk. The Crown not only had the army, but also controlled the flow of information to every resident, and if they no longer had that control they would be unable to feed half-truths and propaganda to the residents. If they knew the truth would they rise to Zoe’s defense? Would they rally at her back, outnumbering the Crown Soldiers, to help her take back her birthright?

  Then there was the other issue sticking in the back of his mind. What happened to the other Thanatos children? According to the King, who was presumably in-the-know because of his relationship with Thea Thanatos, the only known child to survive was Zoe. Her sister and brother were never confirmed to have either died or survived, so the question of their mortality was still unknown. Both were too young to survive on their own, and yet if they were never found where could they possibly have gone? Had a family taken one or both of them in, raised them as their own? Though born into the royal family they were still just children when the Stratons took the Crown, and it was possible that not everyone knew what they looked like. Not even he could remember their faces. He could only recall the name of the other sister, Zara. If she were alive she’d be close to Eva and Zoe’s age. If Zara Thanatos and her brother were alive would they know their true identity? Could they really have lived their entire lives in Terra, forced to honor a Queen whose own family took theirs from them?

  With the Thanatos name firmly in his mind, he placed one hand on the glass pad of the information kiosk and waited for the screen to change. ‘No results found.’ He thought of the original family. ‘No results found.’ Zara and Zoe. ‘No results found.’ It was as though they had been erased from Terra’s memory. The network supporting each information kiosk was supposed to be a vast database that chronicled the history of Terra. The only system he had seen that even remotely resembled Terra’s was one he found on Earth - the Internet. It was a crude and unrealized version of what he was used to in Terra.

  He simplified his query. Zara. Immediately a list of results aggregated before his eyes. He bypassed the announcements and selected the social network, looking for faces to match his search. Four profiles with pictures populated the screen, one Elder, two younger girls who were born long after he was, and the fourth a young woman approximately his age, with sleek blonde hair and light eyes. Evan squinted and leaned in closer to the screen. There was something strange about the girl’s photo. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was but something about her face looked off. He looked to the other three photos to see if the same anomaly was present, but they each looked ordinary. He pinched and zoomed on the fourth Zara’s profile, her picture shrinking as a list of information about her materialized across the glass.

  The girl’s surname caught his attention. Zara Terra. There wasn’t much information about her. She was generationally aged similar to him lived and in an outlying city. When he touched location for a map it appeared and zoomed directly onto a common building in Last City.

  “Wait, what?” he gasped out loud. He looked at the girl’s photo again and studied her features. He couldn’t shake that there was something unnatural looking about the photo, something he could not comprehend. She was pretty and unsmiling, a far-off look in her eyes. Something about her face seemed oddly familiar to him, as though she were a face from a set of memories he had long since forgotten. She wasn’t one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, nor was she anyone he immediately recognized. She didn’t even bear a resemblance to either Thea or Zoe, and yet she was the right age, had an unclassified family surname, and lived in Last City.

  She couldn’t be a lost Thanatos daughter, he realized, a sting of defeat in his chest. Besides, what were the odds that both Thea Thanatos and her long-lost, presumed dead daughter had spent half a generation living in the same outlying city?

  He swiped a finger in a downward motion across the glass surface and it dimmed at once, the anonymous blonde Zara swiped away. He reprimanded himself for thinking it would be so easy to find the answers to his questions. If the Stratons had gone through the effort of completely erasing all traces of the original family from the network then how could he expect to find any information on those who had the remotest possibility of being alive?

  Evan took a seat on a nearby couch and sank in deep into the cushions. He disliked knowing he would have to sit around and wait for news, hoping that wherever Zoe and his sister were they were safe and would be returning soon. Then Terra as they knew it would be changed forever.

  His eyes closed as his mind went to Zoe, seeing her lovely face as she smiled, the memory of her laughter ringing in his head. He hoped she wouldn’t change, that she would remain the same Zoe he met on Earth, plus a smile or two more. He drifted off into sleep as he remembered the way she held onto him as he took her to Paris, how the city lights reflected in her eyes, wide with amazement. She’d nearly left the world she grew up in without seeing everything it had to offer and now she was in another world, exploring the forgott
en parts to find something she had no assurance existed. She had a strong constitution to take it all on faith, not knowing where the path would take her.

