The Colony

by RMGilmour

  “But you knew all along?”

  “Yes, we all knew. We all know. It’s common knowledge where I come from and we’re taught not to respond. To ignore it. Hera should have known. If Castor could go back, he would slit his sister’s throat for not protecting her.”

  “What about the Rathe, do they know?”

  “Of course. They attained that level of technology eons ago. Imagine a society as advanced, more so, than what you see in there,” she said pointing to the wall. “But they choose to live out in the fields, with nature.”

  “Why?” I never wanted to ask Aleric and offend him with my simple question.

  “Because with everything they could do, they almost lost themselves, their humanity. So, they maintained a life of simple abundance while always expanding their knowledge and technology.”

  “What about where you come from?”

  “We enjoy everything our technology has to offer, but only if it makes us stronger, more powerful,” she glanced down at me, taking in my small frame. “You should really drink more of Castor’s serums,” she smiled.

  I was going to ask if they would strengthen more than just my physical frame, but she didn’t give me a chance to form the thought into a viable question.

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “What’s it like?” She then lowered her voice even more until I could barely hear her. “Actually meeting him, the one…”

  I smiled and dropped my head, fighting back the emotion that rapidly filled me as I remembered how it felt to be close to him. This was why I needed to be alone. I’d known this was coming, and I didn’t want to cry in front her.

  I swallowed hard and blinked until my eyes were dry, trying to find the words to describe being in his presence. I doubted I could ever completely explain the feeling.

  “It feels like… my soul has fulfilled its purpose,” I whispered back to her, not looking up.

  Several minutes passed before either of us spoke, or even moved and I peered sideways, checking to see if she was ok. But she was still only staring at the wall.

  “Do you think he’s in there?” I asked.

  “Mason offered to find him, but I said no. I don’t want to know. A large part of me is sure he was never real, that it was just the Guardian fooling yet another one of us,” she began, though she still hadn’t moved. I don’t think she’d even blinked. She seemed mesmerized by whatever feelings I’d brought out in her.

  “But there is a small part, a very small part that hopes he is, and is waiting.”

  “Lena, I’m sure he is.”

  “You did that to me,” she shot me a sideways glance of annoyance, or possibly something stronger; frustration mixed with a touch of animosity maybe. And then lowered her voice once more. “Seeing the two of you together, the way you look at each other…” her words ended in a sigh, and any softness she may have displayed, disappeared. The warrior countenance, restored.

  “If I knew he was real, in there,” she nodded toward the city. “The temptation to meet him would be too much. And while I may welcome the fight, I couldn’t risk him. We’ve lost too many already, us and them.”

  “I don’t believe the Guardian is as powerful as it would like you to believe. Just because it has some control, doesn’t mean it has the power of the Central Unit.”

  “You think it can be destroyed?”

  “I’d bet my life on it,” I answered. I was sure she was going to give me a sarcastic response, but instead she only stared at me, smiling.

  “You need to come back to the Arena with me.”

  “Haize said no.”

  “Haize is your mother?”

  “No,” I laughed. “But I tend to get myself into trouble, and I’m sure she’s only trying to keep me safe.”

  “I won’t let you get into trouble.”

  “No, you’ll just beat the crap out of me,” I mumbled.

  ∞

  We made it back to the Colony in plenty of time before sunset, but I remained just outside of the cave entrance, watching Jordan’s artwork move and change color overhead. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but once the first star appeared I forced myself up and trudged down the stairs. I still had no idea how I was going to convince Grid, or the Guardian of anything.

  Though once in the apartment, Grid was not around, and so I showered and changed, then went back into the front room to wait for him.

  Standing in front of the counter, I tried to figure out yet again, how to make the food appear the way I wanted it to, but all I could seem to produce was mush.

  “If I wanted baby food I would have asked for it,” I yelled at the machine.

  “What are you doing?” he chuckled.

  I jumped at the sound, and turned to see I’d amused him once again.

  “Um, well I was going to make us food,” I said, turning back to the panel and scowling at it. For once, actually thankful that I hadn’t yet found my own apartment to live in. “I don’t think it likes me too much.”

  He laughed, stretching out one hand and placed several fingers on the panel, where he worked his magic to make the food appear.

  Most likely though, it worked well for him because he was a ward, I complained in my head, but I kept the thought safely locked inside. Immediately, I regretted the feeling, that he was the enemy. He wasn’t anything close. And Jordan’s produce from the machine was just as delicious.

  “But I did that,” I complained to him.

  “Uh huh,” he grinned. “Go. Sit.”

  I obeyed, and he followed with our food.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “When?” I asked, not looking up, and not sure if I wanted to respond.

  “When you were trying to make the food come out of the machine?” he said, emphasizing every word to be sure I heard and understood.

  “I don’t know. Really, all I wanted was food, nothing specific.”

  “That’s why it won’t work for you. You need to have a clear vision of what you want. It takes a little practice… for some.”

