To Be Free (19 page)

I'm sorry I couldn't save you;
I'm sorry I was weak and I couldn't admit to the truths I know now,
that I've learned too late to love you wholly and not take for
granted what we shared. I'm sorry I was never the man you wanted me
to be. I'm sorry for being this flawed, the way any human is
supposed to be, and I'm sorry for not being able to forget you.

Even so, there's a difference
between he and I.

Quinn's still alive. His
beloved, the one he came to love and cherish... isn't.

I say Quinn's alive, but to be
honest I don't know – and that scares me.

I look out to the spring leaves
dancing in the trees, dripping with the rain pelting down from the
heavens. Some of the liquid's trailing down into my nightshirt,
running icy fingers down my back, but I still don't offer for us to
migrate inside. Somehow, that doesn't seem right.

“
What... do
you plan on doing now?” I question, gripping the guardrail to the
porch of the house I've made my home – well, that's not exactly
correct. My home is somewhere else, somewhere I can't
reach.

“
I want them
to pay for what they've done to him,” he hisses, his voice catching
and breaking and effectively making him sound as if he's a
prepubescent boy again – even though this man is twenty-five years
old, the same as I am now.

God, has it already been three
years?

“
Those
goddamn bastards think they can get away with spitting on his
memory.” The man at my left spits into the dirt, and the liquid's
quickly washed away and leaves him gripping the guardrail with
white knuckles, shaking with anger. The red armband on his wrist,
his only physical reminder that his lover did exist,
was
real, catches the
light filtering in behind us from the living room window, painting
things in a pool of orange light. “He didn't... he didn't deserve
that kind of life. That kind of
death
.”

I look to my friend, and my
heart honestly goes out to him. I've known him for little over a
year now, after he stumbled in through the next city over,
half-dead, and I offered to shelter him until he got back on his
feet. His constant company, however, has helped me feel less alone
in this enormous world, and he hasn't given any indication that he
plans on leaving anytime soon.

“
How did
he...?” I'm unable to finish my inquiry, and I look away again,
hoping I didn't tread that fine line. We've had a silent agreement
not to delve too deeply into the lives of the other, but over the
months I've told him about my journey with Quinn, and a little
about what Sarah's done to me. In turn, he's told me a lot about
what his life's been like, especially during his later years in
Africa – and a little about the man still on his heart.

He's never told me how he died,
though, or the circumstances leading up to it.

The blond takes a shaky breath,
and I actually hear him swallow thickly before he whispers his next
set of words, every syllable threatening to shatter him, unstable
and thick.

The best way to tell when
you've held something in for too long is when your voice can no
longer speak the words.

“
He killed
himself,” he whispers, and now he leans forward so that his elbows
rest on the guardrail, and he holds his head in his hands, gripping
his hair. I respectfully avert my gaze. “People like us... we were
lead to believe that it was our fault our family paid the price,
died so we could keep living, and it shattered him more than it did
me. He loved his family. He had so much blood on his hands, so many
sins that haunted him until that final breath. He was broken, plain
and simple, and on that day it was raining like this, you
know.

“
I got to
spend one night with him before I watched him jump.”

When I look at him, I find
those olive-toned eyes locked onto me, the defeated and defiant
expression hinting at the resolve of steel within him.

“
If your man
is alive, if Quinn makes it back to you and you meet him again,” he
starts roughly, the rawest pain etched onto his face, “do me a
favour and never take him for granted.”

I wake up feeling parched, as
if I ran a marathon through the Sahara. There's a pounding headache
at the back of my skull and right behind my eyes, and when I swing
myself up to my feet I sway slightly, my vision tilting and
staining red a moment. Quinn, ever the heavy sleeper, snores on
obliviously as he lies within the mess of blankets.

Shaking my head at the sight of
the grown man drooling onto his pillow, I stagger over to the
bathroom to the sink and turn on the tap, cupping water into my
palms and splashing my face with the icy liquid. Biting back a
curse, I lean against the ceramic counter with my hands holding my
weight and breathe carefully through my nose, my wet fringe
dripping into the sink.

I haven't had a vision filter
into my dreams in a while – over a month, actually – and I can't
say I've missed it. It's never pleasant, and it leaves a bad taste
at the back of my throat and makes my stomach roll
unpleasantly.

Who are
you?
I ask, looking up to the reflection
in the ornate mirror that spits my underfed reflection back at me.
Skin stretching too-tight over bones, prominent cheekbones and
piercing witch eyes that have made me see the darker sides of
mankind during my childhood, and messy dark brown hair that can't
be tamed.
Why did you infiltrate my
dreams, and what significance will you have?

Deciding that a bit of fresh
air will do me some good, I leave the bathroom as quietly as I can
and sneak down the hallway to the metal spiral staircase,
stiffening with every step and fearing that one wrong step will
wake the whole house. The home itself is ornate, clearly indicating
that these women are not as a loss for finances, and when I step
off the stairs I turn towards the large back doors, side skirting
the mahogany table and hesitating by the glass doors.

The glass is stained a charcoal
grey, giving very little indication as to what lies outside, but I
can vaguely make out the silhouettes of the trees moving with the
wind I can't feel. I feel my skin crawl with the urge to run
outside and leave everything in this home behind, shivering with
the violent desire assaulting me. I actually take a step forward,
muscles tensing for the sprint and in that moment all my fears for
the future that I can never really read come back to me.

Before I know what I'm doing
I've unlocked and opened the door, stumbling into the hot wind
pelting the world with late summer rain. My bare feet slip on the
wooden porch just before I vault down the three steps, ignoring
them entirely and heels digging into the grass as I land, running
into the cover of the trees in the yard.

