The List:
-Sophia
-Summertime, Solstice
-Sussexham, station
-sun, shadow, sew, swatches, strength, safety, status, sheen, shrug, shake, secrets, stories, sabotage, strangers, selection, Seventh, survival, steps, skeleton
The Result:
"Safety in Numbers"
(*This is a sequel to a previous Suggestion Box installment)
Summertime in Walesmoor was usually a mild affair. The sun
shone her very strongest, but a thin sheen of cloud still staunchly stayed,
filtering her light and heat.
A young girl and her governess sat on the steps behind the
house, stitching with silk threads over swatches of muslin. Such a pastime
befitted ladies of their status.
The girl glanced up at her governess.
“What is it like, Vonica?” She asked, looking up and
brushing her dark hair aside.
Vonica raised her eyes from her work and smiled. “What is
what like, Sophia?”
The young girl’s gaze grew very serious. “Being an
Ordinary.”
Vonica’s lips pinched somberly. “Your father does not want
us to talk—“
“But I am afraid!” Sophia protested. “You have been through
a Division before. I just want to know what it is like!”
Vonica gazed at her charge, barely seven years of age. “You
are still so young, Sophia. You’ll have a few more years ahead of you before
you are in the eligible range from which they cull. You can learn all you need
to know—“
“From my governess, who was an Ordinary herself,” Sophia
finished stubbornly. “You were Seventh, right? What was it like, the Base-10?
Were there obstacles, or puzzles you had to solve? Did they tell you all the
secrets behind the institution of Ordinaries and Cardinals?”
“Sophia, stop!” Vonica’s eyes widened in fear. “Are these
the stories you’ve heard? Such speculation does not become a lady of your
stature.”
“Then tell me the truth!” Sophia insisted. “What happened on
the way to Londonshire?”
“Nothing!” snapped the governess. A tense moment of silence
hung between them. Vonica’s shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “Nothing
happened to me, at any rate... but when I arrived at Base-10, they informed me
that I was no longer Seventh. I needed to be the Third Ordinary.”
Sophia gasped. “Third? But wasn’t there a Third already
selected?”
Vonica shook her head. “There were only two other Ordinaries
when I arrived.”
The young girl quickly subtracted in her fingers. “What
happened to the other four Ordinaries?”
Vonica shrugged and went back to her sewing. “Who knows? No
one talked about it while I was there, but later on—after I came to work for
your father in looking after you—I heard rumors that there had been a Nullifier
attack on our caravan.”
“Nullifiers? What are those?” Sophia felt a sudden panic
rise within her at the word.
Vonica glanced around to make sure they were alone before
sinking her voice to a whisper. “No one has actually seen them, but there have
been sequences of events that confirm the existence of a shadow faction.
Nullifiers want to overthrow the Cardinals, and that is why they began
instituting Ordinaries, one for each Cardinal. The Cardinals, then, cannot be
touched until all of the Ordinaries are killed in the order of their
assignment. Each Division is another chance for the Nullifiers to strike.
If you are selected, Sophia, I want you to be on your guard
at all times. No one has solved the mystery of how or when the Nullifiers slay
the Ordinaries—or even if they exist, and it wasn’t just some arbitrary
accident that claimed the lives of these people in the past. Stay alert, and
live, so that the others may survive!”
>>>>>>>>>
Seventeen-year-old Sophia stood stoic-faced as Vonica’s
warning thrummed in her ears.
“Third!”
Sophia stepped forward. The pendant and the specified
deadline weighed heavy in her hands. She was officially an Ordinary. Come what
may, there would be no turning back or running to safety, now. There was only
Winter Solstice, and Base-10 at Londonshire.
On the Abacus, Sophia slumped in her seat. Teresa was a
simpleton if she thought she could dismiss the warnings. All the same, Sophia
wished she could claim the suave confidence that Donovan had, or the keen focus
of Alice—and that still small voice persisted in her head, telling her that, as
the Third Ordinary, it wouldn’t be long until her time came, if the Nullifiers
decided to sabotage the mission.
The hills, trees, and sky skated past with predictable
regularity—until the Abacus took a sharp bend, and Sophia stiffened when she
realized that they were no longer on the straight track to Londonshire. She
could see the original track, stretching off into the distance, while the
Abacus slithered along a separate track, winding off to who-knows-where.
To make matters worse, Sophia could feel the cars beginning
to slow. A station loomed in the distance, but she couldn’t move as the vehicle
ground to a stop. The door hissed open, and somebody stumbled in. Sophia heard
heaving sobs, as the person stood.
“Donovan!” the name escaped her lips as she stared in
surprise.
“It’s started!” He stammered, staggering over to her. Gone
was the collected demeanor he’d worn when she saw him last. “They got Alice!
She’s gone!”
“Shush!” Sophia warned him as the Abacus pulled away down
the new track. At least they were headed south still—they might just make the
solstice, after all. “Calm down and speak plainly. How do you know Alice is gone?”
Donovan stared at her with wide eyes. “I saw—“ he gulped. “I
saw the saboteurs take her! My Abacus was close behind hers, remember, and for
an Ordinary, there is only one track to Londonshire. We depart in order so that
we can arrive in order. But we were just outside Sussexham when the
semiconductor on my Abacus had to slow down, because there was a stalled Abacus
ahead of him.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean she was taken—“
“I’m not finished,” Donovan shook his finger. “While we were
waiting for the other Abacus, a group of men—I can only assume they were
saboteurs—surrounded the Abacus, and I saw them
snatch Alice out of the car! They took her right in front of me! And I couldn’t do anything to stop them!”
Sophia gripped his shoulders. “Breathe, Donovan! Just
because you saw suspicious men take Alice doesn’t mean they went off and killed
her. She could still be alive—“
“Why would they let her live?” Donovan burst out, quivering
and shaking in his seat. “She’s the First; she’s worth more to them dead than
alive, and once she’s killed, I’ll be next!”
Sophia shook her head. “Then it’s in the interests of
self-preservation that I do whatever I can to keep you alive.”
The brakes on the Abacus squealed, heralding a second stop.
Sophia glanced out the window, but everything was shrouded in a smoky haze. She
didn’t know where they were, what direction they traveled in, or how close they
were to Londonshire. She squinted at the shadows, but the only thing she could
see was a tall blonde in a blue dress like hers. Teresa! Sophia opened the
doors to let her in.
“Sophia!” Teresa gasped, squeezing her arms. “Boy, am I glad
to see you!”
“Don’t tell me,” Donovan groaned, “They got your Abacus
too?”
“Huh?” Teresa frowned at him. “Donovan, what are you doing
here?” She glanced between them. “How did I get ahead of you both?”
“What happened to you?” Sophia asked. “Donovan’s Abacus got
stuck behind—“
“Alice’s,” Teresa finished. “I know, I saw the wreck too.”
“Wreck?” Donovan squealed. “No, no—she was kidnapped but the
Abacus was still on the track. I couldn’t go forward, so I walked to another
station and summoned Sophia’s Abacus. It wasn’t a wreck—“
“Well, a wrecked Abacus stopped mine in the tracks,” Teresa
responded, “and when I got out, I found Alice’s body. She’s dead.” She looked
at Donovan. “You’re the new First.”
Sophia felt the shadows creeping in, chilling her very
skeleton. The slaying had begun, and it would not stop until they were all safe
at Base-10… or else.
“All right, here it is,” she announced to the others. “We
are safer together than separated, so from now on, we stick together. We will
make it through alive—the survival of the other Ordinaries rests squarely on
us.”
>>>>>>
Also in the A-to-Z Challenge Series: ( * Continuations of Suggestion Box installments)
No comments:
Post a Comment