They are twilight and dawn. They are fire and water. They are yin and yan, peace and war, space and time. And now, they must save our world. They created our world and now someone seeks to destroy it. Wren and Raven will teach us to survive, to function, even to thrive. They come from the negative fifth dimension, and, according to their master, they will fail.

 "The Second Host is a failure. The humans are a failure. You are a failure." The figure hissed in an inhuman tongue.        

"But-" Raven began.

    “No buts. You cannot fix this. The Second Host must be destroyed. Leave now and start the destruction.” The figure behind the desk was undecidedly male, tall and dark and cold. It spread a chill up your spine if you were close enough and wore a cloak that seemed to be woven out of a material that looked like a black hole and concealed every part of the figure’s body. Instead of pacing, it glided back and forth. It seemed to radiate frustration and anger and almost disappointment. Wren was racked with anxiety and it showed. Sweat poured off of him and his fingers twitched. His coal black eyes flitted around the room. Raven appeared completely confident, but on the inside she was practically convulsing. She knew she shouldn’t challenge him, but she couldn’t let the Second Host be destroyed. The figure was gliding away to leave when Raven nearly shouted,

    “Wait! I can fix this! I can have them evolve! Just give me fifty days. Please!”

    “But Raven- you know what will happen if we try to evolve them too fast!” Of course, she didn’t- but she knew the outcome couldn’t be pleasant. Last time, they had created the HIV pandemic, which was now creating spreading damage to their biggest project.

“Wren,” Raven explained slowly. “We can do this. It will work. At least we have to try.” Her voice was now obviously strained. The figure glided back to his desk, and watched them in a poised silence. Wren could feel the figure’s eyes back, scrutinizing his every syllable. His voice quavered as he said,

“Raven, this is dangerous. We are putting our biggest and most important project in danger. There are other solutions.”

“Really, Wren, there’s not.” Raven snapped. All of a sudden, the tension in the room was as thick as butter. The figure, who had been watching the argument in a curiosity-driven quiet, was the first to break the silence.

“You know, for convenience’s sake, I could just eliminate you both now.” Wren was rigid, his inky eyes darting around the room for something to protect himself with if rash decisions were made and people started to get hurt. Raven jumped to her primary chance of survival: negotiation. She knew the dark figure was serious in his threat.

“We can do this. Trust us. 50 days. We can make it so they are like us. Give us, give them, a chance. Let us at least try,” Raven sputtered. The figure was skeptical, his glossy cloak swishing in the too-long silence while he decided the fate of the Second Host. Finally, the swishing stopped and he stared directly at the odd pair.

“How about we compromise. I will give you 50 days to fix the catastrophe you have created. If it is not fixed in that time, you, along with the Second Host, will be terminated.” Wren leaped on the offer. He knew that any other “compromise” would include a shorter amount of time and Raven and himself being terminated anyway.

“Yes! We agree. We promise we won’t let you down.” The figure glided behind the tall, mahogany desk. The room they were in usually functioned as an office, with black walls and a midnight ceiling and an obsidian floor. It was a windowless room, with a door that melted into the wall, camouflaged against unwelcome eyes. The room reminded any who stepped into it of the dark owner, deficit of light-save one candle in the center of stained wood desk. Wren and Raven waited uncomfortably, silently, impatiently whilst staring up at their nearly abusive boss- practically their owner. After what seemed like forever, the figure seemed to realize they were still there.

“You may continue. You have only 50 days. Do not disappoint me.” He said, cloak ruffling. Wren and Raven bowed, simultaneously saying as they exited, “Yes, father.”

