“Funny,” I say. “They stole my eggs. You gave them your sperm.”
“That’s not fair, Kira. They made me. They said they were running fertility tests on me, just like they told you,” he says, clearly upset by my accusation that he was somehow in on their plans, which obviously he wasn’t.
Any further dissection of the state of our potentially existent labies will have to wait. The dumping of the heavens upon us has resumed with vigor and we can barely keep hold of the rope with the continuous lash of water and mud. I try to latch onto Blake so he can ascend the rope, but progress is impossible. Gale force winds pelt the rain at our faces with force of a fire hose. As I reach up to try to clear my eyes of mud and water I lose my grip on Blake and free fall towards the river.
Panic overtakes me and it takes several seconds to regain enough faculties to grasp for something, anything to slow my descent. The rope should still be in reach, I think. I shove my hands into the mud and catch hold, nearly pulling out my elbow sockets as I abruptly halt, legs dangling in the raging river below. My upper body strength may not rival Blake or Tristan’s, but between cheer, my nightly workouts here on Thera, and some major adrenaline, I ratchet myself up a few rungs and get my legs out of the water.
Taking some deep breaths to try to get my heart rate down, I survey my situation. Blake didn’t fall with me, so he must still be above. How far, I have no idea, as I’m still blinded by the rain. How much longer can this storm last? Fatigue plagues my muscles, and the rain and mud sting the flesh wounds sustained by the brush and debris. I’ve swallowed enough mud to craft a childhood mud pie. My stomach protests the non-nutritive meal and I dry heave between belabored breaths.
I work out a rhythm. Inhale ten times facing down to keep the mud out of my mouth. Climb two rungs. Rest. Repeat. Several minutes go by. Eight rungs. Ten rungs. Twelve rungs. It’s progress.
And then Blake and a mass of sludge slam me into the river below.
With no time to react and no way to hold on, I hit the cement floor with enough force to hurt, but not kill. The rapids churn us like laundry, sweeping us towards the ocean. Thirty or forty seconds later, I pop my head out of the water and gasp for air. Where’s Blake? He’d been right next to me. A tug at my legs pulls me under for a moment and then we both rise to the surface. My lungs burn but I refuse to die this way so I look for options. I motion towards the ‘shore.’
Swimming against the current, we target anything along the shoreline that can be used to pull ourselves out. The river carries us at least a mile before we can get across ten feet of rapids and grab hold of a dense patch of brush. Blake shoves me up with one arm, his other wrapped around a monstrous cactus. The rain has slowed again enough to see his face every few seconds as a strobe jettisons around the canyon.
“Stay above the brush and search for a ladder with your hands,” he says. “Try to yell out every couple minutes so they can get a handle on your location.”
“Take my hand, Blake. I can pull you up,” I say.
“They have a well trained rescue team. It shouldn’t be long before they find you. They’ll be using the zip lines,” he says.
“You’re scaring the crap out of me, Blake. Get up here,” I say. As the light shines on his face I can tell he won’t be joining me and that it is by choice. “No, no, no, no, no. You are not leaving me here. You don’t get to leave me and our labies while we suffer an eternity on this cursed planet!”
“Chill. I’ll be back. I promise. Trust me. If I don’t come back, at least you have some great other options here—Tristan and Ethan, the chick-magnet Intern,” he says in a joking tone, although I don’t think it’s funny. “By the way, it’s not fake to me anymore. I’m falling for you, Kira.” Then he lets go and the river swiftly carries him away.
“What the hell?” I yell, though he may be too far to hear me. How dare he tell me he’s falling for me right before launching into that suicidal stream of sludge? I know him. He has some hare-brained idea that he can get out to the beach and within range of his father. But the far more likely scenario is that he drowns or gets pulled out into the ocean by a riptide and I never see him again.
The agony of his departure paralyzes any action on my part for what seems like hours. I numb myself to the rain and mud as the intensity cycles between brutal and barely noticeable. As dawn approaches the skies shut off and the drains built into the canyon floor suck the remaining liquid, leaving behind a graveyard of debris and silt. The clouds dissipate and the sun sears the mud to my skin. The minuscule remaining rational portion of my brain urges me to scale the canyon, but my angst of not knowing Blake’s fate squashes any upward momentum.
