“Now hit the showers and report to class in twenty-five minutes,” Reid said. "Don't keep us waiting."
7
I Learn All the Things
I didn't have much time left, so I quickly cleaned up and went to our first lesson. It was held in one of the amphitheater-style classrooms I saw earlier. Wide tables with seating for two lined the room in a semi-circle with each tier raised several feet above the other. I had seen rooms like this in some of the colleges I had visited. Down at the bottom in the front of the room was a podium and a table with a computer hooked up to a projector.
By the time I got in the room, almost everyone else had arrived. And, of course, Maria had taken the seat next to Alexa in the front row. I tried not to let my disappointment show. Besides, it was probably better this way. I probably would have had a hard time concentrating if I were sitting next to Alexa.
I found an open seat next to Zachary on the left side of the class in the second row. When I sat down, he held out a hand to me.
“Nice job,” he said. “That was some seriously quick thinking out there.”
I took the offered hand. “Thanks,” I said. “Not bad yourself. You were hard to tag.”
Zachary shook his head, slowly. “Nah, I choked out there. I was so busy trying not to get tagged, that I forgot the purpose of the mission. It was a losing strategy.”
Which was totally true, but I didn’t want to come out and say that, so I shrugged noncommittally. After all, Zachary was not only much stronger than I was, he was also a trained mixed martial artist. I didn’t really know him that well, but I could already tell he was a guy I didn’t want to make angry. He may not turn green and bust out of his shirt, but he could probably rip off my arm and beat me to death with it.
The last person to come in was Logan. Seeing as how he hadn’t exerted himself during the training, he hadn’t bothered to shower. Red marks on one side of his face and his half-closed eyes clearly gave away that he had been napping – again. How much sleep did this guy need?
Logan looked around the room with bleary eyes and picked a table by himself in the top row on the right-hand side, leaving two empty rows between him and the rest of the cadets. He promptly put his head down on the table and closed his eyes.
Sure. Why not have another nap?
Reid and Abby came in through a door at the front of the classroom. Everyone stood up – except for Logan, he still had his head down – and stood at attention. I was a step behind Alexa and Gabriel since I didn’t really know the protocol for training masters entering the classroom. I wasn’t alone. The other cadets who didn’t grow up in the Seam Wardens also weren’t sure what to do.
“Have a seat,” Abby said and we all sat back down. “Today begins the classroom portion of your training. Not all of your training will be physical. There is a mental component that is even more important than the physical portion. After all, it isn’t your strength or your athleticism that qualifies you to be a Seam Warden, it is your mind. Your minds are unique. You can remember the creatures from the Seams better than the vast majority of the human race. It is your mind that makes you special. It is what sets you apart and what will ultimately make or break you as a Seam Warden.”
She looked up at Logan sleeping in the top row and shook her head, clearly disgusted.
That was not quite the reaction I had expected. I figured this would be more like boot camp where you had to obey instantly or face punishments. So far, Reid and Abby had been really laid back with Logan.
“What you learn here will save your lives many times over,” she said. “I didn’t say ‘may’ save your life since I can guarantee it will. We will teach you about the thirteen forgotten worlds. We will tell you about the creatures that live on them. You will learn which creatures can communicate with us and which ones simply think of you as food. We will teach you how to fight against and defend yourself from the various creatures you will meet. Those of you who grew up among the Seam Wardens may think you already know everything, but I can guarantee you that you don’t. We’ve kept the kid gloves on with you. Starting now, they’re coming off.”
And with that cheery introduction, for the next several hours the Brewsters gave us an overview of how the Seam Wardens discovered the Seams and their interaction with the beings that lived there.
In the early 1890s, a huge earthquake struck the northwest part of Oregon. The city of Portland was pretty much leveled and almost all of the population was killed. Thirty miles of coast all along the seashores of Oregon and Washington sank into the ocean. After several years, the city of Portland had been almost abandoned. People had either died or moved and started over in a new location that didn’t have quite as much death and destruction.
The government created an initiative to give land to people who were willing to settle the area and rebuild what is now known as New Portland. A man named Lars Hanson was among those who came out.
When Lars arrived, he was disappointed to see that most of the prime land had already been given away and that the remaining areas were less desirable.
With one exception.
There was one piece of land in a prime spot that no one was willing to take. There were rumors that it was haunted by evil spirits and that young girls disappeared, never to be seen again.
Lars laughed at the idea. He wasn’t a spiritual man and wouldn’t buy into what he saw as irrational fear based on ridiculous superstitions. He claimed the land and brought his wife and six children to settle there. Everything was fine for several weeks until an Edelgrim came through one of the Seams and killed him and most of his family. The only survivor was his 16-year-old son Jacob, who had been away from home at the time of the attack.
