The Quadrants

Chapter 8

Rohan collected his bike from the shelter and rode out of the school yard for the final time. He sped along the street, dodging in and out of cars as he went, until he spotted Titus ahead. When he caught up, he jumped off his bike and pushed it along beside him.

"What do you want?" Titus asked, looking pained when he noticed him there.

"So... when do we reach our full strength?" began Rohan. "With our... you know."

Titus glanced over at him and let out a heavy sigh before answering. "Nineteen, I guess, or twenty... somewhere around there. I don't know," he said, sounding unenthusiastic. "It's different for everyone. If you practice more, you can control it sooner."

Rohan gazed out absently, contemplating this for a moment as he wheeled his bike along. Just then, however, his attention was caught by a man walking up ahead, amongst the crowd of students on the sidewalk. He wore a black hoodie pulled right down, just like the man near the corner store from the previous week, and now Rohan noticed he kept looking back at them.

His heart gave a start.

Was he being paranoid? It wasn't necessarily the same man. He had never really seen his face the last time, and more than one man in the world owned a black hoodie. Craning his neck and standing on tiptoes, Rohan moved his head one way and then the other, in an attempt to get a better view. But too many people were clustered between them, and the sun shone in Rohan's eyes, and by the time the path cleared somewhat, the man was gone.

"Did you see that?" Rohan asked Titus.

"What now?" he grumbled.

"That guy. There was that guy from the corner store, just up there... just now, looking at us." Rohan peered all around. The hooded-man hadn't crossed the street, but maybe he had gotten into one of the waiting cars.

"What, that poor dude who was minding his own business the other day, reading the paper?" Titus rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Fraser! Are you scared the big bad-man might get you?" he said, putting on a mocking voice. "You're not a weed anymore, I'm sure you could fight him off if you had to... if he tried to beat you with his newspaper." Then Titus snickered, possibly thinking back to the many times Rohan had failed to fight him off. "Or maybe not." He gave Rohan a firm slap on the back. "Don't worry, I'll protect you."

Rohan didn't feel as blasé about the whole thing as Titus seemed to. Maybe he was just being paranoid. He'd had a lot on his mind recently, and half the time his head felt completely scrambled by the mountain of impossibilities he was trying to convince it to accept as fact.

Rohan kept up with Titus all the way to his house, asking questions as fast as he could think of them, and he was still going at it when they arrived. Titus stopped at the start of the path leading into his yard.

"So, anyway, this is me," he said, hands in pockets. "I'll see you back at school in two months, Fraser. So... bye." He spoke firmly, and without ceremony turned his back on Rohan, and began down the path to his house. Wheeling his bike a little way through the gate, Rohan followed, then dropped the bike and his bag into the long grass beside the path. He couldn't leave it at that, there was no way. There was so much more Rohan wanted to find out—no, needed to find out. He was all alone in this except for Titus. He had learned that they were both from the Quadrants, and that he was Terrus and Titus was Ignus, and he knew that there were more like them, and there were cities, but... what about the rest of it? How had he come to be in Bakers Ridge if he wasn't born from his parents?

"Wait a minute. Titus!" he called after him, almost in a panic, feeling as though his precarious hold on sanity would slip away. His class-mate had turned from being his tormenter to being his saviour in the space of only a few days, just at a time when Rohan truly thought he would lose his mind. For weeks, none of it had made sense as he discovered the magnitude of his transformation, and when all he had wanted to do was hide under his bed, or to run into the mountains to live out his life as a hermit, convinced he'd contracted a terrible disease. It was Titus, the cruel, arrogant bully, who had told him what it was all about, and who he was, and that it was ok. And Rohan needed him.