Did she know about Eve? The idea was too unimaginable to consider. So he let it go.
"What's wrong?" Martin asked.
Ty picked up the box and rose, willing his hands to be still. "I'm a little clumsy today. Which exam rooms are active?"
"Four, six and eight," Martin answered after consulting a second screen. "Do you want me to call someone to help you?"
Ty left without answering. Maya would be in one of those rooms, Ty was sure. At least he would get one more chance to tell her to hide her gift. It was her only chance to end the suffering.
Exam room four held an older woman whose gift was manipulating objects with her mind. Ty knew, because he was with the team that had collected her from a town in the Badlands. She explained all about her power to him excitedly on the way to the facility. She even demonstrated by tying a bow from a piece of string and making it fly across the room without touching it. Her eyes glistened in merriment then.
That was weeks ago.
Today she was strapped to a chair, her shaved head covered with sensors that would record all brain activity during her test. Her eyes looked dead.
Two helpers in white bodysuits were placing on the last few sensors as Ty entered. The woman tried to move away from him as he approached. He ignored her fear and tied the bracelet to her wrist.
"During your test today, try to see if this bracelet in any way influences your ability to use your gift," Ty directed. "Do you understand?"
The woman nodded and Ty left the room. In the adjacent room one of the helpers pushed a button. Inside the room, the bald woman screamed and tried to raise her arms to shield her face. But she was tied down, immobilized, reacting to some terrible setting only she could see, some stuff of her own nightmares his mother had devised to bring out her gift.
Ty stared at the floor beneath his feet, counting the tiny imperfections in the smooth white tiles. Years later, it seemed, the woman finally fell silent. Ty followed the helpers into the room and stayed by the door as they revived her.
"Ask your questions now, if you have any," one of the helpers said.
Ty pulled his tablet from his pocket, hit record and pointed the camera at the woman.
"Did the bracelet work in any way?" he asked.
The woman nodded. She was pale and looked like she would faint again at any moment.
"How?"
"I couldn't…I couldn't reach my power," she managed.
Ty turned off the camera.
He knelt beside her and began fiddling with the knot on the bracelet. "I'm sorry you couldn't defend yourself because you had this on."
The woman had already lost consciousness, didn't hear his apology.
In exam room six, the testing had already begun on a young boy no older than six. Ty turned on his heels and left.
His hands shook as he let himself into exam room eight. The helpers had already strapped Maya to a chair. She wore only a tight sleeveless shirt that left most of her chest bare. Her golden skin seemed to glow in the sterile white room. Helpers were attaching sensors across her chest and down her left arm. She sat there motionless, but her eyes were glowing coals shooting fire.
Ty approached, not daring to look her in the eyes. She jerked her arm away when he tried to attach the bracelet next to another she already wore.
"I have to tie this to your hand," Ty said.
"No," Maya said.
One of the helpers grabbed her wrist and held it still for Ty to attach the bracelet. "These gems will stop your power from working."
"I don't want to stop my power!" she yelled. "I want to learn how to use it."
Ty told the helper to leave the room, then leaned in closer on the pretext of fixing the bracelet more securely. "Nothing you will see in the test is real. It's all like a VR game. Don't use your gift at all and this will be over soon."
"Then I can go home?" Maya whispered.
"Don't argue and do as I say, Maya. Please."
Ty rushed from the room, unable to lie to her.
She gasped and flailed during her test, looked to be running away from something, but she didn't scream. She also stayed conscious.
"Did the bracelet do anything?" he asked once it was all over.
She shook her head, still out of breath. "It did block my gift, but then I was able to find a way through."
"Why?" Ty asked, panic tightening his chest.
"I had no choice. I had to make the tree grow."
Ty tore the bracelet from her wrist and rushed from the room. Ronia was alone in the control room, soundlessly sobbing into her hands.
"Tell me where to get the pills," Ty asked, ceasing all pretense. Maya had doomed herself by using her gift today. Eve could still be saved.
