torn blanket to lower myself down. It was a library. Shelves and shelves of books. They were worn and frayed and moth eaten, but each page was like a new treasure for me to discover. My parents had taught me how to read. Before they… before they were gone. At first I started with the books I remembered, the children’s section. Fantasy and romance. Then I moved on to the good stuff. I found a book on wilderness survival tactics. It taught me how to build traps, and there was a procedure for water purification, for organic antibiotics. The library even had an old fashioned microscope. That was the beginning of my love for science. I even had a cat. I named him Tiberius.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“One day, elites came. They lit the library on fire. They killed my cat. I hid in a drawer until they left, then crawled my way through the flames, into the ash.”
My eyes widened. She was much stronger than she looked. I guess everyone here was. They were survivors. While I was raised in comfort. I never went hungry, I was never in real danger, except when I went outside the compound.
My eyes turned back to the journal and a section caught my attention. I leaned back in the couch and reread the paragraph.
August 5th. Damien took me on a walk outside the citadel today and told me the truth. I thought I was like a pet to him, a distraction, but now I’m not so sure. He’s never chosen, and being the king’s son must bear its own pressures. I think he’s lonely. I don’t think he even realized the momentousness of his confession. It was a revelation. It was like time stopped. He pressed on through the ash, hands clasped behind his back. I stayed silent, hoping he’d say more... and he did. So much more. We were told, the elixir was created as a response to a plague that was decimating the human population; that in the time before, pollution and overpopulation and antibiotics had led to a super strain of resistant viruses that were wiping humans out.
King Richard was a scientist who created a true panacea – a cure-for-all. It healed the sick and kept humans strong. But too much of it would lead to death; and rebirth in a new, immortal form. These were the first elites. Most of the people raised in the compounds don’t even know this much; to them, the elixir is blood magic, King Richard is god on earth, and that’s enough for them, but in the citadel they are more informed. Or so I believed.
But today, Damien was talking about his childhood, in the before, describing things I had no amount of comprehension for. Dating apps and ride shares and field trips to the zoo. Picnics in the park, ice skating. It sounded like utopia to me.
But then, according to him, his mother got sick. His father tried to save her. In the end, he failed. He created the elixir a few weeks after they put her in the ground.
Damien said this bitterly, almost like he blamed his father for his mother’s death. Where was the noble scientist who singlehandedly saved humanity from the ravaging plague? Instead we have only a grieving husband turned widow. Was this really the beginning of the elixir – before the race wars, before the blood thirst, it all started with a man trying to save the woman he loved?
This was new. It felt important, but I didn’t know how. Damien had never talked about his mother with me. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the scene. There was something else bothering me, just at the edge of my awareness.
The woman he loved...
Suddenly I saw a vision, a man dancing, a ballroom, the moon.
“I saw her,” I realized suddenly. “Or, I was her.”
“What do you mean?” April asked, glancing up from her work.
“John’s talking about Damien’s mother. In the citadel, in training they told us about the blood memories. Elites can share information, memories through their blood. It’s how Damien told me about the location of the chest. In class, we were given a memory, we were told it was from the king. But that doesn’t make sense, because it was from her perspective. I was a woman in love, with the man who became King Richard. We were dancing, the sky was clear. I remember the music, the champagne. It was so real.”
“So what?” April said.
“So... it