The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (48 page)

“Nah.” He smiled back shyly. “It’s still that old bearded guy with the cool accent. Whose chair is that, anyway?”

“Caitlin’s.”

“
Really?
Shit. I keep trashing her stuff.”

They started laughing.

“What the—?”
a voice said.

Harper stood in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob, the other covering her mouth. She looked absolutely stunned, frozen in place, as she watched Felix and Allison locked in an embrace and laughing like they were enjoying their first dance as husband and wife.

Felix clumsily let go of Allison and stepped back numbly, digging his hands into his pockets, staring stupidly at his feet. He felt like his mom had just walked in on him making out with Emma.

“Have you seen Caitlin?” Harper asked, her voice cold and stiff.

“She’s in the caf,” Allison said lightly. Unlike Felix, she wasn’t acting like the cops had caught her drinking beer out of a paper bag in the park.

Harper noticed the chair and did a double take.

“Felix was just helping me with it,” Allison said preemptively.

“Looks like he was helping you with
something
.” Harper’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What happened?”

“I was trying to get something out of my closet,” Allison said pleasantly, smiling. “Piece of advice: don’t stand on the chairs. They’re pretty flimsy.”

“How’s he going to fix that?” Harper asked dubiously, her gaze trained on Allison. Felix felt like he was no longer in the room.

“He’s not,” Allison replied. “We decided that it’s unfixable.”

“Are you eating?” Felix asked Harper, hoping he sounded less guilty than he felt.

“Yeah.” Harper didn’t look at him—she just turned and stalked out of the room, disappearing down the hallway.

Great,
Felix thought miserably.
Now she’s even more pissed at me.
He shook his head in disgust and headed for the hall. Allison followed, stealing a glance at the chair on the way out, smiling. The last thing she seemed concerned about was whether Harper was mad at him.

The world was hazy, cloaked in shadows. Felix was lying on his back, looking up. He was on a bed and in a room—that much he could tell. For no good reason, he had the curious sensation that he’d been here before. He tried to get a better look, but he couldn’t turn his head. He tried to move his arms, then his legs. They wouldn’t budge; it was like he was glued to the mattress.

The shadows were getting darker. The room grew warmer. Sweat slid down his face as the temperature rose rapidly. The area around him began to glow a deep reddish color. The bed started to move, vibrating and rattling in short staccato bursts. Then it heaved violently like a boat caught out at sea in a raging storm. The red cloud spread outward, expanding, stretching out to the edges of his peripheral vision. And then it all stopped. The bed was still. The temperature dropped. The room was peaceful and silent.

What just happened?
Felix wondered.
Where the hell am I?
Before he could even begin to unpeel the first of the infinite layers of his confusion, a roaring tornado consumed the room. The winds were ferocious. Objects were whirling through the maroon-tinted mist, crashing into the walls and exploding into flames; burning fragments fell onto the bed and all around the room. He struggled against his invisible chains. But it was no use. He was stuck to the bed like an insect snared on a strip of flypaper.

The blanket caught fire and the flames danced across the foot of the bed. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t find his voice. His heart was racing. Sweat dripped from his body, soaking the sheets. The carpet ignited. The fire spread across the floor, climbing up the walls and covering the ceiling as if the heavens were aflame. Thick smoke billowed all around him, stinging his eyes. The fire ate through the blanket and crept steadily up to his legs, and then his stomach, and then his chest, inching closer to his face. He watched in horror. He tried to scream but all that came out was a shrill, hollow whistling sound. The heat was unbearable. The air scorched his lungs. The hot flames lapped at his face like a thirsty demon. He felt his cheeks and forehead blistering. Something warm and gelatinous oozed from the bursting pustules. His hair caught fire, crackling. His skin melted away, devoured by the scorching heat, and now the flesh beneath it was charring like a side of beef on a grill. The scent of meat filled the room. Even through the agonizing pain, Felix’s tortured mind understood that it was the smell of his own cooking flesh.

He screamed. He screamed again. And again. And again.

“Felix! Felix! Wake up! Holy shit! Wake up!”

