She dashed down the hall and disappeared around the corner. Everyone waited in silence for her to return. When she came back around the corner, she didn’t appear to have anything with her.
“Ryoko!” I exclaimed when she grabbed Seda’s mouth and started messing with her center lip ring.
“I know what I’m doing,” she assured us.
“I don’t care! You don’t grab people’s faces and yank on their piercings.”
Ryoko ignored me and backed away when she was done. Seda rubbed her mouth. In the spot where her center ring had been was now a small titanium labret spike. I cocked my head to the side as I looked at Seda. It looked nice, but that didn’t excuse Ryoko for her actions.
“You know, you could have asked,” Seda muttered. “That hurt a lot.”
“What did she do?” Rylan asked.
Seda turned to show them. Rylan and Argus blinked.
“Ryoko, where did you get that labret stud?” Argus asked.
“Your room,” she replied.
“Ryoko!” Seda exclaimed.
I smacked my forehead. “Seriously, Ryoko? You went into his room and stole a lip stud?
Ryoko shrugged. “Yeah. He doesn’t use it, so why not?”
I buried my face into my hand. “You can’t take things from other people’s rooms without permission. You should know that. And how did you know it was in there, or where it even was? Honestly, I feel like I’m scolding a five-year-old.”
Ryoko huffed in offense at my words.
Seda looked at Argus. “Sorry. If you want it back, you can have it. I don’t want to take anything that doesn’t belong to me.”
Argus waved her off. “It’s fine. You can keep it. Ryoko is right. I don’t use that one anymore. I prefer this curved one. Besides, it looks better on you than it does on me.”
Seda’s face flushed again at his compliment. “All right, thanks.”
I wanted to laugh. Seda really was showing us her normal side. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d see her embarrassed, let alone twice in an hour.
“Blaze!” I shouted. “Get your ass out here.”
Ryoko looked at me in confusion. “What are you doing?”
“You’ll see,” I said. “Blaze!”
Blaze ran around the corner of the hall. “What do you—whoa… who’s the cute blonde?”
“What, you don’t recognize Seda?” I teased.
Ryoko giggled quietly. “I know we gave her new clothes and all, but c’mon, Blaze.”
Blaze’s brow furrowed with confusion. “What are you two talking about? I know this chick is about as freakishly tall as Seda, but she looks a whole lot better than Seda.”
“Six feet is not freakishly tall, you ass!” Seda barked.
He shook his head. “What the hell am I missing here?”
I grinned. “We gave her a haircut, like I’m about to do with you.”
“Like hell you are!”
He turned to run back down the hall, but I grabbed him by the back of his jacket before he could get far. “You’re getting this long-ass hair of yours chopped off, whether you like it or not.”
Blaze struggled to get out of my grip. “Chicks dig my mane. Now let go.”
He slipped out of his jacket, but before he could make it anywhere, Ryoko grabbed onto him and hauled him into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and covered the mirror with a towel before grabbing a spray bottle from the closet. The guys laughed in the living room over Blaze’s unfortunate situation. Ryoko held Blaze down on the toilet as I filled the spray bottle with water. For what I had planned, I was going to need it.
Suddenly, Blaze tried to make a break for it, throwing Ryoko off guard, and he bolted to his feet. I gasped when he knocked the bottle out of my hand, his force causing it to crack open. All three of us gasped as water splashed all over me.
Blaze froze, more afraid of how I was going to react to the water than trying to make his escape. “E–Eira, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
I sucked in a tight breath and then slammed my palm into his forehead. “You moron!”
Blaze yelled in pain and held his forehead as he stumbled back. Ryoko grabbed onto him and forced him back down on the toilet. I picked up the scissors and snipped the air.
“Please don’t,” he begged.
“You’re going to regret not listening to Seda when she told you to quiet that disgusting, piggish brain of yours,” I threatened. “And you’re going to pay for spilling water all over me.”
He whimpered and froze as I removed his hat and bandana and began cutting off his hair. “Please, Eira…”
“Don’t be such a baby, and take your punishment like a man,” I chided.
“I promise, I won’t do it anymore,” he said. “I don’t want to have to shave my head after all this.”
I continued to cut his hair. “You’re lying. You’ll never change how you think, and you get your kicks from torturing Seda the way you do.”
“I look horrible without hair!”
Ryoko snickered. “Well, maybe this will teach you to be careful of what you think about, and listen when a psychic tells you to think of something different.”
“Why should I?” he challenged. “I have a right to think as I please. It’s not my fault she has freak abilities.”
I cut a large chunk of hair. “Oops.”
Blaze whimpered, but got the hint and stopped talking. I continued to cut his hair until it was to my liking, and then rummaged in the closet for some hair gel. Once gelled up, I opened the bathroom door and Ryoko shoved him out into the hallway. The house grew still.
“Go ahead and continue laughing,” Blaze grumbled.