Jacob tracked the monster back to what we now call the Seams — the thirteen permanent openings between our world and the other worlds. He tried to alert his neighbors and get help, but shortly after arriving and seeing the Seams they would completely forget everything he had told them. After experiencing this several times, Jacob realized that something unnatural was happening. Since he seemed to be the only one who could remember the Seams or the creatures, Jacob made a vow to do his best to protect our world from the creatures that came out of the Seams.
Over time, he found he wasn’t completely alone. A few other people also claimed to have seen strange beasts. Jacob convinced these people to come see the Seams. When they didn’t forget after a few hours, he recruited them to join him. Those who accepted his invitation joined Jacob in his vow to protect humanity from creatures coming through the Seams, and together they formed the Seam Wardens.
They soon discovered that although there were thirteen permanent portals in the middle of Portland, from time to time additional portals opened up all over the world. These temporary portals lasted anywhere from a few minutes to several days. Sometimes, they were nothing more than a pretty light show, but other times creatures came through. The Seam Wardens fought the creatures as much as they could, but some of the creatures came through unseen and settled in our world. They began to reproduce and develop native populations here on Earth, protected by humanity’s general inability to remember them.
After several years, once the Seam Wardens felt like they had a handle on killing most of the things that came through the Seams, one of the people Jacob had recruited – Silas Smith – became very interested in finding out what was going on inside the Seams. He tried several experiments, including sending animals through on a leash. When they came back without any apparent damage, he went through on his own, exploring the various worlds. Eventually, he had looked into all thirteen of the Seams and helped catalog what was there.
For the next fifty years, the Seam Wardens learned all they could about the Seams and the creatures that lived in the connected worlds. They made treaties and set up trade between worlds with the sentient creatures who were willing to negotiate and set up barriers and defenses against the ones that could not or would not communicate.
Things radically
changed in 1953 when the Seam Wardens made a deal with the beings from the world called Parse. They acquired technology that allowed them to block movement through the permanent Seams, preventing anything from getting in or out without the permission of the Seam Wardens. It also detected and – at close range – could close the smaller and temporary breaches that occurred throughout the world.
This technology allowed the Seam Wardens to enforce order and exercise some measure of control over access to the Seams. It was something they had unsuccessfully tried to do for over sixty years.
The price the Parse inhabitants charged for the technology was unusual, to say the least. The sentient inhabitants of Parse were much more technologically advanced and the Seam Wardens had very little to offer them in terms of technology or manufactured goods for trade.
In the negotiation process, the Seam Wardens discovered that the inhabitants of Parse have a nearly insatiable curiosity and desire to learn everything they can. They are extremely curious about us and how we survive being at the junction of multiple worlds.
The deal amounted to a cultural exchange of sorts. In exchange for the technology to control access to our world through the Seams, the Wardens agreed to allow a certain number of Parse “watchers” to come through and observe our world. They would not interact, but merely observe our world and the beings that lived here.
They are still here and can be seen from time to time wandering the world, observing how we live, but for the most part, they have no interaction with us and keep to themselves.
Class ended with Reid showing a picture of a large monster the size of a really big pick-up truck. Four massive legs, each the size of a tree trunk, supported a circular body covered with thick, gray skin that reminded me of a rhinoceros. An enormous, muscular humanoid torso protruded upward from the center of the body. Each arm was thicker than my waist and ended in three sharp claws. The head was vaguely insect-like with large eyes on the side of the head like a gigantic fly, and its mouth was filled with the pointed teeth of a carnivorous predator and surrounded by three sharp mandibles that looked like they could do a decent job of impaling unwary prey.
If that monster was real, it had to be the scariest looking thing I had ever seen.
“This is an Arlaug,” he said. “It is from Primor. They are incapable of communication, even with our translators. They are fierce and highly aggressive. They can kill you in more ways than I care to explain.”
He paused and looked around. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the picture on the screen. Even the cadets who grew up with the Seam Wardens looked unsettled by the image, including Logan who had at some point in the class been roused from his nap.
“This is what you are up against,” Abby said. “This one is bad, but it’s not the worst of what’s out there. Your training is to prepare you for the day when you may face something like this – or even worse. Class dismissed.”
We ate dinner that evening in the Cadets’ cafeteria. I sat at a table with Zachary, Mariah, and Sierra. I had wanted to sit by Alexa, but by the time I had gotten my food, she had already sat down, and her table was full.
Denied for the second time that day.
Zachary and Sierra started talking, and within a few minutes, were completely absorbed in their own conversation. I tuned out once they started debating which Big 10 school had the best football team. Having grown up in California, I knew the Pac 12 was the only true football conference.
“So, where were you going to go to college?” I asked Mariah. I managed to catch her right as she took a bite of food – which is always awkward for both the asker and the person being asked a question.
“I still hadn’t decided,” she said, once she was able to swallow. “It was down to Columbia or Harvard. I was offered scholarships to both.”
It turned out we had both won National Merit Scholarships and we geeked out for a few minutes about our recruitment from various universities. It turned out I had beat her by twenty points on the SAT, but she had beat me by one point on the ACT. We had both had offers from many of the same universities.