  Who would Zoe be when all was said and done? The Queen of Terra? She knew little about its people or cities, the way it was governed and run. Most importantly the people didn’t know her. Would they accept her as one of their own? As their rightful Queen?

  He awoke from a dream to the sound of small pinging. How long had he been asleep for? He felt more rested than he had before, sleep leaving his eyes and mind quickly as he sat upright in the seat. The pinging sounded again and he realized it was coming from his Communicator, tucked gently to his side in a pocket. He retrieved it and looked at the screen, his eyes growing at the message before him.

  ‘Look again.’

  A flicker of light caught his attention and he looked up, noticing the glass panel of the information kiosk coming to life again, the light brightening the room. The picture of Zara Terra filled half the screen, another near identical photo materializing next to it. He stood and walked to the wall, carrying the Communicator with him.

  At first glance the two faces looked identical, but the second photo lacked the strange quality the first possessed. The eyes and hair were the same but the other features were slightly different. The second woman’s nose was noticeably larger and her cheek bones arched high above her face. Something about the woman’s face suggested an air of superiority and he realized it was the way her mouth formed a smile, taught and a bit smug, the corners upturned infinitesimally.

  The pictures moved without provocation, Zara’s face aligning over the second woman’s. Soon he could no longer tell which photograph he was looking at. Their faces were interchangeable, the woman’s face morphing into Zara’s and vice versa until they were the same person. A file icon pinged on the bottom right-hand corner of the glass, a point of light ebbing beneath it. Evan looked to the screen on his Communicator again, then looked back up at the information kiosk. With a quick movement of his hand he touched the file icon and watched as a third photo emerged, this time of an Elder with the same blonde hair, dark eyes and high cheek bones. Her chin was upturned, as were the corners of her mouth, a superior smile upon her lips.

  Maybe his mind was still asleep, which would explain why whatever he was meant to see in the photos wasn’t clicking. The Elder woman looked like the second woman and even like Zara Terra, but he couldn’t make sense of it. The only photo that looked slightly out of place was Zara’s but he could still not comprehend why. All three women appeared to be one and the same, but Zara Terra was not classified as an Elder, so what was the explanation for the Elder’s photo?

  He looked to the communicator again and read the message half a dozen times more, each time understanding nothing. ‘Look again,’ it instructed, but at what? Perhaps Zara Terra was just another Elder, a misclassified oversight in the network. It didn’t seem odd for a Resident from Last City to have so little information available. Most of Last City’s residents were those with whom the Crown was not concerned. Elders had gone there to retire, those who had no interest in the rigmarole of life in the Royal City, and outcasts who had been banished from the inner cities. The lack of information on her was inconsequential, yet something about it continued to bother him. Who was the sender of the message and why did he or she want him to ‘look again’?

  The communicator pinged and when he looked down he found another message, the second more cryptic than the first.

  ‘Make the right choice.’

  A loud knock on the door startled him, his heart pounding hard in his chest as he nearly dropped the device to the floor. He quickly looked to the information kiosk with the intent to shut it down when he realized it had already done so. The faces were gone.

  He opened the door and found Hector standing on the other side dressed in full military regalia. He bowed his head briefly to Evan, a formality he had never been privileged to, and straightened his back formally.

  “Evander Nero, your immediate presence is requested by command of the Queen and Her Royal Highness the Queen Mother. You will please follow me at once as I escort you to the ancillary Throne Room in the Military Complex.”

  Evan had barely a moment to think before Hector moved to the side of the entry, a movement he realized meant right now. Why meet in an ancillary Throne Room instead of the actual one? More important was the mention of the Queen Mother. He couldn’t recall the last time the first Straton Queen had been on Terra.

  Hector looked at him expectantly as his mind tried to keep up. Without a word he walked through the door, letting it close behind him as he followed Hector towards the Military Complex.

  There were only a few occasions when Evan was permitted to enter the Military Complex, such as when he was accompanying the King or Queen. His relationship with them came with certain privileges, but for the most part those did not include entrance into the secret military compound on his own. As he followed Hector, Evan felt an increasing sense of apprehension. Something was amiss.

