Cured (9 page)

Chapter 14

When I
arrived at the training arena, everyone else was already there. I
had planned to arrive ten minutes late, to add to my prima donna
character. Every pair of eyes in the room was on me as I entered
the training arena. They stared, their expressions full of mixed
reaction to my unconventional attire. Shock, confusion,
bewilderment and disgust. I sauntered into the room and joined the
group, twinkling my fingers in the wave that I saw my mother use
daily.

Theo smirked.
“It’s training, babe, not a beauty contest.”


I struggled to maintain composure.

“
Hee hee,” I
gave a pathetically shallow giggle, once again aping my mother. “Oh
this?” I asked in an unnaturally high-pitched croon, waving a hand
down at my dress. “I just threw it on!” I gave an exaggerated
wink.

Theo smirked again, but his brow was set in a
confused frown.

Ellina’s eyes widened when she saw me. “What
the…”


“
Good
morning, good morning my angels!” Regina interrupted as she entered
the room. Upon seeing my get-up she cocked her head to one side,
“Aren’t you looking… Err, lovely?” She touched my shoulder. “You do
realise this is training for your tests, dear?”

This was it.
I tried to remember what my drama teacher had preached, and wished
that I had spent more time listening and less time mocking her pink
afro. I looked over at Felix, who was looking at the ground,
purposefully avoiding my gaze. Become your character. That is what
my drama teacher had said over and over. So I took a deep breath
and thrust my nose into the air, causing my ringlets to bounce
haughtily. 


“Look Reg,” I began, “Can I call you that?
Reg?”


Regina looked befuddled.

“You see, Reg,” I carried on without waiting
for an answer, “I grew up on the uppermost point of Olympia, I am
sure you know that, and I am also sure you know who my parents
are.”


“Of course I do. However...” Regina
started.

“
Ahem.” I
butted in. “Right. And because of my... Uh... My
status.
I
am sure you’ll understand that I do not need the training that
these… these… these mere Norms need.”

Theo grunted. “You’ve got to be kidding!.” he
mumbled.

I turned to him, squinting my eyes as though
I was seeing a piece of trash where he stood. “Do you have a
problem with me, NORM?” I cringed at my own pretentiousness.

His face
reddened, “You’re insane! None of us are Norms, Avery. That’s why
we’re here. What makes you think you're better than any of us,
anyway? I knew you were going to be like this. You’re just as
conceited and arrogant as the rest of them.” 


His words
hurt, but I carried on as if I hadn’t heard him and turned back to
Regina with my nose in the air. “I am certain that I’m already
talented enough to pass the tests, and come top of the class for
that matter. And I fully intend to do so. Then I will claim the
very house that my parents and I have resided in for my whole life,
and take over my mother’s position as chair of the Olympia Social
Board. And I will do all of this without any of your ridiculous,
pathetic training.” I crossed my arms over my chest
defiantly.

Ellina started laughing. The others joined
in. I felt like an idiot. I hated myself, and everything I was
doing. I had spent my whole life vowing not to become my mother yet
now I was campaigning her views. I was disrespecting those that
society saw as below me, but I knew to be my equals, but now were
absolutely my moral superiors.

“Well, Ms Optime, if that is really what you
want then I guess you can sit out during training sessions, after
all, it will be your loss when it comes to the tests.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and looked over
to Felix, who wiped a line of sweat from his forehead. Then I gave
Regina a tight smile.

“Fabulous,” I said, before flicking my hair
and gliding over to a chair at one side of the arena, where I sat,
and began to inspect my nails as my mother did instinctively at any
moment of slight discomfort.

Regina began to brief the others on their
training schedule, and I wondered when Felix was going to pull his
big stunt. The first step of training was going to be basic
survival skills. I cursed. I should have waited until after that
lesson before I bailed on the training. Felix must have been
thinking along the same lines because he had not yet showed any
signs of fake sickness. A group of five uniformed Norms entered the
room, and Regina introduced them as the trainers, each specializing
in a different area of our training.

