The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (79 page)

             
“I do not know what you are doing here, but I am going to say yes to the query you just posed to me.” I was looking around the office. The light outside was having trouble
breaking through the thick clouds; the room was lit only by the slightest glow from the guarded late-afternoon sun.

             
“How is it that you know Adam, exactly?” We both stared at him, feeling threatened by his inquisitiveness. He looked up at us and smiled w
armly. “Just curious.”

             
“We had to go to the city in order to save my sister. She was attacked by some creatures in the woods.”

             
“Which creatures?” He asked, “We’ve encountered quite a few. We’ve lost several people to the various things that are in those
trees.”

             
“Adam called the ones that she ran into Shadows.”

             
“Oh, they’re the worst!” Don replied sympathetically, “Six of my people were killed by them a couple of days ago. They walked right into their nest. I didn’t know that Adam could heal people injur
ed by them.”

             
A woman entered the room with a silver tray bearing two hollowed-out coconut shells filled with liquid. James and I took them and looked at each other warily. These people really had gone above and beyond in deciphering how exactly they were
going to survive. They were completely self-sufficient. Still, there was something off about the situation…

             
“Your sisters and your brother escaped with you, didn’t they?”

             
“Yes.” I nodded and swirled the liquid around in the shell.

             
“Are they alright? Why
aren’t they with you?” I looked up to find that his eyes had widened in alarm once again.

             
“They’re fine,” I assured him calmly before changing the subject. “So, you have aligned yourself with Adam.”

             
“Yes, I have. He has offered to help us with our probl
em and we will help him with his. That’s the deal, anyway. Who knows if he’ll honor it?”

             
“What exactly is your problem that you’re dealing with?” James asked in a tone that challenged Don to lie, if he so dared.

             
“We don’t see eye-to-eye with the other gr
oup of Earth survivors, James. Adam has offered to help us rectify the situation.”

             
“Rectify it how?” James pressed and I glared in his direction to warn him without words not to push the man too far, lest we wish to overstay our welcome.

             
“We want to get
rid of them. Originally, your father decided to form his own group. The natives took out most of them. They would have gotten him, too, if it weren’t for us. But we weren’t going to allow him or his people to stay here, so he left.”

             
“Where did he go? With
the Bachums?”

             
“Yes. And they took him in with open arms, as I’m told.”

             
“How very God-like of them…” I muttered irritably. I rolled my eyes to the heavens that I was currently criticizing.

             
Don laughed softly.

             
“I can gather that you don’t quite see
eye-to-eye with them, either. The reason why we want them gone is because Adam will grant total safety to only one of us. It will either be the Bachums or me. We are trying to round up the survivors who chose neither group, though there are few left alive,
sadly.” He was silent for a moment, studying us as he attempted to gauge our reactions to that most chilling news.

             
“That's terrible.” I said, just to offer some response.

             
“It is. It's also very unfortunate that we should have to resort to such barbaric
measures in order to live here safely. But this is Adam’s world. He determines how things run. He decides how it all turns out.”

             
“You mean to tell me that he’s proposed this epic war between you and the Bachums and yet he’s helping you? Forgive my morali
ty, but isn’t that cheating?” James asked somewhat derisively.

             
“Perhaps. But it’s also a fair trade between myself and him. His people hate the cave-dwellers. They say that they are stuck in the past. They won’t move forward with the times.”

             
“Is that why
they tried to sacrifice my five year old sister?” I leaned forward slightly in anticipation. I needed to hear his answer.

             
“Yes. They believe that in order to be pious one must also be heartless. If they want to appease their God and keep their lives and
freedom, they have to follow a very bloody and violent interpretation of their creed.”

             
“Adam told you all of this?” I was shocked that he would divulge secrets to a different breed so readily.

             
“I told him if he wanted my help, then he needed to be honest
with me.”

             
I nodded, surprised again by Don's boldness.

             
“You were inside the cave?”
             

             
“Yes.” James and I answered.

             
“Then you saw their painting on the ceiling, I’m sure. The Four-Armed God?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Did you see what he was holding?”

             
“There were symbo
ls. Yeah, we saw them.” James answered.

             
“They symbolize the four great powers bestowed on the people we call the natives. Apparently,
for the first several hundred years on Earth, we had those powers, too. Now some of us are regaining them. We’re evolving
, but in a way, we’re also moving backwards in time. Does that make any sense?”

             
“Is that why he’s so strong now?” I beckoned to James. “Is that why I can see these things before they happen and hear other people’s thoughts?”

