The Broken Destiny (23 page)

“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 able 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.

“Good
will
come of this.” Anaya said, picking up on Sam’s concern.

“How can it possibly be a good thing, Anaya?”

My annoyance startled her, upsetting her serene posture. I didn’t mean it, but being away from Sam was going to be harder than I thought it would be.

Anaya smiled. “All will be revealed.”

I had a terrible thought.
What if they want me for whatever it is I will become?

“I hope so,” a familiar, deep voice said from the doorway, pulling me back to the present.

“Kronan!” Excitement rippled through me.

He walked with such grace as he entered the infirmary, and the energy he emitted was calming. It was a great feeling to have a male figure taking such good care of me. He was acting like a dad and I felt myself blush at that thought. Kronan nodded to Anaya.

“Ava, my dear,” he said, bowing at Sam as he came closer.

“Kronan,” I said in reply and then continued to question my relocation.

“Why do you think you can treat me better when… when my people are the ones who created me? They must know my genetic makeup better than anyone. We are the same after all, aren’t we?” I sighed. I knew it wasn’t true.

“That would be true under normal circumstances,” he said plainly and sat down on the couch by the window. “I’m afraid your fall was the work of witchcraft.”

“Voodoo!” Sam and I spat out together as we exchanged a startled look.

Sam jumped up from the bed where she had taken a seat, came and stood beside me and wrapped her hands around my arm.

“Yes, dears,” Kronan said. “We found a doll near the site of your fall.”

I heard Sam swallow a hard ball of spit as he got up to hand me the doll. I pushed my back against the wall, gasping loudly. I tentatively took the doll from him, covering my mouth with one hand. This was not happening! Sam took a step closer to me, her eyes focusing on the doll and her face pale with shock. It had a head of hair that was exactly the same color as mine, gray eyes and narrow lips. My face had been replicated on to that doll, and wrapped around her body was a dress that had been made from the material of my missing pillow.
There had been someone in our room that day after all
, I noted to myself.

“I didn’t expect things to progress this fast or this violently.” Kronan said to himself, but loudly enough for us all to hear.

“None of us did,” Anaya added.

Kronan cleared his throat. “You are indeed special, Ava, as is Maya.”

“Maya?” Sam turned to me, searching my face for an indication that I knew something she didn’t. I shook my head.

“Ava, we needed an antidote to inject into your blood. You see, those darts were noxious; laced with a strain of poison we have never come across. This played an important factor in binding you to this doll, and maybe to a ceremony to recall the spirit. We think this is the reason behind your capture.” Kronan sat down on the couch beside the window again, his long legs almost touching his ears, deep in thought, a cavernous line set between his brows, a sure sign he was very troubled.

“The Council has stored each ‘specimen’s’ stem cells in a database which they use to refer to, and are kept locked in a secret vault.” Anaya continued. “Well, out of all the stem cells collected, only your sample has gone missing.”

“Missing? How?” Sam asked.

“It would appear that there was a break-in the night of the bonfire. Two guards were killed.”

Sam’s head shot up to meet Kronan’s gaze. “Why does nobody know about this?” She griped.

I felt the numbness slowly returning.

“Creating more panic among the students and the villagers would only complicate things,” Kronan said nonchalantly.

Then he looked at me for a while before standing up to look out the window, gazing into the distance a million miles away before he continued, “Ava, someone here among our people has given themselves over to the dark power of the Zulu witchdoctor.”

I scoffed at his use of the words “our people.”
So, it has begun. My destiny was unfolding before my very eyes, totally out of my control.

Kronan continued to stare out the window as he spoke. “The poison in the dart we analyzed is an ancient potion. It carries the blood of an ancient king. It is an old dark magic, one that has not been practiced for thousands of years.”

The words entered and exited my mind. This was too much. We had no idea what we were up against. The powers of the Minoans had just begun to return, so how could we protect ourselves from the darkness coming for us?

Anaya shook her head, clearly as upset about this as I was.

“We tested almost every human in the colony, but found no match. Your unique bloodline makes you unlike anyone else on this planet. The only thing we could do was to test every Minoan in hope that we would find some kind of common strain, one that would regenerate your cells by means of mutation. The poison attacked your white blood cells, the reason we had to do a blood transfusion and one we could only do once we had found a match.”

