Chapter Sixteen
“Do we really have to do this now?” I moaned.
Shasa glared at me. “It won’t take long.”
“I want to go to sleep!” Visola complained.
“It’ll just take ten minutes, that’s all. I just want us all to discuss tomorrow, and feel prepared for it.”
“We’ve been preparing for seven years!” I reiterated for the millionth time.
Shasa walked over to me sternly. “Please Gamba. I don’t want to fight…”
“Fine!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in the air and storming over to one of the sofas. I threw myself down onto it, next to Madzimoyo, who was once again lost in his own world of literature. Visola and Shasa sat opposite us, on the adjacent settee. I was getting sick of being in this communal living room, and I was bored of having meetings. I just wanted to be where the action was.
It was late. I was tired. I just wanted this day to be over. I had drained every single ounce of energy in my body, and my nice soft mattress was calling for me.
“Now about tomorrow,” Shasa began, as if she was giving a lecture to a room full of hundreds of people, “they said that we would investigate the ship. So I just want to make sure that we all understand that our mission doesn’t have to involve any fighting…”
I rolled my eyes and groaned loudly.
“Please Shasa, stop saying the same thing over and over again! We understand that you don’t want us to kill anybody! We get it! Give it a rest!”
I jumped up from the sofa and walked towards the door. I needed to sleep.
“I’m going to bed!” I called out as I reached for the door handle.
“Shasa,” Madzimoyo’s voice was calm but firm, “you know I don’t advocate any of us using physical force against other people, but you’ve got to be prepared for that as a real possibility.”
I stopped turning the handle and rushed back over to the empty seat; throwing myself onto it, which made Madzimoyo bounce up and down from the force of my weight. I rubbed my left hand over his almost bald head affectionately.
“Sometimes I really love you, Madz,” I told him sincerely. Madzimoyo shrugged and smiled to himself.
“What is wrong with you Gamba?” Shasa snipped, waving her pointing finger in my face, “You’re always looking for a fight!”
“That’s not true!” I denied.
“Look at what happened this afternoon!”
“You told me to attack the Ventus! You signalled for me to do it!” I was furious. “Don’t accuse me of something that isn’t true! That’s not fair!”
Her arm dropped to her side and she exhaled loudly, wiping her right palm across her forehead.
“You’re right Gamba. I’m sorry.”
“You need to give it a rest, Shasa.” Visola warned her. “Seriously, it’s getting boring now. You’ve got to trust us.”
“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to any of you…”
Shasa began to cry quietly to herself, and Visola hugged her sympathetically.
“The Ventus have been through these things before,” Madzimoyo stated, “so let’s just follow their lead. Niyol seems to know what he’s doing.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Madzimoyo looked at me earnestly. “Don’t tell me you still don’t trust them?”
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to think anymore. I just wanted to go to sleep. I was so tired that my eyelids were falling shut all by themselves…
“Sefarina seems really nice,” Visola defended, “and Aura’s pretty cool. I agree with Madz about Niyol: I think he knows what he’s talking about.”
“He’s young, Visola. He’s younger than Madz!” I informed her.
“By a few months!” My brother exclaimed.
“He almost got himself, and his sisters, killed. That doesn’t exactly show off his competency as a leader now does it?”
“They’ve only been seriously training for a few months…”
“That’s not an excuse!”
“He made a mistake…”
“He got himself stabbed!”
“But they still won!”
“And I’m not going to lose!” I thundered, pointing my finger around at my siblings. “And I’m not going to lose any of you! You’re all I have! You are the only people in the world who…”
I couldn’t take it anymore. My head was spinning, my eyes were burning and my body felt like it was going to disintegrate. I just wanted to go to bed, to go to sleep.
Once again, I leapt up and started towards the door, but as I was about to open it, I jumped in shock as Babajide flung it open and bounded towards me. We stared at each other for several seconds, before he put his finger to his thick lips and closed the door softly behind him.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered. He started over to my siblings and indicated to follow him, so I did. I had never seen him look so serious before.
As he arrived at the two couches, he bent down and knelt next to Visola, who was sitting on the end of one of them. She watched him intently, realising that something grave was happening. I knelt next to him, but because my head still felt clogged up, decided to just sit on the floor.
“I’ve got something I want to tell all of you, and it’s incredibly important.” He was whispering so quietly that I had to concentrate really hard just to hear his hushed voice.
“Now, more than ever, do I need you to work together as a team, and only trust each other.”
Shasa’s eyebrows rose in confusion, and Madzimoyo moved to the edge of his seat pensively.
“I’ve just left the lab. I wanted to check the results of the blood analysis, from Diane’s hut. It turns out…”
He stopped, looked over his shoulder, then leaned in closer to us all.
“It turns out that, while not yet conclusive, we have a match on the blood. The technicians ran it through our database, and we got a hit.”
“Whose is it?” Shasa begged in desperation.
Babajide shook his head. “The results aren’t yet 100% certain, but it’s clear that it is one of three people.”
I swallowed hard. One of three? No, it couldn’t be…
“The blood belongs to one of the Ventus.”