She flashed another grin and spun on her heel. Before I had a chance to think of a response, she was already down the hall and turning a corner.
I spent a bit more time exploring the cadet wing but didn't see much that I hadn't noticed when Spencer and Tamara brought me here, so I made my way back to the barracks.
When I opened the door, I was surprised to see two other guys sitting on the couches in the common area. The first guy was several inches taller than me. He had to be at least six four or five. He was built like a truck – wide and strong. His complexion was dark and his hair was buzzed short.
The second guy was almost his opposite. Where the first guy was wide, this guy was thin and wiry. Instead of short, dark hair, this guy had white-blond hair that hung down past his chin. He let the hair hang down over his face, but that was probably to cover up the acne scars that pockmarked his face. His complexion was so pale that I checked to see if his eyes were pink.
They were brown.
The big guy stood up when I walked in and strode over to greet me. He thrust out a huge hand that completely enveloped mine as we shook.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “My name’s Zach.” Fortunately, he didn’t try to play any of those tough-guy games where you tried to crush the other guy’s hand because if he had, I would have lost. Badly.
“I’m Pierce,” I said. “I’m new here.”
“Welcome to the club,” Zach said. “I’m new, too. So is Caleb here.” He gestured to the blond guy. “We got here this morning.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Caleb. His voice was deep and mellow. He sounded like he should be in radio or voice acting.
“Caleb and I were just about to swap stories about how we found out about the Seam Wardens,” Zach said. “So you’re just in time to join the party.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. I immediately liked Zach. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy. I pulled up a chair by the two of them and listened to Zach as he spoke.
“I’ll go back to the beginning for Pierce,” he said. “I’m from Detroit. Born and raised there. I wasn’t always this big.” Zach grinned at me and Caleb. “In fact, I was a bit of a runt and got picked on quite a bit growing up. My parents put me into martial arts when I was ten hoping to help me with the bullies. I’ve been studying Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing ever since. That’s really my first love.”
“You love beating up people?” asked Caleb. He looked nervous and perhaps even a bit paler than a few minutes ago.
Zach shook his head. “See, this is where everyone gets it all wrong. It isn’t about the fighting for me at all. I love the discipline it gives me. I love the confidence of knowing that if I do have to fight that I have the tools to defend myself. The principles of body control, momentum, and redirecting force helped me when I started playing football in high school. Add that to the fact that I started growing like a weed, and I was a five-star recruit coming out of high school." He shook his head slowly. "I turned down scholarships to Michigan State, USC, and Notre Dame to come here.”
“So, what happened?” I asked. “How did you first find out?”
“I was out with some of my friends in a bad part of town,” Zach said. He looked rather sheepish as he said this. “It wasn’t my idea, but I was stupid enough to go along with it. Anyway, we heard this guy yelling for help back behind a building.
“We ran over there and saw the guy backed up against a wall by what looked like a giant spider. Except that its shape was too human. It was as if a human had partially turned into a spider. It was covered in prickly hair, had eight arms, and a head with a bunch of eyes on it.
“When we got there, the thing turned its head completely around – I’m not making this up – and shot some sort of goo from its mouth at us.
“Well, we all jumped out of the way pretty quickly. But when we saw the goo start to eat a hole in the wall where it landed, my buddies decided they had had enough and took off running.”
Zach shrugged and continued his story. “I couldn’t just let this guy die. So I picked up a rock and heaved it at the creature. It didn’t do much good – it just bounced off its back. I don’t think it even felt it. I watched the thing jam some sort of proboscis into the man and started sucking out his insides.
“I screamed for help, but nobody came. I grabbed a two-by-four out of a pile of trash and whacked the creature in the back of the head. That got its attention. It pulled its bloody sucker thing out of the man and turned to face me. I smacked it in the face and orange goo started oozing out of it. The creature let out a high-pitched whine, climbed up the wall, and ran away.
“I yelled for my buddies to get back and help me, but they were long gone. I didn’t have a cell phone – I hate the things – but I checked the guy’s pocket and he had one. I made an emergency 911 call and tried to slow the bleeding.
“By the time the ambulance arrived, the guy was almost dead. When I gave my statement to the police, they looked at me like I was crazy. I told them to check with my friends because they had seen it, too. But none of them even remembered going back behind the building, let alone seeing a man being attacked by a giant spider-monster.
“A few days later, a couple of men in suits showed up and asked me what I remembered about that night. When I was able to give them the details, they took me with them to hunt the thing down. As I’m sure you guys can guess, it turned out they were Seam Wardens. We found an entire neighborhood of the things. They’re called Bryling. They’re like some sort of were-spider, but they’re born that way, not transformed when bitten. Most of the time they look like normal humans, but if something sets them off, they can turn into the spider-monster I saw.
“We tracked down a couple of likely suspects and I was able to identify the right one by the cuts and bruises on his head from where I hit him with the two-by-four.
“After we took him into custody, they told me more about the Seam Wardens and asked me if I wanted to join. And, here I am.”
