Zoe Thanatos (33 page)

Zoe’s eyes opened still full of
sleep, her mind not yet ready for comprehension. She was still in the land of
far away dreams and did not want to come back to the land of reality.

“I’ve made you your favorite
doughy cakes!”

“Mommy, no. I don’t wanna.” She
could have just closed her eyes and drifted back into dreamland. Her body was
still snuggled deep into the feathery soft bed beneath her.

“Just leave her there if she
doesn’t want to go!” a little girl whined. She sounded as petulant as any one
child could be, her voice ringing high in irritation.

Zoe’s eyes snapped open at once
and blinked into the artificial morning light. She found Zara tapping her foot
impatiently on the floor as she stood in the doorway, her eyes trained
furiously on their mother who was sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Zara why don’t you go eat with
Daddy? Zoe will be out to join you shortly.”

“She better not make us late!”
Zara huffed impatiently. She cast her eyes downward at Zoe before running out
of the room.

Zoe sat up in the bed and pulled
loose strands of dark hair from around her race, twisting them into a knot
behind her neck. Thea smiled down at her, her cheeks full of pink and her eyes
sparkling with a hint of excitement.

“Do you remember what today is,
Zoe?” she asked.

The sleepiness still lingered
but she found herself waking into comprehension as she sat. “Today is a very
important day,” she repeated verbatim from memory, having heard her mother reminding
her of it incessantly for some time.

“Exactly!” Thea gently touched
her index finger and thumb on Zoe’s nose and gave it a light squeeze. “Now, you
haven’t got much time to get ready, so I want you to wash up, get dressed, and
join your sister at the Throne Room. She’s going to make a big announcement.”

Zoe could only blink at her
mother. “What did you say?” she asked, her voice suddenly aging into the voice
of a full grown woman. She looked down and saw her limbs spilling over the
child-size bed she was sitting in. She looked up to her mother and found an
Elder woman’s face staring back at her. Time had not been kind to her mother.
While still beautiful, her face was lined with wrinkles, and dark circles
drooped down beneath her eyes like grey clouds. There looked to be barely any
life left in her.

“The Throne Room, Little
Princess. Only you can put right what Korina Straton made wrong. It must be you
and Evander on the Throne and no one else. Our future depends on it.”

“What am I supposed to do? The
Queen has her Crown Soldiers to do as she commands. How can any one person go
up against a whole army?”

“Your sister was born a Thanatos
but has lived her life as a Straton. She only needs an army because she has
lost the power that lies within her, that is encoded within her very being.
You, on the other hand, have not. You may have forgotten who you are, but
you’ve always remained a Thanatos. There is a reason we are the originally
family, Zoe. Don’t forget what I taught you as a child and all that you’ve
learned from Zopyros.”

“Zopyros didn’t teach me
anything, Mother. He left me to die and then Korina Straton finished the job.
Or maybe Evan never caught me at all and I’ve been dead since jumping off the
cliff on Santa Cruz Island.”

“You mean this place?” A slight
breeze blew through Thea’s hair. They were on the cliff of Potato Harbor, the
Pacific Ocean stretched out for as far as the eye could see.

“How?” Zoe asked as she looked
around, taking in the smell of the salty ocean she had missed so much.

“Little Princess you are still
clinging to the mind of your Gaian identity. You are of the original family.
Our ancestors didn’t create Terra because they liked to build things; they did
it because they had the power to create a new world. That power is within you
and that is why you are the heir to the throne, not Zara.” Thea put her hands
on Zoe’s shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze.

“There is a path all our lives
take and that is the reason you have survived three near deaths. It is you who
is supposed to be on the Throne, not your sister. You must take it back from
her.”

Zoe took in a deep breath of the
ocean air and stared out into the distance. A few dozen miles away was the home
she had lived her Earthly life in, but it seemed like a different lifetime. “I
don’t want to be Queen. I wouldn’t know how.”

“But you do. And when you wake
up you will know it.”