  “Well then, it’s a good thing I have you to feed me for the next fifty or so years,” I said, glancing up at him.

  His hand paused half way to his mouth, but only for a moment, before it resumed its course. As he stared back at me, I hoped he’d picked up on the meaning behind my sentence. I was sure he had. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  The following morning, Grid already had breakfast waiting, and as I sat down I yawned long and hard from lack of sleep. Sometime during the night, I’d decided to take Lena up on her offer; though the inner debate about whether I should stay or go, had kept me awake. However, I knew that if we were to go to the Arena again, we would need to leave early, and I doubted I would have the energy to run the distance.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted, and I wished I could tell him why. But I knew he would ask anyway, and I racked my brain for a reasonable response.

  “How come?”

  “It was cold last night. Colder than usual,” I told him, which was true anyway. The cold had never stopped me from sleeping before, but it was the only excuse I could come up with.

  “Why didn’t you adjust the temperature, or get an extra blanket?”

  “I’m sure if I’d tried to do either, I would have ended up with a sauna and a sheep.”

  His smile was welcome, his laughter more so.

  “Why didn’t you come to me, I would have helped you with either.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you… if you were already sleeping.”

  “I don’t sleep much at all,” he admitted. “A few hours here and there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Even back on Earth I didn’t sleep much.”

  “Well, then all the more reason not to disturb you, in case you are sleeping.”

  “You could never disturb me,” he said, and reached across the table to place his hand on top of
mine.

  I glanced down at our hands. My instinct was to pull away, but I realized this was a perfect opportunity I couldn’t pass up, and I turned my hand up to gently clasp his. I couldn’t look up at him though. It didn’t feel right deceiving Grid this way. I only hoped, one day, he would understand.

  I felt his hand squeeze mine, gently, briefly, and then he squeezed again. I felt as though he was trying to say something, and I rose my eyes to his. But he didn’t smile, he only stared back.

  However, after several moments, he winced as though I’d hurt him. He lifted our hands from the table as he stood, bringing me up with him, and pulling me to him. His arms were firm around me, and for a brief moment his fingers dug into my back.

  “No,” he moaned, barely more than a whisper as his hands slid to my shoulders, then gently pushed me away.

  Confused, I could only stare up at him. And when he neither moved nor spoke, but only stared back at me, I turned and left the apartment, one slow step at a time.

  Lena was waiting for me in the food hall, and we went topside together to find Haize, to let her know where I would be for the day. Both she and Aleric were in the tree hut, deep in whispered conversation, but stopped when we approached.

  “What’s going on?” Lena beat me to it, but they were both looking at me.

  “I heard from Mason this morning,” Aleric began, and then lowered his voice as he stepped toward me. “The wards have him… Jordan.”

  “No,” the word burst from me.

  I stumbled backwards out of the room, almost tripping down the stairs, and then ran through the trees toward the wall. I don’t know what I’d intended to do. I only knew I had to reach him, somehow.

  “No!” I screamed, though a moment later I was tackled to the ground.

  “Lydia, hush,” Lena urged.

  “Let me go!” I clawed at her arms, tight around my waist. “They can’t have him.”

  “Lydia, be quiet. You’ll bring the wards down to the wall, and you’ll give him away to them.”

  “No,” I went limp at hearing her say this and lowered my voice so only she could hear me. “They can’t have him. They can’t have him.”

  “Please come back inside with me.”

  “No. No,” I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to leave the wall. It was the closest I could get to him. They would insert him. The Guardian would be able to take him away and bring him back at will, control him. I may never see him again, just like Grid and Gia. He was going to die and all because of me.

  A fresh wound sliced open inside of me, gaping, raw, threatening to consume me. But I didn’t care. It could have me.

  A cold sting briefly touched my temple, piercing my brain and I felt myself falling into darkness.

  ∞

  Voices came to me at first in soft whispers and then they grew louder, forming words, sentences I could recognize.

  “You gave her too much,” I knew her voice.

  “I didn’t, I barely touched her,” definitely Haize.

  “She should be awake by now,” Lena responded.

  “She’s awake,” came another voice, but one I didn’t recognize and was sure I hadn’t heard before.

  “No, she’s not,” Lena argued.

  “Yes, she is. Just give her a second,” his voice again. Although, I could tell from his volume that he was not as close to me as Lena was.

  I tried to remember where I was, or what had happened, but all I could think about was Jordan. He was gone.

  “Lydia,” his voice was closer to me now, as though right beside me. “He’s ok.”

  He was not ok. He never would be again. My brain wanted to say as much, but my mouth lacked the willpower to move.

  “Lydia, I haven’t lost contact with him. He’s ok,” he reiterated.

  His words tried to fill me with hope, but I wouldn’t let it move me. Before I would let any hope enter my heart, I would need proof.

  I didn’t want to rejoin them; it was more out of a need to know who he was than a want to open my eyes. I rolled my head so I could face the direction their voices had come from. And then cracked my eyelids open, to see Haize, Lena and the man I’d never met. My eyes were still blurry though, so there was a good chance I knew him from the Colony.

