The Faith
Chapter 12b -
Virus, Part 2 -
More Expletives Than Needed
(Marco)
I pulled my knees up under me and leaned back against the wall. I was definitely feeling whatever Sarah was feeling right now, or, more likely, anyway, I had caught her virus. My limbs were responding slowly to what I wanted them to do, and I felt like I had the flu, but… I couldn't show that. I had to look like I wasn't sick, because I wasn't even sure I was sick. I don't know, maybe I was. I didn't understand how the little dagger thing worked at all, so maybe I'd caught the virus through that. I really had no idea…
Alay sunk down onto a bale of hay and buried her face in her hands with a sigh.
"Ich habe kein angst…" she murmured to herself. "Ia hei kai… Kithe mia…" There was something else wrong, something else that Alay knew, and it was bugging her. Now, I don't exactly like the psycho, but she was a teammate and seeing her worried… well, it worried me too.
"Alay," I said quietly. "What's a Caster virus?" She lifted her head and regarded me with cool eyes.
"Her Casting reacting to something in the environment," she said, sitting up. "It's not really a virus… it's more… an allergy, I guess. We just call it a 'virus' because of the symptoms that come with it.
"But what is it reacting to?" asked Jake. "If it hasn't reacted before to anything… she's been here how long?"
"A helluva lot shorter time then you're thinkin', Trainee," answered Alay flatly. "At the most, a few months."
"A few months?" asked Jake, confused. "But she moved here at the beginning of last summer…" Alay shook her head. I felt the urge to hide, because I had known this Sarah was a different Sarah and I hadn't shared that fact with Jake. I had lied to him, flat out lied, we all had, but I was the most at fault because Jake was my best friend and… I should have told him.
"I don't even want to explain this," sighed Alay. "There's a lot going on here that I have no freakin' clue about because I haven't been told. But, as far as the allergy/virus goes, I think it's because when Sarah reported to Head Caster Hannah, her Casting adjusted to differences in the Elementals in the other dimension and didn't adjust fast enough when she came back here, so the different Elementals reacted to each other and… well, here we are." You could have heard a pin drop, between the stunned look on Jake's face and the stunned look on Rachel's too. None of this was really any new news to the rest of us, but I still felt really guilty…
"Other…dimension?" asked Jake. "She comes from… the Old World?" Old World?
"Old World?" repeated Rachel, looking from Alay to her cousin. "What Old World?"
"Jai, the World of your ancestors," answered Alay solemnly. "As do I, and Sadie and Emily. Frankly, t'hell if we know why we're here, but… we are. The Ellimist brought us here, I think, more or less, leaving Sadie, Emily, and I to rot in the Yeerk Pool while he switched this Sarah with the one who was here prior to us."
"Old World?" repeated Rachel, just a little louder, in case we hadn't heard her the first time. "Just what the hell does she mean the 'Old World'? Like the 'Old World' old world? That Old World?" Now it was Jake's turn to look completely confused at his cousin. Personally, I had the look down pat, and Ax was looking a little lost too. Good. At least I wasn't the only one out of the 'Old World' loop. Just what the heck were they talking about?!
"You…" Jake narrowed his eyes at Rachel. "You… know?" She heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes.
"Of course I know," she scoffed. "I'm not that out of the loop on our family history. My dad told me about the Old World a few years ago. He wanted me to train to be a… Weapon…" I could see all of the pieces falling into place in Rachel's head, while everything was starting to make sense to me. Sarah's theory about Casters and Weapons in our world was true - they did exist and Jake and Rachel's family was descended from the group that had been lost when the Transgates had become warped. And Alay had called Jake 'Trainee', so that meant then...
Rachel and I both muttered a similar expletive and Jake turned the confused look to me, now. I didn't even wait for him to ask - I had just lost all sense of humor for this situation. My best friend was a WEAPON and he HADN'T told me. That wasn't cool. Not cool at all. And it didn't make my mood any better to realize that I had done the same thing to him, because it added guilt onto pissed-ness.
"I'm a Caster, Jake," I told him dully. "Sarah's been teaching me, because we didn't know there were other Casters in the area to teach me. And you're a Weapon. And, yes, Rachel, Sarah's a Weapon. She's a Caster too-"
"She's a Cross," interrupted Alay. "More Weapon than Caster. Sadie's all Caster, I'm all Weapon, and Emily… well, she's more Caster. But she's Teslahani, so she's been trained in some forms of fighting - oh, what the hell am I saying? I'm completely off topic now. We need to get back on track."
"Back on track?" repeated Rachel. "Bull-" I don't need to fill that word in. "The skank's a Weapon. It's been off-track for a while now." Skank. Skank? Skank?!
"Rach, that was uncalled for," berated Jake. "Sarah's on this team and she's not after Tobias, so get over it." Thank God for Jake's common sense. He may not have used it often, but when he did, he asserted that logic unto others. Unfortunately, Rachel's in the same family, so that made her immune, apparently, because she glared evil daggers at Jake.
"What do you know about anything, anyway?" she snapped. "Stay out of things that don't concern you!"
"Grow up, already!" he snapped back. "You're being such a child!"
"Better a child than an ass!"
"Better an ass than a bi-!"
The ground beneath us suddenly shifted - not shifted, as it moved, shifted as in Shifted, as in the little guys, seharai nendei or Elementals, or whatever you want to call them, moved. Everyone standing was promptly toppled over, with Rachel landing flat on her butt with a yell and Jake falling into Alay, who shoved him off without ceremony and jumped to her feet. I stood too, because the Shift hadn't affected me, sitting on the pale of hay like I'd been.
"Alay, what is it?" I asked, looking out the barn door as she did. Rachel struggled to her feet and rubbed her backside with a look of absolute pain twisting her face.
"Friggin'… I think I broke something," she muttered. "And broke it hard, too."
"Rachel, move." Rachel looked at Alay, who had made the statement with no emotion in her voice whatsoever. I, too, looked at Alay, who had a strange look on her face - some mixture of anger and confusion. "Move, Rachel, now." Her voice was so authoritative that I moved as Rachel did the same. But as Rachel and I moved, something else moved too. Not Ax, who was attempting to stand even as we already were, or Jake, who was on Alay's other side, eyes trained on the door, but something else. Something I hadn't expected…
