Keepers: Blood of The Fallen (8 page)

We walked with Cilandria, through the short hallways of the temple, until we came to a room at the end of a hallway, like a dead-end. She touched the doorknob and it glowed a very bright red, then the door opened. Immediately when she opened the door, I could feel that it was considerably cooler in that room. The air that rushed out of the entrance sent chills down my spine. Walking into the room gave me even more chill-bumps, but it wasn’t because of the air. This particular room was the only room in the building that actually matched the outside. It was beautiful. Everything was gold, from the floor to the drapes covering the huge gold trimmed windows. The long rectangular table and chairs were wooden, which was weird, but they were beautifully crafted.

The table and chairs were the only pieces of furniture in the room, but there was a fireplace with a hidden purpose. Without speaking a word to us, Cilandria walked up to the fireplace and rubbed her hand across the top of the opening. The fire stopped nearly immediately, then the back of the fireplace opened. Cilandria took Asia’s hand and crawled through. I was left standing there, like Kneulton. Then, Asia’s hand stuck out from the opening. I took it and crawled through. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

We walked about three steps, and then we were out in the world. We transported to a small city called Winfield, Illinois. We were standing right in the middle of Birmingham Drive, and there were no people around, anywhere. We walked around the entire city in about three hours and never saw a single person. Cilandria didn’t even understand what was going on. She seemed to be growing more frustrated by the minute.

“How far is this from Aurora?” Asia asked Cilandria.

“Not far, why?”

“I have family in Aurora. My aunt and a cousin.”

“I thought you didn’t have any family left? Isn’t that what you told me?” I asked Asia.

“No, I never told you that, but I had no intention of mentioning it.”

“We should go to Aurora, since you know people there.” Cilandria said with conviction.

Both, Asia and I, knew that there was something terribly wrong. We hadn’t been gone long, so we thought. We went inside of a diner to find a restroom and saw that we had actually been gone for nearly a year! When Cilandria came from the kitchen with cans of food, we showed her the clock that kept track of the date, and she could not believe it. She then told us that there could only be one reason for the huge time lapse: Binatai. She told us that he was far than just a bounty hunter. He was once a part of the High Order, but he left when Kneulton decided the only way to fix the Navarium problem was by killing them all.

We had to find a car, because there was no way we would be able to walk to Aurora, which Asia thought was about a three hour walk. It wasn’t hard to find a car, since there were several sitting out in driveways of the abandoned town. We decided to take a truck from a really nice Victorian style house. I felt bad, because I knew it belonged to some elderly people, but we didn’t even know if there was anybody alive in Winfield. I had the strange feeling that we missed a cataclysmic event, at least in Illinois. I couldn’t help but to feel a little guilty. I went into the big house and grabbed the keys to the truck, from the bowl that sat on a marble countertop in a huge kitchen that had two stainless steel refrigerators, a stainless steel stove with thirty two burners, and two sinks, one in an island and one traditionally in front of a window that had very nice satin curtains.

When I got back outside, Asia was trying to hotwire the truck. She was thinking she might need to, in case I didn’t find the keys. Luckily, I did. She had no idea what she was doing. We piled into the truck, Cilandria got in the backseat, and we started driving. We didn’t know how to get to Aurora, so we turned on the built-in GPS and typed it in. It powered on, and a strange message scrolled across the screen.

Locating extraterrestrial life-forms, please wait.

“What is that, Moses?” Cilandria asked.

“It says it’s looking for aliens.” I responded confusedly.

“And what are aliens?”

“Beings from other planets,” Asia responded.

I didn’t say anything else, but I heard Cilandria say the word “no,” under her breath. She thought exactly what I thought: Iron and the Keeper militia had already been there and killed everyone. I was not happy about it. I knew that nothing good was going to come out of going to Aurora, because I really believed that Asia’s family was dead. I started driving anyway. I looked over at Asia, and I could see her eyes were glossed over with tears.

I had never seen traffic look so beautiful in my entire life. There were literally no cars on the roads. There were no cars neither rolling nor sitting. If the Keepers militia had been to Earth, they didn’t cause much destruction; they killed silently and quickly. We made it to Aurora and pulled up to Asia’s family’s house. It was empty, just like we assumed it would be. There was no sign of a struggle inside the house. Just like the Victorian house in Winfield, the house was also unlocked, with a car in the driveway.

Asia immediately demanded we leave the house. Cilandria tried to console her, but failed miserably. Asia got back into the truck and slammed the door shut. She pretended as though it didn’t bother her. I wasn’t going to push it in her face, so I didn’t mention it.

“I have something to say,” Cilandria said.

“I think you have a lot to say, Cilandria. You have a lot to explain. Like, where is everyone? Hm? Are they dead? Are they prisoners? No…they’re dead. You know it, so just tell us. What is it that you want to
say
?” Asia almost sounded sarcastic.

