Cured (35 page)

“Jett?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to continue the story.”

Jett shook his head, and broke eye
contact.

“What happened to the last people, Jett?”

Jett scratched one of the dog’s ears
absentmindedly. “Want another ice-cream?” he asked.

“Tell me, Jett.” I put on my sternest
voice.

He finally looked me in the eye again, “They
got killed.”

“Why?”

“
It turned
out they were Descendants. They were in disguise as Cure evaders.”
I felt myself tense. Jett continued, “They told us they didn’t take
the Cure and that is why they were still human, and they said they
had escaped and been walking for ages. When they found Tartarus
they were sunburnt and in need of shade, so they came in without
knowing anyone was down here. Leo came back from one of his
missions and found them. He was from Olympia so he knew that they
were Descendants. He knew they were lying, and that they weren’t
Cure evaders from the Fields. He exposed them and… and he killed
them.”

I shuddered.
I didn’t want to meet Leo. “You said Leo goes on missions? What are
they? What kind of missions?”

“
He is a
Prime, so he gets all the insider knowledge for us. He is the one
who hooked us up with WallScreen food. We get it from his house on
Olympia. Since he is a Prime they don’t track what he orders or
where it goes.”

I gasped.
Their leader was a Prime? I wondered if I knew him from back home.
I couldn’t recall anyone named Leo, but I would probably recognise
his face. I was impressed with his ability to keep such a secret
from the authorities. The people of Olympia had no idea that these
people existed, but there were over a hundred of them, still human,
living in freedom. Limited freedom, confined to their caves, but
free from the Olympia hierarchy and free from the Cure.

Eventually Jett and I made our way back to
the dining hall, which was empty, everyone having gone back to
their training. Felix came out of the adjoining room where the food
was ordered.

“How nice of you two to show up once I
finished gathering dishes and wheeling away the tables.”

“Oops, sorry Fe.” I felt bad, but avoiding
dishes meant getting a whole lot of information from talking to
Jett. “I’ll do all the dishes next time.”

Felix rolled his eyes, “And you’ll give me a
back rub? I think I pulled a muscle lifting all the plates.”

“You did not.”

“I did! Seriously!” He began to put on a limp
and I giggled.

“
Fine. I will
massage your back,” I said, thinking that a giving Felix a massage
might be the perfect excuse to get him alone so I could tell him
everything I had learnt from Jett.

“
She gives
good massages,
” Jett chipped in, smiling
cheekily and shooting me a wink.

Felix mocked
a shocked expression. “What?! You gave him a back rub? Jeez Ave,
you’ve known the guy less than 24 hours and you’re already getting
all cosy! Slow down there, cowgirl.”

I shoved him and turned to Jett, “No more
temple rubs for you, Mister.”

Jett chuckled, “I’ve gotta go to class now.
Your Prime friends are teaching us to fight!” He struck a few
ridiculous kung-fu poses before running from the dining hall.

I turned to Felix. “I’ve got to talk to
you.”

Once I had relayed my conversation with Jett
to Felix, he stretched out on his bed and sighed.

“So they’ve been living here for twelve
years. They must miss sunlight, and grass, and rain, and running
around…”

Felix began
to list all the things he would miss living underground but I had
stopped listening. Dogs needed exercise. But those dogs had lived
cooped up in that cage for twelve years. Jett had said Leo was the
only one who ever left, and Leo wouldn’t take the dogs if he hated
them, so the dogs were living without both sunlight and exercise.
Impossible.

“
They're not
dogs,
” I mumbled.

“What?” Felix stopped listing and looked at
me.

“They can’t be dogs. They look like wolves,
but they act like dogs. You can train them, and they don’t bite.
Plus they don’t need exercise or sunlight. They are a hybrid.”

Felix shook his head, “The Alphas would know
if all those dogs had gone missing from Tiana’s.”

