Fervor (39 page)

“
I think Francis knew,”
Sam suggested,
“And possibly Royce. I’m not positive, but I suspect that this is where they trained the Tellers in the use of the connection. I think this might be where they instructed them on the Directives as well.”

“
Do you think...do you think Francis wanted you to find it?”

“
I don’t know. You were right about Francis being broken, Sarah. I don’t believe that you could have fixed him by the time Elliot took away his gift. I think he was beyond saving. You can’t blame yourself for that. You know that, right?”

This time, it was Sarah’s turn not to answer. Sam decided that he needed a distraction. He was not in the right frame of mind to deal with this.

“
There’s one more door, Sarah – one that I haven’t investigated yet. Did you want me to take a look and show you what’s there?”

Sam could not imagine what he would find. Maybe this was where the technicians and scholars once lived, out of sight of the rest of Fervor, except when they went out to test the Bigs.

“
Okay, Sam. I can’t believe that they kept all of this underground. It must have been built right into the cliffs,”
she hypothesized.

Sam did not doubt that they had the capability. These were the same people, after all, who had built the Hub. Anyone who had the wherewithal to build that monstrosity likely had the knowledge and resources to construct an underground training and research facility.

He took a few steps forward and shone the glow torch on the last door. Beyond the glass, there was a network of hallways and doors, like some sort of residential area. Perhaps he had guessed right, he thought triumphantly. Perhaps this had been where the other adults had lived. That was when he caught a glimpse of movement and heard a sudden noise. Sarah got a taste of his anxiety.

“
What’s the matter?”
she questioned.

“
There’s someone else here. There’s someone in the building.”

Sam practically jumped out of his skin as that same something slammed up abruptly against the door. Sam actually heard the glass crack. There was a figure on the other side, but he was not so sure that he would call it a “someone”. The misshapen form looked like it had been intended to be human, but its legs were gnarled and tree-like, and its skin didn’t seem to be properly conformed to its body, hanging loose in some places and stretched taut in others. One arm seemed to end in a proper hand, albeit a somewhat talon-like one, but the other ended in a lumpy nub.

The worst part for Sam, however, was the face, or more like the lack of one. It was like someone had pressed a person’s face against the glass and smeared it out of shape: the eyes awkwardly placed at odd angles, no ears to speak of, the nose squashed flat and pointed upwards towards the right, and a gaping maw with a sprinkling of crooked teeth jutting out in all directions. But this face was not actually pressed against the glass.

Sam could not help himself. He screamed.

That was when the second figure appeared next to the first, slamming up against the door with equal gusto. Sam could not bear to stay there long enough to get a good look at this one. He turned and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

Uncontrolled

Sam finally came to a stop quite a distance from the High Barrens, curling over and gagging as he tried to catch his breath. He felt like he had been running full tilt for hours, driven by fear and disgust. Sarah had been calling to him the entire time that he had been barrelling away from his latest find, trying to get him to slow down and share with her what had upset him so much. He had not taken the time to project the images from the final door to her in his panic, so all Sarah knew was that Sam had left in a hurry, and that he had been running scared.

When he had calmed himself enough to finally respond to her, she was starting to become anxious that maybe he had been physically hurt in some way. He assured the fretful girl that he had not been harmed, just frightened out of his wits.

“
I think it was them,”
he thought, trying to shake the memory of their misshapen forms from his head.
“Why did I have to see that?”

“
Them? Who, Sam?”

“
The ones Royce talked about – the Littles that didn’t turn out quite right. Elliot was right. Some of them did survive. I saw two of them, but there could have been more. They left them here, Sarah. The scholars just left them, like they did with the rest of us. They were holed up down there, underneath the High Barrens, and who knows what those villains left them with?”

Sam wondered if the scholars had provided the odd ones with a proper supply of food and access to water. They clearly had some resources, or they would not have survived the years since the second exodus. Sam was also sure that they did not have access to the connection, but he was still unsure if that was because they lacked the capability, or because that capability still remained suppressed for them. The odd ones had not tried to open the door that had stood between him and them using traditional means, so he had to conclude that it was barred in some way to prevent their escape. They were prisoners on Fervor, too, with even less freedom than the other Littles.

“
You’re positive it was them?”
Sarah asked, finding all of this difficult to accept.