Thunder rolls above me, a loud
crash that makes the hair on my arms stand on end as the rain rolls
down me mercilessly. The wind makes the trees around me whisper,
and I come to a grinding halt within that copse of trees in their
yard, breathing heavily for a reason that has nothing to do with
running.

As we speak, thousands of
people are dying. People like us, Sebastian. He... he was one of
them.

The man from my dream stands as
a shadowy figure beside me, the red mist with the black and white
particles laced within it clinging to him greedily. He's half a
spectre, but I know I could touch him if I tried. The rain and wind
actually affect him, slipping down his skin, hair and clothes and
tugging at the loose ends of his attire. He has his cowl pulled
over his head.

Great. I've finally lost
it.

They take our lives and toy
with them, playing God as if they have the right to decide who
lives and who dies. He never had to die, but he did anyways, and
what did the government do when I tried to rally a force against
them? They declared a manhunt and I had to leave the country.

Who the hell is this man?

I feel a presence to my left,
and I carefully turn to see another man there, lifting a calloused
hand to his lips and pulling the ghost of a cigarette from there,
frowning. This vision-apparition of a man makes me take a step
back, sharp features of his face surprisingly... flawless. As if an
artist chiseled it from marble, and created the most beautiful man.
His eyes, however, are narrowed into slight grey slits as he blows
out a puff of smoke and his auburn hair, tied in a messy, high
ponytail, snaps with the wind.

They've committed a horrible
crime. See, if they can play with life and create the most perfect
human being, don't you think they'd step up to the plate and take
up the challenge?

The words I
hear come from them, I know, and although their lips move I
don't
hear
them
say it. It's more as if their voices are bouncing in my skull, the
blond man's voice a heavy European accent and the one to my left,
the man whose origins I can't even begin to discern, has the kind
of voice that makes your heart stop. The kind you could listen to
for hours.

An innocent man stands behind
bars for a crime neither of us committed, and I'm forced to flee
from place to place, avoiding the men who try to hunt me down.
Within my veins, within my core, you have the secret to the very
thing your country's leaders are trying to achieve, Sebastian – as
well as what his country's attempting, and mine.

“
The secret
to what?” I question over the howl of the wind, my skin numb to the
cold rain by now. My head is pounding, the lines between the future
and the present within this moment in time and confirming my
suspicions. The affirmation doesn't reassure me – rather, it fills
me with dread. “Who are you people?”

The auburn-haired man, so
flawless he doesn't seem real, uses his free right hand to toy with
the professional camera hanging over his shoulders, frowning around
the cigarette he's biting between his lips. Taking the object from
his mouth, he breathes out a puff of smoke into the atmosphere –
the smoke laced with red, black and white particles, fading into
nothing the way the red mist of my gift does – and speaks
again.

To the reason behind why those
born of a different sexual orientation have supernatural abilities;
the secret behind actually controlling these powers, extracting
them and abusing them if you wish; to the control of the world,
total domination. I am his life's work, after all, created for the
sake of learning the secrets of humanity and sharing them so he
could use them for his own ends.

The expression of complete
sadness crosses his features, both hands cradling the camera as if
it's a precious child, to be loved and cared for. I presume it
holds a lot of history, then, and a lot of meaning to him.

He never
thought I'd grow a consciousness of my own, and when I met
him
, I changed. To the
point where I defied my creator and we'd almost made it... then
they found us and he got me away, but he was taken away.

Then, he seems to snap out of
it, dropping the Canon back to his chest and looking right at me
with a piercing, ethereal stare.

We are the damned, same as you.
Our fates are connected – yours, mine, his... and even your other
is a part of this. Mine, too, is connected to us, through the miles
and miles we stand apart.

“
You didn't
answer my question,” I accuse, frowning, and the man offers me a
half-grin, lopsided as it may be.

The ones you see before you,
Sebastian, are the men you will come across sometime in the near
future. Our current selves are struggling through the past that
haunts us, the same yours shadows you, and you know as well as I do
why this is currently happening.

“
No,” I spit,
my hands starting to shake. Taking a deep breath, I shake my head
to clear it. “I can't be right – I
have
to be wrong! It's the fever
making me see this.”

This time, it's the blond that
laughs, shaking his head as he steps up to stand beside the
auburn-haired man flicking the butt of his smoke onto the
grass.

Time's becoming distorted,
especially to you – there's no use denying that. We all have a
hidden potential, our abilities waiting for a specific trigger to
evolve. We're a dying race, and a species will mutate and change to
survive – why would we be any different?

“
Because
we're humans! We haven't evolved in millions of years!” I snap, a
peel of thunder punctuating my statement.

Sebastian, we
were never human to begin with. Since birth, we have been something
entirely different – and that's what scares them, the
humans.
My creator used
to call us the Novae, and the criterion to be considered one of
these “Novae” is to be able to use supernatural abilities the way
we do, or to just be different from all the others. You can trace
our origins back as far back as any of them.

“
Really?” I
question, my curiosity temporarily shadowing my fears. The
auburn-haired man nods solemnly.

In every age, there are those
considered 'mutants.' The ones born with tails, so they cut them
off; those with a single eye; those who could use simple healing
arts; those we called 'witches' and burned at the stake. You get
the point. We're the remnants of humans trying to evolve with a
world that's about to kill them – you've seen it. You know what I'm
talking about.

I shudder, hugging myself and
nodding. For a moment, I see it clearly in my mind's eye – humanity
dying out by their own hands, grasping at straws for a solution.
For a way to save themselves... and the inhumane result.