The Markings Page 2

  A slam of a door back the way we came causes my heart to pause. “We need to move faster,” I whisper and Titus and I pick up our pace to a jog. Another slam off in the distances sends me into a sprint. I glance over my shoulder and see Titus falling behind.

  Then, a guard emerges into the hall behind Titus. “Run!” I scream as the soldier draws his sword. I stop in the middle of my stride and switch to running back to him, but the guard’s blade drives through Titus’s chest before I get there. Through clenched eyes I picture the blade flying back into the guard and effortlessly it does. I drop to my knees, into the purple damp carpet next to my little brother under the palm tree painting. The guard I threw the sword into makes unidentifiable noises as he falls to the floor and silence returns to the castle.

  “Titus,” I say gently, tears filling my eyes. He takes my hand in his, wet with red blood, and tries to speak. “It’s okay Titus,” I try and quiet him.

  “We need to go find Mother,” Titus gets out.

  I drop my head. “You’ll be with her soon Titus,” I say and meet my younger brother’s dying eyes. “You and mother will be free soon.” Titus’s lips curl into a tiny smile before he takes in his last small breath, and his hand becomes limp in mine.

  I fight the urge to make a sound. I clench my teeth and fill my head with internal screams. 1. 2. 3. I count and squeeze my brother’s hand.

  1… 2…3

  Chapter 2

  I don’t know how much time passes before I finally let go of Titus’s hand. It feels like one or two minutes but the stiff muscles in my legs tell me it’s been longer. My tears have dried to my cheeks and my mind is finally starting to accept reality. My mother and brother are both dead. If I don’t move soon I will likely face the same fate. Before I stand I gently cross Titus’s arms and close his eyes. I hate the idea of leaving him here, but I know I have to.

  Abruptly I stand and continue down the hall. I tell myself to move quickly because I know if I hesitate, even for a second, I’m not sure I’ll get the courage to go again. I pick up my pace to a steady jog and then I hear two distant voices coming my way. I scan the hall, looking for somewhere to hide, but there’s nowhere for me to go.

  “Parting Day was a little boring,” a man’s exhausted voice says.

  “I know, the group of prisoners they brought were lackluster at best,” the second guard says and their voices grow louder.

  Disgust starts to build up inside of me. The executions are just a form of entertainment for them. They never have to worry about facing that terrifying day. No one they love or care about will ever have to experience that. I think they must be making nightly rounds in the castle, but then I hear one of the guards add, “We’re ditching tonight, right? Leave it to the newbie to handle. We really only need a single guard on duty outside the maze anyway.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” At that comment the two guards turn into the hall I’m standing in. They stop suddenly and I watch their eyes glance from me to the dead bodies and then back to me. My hatred for people like them, who see Parting Day as a form of entertainment, bubbles over. My eyes focus in on one of their swords. Without thinking I control it, and pull it into the air before slicing through one of their chests. It takes me a second to realize I have just murdered a human being. For the second time, I quickly realize. What have I just done? The disgust and anger that flowed through me steadied out my nerves and my gift, but now those have quickly vanished and I’m left empty and partially scared of myself.

  The other guard starts back-peddling before disappearing around the corner of the hall. I hear him yell, “Gifted! An escaped gifted!” My original instinct to fight is overcome by a need to hide. I race to the end of the hall and take in my options. The hall branches off to my left and right, but I hear voices growing on both ends. In front of me is a staircase, and I take each step two at a time until I reach the top. Once I get to the top I’m overcome by numbness. There’s only one old wooden door so I run through it and hope I’m not just running into a trap.

  I slam the door shut behind me and slide the bolt to lock the door. It doesn’t take long before I hear guards on the other side of the door trying to break it down. “Okay, how am I going to get out of here?” I say and try to slow my breathing.

  For the first time, I scan the room to make out where I am, and a chill runs down my spine. It seems to be some sort of torture chamber. Along the left wall are two large cabinets holding who knows what, and on the right side there are chains hanging from the wall. There’s an odd feeling in the air of the room. Cold and empty; sad really.