Eventually, rescuers find me. I get hauled to the clinic by way of mule. The mule’s stench and the jarring ride barely register. An unnerved Spud Rosenberg meets my rescue party at the top of the canyon.
“Where’s Blake?” he asks me. No need to look up to know his chin fat is swaying and thin brows furrowed.
“The river. He pushed me up and out of it, but got swept away.” Intentionally, the jerk.
“How long ago?” he says.
“Hours,” I respond, although I have no idea the exact timing.
“We’ll find him,” he says. “The rescue team will scour the canyons until they do.” Only if he wants to be found. Or if his dead body is amongst the riverbed debris.
Two nights and no news. They’ve kept me drugged most the time as my wailing ‘distracts the doctors and nurses.’ My wounds are healing. Appetite, not so much. I’ve been stuck in the clinic, hooked to tubes that force nutrition into my body. Bri and Tristan have been swapping shifts to keep me company. I’m surprised Bri trusts Tristan to sit with me, but I guess she figures I’m too distraught over Blake to put up with any crap from Tristan. She’d hate the truth, which is that I prefer Tristan’s bedside manner to hers. Bri’s overly sunny ‘everything will be fine so that you and Blake can finally Cleave’ talk drives me insane when the outcome may be much less than okay. The rescue teams have failed to find Blake, dead or alive. Tristan has avoided the topic of Blake altogether, catching me up on every bit of Garden City High gossip.
“You mind if I read you a children’s story?” he’d asks.
“Is it because I’ve been acting like a child?” I respond.
“Ha ha. No, because the girl in the story reminds me of you,” he says. He shows me pictures from the book on his tablet and I gasp at the resemblance of the girl in the story. The girl wears her long strawberry blonde hair in ringlets and has pale green eyes ringed in gold. Even her facial structure resembles my heart-shaped face. The boy looks like a cross between Blake and Ethan, if I even correctly remember what Ethan looks like at this point. I must be doomed to a life of loss.
“Yeah sure, a children’s story is about all I can handle right now,” I say, pretending to not be that interested. Far from the truth, because Blake and I are supposedly Originals I am very intrigued about my legendary ancestors. I burrow into my pillow, pull my blanket up and listen to Tristan bring life to the magical tale.
Centuries ago, a beautiful princess named Helina of Light stood at the precipice of a volcanic crater at dawn. As firstborn daughter, her family had to sacrifice her to the Gads in exchange for seven years of plenty in the lands surrounding the volatile and fiery volcano. As the sun peeked over the Eastern horizon, she boldly dove towards the fiery pits.
Instead of being consumed by flame, Helina found herself engulfed in warm water. She flopped and flailed in the water to keep herself afloat. A strong breeze whisked her to a shell-covered beach. Too weak to move, she awaited death.
Death did not come. Hadrian of Dark found her while fishing. He abandoned his haul, carrying her to his garden home miles away. Lush, fertile and beautiful beyond measure, Helina thought she was in Heaven with the Gads. She fell in love with Hadrian and, in time, agreed to cleave to him.
A year hence, Helina bore twins to the delight of her husband. Csilla favored her mother. Col
e, his father. The children thrived in the gardens, though Csilla yearned for adventure. She’d grown hearing stories of the ‘mortal’ land of her mother’s birth. After Cole took his uncle’s daughter to cleave, Csilla set out to find Light. She wove a raft of reeds of the garden and pushed out to sea, never to be seen by Helina and Hadrian again.
Years after her parents’ death, Csilla returned to her parent’s garden home with her children and grandchildren. Cole greeted her and marveled at tales of travel between Light and Dark. After nights of feast and celebration Csilla invited Cole to journey to his mother’s birthplace and see Light with his own eyes. He acquiesced to his sister’s pleadings, bringing his own children and grandchildren. They visited the very volcano where Helina was sacrificed before Cole returned to Dark. Despite the lure of Light, he missed his cleave and his father’s gardens.
