My timing is so perfect she has just taken the buns out of the oven. If she’s alarmed to see me at this time of the morning in the kitchen she doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s been this way for three days now. She does wrap up two hot, sweet smelling steaming buns and a thermos of green tea and sends me on my way. She likes working alone and although she enjoys teaching me to cook, I do believe these early hours are hers and hers alone. It’s time to give her space.
The library data base is on computer in the main study. I’ve always marvelled at how I’m surrounded by such old things, the building, books, manuscripts, the Curator. And yet we have every technological convenience at our fingertips. I remember asking Axel to let me try some brainwave entrainment exercises. He very patiently told me to “stop being lazy and meditate the old fashioned way”. He still brewed his tea in a pot of water on the stove. I guess not everyone is a tech fan. I am. I love how quickly everything happens, which is why my search is well under way.
Goldy brown eyes. Funny how it comes up with zero matches. I narrow my next search for eye colour to gold, brown, yellow. I really was expecting another zero. Then there it was, one match, curious. The title has me a little confused. ‘Gene splicing: common traits amongst test subjects’. Highly classified, red clearance required.’ I know where these books are. They’re on the upper most level of the library behind an electronically locked door.
I broke in there once in my ‘can I break into electronic doors’ phase. Axel had taught me once a long time ago to pick locks. That way I’d never be locked out in the rain when everyone was away and be sick in bed for days with a little flu. I did suggest a key but got the “we don’t need keys when we can pick a lock” speech. So I became curious. What else could I break into and I did. I MacGyvered the key pad with some dust off our not so clean floors (yep that’s one of my jobs, sweeping) and found the key sequence that opened the door. OK, so it wasn’t that easy and Richard Dean Anderson looked way more knowledgeable than me when he picked a safe with a graphite pencil and some shavings. I had the help of a little technology, jack the keypad and walla in I went. I guess no one believed we needed any more security than that and I was chuffed that I actually managed to do it.
Til this day no-one knew that I had done it, at least they weren’t admitting it to me. You never can tell with these people. It’s less talking, more doing around here. So it was easy to break in. I found the book exactly where the data base said it would be. I sat down cross legged on the floor, opened the book and began to read. My knowledge of genetics wasn’t the greatest. I understood the basics, knew enough to figure some things out with a bit of reading, but a lot of what I was looking at was out of my league.
Until that is I came across a diagram of my dream looking back at me. Not my dream exactly, that creature, looking straight at me from the pages of the book. With the same eyes, the same expression, I can even see that smile. Lots of thoughts running through my head foremost being have I seen this book before, is that why I dreamt it.
Before I could register that nagging thought tugging at some place in my mind, I was startled by Melody rushing towards me, she actually snatched the book from my lap while yelling, actually yelling, nothing but kind words all these years and now yelling. “Well you did break into the highly classified section” says the angel on my right shoulder. I start to apologise, start to explain, even try to tell her about my dream and how I came to be here but she’s not interested. No that’s not it, she’s not disinterested, she’s scared. Shoving me out the door I realise it’s still much too early for her to be up.
Ahhh, that’s when it hits me. They’ve known about my break ins all along. That’s why she’s here. Why know though? Why acknowledge it now. That’s also when I notice a flash of something above the door, silly me, thinking they have lax surveillance. By now the Curator was coming up the stairs. I knew that look, he was not happy. “Come with me” is all he said.
Chapter 4
Wolf
The train was his shield for now. The Esperanzi couldn’t track him while he was on it, they couldn’t keep up. By now they would have figured out his ruse and eventually would have found the spray can that would lead them to the train station. He’d been on the phone trying to call the Magic Man. All he got was his answer phone “want some magic you called the right man, I will ring you back when I can”. Eye rolls. “Magic Man please call me back. I’m on the way”. How many times should he leave that message? He would just have to turn up and hope, dear God hope, that he’s ready to do this.
It’s unusual for Wolf having this time, knowing that for now he was safe. He thinks back to that day, he’s been thinking of it more and more these last few months. It broke his heart leaving his baby on the Library steps. It broke his heart knowing she would never know who he was, believing she had been abandoned. It broke his heart knowing that she would never know her real name, the one given to her by her parents when she was born.
He waited by the Library. Watching, making sure they took her in. He was terrified when he saw Axel walk away with her, he followed her not knowing what he would do, just following until for some reason that he still doesn’t understand – he saw Axel look down at his sweet baby girl and turn around running, running fast, back to the Library. They never came back out, he knew his baby girl was safe.
His wife couldn’t come to terms with what they had done. She refused to get out of bed, she refused to eat after a while. Stopped speaking, stopped recognising until one day she quietly went to sleep and never woke up, a broken heart was her unofficial cause of death. His life shattered, first his daughter, then his wife.
He hit the bottle, very hard. He didn’t want to remember, self-analyse, get better, get past it. He wanted to forget. He forgot so much, that he started to talk in his forgetfulness about his little girl with her golden eyes. Most people ignored him that crazy dude who sat at the bar and just got drunk every night, except for the guy in the funny suit. He watched and listened, if Wolf had his wits about him, he’d have noticed funny suit guy was there listening for three days in a row.