"The pills don't work. They're useless," Ronia's words appeared over her head.
"My mother said they were in the final trials," Ty insisted.
Ronia pointed at the wall screen in the next room, where exam rooms four, six and eight now stood empty. "I slipped two pills to Maya. She could use her power despite it."
Then the strangeness of the scene hit him. "Are you crying over Maya? Why?"
"Because she's my niece."
Martin burst into the room, knocking Ty aside. "Don't tell him that. Do you want us to get killed?"
Martin glared at Ty like he had just mortally wounded him. "She doesn't know what she's saying. Please don't repeat this to your mother."
Ty had no intention of doing so. "I won't if you give me the pills."
He knew how the trail worked. Some of the pills had to be placebos. Maybe that's what Ronia had given Maya. Ty had to cling to that hope. The pills could be Eve's last chance to keep her gift hidden.
"We can't," Martin protested.
Behind him Ronia reached into her pocket and pulled out a clear bag full of tiny glass vials filled with purple pills. Ty rushed over and snatched it from her hand before Martin had time to react.
"Don't worry, I won't reveal your secret," Ty whispered and ran from the room.
~
Ty rushed straight back to his sister's room as soon as he got the pills. She wasn't there.
He sat by the window to wait for her. A thin white blanket was folded neatly atop one of the cushions on the sofa, Eve's tablet and VR console resting side by side on the coffee table. Eve liked her rooms neat. She tidied after herself obsessively.
One corner of the living room was devoted to her plants. Three rows of large clay pots filled with natural soil, obtained from uninhabited regions in the north where a few trees and shrubs still grew naturally, sprouted plants that Ty couldn't name. She'd told him what they were all called, of course, more than once. Whether the 6-foot high green plant with heart shaped leaves the size of platters was a monstera or something else, he might never get to ask her again.
A sensor on one of the clay pots started flashing and beeping about an hour after he came in. It sounded like a bomb was about to explode; likely it meant the plant had to be watered.
Eve should be back by now.
She would have told someone to care for her plants while she was away. Eve was always obsessing about that too, whenever they went on holiday. Ty tried to silence the beeping device, but could not. He ignored the beeping, and stayed waiting for her until dinner time.
His mother was eating dinner alone, two servants hovering beside her. Ty sat down in his seat to her right.
"I glanced over your findings with the bracelet," his mother said, wiping her mouth on a cloth napkin and replacing in on her lap. "I must admit I expected a more thorough report. You never even tested the boy in six."
"He was already under when I got there. I didn't want to disturb the exam."
His mother took another bite of her venison and chewed slowly, never breaking eye contact. Ty looked away first.
"I want you to redo the tests tomorrow. More thoroughly this time, Ty," his mother said.
"Where's Eve?" Ty asked.
"I don't know. She's probably still cr
oss with me for not returning her bracelet yet," his mother said in between bites. "Which is your fault, for not testing it properly."
Ty glared at her. "Why don't you ask Martin about it, he has a whole encyclopedia on gems."
His mother's smiling eyes gleamed with a playful light. "I would prefer some hands on data on the bracelet. From someone I can trust completely."
She threw her head back and laughed a throaty laugh. Whether at the joke on Martin's hands, or the known betrayal on Ty's part he couldn't be sure. All he knew was that he should get away from her or risk losing control. The freezing cold of his power was pulsing in his forehead.
Ty rose and replaced his chair under the table. "I'm sorry if I disappointed you. I'll do much better next time."
"You better make sure of that," she said still chuckling. "If there is one quality I lack it's forgiveness."
Lack of forgiveness was only the tip of the iceberg of qualities Violetta Remarque lacked.
~
Maya stumbled along, supported by the two men who had drugged her the day before. The doors of the corridor back to her cell swirled all around, leaving streaks of blue across her vision. Every few steps the corridor transformed into the sun scorched plain she found herself in during the exam. Her mouth was still as dry as the sand.
