Free Evanescent by Carlyle Labuschagne

in a soft whisper.
    “I wanted to,” he assured me, while my eyes searched the surface of the concrete floor.
    “What now, what are we going to do?” I started to feel the rush of panic gathering inside me.
    “It’s not that bad,” Sam tried to reason with me by further adding, “You hated staying in the city anyway. You can stay with Anaya, or something.” She rubbed a hand over my upper arm. It was strange knowing, seeing her touch me, and not be able to feel it.
    “Nope, afraid you can’t do that either,” Greg stated.
    “The Council has spies in the village,” Troy confirmed, but it was no surprise to him.
    “You’re telling me we have no home, nowhere to go?” I started pacing the length of the craft, leaving the others staring at me from the hangar floor as memories shot through my mind. Journals – pages and pages of secrets. Somewhere, there is an answer to who was behind it.
    Troy was inside the craft beside me, heat radiating from his body. I could feel him even though he was not touching me.
    “You’ll stay with us for now,” Troy said taking my hand in his, stilling my trembling heart. His warmth brought back the pins and needles, which erupted all over my body. As his touch lingered, my skin came flourishing back with sensations. It was confirmed then, only he could instill sensation on my skin. I knew I was going to have fun exploring the whys.
    “Even better.” Sam tried, her brilliant grin left me seeing something in her delight. She didn’t like Troy very much, so why was she so eager for me to stay with him, why the sudden change?
    “You still don’t get it, Sam!” I moved away from Troy, and took the steps down toward her. “They own us, they have their claws in everything and everyone around us!” I stared up at her. “Including you.”
    Sam shook her head. “So?”
    “Really, Sam?” I lifted her arm to her face. “You have a tracker embedded under your skin. Why can’t you see the scar? Why have they never told us? Lies mean secrets, secrets mean bad things – always.” If only I followed my own advice. I shook my head. I had been so caught up in my own misery, I never even thought it might have been like this from the beginning.
    “Well, maybe it’s a result of the war, because pupils like Sage had gone missing. This is their way of finding us if anything like that should ever happen again. They saved us once.”
    Wow, she actually sounded stupid. She must be in denial – so not Sam.
    “You really believe that,” I said, sounding disbelieving.
    “It’s for our own good, Ava. You told me about all those things, what we really are; we’re dangerous, and we need to be protected from ourselves.”
    I shook her, her red curls bouncing on her head, falling over her face. Sam pulled away.
    “I’m sorry,” I apologized, not noticing how quickly I had just snapped.
    “It’s fine, you were never one to handle pressure very well.”
    I felt ashamed. Yes, I never was and it was a weakness, one I had to cut out.
    “Wake up! Remember the trackers, the deaths of those two students on bonfire night?” I crossed my arms, trying to hold back. “The break-in at the vault, one we never knew about? Now the hit on me and my sister, on Troy – they are hiding something, something worth killing over!” I stopped talking immediately; it was all making sense to me. Enoch was working with the Council, there was just no other way. But what scared me the most was my selective memory. It should have been a guide, a clue to what I was becoming.
    “Ava, what’s going on?” Troy stroked my arm in comfort to my reaction.
    “Where is Kronan, and Anaya? Should they not be here!” It was a demand not a question. Who else was in on it, who else wanted to see me fail? I redirected Troy’s attention.
    Manipulation: Phase Two .
    “The Truth Seekers should have known this!” It was like before, the more I felt, the more emotions came trickling through, words spilling from a place I