I’ll see you tomorrow as long as your father isn’t a serial killer or rapist, I want to answer. I remember a sex education class from grade seven or eight in which our phys. ed. teacher, Mrs. Pringle, who looked like she’d be more at home on a Paris runway than standing in workout clothes in front of thirty teenagers, told us over and over again that four out of five times, victims of rape know their attacker.
I glance sideways at Mr. Jakande. He’s actually quite good-looking for being somebody’s father. He’s got a really strong jaw and chin, and his deep-brown skin is smooth and shiny.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m taking you home last,” he begins, not taking his eyes off the road.
“Yeah, kind of,” I say, twisting the corner of my black T-shirt round and round nervously.
“You could’ve tried to read my mind, though, right?” he says, his voice gentle.
My blood turns to ice. “What? That’s crazy,” I say with what I hope is a convincing laugh, though I have a feeling it’s anything but. How does he know I can read his thoughts? Does that mean he also understands what his daughters are?
“Everything I’m about to tell you stays between us. Not even my girls know. If they did, it would put them in danger.” He pauses, pressing his full lips together. “Jasmine’s not coming home tonight. I’ll let your mother know. I’m going to say she’s staying with us … with my family to work on a school project with Amara. But that’s not the truth.”
“What? What have you done with her?” I ask, my voice rising. I glance out the window, wondering if he’s secured the locks so that I can’t jump out and escape.
“It’s not like that, Jade. She’s safe.” This time I do reach out to try to read his mind. He’s unguarded, trusting me with his thoughts, and I need to know whether he’s telling me the truth about Jasmine. He is. She’s safe.
“You’re working with the CCT?” I ask. “You’re a terrorist?”
He shakes his head. “I certainly don’t consider myself as such. But I guess it depends on whom you ask. Mayor Smith would say we are, but going by the amount of daily suffering she causes, both her action and her inaction look like terrorism as well. In fact, I would consider Smith, if not a complete sociopath, then definitely a terrorist. She fits the definition quite nicely.” His voice is filled with deep sadness. Memories of his parents dominate his thoughts, of their kindness and pride in him. “Many years ago, when my parents were children, my country, South Africa, was in turmoil. A very few people held all the wealth and freedom. Others were virtual slaves, made to work in the mines and in the houses of the wealthy. One man, whom we called Madiba, along with others, formed the African National Congress. They sought to bring the country together and to allow everyone to live in harmony as equals. The corrupt government at that time declared Madiba to be an extremely dangerous terrorist and imprisoned him for decades. However, the world soon saw the truth of what the South African government was doing and declared Madiba to be a freedom fighter and a symbol of the global fight against injustice.”
“But what about the subway bombings? The kidnappings? What the CCT does hardly seems like freedom fighting to me. I mean, who or what are all of you fighting for anyway?”
We’re close to my apartment building. I have serious doubts that Mom’s going to be all right with some strange man dropping me off, let alone informing her that Jasmine is staying at his house, especially in light of my abduction when I was younger. Mr. Jakande obviously hasn’t experienced my mother’s protectiveness, if he thinks she’s going to be the least bit okay with what he’s proposing.
“We haven’t harmed a single person, Jade. The CCT hasn’t abducted anyone or bombed anything. We don’t even know Mr. Moore. None of us had ever set eyes on him until his arrest for the latest subway bombing. Smith saying he is a member of the CCT is a complete and utter fabrication. In fact, nearly one hundred percent of what Smith puts out there about the CCT is nothing but lies and propaganda. We’re actually Climate-Change Transitioners. We want to advocate for a socially just transition into this phase of human existence. But our manifesto never made it into the media. And that’s directly due to Smith. What she’s doing stirs up support for her policies and draws attention away from the very disturbing things her government is doing behind the scenes. Not us.”
“What about the terrorism in London? New York? Are you telling me there are no climate-change terrorists? That the bombings, the fires, all of that isn’t real?”
Mr. Jakande stares at the road ahead for a few moments. “Many years ago, the truth began to be elaborately dismantled by certain governments. There was some resistance amongst a number of global leaders and the general populace….” He trails off. “However, as climate change worsened and resources became more and more precious, those leaders resisting were either deposed or they succumbed to the corrupt. Knowledge is power, Jasmine. Tell the people a lie for long enough, and it becomes truth. That’s the ultimate power: the ability to manufacture truth. The bombings and destruction may be real. The perpetrators are fabricated.”
We pull up and park on the street just in front of my apartment building. Instinctively, I scan the bushes out front.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I say, leaning back to grab my pole from the back seat.
“My parents died a slow and terrible death this year,” Mr. Jakande says quietly. “They were deprived of water for days and died of dehydration. Perhaps it’s a godsend that delirium would’ve set in toward the end.” Tears shine in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Is there really that little water left in South Africa?”
He nods. “The Orange River is barely a trickle, and what is left of it is so polluted, the water would kill. However …” He pauses and looks at me, his face grave. “My parents did not die in South Africa.”