  I tried to take in as much of the room as I could without any movement, the pale grey walls, the gentle lighting that emanated from the ceiling and the small square of pale light beside me, displaying numbers and words that could be read from both sides, no doubt about me. But my brain didn’t want to comprehend them.

  “Where are we?” I asked, my voice was hoarse.

  “The Arena,” Lena smiled, stepping forward. She took my hand and gently squeezed it, but I pulled it away from her. “This is Mason,” she waved her other hand in the man’s direction.

  My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to jump off the bed, and ask him the million questions that ran through my brain.

  “Don’t get up too soon. Don’t worry I’m not going anywhere,” he reassured me. “It’s good to finally meet you,” he smiled.

  I lay back and stared up at him. His dark eyes and short, copper-blonde hair were a striking combination, and like Jordan his skin was pure, smooth.

  “Where is he?” I whispered.

  “He’s still with the wards, but they won’t hurt him. Too many people in the city know he’s with them and they’ve already made their concerns known.”

  “Why do they have him?”

  “They know he’s been outside of the city… with you.”

  I knew it. My fault.

  “How do they know?”

  “They’ve known since that last hunting trip with the Rathe. But it was when you mentioned Gia that they decided to act.”

  Again, my fault. My fault!

  “How are you in contact with him?”

  He pulled from the side of the pale, lighted square that hung in the air beside my bed, another lighted panel showing more numbers, more letters. I didn’t understand them, but they were him and I tried to stare them into comprehension.

  “His vital signs, his brain waves, his energy… nothing… has changed.”

  I didn’t like his pause. Something had changed, and I shifted my unblinking gaze from the screen to him.

  “There were a few moments that were not optimal, but they were brief.”

  I didn’t want to ask what he meant. I couldn’t, and I forced away the images that tried to invade my mind. I couldn’t let myself think about it. He was with the wards. At the very least they were mistreating him, and the most I could hope for would be that they don’t kill him.

  “I want to show you something,” he smiled, and he came around to the other side of the bed. He waved his hands at me, indicating for me to move over and I did. He climbed on the bed and lay beside me, and pulled from the air two more lighted screens, moving them to rest in the air directly in front of us.

  “How are you doing that?” I asked.

  “You can’t see it, but throughout the room is what you would call a computer. Activated by thought, positioned for processing with a simple touch. Once activated, it becomes a fine layer that you can easily penetrate and feel, if you know what to sense,” he said, moving his fingers expertly around the screens. “Here, give me your hand.”

  I gave it willingly, and he held it out toward the nearest screen. At first there was nothing, but once I closed my eyes and relaxed my hand, I could feel a slight tingling sensation across my skin.

  “Before you, he was alone for a very long time. I pushed him into the spacetime travel. I only wanted him to see what was out there, give him some new images to paint, keep him occupied,” he explained, then lowered his voice. “He was waning. I feared he would… request permanent insertion.”

  Jordan’s state had clearly bothered him; he could barely speak the words.

  “Look,” he said, turning my attention back to the detail that was on the two screens
before me. “This is Jordan,” he pointed to the left screen, and then to the right. “And this is you. These are your frequencies, your biological signatures. Your body including all synapses in your brain and the result of those synapses, your mind.”

  The two screens displayed a wavering, slow moving vortex of light. Lines that danced around one another, momentarily swirling faster and higher, then once more slowing, all in rhythm to our bodies.

  “Watch,” he said, and he moved the two screens to overlay one another, and the swirling vortices’ matched almost exactly in a side by side line dance.

  “These few moments are from when you first connected. You were both so lost.”

  I couldn’t tell what he was looking at in order to determine our state of mind, they just looked like lines to me. Maybe it was my disinterested look, or complete lack of understanding, but he touched the screens, pausing the movement.

  “I know it’s hard to comprehend if you don’t quite know what you are looking at,” he said, and I looked up at him, wondering if he could read my mind. Aleric did that to me as well. Maybe my thoughts were clearly written all over my face. “But just watch, you’ll see what I mean.”

  “This,” he said, touching the screens to continue the movement. “Is when you first sensed each other,” and the lines no longer wavered, but remained steady, strong, pulsing lights. “And as you moved through your conversation,” he continued. The lines moved closer, overlaying one another, matching each other’s rhythm and movement.

  “And this,” he began, pausing the movement on the screens once more. He slid those screens across and brought others forward. “This is when you first met in the tree-hut, when you first spoke to each other, when you first touched,” he whispered. The lines expanded, glowing a solid, white light, growing and moving off the screen, becoming one vortex of pulsating life.

  I was completely embarrassed and amazed at his experiment. I didn’t know what to say. I’d watched our souls meet, and meld together in perfect unison. But I didn’t need to see it to know it. I’d felt it. Even now, he was still a part of me, his memory deeply ingrained.