━━ αθάνατοι ━━
THOUGHTS in my mind were ceaseless at this point, speeding from one corner to another, a chaotic synthesis of every negative and positive detail I could possibly imagine. I felt overwhelmed and underwhelmed, anxious and calm, all at the same time. Time, simply, wasn't enough in my hands to comprehend what had happened in mere moments.
There was too much happening and I was losing count of things which had creeped me out, freaked out my mind and made me question reality. Ever since I had gained consciousness, I felt as if my brain would literally burst out of my skull. As ghastly and dramatic as that may sound, it was exactly how I felt. My eyes had opened to the almost setting sun, its rays prancing around my arms and legs and for a few moments, I felt as if I had woken up after a refreshingly long nap until reality hit me like tons of bricks.
The next thing I noticed was Art, still unconscious and laying in a bed near me. His body seemed so still at that moment that I panicked for a split second until I saw his fingers twitch. He was gaining consciousness like me too. Seeing him this way when our last few moments had been so different made me alert. What was he doing here, unconscious? Had he also felt that pain?
The entire ordeal that followed with Mrs Rose, the nurse, and the doctor had muddled my brain further. Here I was, trying to understand what had felt different since the pain had subsided, what had shifted within my body which made me feel unlike me, and there, the doctor kept on reassuring us that nothing had happened.
Of course, I didn't pay attention to any of the bullshit he fed us.
I felt foreign in my own body. That was the best way I could put it after trying to fathom what had happened for hours. Nothing except that thought was even considered by my mind. Like a chant, it continued in the back of my head, until I no more could.
I wasn't going mad or imagining any of this. I knew it the moment I checked my scars in the washroom and none actually showed up. That is when everything went haywire again. And that is when I began to notice further. Blemishes on my face and arms, scars, birthmarks, nothing existed anymore on my body.
When Art suggested we should leave, I didn't question him or even hesitate for a second, I couldn't. Something within me urged me to not consider any other option. I didn't know his father, but then I didn't know Art too and yet I was ready to leave the life here behind to run away from whatever this was that was happening to us. I gave in without a second thought.
My mind and my body suddenly seemed to have shifted their modes. When I had noticed my eyes in the mirror, I had blinked a hundred times, making sure that this was real. And as much as I hated the acceptance of the same, I knew it was. It was clear to me then that whatever this was, I didn't have answers to it yet but neither did that doctor out there.
Something beyond reality had touched us, and that had caused that agony earlier.
I am not one to believe in folklore and fantasies, but when you stand in front of the mirror, barely recognizing yourself, hearing voices you shouldn't possibly be hearing without a device, feeling more energized than pained; you just know. Scars don't disappear in seconds, neither do eyes glow the way mine did, and for a second I believed that I was hallucinating, I had read too much maybe but when Art walked in through those doors, his eyes shining as bright as mine, the only explanation that remained was that either this was real or we were so high that everything was a hallucination.
Before these thoughts had even begun to haunt me further, Art and I had heard the conversation between his father and the doctor who had clearly lied to us before.
So we aren't high on some drugs, great. I thought, shaking my head because, at this moment, it would have been relaxing to know that someone had spiked the food or the air.
It had surprised me back then, how eager Art had been to leave this place; how even his body became more rigid, his eyes brighter in that darkness when he had heard those words. I couldn't understand how this was the same person who had been that rude to me in the library, barely twelve hours ago, but I didn't have the time or the luxury to. Whatever was happening, it was happening to both of us and everything around me was against trusting anyone but him with this.
Maybe I wouldn't have if this was any simpler, I didn't know him at all. But I knew that he had felt the similar trauma of going through that pain and then waking up this way, the similar shift and he was mirroring all my emotions and as miserable as it sounds, I felt better about not being alone in this chaos. Something about what had happened to us had not only changed something within us but even between us.