Zoe opened her eyes, immediately
adjusting to the bright artificial light of the Reproduction Unit. She was
laying on a flat metallic surface, still dressed in the clothing Evadine picked
out for her. She quietly lifted her head and took a quick glance around the
room. She was alone.

Next to her was a small metal table
with a tray placed neatly in the center, a series of capped syringes filled
with colorful liquid in each one. The blue syringe would paralyze her muscles
including her heart, rendering her unable to move and incapable of pumping
blood to her body. The green syringe would stop her heart completely, and the
black one would cease all brain activity. It was a veritable death cocktail,
not even as humane as when humans put down domesticated animals on Earth. It
seemed only fitting that in a world where surrogate births created life,
chemical deaths would end them. No stone left unturned in a world intent on
controlling the population of Residents.

She grabbed all three syringes and
tucked them into the waistband at the back of her pants. Whoever was supposed
to be injecting her with the death cocktail would undoubtedly be back soon. The
room was small and clinical looking, with the table she was lying on at the
center of the room. Of the four walls one was made entirely of smoked white
glass, a panel lit in white light on the far right side. Zoe placed her hand on
it and the glass changed from smoky white to transparent, revealing an
adjoining room that looked identical to the one she stood in. A man in a white
uniform was standing over a body on the table, plunging a syringe of black
liquid into their arm.

When he moved to place the syringe
on the smaller metal table she could see the woman’s face clearly, looking back
at her with wide eyes and a small, proud smile. She was as beautiful as she had
been in Zoe’s dream. Her eyes glossed with tears before going still. The
corners of her mouth receded from the smile and her body fell limp into the
table as the life left her. Thea Thanatos, her mother only in her dreams and
memories, was dead.

As the man in white moved to the
small metal table and collected all three syringes, Zoe moved quietly to the
doorway and poked her head out into the hallway, looking left and right before
running towards the door of the adjoining room. She slipped into the room and
removed a syringe from the back waistband of her pants with her right hand as
her left arm went around his chest, her hand covering his mouth. In one swift
motion she uncapped the syringe and stabbed the needle into his jugular,
plunging the black liquid directly into his blood stream. He could barely let
out a stifled scream before his body fell dead to the ground with a thud.

Zoe looked up to the shared glass
wall and saw the empty room she’d woken up in on the other side. How long Thea
had been looking for her, she didn’t know. Somehow she’d known her daughter was
nearby and had waited for just one last glimpse.

She didn’t want to move her head
down, to take in the sight of her dead mother. But she did, and found she
looked peaceful, seemingly at rest. Her eyes were still open, the image of Zoe
on the other side the last thing she saw before her brain function shut down.
With gentle fingers she closed her mother’s eyelids, feeling the smooth skin
beneath her touch, still warm from life.

The Forgotten Gardens came to mind.
Had her soul, or whatever facsimile of a soul she had, already gone there? Perhaps
Thea was at rest in the beautiful space, her soul reunited with Zopyros, her
sisters and mother, her ancestors, as all the Thanatos souls had gone to rest
before her.

She was alone again as she had been
in Gaia, an orphan with no family. All that remained of the Thanatos family was
a brother and her sister. Zarek was in another world living a completely new
life as she had in Gaia, and Zara was living as the Queen, as Kyra Straton,
also in a completely different life. 

Zoe laced her fingers through Thea’s
hands and moved her arms until they were resting carefully on her chest. With a
final squeeze she let go, arranging her mother’s hands so they rested on one
top of the other just below her heart.

“I’ll be with you soon,” she
promised, her voice just a whisper in the clinical room. She secured the
remaining two syringes in the back of her pants before turning and heading out
the room for the Throne Room.

Eva was escorted by two Crown
Soldiers behind the large black wall that partitioned the Throne Room. The
escort wasn’t necessary but she felt it would be imprudent to suggest
otherwise. They were a mere few feet from the entryway to the Nero Residence
when the Soldiers stopped at the entrance to the Royal Residence. Eva said
nothing as the doors opened and several Crown Soldiers stepped backwards,
nodding their heads slightly in reverence to her.