"It was just VR," she muttered to herself, and the desert would fade. Sand still crunched between her teeth.
The memories of her test grew more vivid once they lay her on the bed in her cell and the door hissed shut.
Alone in the dark room, it didn't matter whether she closed her eyes or kept them open, all she saw was the sun-scorched plain. A pack of lionesses drew nearer, approaching in a half circle. They growled, their fangs glistening in the bright sunshine, their cold eyes promising death. Large cats with sharp claws and sharper teeth were the only animal that scared Maya. Cats didn't need people like other animals did. To cats, people were prey.
Maya had nearly screamed when the first lioness lunged towards her in the test. She screamed now into her dark cell as she relived the moment.
"VR, not real. Just a game," she whispered to herself, but the sand crunched under her feet, the growls too near. The bracelet Ty had given her grew tighter and tighter against her wrist. She couldn't call a tree to rise from the sands, couldn't create a safe place for herself.
Giles' leather bracelet alongside it still worked to harness her power and contain it there. The two bracelets worked one against the other, one making her power stronger, the other taking it away. Together they formed a balance, canceled each other out.
Maya collected all her power in the translucent bubble inside her chest, made it all turn into the searing white heat. Once she was sure it contained no more of it, she sent it all into the ground, imagining the ancient oak tree she'd sit in so often back home. The tree burst from the ground, sending sand in all directions. It was the only safe place she could think of, likely because it was the first hiding place she had ever had as a child.
The lioness' jaws snapped shut, missing Maya's ankle by less than an inch as she climbed up.
Then the horrible desert flickered to black and the white light in the exam room blinded her.
None of it was real. Just like Ty said. He hadn't lied.
She wouldn't be learning anything here, she realized. She was being studied.
Maya relieved the terror of her exam many more times before she finally passed into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After dinner Ty returned to Eve's rooms, which were still dark and empty. The beeping hadn't stopped yet. He walked over to the pot and grabbed the alarm. He let the freezing cold building in his forehead form a current down a vein-like channel running from the spot where the cold started and down his right arm. He fed the flow of the power all the fear and hatred he felt for his mother's ruthlessness.
Ty shut his eyes, closed his right hand into a fist over the buzzing alarm and released the cold current into it. When he opened his eyes again the alarm was gone, obliterated like it never existed. His power, his control of it was still perfect, drilled into him by years of secret practice with Salvio. It still flowed through the channel Salvio taught him to imagine running down his right arm, and still did exactly what he wanted it to, despite the fact that Ty had not used his power for almost eight years. Not since the day he accidentally used it to make Salvio disappear.
Perhaps Eve would be able to call the things he made disappear with her power. They'd never tried it, and likely never would.
Once you learn how to control it fully, you must never use it, Salvio's harsh instructions echoed in Ty's mind. Ty had disagreed, and used it behind Salvio's back every chance he got until Salvio made sure Ty stopped using it. He had Ty practice controlling his power while holding Salvio, who angered him to the breaking point. Ty lost control, and Salvio was gone. Disappeared like he never existed.
Ty lay on Eve's sofa staring at the bright lights in the thousands of windows on the tall buildings all around them. How lucky all those people were, that they hadn't been born into House Remarque.
~
Ty woke to the buzzing of two more of the alarms on Eve's plants. Her bed was empty, unslept in. Ty ran his fingers through his hair to straighten them out and went in search of his parents. He wanted answers. Their eleven year old daughter wouldn't go off on her own, without one of them knowing where she was.
The dining room was empty, save for the serving maid, who waited by the steaming pot of coffee and rushed to set a plate for Ty as soon as he entered.
He waved her away and ran to his father's study. It was empty too. He finally located the butler, who was eating his breakfast of eggs and warm bread rolls in the kitchen. He told him both his parents had left before dawn.
There was one other person in the house who might know where Eve was. Julian. His older brother who would never grow up.
