by Leyton, Bisi
“I am like you, in a way,” Barry replied. “but I am not from any of the Pillars. At least, not the way you understand them.”
“You are from the Pillar?” Wisteria suggested. “The one no one knows about?”
“Not the First the Pillar—” Barry started.
This was getting into the realm of fantasy and fairytale, neither of which was going to help him get his brother back home. “Quit your babbling and answer my questions. What have you done with my brother?”
“I have done nothing to him, but I know where he has gone,” Barry replied.
Nular shook her head. “Please Barry. Don’t say anything. When Lluc gets back he will explain everything.”
“I’m keeping you here as a favor, but as I previously said, I am not getting involved in the war.”
“Humans and The Family are not at war,” Bach argued.
“Whatever you wish to believe, I will not get involved. Take from it what you will.”
“Barry please—” Nular implored.
“What are you talking about?” Bach demanded. “You will tell me.”
“I am not your Thayn, boy, so don’t try to order me around,” Barry cautioned him. “Or the next time, you will go through that floor.”
“Stop this, please? Just tell us what you need to tell us and we’ll be gone.” Wisteria’s soft voice silenced the room.
Bach was shocked to hear the voice he had fallen in love with years back. The girl he loved was still in there somewhere.
“Lluc’s gone to look for your son.” Barry looked over at her.
“My son? I’ve never had a child.” Wisteria shook her head.
“Why would Lluc think Wisteria has a son?” Bach added.
“He’s your son too,” Nular continued.
Bach scoffed. “What is this?”
“When you and Wisteria were at RZC—” Barry started.
“I was only eleven!” Her face contorted and she looked up at Bach like he was a monster. “What did you do, Bach?”
“What did I do? I do not know what he is talking about.” Bach moved toward her.
She scrambled to the door.
“Wisteria.” He stopped her from leaving by forcing the door shut. “How can you believe this?”
“You both need to calm down. The child was a lab experiment!” Barry shouted. “RZC harvested your DNA to create the children.”
“How many children?” Wisteria asked, her hands shaking.
“Don’t know, but Lluc learned that only the boy survived and went to bring him back here,” Barry revealed.
Bach held her close to him, as this news had made him forget that he needed to keep distance between them.
“Why would they do that?” She searched Bach’s eyes as if he had the answers.
He gave her a blank stare, because he had none to offer her. “I promise I will find out, once you are returned to Smythe.”
She shook her head rapidly, her long braids hitting his chest. “I’m going with you. If I have a son out there somewhere, I want to know.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wisteria sat alone on the deck of the Nieves. It was the middle of the night. While it was almost too cold to be here, she was seasick and found being outside helped her to not feel so queasy.
They were sailing to a place called Franklin. According to the wahr-chart, this was where Lluc was. From what she could tell from the wahr-map, Franklin was somewhere in the United States. Although her U.S. geography was rubbish at best, it looked like it was somewhere in Oregon, or Washington State.
Bach wanted her to go back to the Isle of Smythe.
She’d decided she wasn’t going anywhere until she found her child. Somewhere, I’ve got a child? The possibility of that blew her mind. She’d never given birth, so he’d probably been from a surrogate or something, but the bottom line was that she could be a mother. What did she know about being mother? All she’d learned for hers was how to lie. What was she going to do with a six- or seven-year-old half-Famila child?
There were a ton of questions she wanted to ask Frieda, but she’d stayed on Valhalla, for the sake of her own baby. There hadn’t been enough time to learn anything more before they had set sail.
She wished Garfield was here, so she could talk to him.
Enric came up on deck and the already freezing air felt even colder. “Hello, Wisteria.” He hadn’t spoken to her about her decision to come to Franklin, but judging from his hostile demeanor, he knew.
Pulling the blanket over her, she focused on the sea ahead.
“You are travelling with us to Franklin,” he dictated. “Bach has decided we should keep you with us until we have secured Lluc,” Enric continued.
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I have not kept that promise to return you to Smythe. I do not enjoy breaking my promises. After all, I am not a human.”
“You broke your word when you came back to Smythe.”
“I still expect you to make it clear to Bach that there is no hope of reconciliation between you two.” He turned away.
She nodded and rubbed her arms under the blanket. “Do you ever think about Piper?”
Enric paused. “Who?”
“Your human girlfriend with the red hair, who lived with you in Hunter Tower. Remember her? The one who was covered in bruises all the time,” Wisteria reminded him.
“She is dead,” Enric stated bluntly.
“Yes, you killed her--I remember. I guess you got tired of beating on her.”
Enric frowned. “I would never beat a Terran, unless I had to.”
“So she deserved to be kicked around like an animal?”
“Is this why you have behaved so pig-headed? You are angry because I harmed that Thayn?” Enric laughed.
“You are sick and twisted.”
“And you are wrong. I do not beat Thayns, for one very simple reason: Your blood disgusts me. Attacking Piper would mean getting her blood everywhere.” Enric became tense thinking about it.
“So who was beating her—a ghost?”