“
If what Royce and Elliot suggested is true – I have no doubt. Sarah, I want to get off this island, now more than ever. I don’t want to be a pawn in the scholars’ games anymore. I want to know what it means to be a real person, not manipulated by outside forces.”

Sam felt really tired all of a sudden, and there was so far for him to travel to get home. It seemed like it would take him forever to get back.

“
Hurry home then. We’ll be leaving soon. We’ll be free, and we can find somewhere to start over,”
Sarah offered soothingly.

But Sam knew better. They would not be free just because they left Fervor. They might always be on the run. On the positive side, though, they would no longer be under the scholars’ thumbs. In fact, with Francis gone and Nathan’s gift eliminated, they were already almost there.

“
I’ll get back as quickly as I can,”
he responded.
“Be watchful – they may come looking to see what happened to Nathan soon. If it comes down to it, Sarah, and it’s leave without me or be caught, don’t let Nathan or Fiona be stubborn about it. Just go.”

He broke off the link with her, as anxious as ever to get home and wanting to concentrate on making his way back there.

They made contact a few more times during the day, mainly just so that Sarah could check in on Sam and could confirm that all was well. As twilight was approaching, Sam arrived in the area by his old school where Royce was hiding out. He was relieved that this was a sign that he did not have much farther to go. He was less than comfortable, however, with the fact that he had to pass through these parts at near dark. The woods that surrounded him were frighteningly shadowed, making his imagination run wild, and the memory of his encounter with the odd ones was still very fresh in his mind. He found himself glancing over his shoulder every few moments, and he had that prickly sensation a person gets on the back of their neck when they suspect that they are being watched or followed.

Sam told himself that there was no way that they would have succeeded in forcing their way through the door in as little time as they would have needed to take in order to pursue him. Still, that did not stop the less rational part of him from conjuring up various scenarios of how they might ambush him. The thoughts did manage to spur him onward more quickly.

As Sam finally neared his own home territory, he detected something unusual in the connection, faint at first, but growing gradually in intensity. It reminded him of a wounded animal languishing in pain. He tried to remember the last time he had encountered anything like it. The closest thing that he could recall was when Elliot had first come to them. There was a similar sense of disorientation, confusion, and panic, but there was an odd agony to this presence. Also, Elliot had started and stayed faint, never becoming more than a shadow within the connection. What Sam felt now was different. Like someone waking up, achieving new awareness of the connection… and screaming. He remembered that feeling. What astounded the Finder even more was that there was something eerily familiar to this presence.

Sam could not help himself. His curiosity stirred, he had to find this thing – this person – wherever or whoever they were. He plunged through the brush, searching, and soon the shrill screams that he heard with his ears were as loud as the ones in his head. He could also hear the swish and crackle of foliage as the person in question thrashed about on the forest floor, rolling about in obvious pain. Sam approached, still skittish because of the morning’s encounter, and cautiously crouched by the dimly lit figure, unable to make out the person’s features in the near-darkness.

Suddenly, the person lurched forward, clutching at Sam’s shoulders. The startled Finder fell backwards into a layer of dried leaves, the other person falling somewhat on top of him. Sam looked up into Royce’s face, the other boy’s eyes filled with terror and agony. Then there was a flicker of emotion there that surprised Sam even more. He thought he had seen relief.

“
What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me?” Royce pleaded, still gripping Sam’s shoulders with an unshakable grip. Despite the strength in his hands, the Control’s fingers were trembling violently. Sam could feel Royce clawing at him internally almost as vigorously as he was physically.

Fortunately, Sam had some experience at dealing with this before. He cloaked Royce with his walls, shielding him from the rest of the connection. Royce relaxed somewhat in an instant, but he did not let Sam go, and the Finder knew that the remainder of the black-haired boy’s tenseness was due to the fact that he was still in terrible pain. He recognized that pain. He had seen it before in Nathan and in Francis.

“
I’ll help you to get back to Sarah. It would seem that you aren’t subject to the stasis anymore, and this is how we get to pay for delaying the aging process for several years. One of the good parts to all of this is that Sarah will be able to fix you now. It won’t cure everything that ails you, but it will help a little,” Sam told him, trying to keep his thoughts subdued in order to limit their impact on the Control. “I need you to tell me something. Did you go anywhere near the house?”

Royce shook his head in denial, but there was no response through the connection. Sam was sure that he was not being truthful.