So, I had taken a risk. While he was hearing his father talk, a part of me had shifted focus completely on him. Just because I trusted him with this, didn't mean I was blind. No, he wasn't anything like me before we had found each other in the infirmary. And that part of him, I still didn't know, so obviously, I didn't trust.
Today morning seemed a distant, distraught memory now and soon I forgot about even remembering it as we jumped out of the window of the infirmary. Even after we left the building, we could hear Mrs Rose chatting with the doctor about dinner.
They didn't know, certainly not yet.
It was a short walk to the dorm rooms but Art was visibly on the edge. I trailed behind him, my eyes constantly looking behind to check on the staff. As we entered the dorms, we had been hit by sounds, from each and every direction. It was like a sudden wave of displeasure, to hear their piercing noises hit my ears. And that was the reason I was hurrying up now, stuffing anything and everything my eyes could fall upon which I thought I would need.
"No books," Art muttered, standing in a distant corner of my room, shadowed by the absence of light. With this newfound ability to clearly look through, I knew he was rolling his eyes at me. For a second, all of this seemed fun, until I remembered where I was and what I was exactly doing this packing for.
"Just two," I said, eyeing my cabinet.
"They'll be here by the time you select, Aethera!" He grumbled, throwing his already packed bag on my bed. "Get aside," He muttered, lightly pushing me away and towering in front of my cabinet. He picked up two books, from either of the shelves; one classic, one modern fiction, and stuffed them in my bag for me. I should have felt offended, and rebelled probably because this was the first time someone except me had touched my shelf. It was like someone walked all over my personal space, no exaggeration whatsoever. But time and panic didn't leave me a second to be annoyed any further.
"There you go, just enough," He mumbled, grabbing his bag, ready to leave.
I went through mine quickly and then it struck me, I had missed the most significant thing I had actually owned.
"Art, wait!" I called out just before he could open the door for us. "I forgot something,"
"Fast," He said in an urgent tone. I, too, could sense the girls coming back from dinner. I opened my wardrobe in a haste and searched for the little chest at the back. The caretakers at my orphanage had given it to me when I had turned eighteen. They had said it was the only thing that was sent to the orphanage, along with a one-year-old me. I had come to call it my mother's necklace because that was the only thing that had made any sense but in all honesty, no one knew whom it belonged to as much as they were unaware of who had sent me.
It was an aged coin pendant with a long chain, which made it fall right between my chest. The pendant had a silver moon inscribed on its surface with something written on the back in a distinct script that I couldn't understand, but one day hoped to. I had kept it hidden in the same chest it had been delivered to me in. I don't know what made me so hesitant to wear it, but the fact that it was a reminder of a past I had no clue about, angered me. That, however, didn't mean I was ready to disappear without this in my possession. I stuffed it in a small corner of the duffle bag I had packed. Ten minutes later, Art and were running out of the dorms, seconds before Cassandra and her group walked in from the other side of the corridor we had just fled from.
"How are we going to get out of this place?" I asked him when we were far from the dorms, heading towards the other end of the property which was the mostly empty part of the estate.
"Western gate," he replied instantly and then continued further. "There is a small opening in the wall near the western gate, we just need to be careful with the guards," he explained, and it seemed like this wasn't the first time he was going there.
We were a few meters away from the gate, still walking on the single pathway that led to it, when Art grabbed my arm, and we hit another path, dusted and created by constant travel. I looked back at once and realized the guards hadn't noticed us.
"Do you come here often?" I asked him and he nodded.
"Usually in the evenings, sometimes at night with a flashlight," He said, a light chuckle following.
"What's funny about that?" I questioned in confusion.
"I don't have a flashlight with me tonight," He said, turning to face me for a split second, a small smile on his face. "I had night blindness until last night," he said, looking away from me as if he was ashamed to reveal it.
"What do you mean by had? It disappeared?" I asked, even though I knew the answer. Suddenly the smile on his face was replaced by a blank expression, a reminder that not just this small ailment, but many more things had seemed to have ended after that incident.
