Spoiler
So glad to have finally finished this chapter, when I wrote it on word there are some things that are meant to be in italics but I haven't got the patience to go through and put them all in at the moment. Reviews needed!!
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Chapter Nine:
My eyes fluttered open and I tried desperately to figure out where I was. The dark walls were unfamiliar, almost threatening as they rose above me and joined to an equally dark ceiling with heavy weather stains. I tried to raise my head to look around. Bad idea. My brain throbbed and I had to lay it back on the pillow again. At least the woman had been telling the truth about something; there was a bed.
As far as I could see, there were no windows in this box-room. The only light was coming from a lamp on a bedside table, and I had no way of telling the time or how long I had been out for. I couldn’t even know if it was day or night. The door over the other side of the room was chained and bolted with complex iron locks. There was no way out.
This was ridiculous! This type of thing just didn’t happen in the real world. In films yes, it was quite often that someone would get stolen away because they were important or knew too much. That wasn’t me though. All the children from the village had disappeared to an unknown place, was that where I was now? I was furious that I’d let myself be taken away, I dragged myself off the bed and curled up in a small ball, banging my fist against the panels.
The dusty floor was made of wood, yet holes covered the surface where it had been worn away over time. It was like a prison cell. I half imagined myself as an animal, kept behind bars where people would goggle at me through the small gaps, feeding me scraps of food. Abruptly, I realised I was hungry. When was the last time I’d had a decent meal? As though reading my mind I heard the click of a key in a lock and tried to pull myself up, waiting for the door to open. Instead however, a small square of metal at the bottom of the door swung open, like a cat flap, and a bowl of food was shoved through. If I hadn’t felt like an animal before that would have done it!
I scrambled forward, forgetting the pain in my eagerness to eat something. I needn’t have bothered. The ‘meal’ consisted of a pile of soggy carrots in a puddle of cold soup. It wasn’t exactly like dining with royalty. I sniffed it cautiously, it seemed edible… But I couldn’t trust anyone here; that was obvious. They weren’t going to kill me; that much seemed evident. If they were, surely they would have done that whilst I was asleep. By the looks of things they needed me for something and I wasn’t about to starve myself to death. The soup didn’t look very appetising. Nevertheless, I gobbled it down without a pause; I was starving! The glass of water that followed didn’t look too clean, so I left it. The soup was like drinking anyway.
Once finished with my dinner, I stood up to search around this prison cell. The drowsiness seemed to have worn off now that I had eaten something, however lacking in substance it might have been and I was quick to inspect the space. I found that the top of my head brushed the ceiling and as I wasn’t very tall, the room must have been smaller than I’d originally thought. I wasn’t usually claustrophobic, but now I understood what those who were must have felt like. It seemed as if the ceiling was coming closer and closer and the walls were drawing in; I pushed my arms above me, trying to make some more room but it wasn’t working! I hammered on the door loudly.
“Let me out!” I screamed. “You have let me out!”
There was a cough outside; evidently the room wasn’t sound proof. It appeared as if I had guards. Attempting to calm myself I had a sudden flash of sane thought. If I was being guarded, surely they were afraid that I could get out. True, it could have been to prevent others getting in, but who would save me? Nobody knew I was here, and nobody cared. I decided to try a different tactic.
“If you don’t let me out,” I threatened, “I’ll just have to get out myself.”
Two voices started muttering in low tones behind the door, it was impossible to catch what they were saying but they sounded panicked. Why, I had no idea. I wasn’t dangerous but I wasn’t going to let them know that!
“This is your last chance,” I warned them, “I’m going to count to three and if the door isn’t open by then I’m coming out.” I paused for effect, revelling in the fact that the voices were sounding more and more scared.
“One...”
Was that a hissing sound? I looked around, trying to work out where it was coming from.
“Two…”
Who cared about being let out anyway? I was tired; maybe I could rest for a while.
“Three…”
My knees buckled and I hit the hard floor. Then everything went dark.
A sharp pain dug into my side and I rolled over, trying to get comfy. The hard ground beneath me was cold, and very solid. I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes yet though, however uncomfortable I was; I didn’t want to awaken to a prison.
