Fervor (43 page)

“
I’m caught, Nathan, and I expect they’ll get Sarah momentarily,”
Sam admitted.
“Don’t stop for us – it’s too late. Just go. They likely won’t be that harsh on us. If we’re lucky they’ll see us as less to blame than you, Elliot, Royce, and Francis. Maybe they’ll even go easy on us.”

It was a hope, but not a likely one. Nathan did not reply, quickly breaking their link.

Sam strained to see the two figures that were also standing in the clearing, and caught the gleam of sunlight flashing off of their hover. They were both dressed in plain gray tunics and pants, and they were both similar in build to what Francis had been. They also both appeared to be carrying some sort of unusual device, and not one that Sam could identify.

One of them, a fair haired man, approached him. The stranger shifted his grip on the unwieldy device to hold it single-handed, and pulled a much smaller device from his pocket. He passed it over Sam, as if he were scanning him for something.

“
Is it him?” the man farther back demanded.

“
No,” the closer man replied, with some disappointment. “This one’s a Finder. It’s not him.”

“
I thought their Finder was a Little,” the first man remarked.

The one with the scanning device looked at it attentively.

“
He was...he is. That settles it, doesn’t it? Masterson has obviously been through here. Farrell was right. You’re going to have to pay up when we get back.” The two men chuckled at this light-heartedly.

“
So what do we do with this one then? We can’t just leave him, can we? Who knows what Masterson told them?”

The man next to Sam eyed him with a hint of disgust.

“
Farrell’s going to be pissed. Leave it to some of these little fuckers to screw things up thanks to Masterson’s interference. We’ll have to round up the whole house-family and pull them from the experiment so that they don’t skew the results. We’re going to have to hunt down Masterson, too. Who knows where the bastard’s hiding. Of course, Farrell’s going to want to study them. Test them to see the full effects of the Languorite, and what it has done to them. He might even want to dissect them.”

The two men laughed at this as well, but this time it was more brusque and mean-spirited. Sam suspected that they were just taunting him, but he could not be sure.

“
This one wasn’t alone. I saw a girl with him,” the more distant stranger commented. “Dark hair, younger-looking. She disappeared back into the woods when we caught this one.”

“
Probably their Fixer,” his companion concluded, sliding his scanning device back into his pocket. “If Masterson exposed them all, the Bigs would be adults by this point. We’re going to have to watch out for them.”

He paused, examining Sam with a perturbed expression.

“
We should probably get this one into the hover and then start tracking the others. I’d hate to be their Teller at this point. He should have been able to prevent all of this, and the fact that he didn’t doesn’t bode well for him. He’s going to be in deep, deep trouble. Farrell’s going to want to string him up and let him rot. That, or toss him in some dark hole somewhere, lock him up and throw away the key. That boy had to be insane or just plain stupid. He would have known the consequences.”

The more they spoke, the more Sam despaired at his predicament. They continually referred to him as if he were an object, oblivious to their words. He did not like that feeling, and he was worried that they would catch Sarah and the others, just like they claimed they would. He was wishing that she would run, but he knew that she was still hiding nearby, lost in panic. To top it off, everything that they were saying about Francis was making him even more miserable. From the sounds of it, he really had been trying to protect them all along.

The man beside him released the large device he was holding so that it hung from a shoulder strap and shifted it to his back, out of the way. Then he reached for Sam.

That was when a small clump of bushes along the rocks exploded as Nathan charged from them, a large piece of driftwood held menacingly over his head. He took a well-aimed and forceful swing at the stranger’s head and made contact without difficulty, catching the man completely by surprise. He teetered for a second after taking the blow, his mouth open but making no sound, and then his eyes glazed over and he dropped limply into the dirt. That was when Sam realized two things: Nathan had been far enough away that he may not have heard the casual exchange between the two intruders, especially with the roar of the waves masking the sound, and Nathan‘s position had kept the second man out of his line of sight.

“
Nathan, watch out! There’s another one!”

Sam was too late however. There was a brilliant flash and the Watcher was suddenly stranded in a similarly energized netting, the criss-crossing of light suspending him in place. The second man in gray jogged over to them, a horrified look on his face and his device clutched firmly in both hands.

“
Shit! Shit! You better not have killed him! Oh, you’re going to pay for this, you brute. If Farrell would have been pissed before, he’s bound to have a conniption now. I warned Norm that you guys were going to be nothing better than wild animals, but he didn’t take me seriously.” He looked at the fallen man and heaved a heavy sigh. “You stupid shit, you should have listened and kept on your guard.”

The man in gray grabbed Sam by the collar, and dragged him carelessly over to the hover. He dropped the trapped Finder roughly in the dirt at the base of the vehicle and disappeared inside it. He emerged again a few moments later with a third device, and hurried over to where his companion still lay prone on the ground beside Nathan. It was likely some sort of fixing device, Sam guessed, to heal the damage that the Watcher had caused. From all appearances, Sam and Nathan were doomed.