             
“Yes. That’s why you can
fight like wild animals. It’s all an evolutionary tactic that had been rendered inert by our civilized lives on Earth.”

             
“Oh.” I muttered. I ran my fingers through my hair and then placed my face in my hands for a minute of quiet processing. It was far too
much information to take in at once. My thought patterns were not aided by my desperate need to eat and drink. A headache was rumbling painfully in my ears as it tightened around my forehead and ran with heavy feet down the back of my neck.

             
“Are you alri
ght?”

             
“Drink this, baby.” James told me softly and I felt the coconut shell being held to my lips. He tilted it back and I drank two gulps of the most amazingly sweet coconut juice I had ever tasted.

             
“Oh my God…” I muttered.

             
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Don r
eplied with a slight grin.

             
I nodded and took another drink. After I had swallowed, I spoke again.

             
“So, why are only some of us changing?”

             
“Because we’re embracing it, Brynna. Do you want to know something else that’s shocking? Prepare yourself.”
             
“I am
prepared.” I answered instantly.

             
He paused, forcing me to mentally prepare for another bombshell. I just wanted to know what he was going to say. I was sick of dramatic, soap-opera-style breaks in conversation.

             
“We will never die.”

             
I stopped breathing a
t the words. James had taken a huge gulp of coconut juice and was choking on it now.

             
“I told you to prepare yourself.”

             
“We’re…
immortal
?
” I exclaimed in incredulous shock. I was unsure why the thought brought forth such a potent fear in me.

             
“Immortal, a
geless…” Don filled in airily. “Do you enjoy being young and beautiful?”

             
I looked at him quizzically, feeling slightly put off by that random and personal question with such heavy implications behind it. Or perhaps I was imagining things. I felt quite diz
zy.

             
“I suppose.”

             
“Well, then, you’ll be happy to know that you will look the same forever. You won’t age another day, either of you. Any of you, I should say because your sisters and brothers are…” He furrowed his brows when he looked at me, “Where did y
ou say they were?”

             
I shook my head back and forth rapidly, trying to be discreet about my fight with that sudden onslaught of dizziness. If we wanted to stay there, he had to believe that we were all able-bodied enough to work and if I passed out, he woul
d assume that I was afflicted with some illness that rendered me anything but.

             
“I did not say.”

             
“Brynn…” James muttered to me as he went to stand up. I looked over just as he fell to his knees, holding his head.

             
Oh, God or Gods...

             
Disregarding any
wisdom or common sense, I jumped up onto my feet only to feel the ground sashay right out from beneath them. I hit the ground hard before turning over onto my back to stare up at the ceiling. The dancing stars and pools of black and silver that had become
so familiar to me during my descent into drugged sleep on the ship were back. I had been drugged again, this time completely against my knowledge and will.

             
“Her sisters and brother are out there. They’re close.” Don’s voice was still as calm as ever, as
t
hough he was simply commenting on the weather on any old day instead of standing over two people who were struggling to remain conscious after he had drugged them for no reason that was evident.

             
“James!” I cried out.

             
My heart resumed its fearful, quicke
ned march. I hated any kind of sedation. This time, it was so much worse because I had not been able to stop it… It had been against my will, just like the very first time back on Earth…

             
I only heard James spit out three words in fury after he had reached
out and grasped Don’s ankle to stop him from walking further away where he would not be able to hear him.

             
“
Let… her… go…
”

             
The long-clawed hands that were the darkness of deep, unforgiving sleep grabbed hold of me and dragged me into the unknown depths
more merciless than that of the river we had almost drowned in.

             
Pull for the surface, Brynna
, my mind screamed in a plea too desperate to ever be spoken aloud by me.

             
It was useless. The hands were too strong. I collapsed onto the floor.

             
The already dim
light faded away.

XXX

             
“LET GO!” Violet was screaming desperately. I kicked and fought for the surface, trying to break free from the serpent  that was pulling me into the depths of the dark water I had become completely submerged in.

             
“BRYNNA! BRYNNA!” P
enny’s terror was yet another monstrous water-beast, that was wrapping me in the iron grip of its tentacles.

             
“NO! PENNY!” Violet again, but this time her tears were choking off her words. I had to break free of the haze, of the waking dream I was stuck in
to save her. I had to get to her and Penny. There was no knowing what Don and his people were capable of doing.

             
“Just listen to me, listen…” Quinn’s voice, begging shamelessly for an audience and a chance to explain. It was useless.

             
“Where is she?!” Eli
jah was furious as he demanded the details of my whereabouts and an assurance that I was, at the very least, still alive. God or Gods bless him.