“I don’t like this anymore than you do, Asia. I didn’t have this planned. I had nothing to do with this. This is far from what I wanted…”

There was quite a bit of silence in between Cilandria saying that and what she said next. That gave me time to think. I remembered that we were supposed to be able to will anything we wanted into existence. I didn’t think I could will any people back from the dead, but I definitely thought I could get some answers to what happened. I pulled the truck over at a gas station and put it in park. “Cilandria, before you say anything more, I want to try something. Take my hand,” I said.

I took Asia’s hand. We closed our eyes, and I tried my best to focus all of my thoughts into pulling something together. I managed to get small clips. We saw those same soldiers from the room that I fought Iron in. They seemed to simply knocked on people’s doors, and when the people answered their door the knight grabbed them and disappeared. At least, the visions made it seem that way. Cilandria yanked her hand back and fell back into the backseat, gasping for air. She then proceeded to get out of the truck. When she got out she fell to her knees, still gasping. Asia ran around the truck to her and put her arm around her.

“What was that? Do you know where they are?” I asked.

“Those knights…”

“Iron and his militia.”

“Yes, in Earth time, they would be about two weeks old at the very most. They grow very quickly. They die even quicker. We create them in Alburia, in the Source Chamber. Every adult male Keeper in Alburia was created from the Source Chamber. The females in Alburia are known as reproductive caretakers.”

“Reproductive caretakers sound like breeders.”

“Exactly. I am not proud of what goes on in Alburia…this practice was started upon our discovery of Source energy. Everyone possesses it, and that…I’m afraid…is where all of the humans are: the Source chamber.”

After Cilandria’s explanation we decided to go back to Winfield so that we could use the portal we used before, except we used it to go to my house. When we arrived at the house, I panicked. “Asia…” I said grasping my chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you have the book?”

“Book?”

“Asia…please tell me there’s a book in your pouch.”

She checked. Then she pulled it out. I let out a huge sigh of relief. I had actually forgotten that she even carried a pouch with her everywhere. It hung so tightly to her body that it was hard to see from a glance, which was all I could manage for quite some time. When Asia pulled the book out, Cilandria took it from her. “Ringjalla…” she muttered. “Do you mind if I keep this for a little while?”

She held onto the book, and I could tell she knew it was something important. I just wasn’t ready to ask her what it was yet. I had more important things to do. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a small piece of paper off the fridge. It had my mom’s cellphone number on it. I called the number, and I got no answer. It was at that moment that I realized it was everyone. Everyone was gone. The apocalypse had come and gone before we could do anything to stop it. Cilandria was sure that there was still one way to stop it, but it was a long shot.

V

We went back to Alburia, through the teleporting tunnel in the woods, and ran back to the temple. Kneulton met us in the hallway, stating that he was just on his way to the Source chamber. He informed us that something went wrong with the source extractor. We couldn’t say we felt bad about it, because we were there to stop the source extractor. Asia and I kept quiet and walked behind Kneulton and Cilandria. We went to the Source chamber and found that a knight by the name of Gunther was working the source extractor, the job that Brama was doing before we left. “Where’s Brama?” Asia whispered to me. I just shrugged my shoulders, but I knew that Brama had been killed.

It was sad, because Brama was a good friend after he decided his fate was sealed. He had the appearance and maturity of an older man, but he was as innocent as a small child; that always shined through his tough exterior, and that is why he was so easy to defeat in a fight. He was only seven days old. It was still hard to believe that Brama could be so young, but looking at what they called a source extractor, made me into a believer.

It was a large machine, made of gold, which was a necessary element. It was a gigantic rectangular shaped box. It had a door in the front of it. Since the door was open, we could see that it had several small spikes on it that were meant to pierce the skin of whomever was inside the box. The spikes would then electrify and the source would drain from the person. Kneulton saw how we were looking at the box, and he made sure to tell us that the process was quick and severely painful. Gunther smiled and nodded in approval. I could tell that Gunther was much more obedient than Brama. It was as though Kneulton and Gunther enjoyed the process, but Brama was just blindly following orders.

There was a second box on the other side of the room. It was nearly identical on the outside, except that the door was wooden. On the inside of it was a human-shaped mold. That was where the beings were created, from the source energy that was drained through the other box. There was a third box in the room, hidden behind the second box. It wasn’t golden. It was a rusty steel looking box, with a rotting wooden door. It too, contained a human-shaped mold. Cilandria took it upon herself to explain why the third box was there.

