Cipher Code {complete}

Chapter Fifty One: The Future For Them.

Dawn woke up with a gasp, her eyes flying open in fear. The world around her was still shrouded in darkness but this time she wasn't falling. Instead, she was looking into a pair of eyes.

"Hezekiah," she breathed in relief and shuffled away from the man, "what was that?"

The man frowned, his face illuminated by the sudden glow of Dawn's pendant. "Visions," he answered.

Dawn felt a cloth being pulled around her and let out a content sigh. She hadn't realized that she had been shivering. "I don't have visions, I'm not Enhanced. . ."

"It was from the Maeg." Hezekiah stood to full length. "Come," he beckoned her into his arms, "we must go before they find us."

The Maeg? Impossible. Dawn scowled at the man but shoved down her curiosity. If they had broken out of the castle her father's guards were no doubt after them, and Dawn was positive Rose was leading the hunt.

She let Hezekiah scoop her into his arms, too tired to argue or resist. The professor shut her eyes and tried to recall the visions, already feeling them slip out of her grasp.

The capital had fallen, it's citizens now prisoners of war. Corey was injured somehow and died under Rhea Lee's capable hands. There was blood. Why was there so much blood?

Dawn's brows furrowed, her lip down-turned as she pressed her face into Hezekiah's chest to escape the cold.

Then Corey was put in glass. . . No, not glass. A pod, her stasis pod. Was I the one who did that? But it's not working. It won't save him.

Sure that no one else had the pass codes to the room, Dawn felt herself sink further into despair. If even she had given up hope, resorting to using a defective creation, what did that mean for Corey? Why then had she joined the men that killed him?

Why did her father let North fall?

Two tears escaped the hold of her lashes, burning a path through her frozen cheeks. She couldn't accept his death this way. Not when she now had the power to change things.

What she had experienced were not visions, they were nightmares and she would not allow them play out in reality.

It was like this that Dawn entered a fitful sleep. Physically and mentally exhausted, she made a pact to change the future.

†

The second time Dawn woke up, her skin felt like fire. She heaved once then pushed herself off the soft beddings beneath her. The moment she shifted, the room started to spin.

"Oh, I think I'm going to—" she couldn't complete her sentence, rushing past Hezekiah to the bin by his side. Unable to control herself, she vomited into the can, bile and stomach acid escaping her throat and coating her mouth in foulness.

About to use her shirt to wipe her mouth, Dawn looked up to see Hezekiah holding a towel her way. Red coloured her cheeks as she took it from him, her expression grateful. "I'm so embarrassed," she wiped her lips and passed the wet towel over her chin, "you had to carry me all this way."

"It was your first vision." He said gently, as though it explained everything. In his hand was a cup of water and Dawn rushed to it, eager to rid her mouth of the bitter taste that filled it.

"Thank you." she whispered and emptied the soothing contents of the cup.

Dawn decided not to fish for anymore answers tonight, still feeling a little queasy. She slowly made her way back to the bed, settling under the warm blanket. "Where are we?" she asked, ignoring the urge to press for something more. She wouldn't ask about those visions again.

"An inn outside the gates of Auro." The man said, absentmindedly weaving his long hair into a braid.

Dawn tried not to stare but his hair resembled a river of blood under the dim light over their heads. "I never knew inns still existed."

"They don't," he said, giving her a pointed look, "but this one does."

Dawn bit back her frustration and glanced around the room. There were no windows, so she couldn't see outside. "How did we get here?"

He said nothing, his eyes fixed on her face as though he was searching for something.

Dawn sighed and shut her eyes. "At least tell me why we are going to the capital."

"We are going," he replied, his tone gentle, "because that is where everything will end."

"I see." Dawn's heart caught in her throat as she nodded. Everything would be over soon. The prophecy had played out to this point, hadn't it?Was it something she could even fight it?

"The minister will fall in Auro," Hezekiah told her, his eyes shining with golden light, "and in a month he will lose his life."

"You saw her too!" Dawn's eyes snapped open and she stared at him, noticing the golden hue that cloaked his body. Like the ball of light in her vision, it called to her.

"I see her always." Hezekiah said with honesty.

"Can all members of your family see the future? What about me, what do these visions mean?"

"There are some things you will never understand and more that you are not yet ready to know." Hezekiah replied, his meaning vague. "I and my wife will watch over you always, as prophecy dictates. Now sleep."

And like an obedient soldier, she heard the command and drifted away into unconsciousness without realizing that she had a fever or that her hair was slowly losing color.

†〰†