As I scanned the crowd for Sam, I heard branches rustling behind me. Staring into the darkness, I held my light out toward the noise and realized I was sitting on a high embankment between a thicket of bushes. Behind me lay a pathway that had been carved into the ground from years of activity. I looked back down at the water thinking how this might have been a great fishing spot for someone. Above all the other noises that were floating up the embankment, Robert’s voice rang through like a deep bell.
“Let the party begin!”
I immediately focused on the entrance. They did not enter through the Minoan village as I had expected, but had come from the other side of the cove. I recognized Dave standing beside Troy, while Robert was out front greeting everyone. Greg and Shane walked alongside each other a short distance behind Troy as if they were in formation. Excitement bubbled up inside my stomach and shot through me like a rocket, leaving me dizzy for a second. My pulse raced as I grew desperate to get down as fast as I could. That excitement abruptly died out when I heard a bunch of girls scream as they ran toward the group – toward Troy.
“One at a time!” Greg hollered with amusement.
Horrified, my world came crashing down around me as a brunette flung herself around Troy. He wasn’t protesting at all! In fact, he held her around her waist and pulled her closer to him. I really thought I was going to hurl. I felt like such an idiot, a stupid, stupid idiot, for thinking for one second that a freak like me ever stood a chance of being with him. Idolized by the groups of girls that flocked toward him, I began to shiver from anger and disappointment. Kronan blew a loud horn over the crowd as fireworks erupted in the sky, their loud booms and flashes of bright light setting the night on fire. I gazed into the brewing storm. Flickers of light danced in the distance and thunder roared faintly as the storm neared. I stood slowly and carefully, steadying myself on the edge. The wind tore at my clothes and the loud bangs from the fireworks deafened my ears. My mood had worsened immensely. I started to wonder what the students were saying about me behind my back. They were obviously calling me a freak, I knew that much. But, how much do they think they know about me? They are wrong – all of them. Then my mind went back to Troy. I tried to swallow my anxiety, to push it deep down inside me, suffocating it with a numbness that wouldn’t come. Waves smacked against boulders beneath me; the storm was nearing. I was both scared and in awe. All hope I ever had for an exciting future died as Troy held that girl in his arms. Tears burned down my cheeks. I dared the storm to come for me. Storms were one of my favorite things. More fireworks lighted up the sky, their golden sprinkle fading into the dark amethyst of the night sky. I stood still and looked down thinking that if I jumped, I would never have to feel the cut of rejection, the noose of my destiny bounding me to a fate I never wanted. I begged for all of it to go away. Still, the numbness stayed at bay. The wounds of who I was becoming evident in recent events. I didn’t want to think about the Zulus, my bloodline, or my so-called destiny any longer, but that didn’t hurt half as much as the fact that I had had such high hopes for myself and Troy. Even though nothing had happened between us yet, I had felt that something magical was about to happen. It was all in my head then?
I pleaded with the storm to consume me. A tear made its way down my cheek, then another and another. My chest tightened as I struggled to stop myself from bawling my eyes out. Overwhelmed by the despair of what I had become, I felt two giant, iron hands clamp themselves around my torso, squeezing the life out of me. My breath left me suddenly and quickly. Feeling extremely lightheaded, panic sank in fast and hard. I had to get to solid ground, but I wasn’t going to walk through the dark path behind me. That would have been stupid, even more stupid than climbing up there in the first place. My chest tightened even more. I fought the attack that was developing inside me. A panic attack. Must be. I’ve had them before. I gasped for another breath. My back arched as a heavy weight crushed into my ribs, squeez ing the little air that remained in my lungs. As I desperately sucked in air, a sharp pain shot through my chest with such intensity, I had almost fallen from the edge. I tried to steady myself on the rocks, to focus on placing my feet carefully on the edges as I rushed down the steep stairs. Focusing on my steady feet would take my mind away from the pain erupting through my chest. But my knees buckled. When I tried to turn so I could sit down, I felt myself fall instead. My hands reached wildly for something to grab onto, but I kept falling straight into the darkness. As the wisps of breath left me, I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. Think of me, was my final thought before my face smashed against something harder and colder than a wall of ice. Helplessly, my body snapped back and crashed into the misery of the waters below. The darkness took me. I welcomed it. I had now successfully leaped over the edge of sanity.
Part Two
Closer to the edge.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Blindness
I kept falling for what seemed like an eternity down into an endless pit of heaving shadows. Bodies clung to a wall of other bodies as they climbed and clawed over each other to breach the entrance that could never be found. Searing heat ignited my body as I tumbled down into the darkness; falling with little fear of where I found myself. The heat wasn’t coming from any fire, but from billions of screams and moans from those desperately clinging onto the edge of eternal anguish. This must be a nightmare, I thought to myself numbly. It’s where I belong for taking my own life. But when I thought about it, I couldn’t remember if I really had killed myself. I closed my eyes and was gone again – taken asunder.