Generation after generation passed between Dark and Light. Only those of the blood of the Originals could make the journey. Until, that is, Helina’s great-great-great-great granddaughter, Ilana, who lived on Light, struck a deal with the Gads when her husband died before his time. The Gads agreed to bring her husband back to life in the Dark land of her distant grandfather. Eventually, others were granted a second chance at life on Dark.
“Cool story, huh?” Tristan says upon finishing. “I love a good romance.” I envy his naivety. He thought some author imagined the story. Although I imagine much of it to be fiction, the folklore justifies Original domination over Second Chancers. Tristan doesn’t even realize he once lived in Light and his benefactors in Dark Exiled him here by execution.
Choosing my words carefully I respond, “Kind of grim. I can’t believe someone wrote a story for kids about a girl jumping into a volcano.”
“You wouldn’t jump into a volcano if it meant finding your one true love?” he ask. I might actually jump if I knew I could find Blake. Or see Ethan again. But to jump thinking I’d die? Crazy.
“She didn’t know she’d find love,” I say. “And since when are you such a romantic?” A slip. Not one he’d recognize, but a slip nonetheless.
“I’m a regular Prince Hadrian,” he says, brown eyes sparkling and impish grin shining. And with that, I smile for the first time since Blake disappeared. We talk for hours until Bri arrives, covering every kosher topic on Thera, from Cleaving, love and romance, to friendship, sports, exercise and food. It is the Tristan of our early relationship. Fun. Talkative. Charming. Sweet. I fell in love with that Tristan, not the soulless, drunken oaf who cheated on me with my best friend.
“Have you found him?” I ask as Spud Rosenberg enters my living room unannounced, a second man behind him. Although I’m thankful to be out of the clinic, being in the house I share with Blake without him has been excruciatingly painful.
“I’m afraid I can’t say,” Spud says. “Our search and rescue operations are confidential. But you should prepare yourself for the worst.”
“Are you kidding me?” I say. “He’s my partner. I need him back and to know that he’s alive. Why won’t you tell me?”
“We’re not here to discuss Blake. My colleague, Ethan Darcton, requires a word with you—and I do believe you’ve been wanting a word with him, as well,” Spud says.
“Ethan Darcton—as in related to Brad Darcton of the Ten? ” I ask, straining my neck to get a look at the guy who’s still obscured by Spud’s large head. My stomach lurches toward my throat as if I’ve just taken a plunge down a roller coaster. I instantly recognize the face. Striking. Magazine cover material. Young twenties. Dark hair. Twinkling sapphire eyes. Stubble from a couple-night start to a beard. And definitely not a ghost. Ethan. How could he show up now after all this time? He just now comes to see me? He walks towards me so I can get a better look and I can finally confirm he’s as incredible as I remember. He’s a Darcton? The Ten was responsible for that explosion and Mr. Senior Ten’s son was there that night striking up a conversation with me? That can’t be a coincidence. Could hot college dude be a terrorist?
“Yes, I’m his son and we’ve met previously,” he says as if he might have slipped my mind, taking my hand in his and sitting down next to me on my couch, close enough that his knee touches mine. My heart races at his contact, but my brain is doing somersaults at the thought that Ethan may have been involved in the Goodington disaster.
“I’ll leave the two of you to talk,” Spud says. I shoot Spud an icy glare, but he waves me off and exits through the front door. My attention returns to the Darcton heir and I find his eyes transfixed on me. I sigh deeply and try to find my voice amidst my astonishment.
“So, after all this time, you show up. At first I thought I’d lost my mind,” I said. “I kept seeing you on Earth, or so I thought. And again at the scale version of the Headquarters meeting with... your father. I heard your voice at the clinic, but you wouldn’t open the door. And then Blake said he’d run into an Intern named Ethan with your description. Why wouldn’t you say something to me and let me know you were alive? Or perhaps you were purposefully avoiding me.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, as if to compose himself before addressing me.
“I’m so sorry that Blake’s gone missing,” Ethan says, ignoring my questions. “He seems like a really nice guy and from what I understand, you two are close.”