“But Vivienne and Amara said …”
“I know. That’s what I told them happened. It’s also what I told my wife. Still devastating news, but not as gruesome as the truth. My parents died here only a few short months ago. They were on one of the refugee boats that came down the St. Lawrence. I made sure they had passage to leave South Africa before we left for Toronto by plane. They were following us and nearly made it here. Smaller ships came and got the refugees from the larger ships that were turned away off the Atlantic coast. These smaller boats brought people inland. Near Kingston. However, once they landed, some of the boats were detected, and the army and police were dispatched and ordered to round up all the refugees they could find. Then they took them to the camps.”
A feeling of dread invades me. “Camps? What camps?”
“Prisoner camps filled with climate-change refugees. Smith set some of them up. The federal government established others. She’s not only been given the authority to run Toronto as a city state, but also the control over much of the wider area in this part of Ontario. There are dozens of internment camps around the province, including two north of Toronto. We’re taking Jasmine to see one near Muskoka tonight. This government is savvy. The smaller the camp, the less likely it is to be noticed. So they keep the prisoner numbers around a hundred. That’s not to say the conditions are humane. They’re anything but. However, Smith’s doing a great job making the public believe there’s a terrorist around every corner and that any immigration will just add to the threat. Pretty soon she won’t have to worry if the camps are discovered, because people will support any violation of human rights if they’re fearful enough. Even torture … or murder.”
I take a deep breath. I’m overwhelmed by this information. “So why Jasmine? Why not take Amara or Vivienne? Since they’re Seers as well, why not take them to the camps?” I don’t ask why not me, even though that’s what I really want to know. Jasmine and I share the same DNA, and yet something obviously makes her stand out as being so much more spec
ial than me. Something that makes her elegido.
“Jasmine is being used by the mayor to bolster her little propaganda machine. And the safety of Beaconsfield and all the Seers is being actively threatened to make her go along with the mayor’s every demand. Smith could do serious damage just by revealing the truth about the school to the public. My greatest fear is that she’d turn all of you in modern-day science experiments. The thing is, Jasmine’s in a position to destroy Smith, if she can get her hands on the right information. I don’t think our mayor is fully aware of that. In fact, I don’t think Smith is aware of everything that’s going on in terms of her night crew.”
“How do you know so much about us?” I ask. “About the Seers? My mom has no idea what Jasmine and I are. And the thing is, tonight when you found us there were two bodies lying on the ground. Bodies without heads. But you didn’t even blink an eye. You just gave baby wipes to Fiona to clean herself up in the car like she had nothing more than a runny nose. She had brains, blood, and bone in her hair.”
It’s Mr. Jakande’s turn to glance uneasily out the window. “We can’t stay out here too long. There’s no guarantee that we aren’t being tracked or followed by either Smith’s cronies or our demonic friends. I know about the Seers because in my former life, before my political position in the South African government, I was a professor at Durban’s KwaZulu-Natal University and one of the world’s top Aramaic experts. As such, I was given the task of trying to piece together more fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls from what archaeologists called Cave Four. I discovered the scroll that speaks clearly about the Daughters of Light, the identical twin descendants of Lilith. It says they will be instrumental in the Final Battle of the Apocalypse.”
“The Seers,” I say.
“Yes. You and Jasmine. My daughters. And about two dozen other women, young and old, scattered around our crumbling world. It’s my understanding that as many as possible were brought both here and to London as soon as it became clear the countries least impacted by climate change were going to close their borders to those displaced by environmental destruction.”
“So you know about the demons too? And the Place-in-Between?”
He nods. “The scrolls mention both quite extensively. I believe it is where the idea of limbo originated many centuries ago. But what is most worrying …” He trails off, looks out the windshield window into the darkness, and clears his throat uneasily. “We really need to get inside,” he says, grabbing hold of the door handle.
“Wait,” I say. “You can’t leave me hanging like that. “What is it? What’s worrying?”
Mr. Jakande turns to me. “According to the signs mentioned in the scrolls, it would seem that the Apocalypse may be near.”
“What exactly is this Apocalypse?”
“It’s the end of time and this world as we know it. The Final Battle.” A heavy quiet spreads through the car like a blanket. “We need to go and speak to your mother,” Mr. Jakande says, opening his door. I watch, speechless, trying to digest what he’s just told me, as he slides out of the car, his long legs stretching into the night.
JASMINE
The hood is removed from my head, and my eyelids automatically slam shut to shield my eyes from the light. Yet as soon as the arms holding me loosen, I instinctively begin to swing. I don’t have my pole, and a moment too late, I remember my legs are tied together. Arms pinwheeling, I open my eyes just in time to see a cracked and worn cement floor hurtling toward my face.
At the last second — and I mean literally the last second, when my nose is millimetres away from brushing the grime off the concrete and smashing open like a vandalized jack-o’-lantern — I’m caught around the waist and hoisted back to my feet.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” the man who just saved my face says as he bends down to untie my legs. “You need to trust us.” His voice is gentle and kind, and as I stare down at his shiny scalp, I reach into his thoughts and realize he’s sincere. He’s also one of the people who just abducted me from downtown Toronto, which means he’s not really in any position to tell me what I need to do, in my opinion.
“Screw you,” I spit back at him.