“I do not know and I do not care. Bach said it was not him and the only other person in the den with us was Felip,” Enric replied. “He even convinced her to travel through a threshold with an obsidian crystal and it killed her.”
“You’re lying. You sent her to die. It’s too easy to blame Felip, because he’s not here.”
“Why would I lie to you, since I do not care what you think?” He continued walking toward the steps, leading down to the lower deck.
Wisteria remembered that Piper had been very unstable, but she didn’t deserve to die. “Do you miss her?”
“How can I miss her? She was only a Terran,” he answered unemotionally. “Just remember the agreement.”
After he was gone, she wrapped her blanket more tightly around her. Something about the conversation left her shivering.
“You will freeze to death if you stay out here much longer,” he said to her and placed a thick material over her.
Opening her eyes, she saw the speaker wasn’t Enric, but Bach.
Wisteria shook her head. “What do you want? We agreed I would stay away from you. I hoped that meant you’d stay away from me,” she snapped, needing to get him angry again. That was never hard, because he always seemed to thrive on his bad moods.
“I could not sleep.” He sat across from her, seemingly unaffected by her nasty demeanor.
“Well, take that up with your girlfriend.” She threw off the blanket he’d given to her. The extra covering was wonderfully snug, but she had to be mean to him. “And leave me alone.”
Bach clenched his hands together. “You might have a child with me. We should talk about that.”
“I’m tired.” She covered her head with her hands.
“Have you ever thought about us having children?” He placed the discarded blanket back over her.
Man, she felt so much warmer. It was as if the material was made of hot air and sunshine. “No,
never with you.” She’d never imaged starting a family at all, not with biters around. There was no real place in this world for children, her world or his.
“You were the only person I ever imagined having a family with.”
“We were kids—we’re kids now. Why would you ever think that?” She couldn’t believe that.
“I do not know, I just did.”
“It would be stupid.” She was scared to even consider it. After hearing what Jason Webb went through, because he was half human, Wisteria never entertained the notion of children with Bach.
Jason had been separated from his mother and imprisoned for the first ten years of his life, just for being mixed. After that, he was exiled to Earth.
Wisteria couldn’t imagine bringing a child into that. “I don’t imagine you being much of a father.”
“What will happen if we find him?” he continued.
“Easy--he’ll come back to Smythe with me. Your people have no place for mongrels. Isn’t that what Didan called your half-brother?” That was actually the truth.
“Jason was not my half-brother.” After two years, Bach still could not handle that reality.
“Yeah, because there was no way your mother would ever sink so low as to enter into a Mosroc with a Terran. She’d never dishonor her Pillar, or her children, like that. She was dignified!” She recited words Bach had once said.
“I did not mean those words then and you know I do not think that now.”
“Whatever.”
“You are determined to hate me? You treated me like garbage.”
“Go to bed.”
“Why? There is nothing you are saying now that we have not talked about a thousand times. And a thousand times you said this was not a problem. What changed?”
“Bach, leave me alone.”
“I gave up my life for you. I almost died. I walked away from my home and my family, because of these same problems, and that was not enough. What do you want? Tell me what I have to do to fix this?” He growled.
“Be happy for me and Steven. I trust he’ll be a good father to your child.” Crap, too far Wisteria. She knew she’d crossed a line. “What I mean is—”
“I know exactly what you meant.” His emerald eyes darkened and he rose to his feet. “That will never happen.” He stormed away.
*****
Six days later, Wisteria climbed up to the deck when Radala told her they were approaching Franklin. After her run-in with Bach, she’d decided to remain in her cabin as much as possible. It kept her from having to keep fighting him, but it did little to help her sea sickness. While she was astounded they’d made the journey in such a short time, she was equally glad it was almost over.
The boat sailed in the direction of a mountain range and into a lagoon, surrounded by gigantic mountains.
She couldn’t help but think the place looked like a postcard. The mountains were picture perfect with their colossal beauty.
They moved toward a harbor, past several older boats. The boats were rusty, with broken sails and smashed windows. It didn’t look like anyone had been there in years.
Bach and Radala stood at the front of the boat, next to the orb that controlled the vessel.
Wisteria couldn’t help but to feel that they looked good together. This was who Bach should be with. She drove away the shaky feeling of this startling fact and turned to Enric. “Are you sure this is the place?”
“This was the location you picked on the wahr-chart; I should be asking you that question,” Enric remarked sarcastically.
“Come on, the human is doing her best,” Radala joked. “The way you keep scaring her, no wonder she hides away from us all the time.”
“Radala, stop acting like I’m your pet,” Wisteria responded.
She glared at Wisteria and burst out laughing. “How am I supposed treat you? I do not call you Terran--what more do want from me?”
“You girls need to keep your emotions under control,” Enric jeered.
“What?” Radala strode over to Enric, grabbing his neck. “Say that again qwaynide and you will be eating your tongue.” She lifted him a couple inches off the ground.
Wisteria chuckled at the sight of someone putting Enric in his place, but the real worry was about what she was going to find on Franklin.