"I guess," he replied and looked back ahead, his hand still grabbing onto my wrist, leading me on an unknown path. It didn't sit right with me, how different he seemed in the moonlight, far away from the campus I had been so used to seeing him, minutes away from escaping the Academy. A lot of things actually didn't sit right with me, even if I didn't have any time to think about them.
But now that we were moments away from leaving, I tried to think about it, I tried to think how we had never talked until this morning, how his thick British accent had never been this clear to my ears, how I had never thought of this day, yet, here we were. But then no one thought of something like this. What even was this?
I knew my time in this place was limited the moment I had woken up. I don't know why and how, but I had known.
Suddenly the walls of the Academy felt more than a place I had been stashed away for a couple of years, they seemed contradictory and suffocating. I wanted to be out of there more than anything else in the world. It baffled me because such emotion, to this degree, had never passed my consciousness until tonight.
Back then, when we had heard about his father sending his men for us, a distant memory had flashed in front of my eyes, triggered further by Art asking us to leave. A few years ago, I had had the same thought. Where we were headed right now, was a place I had once thought of escaping to, but never did. I had many opportunities, the orphanage would have never thought of searching for me there, but I had chosen against it. Tonight, I had been faced with the same situation - to find this place again, to escape to it, or not.
And I had made a different choice than the one I had made before.
"Aethera," Art's voice called me back and I noticed the wall a few meters in front of us. Sure enough, there was an opening in the corner, surprisingly visible to my eyes even from this distance. It was just enough for one person to get out of so when we neared it, I gave my bag to Art and easily slipped through it. Art threw our bags to me after that and made his own way.
He dusted his jeans, took the bag from me, and then opened the small tourist map we all had in our dorms, but never used.
Believe it or not, we had ditched our phones and left them in the dorms by themselves. Not that it mattered to me, I didn't have a single phone number saved on it except Leah's. It was a gift from the orphanage which I didn't need anymore. But Art on the other hand had thrown his phone at the back of his wardrobe after switching it off. He didn't look back even for a second, even when we packed and left his room.
Unlike me, he seemed far more focused, far more in control. I had only provided us with the address of the place we could hide at, but Art, within minutes knew how to escape the Academy, how to reach the place I had opted for, how to hit the town for necessities, all with a map.
He had everything figured out.
"Alright, we need to walk straight until we hit the road, cross it and then walk straight for about five more minutes, then leave for La Conner," Should I be scared or infuriated at how composed and mature he's being about this?
I wanted him to freak out. I wanted both of us to freak the fuck out and wail and panic over whatever in the name of our worst nightmares was going on. And because that's not happening to me, I wish that would happen to him. It feels horrible on my part, to wish something like this upon someone, but I couldn't help it. I want this to be more natural, more real. I want one of us to actually feel the crumpled situation we have stepped into. It won't make anything better, but it will make this more humane.
I don't want to feel this composed, I don't want to leave this place without feeling emotional or deranged about it, but I feel nothing. I feel nothing as I look back at the wall we just escaped through, nothing as I notice the lights of the building emitting their soft glow when we are crossing the road and nothing as I realize that hours ago I had mentally planned a calm day ahead of me, with certainly no escape plans.
But all I feel is the need to walk away further, to stop thinking about what has happened, and think about what will happen if I don't leave this place and this life. Any moment now, they will know we aren't in the infirmary anymore. Maybe they already know and are rushing towards the dorms to track us, but we don't know, we can't hear the voices anymore, they no more ring in my mind at least.
"Step back," Art said, bringing me back to reality. We had crossed the road and were at the other end of the forest that enveloped the Academy's estate again. He bent down, in the middle of the small clearing we had found ourselves in and searched for something through the leaves for a minute. I didn't understand at first until I moved and stood beside him.
There was something below the stack of leaves in front of me, hidden by a dirty old green cloth which Art found and threw back, leaves falling everywhere around me to reveal a small ditch, just enough for a dirtbike to be laid out flat and hidden.
