Chaos Surging

CASSEY

News on the television was anything but good.

Standing in the company of her stepmother, she was tall and dark skinned with messily tied back black hair able to reach her waist – she wasn’t out of her twenties yet and never enjoyed revealing her naivety. Dressed for a climate that wasn’t African, she watched from the centre of the living room with her stepmother, Ngozi, who sat in her late husband’s favourite armchair with a cup of tea in hand. The two Nigerian women shared the same rich, dark eyes bulging with identical horror and sadness. Keeping tears to herself in the family home in Enugu, she reminded herself this was the fight she’d chosen to win.

‘…up to three hundred people are confirmed dead following the suicide bombing in Mexico City two days ago with the number expected to rise. So far no group has claimed responsibility for this heinous display, the fourth of our year 2047, but once again, the finger is being pointed at empowered people – the novi.’

She and her stepmother watched the images to come, both of them silent for fear of missing something vital.

‘It’s proving to be a very bloody January,’ Ngozi spoke with dread.

Aerial footage of Mexico City, high in altitude and where a nation’s flag once waved majestically over its Centro Historico, was shown.

It had been a very bloody January, she needed to agree – she had to ask herself though, how was she going to cope knowing she’d opened the doors for the perpetrators to commit such atrocities? It was perplexing.

Images of angry and crying people followed, as well as a world map with four locations highlighted – Copenhagen, Vancouver, Shanghai and Mexico City. All four cities were in countries that sympathized with empowered people and others that didn’t. WHERE NEXT?! flashed on the screen before varying reports followed.

World leaders had convened in an undisclosed location to discuss the subject of the empowered novi.

People the world over were evacuating major cities close to the unofficial novus celebration known as Exodus Day – it was described as a turn of events.

She continued watching the unfolding chaos.

An American family standing before their car explained why they couldn’t risk remaining at home – they couldn’t tell if they were going to see the coming tomorrow.

A novus girl in Athens was identified and lynched by a mob of twenty – some arrests were made.

An empowered woman with a digitally distorted face stressed the fact novi deplored and condemned the attacks, further stating members of the novus race had been killed also.

She breathed out, seeing the faces of men, women and children caught up with the madness unfolding everywhere – she sometimes wished she could be blind to everything.

A loud group discussion between several humans then took the screen which didn’t give her much reason to hope.

‘…they came out of nowhere and incite fear with their very being,’ one man spoke. ‘They are threats to human survival. They should’ve just stayed hidden where they were.’

‘They cannot be blamed for what they are,’ another man replied, ‘and labelling them as threats on live television will not be seen as complimentary by many within their communities. After all, anyone with a gun is a threat.’

‘This is very different – they have powers, and they can do anything! They can create even greater abilities provided they try hard enough!’

‘Crossing the threshold,’ Ngozi brought up quietly. ‘How many times have you crossed it now, my dear?’

‘I prefer not to think about it,’ she replied, unsettled by the ease in which she could thresh and develop extra abilities.

‘What a lot of people, some of whom are presently seated, like to ignore is the fact that this is a clear move of retaliation,’ a woman on the television cut in, sounding angry. ‘Thousands of novi were abducted over the last two decades, it has been confirmed, by rogue factions and entire governments for segregation and use in scientific experimentation and military deployment. They have been forced to endure a holocaust for no other reason than for existing…’

She thought of the concentration camps she’d dealt with, along with the others, before looking to her stepmother. ‘Have you seen enough?’

Ngozi took the subtle hint and turned the television off.

‘Only fair,’ her stepmother said, ‘you already see too much of it anyway.’

She looked Ngozi over, liking the bright Igbo pattern on her dress and the beads woven into her greying hair. Ngozi had adopted the style following a university trip to Namibia long ago, she recalled.

A proud Igbo, with a hint of Tiv thrown in some generations ago, she yearned to be back amongst her family, community and culture if it wasn’t for her self-appointed duty. Looking down at her thermal vest, cargo pants and snow boots only served to remind her of the burden she’d chosen.

She looked around the living room at all the things she wanted to touch so greatly – wooden figurines on the bookshelf, the branch of a kola tree brushing against the window, family photos of her many younger half siblings with big and toothy smiles, a painting of water birds her own mother, Uzoamaka, had completed long ago.

