A Hidden Element (11 page)

"Yes, and he knew my brother would kill me if he found me. He stopped my brother from killing me and your dad, but in the end my brother took his own life. He couldn't see himself as anything else but a monster. I tried to convince him otherwise."

"Why would you do that after he killed your parents? Your friends?" Charlie would have killed him, not saved him.

"It wasn't his fault. I believed he could have overcome his murdering tendencies if he'd been raised with love, with a family who cared for him. But he had no one. And I was his only family."

"Where did this all happen?"

"At the lake where I grew up in New York. At the site where my father's spacecraft crashed long ago. And Felix told me something long ago I never forgot, Charlie." She paused.

He looked at her as he bounced from foot to foot.

"Fate seeks to realign itself to its correct path, no matter how bad the outcome," she said.

"What does that mean?"

"Our destiny is already set. Fate will find a way to achieve its set course. We have to follow it, but sometimes it's not the outcome we desire."

"Can't we make a difference? Change the outcome?"

"Sometimes."

"Then sometimes not, right?"

"Right."

"Good is supposed to win out over evil, isn't it?"

His mom didn't respond. He sat down and this time he covered her hands with his. She gripped them. And he felt what she felt. She would do anything to protect him. She would kill for him. It shocked him. He had thought he was the violent one. His mom had seemed soft and sweet. Maybe they weren't so different. Or maybe he was more like her brother.

"What was your brother's name, Mom?"

She gripped his hands harder. "The government didn't name him. He only had a number. X-10."

"X-10." It sounded like a robot. Or a monster.

"But I called him Charlie." She looked away with a sad smile. "He wanted to be called Charlie."

Caleb hung back in the shadows of the courtyard and watched in frustration as the community members dragged the stoned Elyons off to be buried in the woods. There were too many deaths now to deal with. A work detail had been formed and Caleb was not part of it. Fear struck him that they would discover he never buried any bodies up on the tree line— and fear of then being lobotomized.

If that happened he could never save anyone again, including his sons. He would be an empty shell used for manual labor and breeding. He wasn't blind to the irony as it summed up his life now. If he didn't comply with the order to breed soon, he would be lobotomized.

Caleb scanned the original community members that gathered after the stoning. Doctors, engineers, farmers, cooks, carpenters, seamstresses and more. They understood their duty and accepted it. Brought here under false pretenses, he did not. These were the elite, chosen by his father from the Underground Destroyer rebellion. They had named his father their great savior and leader. They would follow him and do what he ordered. Not Caleb.

By the time Caleb had been drugged and strapped down on this secret mission, escape was futile. His mother was dead, he had no friends to miss—but still he had not chosen to come. Not this way. He had dreamed of coming here, yes, but to travel with Uncle Brahm on a mission of good—not on his father's mission of evil conquest.

How he missed his Uncle Brahm. He had been a kindred spirit who fed his soul with acceptance, love, and wisdom—all the things his own father never gave him. In his final days on Elyon, Caleb had helped his uncle get ready for his mission to Earth. And then his life became a dark void—his mother died, he found his father in bed with Uncle Brahm's wife, and he was kidnapped by his father.

He would have given up his dream to go to Earth and stay with Uncle Brahm if he had known of his father's plan to steal the ship and go to Earth. His father deceived him because he knew Caleb's choice would have been to stay with his uncle—and he'd come to understand his father never wanted his hated brother to have anything of his. Especially his own son.

He remembered knocking on his uncle's door that first day to assist him with preparations for the Earth mission, hoping for his own ticket to go.

His uncle greeted him then with a wide smile on his round face and pulled him into a big hug. His uncle's hair was white like his father's but all over the place—like his scientific inventions.

"My boy, Manta and I are off with the others. Starting a new path for our world to follow."

"I'm happy for you. Everything will work out on this mission, right?" Caleb felt bad the moment he asked.

His uncle's smile faded. "My brother Feo's crash was over forty years ago. He was a young Madroc, just out of youthhood." He paused and shook his head as if reliving his youth. "But we have better technology now."

"I know."