  There’s a small window on the far side of the room. I move to it and look outside through the bars on the window. It’s on the front side of the castle and must be thirty or so feet up. I shouldn’t have gone up the stairs, that was stupid. I was on the ground level. I should have been looking for a door or window to get out of. I glance out over the maze of hedges that circle the castle and can make out bits of light coming from lanterns in the city. Word of my attempted escape will have reached them before I get out of here so I know I can’t go there. Everything outside seems to be so still though. Like a completely different world. The breeze from the cool night air lightly blows against my face.

  “I need to get out of here,” I say, trying to work out a plan.

  “I can help you,” a deep quiet voice says from behind me. I whip around and scan the empty dark room.

  “Who’s there?” I ask, my voice shaking. A tall thin man dressed in a uniform similar to that of the other guards steps out from the shadows of the room. “Don’t come any closer,” I say, my eyes holding his.

  “Don’t worry, I’m here to help. It’s time. It’s finally time,” his deep voice says and it reminds me of when my mother had said the same thing when the guard came to take her away.

  “Time for what?” I ask and raise my voice to be heard over the banging on the door.

  “What’s your name?” The man deflects, his face coming to life as he starts to walk around the room looking for something. He opens one of the cabinets on the side of the room and pulls out a sword. He moves back in front of me and hands it to me. “Your name?” he asks again.

  “Adaline,” I say in an uneasy voice as I take the sword in my hands. I’ve never held a weapon before. It’s heavier than it looks, its cool metal handle piercing my skin sends a chill through me. It’s old, not as shiny and clean as the ones the guards in the rest of the castle were carrying. It has a beautiful curling design around the handle, and the letters TM engraved at its end.

  “Good. Good name. You’ll need that,” he says, looking to the sword as he moves around me to the window. “You need to go,” he says and looks to me. I can tell he notices the confusion on my face. “You don’t know how to get out? You can teleport. You’re a Force Lifter, right?”

  “That’s what my mother called it, but I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of this means,” I say and tears of frustration and fear build in my eyes. “What am I?” I ask quietly.

  “A gifted. You’re a gifted,” the man says simply. I look to him with pleading eyes wanting him to give me more information. The man begins to explain, “Every once in a while a child will be born with the gift that gives them the ability to enhance one of their five senses, such as hearing something from miles away, or smelling something or someone and immediately identifying it.” He pauses, seeing I’m still very lost. “You’ve used your gift, right? You’ve made it this far.”

  I nod my head slightly but add, “But I don’t know how to use it. I don’t think I’m doing it right.”

  “Here,” he says, pulling out a small gold coin. “Picture this coin sliding around my hand.” I think about the coin moving but nothing happens. “Concentrate. To make your gift work to its best ability, you need to block everything out except the object you want to control. Don’t just picture it moving, but tell it to move in your head. You can do it.”

  I clench my fis
ts, hold my breath, and focus on the gold coin in his hand and see nothing else. In my mind, I tell the coin to slide forward on his hand. “Slide forward,” I tell the coin and watch as it slowly but surely moves across his hand. I let out my breath and look to him for a response.

  “That was good. This is an easy exercise you should do to help you get better at controlling it. I have one more thing I need to teach you. It seems more difficult, but it actually can be a lot easier. Picture the coin out there,” he pauses, glancing out the window, “but don’t just move it. You have to see it there and it will teleport.”

  I look from the gold coin to the ground outside the window. I stare into the ground and imagine the coin lying there until it finally appears. I blink hard amazed by what I see.

  “Good, now you need to go,” he pushes.

  “Why are you helping me?” I say forcefully and turn to him.

  He’s quiet for a minute as if he were looking for the right words, “Because you are meant for more,” he says strongly, holding my stare. “Now go.”