Felix had a point. I scratched my head. I was
sure they were hybrids. “Maybe they bred them here?” Felix
suggested. “Maybe they figured out how to do it.”

“
No way.
They're not even Prime, they’re only human.”

“
Well they
cant be hybrids then. We know first-hand how guarded Tiana’s farm
is. And even if the Prime guy-“

“
Leo,” I
interjected.

“Right. Even if this Leo guy had somehow
found a way to steal the dogs, they would be able to track...”
Felix stopped talking suddenly and his expression changed from
confused to one of realization.

“What?” I asked

“
Trackers,”
h
e said.

“Yeah. All her animals are tracked so that
she would be able to find them if they ever escaped. But these ones
can’t be tracked because-“

“
No,
” Felix interrupted. “They're
not tracked wolves, Avery. They’re
tracker
wolves. They don’t have
tracking devices because they weren’t farmed on
Olympia.”

“What do you mean Felix? All engineered
animals are farmed at Tiana’s. So of course they’re from
Olympia.”

“Except the tracker wolves. Remember Axil’s
story? His parents were farming tracker wolves trained to attack
anyone who left the border. That means they have to be trainable,
right? And you said the dogs you just saw were tame. What if they
are the tracker wolves?”

I realized that Felix had a point. That would
explain why the animals didn’t have tracking devices in them.

“
But how did
they take the wolves from Axil’s farm unnoticed?” I
asked.

“Well Axil did say the wolves went missing…
Maybe they just found them wandering around?”

I frowned, it was an unlikely theory.

Felix
shrugged. “
I’m just guessing here, but it
could be a possibility.”

I nodded, “We should tell the others.”

“First, rub my back?” Felix asked with a
grin.

I massaged Felix’s neck for a long time,
finding and ironing out his knotted muscles. It was soothing, in a
way, because I used to give him back rubs back at home all the
time. I was working on an extra tense knot when the dining bell
sounded, ringing off the walls. We moved towards the dining hall
and met Ellina and Theo in the hustling crowd outside the door. We
managed to snag four seats together and dug into plates piled with
some sort of chicken curry. I ate quickly, to keep up with Felix
and the others, so that we could leave the hall and talk in
private. We finished eating and I beckoned for Ellina to follow me,
before pushing back my chair and sneaking from the room. Theo and
Felix followed. Just as I thought we had managed to escape, a young
voice began to yell out Theo’s name.

I turned and glared at him and he shrugged
his shoulder apologetically, re-entering the dining hall and
scanning the diners for whoever was calling him.

“Theo!” A redhead boy of about fourteen stood
and waved at us. “Theo can you tell the deer story one more time
please!”

There was a chorus of assent from people
around the room and Theo shot me regretful glance.

“
Sure Mace.”
Theo said, and moved into the center of the square. “The deer was
our third task. We had been dropped on the uninhabited side of
Olympia by an aircraft, and we already knew that Hercules’ third
task had been to capture the hind. Actually, it was really Avery
who figured out that the deer must be her Aunt Tiana’s.”

Theo turned
to me but continued speaking, “Avery actually knows more about
animals and her Aunt than I do, so she would be a better
storyteller. Ave, do you mind?” He gestured to the floor where he
was standing and I groaned inwardly. I was bursting to tell them
about the tracker wolves and this leader person called Leo. Instead
I put on a happy face and stepped into the center of the square,
facing the audience. It was then that I realized that every face
was unwrinkled, and not in the way that Aunt Tiana’s serum
stretched the skin until it was taught all over. These people could
still smile and frown freely, they were just young. In fact, the
only person I had seen older than myself in the compound, was Dom.
I frowned, and added that point to my agenda to discuss with the
others. Then I launched into the story.


As I finished telling it, there was a loud
round of applause. I smiled and began to back out of the room, when
there was a quiet, “Ahem”.

Everyone
stopped clapping immediately and there was silence. I was starting
to dread those ‘ahems’. Dom had entered
the room without me noticing, and was looking at me with a
curious expression.

