I am Number Twelve

1

Part one- The meeting

1

'I'm telling you , Lola. We need to leave. It's not safe anymore!' I say, reduced to begging. I feel low, the lowest of the low. But it's something that needs to be done. 

'No. We are not going. Nothing has happened. We have been out of the spot light, and nothing is going to happen!' she screams back at me, with equal force.

'For gods sake, Lola! We need to go! I can feel it. My scars are itching. Number Four is in danger!' Of course, I know nothing of Four, whether they are a boy or a girl, where they are, what they look like. Nothing. But they are Aquillian, fighting for something real.

'Zeda, stop yelling. We are safe here. And I will not just drop everything and leave because you scars are 'itchy'. Stop being so damn childish and leave me alone. I have things to do.' She says, flicking her white blond hair over her shoulders. I watch it swish past her arms, weak muscles, lying dormant. We haven't trained in months. I train, at least once a day. Always at night. Occasionally during the day if Lola lets me go out for a run on my own.

She sits down on her computer chair and begins to type on one of her many key boards that is connected to one of her many computers. She's scanning the news, just as she was before I decided to talk to her, not even caring about how I feel. 

'Jack would've listened to me.' I say, spitefully, and turn to walk away.

'Wait, Zeda. I'm sorry, I know Jack isn't here right now, but he's still inside, in your heart. I'm sorry we're not moving. Go for a run or something, but stop bothering me.' She speaks very cautiously, like walking around a bomb that is yet to go off.

'Enough with the crap, Lola. Jack is dead. He's not coming back. He will never be my Cepan again. So now I'm stuck with some lousy bitch he decided to pick up off of the streets. You're not even Aquillian. I hate how you strut around here pretending to know what I'm going through. I've had enough. I'm going for a run. And not because you told me to.' 

She looks hurt, but I don't even feel a shred of sympathy for her. I wouldn't even care if someone slit her throat while I'm gone.

I move down the hallway away from Lola's office. I must admit, She has done a reasonably average job keeping us safe for the past 12 months. And I guess she was that special someone to Jack. But I hate her.

Ever since Jack died, she hasn't enforced the usual training, in fact, she used to scowl at me when ever she caught me in the garage practising with a punching bag. She hasn't moved us any where in the last 5 months, she never listens to me, She didn't even care that I turned 15 2 weeks ago. She does't talk about filling Jack's role of my Cepan, like she promised him when he died. She won't tell me where my chest is. She doesn't even tell me of any news of the others. I haven't said anything about my Aqualite pendant I found in her draws. She certainly doesn't love me, and I will never love her.

I reach my bedroom door, and I slip inside. The horizontal wooden boards are looking as tattered as ever on the wall. The grey carpet is worn away where the door opens and closes, and where I stand to get out of bed in the mornings. 

I move around the bed, pushed up against a led light window on the wall directly in front of me. To my left, a massive fire place stands gracefully on the wall opposite my bed, and another led light window on the left wall facing north distorts the sunlight and projects a million tiny specs of light on my bed. I sit down on my bed, which consists of three double foam mattresses stacked upon each other. Just because I was left with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gems, doesn't mean we have the need to spend them.