Chapter Nineteen
Catherine
"This is not going to work! Tell her that!" I whisper fiercely into his face, my voice urgent and at the brink of rising. "They probably figured it out already. Don't you get it? Those people can read my mind!" I say, my index finger tapping at the hair above my ears. "And I don't know about you, but I surely don't want to get stuck in this!" Damn it!
The man in front of me looks pissed as he raises his hand to shush me and continues speaking into the microphone on his shirt, his beard wobbling up and down with his chin as he goes on. I turn to one of the others.
"What's he going on about? What's happening?" The man looked at me with pity in his eyes and said, "I'm sorry Miss, this is not in my control." Ugh!
The man with the beard, or supposedly 'Donald', puts down the device in his hands. He looks at me, bored. "Miss Davis, you need to convince Peter and the rest of them not to continue with this 'heist'."
I stare into his face, shaking my head, "Are you out of your mind? What will my excuse be? She doesn't want you to continue with your plans because she's scared it'll disrupt hers? Come on Donald, you've known these people long enough!"
I stand up and dust my knees. "I have to go now. Tell her I can't do it." I say to the three men in front of me. Donald rolls his eyes, "Miss Catherine, come on now. You can't say no to her. You of all people know whatever she does, she does for a reason."
I lose my temper and scream into his face now, "For a reason? Is this the same reason you guys are here? Stalking us, watching our every step? Is this reason the cause of my forced lies?" I stop for a quick breath and then hurry, afraid they might have heard me, "You know what, I'm not going to keep this from him anymore- I can't. I'm telling Peter everything."
Donald looks at me weakly, "Miss Catherine, no, you can't." I spit at him with quitting rage, "Yes I can." I walk around swiftly, heading for the house and freeze in my tracks. Peter stands in front of me, trying to look blank, but his eyes give him away. A swirly shade of red mixed with hints of green, of sloppy yellow. I gulp.
-
"Don't you think I have enough to deal with already? What else have you been keeping from me?" He said, his tone low, but angry.
"Not a lot." I whisper unnecessarily.
"Catherine..." He runs his hands through his hair, tired. "Catherine, Ester said you might be up to something, but I refused to believe him. And parts of me still do. Please, please, just tell me what's going on here. Who are you, why are you here? Who's side are you on? Do you know those men?" He looks at me, begging, and I can see the slight shadows below his eyes. I sigh guiltily.
"Peter, I'm the same person you met ten years ago in pre-primary. The very same one. I-"
"Start over, Catherine- if that's your name- start right from the beginning."
I breathe in. "My name is Catherine Stanley Davis. I am seventeen years old. I have always lived with my parents- all my life, until merely twelve days back where I returned here to find them brutally murdered, perhaps even tortured. My parents are-were- an integral part of a secret society called To Sotos. Obviously, I joined them too..." I gulp. Can I tell him? "Peter, you must understand this goes deeper than... It's not easy to explain this, I..." A solitary tear runs down my left cheek.
"Catherine, I don't care how difficult it is to explain. You need to. You have to." He pauses. "That day when we went to get Ester, and I said we didn't need to fight them, you slapped me. Why? You never wanted to fight them; you are a part of them. Is Ester too?"
"Ester doesn't know about this. And I had to keep my cover." I say and at once I know the weight of my words.
"Just tell me everything. Now."
"Peter, I want to, but I can't, I just can't. How can I?" He doesn't reply. "This is way more complicated than you think, it's way too much. I-" I break off and fall into a heap on the floor.
He shakes his head, or so I think, and walks out. And then it hits me. Peter and the rest of them plan on heading to the pyramid in two days. Maybe, if just maybe, I could get them to meet Igetis and Countess Margarita, things could be more settled- and faster. I stand up quickly, rubbing the tears from my face with the back of my hand, and leave the room to find them.
The chairs that were once occupied by us now seated all of the twelve men tied up with duct tape firmly. I shake my head and go straight up to Peter. "Untie them." His back is turned to me, so his eyes, as they normally do, couldn't give away hints to his emotions this time.
Instead he says to me in a grave tone, "I don't think you have any voice in this matter Catherine. Instead-" He stops, mid-sentence and looks down. I frown, now angry.
"Instead," I complete, "I should be tied up with them too right? Is that what you want?"
His filling silence gives him away.
"Okay then Peter," I put my hands out together in front of me, my wrists touching each other. "Tie me up, go ahead." I huff. "Peter, they don't mean anything bad. We are with you, we have always been with you."
Finally, he turns, and I take a step back unknowingly. He looks scary, his eyes burning red, like chili, his face fierce, his hands clenched at his sides and he gritted his teeth together, leaning onto me.
He said, "When did you join them? When did you and them become a 'we'? When did we-" he gestures to the rest of the boys from Oi Alloi, "become 'you'll', 'them'?"
He moves closer. I can feel his breath on my face. "Tie her up." He's doing it. I can't let him, he needs to meet them. "You're okay with that I suspect?"
I take a space back and look him in the eye, trying my best not to waver. " I am. But there's something I need to do before that. You need to meet them."
"Meet who?"
-
Peter stops the car behind some shrugs, the same place as Ester had thirteen days back. We get out of the car and walk onto the familiar open space leading to the Pyramid. Right before the wired fence, I stop. "Not this way. We're going in from the front."
"And that's going to make so much of a difference right?" Max asks rhetorically. I ignore it and walk ahead, parallel to the fence to the main entrance. Peter jogs up beside me.
"Have you been here before? From this main entry?" He asks. There is no point in lying. I never wanted to, and I won't.
"Yes." I clear the branches in front of me as we walk into the forest, the clearing now ending. He nods and continues. "When?"
"I would rather you wait until you meet them for all your questions to be answered." I say. Once again, he nods and we continue shoving aside the leaves.
"How big is the Pyramid?" I think about it. "It's not really a pyramid, you know, more like a diamond. And it's quite big." We continue in silence.
"This way." I turn towards my right and after clearing some more branches, we can see the glistening glass of the top half of the diamond, the gray metal wires surrounding it.
Men in armor, masked and loaded, patrol the gates. A soft blue light is emitting from the inside and if one would look up, and tilt their heads all the way back, they would see the clear name for the base, stapled onto the building.
I smile at it and walk straight to the gates, beckoning the others to follow me. If I didn't, I think they would probably stand here for the rest of the day, admiring this beautiful structure.