Breaking out of Eden.

The Copycat

The next day after I left Matt's apartment to go to work, I took the long way going via Bael street.

Like always the people were rushing about left right and centre trying to get to work and school, but I wasn't looking for the general populous, I was looking for the keeper.

I found him stand in one of the doorways talking to an old woman with five or six children sitting around her chair. He looked at me and his smile faded he got up from beside the woman and walked towards me, "Valery, I was expecting you to come and find me eventually."

"How could you turn away from your own people?" It was that that had been keeping me up well into the night.

He looked away from me, his eyes unnaturally bright, "you do not know how much I regret that. But," he turned back to me and there was an anger in his eyes that I wouldnt have expected of him, he was usually so even tempered. "I had to, they were too strong, too full of hate and greed. I found out that day that power does not mean knowledge. After that happened I created a second world, a world of intelluct and called it Kolem. That world eventually fell but that is a different story."

I looked away from them and back to the small, rundown house that he had been in before. "Who's the woman in the house." I asked.

"She will have a heart attack sometime in the next few weeks."

"What? Who do you know that?"

His eyes met mine and I saw something in them that I hadn't seen before, it looked like he had seen everything and he didn't like it, "I know all things Valery, that woman is close to death, her life force is as thin and wavering as a spiders web. Ready to break at the slightest breath of a wind."

I caught my breath he sounded so sad like he knew the woman personally. I suppose he did in a way. He had known me before I had said one word to him, maybe it was the same with everyone. "Can you see my life force?"

He simply stared through me for a moment. He was looking in my direction but his attention wasn't focused wholly on me but around me, like he was looking at things I couldn't see. "You read the Genesis File." It wasn't a question but a statement.

"How did you know?"

He wasn't focused on my face but more at the area just above my head, " your thoughts and future keep changing, swirling so that the image is distorted. You are not dying Valery but your defiantly not healthy."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It was foolish of me to make her read the Genesis Files." He seemed to be talking to himself and had forgotten that I was there, " What if her body rejects the File as I know it eventually will, what will I do then? She will die and the gates will collapse."

Panic was clear in his voice and his words made me feel sick. Would the Genesis Files kill me before I could get Adam, Eve and Clara back to Eden? I can't let that happen I thought.

"How long do I have before my body breaks?" The keeper looked at his surrounding as if for the first time realising where he was. His eyes looked around Bael Street then locked on me. " A year, maybe two."

At those words my moth went dry, "what will happen to me after that?"

He turned away, his voice full of sadness when he said, "Can you not guess?"

I pushed aside my panic and grief "Will that be enough time. To save my would, I mean?"

"You still want to do that?"

I was silent. Why did I want to do that? It what the keeper said was true then I wouldn't be there to see my world fix itself, so why did I still want to risk my neck to make it happen? When I thought about it the answer was simple. My family, if they were still alive then my brothers, my sister could get married, have kids. They could do anything.