I should have known. I was blind to the fact that my best friend -my boyfriend! He was the mole! Some small part of me knew there was no way I could know, but my mind kept replaying every time he acted strange. Every time he would give me a weird look. I should have noticed it then!
Then the good memories came. The first time we met. His chubby face asking me if I wanted to play with him and his friends. The first time we really connected. Our first kiss, how awkward it had been having our lips touch only knowing what to do from movies. Our first weeks as a couple -each of us trying to figure out how we were suppose to act now that we were “together”.
Was it all an act? I thought.
Wet beads of heartbreak fell down my face landing on the floor without a noise.
“Alby!” the same old man who announced my crimes called out.
I snapped my head in his direction sudden anger filling my emotions.
“What I did, I did for my planet. I have no need to make excuses for doing what is right.” I retorted at him.
“Ah, but it says here that you aren’t even from our little brother planet, Praeditos Terrae,” another Council member interjected, showing everyone a hologram image of me and my information.
I ignored the pictures and studied the woman who offered it to the rest of the council. She was old with stretched pale skin that sagged off her face in a way that resembled putty. Even from the distance of her position to mine, I could see her surprisingly blue eyes. Cold calculating eyes that watched me while the other council members examined my profile. She was going to be someone to be trifled with.
“According to this database,” she continued, “You were born on Infantem Terra.”
The infant planet, the planet that Prima and Praeditos have been fighting over since its discovery --over four thousand years ago.
“And your dad…” the old woman smiled with a fake sympathetic demeanor, “He was born on Prima!”
I ground my teeth, this woman was revealing secrets from my past -things I would like to keep hidden.
“That doesn’t change my loyalties,” I turned my eyes to my boyfriend, “I am no traitor.”
Orin’s eyes were cold and his expression was blank.
The old woman started up again, “Yet it does beg the question, if your father was a Prima resident, how did you end up on Praeditos?”
I didn’t bother replying, she had already figured it out on her own.
“From various scraps of information-”
Stolen from Praeditos Terrae no doubt, I added mentally.
“-we have unearthed the true story.”
She glanced at her fellow Councillor members as though to see if they caught the joke.
When no one laughed, she awkwardly continued.
“We discovered that your father was once a loyal Prima citizen, but at the age of fourteen he went rogue.”
Just before his soul had to be implanted into a Figura Trebeas and you monsters turned him evil. I thought.
“He started to get his friends to follow along with his ideas -dangerous ideas. The leaders of his community had no choice but to punish him.” the woman continued, her voice getting strangely soft.
Pity, I observed, she pities me, just like the guards. They think I am some senseless child that does everything she is told.
“They cast him out of his city after he endangered half the community to the DD- 41,” the council gasped in perfect harmony.
I knew the creature she was talking about. I had heard stories of an outbreak of the Dæmonium a Diabolo back in the year 9780. How the creature destroyed millions of Prima residents until it was finally destroyed. However, I didn’t know my dad was a part of it.
“For the following five years afterward, he travelled,” the old woman reported clearly fueled from her fellow councillors’ shocked expressions, “All around Prima Terra not staying in one place for more than a month. He managed to avoid the Transformation by avoiding every law enforcer and using his…”
She glanced at me, “...Unique skills.”
I suppressed a grin, “You mean his Praeditos Terrae gift? The ones that we have and with all your smarts you still have yet to replicate? Those gifts?”
Every eye turned to me. Every face glaring. It was like someone had suddenly held a blowtorch in my face, turned it on, then proceed to breath rapidly down my neck.
I smirked at their reactions.
For several seconds, time seemed to freeze.
Then the council member on the far right side coughed violently and the tension cleared.
The man who announced my ‘crimes’ muttered, “Annora, would you care to continue?”
His booming voice, even at a whisper, carried easily to my location.
Annora jerked away from her frozen position, “Yes well...”
She searched violently through her hologram tablet. Fingers flying across (and through) the device.
