Tristan’s fingers trembled as he keyed the microphone on the radio. “Umm…Control center.” He waited for an answer, but none came. “Control center.” He raised his voice.
William became agitated. “You gotta let go of the button!”
“Oh yeah.” Tristan remembered playing with walkie-talkies with his sister, and then released the microphone key. Static burst from the speaker loudly.
“Try again!” Joshua urged.
“Control center, this is team seven. We are lost!” He pleaded. “And we need help.”
All of their hearts sank as the same hissing noise taunted them, and nothing else. Then the crying really started up again, but this time it got a hold of them all.
----------
As the parents were being entertained with more ‘instant updates’, and so called live shots of the on-going adventure; a good portion of the children’s mothers began to worry for no apparent reason. Jackie Welsh was certainly no exception to this phenomenon. In fact a growing sense of outright trouble began to gnaw at her.
“Honey,” she turned to her husband, “something’s wrong.”
“What?” He was genuinely surprised, after all she had been having a good time just the moment before. “They’re fine.” He tried to assure her.
“No Michael, something’s wrong. I can feel it.”
Michael Welsh knew the tone of her voice all too well. It said that he’d better get up right that instant, and do something, or he would regret it.
“All right.” He conceded, “I’ll go see if we can talk to them, OK?”
Jackie nodded her approval.
----------
Tristan’s tears were exhausted first, and then he tried to talk the others down to a calmer state. This only had minor effect, and so he tried the radio again, but the static just triggered further crying. After Joshua cried himself out, he and Tristan made a decision.
“We’re going to have to find a way out of here.” Tristan was empathetic.
“I want to go home!” Penelope pleaded yet again.
“I know!” Tristan was sharper with his retort than he cared for, and he bit his tongue for snapping at her.
“Leena.” Sarah sobbed, “Help us!”
Leena had been tightly gripping her older brother’s hand, until the little girl’s pleas shook her mind back to the necessity of clear thought. “Your right.” She nearly mumbled as letting go. “We are all going to have to help each other out, to find our way back.” She dried her eyes.
As Leena and Joshua worked to pull the others back together, a thought came to William. “Hey! Maybe this is just part of the test.” He voiced. The realization that he had to be right sunk in. After all, they were in an amusement park, and this was basically a ride; though a real scary one. The crying and sobbing stopped.
“Yeah.” Tristan spoke up, “This is just an obstacle.”
“Like the monster we saw.” Added Joshua.
Tristan nodded seriously.
“What about the radio?” Becky reminded.
“They probably just don’t want us to rely on anyone else.” Leena assured, although she spoke more to extinguish any doubts, than from real conviction.
Tristan had by now regained most all of his original enthusiasm for the adventure, and figured; “Sure. Heck they’re probably watching us right now. I bet if we really got stuck, or into trouble; they would be here in a minute” His raw energy began to rub off on the others.
“Well, let’s not just sit around here like a bunch of scared kids.” William chided. “Let’s beat this Quest!”
When they were all set to proceed, Leena turned to Becky and asked; “Which way now?” The younger girl with the red mane could only swallow hard and blink. Then Sarah surprised them, as she walked up to an entrance and looked thoughtfully for a moment, before moving in front of another entrance and doing the same.
Becky hesitantly said, “To the right?”
The normally shy little nine year old voiced her disagreement firmly, “NO!” This took everyone aback.
“What’s wrong with sticking to the right?” William was curious.
“We need to go down.” Sarah sounded determined.
Leena asked, “Why down Sarah?”
“I don’t exactly know….I just know for certain that we can’t go either of those other ways.” No one said a word for a long few seconds.
“Listen to her.” Penelope also asserted. So they went down.
The rock walls changed within a short sloping walk, from the rough look of being carved; to a much smoother appearance of flowing, or melting origin. The kids all remarked on how neat this was, but then the passage began to narrow, and they weren’t so enthralled any longer. It kept getting slightly more constricted through the twisting turns of a downward spiral. When it narrowed to the point that they had to crawl, there was some dissension about further progress.
“Let’s go back.” Joshua complained. “This hurts my knees.”
As they looked further down the tunnel, they could see that it tightened even further.
“Maybe we should.” Tristan agreed.
But Sarah was adamant, “No! We need to go this way.”
Leena saw the argument ahead, and was quick to prevent the ensuing bout. “Why don’t we stop for a lunch break?” She said more than asked, as she sat against the curved wall. “Yeah!” Came a chorus of replies.
After a rather tasty lunch of bean burritos and chips, the kids were feeling much better, and so decided to press forward as Sarah insisted. The tunnel continued to compress, until for a short while they had to crawl on their bellies; except for Penelope and Sarah whom could still crawl on their knees.
At that point Tristan stated, “If it gets any tighter, we’ll have to turn back.”