The pain was in my other side now, jabbing in and out quickly and a clicking noise was sounding next to my ear. I tried to swat it away with the back of my hand but it came back, getting louder and louder.
“Whadoyouwaa?” My words were slurred, I was still too drowsy.
A high voice sounded instantaneously, “Where are we?”
I rolled over, rubbing my eyes in an effort to clear the blurriness. Stood next to me I could just about make out the silhouette of a short figure with long dark hair.
“Where are we?” she repeated, evidentially thinking I was quite slow. I didn’t blame her of course, whatever the guards had issued into the room had knocked me out badly and I was very disorientated.
“Huh?” I replied intelligently.
She raised thin, arched eyebrows at me and then turned to the door trying to pull it open.
“It doesn’t open,” I managed to say. A full sentence at last!
“Thanks,” she muttered sarcastically as she moved her hands over the solid walls. “What’s your name by the way?”
“Ashling,” I told her.
“Angelica.”
“What are you doing?” I asked her full of curiosity. Trying, I found I could sit up now and I swung my legs over the side of the mattress.
She ignored my question, instead asking one of her own “is this some kind of prison?”
“It looks like a cell,” I commented.
She didn’t look too impressed with this answer, “I could have figured that much out for myself.” Then why ask? “It’s a bit unfair don’t you think?”
“How do you mean?”
She sighed heavily; apparently I wasn’t making a good impression. Megan had always had one piece of strange advice for me: ‘the best friends are always the one’s you meet on the inside.’ Yet this girl didn’t seem to be one bit interested in me. I had never been the best at picking friends but somehow, I knew she wasn’t going to be one.
“We choose to come here, to learn how to serve The Creator and they reward our loyalty by locking us in a cage!”
“Who?”
She gaped at me, her eyes popping. “You don’t know who The Creator is?”
I shook my head apologetically, “and I didn’t choose to come here either!”
“You don’t know who The Creator is?” She repeated, dazed. “Where have you been?”
“Living on another planet,” I replied sarcastically, trying to prove I wasn’t totally useless.
“What planet?”
“Excuse me?”
“What planet?” She said again, “what planet were you living on?”
I looked at her closely but it appeared she was being serious. “It was a joke.”
“Oh,” she turned away. Apparently this girl had no sense of humour.
“How old are you?”
“Sixt-” I stopped myself before finishing off the end of the number. I hadn’t been asked my age for a good few months. Not since it had changed anyway, “seventeen.”
“Tell me,” she said, “what did your parents do to celebrate you last birthday?”
I snorted with laughter, unable to hold it in. She must have thought I was deranged. “My father’s dead and my mother couldn’t care any less if she wanted to. She goes out every other night with some guy she’ll have met the day before. I spent my last birthday living under a bridge in the freezing cold trying to find scraps of food.”
“Sorry,” she said. She didn’t sound it. “It can’t have been worse than mine though!”
I raised my eyebrows. I highly doubted it, “try me.”
“I turned sixteen last week,” she told me, an air of superiority coming through when she spoke. “My parents bought me most of what I asked for, a new television set and tickets to a concert… which I won’t get to go to now! I told them that I was leaving school soon, to join The Creator and his noble cause.”
She paused for effect but upon seeing the blank look on my face sighed and tried to explain. “The Creator is the one who made us like this. He seeks out those in this world who are exceptional and then grants them their gifts. But there will always be those who fight to stop him, those who think that our powers are works of the devil. That is why we must join him; to fight, and to protect those like us!”
“Like us?”
“Yes like us,” she snapped impatiently. “We have gifts, powers… or we wouldn’t be here! My parents were scornful,” she added. “They think that joining The Creator is like a curse, they’ve heard all about him from my uncle you see; he left to fight for his army.”