I stretch my legs and look around. The place is dimly lit by a few overhead lights and candles. About a dozen people are seated, most of them in a loose circle on stools and chairs, watching me. A few are at tables that have been turned into workstations. The crowd is diverse in terms of age and race. One boy looks like he might be only a year or two older than me, no more than eighteen at the most, and then there’s an elderly woman I’d guess is nearly seventy. We seem to be in some sort of abandoned industrial building, maybe an old warehouse, judging by the high ceilings and sparse interior. There are a couple of futons in a far corner of the cavernous room. Clearly a few people are calling this dusty place home.
“I swear we’re not here to hurt you,” he says.
“Trust you?” I laugh sarcastically. “You grab me, blindfold me, and then throw me, like I’m nothing more than a sack of potatoes, in some kind of vehicle for more than an hour, and I’m supposed to trust you?”
A door opens at the opposite side of the room, and three people walk in toward us. As soon as he steps from the shadows to where I can focus on his face, my heart jumps.
One of them is Raphael.
What’s he doing here?
He runs a hand through his black hair and catches my eye before quickly looking away.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice shaking.
The bald man finishes freeing my legs, stands up, and begins to wrap the rope used to restrain me neatly around his left wrist. He’s wearing a tight black tank top, his biceps bulging like overblown birthday balloons every time he moves. Tattoos snake their way up and down both his arms. Even if this guy who looks like the poster boy for anabolic steroids were holding me, I still should’ve been able to break free easily. It makes no sense.
“What happened to everyone else? To Cassandra, Jennifer, and Vivienne? And my mother and sister are going to totally freak out. I really don’t think my mom should have to deal with the abduction of another one of her children.” An uncomfortable lump forms in my throat at the thought of Mom and how worried she’ll be. I should never have tried to pull off this stupid plan tonight.
“We’re sorry for the way this had to be done, Jasmine,” the woman with Raphael says, stepping forward. She’s tall and lean, with cheekbones that reach for the sky and chocolate skin that glows in the soft light. Her voice is like a purr. “The other Seers are fine. We arranged for Frederick to pick them up on Yonge Street and drive them home. You did a good job gaining his trust, as he did yours. Your sister is home and safe, and your mother thinks you’re safe.”
I look over at the other guy who’s with this woman and Raphael. He’s taller than Raphael and slightly thinner, with a lighter complexion and honey-coloured hair that hangs over one eye. He smiles at me. God knows that’s a lot more than Raphael’s doing. I get the sense that Raphael is purposely trying to avoid looking at me, which makes me feel like my heart is being crushed between two very strong hands. It’s like I’m invisible.
“What are you talking about? You’re saying Smith’s driver was in on this? That he helped you abduct me?” I ask. I’m starting to feel a bit like a zoo animal on display with everyone staring at me. “Can I at least sit down?”
The bald man pulls a wooden chair over to me. “Sorry,” he says with an apologetic smile. “My name is Harry, by the way.”
I make a point of moving the chair about half a foot from where he placed it. At this point I have no desire to play nice. “Thanks,” I mutter, sitting down. The ring in my pocket digs uncomfortably into my upper hip, and for a moment it almost seems to heat up and pulsate, like a tiny creature. Either I’m really losing it or this is no ordinary ring. Which might explain Mr. Jawad’s reluctance to let it
go.
Thing is, I don’t think Mr. Jawad is an ordinary human being either. When I touched him, it reminded me of kissing Raphael. As soon as my lips touched Raphael’s, I felt like my life was ending. Visions of incredible suffering, of war and hell, invaded every cell, every atom of my being. The difference is that with Raphael, it felt like I was seeing things he’d actually witnessed. With Mr. Jawad, the screaming people, the animals being torn limb from limb and boiled alive, seemed to be inside him. Like they were a part of him.
The woman places a chair across from me and sits down. She crosses one long leg over the other, raises a finger to her full lips, and regards me closely.
“I’m Noni,” she finally says. “And I apologize for the way you were brought here, but many of our members are uncomfortable with you knowing how to get here, knowing our location … despite Raphael’s constant and very passionate protests that you are absolutely trustworthy. He’s quite a fan. Perhaps in time you’ll gain the rabid admiration of the rest of us.” She pauses, a smile dancing across her lips.
“Am I here for your amusement?” I snap. My face burns. If Raphael is such a huge fan of mine, why does he seem to be pretending not to know me? “So what makes you so special that you needed to keep me blindfolded on the way here? From what I can see, all of you are just squatting in an abandoned warehouse. I couldn’t care less where this dump is.”
A few of the people on the computers leave whatever they were intently working on and turn in their chairs to watch.
Noni tilts her head and silently studies me in a way that makes me feel almost naked, like a bug under a microscope. She’s not sure if she can trust me.
“I’m sorry. For saying what I just did. You can trust me.”
Noni nods, though I know she’s not entirely convinced. “The reason we’re so secretive is that this is the CCT headquarters … or the closest thing we’ve got to headquarters.” She waves a hand toward everyone sitting on the chairs. “You’ve met Harry, and these are our other members, whom you’ll meet in due time. And, of course, you know Raphael….”
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