Chapter 2: Missing Something
1253 Words
Aarman’s POV:
“Aarmi, turn around Aarmi” I heard my sister, Aliya’s voice.
Aarman Elatewoods was my legal name but most people on the Island called me Aarmi.
Well, we were all Elatewoods around here anyways.
Like some giant clan family.
All the TEOs were given the same last name.
Thousands of us with the same last name.
My sister waved at me calmly, motioning for me to come over. Her long blond hair curled to perfection, framing her face. She looked like she was ready for a date or something.
Or was I missing something?
I thought we were only going to find out the identity of our mates – not meet them in person. Or were we?
I smiled and walked in her direction. Spotted my brother, Adam, sitting next to her. His deep brown red hair styled perfectly. His fitted bottle green T-Shirt emphasizing his extra wide chest.
“Am I missing something?” I asked raising my eyebrows, amused by how ready they both looked.
“Of course, you are,” Aliya stated as a matter of fact “where is your phone?”
I probably left it in the car again.
“You missed the last memo brother,” Adam ran his hand through his freshly groomed hair before handing me his phone, “Read that!”
‘Good afternoon,
Just a Reminder. Please come prepared to travel.
Sincerely,
Your Compatibility Team’
“Travel? Just a Reminder?”
What were they talking about?
I couldn’t believe I just read that.
“They mean travel out of the Island – Travel? They are sending us out?” shock evident in my voice. I was more surprised than shocked. But I always acted a bit dramatic around them. Although I could feel my heart rate go up. Not sure if I was excited or nervous or a bit of both.
“It’s ok,” Aliya tried to calm me down. Her blue eyes empathizing with me.
“None of us have ever gone outside the island,” I tried to remind them. “At least not yet.”
“You’ll be fine brother,” Adam reassured. “Here, I packed you some items” he winked.
“OK?” I managed to respond still confused by this new ordeal.
We all knew that a day would come where we would be sent out into the real world to carry out assigned missions.
I had always wanted to be assigned on a mission outside of the Island.
But not like this.
What did the Mate Reveal have to do with travelling outside of the island?
I was growing very curious.
Adam squinted his eyes and gave me a nod as if reading my mind, before checking the time on his phone. I had a weird hunch that they knew more about this situation and were deliberately keeping it from me.
Although all three of us were born minutes apart, Aliya and Adam always treated me like a younger sibling.
We were unidentical triplets.
We shared the same womb, same birth date and lived together as children, but we were biologically unrelated embryos who had survived the Edition One Procedure.
Our Surrogate parents had to leave when all three of us were six weeks old. They had a family emergency and couldn’t care for us or stay on the island.
At least that’s what we were told when we were old enough to understand.
We were moved through many different families on the island.
As sad as it sounds this was quite common.
Many surrogates didn’t stick around. Specially during the early days. The island was quiet dead in the early days and Dr. Woods didn’t believe in keeping people here forcefully.
She also made sure that they were paid very well for the procedure.
Surprisingly, none of the surrogate couples leaked the secrets of the island.
Most of them knew little about the whole gene editing part of the surrogacy to begin with.
I always wondered if we freaked our surrogate parents out as babies.
Before anyone of us could say anything further the screens across the room turned green.
A familiar face beamed across the screen as the room became silent.
Dr. Woods.
Her usually calm face looked eager as she pursed her lips, awe struck by the energy in the room.
Her piercing green eyes looked tired as she pushed her glasses up.
Her hair was neatly tied up in a bun.
Signature Dr. Woods look.
“It is always a pleasure to see you all my children” she smiled “we have reached another
milestone in this exciting journey, I am just as excited as you all are, for the big reveal!”
I could feel my face turning warm.
My curiosity causing me to question everything happening around us.
The only feeling I should be feeling is excitement, but I was feeling uneasy.
Like something bad was about to happen.
“Our Compatibility team has worked tirelessly on generating the most accurate results” she smiled “we clearly did not want to waste any time in getting you all hooked to the ones meant for you” she nervously giggled.
Almost as if guilty of something.
“Now, now, let’s not waste any time,” She pursed her lip and looked back to check with someone, nodding confirming she got her answer.
“Please walk down thru the hallway. Our team has divided the reveals by your month of birth to keep it simple. For example, those born in February will be room ‘2’ and those born in July will be room ‘7’ and so on. And of course, we will need our wrists to gain access, so I hope you all came in here with your wrists today!” giggling. keeping it upbeat.
Her voice always had a homecoming effect on me, however, the questions racing through my head were getting the better of me today.
I had met Dr. Woods several times, so had all the other TEOs.
Always smiling, always patient and she only always gave us good news. If we were to be given bad news it would always be through an appointment with our counselor.
Oh wait!
My counselor.
I had missed my appointment with my counselor yesterday.
I had called her office to reschedule my appointment. The receptionist on the phone had refused. She told me it wasn’t possible to reschedule it and that I should try to make it.
I had completely forgotten.
Stuck fixing the leaky roof of the lab I was assigned to supervise and had unintentionally missed my appointment.
All of this made sense now.
Everyone here knew something that I didn’t because I had missed my counselor appointment.
Nervous conversations and the energy among the TEOs moving towards the hallway had me on the edge.
“I guess we are heading to room ‘11’ then?” Aliya broke in.
“Wait. Do our mates have something to do with normal humans?” I firmly asked.
Aliya and Adam looked at each other.
“That’s not possible right?” I impatiently asked again. I had never felt any attraction to the normal human visitors who came to our Island every now and then. I surely had a head turning effect on them. I had never met a normal human who had the same effect on me.
This was starting to really mess with my head.
“Just relax, I think they have your counselor here,” Aliya finally answered, “she will explain it to you.”
“It’s not what you are thinking brother” Adam added.
The concerned look on his face wasn’t helping at all.
They weren’t making sense to me. I wanted answers now.
Why did the roof had to leak yesterday?
Why did I f******g miss my appointment yesterday?
I would kill myself before accepting a normal human mate.
Hopefully, I’m just overthinking this.
They knew nothing about us. They didn’t feel what we felt.
As if it wasn’t hard enough dealing with them on the Island, now, we had to deal with them as our mates?
My Thoughts were running wild.
This was all a big mess.
I suddenly didn’t want to proceed at all.
I was out of choices though.
I had to see my counselor.
- Writer