Screams of terror woke me once more, I was still falling. Feeling I had to do something to get myself out of the sad situation I was in, I turned my thoughts on. I didn’t mean to take my own life, I didn’t jump did I? Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice echoing through my mind, and sing through my heart, “HANG ON!”
But the hopelessness sank in, it was too late for me. I had died and found myself in a world similar to Hades from Greek mythology. Little by little, I slipped back into nothingness, too tired to fight anymore; glad I had escaped the agony of a life I never wanted.
A huge, white bang shook me from the inside out. I found myself staring into the ghastly yellow eyes of a monster concealed behind a white mask, its glare burning right through me. I screamed, but no sound escaped from my lips.
A sinister smile spread across the face of this thing. “You’ve lost. Give yourself to me. You can end this,” it said without moving lips.
“No!” I yelled back.
All of a sudden, my skin felt like it was engulfed in fire. I watched in horror as my skin peeled back, exposing red flesh and white tendons, steel veins pumping out the strange color of my blood. His voice came to me once more… “HOLD ON!”
Sadly, my body seemed weaker than my mind. I trembled violently, struggling to draw air into my lungs, struggling to keep the pain at bay. Help me, someone… anyone. Get me out of here or kill me, I begged to no avail.
“Just let go and it won’t hurt anymore.” The masked thing chuckled.
“No!” I yelled once more.
The white mask spun around me as my body doubled over from pain that I could no longer bear.
“HANG ON!”
So I did. The words that escaped my mind were in a language I didn’t understand – the knowledge of an ancient soul. Strange words and prayers streamed out from somewhere deep inside me; deep and true. I fell back into the darkness, eluding the monsters’ efforts of forcing me into his world.
“HANG ON!”
A loud beep pulled me out of the hollow darkness, the annoyingly incessant beeping cutting at my ears. I moaned as a soft warm pressure on my arm kept tugging at me. I heard a muffled yet familiar voice, but the pain in my head was far too much to take. Nausea hit me hard and I jerked forward, the flame deep inside me shooting through my stomach, making its escape with an acid scorch through my mouth. I felt my body being tossed aside, felt the sharp sour burn force its way through my nose and out of my mouth. I choked
on what felt like a liquid flame, gasping as the pain caused more nausea to push out the fire through every hole in my face. I desperately swallowed back cool air, before my throat caught ablaze and the last of the fire spilled out onto the sterile floor below my bed.
“Get the doctor!” I heard a woman yell.
Another violent jerk and more acid escaped. I gulped down as much air as I could. As soon as I had choked up every last bit of poison inside me, I collapsed back into a deep sleep. The feeling of falling never came and the voice was gone. The numbness finally came.
“HANG ON!”
The soft and constant patter of rain against the window woke me the second time. My eyes cracked open. At first, I struggled to see as the dark figure came toward me. I squinted against the faint light in the background.
“Ava?” It was Sam’s voice, soft and uncertain.
“Hey,” I managed to croak as her ginger locks woozed in and out of focus.
Trying to force myself to smile, exhaustion won over and I slipped back into a sleep. As I drifted, I heard a soft melody in the background. I recognized the tune and felt myself smile somewhere inside. I was not alone.
My body was way too tired to wake. I forced myself to wake up – my mind uneasy, raring to get going, but it needed my body in order to do that. The battle of mind over body was not an easy one.
“HANG ON!”
My eyes teared as I tried to focus on Sam who was half-slumped, half-sitting on a sofa near the small infirmary window. She was in a deep sleep; her mouth hung open, long legs flung over the arm of the gray sofa. Maya lay sweetly next to her. Another loud beep pierced the silence, followed by a loud thump as Sam fell to the ground. Maya jumped up and they both stared at me, not registering that I was almost fully conscious.
“Your snoring woke me,” I groused, lips so dry the skin peeled back. I tried to swallow against the dryness.
“I don’t snore,” Maya protested with a grin.
“Sam,” I said, with a poor attempt at giggling as I choked on sour spit.
A bitter and bloody taste clung to the inside of my throat, mouth and intestines. Every inch of me felt like it had consumed the fire. I wanted to tell them I was sorry, but exhaustion won and the words never came. I fell back into nothingness, where it was at least bearable.