His eyes snapped open. Lucas was standing over him—screaming. It took Felix a moment to realize that Lucas wasn’t screaming. The voice he was hearing was his own.
I’m in the dorm
, Felix thought, intensely relieved that he wasn’t burning to death. It was a dream. Just a dream. And then he panicked, every nerve in his body firing at once. He felt a thin sheen of sweat coating his body as he swung his legs off the mattress and staggered out of bed, looking frantically around the room.

“You okay?” Felix shouted at Lucas, fearing he might have gone nuclear again in his sleep. “Everything all right?” He threw himself on the floor and checked under his bed. Then he jumped up and wrenched open the closet doors.

“Take it easy, dude.” Lucas withdrew a few steps, watching Felix curiously from the center of the room, smearing his eyes blearily with the heels of his hands. Lucas, wearing only green and orange PC boxers with a smiling sturgeon on his butt, looked very confused, and very tired. “It’s just another dream. Third one this week, dude. You think you’re done scaring the shit out of me?”

Deeply relieved that this wasn’t a sequel, Felix slumped down on his bed and took a deep breath. He didn’t need Lucas to keep track of how many times he’d had this dream: Each time it scared the hell out of him, each time it was exactly the same, and each time it was horrifyingly unforgettable.

“Sorry,” Felix said contritely. Most of his panic had melted away, but not enough to calm his racing heart. “Shit. Sorry about waking you up.”

“It’s okay.” Lucas flipped the light switch and returned to his bed. “You remember anything?”

Felix considered his options as he stared up at the darkened ceiling, but his answer was never in doubt. He would lie, just like he had every time before. “No.”

“Too bad,” Lucas said. “G’night, dude.”

“G’night.”

“You look like hell,” Allison said to Felix as they walked along a path on the north side of The Yard.

“Thanks.” He zipped up his jacket until the puffy down-filled collar covered his chin. It was bitingly cold, the coldest day of the year so far. The chill gnawed at his ears and the tip of his nose. “I didn’t get much sleep. I keep having these really weird dreams.”

She gave him a searching look, her breaths escaping in little clouds into the frigid air. “You okay?”

“I guess.” Felix wasn’t sure if he was okay or not. The dreams were really getting to him, bleeding into his waking life, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Ten o’clock classes had ended and the eleven o’clocks were about to start. The path and the steps to the lecture halls were clotted with students and drifted with clumps of fallen leaves.

“So where’s Bill’s office?” she asked, as they skirted around a group of students hanging out in front of the Siegler Building. “Did you say it was in Stamford?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he say… um… did he say why he wants to see me?”

“Not really. I haven’t even talked to him in like a week and a half. Not since I saw him at Inverness.”

“Oh. So what’d he do, text you?”

“Uh-huh.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way, both staring at the ground. When they arrived at Bill’s office (they’d taken the stairs to stay warm) they found that the door had been left open for them. Felix shrugged out of his jacket. The comforting warmth of Stamford’s central heat had felt great at first, but now he was starting to sweat. He poked his head into the room and said, “Bill?”

Bill was sitting at his desk with his laptop open in front of him, eyes focused on the screen. He looked up, startled. “Oh—hey Felix.” He snapped the monitor shut. “Come in. Is Allison with you?”

“Hi!” Allison stepped around Felix and entered the office.

Bill got up from his chair and leaned over his desk to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you, Allison. Please have a seat.” He motioned at the two guest chairs. “It’s a cold one out there, isn’t it? The weather guy says the high will only be forty today. Either of you like a cup of tea?”

Felix shook his head and dropped his backpack on the floor, then sank heavily into the chair, sliding down until the small of his back rested on the edge of the seat. He folded his coat in half and held it on his lap.

“No thanks.” Allison slipped out of her jacket and took a seat in the other chair, her eyes roaming around the room. Then she looked at Bill and said simply, “You don’t look like a groundskeeper.” Felix agreed. Bill was dressed like an investment banker on business casual day: tan slacks, leather loafers and a blue button-down shirt. Felix had seen him like this before so he wasn’t surprised.

