The War of Elevens| Book 1 of the Space Thief Chronicles

Chapter 26| We're Still Children in the End

Max Wikkens was restless. 

He walked up long colorful staircases and told himself he would stop when either he reached the top floor or his legs gave out, whichever came first. But his legs did not give out, and so when he reached Elliott Way's very top floor he started back down a different series of flights until he was caught by Sergeant Josey, who snapped at him with aggressive authority, "Get back to your instruction period before I make you run suicides until you puke up your lungs."

When he and Lilly first came back to Elliott Way, he had been so preoccupied with finding a shirt and she was so preoccupied with finding the Board Members that they both did not notice how many Bloom Officials were stationed on Elliott Way's grounds, nor how lucky they were that they were able to enter Elliott Way without being seen while Bloom Officials were walking around the facility's easternmost corner during their rounds.

Max credited that to his extremely good discretion and stealth. 

Now that he had a shirt on, he was much more keen on noticing the wild intensity that was Elliott Way. Elliott Way, Max often thought, was a perfect example that things without internal organs could be sentient. One could simply feel the facility's personality like one feels the charge of an oncoming thunderstorm or the macabre solemnity of a graveyard. Elliott Way had always been sentient in a positive way: bright, colorful, full of changes and mystery and wonder.

Today Elliott Way was all these things...colorful, forever changing, mysterious, wonderful...but these things were muddied by a darker layer of feeling...a feeling of destruction, rugged gore, and evil. Like Elliott Way expected a cataclysm.

Elliott Way was like this for three reasons: 

One: There were Bloom Officials everywhere. They paid Max no attention as they stalked corridors and guarded doors to training rooms. 

Two: There was an unusual hush, and it wasn't because most of the trainees were in instruction periods. The fairies peering from plants tumbling out of light fixtures did not chitter in their tinkling language. The walls sang no trilling opera notes as Max passed them. It was as if the facility absorbed sound, and the resulting quiet was violent, vivid, a promise for upcoming catastrophe. 

Three: People whispered about the dead psychic and the space thief. Instructor Kamaria's conditioning class entered through the main entrance doors right as Max rounded the corner into the entry rotunda, where a storm of kids raged, bright-eyed, wringing out their hands, whispering scary sentences Max had to strain to hear: 

"...If Storm's alive, and there's a space thief here, and Storm wanted space magic before to destroy the world, then he's coming here..." 

"We've got Bloom Officials and guards. We'll be fine." 

"That didn't stop a space thief from killing a psychic." 

"Bloom Officials weren't here then, idiot." 

"Who do you think it is?" 

Zander and Kaitlynn were among the class, and when they spotted Max, Zander's eyes narrowed to slits and Kaitlynn's widened. Max beckoned them to follow him up the main stairwell. Zander and Kaitlynn broke away from the other kids making their way to Treasurer's Place for lunch and, breathlessly, spoke over one another. 

"Max," started Kaitlynn, gripping the banister of the staircase. This particular staircase had bright words painted on each stair's base; Kaitlynn stood on SACRIFICE. "Where have you been? A bunch of kids walked by Stevia dragging a dead body out of the training room and then Instructor Kamaria asked us if we knew anything about a space thief."