She looked at the colours, appreciatively, before returning her gaze to the old woman who had gladly stepped in to fulfil her late mother’s role. She remembered a touch of animosity on her end which had been quick to fade. Their adoration for each other was set in stone well before the first of her half siblings was born.

‘It’s good to have something from the past to hold on to,’ Ngozi explained, sipping from her teacup.

Agreed – she’d always thought of her father, amongst other memories, when crossing the threshold to attain a new gift. She set her comforting, dark eyes on the chair Ngozi sat in – a time ago her late father would sit her on his lap and read to her. Her favourite story was Rapunzel. Following his passing, she didn’t want anyone sitting in that chair – she had been very loud about it – but some words from Ngozi had put her in her place.

Sitting in this chair, we can still be together, Ngozi had told her firmly – you can still keep a part of him in your heart child.

It’d been an ear bashing she was now happy to have been dealt – it also reminded her to not show her elders any disrespect.

‘So, things are going to get more difficult,’ she explained, breathing out.

‘The story of the world, my girl,’ Ngozi replied, ‘and I trust you’ll do your part to change that.’

‘I’m going to try my hardest with the powers I’ve got.’

‘You will explore diplomacy first… when you need to complete a task?’ her stepmother asked.

‘Always,’ she answered, recalling her many lessons.

Ngozi nodded with a smile. ’You are afa – you will perform your role amazingly.’

She took another breath. ‘There’s a possibility I’ll have to make my face known to the wrong people… but I’ve made a cover for myself. It’ll protect you and the littles… and I felt the title I was using was disconnecting me from others.’

‘Always thinking about everyone else – your father and mother are smiling where they are. What is this name you’ve chosen?’

’Aha m bụ Cassandra Lawal.’

‘Cassandra?’ Ngozi added, raising a grey and slender eyebrow. ‘I find that highly appropriate.’

‘Cassey, for short,’ she added, knowing her anthropologist stepmother would understand its significance.

‘Pray you never have to hear it mentioned in a death notice.’

‘My girl, all I do is pray.’ Ngozi set her cup of tea down and stood. ‘It really goes against my atheist upbringing.’

Cassey wanted to assist her stepmother in standing but thought better of it. Ngozi stood before her, several inches shorter, and smiled yet again.

‘I’ll keep telling everyone you’re off playing aid worker, but please, come and visit when you can.’

‘I promise.’

‘Good, and also, a little bit of motherly advice,’ Ngozi told her. ‘If you’re going to save the world… do it quickly.’

Cassey nodded – it wasn’t bad advice.

’Ka chiọma biara gị,’ Ngozi added. ’Ijeọma.’

Opening her eyes, Cassey blinked several times before sitting up in her cot. Watching her stepmother drinking tea had made her thirsty, but then she remembered running out of teabags several days ago. She made a mental note to go down to the coast for supplies – she hadn’t hit the colourful Saqqaq in a while.

Cassey stood and, in the electric lamplight of her ‘headquarters’, looked at everything on the walls whilst feeling the Greenlandic cold emanating from the outside. A storm currently raged.

Maps, photographs of people and places, names of her few assets around the world, classified documents she’d dug around for, her own personal notes, theories and recollections – she knew she, like anyone else, wasn’t truly ready but it was a good start.

Cassey stepped closer, reading the code names of her assets and connections written here and there – Truth Seeker, the Centurion, Goddess, the Burmese, Terror, Dragonfly – she paused on the last one, momentarily, before stepping towards a surveillance photo taken before the mass explosion in Copenhagen.

A man with a murderous grudge who showed it clearly in the way he was standing.

Cassey looked to another photo, taken in Vancouver, which had been posted on a teenage girl’s Instagram account.

Another murderous grudge-like pose was in the background – this one belonged to a red haired young woman.

The same pose appeared on a man in footage taken before the attack in Shanghai, and she expected to find something very similar in pictures of Mexico City.

Cassey turned her attention to an image she’d drawn of a man and pinned to the wall several days ago, a man she had been shown by those above… or wherever they may be watching from… and who would lead her in the right direction. Shame she couldn’t see him now.