The trainer who specialized in basic survival
asked the group to sit as he distributed textbooks to them all.

“Please read your books now. I will quiz you
on them in twenty minutes. By then you should have finished
reading.” The instructor motioned to the thick book. I rolled my
eyes. The Primes had photographic memories, and would manage to
recall the entire book after only flicking through the pages and
quickly skim reading each page. I prayed for Felix to concentrate.
Although, watching Felix attempt to imitate the others, who were
scanning their pages in five seconds apiece, I lost hope. There was
no way he was actually reading anything at that speed.

After everyone had finished reading, which
was only fifteen minutes later, the instructor started by
explaining different weather extremities and how to deal with them.
He spoke quickly, expanding on what the group had already read.
Something about the difference between hypo- and hyperthermia.
Something about the tell-tale precursors of a tropical storm. He
spoke too much too fast.

I pretended to be pondering the roof pattern
when the instructor started talking about poisons. He talked about
carbon and its ability to treat poison by oral ingestion. He pulled
out a box of activated charcoal to show the Primes what it looked
like. He gave the box to Ellina to pass around the circle. When the
box reached Felix, I watched him take a handful of the charcoal,
and sift the pieces through his fingers before passing the box
on.

“Charcoal is useful for preventing poison
absorption but not against ingested metals such as sodium,
potassium, lithium, alcohols and glycols,” the instructor was
reeling off in a monotonous tone. I tried to remember the names of
some poisons and what they looked like, but it was hopeless. I had
never listened in school. I never thought I would need to know any
of this, because of my predetermined future on Olympia. Descendants
were required to attend school, just like the Norms in the Fields,
but there was no reason for our attendance. There was no further
education or career after graduations. We lived the lives of
retirees, spending our days doing whatever we liked without a care
in the world. School was merely a formality of the law, and I had
known that once I graduated I would be able to forget everything I
had learned without any serious implications. Oh how I was
wrong.

I looked over at Felix, who had always been
smart at school. He didn’t need to try hard to get good results and
he spent most of his time in class doodling rude pictures and
mocking our teachers. Now he looked like he was hanging onto every
word that the instructor was saying. As I watched him, he turned
discreetly to look at me out of the corner of his eye, and then
flicked his hand in my direction, as though he were swatting a fly,
before turning back to the instructor. I noticed a tiny object
fling out of his hand and fly in my direction. Neither the Primes
nor the instructor seemed to have noticed Felix’s lapse in
concentration. I frowned, scanned the ground, and spotted a small
black stick. The charcoal. He must have taken a piece when he had
been holding the box. The stick was just out of my reach. I
stretched my foot out as far as it would go, and managed to touch
the charcoal with my toes. Slowly, I rolled the stick towards me. I
looked up to see if anyone had witnessed the action, but the
Newbies all had their eyes trained on the instructor. No one had
noticed. I bent down, as though examining my pedicure, and quickly
picked up the charcoal. I looked up to find that Theo was staring
at me, his head cocked to one side and his dark hair flopped into
one eye. He was perfect. I started to smile, and then remembered
myself just in time. I was playing the brat, and the brat would not
smile. Instead I raised my eyebrows at him in a condescending
manner and turned my smile into what I hoped was a cold smirk,
before returning to my original fingernail examining position. When
I looked up again he had turned back to the speaker. I sighed in
relief. That had been a close call.

The trainer had now moved on to discussing
ways other than charcoal to rid the body of drugs, “… Cleanse the
bowel with polyethylene glycol solution for lithium, iron, ingested
drugs…” His voice was so boring I was nearly falling asleep.

“Excuse me.”

My attention was sparked when Theo spoke up,
and I began to concentrate again.

“Yes, Newbie?” The instructor pointed at
Theo’s raised hand.

“I was just wondering. You said that
polyethylene glycol and activated charcoal could rid the system of
ingested drugs.”