But the man in gray never got the opportunity to use the device to rouse his cohort. The sudden flurry of activity that followed caught Sam as much by surprise as it did the unsuspecting stranger. While his view was somewhat obscured, Sam was fairly certain that Elliot had not come rushing into the clearing, nor would the burly man necessarily be that effective on his own since the intruder in gray had been wary after the first attack and had been watching for a second. He had perhaps been anticipating that the technician might interfere again, or perhaps there would be trouble from the rogue Teller or Control from Sam and Nathan’s house-family, but he was not ready to take on a group of five full-grown adults. He managed to stop one of them with his device before he was swarmed and overwhelmed by the four others.

Sam wanted to know what exactly was going on but found himself closing his eyes and cowering away from the scene as much as his restricted position would allow, trying desperately to bring up his walls as quickly as possible in order to block out the assault of anger, resentment, and even hatred that flared from the four Controls still able to act. In a fury, they wrenched the entrapment device from the man’s hands while forcing him to the ground. The events that happened next left Sam with nightmares and was something he wished that he had never had to live through. The enraged mob of Controls, with Royce in the lead, beat the man savagely, bashing at the man with the otherwise non-injurious weapon that they had torn from his hands. The man’s screams were blood-curdling, and Sam would have willingly submitted to being deaf again if he could have avoided hearing them, but he wasn’t even able to cover his ears. He could sense Nathan’s discomfort as well, horrified by the violence going on inches away from where he was forced to stand.

Sam shivered as the beating continued, until the man finally went silent. The Controls had used the opportunity to take vengeance on the scholars for everything that had been done to them, losing a piece of their humanity while they exhausted their frustrations and outrage on this symbol of their oppressors. The others had stopped when it was clear that the man had been overpowered and had no fight left in him, but Royce had been especially driven, mercilessly dealing the man blow after blow despite the intruder’s pleas for him to stop. The stranger had not been that far off when he had suggested that they little more than wild animals. Sam wondered what would have happened if Royce had had free reign to take out his frustrations on him when the Control had attributed him with the blame for his circumstances.

Things went very quiet after the man’s screams had stopped, and Sam lay there helplessly, wondering what to expect next. He heard Sarah emerge from the bushes, sniffling and dazed.

“
I can’t fix them,” she murmured over and over again, staring at the fallen men. “I can’t fix them.”

Nathan was struggling futilely to escape his binds, but none of his efforts proved successful.

That was when Elliot and Fiona arrived. Elliot gathered up the devices that the men had been using and activated them to release Angela, Nathan, and Sam from their restraints. He then took the fixing tool that was now lying in the dirt and examined the men.

“
I can help this one,” he said quietly, gesturing at the man that had succumbed to Nathan’s attack. “But the other one is beyond saving. We’ll have to dispose of the body.”

He did not ask for an explanation or some recounting of the grim details. The blood spatter and the drawn faces spoke volumes.

Elliot first entrapped the unconscious man in one of the stranger’s own energy nets, and then the technician set about using the healing device on him. While he was doing this, Nathan and Fiona had shuffled Sarah away, leading her from the frightful scene and taking her back to Elliot’s hover.

Sam sat at the base of the hover in the clearing, still trying to make sense of it all. It was just another case of everything going wrong, and as per usual, the scholars had been at the root of it. He was worried that this would change things and make it worse for them while they were on the run. What did this mean for Royce? What did this mean for Elliot?

After he finally managed to motivate himself briefly out of the stupor that he found himself in, Sam got to his feet and followed in the same direction as Nathan, Fiona, and Sarah, wil
ling himself not to look behind him. He would have to put all of this behind him, as they all would. He only hoped that when he left Fervor, he could somehow leave all of this, too.

New Beginnings

Sam stumbled across the beach toward the marred-looking hover, his mind dazed and his heart numb. He stared at the vehicle with some reservation as he approached it. Getting into the hover and leaving Fervor represented an end to everything Sam had ever known – his only reality – and a leap into something frighteningly new. His feet felt like lead weights with each step. Sam was beginning to understand why Francis would have rather faced punishment than go with them. He wanted his freedom but was definitely afraid of the unknown.

Nathan met Sam at the door, looking him over carefully, the Watcher’s face demonstrating great concern.

“
Are you okay? Did they hurt you, little buddy?”

Sam shook his head as Nathan checked him for a second time. The Finder felt like he was somehow lagging a few seconds behind the rest of the world. He had a few scrapes and bruises from being tossed into the dirt, but they seemed meaningless after what had happened to the investigators. The sounds of their cries seemed to be repetitively echoing through his mind.

Sam was tired and cold, even though the sun was shining brightly and he and Sarah had barely just risen for the day. He wanted to curl up in a corner and go to sleep, pretending that none of this had ever happened. It certainly was not what Sam had been expecting when he had awoken that morning. He wondered where he would be waking up the next day.

Nathan ushered Sam into the hover and guided him into the seat next to Sarah’s. She trembled like a leaf and was slouching in the chair, staring wordlessly at the chair back in front of her. Her dark eyes had a glassy and vacant look to them. Sam edged closer to her, trying ineffectively to get her attention and put his hand on hers, both offering and seeking comfort. She did not respond, neither flinching away nor accepting the gesture. She did, however sigh very quietly.