Dreams

Cayden walked out of the control room and headed for his room. I ran after him, overtook him and blocked his way.
“What just happened?” I asked, trying to be polite. I was simmering with anger.
“I just told you, I worry about you sometimes,” he said laughing. He went to walk away.
I grabbed him by the arm, spinning him around to face me. “I heard you in the bathroom. What’s going on?”
Cayden wasn’t laughing anymore. His face turned an ashen white and he looked worried, vulnerable. I had never seen him like this, he wasn’t so confident, no matter the situation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he laughed. But this wasn’t a hearty laugh. It was forced. “You must have been hearing things, I wasn’t doing anything in the bathroom.”

He walked away, and this time I let him. I was too heartbroken to do anything else. He was lying to me, he didn’t trust me. I ran to my room, eyes full of tears. I buried my face into a pillow. Pillows are good listeners; they absorb your tears and make you feel better. I was so upset that I thought delusional thoughts such as this.

I decided to take my mind off things and began to brush up on my human knowledge. I began flicking through the pages; human traits, brief human history, how to recognise a human… my eyes were drawn to that page. I never thought it necessary to read this page; humans look the same as us, after all. The page said:
The human being is different to the superior Cleanser in many ways. Their appearance is extremely similar to ours and in a crowd you could not tell the species from each other. However, up close, you would notice one main difference. The Cleanser eye colour is a rich purple, whereas the human eye colour can vary, from colours such as brown, blue, green etc. It is impossible for a Cleanser to have these colour eyes. This is also great knowledge for identifying spies. Human spies must wear lenses over their eyes to prevent their discovery, however the technology used is not faultless. They flicker occasionally to show the true eye colour, giving away he true identity of the human.

I froze. Why had I never read this before? I suppose it was because I had never had a reason to ever be suspicious of Cayden before. I loved him and he didn’t love me. It was all coming together so quickly. His amazing athletic and combat abilities even though he was relatively poor, his flickering eyes and the fact he was so close to the daughter of the Leader. He was always asking questions about strategies that were nothing to do with him, top secret. But I told him. I told him everything. He didn’t love me, he was a spy.