  I close my eyes tight and try to picture myself outside as I did with the coin. Suddenly I’m overcome by a cold wind. I open my eyes and now I’m on the outside. The sun has just fallen below the edge of the forest and darkness masks the world. I look up and see the millions of stars scattered in the sky, and I can’t help but smile. I haven’t seen stars in seven years.

  I look up to the window where I was just at seconds ago and can make out the man’s face through the bars. I realize I don’t even know his name. I will never know the name of the man who saved my life. He gives me a small nod and then sinks away from the window.

  A glint of light from the ground catches my eye and I notice it’s the gold coin. I bend down and pick it up. I hold it between my thumb and finger examining it. On one side there’s a beautiful engraving of the castle with the words Dather stamped under it. On the other side is an engraving of a tree with the words Freedom Islands stamped above it and A Nation Reborn stamped below it. I take in a sharp breath when I recognize the resemblance this side of the coin has to the tree painting back in the castle. Tears threaten to fill my eyes, but I can’t stop now.

  I put the coin inside the pocket of my shirt. Then, the quiet cool night bursts into commotion. The main castle doors fly open and I whip around raising my hand just in time to see a large, much more muscular, guard. I’ve only ever seen him once before in my life. His name is Paylon. He is 18 years old but is already the captain of all of our nation’s guards.

  I think of him freezing just like I did to the others, except he doesn’t freeze. I realize, almost too late, that somehow he may be immune to my gift because it doesn’t seem to affect him at all. Shock and numbness surge through my body, but I am already so close. Guard after guard starts pouring out of the castle behind him. I turn and run down the rocky road into the maze, and I can hear the guards pick up their pace behind me.

  I lift my hand and just picture the bushes splitting apart. The cuts in the bushes aren’t clean, but it’s enough to get me through it. Once I’m through a section I make sure to try my best to close it off behind me so Paylon can’t proceed through it. I make it through the last section in no time and I can see the stretch of forest just a few paces ahead, but what I don’t see is the inconsistency of the rest of the path. I miss my step and drive my head straight into the rocks.

  My vision starts to blur and I can’t make my body move. Everything starts to hurt. I can feel my blood trickle down my face. Then I hear the footsteps getting closer to me. At first, I think it’s Paylon, and that he’s finally caught up to me. Then I realize that the footsteps are coming from in front of me.

  This is the end. I can feel it, but what I feel instead of a sword being driven through me is the feeling of the guard’s hands lifting me into his arms.

  He runs, not toward the castle, but away from it into the woods, and that’s when I lose consciousness. My world is filled with black, but my mind seems to move faster. It works its way backward, remembering each tick I had ever made on the prison cell wall until it stops at a memory I blocked out long ago. In my unconscious state, my mind forces me to relive that memory. I used to think that was the worst Parting Day, until today.

  ***

  I press my face between the two metal bars of the cell, watching the nurse grow smaller the further down the hall she goes. Mr. Stevens, the man in the cell next to mine, has finally stopped his hysterical crying and the prison returns to its chilling quiet self. I’m not sure why Mr. Stevens had been screaming, but it was enough reason to have them send medical down to the prison.

  We were brought here because my mother didn’t pay her dues to the King. My father left my mother to raise Titus and me on her own, but it just wasn’t possible. Most of us are in here for simply not paying the King’s dues. Some are here for worse reasons, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. In the end, we are just collected to be held down here until it’s our time to be killed. They take a group once a week to the coliseum and murder us in front of the people of Garth. We are made into a symbol of what happens when the laws are broken.

  I wonder if there’s something wrong with Mr. Stevens. Not because I’m worried about him, but because I know being sick just gives them a reason to pick you next. Better him than me. Most people down here have just accepted their fate, but not me. I’m going to get my mother and brother out of here. I turn and check the carved lines on the wall. Today is day 1,966 in the cell. You’d think being here for nearly six years would have given me plenty of time to think of a way to get out, but I haven’t been that successful. Now that we have some peace and quiet down here I may get somewhere on my newest plan.

