CHAPTER TEN
But she could not sleep. When her older brother left, she timidly got out of bed and looked at the faces of her family who were sleeping--Lir, Nela, Benjamen, and her papa. Their faces were dirty and worn-looking, as though they were sick.
With tears in her throat, she kneeled down before her papa and said, "Even if they capture you they will not have you forever, because they will not have me."
It was at that moment that she began to hear the whisperings--at first like someone crumpling a piece of paper, then growing in clarity.
She grabbed her heart and stood. Was it the whisperings of her people?
She closed her eyes and staggered backwards, feeling like she was going to faint when she realized what it really was--it was the whisperings of the humans!
She caught only a few words here and there, like kill, dangerous, and painful. She pressed her tiny, white fingers to her temples and moaned silently. It was the vibrations of the hatred, now coming to try and claim her.
No! She would not let this seduction take hold of her. She realized, suddenly, that it was now happening because she was in such close proximity to those that she loved--those that she loved who had already succumbed to it.
It would have been so easy for her, in that moment, to cry out passionately her desire for revenge against the astronauts for taking her family, but she stopped herself. She would only be letting the evil defeat her, as well. And God willing, she knew that she was the one who would save them all.
The whisperings continued. She felt two tears drop from her eyes as she looked through pain at her family. She wanted desperately to save them from the sickness that had grabbed hold of their hearts, but she also knew that she did not yet have the strength to do so. The prophecies stated it best: she would likely have to die in order to truly rescue them.
She kissed her papa's forehead, and his skin felt damp and cold. She closed her eyes again and got up, walking to the other side of the room. "I will never let you win," she said.
As quickly as they came, the voices vanished. As she looked out the window, she could see Arista rising up from the horizon, brilliantly orange and the clouds surrounding it pink and purple. The gray cumulus clouds in the sky higher up were moving swiftly with the wind, and among them and almost camouflaged by them Eve could see a hovercraft descending towards the planet.
Someone stirred. "...Eve?" It was Lir, the older of her two sisters.
"Go back to bed, Lir."
"You're back. Are you hurt?"
She turned to face her sister. "They captured the people in the cave. I was among them when it happened."
"Oh, no! All of them?"
"Don't worry about it now, Lir." Lir, wearing a dressing gown, rose and crossed the room. She then touched Eve on the arm. Eve looked up at her.
"I have not succumbed, Eve," she said.
Eve nodded at her, then feeling gratitude that could not be measured by the deepest seas in the universe. "Then you're the only one in our family."
At camp, Anthony was washing his hands when he overheard General Garrison talking with Kingston Smyth.
"I've put that Novacadian, the one that ran away, back in her house, but she's shackled to her bed. Hopefully we'll get no more trouble out of that one."
"Um, sir," Anthony interrupted. "Don't you think that's a little harsh? You've already got the force fields, and plenty of armed men manning the village."
The general swiveled his eyes to Anthony. "Harding, don't you remember that one of them recently found a way to break the force fields? You were even there. It took seven men to hold him down."
"But we've made updates to the system since then. We found the problem and fixed it. With all due respect, sir,"
General Garrison raised his eyes to him. "...Yes?"
"Part of our mission in coming here was to pose as allies to the Novacadians, and I don't see how shackling them to their beds will make them trust us anymore."
The general nodded. "I see what you're saying. So you want us to release her from her restraints, is that it?"
"Well, at least get someone to do it that they trust."
"Like you?"
"Well, they did let me into their cave. To me that seems like a pretty big show of trust. And if I release her, they'll trust me even more."
"Very well. You can release the girl. But if she gives us even the slightest problem, I want her in a holding cell."
"I'm on it, sir."