  During previous visits the complex he observed a rather serene environment where everything and everyone worked as a function of the complex itself. Crown Soldiers quietly stood guard at entrances, roamed the interior corridors, and went about the usual business of protecting Terra and its residents. That untroubled scene was gone, replaced with a discordant atmosphere that left Evan feeling uneasy. Soldiers were dressed in their formal uniforms, boots newly polished, fitted jackets with various insignias inscribed in metallic colored threads, and weapons holstered at their sides. The sight of them with weapons was still as unnerving has it had been the first time.

  There were triple the number of Soldiers present, if not more, forming lines in multiples as higher ranking officials shouted instructions at them. More soldiers congregated around great panels of glass which glowed with maps that animated, updating in real-time. All around the complex was a cacophony of orders and salutes from the soldiers. He had never seen so many before and the feeling that there were even more out in the corridors of Terra did little to quell his uneasiness.

  Hector led him toward an entryway stocked with half a dozen soldiers, more than any other door or corridor. The first two soldiers at either side nodded at Hector as they both approached, their bodies moving to open the great double doors as they neared. Just as the doors parted there was a shuffling from somewhere behind them and the voices lowered into hushed tones. Evan turned to see someone, a woman by the look of her, being escorted by two rows of a dozen soldiers, a sheath of black fabric draped over her head to disguise her face.

  Hector moved next to Evan and used the extension of his arm to move him backwards as he stepped back, making room for the soldiers to escort their prisoner through the very entryway. The room fell into a silence as nearly every head turned to look at the prisoner. Clearly there was a lot that Evan had missed in only a short period of time. He wondered what other surprises were awaiting him.

  As the convoy moved in through the entryway Hector took hold of his arm again and escorted him in afterward, bringing up the rear of the convoy into the room. It was more lavish than the monochromatic simplicity of the rest of the Military Complex, the glass walls depicting a fantastic view of the universe similar to the one in the Throne Room. Crown Soldiers in their finest military uniforms formed a perimeter along the walls of the room, each standing ramrod straight and at full attention.

  The soldiers escorting the prisoner moved to the center of the room and formed a semi-circle around her, each of them standing at attention towards a focal point in the room. As the movement stopped Evan noticed a second circular formation of soldiers around a second prisoner, who also had a black hood around their head. He had the distinct feeling the second prisoner was male.

  “Evander Nero,” a familiar voice called smoothly. It had been a long time since he last heard the Queen Mother’s cool voice, and even then it made his shoulders snap back. He turned his attention away from the prisoners an
d to the center of the room. Three ornate chairs were situated on a platform that constituted a throne, the Queen and Queen Mother in two and the empty third at Kyra’s side. They were each dressed in richly-colored robes with elaborate embroideries made of thick golden thread and jeweled crowns sat atop their meticulously adorned heads. There had not been such pomp and circumstance since the days of Kyra’s coronation and wedding ceremonies.

  Evan bowed his head deeply before the Queen Mother and to the Queen, who looked down on him with wide eyes and a constrained smile. “Your Highnesses,” he greeted.

  “I have not seen you in some time, Evander. You seem to have grown into a man worthy of your father’s name,” the Queen Mother spoke. Her words were an unwelcome surprise to him. Though he felt she was culpable in the death of his parents, verbalizing such an accusation would be tantamount to treason and subject to the severest of punishments. He had long ago learned to keep his anger contained within him and would not let her brazen greeting alter the habit.

  “You honor me, Your Highness. Surely I am unqualified to be present at a proceeding such as this?”

  “On the contrary, Evander, your lifelong friendship with the Crown has conferred upon you a most unique position. The Queen tells me you have been a trusted companion of both hers and her husband’s, and by extension you are a trusted appointee of these proceedings.”

  Evan took a moment to survey his surroundings again, the formations of Crown Soldiers standing pointedly about the room around the two faceless prisoners, seeming less ceremonial and more like a trial.

  “Please, join us,” she requested, her arm extending towards the empty seat on the throne.

  The Queen Mother’s mention of Owyn made him realize that it was the King’s presence that was missing from the room, the third chair a glaring reminder of his absence. He couldn’t imagine where the King could possibly be that would take him away from the gathering, and surely they would not invite him to sit in the King’s place.