She asked me about my experience meeting the Seam Wardens, and I gave her the details I was told about my family being attacked and how I had spent several months here but had only a couple of memories about my entire time here.
“What about you?” I asked when I had finished telling my tale. “I know you helped capture a Stoki. How did it happen?”
Mariah shrugged. “It wasn’t anything heroic on my part,” she said. “My parents are migrant farm workers, and I grew up living in temporary housing, moving from place to place. People come and go all the time and it's hard to keep track of who has left. But this past summer, I had noticed more people than usual were disappearing without anyone knowing where they went. And instead of entire families leaving suddenly, it was a single girl disappearing from the family. That in and of itself wasn't completely unusual — people ran away occasionally. But in a space of a couple of weeks, ten girls had gone missing.
"I noticed a strange man who had been hanging around. He spoke fluent Spanish, but from his accent, he was clearly not a native speaker. Something about him seemed off, but at the time I couldn't put my finger on it."
“The shape of his head?” I asked.
Mariah nodded. “Anyway, I followed the guy through the housing complex trying not to let him know I was following. I saw him stop off at a house and meet up with a girl named Luz who was just a few years older than me. I almost turned around and went home right then since it was clear she went with him willingly and even introduced him to her parents.
“But something still wasn’t sitting right with me. I followed them to the edge of the housing complex and watched them sneak off into the woods. I followed behind them and felt really stupid when I saw them start to make out not too far into the woods.
“I had turned around to go home when I heard Luz gasp in what sounded like pain. When I turned back, I saw the man had turned into a hideous, burnt-looking creature with bat wings. He covered her mouth with one hand and clamped his mouth onto her throat. His head was making strange spasming motions, and it took me a minute to realize he was drinking her blood.
“I screamed and pulled out my cell phone to dial 911. The Stoki heard me and looked straight at me. For a moment, I thought he was going to come after me and kill me, too. But instead, he grabbed Luz under the arms and flew into the air, taking her with him.
“I ran back to Luz’s apartment and told her mother what had happened and that the police were on the way, but she had no memory of Luz leaving with a strange man. She looked at me as if I were crazy. I was so hysterical after seeing the creature that I’m sure I seemed crazy – ranting on about a flying corpse eating a girl. When the police finally arrived, there was no body to show them, and no creature for proof. When I described what I had seen, the officers reacted so condescendingly. I could see the looks they were giving each other. But two days later when Luz still hadn’t come home, different officers came looking for me to hear my story again. But this time, there was a Seam Warden with them, only I didn’t know that’s what he was at the time. He told me I wasn’t crazy and what I had seen was a creature called a Stoki. He gave me his phone number and told me to call him when the creature came back. He seemed completely certain that the creature would return.
“Three days later I saw him again, flirting with another girl. His features looked slightly different, but the Seam Warden had told me what to look for in the head shape, so I knew what he was.
“I called the Seam Warden and several of them came and took him captive. He didn’t even put up much of a struggle. Once he saw them, he just stood where he was and waited for them to take him away. I know it sounds strange, but he almost looked relieved that he had been caught. Isn’t that weird?
“Anyway, at that point the Seam Wardens told me all about the thirteen forgotten worlds and asked me if I wanted to join up and make a real difference. And here I am.”
&nbs
p; We continued talking for the rest of dinner sharing bits and pieces of our lives. We had a surprising amount in common. We both had grown up in California, been at the top of our classes, and even liked a lot of the same music and TV shows. I found myself relaxing around her as the meal went on. When we were done, I felt like I had found another person I could trust. Which put her on a very short list.
That night, we were told that lights out was 2200 hours, but that didn’t mean all the cadets took the mandate seriously. Logan stayed up most of the night playing on his guitar while Kevin watched TV in the common area.
I was really glad we had soundproof rooms.
I was both mentally and physically exhausted by the time 2200 came, so I shut my door and slept like the dead. I didn’t even wake up once. Which, given the fact that I rarely slept well in an unfamiliar location, was a testament to how tired I must have been.
When the training master came in the next morning at 5:30 am to wake us up, I was still tired, but felt somewhat functional. I was no stranger to early mornings, and I had functioned many times on considerably less sleep than this.
Reid and Abby had us assemble in the same room where we had our workout the night before. Alexa, Mariah, Sierra, and Kathryn were already waiting there. I always found it fascinating to see girls in early morning situations like this. Some of them, like Alexa, looked just the same. She didn’t wear much makeup and typically had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, anyway. She seemed to be in her element.
But others, like Kathryn, seemed to struggle in this kind of situation. She obviously didn’t want anyone to see her looking less than perfect and somehow found the time to do her hair and makeup before assembling. She also looked more tired than any of the other girls. I wondered what time she had gotten up to get ready.
Thirteen Forgotten Worlds (Seam Wardens Book 1) Page 10
