Finally, I get Thomas done. Here it is!
5. Thomas
"That was a hell of a shot, Thomas."
Thomas looked next to him when he heard his name and his eyes met those of Aris. The two teens were carrying a deer between the two of them after quite the successful hunting trip.
"According to the most recent numbers from the Navigators, we could kill one deer this week without causing significant harm so," Thomas paused and looked away from Aris as he shrugged, "I went for it. No one else was assigned deer today, anyways."
Aris didn't reply right away, and this prompted Thomas to look back at his hunting partner. He nearly jumped when he realized that Aris had been staring him down with a furrowed brow the entire time.
"You know, I still think you'd be better at leading the Hunters than me," Aris finally said.
Thomas looked away. He was done leading, but Aris wasn't done pestering him about it. "Well, you're wrong."
Aris didn't push it after that. They walked back to the village centre - aptly named Paradise Central - in complete silence. As they neared Central, the bustle and hustle of the village broke through their silence and took away the awkwardness. Finally, they had a reason to stay quiet.
Once in Paradise Central, the two boys made a beeline for the Hunters Hut. Paradise Central was located in the largest forest clearing they had yet to find. It was bordered by a dense forest on one side and, after a sparsity of trees, an open meadow on the other side. It was approximately three miles away from the seaside. The cliffside above the ocean had been the initial location of Central, but that didn't allow many possibilities for defenses and escape should they be attacked, so they moved to the clearing.
Paradise Central was planned in such a way that all of the Guild Headquarters were arranged in a circle, with the Town Hall in the middle of it all. No one lived in Central - it simply served as an economic centre. The majority of people lived in the one mile radius surrounding Central, mostly in the meadow, and a few lived about two miles out.
The Hunters Hut was, more or less, a misnomer. The log cabin was quite large, with two rooms and an annexed wooden shed attached by an outdoor hall about fifteen feet long. The bigger room, which everyone entered into, had a colourful map of the region marking mating and habitat areas of certain animal species, a round table with chairs all around it in the centre, and two chalkboards. One of the boards had the names and assignments of all of the Hunters and the other had the list and numbers of animals that could be safely hunted in the current week.
The second, smaller room only had a square table. All of the walls were covered in hunting weapons - some made, some found. There was a chalkboard next to the doorway with inventory.
Finally, the shed was where meat was stored and preserved. It was also annexed by the Cook House, since Frypan and his apprentices often preferred to butcher the meat themselves.
After Thomas and Aris carried the deer over to the shed, they returned to the large room. Aris made a beeline for what they called the Quota Board and crossed out 'Deer - 1' with a granite rock that was resting on the round table. The chalkboards, abundant paper, and hunting knives were three of the many necessities that were found in the bunker underneath the burnt Flat Trans.
Thomas sat in a chair tiredly and waited for the other Hunters to trickle in as the sun started setting. His mind went blank, and maybe he even napped. Thomas couldn't really remember.
But he did remember something.
He is four years old. It's something he feels very strongly, so his birthday must have been recent. He is sitting at a dinner table, his mother next to him. In front of him is a plate of eggs and toast. The meal feels special. Rare.
His mother reaches under the table and pulls out a book. It is thin, tattered, and has a strange checkered pattern on the cover. She slides the book over to him.
"Your father loved crosswords and sudoku," she says quietly. "Do you want to do a puzzle together?"
He nods. The book feels like a game, and he knows that he loves games, like any little kid.
His mother opens the book to a nine-by-nine square with some random numbers printed in a few of the small squares. She explains the rules briefly - one of each number one through nine in each row, column, and box - and slides her chair closer to him as she grabs a pencil.
She writes in a number, and that's when he sees it. Not the number that should be next to it or below it - he sees every number. The puzzle makes sense, hovers in his mind like a brand. He grabs the pencil from his mother, perhaps a bit too excitedly, and fills it in rapidly.
His mother looks at him in shock as he slides the finished puzzle to her five minutes later with a proud smile on his face.
"Thomas!"
Thomas snapped out of his daydream at the loud noise and noticed that all of the Hunters had returned. The sky was a light purple already, and some of the boys, girls, men, and women were looking at him like he was a strange alien. Most of them shrugged, and the final meeting of the day commenced.
However, he couldn't shake the memory, and all of the extra knowledge that came with it. When they first started working on building Paradise, one of the Group B girls had theorized that all of them were particularly intelligent in a very specific field, and that's what made them such predictable Variables. Thomas always knew that for him that field was mathematics and cryptanalysis, but he hated that WICKED had made him that way.
Now, it no longer seemed that way.
Ever since Thomas went all "code words hidden in the maze" I imagined him to be skilled at cryptanalysis. Don't forget to leave a review!
Sneak peek of the next chapter:
Benjamin Wyatt. That was the name of the first baby born in Paradise. After ten hours of labour, blood, and trying everything imaginable to avoid a crude Caesarean section, the wailing kid was finally born and the mother was relatively healthy and sane of mind.
And Dora was tired. Very, very tired. She may have been named after Metrodora, but that didn't mean the eighteen year-old girl had the same adeptness for women's health as the female Ancient Greek physician.