“What is this?” Bach called to Enric and Radala. “You are fighting like children when we have to find Lluc?”
A loud humming noise sounded behind them. She looked back as three speed boats zoomed up.
Painted on the side of one was a faded RZC logo.
RZC Bio Technologies was the company that had experimented on Wisteria and Bach, seven years ago. She didn’t know much about what they’d actually done to her, as one of the results of her time with them was memory loss. Bach’s memories, on the other hand, had been taken by his brother.
An additional result of her time at RZC was Wisteria and Bach had become emotionally bonded at a very young age. However, seeing the RZC boat on the island where her child might be made Wisteria realize RZC had done much more to her than just that. If she believed what Silas Cheung, her old mathematics teacher had told her, her father, Deji Kuti, was an employee, or actually a senior executive in RZC. That meant her own father condoned or even resided over what had happened to her back then.
“Fantastic,” Radala remarked. “These humans are much cleaner than those at Valhalla.”
“You are in a restricted area,” a man’s voice called over a megaphone. “Please leave immediately, or we will come aboard.”
“What, they think they can command us?” Enric seethed. “That Terran will rue the day he ever—”
“When you kill him, what will happen to Lluc?” Wisteria asked.
“So we should pretend we are stupid and do what they want?” Radala considered. “It seemed to work at Valhalla.”
“Just keep calm and listen to what the humans say,” Bach suggested.
Though he kept a straight face, Wisteria could see that he was still mad about the ‘Steven raising his child’ statement.
Two men sailed over to the Nieves. The remaining men and women waited on the other boats, guns trained on the group.
By the time the two visitors were aboard, Enric had sealed the entrance to the lower deck.
“How did you find this place?” the first RZC guy, who was Asian, inquired as he inspected the boat. He didn’t look much older than Bach.
“We aren’t on any trade routes or anything and the mountains make us a hard place to stumble upon.” The second person, who looked no older than the first, pointed to the majestic snow-topped peaks around them. “You’d have to know precisely where this place is.”
“We—” Wisteria tried to answer.
“You are Deji Kuti’s daughter?” The Asian guy bent over to get a closer look at her. “Wisteria? You don’t remember me? It’s Christopher Zhao!” He grinned at her.
“Christopher?” She took a closer look. Yes, he was one of her old friends from Lagos. “Christopher Zhao?” she repeated with disbelief. Not sure if he was real, or a figment of her imagination, she reached out to touch him.
In one swoop, he picked her up and spun her around. “I don’t believe this!”
“We have work to do,” Bach interjected.
“You’ve changed!” She laughed as she checked him out.
The once smooth-skinned, pasty kid she’d known was now a rugged-looking bearded man, with his long dark hair pulled into a ponytail. Instead of his gray trousers and burgundy blazer he now wore mismatched military uniforms.
“So have you.” He seemed to look her over.
She hugged her old friend again. “Why are you here?”
“We’re doing great. I can’t believe this. It’s a miracle,” he gushed.
“How did you end up out here?” She had to know.
“RZC transferred my mum here, months before Nero broke out.” Christopher signaled to the people on the surrounding boats to lower their weapons. “It
’s Wisteria Kuti,” he called out.
“Are you sure?” The man standing behind Christopher walked over to her. “She looks bigger?”
She recognized the man as Lucky Sanusi, another one of the RZC kids she’d known when she was in Lagos. “That’s because I was thirteen when you last saw me.”
“How did you find us?” Lucky asked.
“My mother told me.” Wisteria thought that would be a reasonable explanation. She didn’t see the point in telling them the truth about why she was here, or where she came from. “Who else is here?”
“From RZC? Thousands--it’s like they knew this was going to happen,” Christopher said.
“Astonishing, is it not?” Bach remarked dryly.
Christopher grimaced faintly at the remark. “Anyway, your father is going to be ecstatic to see you.” Christopher rubbed her shoulders with affection. “He’s going to be amazed to see you’ve survived. How were you able to?”
“My father is here?” she exclaimed.
“Yes.” Lucky nodded excitedly.
Wisteria wasn’t sure she believed it. She’d given up hope of ever seeing him again.
“We are not here to see your father,” Enric interjected. “We have other matters to attend to.”
Christopher glared at Enric. “Who are these people? Are they friends of yours?”
“She does not speak for us,” Enric asserted.
“Because if they brought you here against your will, we’ll sink their boat,” Christopher continued in a deadly-sounding whisper. “You’re safe now.”
Even though he whispered, Enric seemed to still hear him.
She could practically feel Enric’s temper boiling, as Christopher asked her permission to let them in.
“I’ll explain everything when I see my dad,” she replied. “But in the meantime, they can come in.” She still had to keep Enric happy. Her mother’s life was still in the balance.
*****
Wisteria brightened up immediately after she saw her old friends.
Bach was not at ease. The last time he had arrived in a human settlement was when he came to Smythe. The people there imprisoned and poisoned him. The time before that, at the Dungeon in London, they had wanted to eat him and had almost killed Wisteria.