Just then, Joshua, who was in the lead, called back, “Its’ opening up. I can see right ahead where we can start walking again.” They all breathed a little easier.
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Millie Schotner was angry, very angry. Master control had lost all signal from the teams as soon as team seven entered the catacombs. She had sent several technicians to place transponders in to the catacombs a short distance, but these did not seem to make a difference. Things were not going according to plan.
“Do you wish us to send the guides after the teams Ms. Schotner?” The lead technician asked.
“If I want you to do something, I’ll tell you exactly when, where, and how high to jump.” Her voice was cold.
Mr. Fielder leaned and whispered in her ear, “Our people still haven’t got a fix on exactly what’s causing the temporal disturbances, it is either the Purge devices, or it is one of the teams of children themselves. Most probably team number seven, as the disturbances started shortly after they entered the tunnels.”
Suddenly a loud alarm from the control panels rang out.
“That’s an activation alarm!” Mr. Fielder boomed. “Where is the location, and what team is it?”
“We can’t get a location, but it is registering as team number two.” The lead control tech said after checking his readout.
“Is it in the chamber?” Millie shouted her question with demand.
“I can’t tell Ms. Schotner.” The tech said helplessly.
“You are a useless man!” She spat.
Mr. Fielder touched some controls on his watch, and then listened to the small earpiece he wore, before whispering in Millie’s ear again. “It is not in the spire chamber, Master.”
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A few minutes after Michael Welsh had left to talk to someone about their children, Jackie heard a ruckus coming from the entrance to the lounge. She recognized her husband’s voice immediately.
“Oh no.” She said half aloud.
Michael’s voice raised to the point of yelling, and that got the attention of everybody in the room. “What do you mean I can’t talk to my kids? You
got radios don’t you?” Jackie could see a dreamland employee vainly trying to calm Michael down. “You’d better get someone who can tell me why, and NOW!” the tall burly Mr. Welsh yelled again. Jackie knew that Michael was more than likely just intimidating the man, to get some action; at least she hoped so.
The employee left the lounge, and her husband came back over. He flashed a friendly smile as he sat down. “That ought to light a fire under them.” He assured her.
“Oh honey.” Jackie replied with true embarrassment.
----------
The next junction team seven came to was much more complex than any previous. Instead of the familiar three branches, this one had a full dozen passages leading from it. Some went sloping upwards, some drifted down, and some curved off.
“Before we’re confused here,” Leena thoughtfully stated, “we should mark the tunnel we just came from.”
With that Tristan took the multipurpose tool he’d found in his knapsack, and after selecting the scratch-awl; scraped a large ‘X’ into the side of the tunnel. He turned with a smug grin on his face. Leena grinned back with approval.
“What do you think Sarah? Which way?” Becky questioned, trying to prod her.
The short brown haired girl’s eye widened, and she swallowed hard. Then she did just as she had done at the last junction; she walked up to each entrance and peered down the passage.
While Sarah was doing whatever it was she was doing, William turned to Tristan and stated, “My map is kind of goofed up since that turn around in the tunnel back there, but I’m still on it.” This made Tristan laugh.
“What’s going on?” Leena asked.
“William still has a fix on our position.” Tristan smiled.
This caused a look of panic from Penelope. “Should I still be mapping too?”
“Don’t worry about it Penny.” Tristan calmed her. “William’s got a handle on it.”
“I didn’t know what to do after the passages got all turned around.”
Joshua sided up to her and asked, “How do you map something like that?”
Penelope gave him a big grin, and snuck a hug on him.
Leena noticed that Sarah was having a hard time deciding which passage to choose. She kept going between three of them that were close together. Leena approached her, and quietly questioned, “What is it that you see, or feel?”
Without looking at Leena, Sarah replied, “Some of them make me feel sad.”
This was the first moment that Leena saw the truth about her, Sarah was indeed someone special. She wasn’t the only one though, not by a long shot. “So, what’s so special about these three?” The younger of the Welsh children prodded.
“These two don’t make me feel anything really.” Sarah pointed. “And this one kind of makes me feel mad.” She drew a grimace across her cute face.
“Then we go down one of the other two, right?” Leena presumed.
The younger girl looked at her very curiously, “No, we go down this one.” She pointed down the tunnel that had obviously made her angry.
Leena didn’t know what to think.
With the decision thus made, they all started off. After walking ten minutes or so, Joshua joined Tristan just ahead of the group, and this prompted William to catch up with the pair; as he didn’t want to be left out of any of the guy stuff at that point. Leena grinned at this, and then her mouth dropped open in abject terror. The three boys had vanished right before her eyes, seemingly into thin air.
“NO!!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. She started to run to where they had just been, but several small pairs of hands held her back. “Stop Leena!” Becky was also screaming.
“Tristan!” His sister yelled after him.
6: they must vanish
Fractured Worlds (Book 1 of the Fractured Worlds Trilogy) Page 5