Sun seeped through my eyelids as I rolled over and grabbed for my glass of water. I opened my crusty eyes slowly to see the books stacked on my left side table. HIV: 101 and Help! My Child Has HIV! stared me in the face- my dad’s books. He must have been reading in my room last night-he does that sometimes. He was just worried about me, I guess. My foggy mind slowly cleared. I started going through my Facts list. I had anxiety about 6 years ago, when I was first diagnosed. It became a bit habitual for me to go through what I knew for certain every morning. ‘My name is Analise Heron,’ My mind buzzes. ‘I am 12 years, 9 months, and 16 days old. I have HIV. My father’s name is Patrick but I call him Dad. My mother’s name is Sheila but I call her Mom. My sister’s name is Jaqueline but I call her JJ. It’s Thursday-oh. It’s Thursday.’ I slid out of bed, my covers toppling over me and on to the ground. Thursday meant the Mercy Hospital Chronic Disease Support Group, or the MHCDSG as the quote-unquote “buddies” (aka the tiresome doctors who run the support group) call it. I threw on a sweater and grabbed my earbuds. My five-year-old sparkly alarm clock read 8:53 AM. Sluggishly, I slunk downstairs.

“Nice of you to join us, Ana.” My mom said. She was sweeping the hardwood floor of our dining room. JJ was wiping down the table.

“You have to clean the living room!” JJ said to me.

“Why?” I asked. I really hated cleaning. It wasn’t the act of cleaning that repelled me, it was that it took up so much time. My mother turned to me, but continued her rhythmic sweeping.

“Because the Kays are coming over for breakfast at 9:15.” I groaned to myself and turned right into my living room. The Kays, Francesca and Will, were our neighbors, old married couple who owned a restaurant on Route 1. Their hobbies included dragging out conversations that should have ended 15 minutes earlier, awkward breakfasts, clumsily gardening and drinking coffee, and misplaced sentences. I aggressively didn’t enjoy their company. I picked up the living room lethargically. Soon, the doorbell rang. Will and Francesca opened the door and let themselves in.

“Hellooo?” a crickety voice resounded from the mudroom-Francesca. She walked into the living room. “Oh, Annie, you’re so tall!” Another thing that I didn’t like about Francesca-she called me Annie. She also had this inexplicable belief that I grew a foot every day. My dad called to us from the kitchen.

“Order up!” We all strolled into the dining room. More accurately, I was dragged into the dining room. My dad shuffled out of the kitchen with his hands full of plates of any type of breakfast imaginable. He slid everything on to the table as we sat down. I grabbed myself a plate of eggs and wolfed it down. I got up to head outside to feed the stray cat I’d like to call mine, but of course, Will thought it would be a good time to strike up conversation.

“Analise,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I said and scooched towards the sliding glass door.

“How’s school?” Francesca chimed in. Of course.

“Homeschool’s pretty good.” I’d been homeschooled since age 6. I shimmied outside before anyone could ask me another question. My backyard had three big oak trees to shade people in the summer and to catch snow in the winter. Now the ground was yellowing grass with burnt orange and coffee brown and dirty gray and scarlet red and marigold yellow leaves, the numbers of which were growing rapidly because of the others drifting lazily to the ground to join the ranks. This gave it the effect of a sunset, or a giant fire. My back and side yards were connected to my neighbor’s back and side yards, with the only boundaries being some bare-branched, flimsy bushes. There was a murky pond in north west corner of my yard that was surrounded by stones. An outdoor firepit which was raised off the ground sat squatly in the middle of the yard. I sat down on the grass, calling out to the stray cat.

“Midnight! Kitty cat, come here!” Strangely enough, the cat actually liked me and would come sometimes. I stuck my earbuds in my ears and turned on some alt rock as Midnight trotted over to me. She was a beautiful cat, with silky jet black fur and long legs with muscles that stuck out when she ran. Midnight was pretty docile as far as I knew. I had just started feeding her some dry cat food from the bag I kept in the bushes when I heard the shick of the sliding glass door and my father calling out, “Ana! C’mon! Time to go!” over my music. I pushed myself up reluctantly, grass crackling beneath me. I left the cat food bag open for Midnight and ran inside to get a book for the approximately 39 minute, 22 second ride (I knew because I timed it once). I grabbed the first book off the stack on my porch(Chasing Vermeer) and scrambled into the car. My dad had a 2001 Volvo station wagon, of which I always sat on the left side. It was always messy, with my sister’s junk (and maybe some of mine) all over the floor.