Anaya walked up to me and gently took the doll from my hand, handing it back to Kronan who was now eating the pancakes Sam had abandoned on the table, keeping my eyes locked to hers.

“But, I don’t understand, they need me right? Why would they want to kill me?”

Kronan sighed deeply. “In hope that we would call on him for a cure or give you over to him in order to save your life, but he never expected what we found.” Kronan’s smirk widened across his face.

Anaya continued. “Ava, we eventually found a match. The genetic material of one of the people we tested in our village matched each strain of yours just about perfectly, which means that you’re related to each other.”

“Related? How?” Sam butted in before I could say anything, her eyes anxiously meeting mine.

“You have a sister, Ava,” Anaya said with a sparkle in her eyes – a sparkle I hadn’t seen in weeks.

Her words echoed through my mind.

“A sister!” Sam yelled.

“How is this possible? No human on this planet has any relatives.” I asked, looking down at my hands, my fingers twirling the strings of my scarf nervously and excitedly. Then, a huge electrified smile appeared on my face. My chest wanted to tear open with excitement and love.

“It is true,” Anaya assured me.

“Maya is your sister, my dear,” Kronan said while he licked at the sweetness from his lips.

My smile widened and I looked over at Sam, who seemed happy for me.

“I’m glad to see you’re taking this well.” Kronan stood wiping his hands on his robe.

“Yes, of course I am.” I said, half in a daze, in shock that it was at all possible. It should not have been possible – second generation had one child, and one child brought on death.

“Liars.” Sam mumbled to herself quietly, but not quietly enough to be overheard. I could tell from the slump in her shoulders that she was no longer happy and I could understand why. It had always been just the two of us, Sam and Ava, but now it was Sam, Ava and Maya. Sam stomped out of the room, leaving the door wide open in her haste. Kronan and Anaya kept staring at me.

I moved forward. “You need to tell me everything! How is it that I have a sister if my mother passed away after giving birth to me?”
More lies
.

But before I could get my answer, pain like nothing I have ever felt before tore through my body. I screamed in agony as my bones felt like they were being ripped directly from the muscle. Skin shredded from bone, and all I kept thinking was that Sam felt like an outsider. The physical pain of whatever was happening inside me was bearable, and would pass – I hoped – but losing my best friend was not. With a motion of his hand, Kronan shut the door from across the room. Anaya and Kronan started a chant in the language of the ancients, something passed down to a select few and lucky for them, Anaya was a direct descendant. The pain coursing through my entire body left me paralyzed with fear.
What was happening to me?
Then, a white light blinded me and the pain left almost as quickly as it had come.

“It’s happening, we need to get her to Arraina!” The urgency in Kronan’s voice only added to my tension.

As my body relaxed and my breathing returned, I called for Sam.

“I’m right here, friend.” She said.

I must have been out of it for a few seconds as I was not aware she had returned.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too.”

Sam’s face came into view and then her fiery locks went out of focus, her blue eyes soft on mine. Closing my eyes, I submitted to the fatigue.

My belongings were neatly stacked by the door. They consisted of a row of bags and a blanket Sam had brought to the infirmary. I sat on my bed and stared at Sam, she hadn’t spoken much since Kronan and Anaya had left.

“I wrote you a letter last night.” She leaned over and handed it to me. I took in her scent; I wanted to remember her forever.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, but tears rapidly forced their way through. She had used the same strange paper as the last time. Drawings of flowers covered all the edges of the handmade envelope.

“You know, it’s not like I’m going to some far off place and leaving forever,” I said to her.

“I know,” she said, holding me tight.

“At least the other girls will return after I leave.”

“Please don’t. It isn’t your fault. You just make sure you get back soon, okay?”

I could see the uncertainty and sadness in her light blue eyes. They were like two hardened darts of poison, swallowing the pain. She undoubtedly would have been thinking about everything I had told her, about us being broken experiments, the ancient blood craft that tied me to an ancient spirit and why I suspected the Zulus of wanting me. She was wondering if I would survive my change, my training and eventually my stand-off with destiny. These were the few questions that ran through my mind with every breath I took. Sam and I were both terrified of what was to come. Everything was so uncertain.
You wanted change and you got it
, I told myself.