"I often wonder, if your father's twin, Feo, had survived the crash, would your father be different."

"Not likely. He was born the way he is."

His uncle shook his head and looked down. "No, your father was much softer in his youth. We had been brothers and friends then."

"I didn't mean to make you sad."

His uncle looked up and smiled again. "You never make me sad, Son."

Caleb was desperate to move on from talk of his father. "So, taking any volunteers?"

"Aha, I don't think your mother would take to it well."

But in the end it didn't matter. She died that week, having fallen into the well and breaking her neck. Aunt Manta died, as well, in a laboratory explosion. The mission to Earth was delayed, and a few months later his father's Underground Destroyer uprising had stolen the ship to Earth—with him in it.

His father had lured him to the ship late at night under the pretense Uncle Brahm planned to take them on a special secret tour before the launch, but it was all a lie. Upon entering he encountered the Destroyer defectors and, under protest, was strapped down in a holding cell and drugged. When he awoke the dark woods of Earth greeted him—and his hate for his father consumed him.

He saw Uncle Brahm once walking through the mist back home on Elyon. Desperate to contact home, he had stolen his father's communication belt. He tried to get his uncle's attention, but he never looked up to see him watching him from afar, a sad look on his bowed face. Then he faded into the fog, but seeing him was worth the whipping he received from his father when he discovered him using the belt.

Could Uncle Brahm have helped build another ship with his people? Would they be able to seek a new life as planned for their people before they died out? He held on to the tiniest hope he would see his beloved uncle again—and when that happened his father would no longer be ruler.

But he was here now, alone, on this new world where their people were fleeing once again to a new life, away from the forced life they had here. He had heard the whisperings around the compound. Many Elyons wanted to become part of the human world. They didn't want to take over Earth and destroy its native inhabitants. They wanted to blend in and belong. To live a life of their own choosing. Like him.

He watched his sons' heads now as the community women took the children back to the main childcare room.
Jeremiah and Josiah
. He whispered their names to himself. They were so small, so innocent. He had to get them out of here. No child should have to participate in killing. Many children smiled, as they threw their stones, as if it were a game. Emotion tugged at him when his sons didn't smile. They both closed their eyes and threw their stones, only after a 'mother' had forced their hands up to do so.

Caleb had closed his eyes, too, wishing his aim would go far off course. In closing his eyes together with his sons the distance closed between them, but it was still an impossible chasm to bridge. Someday he hoped to be able to go to them, smile down at them, and tell them he was their father.

He tucked himself away now under the corridor overhang, pulled his hood over his face, and listened to the community members whispering nearby.

"They didn't need to die."

"A fit punishment, if you ask me. They are endangering our way of life."

"What life? This is no life. Our first community failed in the human world. We won't make it like this."

"Maybe we could bond with the humans. Befriend them. Be part of their world."

"Yes, in doing so we can create our own world, too."

"Or maybe they'll just experiment on us.

"Shh. We'll be heard. Stop this talk and thinking. Do you want me throwing rocks at you, too?"

The community members wandered off. Caleb stayed and watched the last of the dead being dragged away. He wondered if he could dig them up in the night and revive them, but nighttime was hours away. They'd be too far gone by then. He only had a short window of time to bring someone back to life before they finished passing on to death. And he didn't know if he had enough energy to save them all. Giving life drained him of life.

"Caleb." His father dismissed the elders and called Caleb over. Tollen, the lead elder, tilted his head at him in passing. Caleb pulled his hood back and moved toward his father, shielding his thoughts in preparation. His father smiled at him. A pit sunk into Caleb's stomach wondering what dirty deed would be required of him.

"Yes, Father."

His father continued to smile at him. Caleb hid his hands in his robe and squeezed them together.

"Tonight it is time. You must breed. I am sending a special girl over."

Caleb shook his head. "I do all you want. I dig wells. I bury the dead. I won't do this. I won't."

His father's smile disappeared and he grabbed Caleb's robe then let go. "You
will
do this. My flock is fleeing. My elders think I cannot control my son. This is your last chance."

Caleb shook his head again.