"What the -" I gasped, stepping back as Art lifted it up, cleaning the seats and grabbing the helmets placed near it. "How did that thing get here?" I questioned. How does a whole dirt bike bury itself in the middle of a goddamn forest?
"Archie and I bought it the day we stepped into the Academy," Art replied, his eyes focused on the bike. "We use it to get to the closest towns some nights," he added, so nonchalantly as if it was a daily routine for him.
"You've broken...quarantine?" I questioned, my eyebrows scrunching in confusion. We lived in a bio-secure bubble, no one, not even the guards were allowed to leave until yesterday and he was using a dirtbike to get around? Art chuckled in response at first, which only baffled me further.
"Aethera, half the Academy has! Do you really expect everyone to sit around for months? The route I just took you through, everyone used to use it until yesterday to get the fuck out of here right after the lights were turned off," His chuckle broke into a laugh as he revved the engine, asking me to sit behind him.
"Is there no other transportation option?" I asked, taking a hesitant step towards the dirt-no-death bike. I mean, that thing wasn't even made for two people in the first place!
"I'm afraid not, Your Highness," he said, thickening his accent further, purely out of sarcasm.
"Whatever," I sat behind him, taking the helmet from his waiting hands, hesitant to place my hands on his back but when the horrid thing began to actually move, I had no option, my hands had automatically clutched his shoulders.
We went back on the same path we had taken to reach here until we were meters away from the road but then Art stopped and slid the bike back into the thick shrub-lined path and soon I noticed why.
They were here. If I focused ahead, I could hear their engines as clearly as I was hearing the bike's a few moments ago. It came from our right, still distant but about to pass us in barely a minute.
"Shit! They're here faster than I expected; they should have taken at least half an hour more," he grumbled, "But don't worry, they won't notice us." Art reassured me. I knew they won't. We were still hidden behind bushes and gigantic trees. Plus the two cars that were headed our way would enter the western gate of the campus, which was still far away. They won't slow down to actually look in the middle of the forest, no one would. As I had predicted, the two darkened SUVs crossed us moments later, their windows tinted. They didn't stop or even slow down but that didn't mean we were out in the clear.
But we both knew what would follow once they would reach. If they hadn't noticed us escaping until now, they would be searching for us within minutes.
"We don't have much time," I said as Art hit the road. We were soon racing in the opposite direction as the cars. He was right though, they shouldn't have been here this fast. Did this mean Art's father was that eager to have us removed from this place? Whatever it did mean for them, it only meant one thing for us; we had to get out of here faster than we had expected.
"It's okay, they'll search the campus first before they realize we're not even there," Art screamed over the wind but even if he had muttered those words, I knew I could have heard him. "They won't know," he added later, in a lower tone, as if reassuring himself or finally aware of the fact that I could hear him.
"Okay," I replied, shifting my attention away from him. The forest spread quietly on either side of the road. But, I could hear bats cruising over our heads. If I focused more, I could hear water rushing in the distant corner in the form of a creek and birds that surrounded us, resting on the branches of the trees. Cicadas wailed around us as we sped away from the forest in the dark. As Art drove us away from the only place I had come near to calling home, I finally had a minute to breathe. To open my senses and notice them for the first time.
Unlike before, it didn't alarm me. When I had noticed my eyes, it had scared the living hell out of my existence, but now, when my ears were hearing things over the grumbling engine, far away in the forest, I didn't care. It felt different but I was not hating it, I was actually enjoying it at that moment.
I tested my eyes after that, moving my face away from Art's back where it had been hidden before. I looked to my right, trying to focus on the passing forest and it came as easy as breathing, to anchor myself to every detail that passed us. I noticed a bird resting, I looked through the forest in the shadow until I no more could, I noticed a leaf falling on the edge of the road, and I noticed an owl looking at us from such a distance that no one should have been able to spot him.
But I did.