Zach looked from Caleb to me. “Sorry,” he said. “That ended up being a lot longer than I meant it to be. I sometimes get started and have a hard time shutting up.”
"Not at all," I said. "That's a pretty cool story. That was hardcore sticking around with a monster in front of you. I'm not sure I could have handled that."
Zach shrugged like it was no big deal.
“What about you, Caleb?” I asked. “What’s your story?”
Caleb shrugged. “It’s not nearly as heroic as Zach’s story.” He ran his hand through his hair and took in a deep breath.
“There was a serial killer around town,” Caleb said. “He attacked every few days, always at night, killing and then removing the brains of his victims. It was all over the news and the entire city was pretty scared.
“There was a curfew put in place and extra police were called in, but nothing seemed to help. The killer continued on no matter what anyone did.
"One night, I saw something outside my house slinking through the shadows. I couldn't get a good look at it without leaving, and there was no way my parents were going to let me out. It was tall and thin with really long arms and legs. I know it sounds stupid, but for a bit, I thought it was that Slenderman thing I had read stories about when I was younger.
“I figured I must be imagining things. After all, it was dark and I saw it in the shadows several houses away. I had to have been imagining things, right?
“Well, the next day my neighbor was found dead with her brain missing.” Caleb took in a shuddering breath. I could see that he was getting emotional. I couldn’t blame him for being upset. It wasn’t his fault, but I would probably have felt the same way had I been in his situation.
“I had seen the killer and instead of reporting it and helping to catch it, I had chickened out and ignored it. From that moment on,” he said. “I was obsessed with finding this thing again. I went to the police and told them what I had seen. They politely took notes, but I’m sure I sounded like a derang
ed lunatic to them.
“When no one took me seriously, I started sneaking out of the house at night and searching for the creature myself. At first, I didn’t find anything. I almost gave up, but after more than two weeks and five more deaths, I found it again. This time I got a closer look, and I hadn’t imagined what I had seen last time. The creature was way more than seven feet tall with impossibly skinny arms and legs. Each hand had seven, long fingers with claw-like knives on them. It was slinking through the shadows, but at one point it got pretty close to a street light, and I finally got a good look at it.
"Its skin was mottled gray and looked slimy. Its head was too small in proportion to its body and lighter in color, almost white. It had a huge mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth, but it didn’t seem to have any nose, ears, or eyes.
“Every instinct told me I should run and get out of there, but I remembered how awful I felt not doing anything last time. I had promised myself I wasn’t going to ever feel that way again. So, I followed it back to an abandoned machine shop in a bad part of town and saw there were three more creatures just like it inside.
“It seemed like they were nocturnal, and I figured attacking them at night when they were up and alert was a bad idea. I made a plan to come back in the daylight and burn the building down after school.
“But that next morning, I was called out of class and a man and a woman started asking me questions about the supposed monsters I had seen. After having the police look at me like I was crazy, I was prepared to deny everything, but these people acted as if it were obvious the creatures were real and they only wanted to get more information on where to find them. So, I described them in as much detail as I could.
“Instead of giving me the pitying ‘this guy is crazy look,’ they told me they were part of a government agency that investigated these kinds of unexplained sightings. They then told me what they knew about the creatures I had seen, and that they were called Edelgrim. They’re hyper-intelligent and vicious predators that either cannot or will not communicate with humans.
“When I told them I knew where they were, the two agents had me take them there right away. Once they saw the place for themselves, they used a gate box – it looked like magic to me at the time – to open a portal and bring back fifty soldiers. They surrounded the building and threw in some kind of explosive. When it went off, it completely vaporized the building in an instant, but still didn’t kill the Edelgrim. They were on fire and screaming, but they ran right at us and began attacking the soldiers. Three soldiers died before my vision had fully recovered from the brightness of the blast.
“The soldiers opened fire with these huge guns that blew chunks off of the creatures. But as fast as they hit, the Edelgrim healed. Finally, one guy wearing a strange robe pulled out a huge sword that was like five feet long and cut the head off one.
“That seemed to do the trick. The soldiers changed tactics and used these big blobs of stuff to trap the Edelgrim and glue them to the ground. Once they were slowed down, the guy with the robe cut each of their heads off.
“It was both the grossest and coolest thing I had ever seen in my life. He cut the heads off all three of the Edelgrim and this black stuff, their blood I suppose, spurted out. Once it was all over, the Seam Wardens thanked me for my help and asked me if I wanted to join up. And, here I am.”
We sat in silence for a moment taking in what we had just heard.
“Man, the world is a lot stranger than I ever thought,” said Zach.
My thoughts exactly. How many strange monsters were roaming the earth? I could now see why the Seam Wardens were so anxious to recruit those who could remember the creatures.
“What about you, Pierce?” asked Zack. “You’ve heard our stories. What’s yours?”
“I’m afraid mine is much shorter,” I said. “Because I don’t remember any of it.”
I told them what Tamara and Spencer had told me about how my family was attacked and how I had lived here for several months before being sent to live with my uncle.
“And you don’t remember it at all?” Zach asked.
