Subject 15

CHAPTER 17 - Seth

I was more cautious and careful after that. I would always look around the endless hallways, studying everyone and learning as much as I could from their Masks. I was almost comparable to a caged wild animal. I felt like I was back in the wilderness. I would look into the eyes of everyone I passed, and Raven said that it looked like I was looking into their souls. It didn't help that most of them wore their hearts on their sleeves.

My once bright eyes were now dark green storm clouds, waiting for something, or someone, to spark the lightning and thunder. I didn't let my Mask alter their image, though it could, simply because I didn't want to – I wanted everyone to know that I meant business and to stay away if possible. As if my Mask didn't already say that.

Raven was constantly concerned, and I would catch her looking at me with a worried look more often than not. At night, when we slept in our modified cubicle, now outfitted with a couple of blankets, a small electrical fan for the warm nights, and even a survival camp set, Raven would lay close to me, one arm laying gently across my chest, the warmth from her skin sinking deep into me. She would lay there, looking at me while she thought I slept, and fall asleep while keeping watch over me, like she was my guardian angel.

Even Samantha noticed the shift in my mood, yet I never grew distant with her. Though I slightly drifted from Robert and other acquaintances, I would always be talking with Samantha at lunch and before and after class, never wanting, nor willing, to be parted from her.

There was just something about her. I didn't know what to call it, but I just felt drawn to Samantha, and her tantalizing smile and enchanting blue eyes always brought me back from the brink when I was growing distant.

But no amount of being watchful prepared me for what I was faced with next...

It was lunchtime on a grey day. The clouds were pregnant with rain, but like a reluctant child, the rain never fell, instead turning the sky a deep and dark color that made the darkness in my eyes evermore present and depressing. Samantha and I were talking about nothing really, just a book. She had convinced me to read an old, pre-Fracture one, titled Looking for Alaska by John Green, and so far it was pretty good, but I took my time reading, simply because it was something I could make my brain do slowly. However, Samantha was frustrated that I hadn't arrived at, "the good part," yet.

"Come on," she said with her wild arm movements and sly smile, "it shouldn't take you that long to read this!"

I laughed and said, "Be patient, Sam! I am going to-" and that's when I heard it: the scream. It was far away, distant, and no one else could have heard it, but my ears are far better than anybody else's, and even above the commotion it was as loud as a crack of thunder. I recognized that voice – Rebecca.

"Seth?" asked Samantha, sensing something was wrong. "What is it?"

"Someone is in trouble," I said as I got up quickly. I turned to Sam for an instant and said with fire in my eyes and steel in my voice, "Stay here," and ran out of the double doors that led to the courtyard. I got my bearings, and then ran to the opposite side of the school.

Once upon a time, this use to be a large church campus, but after the Fracture, and Quorum's part in it, almost all churches of any religion were abandoned, either going underground or to other countries. The FPS, apparently, thought that anyone with any kind of religious beliefs were too dangerous to be allowed to worship, and that they were hateful to anyone who didn't share their beliefs. The scream had come from the rickety building that once was a church with a tall steeple, but the bell was missing and thick curtains covered all the windows. I could hear the wood on the inside falling apart.