Days later, I was still in the infirmary with my left arm in a cast. It was still raining, the rhythm of soft drops falling to the ground, against the cold windows and onto the skylights above my bed, continuous and soothing. It created a soft, sedative beat as it fell on the roof. Poseidon had finally moved on. I had missed the first rains in over five years. Everyone was grateful for the rain, but it meant different things to different people. For me, it meant that we could grow our own crops again, it meant life. The thought of fresh fruit and veggies left my mouth watering. The one big flaw with genetically grown food was that it tasted as fake as it was. There was talk of flooding on the news. Reporters stated that the dam wall was only just managing to restrain the few days’ worth of solid rain. I was relieved that I had stayed under for so long. I felt I couldn’t face anyone after my embarrassing fall or my poor attempt at suicide, whichever one it was. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I always gave up easily, but suicide was too much of an easy way out, even for a lazy girl like me. Why wouldn’t I want to live? I wondered. Sure, I didn’t get the boy of my dreams, but things were going to be different for me. I had a destiny. This was probably the only time I had felt excited about it, because it meant that I would have more than what the Council provided for us. I was angry and hated myself a little for thinking everything was so broken and so far off from my ideal that I couldn’t fix it. Well, maybe it didn’t need to be fixed – I just needed to move forward. The fact that I didn’t have the will inside me to live made me even more furious with myself. It was very unlike me as I hated the idea of suicide. I had made that very clear the day one of our professors had hanged herself, telling Sam that it was cowardly as she had taken the easy way out. I couldn’t see what a person’s spirit could possibly gain from it. I believed it was a huge roadblock that obstructed the path to wherever our spirits went after our bodies died. My mother often wrote about her spirit, but our society here on Poseidon didn’t believe in anything but science. Science was not a spirit, science was not the unexplainable. Mom saw it as a place where the spirit was free of thought and need. Why did I jump? I pondered. I paged through my mom’s journals for inspiration. Another recurring subject she wrote about was the Great Spirit or God. She believed that when things came tumbling down, there was always hope as long as you had faith in the creator. I did not know about this God she admired. None of us knew anything about religion. We knew of religion, but we were taught that religion divided people and that it brought about war. Everything I had learned about Gods was either from mythology or Arriana who spoke about it sometimes. She talked about the Gods that give and then take, the Gods that punish and ruin lives. I wondered if that applied to me and my kind. The God my mother wrote about was different. He was kind, compassionate and reliable. He was more like a parent. The thought was strange to me, but it was there. Sam argued that my mom was delusional in her last days as she waited for the Change to finally consume her. Perhaps Sam was scared of the unknown – the Council had made sure of that.
Feeling sorry for me, the head nurse allowed Sam to bring me a tray of my all-time favorite treats, pancakes and white chocolate milk. This time, Sam had used the replicator. We were celebrating my release from the infirmary. I was busy packing all my belongings when she entered. While I rolled up my silicone computer screen and wrapped up all the attachments, I wondered if all my technology would work in the Minoan village. There was no way I could leave my computer behind! All my downloads, all the poems I had ever written… my life, my music, was stored in there.
“Thanks, friend,” I said to Sam as she placed the tray of treats on the metal table.
“Cool,” she replied glumly. We didn’t look at each other for a while. I think she had hoped my situation justified me a longer stay. But more than ever, the Council wanted to rid the school of distractions and unwarranted behavior.
Sam I had never been apart for more than a day, except for the two days after I was attacked, of course. I could finally talk about the attacks without breaking down. The place I had visited during my concussion had been way worse; my head was a scary place indeed. I could not imagine what it would be like not having my best friend, who was more like a sister, around me. We felt lost without each other. We had always been a team, but the time had come for our team of two to be separated. Once I was released, I would be going to stay with Arriana. The reason why this was happening was not that clear to me. Although we had discussed it shortly after I had been attacked, I hadn’t thought it would actually happen. Sam and I stood hugging for a long time. We stared out the window at the rain and the gray haze falling over the rolling hills. I felt lonely already.
“Sam? Ava?” Anaya was standing at the door, compassion glinting in her unbelievable turquoise eyes. She entered slowly. “We would not separate you without good reason,” she said. It was just like her to get straight to the point. “You know that.” She nodded for us to agree.
“Then why are you doing this to us?” Sam’s voice took on a harsh tone.
“It is in Ava’s best interest. The best healing she can receive is from Arriana and myself.” But I knew it wasn’t that because our technology was far beyond medical treatments. It was time for my training to commence.
Anaya moved closer to us, her long, brown hair cascading all the way down to her waist. She wore jeans once more. Her Minoan robe tied around her tiny waist in a thick knot.
“At her age, she should not be experiencing these changes so soon.” She said to Sam.
Changes? I asked myself. The day before, I had begun to hear noises that were clearly coming from a long way off. I could hear the ocean’s roar all the way from the infirmary. In addition, I was suddenly a
ble to sense people’s moods and catch glimpses of things in the distance, almost as if I was looking through a pair of binoculars. I could also make out any odor in the entire infirmary. The smell of disinfectants in the storeroom stung my nose and I could smell the sweet aroma of my nurse’s perfume as soon as she came through the front door; on the other side of the building. The smell that was most prevalent, however, was the scent of the rain. It constantly emitted a crisp, cold, clean odor. I thought it was just a side effect from the head injury and that the medication had somehow played a role in the improvement of my senses. But, deep down inside I knew better. My changes had started the day after the first attack. I was just hiding from them. The nurse unhooked my tubeless drip, which had provided an endless supply of “super juice” as Sam had called it. It made you feel better in no time. If you broke an arm, it regenerated the bone and strengthened the muscles within a few hours. However, it had taken a lot longer to heal my body in this instance. It must have been my blood. A vision of my foreign colored blood flashed before me. I considered that they might be wrong. I didn’t want to be the girl from the prophecy, but the changes inside my head were the changes Anaya was talking about.
The Broken Destiny Page 18