The Proposed Prophecies

The camera above her head continued to blink as she laid on the bed in her room. Blink after another then it stopped. She looked at her watch. It was two minutes after midnight. She expected Jake to arrive at any time now, just like he had said he would. She checked her watch each minute. It felt like forever until she finally heard a slight knock on the door at just a little past twelve thirty. She opened the door and let Jake in. He was wearing a dark military suit, just like the rest of the guards and had his two guns attached to his belt on each side of his hip.

“I have some good news.” He said and sat on her bed whilst glancing around the room. Not that there was much to see, but it felt like he was avoiding her eye contact. “Tomorrow, Eve is transferring your sister Becky into the red zone.” Liv’s heart started to beat faster than ever. “Really?” she asked and he smiled and nodded his head as a yes. Liv could not help her excitement. Life blood seemed to run through her veins again. She jumped onto the bed and hugged Jake tightly. This was the best news she had heard since waking up in the bunker.

Suddenly Jake stood up. It was sort of comical to Liv and she tried not to laugh as he looked really nervous. Normally, he would have walked away, but the confines of her room did not offer such an option. There wasn’t even anything to be even entertained with – there were no pictures on the wall, no books or decorations. Everything in her room was plain.

“So, do you want to fill me in a little on your plan?” She said, trying to fill the awkward silence. He relaxed his face, looking a little less anxious, and she made him a space on the bed. She patted it and he sat on the end, barely even touching the bed, as if half of his body was still in the air.

“You could sit next to me you know. I don’t bite.” She smiled as she remembered his words back in Amy’s house when she had sat on the other sofa across him. It felt strange to sit so close to him. But now the situation was different. He looked like the nervous one and she was the one who was calm. She was calm because she knew that Becky was coming and she would see her soon.

He smiled and shuffled a little closer to her but still kept his distance. “About my plan…” he said and paused. “I am really trying to find the best words to tell you this.” He scratched his head then exhaled. “Me and my team of Alters are planning to fight Eve but she still has far too many Alters on her side. Technically all she has to do is to step down from her post and the next in line would be her son.”

“She has a son?” Liv was surprised. There was so much she didn’t know about Eve but the fact that she had a son was strange. Somehow this made Eve look more human than ever.

Jake explained that the Alter embryos are created in a lab from female egg and male Alter sperm that they have frozen. Then they are placed into a generator to develop for a year and after this are sent to be raised by a certain Alter who would become a mentor to them. “The ability for Alters to conceive on their own is taken shortly after they fully develop to avoid overpopulation just like on earth. That’s why no one thought it was possible for children to be born between humans and Alters… Anyway, Eve had one Alter appointed to her.”

Liv straightened her legs, rested her back against the pillow and looked at him. He still appeared nervous even as he was talking. His voice sounded uneven and took some deep breaths as he spoke.

“How old are you?” she asked and he smiled. “This is irrelevant right now, we should focus on the plan.” She smiled. “Please.” He exhaled. “Thirty eight.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean your human age”.

He smiled again. “About four hundred. I stopped counting after two hundred.” They both laughed. It didn’t even feel strange to hear this. Liv thought this must be because of everything that had happened; nothing looked strange anymore, not even her being attracted to a four-hundred-year-old. She pulled him next to her by his arm and he laid down. He was close, as the bed was only a single bed to begin with and it was hard to have any space in between them. “So what happens after you reach the age of five hundred?” she asked, remembering it mentioned in her grandfather’s diary that Alters live to around five hundred years of age

“We die. But then there is another embryo created instead and we believe that your soul is reincarnated. But I am not sure that this is true.”

She turned her body towards him and placed her hand on his chest. It was covered with a thick and heavy-looking uniform. Her red uniform was light and breathable but his one felt like even a bullet wouldn’t be able to get through.

“I have to tell you something important.” He turned around to face her just as she did. “It is about Eve’s son.”

“What about him?” She felt his hand on hers and the warmth again rushed through her body. He was close and she could hear her own heartbeat.

“You probably know that Eve has some sort of an interest in you, though I am not quite sure what it is yet. I don’t believe she just wants you to rewrite history… there is something else.”