One of the Queen’s ladies dressed
in a traditional purple gown greeted Eva with a fixed smile.

“Welcome home, Evadine Nero. My
name is Julia. Please follow me and I’ll escort you to your new residence.”

There must have been a mistake. Was
she being moved to an outlying city far away from her brother? No, that
couldn’t be it. Why would one of the Queen’s ladies take her to a residence
outside Royal City?

When Eva did not reply, Julia
turned and walked away. The two Crown Soldiers behind her motioned for her to
follow. She did so, weaving past the expansive common room to a part of the
residence she’d never seen before. An entire wing expanded out from the main
area, and a series of smaller residences were tucked away behind closed doors
spaced distantly from each other. Julia opened one of the first doors and
stepped aside, motioning for Eva to enter first.

It was the size of the common room
in the Nero Residence, large and impeccably decorated with sectionals of
modular seating in crisp white colors, a dining area that could seat at least
six people, and at least three bedrooms that branched off from the main common
area. The glass walls ebbed with a soft golden light that cast a soft glow on
every white surface.

“Why am I here when I have my own
Residence? One that I’ve lived in for most of my life,” she reminded, looking
to Julia and the two Crown Soldiers expectantly.

Julia smiled politely and bowed her
head ever so slightly. “As a member of the royal family you are entitled to a
private apartment in the Royal Residence. Two of the Queen’s ladies will be
appointed to your residence for your personal needs. If you require anything at
all please do not hesitate to request it.”

As a member of the royal family?
Eva took a swift look around. While the accommodations were decidedly swankier
than the considerably nice dwelling she’d grown up in, there was no escaping
that she was even more in royal custody than before. And only a few doors down
from the Queen at that.

“We’ve taken the liberty of moving
your personal belongings from your old residence so that you can become
instantly acquainted with your new home. Her Highness requests that you please
change into formal dress and accompany her to the Throne Room for the official
proceedings. Do you have any questions?”

She had many, but none that she
would dare ask. Julia and her two escorts excused themselves from the room,
leaving her alone for the first time since releasing her from the holding cell.
What is going on?
she wondered. There wasn’t time to dwell on questions
no one but Evan could provide answers to, and he was nowhere to be seen. She
quickly changed into a formal dress that had been laid out for her, probably by
one of her new servants, and ran her fingers through her hair before making her
way into the Royal common room.

As she entered everyone stood,
their backs to her and attention on something on the other side of the room.
Eva made her way through the throng of people and stopped when every head in
the room bowed. The Queen entered the room from her private residence dressed
in a resplendent green gown and sparkling golden crown, Evander at her side.
He, too, was dressed in formal attire, and much to her surprise also wore a
simple golden crown at the top of his head. In the shock of the moment she
failed to bow and stood out amongst the crowd of bent heads. The Queen’s eyes
were on her but her face revealed nothing. Eva knew better than to not bow in the
presence of the Queen, but was too taken aback by the sight of Evan as King to
remember the formalities.

Evander did not speak a word, but
merely stared at her intently with bright green eyes that were set off by the
Queen’s own dress. As the moment passed the Residents present in the room stood
up straight again, and Eva could see in her peripheral vision several
incredulous glances from the others.

Eva watched in continued
fascination as her brother bowed his head to the Queen before releasing her hand
and walking straight for Eva, every Resident between them parting to make a
pathway for him. He embraced her in a hug and met her cheek with a chaste kiss.

“You said we all have a part to
play,” he whispered hoarsely in her ear. He took a step back and Alcander
appeared at his side, dressed in his military finest. “Walk behind us in the
processional,” Evan instructed before turning back towards the Queen, giving
Alcander a brief look as he did. The soldier held his arm out to her and she
linked hers around it, not knowing what else to do in the state of shock she
felt stuck in. The Queen Mother emerged second, dressed in an equally beautiful
blue gown that made her blue eyes all the more piercing. She had her usual air
of satisfaction and superiority, and a smile that could cut glass.