"I have your surgery scheduled for tomorrow. Then you'll breed anyways. What does it matter? Don't you want to keep your powers and your mind? My people must believe that I, Adrian Madroc, am in charge and know what's best for them."

Caleb stared into his father's eyes burning with yellow fire, glad his own eyes were different. His father had abandoned his eye covers long after they settled here. They'd never had anything in common. His father had dismissed his writing. He said poetry was for sissies, but his mother had loved his poems. She'd said he had a well of beauty inside that someday a wonderful girl would fall in love with.

Well of beauty.

Well.

And the loss of his mother struck him hard again—and the thought he'd played with in his mind for years came back to him. Why
had
she fallen down the old well?

And his father had ordered him to build that new well here. A horrific idea came to him. Was his mother's death not an accident after all?
No.
No!
His father couldn't have done that.

Memories flickered of the few times his father had been full of light to him, not dark. The time he'd broken his leg at seven. His father had placed his big hands on his leg and healed it. He hadn't even yelled at him for crying, then he'd picked him up and carried him home. Caleb remembered feeling safe in his father's arms.

Then when he had been nine years old he'd been sick with a raging fever. His mother was off visiting her sister and his father had stayed home from work to be with him. It was an accepted practice to let children heal in their own time from diseases they could fight off. If they didn't they contracted many more illnesses and their body's immune system became weaker and weaker, until a slight cold could kill them.

Caleb recalled from his feverish state how the light had hurt his eyes. He kept them closed while for hours his father had sat next to him pressing cold, wet cloths to his forehead and neck. Shadows of goodness in his father had been there once. Anyone with a shadow of goodness didn't kill their own wife.

"All right, Father. You're right. It's time."

His father looked at him for a moment then nodded. "I'm glad you've finally come to realize this is part of your destiny here."

"I do. I can't fight it any longer. You're right." Caleb looked at his feet, unable to bear his father's steady gaze.

"Being celibate is no fun, right Son?" His father put his hand on his shoulder. "Let someone else do the work of your hand and make our Madroc offspring from it, too." His father raised his hands to the cold sky. "For behold, I will create a new Elyon and a new Earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind."

But it shall not be wholly forgotten, if I can help it
, Caleb thought. His father twisted the words of the human god into his own. So could he.

"And I will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more." His father lowered his arms and looked at Caleb. "And you will help me show our flock they must work through this pain first in order to have their own 'heaven here on Earth', as humans say."

Caleb nodded. "I'll go now and wait for the female."

"Yes, you go."

Caleb turned away but his father called to him again. "And I'll be watching."

Caleb nodded again and made his escape.

It seemed he had no choice now but to do his father's bidding.

He was named after his murdering uncle.

Charlie didn't want to believe it. And he didn't understand how his mom could forgive her brother for killing her family and friends. He couldn't even forgive his dad just for wanting him to be normal. Charlie would never be normal—and good enough for his dad.

"But, Mom, I still don't understand why Dad tried to kill you."

His mom got up and walked to the bay window. Branches scratched at the glass pane in an eerie wail. Total blackness leeched out there, as if the world around them had disappeared.

"I thought, at first, it was because I had suppressed my powers for so long and my pregnancy brought them out, redirecting them on him. Hormones can do funny things, especially when you get older." She turned to smile at him. "Kind of like with teenagers."

"But now?"

"But now, I'm not sure." She placed her hands on the window as if looking for someone out there. "Tonight your dad said something that triggered a terrible memory."

The mystery around what he was, who is mother was, and why his dad acted so strange all swirled in his head. And then there was Adrian. Who was he, too? A guardian angel or an enemy? He wasn't sure what to think except that he needed him.

"What kind of memory?"

"I can't remember it all. I've blocked it out. I didn't want to remember. But I do know it had to do with the day my boss died at work. An employee went on a shooting spree. While the details are blurry to me now, I do know that what your dad said—'it's not me'—had something to do with that day."

"Why?"

His mother shook her head, as if shaking away the memory or trying to relive it.

"I—I don't know. I knew then but not now."