Liv didn’t really care about what he was saying, she already knew that. She was more interested in looking at his full lips as they spoke. “It might have something to do with you being half human and half Alter.” Liv smiled as she already knew that too but realized she had never had this conversation with Jake before.

She kept staring at his lips. They looked very soft and she had an urge to touch them. She had felt nothing but depressed ever since she had come into the bunkers, but this here right now was some kind of wonderful dream. A dream she never wanted to wake up from.

She pressed her lips against his but he pulled back slightly. “I really have to tell you about Eve’s son,” he whispered and his eyes closed. She kissed him again and he pulled back again and opened his eyes. She felt his hand on her waist and his eyes staring at her.

“We should talk first,” he tried to whisper but her lips were forcing him to stop talking and eventually she felt his resistant evaporate. She wished time would stop. She usually wanted it to pass quicker but not this time. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Not her Mother being an Alter, not her being a hybrid, not even Eve or the virus. She had no guilt and pushed forward like there was no tomorrow.

****

Liv opened her eyes and spotted Jake zipping up his uniform. She looked at the watch on her wrist and realized it was shortly after four in the morning. He looked at her, his expression serious “I have to go, the guard will change shifts and the cameras will resume in about half an hour.”

“So we still have half an hour.” She got up and grabbed his arm, pulling him back but he looked nervous again. This surprised her – surely after spending the past few hours with each other he would feel less nervous and awkward. She asked him what was wrong and he sat next to her.

“I should have told you this before anything happened between us.” Liv’s attention was fully on his words this time.

“Eve’s son… is Evan. Evan is Eve’s son.” His words hit her right in her chest and kept repeating over and over again in her mind. She suddenly remembered Evan and Eve walking together into the car on that stormy day when she had driven Tiffany there to ask about her parents. She even remembered him giving her the diaries back, his sad face, the secrets, the time spent together. Memories were popping up like weeds.

“I should have told you before we did anything. I am so sorry.” Jake kept apologizing but she didn’t feel any anger towards him. She was more disappointed at herself as she had misjudged the whole Evan situation.

“I am sorry,” he whispered again and placed his hand on her cheek. She stood up and put her clothes back on and breathed heavily.. She’d had everything figured out wrong. Evan was Eve’s son, not some kind of a lover like she had originally thought.

“So is Evan part of the plan you wanted to talk about?” She sat back on the bed. He shook his head. “Yes. He somehow became attached to you. I think he even might have feelings for you. But we can used this to our advantage. You can turn him against Eve and make him convince her to step down. Even though Evan was raised by Eve, I am sure he would be easier on the Alters and people than she would. He would be a better commander than her.” It was still hard to believe. Now was the time she needed Tiffany to appear and bring her that magical calming vodka in a plastic red cup.

“Why don’t you want to be a commander? I thought that was supposed to be the plan.”

Jake explained he was unable to be a commander as he wasn’t next in line. “Before he died, Axel chose Eve to be next in line and Eve chose Evan and Evan needs to choose someone after. We can’t just become commanders. We have to be chosen by the previous commander. Evan would have to choose me in order for me to become a commander and he would either have to step down from the post or die.” He got up and faced the door for a while. “I would never be telling you this if it wasn’t important. Eve has never liked to play by the rules and with her as a commander it would be Russian roulette every day… even after the actions outlined in the Proposal have been completed.” He turned back and looked at her.

Suddenly his watch started to beep. “I have to go now, the cameras are turning back on. I will come again tonight.” He leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. Seeing him leave, she felt an emptiness and agony deep inside her.

It was hard to go to sleep. She laid back and looked at the blinking red light again. She thought of Evan and the first time she had seen him at the airport when she picked him up with Tiffany. How he had smiled and she had been completely unable to speak. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she remembered the night on the beach, the way he had looked at her and the way he had looked at the mark on her hand. She turned her hand around and looked at the circle crossed in half and remembered his eyes glancing at it. She wondered if he had known the whole time that she was a hybrid. She wiped her tears and hugged the thin pillow on her bed and laid on her side. She wondered how it had never entered her mind that Eve could be his mother. She closed her eyes and pulled the pillow on top of her head instead of laying on it. She pushed the pillow closer, tighter, and turned to face down and scream. One scream, that’s all she could afford down in this bunker.