“Yes…” nodded the instructor.

“Well, isn’t the Cure an ingested drug?”

“Yes I would say so.”

“Then can’t anyone become un-Cured?”

The instructor shook his head, “Good
question. Actually, many years ago, when I was giving this very
lecture a young man asked the very same thing!” The instructor
squinted as though he was trying to remember something. Then his
eyes widened and scanned the room to meet my gaze.

He raised his finger and pointed at me. “The
young man was your father.”

My mouth dropped open. I quickly snapped it
shut again, trying to maintain my bratty act. Instead I shrugged
nonchalantly and rolled my eyes, “So what?”

“Well, it actually became a scandal of
sorts,” the trainer said, “Because the very next year, five people
managed to evade the Cure. Those five people took the pill and then
washed it down with a stash of charcoal, which they had hidden on
their person. The Norms were from the Scientific Field and were
manufacturing the charcoal for medical purposes. Anyway, it worked.
The Cure was ineffective and the five remained human.”

“You’re not saying my father had anything to
do with it, are you?” I asked, my voice coming out colder than I
expected.

“No no no!” The trainer held up his hands,
“Of course not. King Apolleon would never! It is quite a
coincidence, though.”

I decided to let it slide.

“So what happened to the five? How did they
get found out?” Theo ignored my interference.

“They tried to escape during their Prime
initiation. Every single one of them was caught,” the trainer said,
“They were sent to Tartarus prison and no one ever saw them
again.”

I shuddered. Felix met my eye. His were
filled with fear.

Chapter 15

Having
finished his lecture on toxins and weather dangers, the instructor
left the room and the second teacher came in. She was a middle-aged
woman from the uppermost ranks of the Labour Field. The academic
section of her brain hadn’t been turned to total mush, like it did
for most Labour Norms, so she was educated on basic survival skills
that involved physical activity. She briefly went over how to find
water and food in the wilderness, as well as how to navigate
directions. I tuned out. It was hard for me to listen in without
being obvious.

After the theoretical part of her lesson, she
asked for the group to stand up. She told the Newbies that she was
going to help them utilise their new bodies in the most effective
way. She pointed up to the ceiling at the far end of the arena. I
looked up and saw a complex system of ropes and pulleys that I
hadn’t noticed before. The ceiling was high and there were no
safety nets.

“First we will be working on your balance
skills, “she said motioning to Ellina, “Ladies first.”

Ellina looked worried, but nodded. 


“
Your senses
are heightened, and your balance is impeccable. Although you may
find this scary to start with, because you have not yet utilised
this new improved skill, once you are aware of your perfect
balance, you will be entirely at ease with heights.”

Ellina nodded again, “What do I do?”


The instructor pointed to a swinging ladder
at one side of the room, “Just climb up and follow the rope
matrix,” she pointed to the other side of the room where there was
another ladder “and you’ll come down this side once you have
completed the course.”


“Are there any harnesses or… or
helmets?”


The instructor laughed. “Trust me, you don’t
need a harness.”



Ellina
walked over to the ladder hesitantly. She placed a foot on the
lowest rung and turned back to the group. Theo pulled an
encouraging ‘thumbs up’ and Ellina began to climb. With every step
her climbing quickened, until Ellina was scaling the ladder with
ease. Upon reaching the top she stood on the platform, her lip was
quivering nervously. 
“You’re fine,” said the
instructor.

She took a tentative step onto the rope, and
then another one, her arms out to her sides like a trapeze artist.
At this point she paused, and her face lit up in an excited grin.
She lowered her arms and began strolling across the rope as though
it were a simple pavement. She completed the matrix in a matter of
seconds and swung off the rope onto the ladder with ease. 


“
That was
great!” she said with a laugh. 
Axil moved towards the ladder,
eager to take the next turn. As he completed the course I looked to
Felix, who was frowning, deep in thought. I wondered how he was
going to get out of this.