Soon enough, the landscape around me changed. The road was now illuminated with street lights and cul-de-sacs began to appear. Minutes later, we were in the heart of a quiet town, La Conner, the nearest town to the Academy. A few cars passed us, possibly couples going back home after a hard day's work. When we paused near the only traffic light in the centre of the town, a car parked itself near us. I noticed a little girl in the back, playing with her elder brother while her parents laughed at something in the front. I wanted to tear my eyes away from them, to not feel the absence of what they had, in my life. But I didn't. I continued to watch them until the lights changed and Art sped in a different direction from them. We reached a supermarket in less than a minute.
"I'll handle the shopping," I told him, heading there as soon as I got off the bike.
"No," Art was fast to react, grabbing my hand. The sudden touch should have made me squeal, step away, or for my heart to speed up. Instead, the opposite happened, it calmed me. It felt familiar and natural for some reason so I didn't protest.
"But that'll just make things faster. We don't have time, Art. I am pretty sure they know we aren't at the Academy anymore. They will be heading to town next," I argued.
"Which is why we can't go in different directions!" he was being persistent, there was suddenly an urgency in his voice. "Aethera, it'll take me a minute or lesser to withdraw money, we can think about what we need until then, but we stick together. If they find even one of us and if the other isn't around..."
"I get it," We would be lab rats by the end of the day.
I didn't know much about Art but I knew from the way he had reacted after hearing his father that he didn't trust him with this any more than I did. He was more eager than me to flee. The way he thought of everything, the way he knew exactly where to go and what to do, I knew he had thought of this beforehand as well.
"There is no way my parents are going to figure this out for me," Art said as if reading my mind. "There is no way anyone except us is going to know about this," I nodded while Art went ahead and withdrew money from the ATM outside the building of the supermarket.
I don't know what I would have done had Art, or anyone else not been in this situation with me, if I had been alone in that infirmary, clueless. Would I have given up and let someone take me away? Whatever money was left in my account by the orphanage was controlled by the administration at the Academy and would be, until I would have passed out of the course so escaping would not have been very convenient.
If I had gone through this alone, I know if not Art's father, someone else would have taken me away. I knew that from the moment I heard the doctor talk about this in such disbelief as if he hadn't even heard of such a case before that this was dangerous. Obviously, even I knew that your entire blood type doesn't change within hours, that you're not normal if you have such senses but I think a part of me was still in denial.
I was aware of everything happening around me, I could hear every voice in the back of my head, yet, I followed Art as if I knew nothing, submerged in my thoughts.
If someone passed us, they would think I wasn't noticing anything, that I was blank or even not in my senses, as the man with me left my hand to grab us a shopping cart at the supermarket and I stood frozen at the entrance, waiting for him. But I knew everything. It was nearly impossible not to notice everything that passed through and beside me. I could hear every single voice and noise in that gigantic hall of a supermarket and it should have freaked me out but that's not what I felt anymore.
Once we hit the aisles, I tuned out the voices, throwing them in the back corner of my mind, and walked in front of the cart, stashing in whatever felt necessary. Band-aids, scissors, knives, ready-to-eat meals, a pan, lighter, snacks, water, caps, two windcheaters, and a pair of hiking boots for each of us. I knew what our destination was and I also knew that hiking wasn't necessarily on our list but I didn't want to take chances. A part of me felt we had more running to do in the near future.
Ten minutes later, we were holding an additional bag each and speeding away from this place as well.
"Take the next right," I told Art as soon as we were exiting the town from the other end. His part of the plan ended right here. When we had left the infirmary, Art had told me he would get us out of here and take us through the town, everything else was up to me.
"Take the second left," I kept on giving him directions. He didn't hesitate, he didn't question me. He should have, I was making him drive us to the middle of nowhere. It was almost nine-thirty in the night, and the gates of the orphanage would be closed off by now. There won't be anyone around except this one guard who slept through most of the night.
"Are we going to an orphanage?" Art asked as we parked his bike a few meters away from the gate.
