The Phoenix Creation 🆕⭐⭐⭐⭐ (on Amazon)

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Fly High

'How is she today?'

'Vesta, you know Alya, almost as well as I. How do you think she is without her best friend to play with?'

Alya heard Vesta laugh. 'Utterly bored then,' she said.

Alya smiled at the nail-on-the-head response from Hanuel's mother. She padded quietly along the tiled hallway from her bedroom to the lounge. It was day three of her and Hanuel's recovery after their ordeal. Alya had reluctantly stayed in hospital overnight where they had monitored her condition. Amongst great protest, she had even returned to the dreaded scanner that she'd spent so much time in as a little girl and allowed them to scan her lungs, at the doctor's insistence. They were concerned that the storm may have been highly toxic but Alya had insisted that it wasn't. When asked how she knew she went quiet remembering that she couldn't quote Zeph, for her safety and his and her cousin's too.

Alya was disappointed that Doctor Jama wasn't able to tend to her but the nurse had explained that he was no longer at the hospital and had taken early retirement. Alya couldn't help but assess the nurse's expression as she explained about Doctor Jama, and Alya knew she was hiding something and wondered if her favourite physician had done something wrong?

'Diana,' said Vesta, lowering her voice and changing her tone enough to make Alya pay acute attention. She stopped advancing down the hall and remained just out of sight as the two women conferred with each other while seated at the dining table.

'You were right to be concerned,' said Vesta. 'Those two doctors that came here are not registered anywhere on C1. I double-checked the database and I had Artemis ask around too, just in case I'd overlooked something. I mean, they could still be doctors, but in the private sector, so we looked there too. They would still need to be registered to practice.'

'Oh, my Gods,' said Diana, leaning back from the table as she processed the information. 'I knew there was something not right about them, but they knew Doctor Jama.'

'Never mind that,' said Vesta. 'Whoever they are, we have to ask, what is their interest in our Alya? Why her?'

'I don't know,' said Diana.

Alya could hear the worry in her mother's voice and she knew she had to intervene before this, whatever this was, spiralled out of control. She walked casually towards them and Vesta and Diana's heads snapped up as she approached. The two women looked slightly guilty and her mother pushed a chair out to make room for her, as a diversion tactic.

'I heard you,' said Alya, bluntly, dismissing the proffered chair. 'It's probably not anything to do with me,' she continued. 'It could be something or somebody related to Uncle Bruce. Did you think of that?'

Diana nodded to appease her daughter. 'Possibly, Alya, we're going to have to report it to Patrol and go from there I think.'

'What? No! Don't do that, I'm already on their radar, Mom. Just tell Uncle Bruce and he can deal with it.'

Alya's mother appeared to suck lemon as she weighed up her daughter's suggestion against her own.

Alya tipped her head to the side, awaiting a response. The truth was, she had bigger things to worry about, and she'd temporarily forgotten about the two bogus doctors' existence until just now. She was a little bit concerned, but it felt like Vesta and her mother were going off track. It was probably an insurance scam, or even brazen burglars casing the joint before coming back another day. It could be something altogether different, but the main thing on her mind right now was, Zeph.