“
Miss Avery
Rose, you are quite the storyteller,” he said, “And you seem to
know a lot about Olympia.”

“Well, yes, I did live there my entire
life.”

“Hmmm.” Dom twirled his moustache in his
irritating way and I shuffled my feet, eager to leave. “Perhaps you
would consider a change of duties whilst you are with us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well the two Primes are responsible for
training us, but I also think that it would be a good idea to know
more about our opponents. Maybe you would consider tuition. You
could teach the history of Olympia, the ways of the Primes and
anything else you consider to be of importance.”

I nodded, “Sure Dom, so long as Felix can do
the same? He is a Descendant too.”

Dom twirled his moustache for a moment,
before clearing his throat again, “Yes okay, from now on you two
will be tutors, and the Primes will be trainers.”

“
Great,
sounds good,
” I said hurriedly, “Mind if
we go to bed now? We are super tired.”

At Dom’s dismissal we all dashed down the
hallway, and into the boys’ bedroom, Ellina keyed the door closed
behind us.

“
What is
going on?” s
he asked.

Felix told the story whilst I sat, anxiously
picking at my fingernails, a habit that my mother hated. By the
time he had finished my nail beds were bleeding and I was wriggling
in my seat.

“So what do you guys think?” I asked as soon
as Felix stopped talking.

They were quiet for a long time, and I
continued to jiggle my leg until Theo reached a hand out and
clamped it down on my knee, steadying my jittering immediately.

“
I think they
are the tracker wolves,” Theo said.

“Really?!” My knee started up again
involuntarily until Theo grabbed it again.

“
Yeah,
really,” h
e said. “It’s the only
explanation for their lack of tracking devices. But I don’t
understand how knowing so helps us in any way.”

“
Well if we
could train them to fight, they would be a good addition to the
battle on our side,” Ellina said.

“
We would
have to train them in secret. It would be impossible to do so
without anyone knowing.” Theo argued.

“
Not
true,
” I said. “Everyone knows I love
animals. Jett has already trained them to be tame enough to play.
It wouldn’t take that much effort to remind them of some of their
natural wolf-like behaviour.”

Theo sighed. “If you think you can do it,
then by all means, do. But I think you should ask Dom about it
straight out. Don’t sneak around and go behind his back to train
them. If you get caught he will get suspicious, and that is the
last thing we need.”

I nodded happily. I couldn’t wait to start
training the dogs. Then I remembered the other topic I had meant to
bring up. “Have you guys noticed how there are no adults here?”

“
Because all
of the adults are either Cured or Prime,” Theo said
matter-of-factly. “They must have gathered kids willing to sneak
away before they were Cured.”

I wanted to hit myself. Obviously Theo was
right, no Primes would want escape their privileged lifestyle, and
Norms feared the consequences of running away. It was only before
children took the Cure that they spoke amongst themselves, very
quietly, of getting out before they had to take it. Before their
lives were hijacked. After they were Cured they were either Norms,
too disabled by the drug to be able to counter any Prime attack if
they disobeyed, or Primes who suddenly didn’t think the Cure was
such a bad thing.

Chapter 32

The next few
days passed quickly. The four of us stayed very busy with Ellina
and Theo training the younger kids in the morning whilst Felix and
I tutored the older ones, before groups switched over after lunch.
Then we would have dinner and tell a few stories before Jett and I
would go and train the dogs. I didn’t tell him why we were teaching
them to fight, and he never asked. They were quick learners, and
very obedient when it came to obeying commands. After a few hours I
would say goodnight to Jett and head off to bed
exhausted.

We didn’t
have a lot of time to ourselves to talk about the plan, but Ellina
and Theo were impressed with how quick and strong the kids were.
They were also very f
ocused in class with
Felix and me. Theo mentioned multiple times how unusually focused
they were, but I didn’t think much of it, putting it down to the
fact that they were just good kids, and probably very scared of
Dom.