Chapter Eighteen
I paced up and down the room, my small feet slapping steadily against the cold stone floor. It was almost morning, and I had been awake half of the night walking the same route across my bedroom: a straight line that began at my bed and ended at my steel bookcases. I was both excited and terrified. I was also upset.
Babajide’s words echoed in my mind: the blood belongs to one of the Ventus. I still couldn’t quite get my head around it. First we were told that they’re traitors, then we discover they’re not, only to then uncover that they are? It was so elaborately confusing that it made me feel dizzy. But then again, I probably felt that way because I had been walking around in circles for several hours.
Madzimoyo was right though. There had to be a simple explanation. Something that made logical sense. I loved Madz. He always saw things that no one else did. He was also able to piece things together and then explain them in a way that was easy to understand. He was really intelligent, and I loved him for it.
His three explanations ran around in my mind on a loop. The Ventus were traitors after all. Someone planted the blood. Babajide was a liar. I didn’t want any of them to be ‘truth’. All of them would lead down a path that I didn’t want to tread. Even though I was primed to fight, as I had been preparing to my entire life, I really didn’t want to have to go against the Ventus.
I remembered the feeling of dread that had overwhelmed me when Sefarina pinned me against the wall. I was frozen in place. I couldn’t move. It was horrific. I had been screaming inside, and trying with all my might to fight against her, but there was nothing I could do. Luckily I could still control my ‘walking waterfall’ as I referred to it, which gave me some means of attacking Niyol while I was paralysed.
A cold wisp of air crawled down my spine. I shuddered. The thought of us going against the Ventus again, without them holding anything back… They were so powerful. Without much water around, Team Aqua were at a complete disadvantage. Gamba had seriously misjudged their abilities. And while we were clearly better at hand to hand combat, their powers could stop us in our tracks before we even got close enough to lay a finger on them…
It didn’t help that Shasa and Madz weren’t really prepared to fight, and also weren’t very good at it. Shasa was amazing in the water, but couldn’t do much out of it. And Madz… his plant creatures may have their uses, but he rarely used them offensively. In fact, I think that was the first time I had ever seen him use them in combat…
I shook their powers from my mind. Gamba was tough. He was strong. And so was I. My bubbles didn’t look like much, but they were lethal. And my ability to control the water… I didn’t have the chance to demonstrate that I could make water spouts fly through the air at targets. Gamba called them my ‘water arrows’, even though they looked more like tentacles. My general power to make water travel upwards was a definite strength, but the fact of the matter was that in front of the Ventus, I looked weak. And if one of them really was working for the Inimicus, they would be sure that they could defeat us.
But who could it be? Niyol? I guessed that he could have suffered some sort of post-traumatic stress after being stabbed, but would that really turn him against his sisters? Unless Valeska had gotten to him first, but if that was the case, why would he have killed her? Surely he would have saved her, and she wouldn’t have stabbed him? Unless he developed some sort of infatuation that continued after she died and, mixed with guilt for her death, he decided to carry on what she began…?
Then there was Aura, who was strong and confident and beautiful. Why would she turn against the Elementus Populas? Because she wasn’t Primus? Because she resented her brother? Because she hated Sigwald? And Sefarina… a girl so genuine and lovely, I couldn’t imagine her doing anything horrible to anyone. She was filled with love and the spirit of servitude, just like Shasa and Madz. She didn’t have a nasty bone in her body. Or did she? Maybe her ‘loveliness’ was all just an act that Valeska had taught her? Maybe she was harbouring some dark secret, one that forced her to act against her nature and turn to the enemy?
I shook my head from side to side until my brain became fuzzy and I felt ill. I always overanalysed everything. I thought too much about things, and it just made my head pound and my stomach hurt. I didn’t really believe that any of them were Inimicus. I could just… tell. Ever since they had arrived I had felt some sort of connection with them. I wouldn’t say it was spiritual, but it certainly seemed like I felt an instinctive bond with them. When we fought, it was really difficult to even use my powers to harm them. It somehow felt… wrong.
And that’s because it was. They were Elementals. We were Elementals. There were only ten of us in existence at any one time. If one of us died, we were all weaker because of it. We had to work together, or risk certain destruction by falling apart.
My mind raced back to the lessons we had many years ago on the Elementals of the past. Some of them had worked very closely with one another, whereas some of them had huge fallings out and began fighting amongst themselves. Many innocent civilians died in the clashes, which were always dismissed as ‘unnatural weather conditions’ or ‘natural disasters’. I had always wanted to know more about the team before us, the 34th group of Elementals, but Babajide usually avoided my questions about them. I sensed that the Elementus Populas wanted to distance themselves from them. One time Babajide had muttered something about how, ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it had been a much harder job for the Elemental teams to protect the environment. Was that because the previous Elementals had rebelled, and all chosen their own separate paths?