“Um, I’m not sure I can, because you actually look good,” Argus said.
Blaze’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Sure, your hair is a whole lot shorter, but it actually works for you,” Argus said. “Didn’t they show you what you looked like when they were done?”
Blaze shook his head and walked back into the bathroom to check. I leaned against the hallway wall and waited. He came back out a few moments later and looked at me. “You didn’t butcher it.”
I chuckled. “I never said I was going to. You just assumed I would.”
Raikidan snickered. “Psychological torture. You really are cruel, Eira.”
Blaze looked at me with a stupid expression. “I don’t get it.”
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” I said as I walked into the kitchen.
The boys all laughed at that. Blaze really was a clueless idiot. I sat down at the bar and bit into an apple. Today was good. I got to torture Blaze, and Seda was now going to be able to be normal.
Ryoko leaned on the bar. “You wanna go for a walk?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“You boys wanna come?” Ryoko asked.
“Sure,” Rylan replied.
Raikidan nodded.
“I’ll pass,” Argus told her. “I should finish working on these plans.”
“All work and no fun,” Ryoko teased.
Argus shrugged. “I enjoy it, so it is fun.”
Ryoko shook her head. “Whatever, crazy man.”
I headed for my room. “I’m going to change real quick. I’m not walking around the city with wet clothes.”
Ryoko nodded. “Okay, don’t take too long. We’ll wait for you outside.”
I rummaged through my dresser and found a good pair of denim pants and a white tank top. After changing into them quickly, I sifted through my closet and found a cropped black and red jacket. Shrugging it on, I headed for the front door to meet up with the others.
The day was warm and the walk had been nice. Ryoko gabbed on
and on about random things, and I just listened. I didn’t know anything about half the things she spoke about, but, luckily, Rylan did, and he was able to hold a conversation with her. They were lucky they had so much in common. I remembered Zane would complain from time to time that he couldn’t find someone to be with because no one shared anything in common with him.
Thinking about it and looking at these two made me wonder what was so great about finding someone. Why was it so important to everyone? Wasn’t it better to be alone than to be hurt over and over again trying?
“Here.” I looked at Raikidan when he handed me a bottle of water. “You look thirsty.”
“Oh, um, thanks.” I took the bottle and gratefully took a swig. I took another when I realized how refreshing it was. “Where did you get this?”
Raikidan jerked his head in some direction. “I bought it.”
I chuckled. “Where do you get all this money?”
“What, do you really expect me to hand over everything to you when we get paid?”
I smiled. “I suppose not. Well, thanks again for the water. It was… thoughtful.”
Raikidan opened his mouth, but Ryoko called out to us before he could speak. “Hey, guys, you might want to come over here and look at this.”
Curious, I made my way over to where Ryoko and Rylan were standing. Ryoko pointed to strange symbols carved into the brick wall of the building. Raising an eyebrow, I took a closer look at them.
“Recognize those symbols?” Rylan remarked.
I nodded. “I sure do, but they’re not making any real words.”
“Do you think there are more located around here?” Ryoko asked.
“I was wondering the same myself,” Rylan remarked as he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and a broken pencil from his pocket. “I’ll write these down, and if we find anything else, we can figure out if they’re related in some way.”
I nodded. “We should split up to cover more ground. We’ll meet at the park in an hour. Sound fair?”
Ryoko and Rylan agreed and ran off. Rylan turned on his heels and came back to give me a strip of paper. He also broke a piece off from his pencil before he went to catch up with Ryoko.
Raikidan moved closer to me. “What’s going on?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure, but if you see anything that looks similar to these symbols carved or written anywhere, tell me, okay?”
He nodded and then followed as I took off. I looked all around as I took several turns down alleys. The more I looked, the more I started to feel something was wrong. These symbols were important. They had an important message, and it was important to find the rest, which was going to be hard. The sun was setting and in an hour it would almost be nightfall. Once darkness hit, it would be impossible to find any if they were out there.
“Eira, right here,” Raikidan called.
I turned around but didn’t see him. “Where are you?”
He poked his head around a corner to a small alley I had overlooked. “I think I found something here.”
I rushed over to him and took a look. He was right. There were a few symbols carved into the wall. There were only five in total, but it was better than nothing. Quickly sharpening the broken pencil with my dagger, I wrote the symbols down in the same exact way I saw them.
“All right, I got them,” I told him. “Let’s keep checking the rest of the main alley and then head to the park to meet up with the others. If we’re lucky, we’ll find some more on the way.”
Raikidan nodded and followed me. We searched high and low in the rest of the alley but didn’t find anything and were even less lucky on our way to the park. Once we got there, we sat down on a bench to wait but I became increasingly agitated as time passed and I couldn’t explain why.
“Calm down,” Raikidan whispered. “You’re getting yourself worked up.”
“I can’t help it,” I admitted. “I’m getting a really bad feeling, and the longer we wait, the worse it gets. I can’t get it to go away.”