Eventually he approached Wolf and told him it was probably a good idea to be quiet now. A fight broke out. Wolf’s reflexes were drink laden, no contest for funny suit guy. He didn’t feel the prick of the syringe, didn’t know it was a chemical that knocked him out. All he remembered was waking up in what he later learnt was the Palace. No-one really spoke to him, they cleaned him, fed him, sobered him up. Then came the interrogation. Not the scary bamboo under the finger nails type. These people were much too civilised, just questions, relentless questions mainly about a baby born with golden coloured eyes, over and over and over again.
Mere confusion kept Wolf silent. He was still in somewhat of a liquor-sobering haze and was really just trying to understand what was happening, and that’s what he did when he was confused. He retreated within himself until he could figure out what was happening around him. That’s what saved his baby’s life, his refusal to speak.
By the time he understood what they were asking him, who they were asking him about, his dad protection mode kicked in. Til this day they didn’t know the truth, at least not through him, not to his knowledge. He lied. When he finally answered yes to the question, that he did have a daughter with golden eyes he told them she was dead. Died from an illness with her mother, they were hiding, protecting their daughter and never received the medical treatment they needed. Wolf was angry, distraught, terrified, in tears telling them this. It was easy. He didn’t have any alcohol in his system, the pain became new again with every image, every memory. The lie came easy, the emotion was all too real. This is probably why they believed him. They had to sedate him because after the tears and anger came the punching and the throwing furniture. It was very convincing.
He came to a few days later to the face of a smiling nurse checking his pulse, with he
r far too chirpy “lovely, you’re back with us”. He could only groan in response. He refused to get out of bed for a month and they just left him to it, left him alone with his grief. He didn’t have to lie about that. The all too chirpy nurse, Juliet if you can believe it, eventually coaxed him into a wheelchair and took him for a turn in the park every day. Slowly with the help of chirpy Juliet, who never had a bad day- didn’t believe in them, he managed to get out of bed on his own.
They fed him, clothed him, recruited him. After all, he knew about the children, his daughter was naturally that way so he became an operative for them. He preferred field work, he couldn’t stand staying at the Palace seeing all those kids with the golden eyes. It was the only thing they had in common with his daughter, it was one thing too much. So he left the Palace whenever he could, on whatever assignment he could find.
This wasn’t part of his assignment, running from the Esperanzi. He cut communication with the Palace over a month ago when the Esperanzi picked up his trail. Gordon, the old man as most people called him behind his back, wouldn’t be happy, actually the word livid comes to mind. He wouldn’t understand what was happening and that makes him angry.
It surprises Wolf that the Palace guards haven’t found him yet. He was sure the Palace implanted everyone with trackers, it was something that was never discussed only implied. They probably did it when he was unconscious after his little break down. The conversation would have been something like “let’s keep him, right, tag him”. He could actually hear Gordon saying that. So where were they? It didn’t matter anymore anyway. In two hours he’d be at Magic Man’s studio and he’d wipe it all, that was the deal, the money in his pocket for memory loss.
Chapter 5
Lily
The Curator just sat there and stared at me for hours. OK maybe not hours, but he made it feel that long. I was already blushing, I could feel beads of sweat running down my back. I tried as hard as I could to keep that neutral face Axel always had on. I was beginning to get annoyed. All I did was break into their precious don’t let anyone read these books area. Big deal. Except it was a big deal because the minute I saw the pictures of those gargantuan animal things, they were at the door and now I’m in the office, sitting opposite the Curator who is just staring at me.
“Why did you do it”?
“Do what” I said. I decided that I was going to play hard to get. Make him sweat.
Axel sat to one side of me, neutral faced, calm as ever. I had no idea if he was mad at me or not.
I use to think he was just laid back until I asked him one day. I told him his face was really difficult to read and I often wondered what was going on in that head of his. All he said was “people’s thoughts and feelings are their own private business, if they want to share them with you they will, until then there’s no point trying to figure it out. It’s a waste of worry. You want to worry about something, worry about getting your lessons in on time”.
And that was it. And he meant it. There was a lesson in there of course. There always was with Axel. Don’t worry about things you have no control over, very enlightened. One day I will come to value this as good advice. For now however I just wanted to scream at all of them and tell them to let me go.
My attention was jolted back to the Curator when he slammed his hand down on the table. God that made me jump. It made me a little scared too. Why was he so angry? “Why did you break into the classified section, you know you are not allowed in there”
“Because I could” I said. “I was bored, just had a theory and wondered if I could do it, so I did”
“Really” sneered the Curator. He actually sneered at me. “Did you just try to find books about gene splicing at five in the morning and figure I may as well just break in to the classified section and see if I can get it?”
Aha, surveillance not just in the classified section. They were watching the computers too. OK, so that’s the game we’re playing right now. I could work with this.