It was strange to think that somewhere in the world, wherever the Elementus Populas main base was, where the Supernus operated, there were images or visual depictions of every single group of Elementals going back almost 2000 years. After Mount Vesuvius erupted, which is believed to be caused by rogue Elementals, the Elementus Populas was set up, and had monitored 34 groups of humans with supernatural powers. And we were the 35th, but still weren’t a complete group, so hadn’t yet been commemorated and titled as such. They still had to find the Ignis, who was presumably out there somewhere.
I found the whole history of the group fascinating, as did Madz. I knew that, if the opportunity ever came up, we would both love to go to the Head Office and explore the archives and discover more about those who came before us. It was weird to think that only a handful of people in the entire world knew about our existence, and that we had been hidden so successfully for such a long time.
But that’s how I knew the Ventus weren’t working for the Inimicus. I was sure that if they were working against us, we would just know. It would be instinctive. We could feel it. And during the short time I had already spent with them, I had felt as if they were members of my close family. We shared a sacred bond; and supernatural one too. And it wasn’t something that I was imagining.
I knew that if I told Gamba how I felt, he would say that I just wanted to be close with them because we didn’t have any other friends. He knew how lonely I was, and how desperate I was to leave the island and explore the world. I had always wanted to go with Shasa and Madz to the mainland, but there had never really been any reason for me to. So instead of exploring the world out there, I made sure that I knew everything about the world in here. I knew every inch of the Aqua base by heart, and the people who worked in it too. I always talked to everyone that walked past me, and made sure that I asked them about their lives, their loves, and what the real world was like. I couldn’t help being a sociable person: I just liked listening to people, and trying my best to understand the human mind. It really was captivating.
In my spare time, between physical training sessions and geography, history and language lessons, I read psychology books. I loved The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and also poured over any psychology textbook that I could find. I was currently working my way through two: one about Cognitive Neuroscience and the other about Social Ps
ychology. Social Psychology appealed to me the most; mainly because it was so deeply entrenched in recent history. I found the Minimal Group Experiments fascinating, and it always made me wonder if humans were innately selfish or if they were taught to be that way. But I guessed that no one could ever really definitively answer these sorts of questions, and that is what I found so appealing. It meant that Madz and I could have hour long debates and discussions late at night, ones that couldn’t ever really have solutions.
It was strange how close I was to all of my siblings, especially when they didn’t seem to be close to one another. I could be loving and caring with Shasa, a fighter with Gamba, and an intellectual with Madzimoyo. They all allowed me to develop different sides of myself, but at the same time were unable to find common ground between themselves. I mean, Shasa and Madz both wanted to be charitable, but other than that they weren’t really close. And as for Gamba… he didn’t get along with either of them. He was just so different- he didn’t really share anything in common with them. I think that he saw himself as an outsider, and found that difficult to cope with. He certainly used his bravado as a defence mechanism, but I really wish he wouldn’t.
I shook my head from side to side again, telling myself off. I was doing it again. No wonder I couldn’t sleep. My brain never switched off, and if I wasn’t thinking about training, then I was busy psychoanalysing everyone around me.
I stopped pacing, and crashed down onto my bed, lying flat and looking up at the dull copper ceiling. My exhaustive knowledge of people hadn’t helped me to see through Valeska, or Diane. But that was probably because we weren’t used to liars on Aqua Island. I thought back to what Madz had said hours before about someone planting the blood. Could it have been Diane? Or even Babajide, if he was in fact lying to us all along? Could it be him working for the Inimicus after all? Now that would be a shock…
But it just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t Babajide. But who else had access to the Ventus’ blood? It’s not as if someone could just go up to them and steal blood from them without them knowing, now was it? The only people who could get something like that would be those working at the Ventus base. And there were only three people on the island who did: Sigwald, Captain Harris and Malik.
Maybe Valeska was right about Sigwald being a mole. But then, why would she reveal the identity of a fellow infiltrator, unless it was all part of an elaborate double bluff? And the other two: the Captain and the Trainer. I gathered that they worked pretty high up in the Elementus Populas, so it would be strange if they managed to slip through this entire time without being detected.
I placed my hand on my flat stomach and breathed in, feeling my lungs expanding. I held my breath for a beat, and then expelled the air, listening to the sound that my mouth made as the gust of wind left my body. Perhaps this was a riddle that just couldn’t be solved. Maybe it was like how Francis Bacon described science: as the closest thing to understanding the world that humans can get. We’re not God; we’re not omniscient. We’ll never really know ‘truth’.
I sighed. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach, that this was a puzzle that would be completed. And today was the day that it was all finally going to fit together.
And I was dreading it.