“How did you survive the explosion at the Goodington party? How are you here on Thera? You’re really Brad Darcton’s son?” I ask. To think that I obsessed over every word he spoke to me that night… wondering if he felt even a fraction of the connection I felt… wondering who his girlfriend was… and ridiculously wondering if he could forget her and want a forever with me.
And then the fantasy fizzles. He’s a Darcton. “Why were you even there that night?” Heck, they can Exile me for all I care. “Did you cause the…” Ethan cuts me off as he firmly plants his hand over my lips, but shakes his head ‘no’ at my intended question.
“I know you have a lot of questions. But, let me address one thing at a time. I was at the Goodington party, because as part of the interview process the SCI does a ‘spot check’ on the most promising Recruits to confirm they’re of the right kind of character to represent the Second Chance Institute. The Ten asked me to observe you and your friends. It was during my observation I happened upon an unfortunate incident,” he says, as if reciting a script. “It’s easier to show you,” he says. “I brought a video that should… shed some light on the events of that night.”
“Video?” I ask. He briskly leaves the couch, takes a memory card from his pocket and plugs it into the side of my tablet. I follow him. A few moments later images appear on the monitor and I take a seat in my desk chair. Ethan’s not acting at all like the flirty, sweet guy I remember. In fact, he’s awkward and seems nervous. His hands are shaking. The all business demeanor doesn’t suit him.
“I apologize in advance for the content,” he says. “I was directed to show you.”
“By?” I ask.
“The Ten,” he says. “They have… concern about the time you’ve been spending with your former boyfriend, Tristan. Given your importance… as a Recruit… they want you to be fully informed as to his behavior leading up to the accident.” I clench my teeth to keep from correcting him. Accident? Don’t insult me.
Mr. Darcton the Younger skips forward to the segment I’m to watch. Briella and Tristan fill the screen. They’re sprawled out on a bed, presumably within the former Goodington estate since they’re dressed in Winter Formal attire.
“We need to tell her,” Bri says.
“Why now? If you haven’t told her about us after a year, what’s changed to make you want to come clean?” Tristan asks.
“I love you,” she says. “I always have. Since our first time up at Mammoth, and that was before I stupidly introduced you to Kira and you blew me off for her.”
“I didn’t blow you off at Mammoth. You were playing head games and then you blew up at me after I spent the afternoon keeping Kira company in the lodge. I didn’t w
ant to deal with your crap. No matter how good of a time we’d had at that party,” he says. “Besides, you said you were okay about it. That you wanted her to be happy and I made her happy.”
“I don’t think either of us have been making her happy lately. She has to know something’s up and I don’t think she could handle finding out about it from someone else,” Bri says.
“I thought we’d talked this through at iHop this morning and decided not to tell her. She’ll probably be leaving soon anyway to go do that stupid internship and then I can use that as an excuse to break up. When she gets back we can tell her we hooked up while she was gone,” he says.
“No, it’s not enough. You can’t date my best friend while having me on the side. We need to tell her. Tonight,” she says.
“That’s crazy. You’re drunk,” he says, and then shoves some tongue down her throat.
“You’re drunk. I’m just enough drunk to give you what you’ve been wanting all night,” she says before slipping off her dress and unbuttoning his tux shirt.
“Please turn it off,” I say to the monster I assume filmed it. How could I have been so wrong about Ethan? I’d built a freaking pedestal so high to put him on, so I guess I shouldn’t be shocked to see how far he can fall. At least I’ve kept a perfect record in falling for only schmucks who disappoint.
“Of course,” he says. He closes out the file and slips the card back in his pocket. He turns to me, putting his hands on my shoulders and whispering in my ear, “I’m so sorry. Know that I had no choice and disagree with the Ten’s methods.” His touch sends shivers up and down my spine, attraction and repulsion converging.
I pull back, step away from him, and practically spit out my words. “You followed me? Taped my friends? How did you survive the explosion? Why won’t you answer my questions? Why have you been avoiding me?” I ask, furious at his involvement with the Ten. Furious at the Ten for sending someone to spy on me and for killing my friends.
daynight Page 21