“Why are you getting this feeling?” he asked me.
I looked down at the piece of paper. “Because of these. The more I read them and realize how much we’re missing, the more I realize how rushed they were carved and how important it was for whoever wrote it to put it in cryptic fragments.”
“You told me you couldn’t read.”
I nodded. “That’s true. I did say that. I can’t read common. But I can read these. These symbols are an equivalent to common to me. While we were in the military, we chose to design something I could read and write with ease, instead of forcing the impossible on me.
“You see, I can understand pictures. I understand what they mean when you put them together, so it was decided that a symbolic language would be made up for me to be able to read and for only select people to learn. It was up to me to decide what each symbol would be and what it would mean.” I looked at him. “In the end, the rebels adapted this when I left the military to be used as a type of secret code to allow messages to be passed around without the military finding out.”
Raikidan took the paper from me. “So you’re saying this message is from a rebel?”
I nodded. “It’s the only explanation, and if that’s the case, then this is really important.”
Raikidan nodded and looked at the paper some more. “So why pictures?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s because I can picture images of things better than I can actual words. Shva’sika tried to teach me how to read and write in Elvish, but I struggled and only know half of the language, if that. I don’t think it’s possible for me to read or write properly.”
“It might only take more time for you,” Raikidan encouraged. “Maybe you just need an extra push.”
I grunted. “I need something, all right.”
Raikidan laughed at me, and soon after I was joining in. I didn’t know how he did it, but Raikidan knew how to keep me calm in the simplest ways.
“Thanks, Rai.”
Raikidan tilted his head. “For what?”
“For knowing how to distract me long enough to calm me down even if it wasn’t your full intention.”
Raikidan placed his hand on my shoulder and opened his mouth to speak, but our attention was drawn elsewhere when quick footsteps headed our way.
“Find anything?” I asked Rylan when he stopped in front of us.
He nodded. “A few more. They were only a few symbols long, but it’s better than nothing. You guys?”
“We found one,” I told him. “I would have loved to find more, but it’s better than nothing.”
Rylan nodded and looked around. “Where’s Ryoko?”
I shrugged. “I figured she was with you, but I guess you two separated?”
He nodded. “We were together for most of the time, but when the alley we were in split, we thought it would be best to separate. I would have figured she’d beat me here.”
“I’m here!” Ryoko cried out. She stopped when she got to us and leaned on her knees to catch her breath.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. I just ran into some soldiers, that’s all.”
I noticed the ounce of alarm rush through Rylan’s eyes. “They didn’t harass you, did they?”
She shook her head. “They thought I was lost, so I pretended they were right, and they helped me get to a main road. I was a lot farther away than when we had started searching, so I had to run to get here.”
I shook my head and chuckled. “That would be your luck.”
She laughed. “Yeah, especially when it was shortly after Rylan and I split. But I did find something important while I was running that you’re going to want to look at before we get to the house.”
She handed me her strip of paper and I looked at it. I froze
when I read two words she had scribbled on here.
“Arnia and Jaybird…” I whispered.
Rylan cleared off the coffee table, and I placed the pieces of paper down on it. We had to decipher this as quickly as we could. With the help of Ryoko and Rylan, we started to piece everything together. We looked at the way each symbol had been spaced and how they had been written. I rubbed my temples when we came to a standstill. We had only a few words put together, and we had letters to spare.
“What words do you have so far?” Zane asked.
“Help, found, and find,” I told him.
“We also have their names,” Rylan added. “But right now that doesn’t do us much good. Seda, you’re sure we found all the pieces of this message?”
Seda nodded. “Yes. I even did a second scan to be sure.”
I looked at the remaining symbols and mused over the words we had. “Help. Found. Find.” I looked at a small group of symbols and something clicked in my head. I placed symbols together to form words as I spoke. “Help. We have been found out. Find us.”
“By Satria…” Ryoko breathed.
“Shit!” I jumped to my feet, nearly knocking over the coffee table. “This is bad. This is very bad. Seda, I need a communicator.”
“Laz, stay calm,” Rylan advised. “We need to keep our heads on so we can get this fixed.”
“I can’t stay calm!” I yelled. “This is really bad!”
“We know. Having anyone found out is bad,” Ryoko remarked.
“No, you don’t understand.” I grabbed my forehead in distress. “Arnia and Jaybird are unaltered twins!”
The room was silent. It didn’t even sound as if anyone was breathing. I started to pace in agitation.
“Can someone fill me in on what I’m missing?” Raikidan asked.
Ryoko sighed. “How much do you know about twins?”
“Not much, honestly,” he replied.
She nodded. “There are two types of twins in Lumaraeon. Unaltered twins and altered twins. Altered twins are experimental. They are our attempt at creating twins at will, but it’s very rare they make it through the tank growing phase, and even rarer for them to last long outside the tank after growing. They’re not stable enough.
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