She told us that it was the original source extractor. There had been several failed attempts at creating beings from source energy, but that box represented the worst of all failed attempts. She told us that they tried to get rid of the beings that the box created, but it was impossible to get rid of so many of them. The old source extractor made beings from very little source energy, and as a result, it could produce hundreds of thousands more beings than the upgraded source extractor. “Navariums…” Asia said, convinced. She was right. The original source extractor created the Navariums, and because of the Navariums’ destructive behavior, they discontinued the extractor.

The original plan for source extraction was to create beings that had the same abilities that the Keepers possessed but to a much lesser degree. They wanted to create Keepers like Brama, Iron, and Gunther. They didn’t want to create Keepers like Asia or myself. “Well, Kneulton, where did Kavars come from, if this is how you’ve been making Keepers for a long time?” I asked.

“Kavars are a breed, not a creation. You are of a Navarium father and Keeper mother. That is the only way Kavars exist, simply because Navarium females cannot produce a Keeper’s child. It is physically impossible.”

“So, my dad is a Navarium and my mother is a Keeper; I already knew that. My dad has never been a bad person though.”

“No, your father was also a Guardian. Your father was the result of a horrible mistake.
Your father
was documented and observed constantly since the moment of his creation. His source energy was the last that was extracted through the original extractor, and unfortunately, the Keeper assigned to the Source chamber on that cycle was less than observant. Your father is the result of a trickle of Navarium source energy mixing with a Guardian’s source energy.”

Before that conversation, I stopped believing that Guardians even existed. I wasn’t sure of what to ask next, but I was sure I needed to ask something. “Where are all of the Guardians?”

“The Guardians no longer exist,” Cilandria said.

“What do you mean?” Asia asked for me. I was busy trying to shake off the shock.

“Moses’ father was the last of the Guardians. When Moses was born, he was born as a Kavar, and that was the end of the Guardian bloodline. Now that Moses’ father has passed, there are no more Guardians.”

“Precisely,” Kneulton added.

In my mind, I knew that my parents were gone. I knew they no longer lived, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I was not close to my parents, and I never knew why. I never knew why I couldn’t bring myself to care for their wellbeing as much as I should have. They were important to me, but I never had the need to invest any of my time in knowing if they were fine. It hurt that my dad was gone, but I didn’t care nearly as much as I felt I was supposed to. I didn’t shed a tear. They never said my mother was dead, so I assumed that she was in Alburia, since she was a Keeper. I didn’t want to see her, though. I couldn’t bring myself to worry. I had too many other things on my mind. I was a bad child, but I couldn’t control it.

Asia put her arm around my waist, and I kissed her forehead. Cilandria asked to be excused and took Kneulton out of the Source chamber. Immediately, Asia asked me if I wanted to see how the extractor worked. I couldn’t lie, I was very curious. She walked over to the new extractor and closed the door. Immediately, it started to make a murmuring sound. It hummed, and we could hear the quiet crackle of electricity inside of the box. It was so powerful that we could feel our hair stand up on our skin, and we could taste a metallic taste in our mouths. It was really spectacular. It went for a few minutes, then it shut off instantly, and the door opened. The other box, with the mold, made a sound that sounded like air shooting through a straw, except magnified a hundred times. After a few minutes, the second box stopped hissing, and the door opened, just like the extractor.

Asia noticed something that we missed earlier. There was a small pipe that ran across the ceiling from one box to the other. It suddenly didn’t seem exactly like some sort of sorcery. The source energy had to travel through the pipes. We had no idea how energy could be turned into a person, but we figured there had to be a chemical somewhere that would mix with the energy, to create a being. Asia thought it was probably in the molding box, and I agreed. I thought it was probably something that is in a small compartment somewhere in the back of the box that came out through a tiny hole to mix inside of the box. It didn’t make sense. We knew it, but we couldn’t help but to wonder how it worked.

I wanted to try something. I knew it was crazy. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about much at that moment, except for getting some sort of positivity out of the day. Seeing as how there was nothing we could do to change what had already happened, I thought that maybe the one person that could make a change could be coerced into doing so. “Binatai.” Asia looked at me with a bewildered look. Before she asked me why I was calling him, I told her that he was supposed to come whenever I called him. “Binatai,” I said again. Still, he didn’t come.

Cilandria and Kneulton reentered the room. Their conversation lasted several minutes, and I was hoping that Cilandria would come back alone or at least drop the old fool for causing a mass extinction. She did neither. She came back and told us that she knew where Santana was, only there was a catch. Santana was not possessed as I originally thought she was, she was imprisoned, and the person we saw wasn’t her at all. The person we saw was a mistake, created by Kneulton himself, in the Source chamber. He attempted to make a being that would live a full Keeper lifespan, but wasn’t a real Keeper.

“That doesn’t solve where Santana is, nor does it solve why that
new
being looked just like her.” Asia said.