“Ana, what took you so long?” My father whined.

“I was feeding Midnight,” I said defiantly, knowing Dad didn’t even want me near that cat. Sure enough, my dad said, “Analise! That cat could have rabies! You could die if you touched it!” An uneasy quiet settled throughout the car, punctured only by my father starting the used Volvo. I angrily ripped open my book and started to read. I began to watch the world going by out my window. The landscape changed in a rhythm-fence, cars, trees, fence, cars, trees. My eyes blurred. This, combined with the low humming buzz of the motor whirring and the spinning of the wheels on the street, slowly lulled me to sleep.

This time I woke up (if you haven’t guessed, I like to sleep) to a bleating horn. Traffic. I could now determine that my father was the one who had been leaning on the horn and had woken me from my semi-conscious mind drift. Judging from the landscape outside, we were about 4 minutes from the hospital. And in traffic. Deep, deep traffic. And fifteen minutes later, I was still in the car. And bored. Deeply, deeply bored. I found myself tapping. My tapping started with my foot. To be honest, it wasn’t really tapping, it was bouncing. Then my fingers. My fingers rolled slowly across the car window sill, then faster.

“Ana,” my dad said. “Please stop tapping.” I stopped tapping. But then I got bored again. ‘2 minutes,’ I thought. ‘2 minutes and I’ll be out of this metal prison.’ And I counted the seconds and looked out the window and started tapping. It wasn’t intentional, and it was only my hand.

“Analise,” Dad said. “Please stop tapping.” And I stopped. ‘1 minute,’ I thought. ‘Maybe shorter.’ I stared at the car in front of me. The license plate was 401-YZA. It was a silver Subaru. But there was only so much you could learn from the back of one car. Then, involuntarily, my whole body was somehow bouncing.

“ANALISE HERON!” My father yelled. “JUST SIT STILL!” By then, I was kinda mad because people tend to get angry with me for tapping even though it was COMPLETELY involuntary. I was so engulfed in my fiery annoyance that I didn’t notice that we were already at Mercy Hospital. I stormed out of the black station wagon and up the twelve wide steps (of course I had counted. I counted on the first day) and into the hospital. I knew the hospital inside and out . Partially because every single time I went to the doctor’s office I had to go here, and partially because of my mom’s job as a surgeon. I could tell you most of the people who worked there and which wing to go to for your various ailments and injuries. As my feet stomped across the black and beige tiles, I realized that it was pretty much useless for me to be angry. There was nothing I had to really be furious about, but I kept being furious. I thunderstormed straight into the elevator without reason. Why? I never allowed myself to be angry or upset around my parents. I didn’t want them to be more stressed than they already were. I stood sulkily in the corner of the elevator until I remembered. I was 6 when I was diagnosed with HIV. The night of the diagnosis was terrifying. Not because I was sick. No, I basically didn’t understand what that had meant. There were even stories about me saying it wrong. I couldn’t sleep that night. It was very, very dark in my room. I crept out of my room and down the hall to my parents’ room. I could hear crying from both of my parents.

“Patrick, what did we do wrong?” My mother whispered.

“I don’t know,” My father gasped between sobs. “What do we do?” Two things came to my sleepy six-year-old mind: 1, something was wrong, and 2, my parents didn’t know what to do. This was scary. My parents didn’t know what to do. I never wanted my parents to not know what to do. I decided, then and there, that I ALWAYS wanted my parents to know what to do, and I would use every fiber in my 3 ½ foot tall being to make sure of that. I sat right beside that beige door for a while, listening to my parents’ crying. I eventually drifted off, their quiet fitful weeping acting as a lullaby. When my parents found  me outside of their room, I was slumped against the  off-white wall, snoring. They woke me up and asked me what I was doing out there, and why wasn't I in my bed? I told them that I was walking down the hallway (with no explanation why) and fell asleep outside their room. This apparently was an appropriate excuse because they didn't question me. I've been told this story, and I play along. I pretend that I don't remember. I laugh at my young, foolish self. In truth, I remember. I remember how scared I was. I remembered and I stopped brooding.