Ty took a few deep, calming breaths before knocking on the doors to Julian's rooms. A kind faced woman with short, curly grey hair opened the door. Therese, their old nanny who had stayed on to watch over Julian.
"Ty? How nice to see you!" she exclaimed and pulled him into a hug. "Julian will be so happy to see you."
"No, I won't!" Julian shrieked from the sofa and ran to hide behind the long velvet drapes that obscured the windows.
If the fear and anger in his brother's voice hadn't been so painful, Ty might even have laughed at the silly hiding place.
Therese released Ty. "Now really, Julian, is this any way to behave? Come out and say hello to your brother."
"No, I won't!"
Ty stayed by the door, considering turning around and leaving.
Therese approached the curtains. "Julian, you are being rude. Come out from there."
Julian held the curtains together tightly to prevent her from drawing them open. "I will after he leaves!"
"I'm sorry I haven't been to visit for such a long time," Ty said.
"For two whole months!" Julian yelled. "I counted!"
Had it been that long?
Ty walked over to the curtains and looked in from the side. "I'm here now."
Julian wrapped himself in the cloth. "I don't want to see you. Just like you don't want to see me."
"I do want to see you. It's why I'm here."
Therese finally succeeded in prying the curtains from Julian. Bereft of his hiding place, he turned around and pouted out the window, his back to Ty. "First you stop coming. Then Eve stops coming and I'm all alone here, all day. Forgotten. Because no one loves me."
Julian's shoulders shook as he began to weep. They were of the same height, Ty and Julian, but otherwise looked nothing alike. His brother, like Eve, had their father's fair hair and brown eyes. His mother's too, before she changed her appearance to match Ty's.
Ty walked over and put his arm around Julian's shoulders, dreading the answer to his next question. "You know I love you. I have so many more duties now, though that's no excuse. I'll m
ake time to visit more often from now on. What do you mean Eve hasn't been visiting?"
Julian stopped sobbing long enough to hold out his hand, two fingers extended. "She hasn't come for two days now. Two. I counted."
Two days?
Ty led him over to the table by the window, his legs rubbery.
"She's away, visiting a friend," Ty lied, hoping his brother noticed none of his terror.
Julian wiped his tears off on his sleeve. "Oh, good then. She should have told me."
"She should have," Ty repeated, his voice shaking.
Therese had brought over two cups of hot cocoa and some cookies and Julian dived right in. Then he pulled a pack of cards from the drawer in the table. "Want to play a game of Black Peter, Ty?"
It was a children's game from the time before the Ring, before the Badlands. Boring and childish, but his brother Julian couldn't handle any VR games whatsoever. No electronics either for that matter. A few years ago he went into a full seizure when Ty had showed him a video on his phone.
"Therese will play with you," Ty said, standing. "I should go to work."
Julian's bottom lip started shaking. "You can't play Black Peter with only two people."
Ty sat back down and took the deck from his hands. "Alright, only a few games."
He dropped half the deck when he tried to shuffle the cards.
"Clumsy you," Julian whined. "Give them here."
Ty obliged, and watched Julian try to shuffle. He bent more than one card before he finally started dealing.
There was a knock on the door and a moment later, Therese let in a bleary eyed Eve. Ty rushed over and picked her up before he even decided to. She stared at him blankly. "I was in the hospital. They told me I fell and hit my head."
Hit her head? Why didn't Mom and Dad say so?
Ty ignored the questions, too relieved to have her back safe, to worry. She was still herself. He hugged her tighter and then set her down. Julian was hiding behind the curtain again. Eve coaxed him out much faster than Ty did.
Eve got all excited about playing Black Peter, so Ty reshuffled the cards and dealt them out again. For the next hour, they were children again and Julian was childish because he was twelve years old, not because their mother had made sure he'd never use his power by making him stay a child forever.
The Grower's Gift (Progeny of Time #1) Page 17