Two of the crowd members that had heard them, though, smiled back at them. Ellie was surprised that both of these smiling people had the abyssal eyes. It almost made her wonder if the group wasn't as aligned as she had once thought. Could there be some disturbance in the sect? Could they still have enough individuality as to allow them to disagree with each other?
Ellie's eyes became locked with those two, as if their eyes, in their dark depths, were trying to relay something to her. Something that her own brain struggled to interpret. Only after they smiled broadly at her and turned back towards the stage could she move again. Then, all she wanted to do was run, flee these people that seemed to surround her at every turn.
"Hey," shouted one of the two that had smiled at them. "Why do you get to lead us?"
"Yea," call the other. "Who died and made you king of the group?"
"Excuse me?" Sam asked.
Sam seemed to not have any trouble hearing the two hecklers at the back of the group. He looked out over the crowd, his dark eyes searching the faces around them, spotting the two of them easily as they slunk back from the people around them. Once he did, though, he also spotted Ellie and her friends. As he stared daggers at her, his hand rose up as if to point accusatorially at her. Ellie braced herself against the doorjamb, waiting for some signal from him that the chase would be on. That the people around her, all those abyssal eyed people, should turn around and attack the one that had seen them for who they really were.
"Uh, let's get out of here," Ellie mumbled, her words barely loud enough for herself to hear.
"You two think you can do a better job as leader of this division?" Sam asked, momentarily ignoring Ellie's presence there. "You're welcome to come up here and help out."
"I... we... I just wanted to know why you're the one in charge around here," said the first heckler.
"Well, there are many reasons why I rose to the position. I was one of the first to come to this school... that uh... that was properly enlightened to the dangers that these demons pose to the rest of the world." He waited for the crowd to cheer his words, which they did quickly enough. No one seemed to notice the slip, the slight tipping of his hand. The small peek at the hidden group lost amongst the crowd. Ellie had, though. "As for who died to appoint me, a lot of us have lost someone to the demonic scourge." He waited again, allowing the cheers and jeers to stir up once more. "Plus, there was my mother, who had done a lot for this group, laying the groundwork for things to come. You may have heard of my mother. Natalie Jennings?"
Ellie could just see the look of surprise on the faces of the two hecklers. They were properly kowtowed, just by the name of Sam's mother. Ellie quickly scribbled down the name, hoping that it would prove important in the end. Perhaps it would help her to get more information on Sam. It certainly gave her his last name, something she hadn't had before. She quickly flipped through her stack of papers, finding his smiling face in the middle of the J section. She scribbled his mother's name again on that page, circling his picture several times, to emphasize just how important he was.
"Now, then," Sam said, seeming to flinch at his own choice of words. "Where was I?"
"Yea, let's go," Alex said, finally agreeing with her. "The last thing we need right now is for this crowd to turn on us, thinking we're not cheering the performance on enough."
"Maybe we should just slip back and head to the cafeteria," George said. "That way no one will even notice that we left."
"Plus, there's food there," Eric said.
Alex's hand went to Ellie's arm, slowly pulling her back into the building. Ellie looked around the crowd one last time, trying to see if there were any more faces that she hadn't noted already. That was when she saw her, the girl from the night of the break in.
Lost in the sea of cheering faces, she was making her way towards Ellie. Her eyes were on the ground in front of her as she pushed her way past the crowd. It wasn't until she got free of them, got to the open space, that she looked up. Instantly, her eyes locked on Ellie's, as if drawn to them across the space between.
Her very dark, abyssal eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Source of Sam
"Twenty-seven," Ellie said. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, flipping through the large pile of papers on her lap. The pages weren't cooperating, falling to the floor as often as not. So, she had to count the circled pictures several times before she was certain of her count. "We got twenty-seven people, including Sam, that are definitely part of this whole..."
"Cabal," Becky suggested. She was lying down on her own bed, facing the wall. The lights on her side of the room were out, and she had said she was going to sleep hours ago. However, even from the other side of the room, Ellie knew she wasn't asleep. "They're a cabal."
"I'm not sure what they are anymore. They're something, though. Something much more than some secret society at a school in the Midwest. I mean, when he namedropped his mom like that, everyone there knew who he was talking about."
"No, they didn't," Becky said, as she rolled back over to face her. "There were several people around there that had no idea what he was talking about. They all just wanted to stone a demon."
"For the ones... the ones in the... cabal, I mean. They all knew who he was talking about. It was like he was talking about the messiah or something. Someone important, not just to him, but to all of them."
"What does your little database tell you about her?"
"I hadn't checked it," Ellie said, shrugging. She scooted over to the head of her bed, reaching over to grab the tablet from where it usually was in its cradle. "I'm... I'm almost afraid to find out at this point. We didn't have much luck finding Sam. I'm guessing his mother won't be in here either."
"Well, there's always Google. Google is god, as they say, especially these days. I've heard they're financing half the mission to Mars at this point."