“The creature looked like your friend, because it was your friend’s source energy. When we use source energy, the new being will always look like the source host. At least, somewhat. Haven’t you heard that everyone has a twin? This creature…it looked exactly like your friend,” Kneulton explained.

“So you’ve taken source energy from Santana? Did you kill her?”

“No. No, she is here, but she cannot be released. She is a danger to us all, so she is being kept in a room here in the temple. We are taking her source energy slowly to further our experiments.”

“Where is she? Cilandria…where’s Santana?” I asked, nearly pleading.

“She’s in the next room, Moses. Although, she isn’t rested enough to talk. I have tried to bargain for her release. However, Kneulton has only agreed to release her if one of you will replace her.”

“That would defeat the purpose. No. Let us see her.”

They decided that it would be ok to let us see her. She was in a room alone; there were no cell bars or anything, but the room was obviously a prison. When we walked into the room, Santana was barely able to raise her head and look at us. She was so pale and tiny. She seemed so frail that I didn’t really want to touch her, in fear that I would hurt her. She smiled at the sight of us. She tried to speak to us, but nothing came out but air. “Save your strength, we’re going to get you out of here.” I laid her down on her cot that was just one blanket, on the floor. She was so light that I was able to pick her up by myself.

After I laid her down, I noticed that she was wearing the same clothes I last saw her in. They were stained and smelled of waste. Her nails were long and her hair was thinning. I could tell they were only giving her enough food to survive for the next day. It broke my heart into pieces. I finally could feel all of the pain rush into my soul at once. My stomach rolled up into a knot, and I burst into tears.

I poured my soul out to Asia and Cilandria, in Santana’s prison. I expressed all of the feelings that I should have expressed well before that day. I told them about my strained relationship with my parents, and why I never went out of my way to talk to them. I told them that Asia was the only stable thing in my life, and I felt as though that I would lose her eventually, because I lost everything else. I held Asia close, while I sobbed into her shirt. I could feel her holding me, caressing my back. It was the most comfort I had ever felt in my life. I felt as though I was being rejuvenated. During that moment of intense pain, I figured out what I needed to do.

I had to fight. I had to fight for Santana, my parents, and Earth. I knew I had an ally in Asia, but Cilandria… I didn’t know if I could trust her to help me do what needed to be done. She was one of them. Technically, so was Asia and I, but Cilandria was one of the highest ranked Keepers. I wasn’t sure if I could trust her to go against the rest of the High Order, which apparently would be tougher than just Kneulton. Binatai would certainly be a problem. I had nothing for someone who could control time, but I did have a plan.

Just looking at Santana lying in her cell gave me some knowledge that I needed. The source energy, as they called it, was something drained from the blood of a person. They had to drain the blood, in order to extract whatever the source energy was. That’s why Santana looked so pale and fragile. She had been through a massive blood loss. I leaned down and kissed Santana on the forehead, “I’ll be back.” I took Asia by the hand and walked out of the room, she kept looking back at Santana, until we walked out of sight. We left out of the room and started walking towards the exit. Cilandria walked with us, which was a surprise to me.

Once we got outside of the temple, we had to go through the building where we first met Brama. I was looking forward to seeing him, so that I could ask him to fight along side me, but he was already gone. They had already killed and replaced him. I had forgotten about that. The new guard was bigger than Brama, and he was also more of a brainwashed tool. He didn’t have the childlike innocence that Brama had. He stood there, with a smile on his bearded face, which showed a striking resemblance to Brama’s. When we walked up to the door, I grabbed the handle, and the new guard stopped me.

“Are you…the Kavar known as Moses?”

“Why?”

He chuckled, “Yes, you’re most certainly him. Per Kneulton, you are to never return to this temple, once you leave.”

“Brama would’ve been happy to let me back in, so I could wipe that smug look off your face.”

“Ah…Brama…I believe I have something he used to own.”

“His life, you big son of a –”

“Yes, his source energy. He wasn’t using it the way he was supposed to, so he was replaced. The poor fellow was unwilling to go, from what I hear. He was salivating in fear as he stood in the chamber. Funny… I get to keep all of his knowledge, but usually the process leaves out memories.
I
have two memories. You nearly cooking him in his armor, and one of him screaming your name as he was drained of source energy.” He chuckled again. “That would never happen to me. I would break you.”

“You’ll die as soon as I reenter the temple.” We left on that note. Cilandria never said a word. She just stood there, behind us, spectating every thing. That was when I decided she may not have been against us, but she wasn’t for us. She could’ve easily gotten us through that situation by stating who she was. However, she never said a word, until we got outside. After I asked her if she was with us, she looked at Asia, who was staring right back at her, and she smiled. Then she told us we probably should go to the eastern border, but she wouldn’t be able to go with us.