“So The Creator isn’t a curse?” I asked her. “Only it seems that if he takes people away from their families…”
“No,” Angelica snapped, “it’s for the greater good anyway. He gives people gifts so that they can learn to use them. My parents were having none of it though. They locked me in my room and put bars on my window. Of course, I have an en suite bathroom so they never had the need to let me out. They told me that they were going to bring in a tutor three times a week so that I would never have to leave the house. I was a prisoner in my own home.”
“But at least they cared about you enough to do that,” I pointed out. “They just wanted to keep you safe.”
“Yeah right,” now it was her turn to laugh, a low eerie sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “They weren’t protecting me; they just wanted to stop me from making my own decision. They couldn’t stand the fact that I wanted t make a choice without caring what they said about it.”
“Right.” Stuck up cow.
“But I escaped,” she told me proudly, flicking her hair behind her shoulders. “They came to let the tutor in one day and I ran for it, all the way down the street. Of course they chased after me but I can run pretty fast when I want to; it’s my gift.”
She paused, “what’s yours?”
“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully, “I left behind a glowing light before, could that be it?”
“No, no,” she waved her hand airily, “that’s just your trail, usually you can’t see it though I’ve heard of some who can,” she stopped and scrutinised me closely. “That either means you're really powerful or just have exceptional eyesight.”
“Oh,” I wasn’t really sure what to say “My eyesight’s ok I guess.”
“Yeah,” she replied, not really paying much attention as she returned to inspecting the walls. “I didn’t think you looked that powerful anyway.”
Thanks.
Just then a low rumble sounded from behind the door and it swung open majestically. I blinked in the brilliant light that reflected off the white walls outside as a woman stepped through. She was wearing a long white coat and around her neck appeared to be a thermometer on a thick, black wire.
“That’s how the nurses measure your power,” Angelica said in an audible whisper. Measure your power? I didn’t like the sound of that. The thermometer was sharp and pointed at the end and I wondered privately where they were going to measure from.
“Come with me,” the nurse instructed, her powerful voice vibrating around the walls. “You have completed the isolation process and shall now be admitted into the rest of the camp. There you shall undergo a series of tests to determine your strengths and weaknesses and learn how to develop them. Walk this way and keep closely behind me.”
I shot a quick look to my left where Angelica was already scrambling towards the door, an eager look on her slender face. I followed her example, heading the way the nurse had just retreated and into the place which was going to become my home.
The passage ways were all pure white and as cold as ice. I shivered slightly as I walked along them, not wanting to break the strange silence that seemed to inhabit this place. Left, right and then left again, I lost track as we continued down the winding halls. Each one looked almost identical to the last and just as I was beginning to wonder if we would ever reach the end the walls opened out into a huge room filled with six long tables. At least sixty children sat at each table, all squashed up together on the small seats. Nobody looked up as we walked in, they were all gazing up at the huge pot at the far end of the room where a large man stood, his hand poised over the lid.
The nurse pointed us to two empty seats, each on completely different sides of the room. I turned to say goodbye to Angelica, and perhaps to wish her good luck. But she had left already and was practically running over to the table in her enthusiasm.
I sighed and then made my way over to the designated seat, beside a surly looking boy who seemed to be around my age.
“What’s going on?” I asked him in a whisper, yet he merely held up his hand to my face and ignored my question. I inclined my head to follow the gaze of the others, all looking at the man beside the cauldron.
At a sudden tap on my shoulder, I wheeled around in my seat to see a young girl with thick glasses that hid bright green eyes like a cat. Her hair was cropped short but still small waves wound around her head and fell across her face. “I’m Talia,” she said quietly. “Are you new here?”
“I’m Ashling,” I replied in the same amplitude. “Yes, I was brought in from isolation.”
Just then a loud gong sounded from the front of the room, all of the children seemed to shift slightly in their seats, all in unison.
“Grab your bowl and get ready to run,” Talia told me “If you don’t get up there fast you won’t eat today.”
I held on tight to my bowl as the lid was opened. “Come,” a voice commanded.
It was like he had lifted the lid on madness, there came a sudden uproar and chairs were thrown back, people trampled on and some thrown against walls. I ran with the others, fighting to get to the front like animals in the zoo at feeding time.
This was going to take a lot of getting used to.