"More than half. If they hadn't invested in it, it never would have gotten off the ground. The non-profit changed its name so often in the early days, just to accommodate Google's slightest whim. It's not even the same mission anymore. Or, at least, that's what I've heard from Mare. She's been following it a lot closer than I have."
The database was still pulled up on the tablet, as she hadn't used it since that morning. She ended up using her laptop to compile the pages, as she needed the stronger computer. Once she turned on the tablet, the database page refreshed, sending her back to the main page of the interface. She tapped on the search bar and entered the name Sam had mentioned at the rally. Unexpectedly, Natalie Jennings came back with five results. However, none of them quite fit what she was looking for, mostly because all five of them were still alive.
"Maybe they have a different section for the dead," Ellie said. She quickly entered the ID number for her mother, a number she knew by heart. It pulled up her usual page, the same page, with the same information, that had always been there. "Right. Maybe not."
"Did you try Google?" Becky asked.
"Google isn't going to give us anything useful, not without things to limit the results. I could put the name in and get like fifty results back. Or fifty million." Just to prove her point, she did pull up Google in another tab, entering the name once more. "See? Almost a million hits. There's no way of telling which Natalie Jennings is Sam's Natalie Jennings." On a whim, she added Sam's name to his mothers, only getting more results for the attempt. "If only we had something else to go on. Anything else."
"I don't know. You're the hacker in this outfit. Maybe hack into something? Like the school records, maybe? If you find his social, wouldn't that help things? We didn't go that route before because we didn't know his last name, right?"
"Right," Ellie said. She lightly, yet firmly, hit her head against the wall behind her, a minor punishment for not having thought of it earlier. Once she was done feeling stupid about it, she got up from the bed and went over to her chair. Her laptop was on the far side of the desk, blocked by the printer that was still
there. The laptop had all the links and notes she had used when she had hacked into the ID system, and she figured that would be the best place to start anyway. Besides, the tablet wasn't powerful enough to brute force through a paper bag. If she needed to hack into a new system, she would need the stronger computer.
The student ID system didn't have social security numbers. It did, however, have student ID numbers. She quickly pulled Sam's ID from the system, figuring it would help when going through the other systems the school had. There were plenty of targets available for her, documented when she had first scanned the network for the ID system. At the time, she had also found the food services system and the gym's scheduling system, neither held any interest to her. Though she was tempted to give herself more credits on her cafeteria card.
It took her twenty minutes, and five designated targets, to find the right system. Instead of finding the main school records, though, she found financial aid. If she wasn't getting a free ride, due to her father working at the school, she might have been tempted to alter her own records. As the idea played out in her mind, she looked over to her roommate, who had finally slipped into a light sleep. Figuring what the girl didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, she pulled up Becky's file.
"Woah," Ellie muttered, quickly slapping her hand over her mouth to silence herself. Becky's file looked much like hers would have, with no outstanding balance and no payments scheduled in the future. To the side, under sources of payment, there was just a single line. Becky had gotten a free ride to the school under a scholarship from Angel Corp, one of the biggest companies in the world. Angel Corp was starting to rival Google, though it had never gone public, and their executives were well known to be recluses. Ellie didn't remember anyone ever talking about a scholarship program for the group, and Sarah from boarding school had gone through them all, trying to pay for Yale.
She quickly clicked out of Becky's records, flipping back over to the search engine to find Samuel Jennings. Sam's entry was a study in contrasts. Not only did he have no scholarships on his record, he still had an outstanding balance of twenty thousand dollars on his account. The last payment he made was only for two hundred, and had come in just before the school year started. There were several waivers listed in the notes section of the page, one for each quarter, then semester as the school schedules switched formats, going back to his freshman year. He was listed as a senior, with an asterisk next to it. The asterisk no doubt meant that he wasn't going to graduate without clearing the outstanding balance.
For a split second, Ellie felt sorry for Sam. She remembered him mentioning that he had lost both of his parents. She managed to find a backdoor access through the financial aid system into admissions. As she delved deeper into his records, she noticed several mentions of foster care. His application letter spoke about how he had lost both of his parents, within weeks of each other, to unknown circumstances. How he ended up in foster care, where his foster parents neglected him until he turned eighteen. According to the letter, he ended up working three jobs as he finished high school and, though he wouldn't be able to afford college, he still wanted to go.
Attached to his file was a picture of Sam. He was dressed up in a suit, though he looked much younger. Ellie figured it was his high school senior photo. Just like with the ID photos, his blue eyes looked normal in the picture, without any signs of the hollow voids they had become since then. She wondered what that meant, if whatever had happened to him, to them, had happened at the school after the photos were taken. Or did the cameras just not pick up the abyssal eyes, much like everyone else at the school seemed to not be able to see them.