Well… I succeed in flustering her. I grinned, Point me!
“Yes, after the five years were up, your father disappeared.” She read from her tablet.
Annora brought up a hologram of a file labeled Jeffery Alby.
“Eight years later, he was discovered on Infantem Terra.” She pause.
“That’s when your mother was brought into the picture,” Annora frowned, “Poor thing. She knew nothing of our universe until your father came along.”
“She was a curious and foolish scientist. One that actually believed in the existence of other planets. He made her create for him a fake Infantem Terra ID so he could live comfortable there. Then he tricked her into marriage. Made her give up her job and everything.” Annora continued.
I glared at her head, wishing I could shoot laser from my eyes or something.
“A year to their marriage, you were born in an Infantem Terra hospital,” Annora looked up staring down at me from behind her long nose. “When you were born, something curious happened.”
My stomach dropped, my mouth somehow became a desert, and my eyes grew as she came close to spilling my secret.
“We didn’t understand it. Just a flunk in the systems, our experts had said. We, the council, came to a decision that whatever it was must be stopped. It took us five years to track it down.” Annora paused, “to track you down.”
NO! I thought frantically, this can’t be. They know the truth. They know everything!
My heart thudded unnaturally fast in my ears.
One of the other council members made a motion.
The jangling of keys against my cage made me jump. I realized the council member had motioned to the Figura Trebea who had brought me, to take me away.
They are going to discuss my sentence.
The Figura Trebea placed the blindfold around my eyes once again.
A series of twists and turns later, I was back in my cell. The uncovered light bulb welcoming me with its burning light. I closed my eyes.
Focus, how can you gain the advantage?
My power-- of course. My casting power could work for this situation.
I closed my eyes. The lightbulb above was so bright it burned through my eyelids. I pictured the room, envisioned the ten council members looking down at me with disgust.
Instantly, I was there. In the same spot as I had been at before. Staring up at the council members each of their mouths moving soundlessly. As though I turned on a TV with the mute on.
Back in the cell, I moved my arm moved toward my wrist watch and adjusted the strength of my power so I could hear their words. I grimace, my head ached from the effort. Controlling my body in this state was extremely strenuous.
I focused back on the room.
“--needs be contained. She is too dangerous.” the voice of a council member started
Another voice spoke up, “Not contained, she needs to die.”
“To die?” I the first old man, the one who announced my crimes said, “I think we can use her. To end the war for our side. She could be our secret weapon.”
Annora scoffed, “I doubt she would ever change sides. Besides, I don’t think anyone would ever be able to train her.”
“I will.” It was Orin.
Annora somehow managed to stare Orin down while being on the same level as him. “Let me remind you, Odee. You are still are still a Ossa.”
Ossa was the word used by the Prima to label those who have not been transformed into Figura Trebea.
Orin’s cold blue eyes barely even flinched, “And let me remind you, Croft, what power I have here. Who my father is.”
Wait, what? His father… Orin’s dad is dead! At least that’s what I had been told…
Annora stopped. A fearful look crossed her face.
In fact all of the Council had been struck with fear. The room had froze completely.
Only Orin moved, he sat back on his chair a smug smile on his tan face. “When I was on Praeditos I got to know many different people. I learned how to gain trust, about the psychology of a Praeditos brain. Regaining Alby’s shouldn’t be a problem.”
Annora spoke up, “R-Regaining?”
Orin just laughed, “Oh yes! DIdn’t anyone tell you? I was her boyfriend. Played her good. Her and her mentor. How do you think the information about her family came into our hands, huh?”
“No,” I said aloud. My brain jolted back into my cell. “No, no, no, no, NO!”
“It can’t be!” I repeated, staring hard at the wall.
“Orin betrayed me.”
I pressed my hands into my eye sockets so hard I was seeing spots of rainbow.
Keep it together.
I couldn’t.
The one person I thought I could trust was a traitor.
I curled into a ball and cried.
No comments:
Post a Comment