“Not yet, anyway. Tamara says that the longer I’m here, the more memories I’ll recover. We got interrupted before they could tell me all the details about it, but now that I’ve had some time to get used to the idea, I’m not sure I really want to have that memory back.”
At that moment, the door to the barracks opened and three guys walked in. The first guy looked Hispanic, perhaps Mexican. He wore his hair short, almost buzzed. He had a big, friendly smile as he approached us.
The second guy was anything but friendly looking. He had brown hair which he wore in one of those spiked up, messy looks. He must have had a ton of product in there to keep it like that. He looked around the room with a scowl and clearly wanted to be anywhere but where he was.
The third guy had blond hair but not nearly as light as Caleb. He looked like the California surfers I knew back in school with sun-bleached hair and a dark tan. While he didn't look as angry as the second guy, he still didn't look happy.
“Hey Pierce, welcome back!” said the first guy. “I was hoping you would decide to come.”
I blinked in surprise. “Do I know you?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m Gabriel. We hung out when you lived here. Not as much as you hung out with Alexa, but yeah, we were friends.”
“Oh,” I said. This was awkward. He was the second person I’d met who remembered me, but I had no recollection of. “I’m sorry, but after I left, all my memories of that time faded. They’re slowly coming back, but not as fast as I would like.”
Gabriel looked surprised. "Really? Well, now that I think about it, I guess that makes sense. Since you were away for so long, of course, your memory of the Seams would have faded." He paused and thought for a moment, then smiled mischievously. "Well, in that case, I believe I should collect the money you owe me."
Totally lame joke, but at least it was obvious he wasn’t serious. I could handle good-natured teasing – extortion and bullying, not so much.
The second kid, the one with the spiky, brown hair, looked around the barracks in disgust and flopped onto one of the beds. “And this is my prison for the next year,” he said. “My talents are wasted here.” He began pulling something out from under his bed.
“Don’t mind Logan,” Gabriel said. “He doesn’t want to be a Seam Warden or go through cadet training.”
“I can hear you,” Logan said. “But it’s true. I don’t want to waste my life barbarically fighting monsters. I’m meant for better things!”
“Like what?” Zach asked
“Like being a famous rock star,” said the guy with blond hair. He rolled his eyes. “I’m Kevin by the way.”
“Exactly!” Logan said. By this time he had pulled out an electric guitar and plugged it into an amp. “I should be making millions of dollars entertaining the masses. Women should be throwing themselves at me, while guys everywhere wish they were me.” He held a pick in his hand, raised it above his head, and with a dramatic flourish began to play a fast-paced and complicated guitar solo.
For all the drama and whining, I had to admit that Logan was pretty good. I played a little myself – not very well, and I knew several guys who had their own bands in high school and even a few who went on to get recording contracts. Logan was better than all of them, and quite a bit better than the majority of them.
His fingers flew across the frets playing notes at a frenzied pace. I didn’t recognize the song, but I could appreciate the artistry. He really was good.
The barracks door opened and a stern-looking man wearing a Seam Warden’s uniform strode into the room carrying three bundles of clothing. He had short, brown hair that was starting to go a bit gray on the sides. His expression made it clear that he was not expecting to see anyone playing guitar in the barracks.
As soon as Logan saw him, he stopped playing and put down the guitar so fast you would have thought it had caught on f
ire. Gabriel, Kevin, and Logan immediately stopped what they were doing and stood at attention. Zach, Caleb, and I followed suit, but several seconds behind.
“At ease,” the man said. “You still have twenty minutes before your training officially begins, so enjoy these last few moments of freedom.” He looked over at Logan and gave a small nod of acknowledgment.
“My name is Reid Brewster, and I am your training master. You will call me Mr. Brewster, Sir, or, if you are really daring, O Captain, My Captain.” He waited for a beat, clearly looking for some sort of reaction. I guessed he was quoting from something, but whatever it was neither I nor any of the other cadets were familiar with it.
Mr. Brewster sighed. “I swear, you cadets get younger and younger every year. It looks like it’s officially time to retire that joke,” he said. “Anyway, it’s my job to whip you cadets into shape and prepare you to become real Seam Wardens.” He handed Zach, Caleb, and me each a stack of clothes containing three sets of black shirts, cargo pants, and tactical vests.
“These are your uniforms,” he said. “You other three should already have been issued yours. If that's not the case, please tell me now.”
The training master looked at each of us and continued when no one said anything. “Excellent. I expect to see each of you fully dressed in uniform and in the Simulation Room at exactly 13:00.” He looked at his watch. “And that is in sixteen minutes, so I would suggest you hurry.”
He spun on his heel and strode out the door.
6
I Become a Player
I quickly changed into my uniform. The black shirt was surprisingly light and comfortable. I thought it would be too hot to wear, but even with the long sleeves, it felt like I was hardly wearing anything at all.
When I first put the shirt on, it had seemed a bit too big, but by the time I got the pants and vest on, it had shrunk to fit me perfectly. I had no idea how it worked, but I wished all my clothes did that.
Thirteen Forgotten Worlds (Seam Wardens Book 1) Page 7