"No, just somewhere near it." I strapped the bag against my waist, turning in the opposite direction of the gate I had been so accustomed to seeing but didn't have the energy to face tonight. "You'll have to drag that thing with you," I told him.
Art started to follow me through the thick forest that ran parallel to the orphanage I had lived in for years. I hadn't ever used this route, I had only seen it from a distance but this was our only chance to get where we wanted to with that death bike.
"There is a house," I began to tell him as we walked deeper into the darkness that enveloped the forest, "It's behind the orphanage, hidden by the forest. I found it years ago and a month before I was about to come to the Academy, its owner passed away," I said, explaining to him finally where we were headed. He had followed through with the entire plan just to reach this place which I had told him nothing about so I felt like I owed him an explanation.
"Oh, you lived around here as well?" Art asked. Suddenly, I felt hesitant to respond. Of course, he didn't know. He hadn't known my name until this morning, let alone how I had ended up at the Academy.
"I lived at the orphanage," I tried to reply as nonchalantly as possible.
"I'm sorry, I had no idea," it won't take a genius to spot the pity in his voice but I had learned to ignore it a long time back. He wasn't the first one to pity me after hearing it and he won't be the last as well. Before I could continue, Art added another question, "Did you know the owner?"
"No, I read about him in the local newspaper," I replied, glad that we had moved past the topic of my residence, "I used to...um, how do I put this?" I used to break into the cottage to read in peace, but how would I explain that to this guy.
"Trespass?" Art suggested, breaking into a short laugh.
"Something like that," I mumbled while he continued to control his laugh.
"I didn't take you for someone who would break rules. I mean, you're probably the only one who didn't know the infamous sneak-out path of our campus," he said, after a few seconds.
"I didn't take you for someone who would actually leave the Academy," I added but in response, he stiffened and I realized my mistake. "I'm sorry-" I began to apologize, mentally face-palming myself. Art had just left his entire life behind as well and here I was, putting it in a conversation as if nothing had happened.
"No, no, it's okay," he shook his head as the gates of the house came near, "Now that we're stuck together in this offbeat situation, I don't mind telling you that this isn't the first time I have planned about leaving that place," he let out a breath almost in relief. I understood why that was something he couldn't have ever talked about before. Why would someone, who had everything, walk away without a second thought? What kind of madman would turn into a runaway and give up that kind of status and money, that kind of life that his parents had built for him?
But Art wanted to, and tonight, he did.
"Me too," I sighed and Art turned to face me, his eyebrows scrunched in confusion, "This place belonged to someone named James Royce. He worked in Seattle a few years back, and hardly visited this place. He died without a family and this house, at least until I was still at the orphanage, was never visited by anyone after his death and it's just there, forgotten and hidden," We were in front of the gate by the time I continued further, "I had nothing figured out back then actually, but days before they sent me to the Academy, I wanted to escape to this place and...I don't know, hideout?"
"Makes sense, it's pretty decent," Art shrugged as we stashed the bike near a tree, easily climbed the seven-foot-long gate, and jumped to the other side. True, it was pretty decent. I had never been inside the actual two-storied house, but there was a door at the back which could have been easily broken by anyone. The garden has always been untamed and wild which is how I knew no one cared to visit and tame it and, sometimes I would just walk into the backyard, sit on the mahogany table below the tree and read until sunset. When the sun would actually show up on winter mornings, I would tell the staff at the orphanage that I was heading to the town, only to spend my mornings and afternoons here.
All of that seemed so strange, so unfamiliarly distraught now. Standing in this garden, gazing at the house in this darkness seemed bizarre. I had never been here past sunset. But seconds later, when Art broke the backdoor of the house with a single strike, it suddenly seemed more realistic than ever before. I had actually absconded and found a place I had always wanted to hide out in, with a person, I didn't even know or care to talk to until this morning.
And now, as far as I knew, it would take Sherlock Holmes to find us within the next few days.
Until then, I would figure out what the hell had happened to us.
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Thank you for reading!