Page 125 of A University of Betrayal

No, impossible...

My mother was a Quatura.

Just to make sure I had understood correctly, I looked again at the combination of Quatura and Senseque. Not only did this crossbreed clearly have to produce male offspring, it was also outlined in red... as if I wasn’t the only person who had been puzzled by this topic.

Judging by the scribbled handwriting, it was Mum’s.

At the bottom left was another signature...A. Westcode.

Only one person came to mind, and that was Amanda, Vivienna’s mother. She had seemed like she knew my mother, but did they do research together? Odd... And the dates in the bottom right-hand corner were also worrying.

The document had been created on November 6, 1998. Twenty years ago. That’s how long Mum seemed to have been researching this project.

I tried to soak up all the information from the page, but I kept getting stuck on the red-circled marker that stood out alarmingly.

Could it be that she knew? What if she knew and that’s why she’d kept researching it? Precisely because she wanted to know how it was possible that I was a girl and not a boy. Is that why she thought I was a Quatura?

More and more questions piled up in my head, but there was one that wouldn’t let go.What if I wasn’t allowed to exist?

It was certain that I was descended from a Quatura... and most likely from a Senseque. But that wasn’t allowed. These two sides... They hated each other to the core, almost as much as the Ruisangors and the Senseque.

“Bayla, what...”

I wheeled around.

“Mum!”

Mum looked at me in surprise before her eyes wandered to the document in my hands. Then she paled. With a quick step, she approached me and snatched the document from me as if it were a bar of nougat chocolate. Her favorite kind.

“What are you doing here?”

It didn’t even sound angry, but rather... shocked? Had she wanted to keep these documents from me?

“Mum, you’re researching the genetics of the species?”

Mum didn’t seem to know quite how to respond to my questions, so she pushed me aside, put the document in the desk drawer, which was – what else – lockable, and pulled me out of the room a few seconds later.

“You’ve been researching genetics for twenty years...”

“Bayla, you shouldn’t have seen that.” She pulled me violently toward her, by the shoulders, but I barely moved. I remembered her being stronger. She seemed puzzled for a moment. “Tell me what you saw.”

Confused, I blinked at her. How did my mother always manage to catch me off guard like this?

“Tell me, Bayla,what did you read?”

“Just briefly... the table and...” I thought about what I should tell her, but decided to skip the red circling. “That you and Amanda Westcode have been researching these things.”

Mum stared at me. There was something indecisive in her eyes. She looked much more confused than I felt, and somehow like I’d found out something that no one really should know about.

“You never say a word about what you’ve just seen.” Mum shook my shoulders as if she wanted me to give an immediate sign of approval. “Bayla, you have to promise me.” There was desperation in her eyes, and finally I nodded, but not without giving free rein to one of my many questions.

“Why?What’s so wrong with this document?”

Mum blinked at me. She always did that when I asked too many questions, for example about my father. Only this time I wasn’t going to let her get away without an answer.

“Tell me why. Why exactly should I keep it to myself?”

“I should never have done that investigation.”

---