His file only had his current address, a dorm room, and the address of the hotel he had been staying at after being kicked out of his foster home. However, it did have his social security number on it. Ellie quickly searched the usual database for the number, but it came back empty. At that point, she wasn't sure where to go. There were several government databases that she could try to hack into, but she wasn't that confident with her skills. The last thing she wanted was to get on some government radar over this group. Instead, she pulled all the information she already had on the guy, and everything she had on the group so far, into an email and sent it off to her old hacking teacher from boarding school. He was a paranoid conspiracy nut, so she figured he would get a kick out of it at least. It was already late at that point, and she figured he wouldn't get to it until Monday. So, she turned off her light and crawled into bed.
Her mind wouldn't let her go to sleep, nagging at her as it whirled around the possibilities. However, this was nothing new to her, as she hadn't been sleeping well lately. The same old thoughts started batting themselves around in her head. Why had so many of the abyssal eyed people lost parents? Had they all lost someone? Was that what turned them into what they were? What did that mean for her? New concerns popped up amongst the old. Had she exhausted all her options? Was there some other database the school had that might help her find what she's looking for? Would Mr. Wentworth consider the email something worth reporting to the authorities? Reporting her to the authorities?
She wasn't in bed for long. Barely twenty minutes after she had turned off the lights, she heard her cell vibrate, notifying her of an email. She reached up, grabbing her tablet, pulling it up in the darkness of the night, straining her eyes to see the screen. There was a single email from Mr. Wentworth, with an attachment.
Mr. Wentworth had hit pay dirt.
"Becky, wake up," Ellie called out. She didn't bother to look over at her roommate, or even get out of bed, as she read and reread the attachment. "I think we got something."
"What?" Becky asked. In her half-asleep state, the word came out stretched and husky.
"My old hacking teacher found out something."
"What?" she asked again.
"God, come look. Both of Sam's parents were committed."
"With a kid like that, it takes a lot of commitment."
"No, I mean they were both in a psych hospital," Ellie said, throwing her pillow across the room at her. "They were both there, together, twenty-two years ago."
"So?"
"So, that means Sam may have been conceived in a hospital."
"So?"
"So... Rebecca Anne's mother was there, too."
"Wait, what?" Becky asked, finally seeming to wake up.
"We finally have a connection, for two of them at least, but one that's much more tangible than that they all lost a parent. Or, well, most of them at least. Not sure if they all had just yet. But, I mean, there are--"
"Ellie, this is huge," Becky said. She jumped out of bed, all thoughts of sleep long gone, and ran the three steps between their beds. "Do you know what this means?"
"It means there's a source, a trackable source, something we can actually investigate."
"More than that. It means you're not crazy."
"What? Wait, when was that an option?"
"Oh, come off it, Ellie. It's always been an option. It was fun to play along, though, so I didn't bring it up."
"Um... Thanks?"
"We have to tell the others." She jumped back off of Ellie's bed, heading to the door.
"Becky, wait."
"What? Why?"
"Well, for starters, you're in pajamas."
"Oh," Becky said, looking down at herself.
"And, second, it's the middle of the night. None of them are going to be awake right now."
"Right. Wait, where is this place? Where they were committed? Can we try going there?"
"What? Why would we go there?"
"To find out more about these people."
"But, I... I mean, I could probably just hack into it."
"That wouldn't help. Trust me. Hero's been in and out of therapy for as long as I've known him. They'll have some cursory information available in their system, and you might be able to hack into that. But all the juicy stuff? Even in this day and age, that's all going to be on paper."
"Ugh. Tha
t's going to be a problem."
"Why? Where is the place? The suburbs?"
"No. Worse. New York. Upstate New York."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Weekend Road Trip
"Why did we have to be awake for this?" Eric complained. "The sun is barely even up yet."
The five of them were in the otherwise empty cafeteria. The breakfast food hadn't been set out yet. Ellie liked the empty room. It reminded her of some of the best times she had at boarding school, when Mare and the rest of their friends would sneak around the school at night and during the summer, when most of the students went home.
"Because of what we found," Becky said.
"I'm sorry, we?" Alex said, teasingly. "Wasn't this all Ellie? At least, that's how it sounded while we were walking over here."
"I mean, couldn't this have waited another few hours?" Eric asked.
"Not if we're going to deal with this this weekend," Ellie said. "I kind of want to be on the road soon. It's a twelve hour drive. Believe me, I would have wanted to be halfway there by now, but Becky insisted we get more sleep."
"And that we might want to invite you fine folks along," Becky said. "I mean, how often do we get to do a road trip these days?"
"Often enough," Eric said.
"Plus, you have a full electric car," Becky said. "The smart road conversion of the highway system is only halfway done along the route. Even with the induction panel system, you'll run out of charge before we get there."
"I'm sorry, I don't follow," George said, raising his hand as usual. "Maybe that's because I'm still half asleep. Smart roads?"
"The solar roadway system they're putting in across America," Becky said. "You know, infrastructure spending and all that. You don't follow politics?"
"I still can't vote."
"Neither can I," Ellie said. "But I know all about this. It's no excuse."
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