Riddle of Fate Read Free Page A

Honestly, she didn’t know why they were making such a big fuss.
     
    ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
     
    It was frustrating not being able to tell Brier about her day. She was sure she could trust him not to tell anyone else, but somehow she sensed that she would be placing him in danger if she revealed her secret. A ridiculous thought, but one that she couldn’t shake off.
    He’d stayed the night again, but had left early that morning before she even woke up. All she remembered was him giving her a quick peck on her cheek before leaving.
    She was not looking forward to the Company's tests. If they were anything like the ones she'd had to endure after they first found her, then this day was not going to be any fun at all. She shivered and pushed the thought away.
    Merrit met her at the library entrance. His usual smile was nowhere to be seen. “Did you say something to Peater?” he asked, rubbing his hooked nose.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Yesterday. I saw him call you into his office before he called me in. What were you talking about?”
    “Nothing that’s of any matter to you. Why are you even asking?”
    “My meeting wasn’t all too pleasant,” he said before bounding up the last three steps and disappearing among the bookshelves.
    That couldn’t have had anything to do with her. She didn’t even mention his name. She crushed the little voice at the back of her mind telling her it was because she had spoken to him about fixing the typewriter. And then lied about it.
    Before she managed to reach her desk, Peater gestured for her to enter his office. Taking a deep breath, she followed him in. “Sit,” he said. It was an order not an invitation. “We have come to realise that perhaps not all that you told us yesterday was truthful.”
    “I don’t know what you are referring to.”
    “We asked you if you had spoken to anyone regarding what happened yesterday. You told us no one.”
    Her heart was racing and she smoothed down her skirt. “I didn’t –”
    “I suggest,” he interrupted loudly, “that you consider carefully what you are about to say. Further lies will only serve to make your predicament worse.”
    “I didn’t think it mattered. I mentioned to Merrit that I thought I had mended the typewriter and he laughed! He didn’t believe a word of it.”
    “You should have told us yesterday. We questioned him. I am afraid it wasn’t an easy conversation for him.”
    “But he doesn’t know anything,” she said, the colour draining from her face.
    “On the contrary, he knows more than what’s good for him.”
    “Why is it so important that no one knows?”
    Peater ran a hand down his face, looking worried. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, studying her. “This has happened a few times before. It was all before my time with the Company. The most recent one wasn’t even in my lifetime. About sixty years ago.”
    “So, then I’m even more confused. If I’m not the first then why the big fuss?”
    “They all went mad. The last person soon after his second ability manifested. He started behaving strangely. He was reported to wander as if in a trance and find himself someplace without knowing how he came to be there. He had full conversations with people with no recollection later of even seeing them.
    “It wasn’t long before he became violent. He killed two people before they managed to capture him.”
    A gasp escaped her. “What did the Company do with him then?”
    “The only thing they could. What they had done with the ones before. They terminated him.”
    She jumped to her feet, knocking her chair over. “Is that what you are planning to do with me today? Terminate me?” Her racing breath made her chest heave.
    “Calm down. Do you think I would be telling you this if we were? We want to help you. We want to find a way to either enable you to manage two abilities or to suppress the second one.”
    It took her a moment to compose herself. "Do you have a way to do either of those