Bill smiled at Allison. “I’m trying to encourage my colleagues to take fashion more seriously.”

Allison laughed.

Bill settled back into his chair, then he looked at Felix and his eyebrows nearly came together over his nose. “You look a little chalky. You sick?”

“Just tired. Nightmares keep waking me up.”

“Nightmares? About what?”

“Burning to death.”

“Burning to death?”
Bill’s eyes went wide for a moment. “Are you doing your relaxation techniques?”

“Sometimes. They don’t seem to be working.”

“Have you—”

“Sorry.” Allison held up her arm and nodded at her watch apologetically. “Not to be rude, but we actually have to meet our friends in a few minutes. Can we hurry this up?”

“Of course,” Bill said. “This won’t take long. So you’re probably wondering why I wanted to meet you.”

Allison nodded, her face placid.

“It’s pretty simple really. The three of us know something the rest of the world is blind to. We know about The Warning. We know that Lofton Ashfield is the Drestian. We know that Felix is the Belus. And we also know that the world isn’t what it seems. If Lofton has put things in motion—and he has—you’ll start to look for the signs. You’ll see them everywhere once you know what to look for: the liberal politician with an unerringly consistent voting record who suddenly becomes an advocate for press censorship and the criminalization of public assemblies; senators from neighboring states forming alliances irrespective of political party; and most telling, the government’s inaction—
deliberate inaction
—to combat violence and poverty and to provide basic services to its citizens, which is clearly by design. The more incompetent, self-interested and corrupt the government appears, the easier it will be for Lofton to offer the people an alternative.
His
alternative. Living in this world—the real world—won’t be easy for you. You could feel isolated. You may doubt yourself. You may even feel like you’ve lost your mind. So I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine with all that,” Allison said lightly, shrugging. “I really am. I always thought—always hoped—that there was something more to all this. Something below the surface more important than all the trivial crap everyone’s so obsessed about.”

“Good,” Bill said. “That’s good. I appreciate that perspective. But if you ever need to talk with someone, I’ll make myself available. Make sure you get my number from Felix. If you have any questions or anything, you can—”

“I do have a question,” she interrupted, causing Bill to raise an eyebrow. “Why would anyone follow Lofton?”

“Good question,” Bill said with a nod of his head. “According to The Warning, the Drestian
will
fix the Source, but the Belus”—his eyes went pointedly to Felix who was studying the maps on the wall behind Bill’s desk—“can only fix the Source with help from all of us—from humankind.”

“But Lofton will also make everyone his slaves,” Allison pointed out.

“That’s right,” Bill agreed. “It’s a classic example of competing political philosophies. If you follow Lofton, you’re giving away your freedom and your self-determination, but you gain certainty and security—
and
the survival of the Source. If you follow Felix, you believe that freedom is something that cannot be given or traded away. You believe freedom is a critical component of our makeup, and that without it, there is no point to our lives, regardless of the consequences—
and there are consequences.
Because if Felix and the rest of us—humankind that is—fail, the Source will fail. To put it simply, those who would follow Lofton have no faith that we can solve our own problems so they would hand over control—and their freedom—to a single man who will solve our problems for us. And those who would follow Felix believe we should have the right to decide our own fate, the right to fight for our own destiny, and that servitude to one man’s will, one man’s rule, can never be tolerated even if it means the end of the universe.”

“That’s what I thought,” Allison said.

Felix glanced at her, thinking she was joking, but she looked serious.

Bill leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “Well I’m glad we’ve reached the same conclusion.”

Allison looked down at the floor and crossed one boot over the other. Then she lifted her gaze and said, “I have another question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why is Lofton killing people in Ashfield Forest?”

“Sorry?” Bill said, surprised.

“The
Ashfield Forest Mystery
,” Allison said. “Isn’t it obvious? He’s the Drestian. It’s his forest. He must be responsible.”

“Lofton’s not killing anyone,” Bill said fervently, shaking his head. “At least not in Ashfield Forest.”