  “Sister,” Titus’s childish voice whispers. I turn and see his cheeks look shallower than normal. His brown hair is matted to his forehead and his grey eyes peek out at me. He hates silence so I should have known it was too good to be true. “Can we learn history today? I want to hear the rock story again.” I take in a deep breath and glance up in the cell across from mine. Cindy Sewer meets my eyes and I give an apologetic nod. She’s nearly 60 years old and Titus and I have taken to calling her our grandmother. She sits on her mattress with her back pressed against the concrete wall. She looks weaker than normal, probably as exhausted as I am after listening to Mr. Stevens screech all morning.

  “I’ll make it quick,” I whisper across the cell. Granny gives a huff of a laugh and waves me off like she doesn’t mind. I only agree to tell Titus the story because I know he’ll drift to sleep about halfway through and then we can return to our quiet afternoon.

  I move and join Titus on the mattress and hand him one of the few treasures we have down here; a book. I got it for him a couple of months ago. I had a pretty decent relationship with the servant who brought us our meals and I had begged her for books I could use to teach Titus about anything. He’s nearly seven years old and I’m the only hope he has at learning our country’s history, math, or how to read. Some days my mother helps, but usually she stays fixed in her trance. Today is one of those days. I glance over at her, curled up in the corner of the cell just staring into the wall. She does that a lot. It’s like her body’s here, but her mind is elsewhere. I don’t blame her though, most people down here are like that.

  “What’s the point?” The servant girl had asked me.

  “It’ll help pass the time,” I had lied. In reality, I knew I was getting us out of here, and I needed to make sure Titus would be ready when I did. So, she brought me one book a week for about a month, but then she was swapped out for a different servant who I haven’t quite warmed up to yet.

  I open the old book and begin to read the story to Titus. “The year is 4912, and it is early May.”

  “It is late spring in the state of Colorado,” Titus’s voice layers over my own. I laugh a little as he stumbles over the word Colorado.

  “Better that time,” I try and encourage him. “On the television, a news story plays where they are talking abou
t the asteroid shower again.” Titus lifts his finger and points to the illustration in the book. The furniture is so much more luxurious than any we ever had.

  “I want a television one day,” Titus says, imagining a future where we could somehow be given a television in this cell.

  “Televisions don’t exist anymore,” I gently remind Titus. Nothing in this book exists anymore. Before our civilization, the population on this planet was much greater and people lived in places called North and South America, Africa, Australia, Europe, and Asia. Now, these places no longer exist because of the asteroid shower.

  The shower happened just over 100 years ago, and it is the reason the world I know even exists. The asteroid shower was predicted to happen years before it did, but no one had thought that it could be so extreme. When the shower started it was too late for most people. The asteroids, as we learned later on, were full of atomic energy. Some say radiation, but the true chemicals in the rocks had never been discovered before. When the asteroids hit Earth they exploded, sending their chemicals into the air. Many were injured if not immediately killed in the shower. This atomic energy mixed in some people’s bloodstreams and gave them the gift of having an enhanced sense.

  “The news says Hawaii is the freeform home,” Titus continues to read the story ahead of me.

  “Close,” I say and reread the line to him. “The news report claims that Hawaii is the freedom island. Scientists have launched a force field over the islands as a barrier.”

  “But,” Titus says in an overly loud and dramatic voice as he turns the page. He holds up his hand to stop me from speaking. I try and hold in my laugh because he says he does this to build the tension. His eyes take in the illustration on the page. The destruction and death sprayed across the book. Slowly he drops his hand and lets me continue the story.

  “But the force field wasn’t put up in time to avoid all destruction. The islands were hit for hours before the field was up and running, leaving the cities and towns completely demolished.” I scan the graphic image of the rubble island until slowly we turn the page together. “The first few years following the shower were spent rebuilding civilization on the Hawaiian Islands. Society had to completely start from the beginning. During the shower the islands shifted along the Earth’s plate until finally settling.”