“So you’re watching my every move now. Tell me something is it just here in the library or does it extend to my home and private room as well”, I was so mad, seeing Axel just sitting there passively. How naïve was I to think that no one was watching me.
“Do you know about this”, I scream at Axel “do you know they watch my every move, our every move, are they watching our house too”. Axel looked at me blankly a stranger would have said, but I knew that look. That impassive, neutral blank look he gave everyone. “Really” I scream at him again. “You’re just going to sit there and say nothing”.
The Curators face was turning red now. I had forgotten about Melody sitting on my other side. She could be as quite as a mouse sometimes. She looked like she was looking for a wormhole in the back of the chair so she could silently travel to another dimension. Why was everyone so on edge?
“OK”. I finally say just to fill in the silence. The Curator had asked his question, he was now waiting for an answer. “You caught me. I broke into the scary section. I read a book about something I don’t understand. Actually reading isn’t quite the word I’d use, it was more like looking. What’s the big deal? Do what you need to do. Change locks, punish me, make me sweep the floor for a month” I was raving now, deliberately. I was starting to get very scared, why was I in trouble exactly.
“Enough” screamed the Curator. “You will answer my question and answer it now. Why did you break in? Why were you looking at that book”? Yep as angry as he was and as scared as I was I still didn’t want to give in so I couldn’t help myself.
“Extra credit on the assignment you set” I said quietly. “I wanted to prove you wrong about not being a very good student because actually I am, so I went looking for some material that was actually interesting considering the stuff you get me to do is so boring”.
Deafening silence, now I’d done it. He actually got up out of his chair, came around to my chair yanked me out of it by my arm and screamed in my face. “Tell me”.
Axel was out of his chair, standing, ready to do- I don’t know what he was ready to do. Melody just sat there meekly in the chair that was way too big for her very petite body. This situation was getting out of hand now, confusing, to say the least. All I wanted to do was run away and hide so of course the next logical thing to do was kick the Curator in the leg. Not my fault, Axel had taught me to do that. It was instinct by now. My plan was to run to the door, get out of the library, run into the woods and keep running until everybody came back to their senses. It was just a book.
I had kicked the Curator so hard that he had no choice but to let me go as his leg collapsed out from under him. I didn’t need an invitation. As soon as he let go I ran. Except I wasn’t running, not exactly, my legs were kind of kicking but when I looked up to see what the problem was there was Axel.
He knew what I was going to do the minute the Curator stood up. He was ready and waiting. He caught me before I even knew how far away the door was. And he had his eyes locked with mine, that calm, passive face that I had come to care for and trust just looked me in the eyes, kept looking at me in the eyes until I gave up trying to run. It was no use, I would never out run him. We stood there, Axel holding on to my arm, looking at each other neither wanting to look away first and softly, ever so softly and calmly he says
“Tell him what he wants to know Lily, its important”.
Just like that I was ready to spill everything. My stubbornness melted away with Axel and his aggravating gentle manner, I swear that man could get me to do anything just by being kind.
With the fight knocked out of me, Axel gently lowered me back down to the chair. This time I didn’t sit defiantly as I had before. I folded my legs under me and hugged my knees. Defeated I started telling them about my dreams, how I couldn’t sleep for the past three nights, how I couldn’t save the man in my dreams. I left the animal thing til last, my last stand of defian
ce. I knew that would be the centrepiece of my story, in my mind I sounded quite dramatic when I said “I went looking for any reference I could find because I wanted to know why that beast in my dreams had the same colour eyes as me”.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. ‘Thank you. Great story. Why didn’t you come to us before if you couldn’t sleep’, something other than dead silence. Instead the Curator had paled, Melody actually whimpered and was really digging around hard to find that worm hole. It wasn’t until I looked at Axel that my earlier feelings of fear increased tenfold. For a second, just a second his eyes went wide and his skin actually paled. If I’d been alone with him I would have believed I imagined it, but throw the other two into the equation and I knew that what I thought I saw was real. An emotional reaction out of Axel, what the hell was going on? It took quite a few seconds for all of them to recover.
The Curator just rushed out of the door, bruised leg and all. Melody took off after him having failed to dimension hop and Axel and I were left alone in the Curators office. He had gone to the window, staring outside. I waited, waited for him to say something but he had gone somewhere inside his head. He wasn’t going to talk any time soon.
He didn’t jerk exactly when I touched his arm. It was more an impulse, he just looked at me blankly, neutral face again.
“Axel tell me what’s happening, I’m confused. I don’t understand what I have done to anger everyone and you, your reaction to all this is scaring me” I said “please”.
He lifted his hand to my cheek and just laid it there. Now I’m terrified. The only time Axel and I ever have any type of physical contact is when we train, even when I was younger, no cuddles, no hugs, not even a handshake, so this new development was terrifying. The normally pretend dull look in his giant blue eyes disappeared only to be replaced with sadness. His face actually softened. Two expressions within minutes of each other. Terrified.