(Chapter 3)
by
Jocelyn Stewart


Kertan had been screaming for hours unrelentingly. They couldn't make her stop screaming. The medicine didn't work on the ones like Kertan. After a while she lost her voice, but Joyanne knew she hadn't stopped screaming. Kertan was still lying strapped to her bed, calling for her mother.

Joyanne curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest, trying not to hear the silent screams. Morgin had died that way yesterday and Lesa the day before. The Firsts wouldn't go anywhere near them. Not after several of them had been killed in transfer. The Seconds wouldn't touch any of them either; the Thirds were the only ones. She looked out the window at the starless night. They always started screaming in the middle of the night. A number of Third Order channels had been killed, too, but they hadn't abandoned the children of Hamlin. They always came back.

Every morning, Jorden and Peter would come in and check on the ones who were left. Every evening, Jorden would bring them something good to eat. During all the time in between, the Five, as they had come to be called, would sit in their room and wait to die. At nine, Joyanne was the youngest. Cyntha was the oldest; she was fourteen. With them in the room were Desmin, Jestin and Rielle.

Joyanne felt Rielle shaking the bed, trying not to cry out loud. Rielle was small for a twelve year old. Everyone who saw them thought that Joyanne was older because she was so much taller. At some point Joyanne had started taking up for the smaller girl. Jestin always picked on Rielle when there were no adults around. Cyntha didn't care one way or the other. She had stopped talking to the other four children soon after they had put her into the room with them. She only talked to the adults. Desmin did whatever Jestin was doing, which was usually making Rielle miserable.

"Ree?"

There was no answer, just more shaking. Joyanne uncurled and turned over to look at her. Rielle had her own bed, but had begged Joyanne to let her sleep with her. Joyanne had never shared a bed with anyone before, but she guessed that was what regular families did. So she had agreed.

Joyanne had no idea what went on in real families. She had been a ward of the town for most of her life. Her parents had been killed in a storm at sea when she was ten months old.

She reached over and patted Rielle on the shoulder. "Don't cry, Ree. Please don't cry."

Rielle turned over to face Joyanne. Rielle's face was wet with tears. "I don't want to die," she whispered. Joyanne put her arms around her friend and rocked her quietly. She couldn't tell her that she wasn't going to die. They were all going to die; they just didn't know when.

Joyanne wondered what she would be screaming as she died. She barely remembered her mother and no other adult had done much more than feed her and make sure she was dry as a baby. She had lived in group homes for as long as she could remember. She had made friends with the other children, but had learned early not to get too attached to anyone. She was never in one place for long.

Rielle was different. They had become attached to each other almost instantly.

Holding Rielle and rocking them both, she fell asleep and dreamed of a soft voice singing a barely remembered lullaby.

***

The view of Promise Mountain was spectacular, even though most of the trees had lost their leaves to the wind. A gust set a few of them dancing outside the window. Occasionally a single one would flutter by, like a lost and lonely red-gold butterfly that hatched too late in the season.

Joyanne felt she must be spending too much time alone. She got up from the couch and went to stand by the window. It had been years since she had thought of Rielle. She was restless with her confinement. Ydara had quarantined her, for all intents and purposes, to a Deferment Suite. Standing by the window, her mind spun in tight tail chasing circles or flew off onto strange tangents.

Joyanne had been able to pretend for a long time that she was content. Living among the Third Order community had been as close as she had ever come. When Jorden and Peter had practically adopted her into their family, Joyanne had seen what she had missed growing up an orphan. It made her glad to know that there were happy, normal people in the world, even if she wasn't one of them.

Ydara. Every time her thoughts came back to the channel, she had to wonder. Joyanne had been glad beyond words when Evender had returned. Constant exposure to Ydara had put Joyanne into an overproduction spiral that had gotten worse with every passing hour. There had been no help for it. Ydara couldn't function without her support.

Firsts had been the enemy since her establishment. Now she had one for a friend. And yes, Ydara was her friend; she knew deep in her soul that this was true. So they had held each other together until Evender had arrived, with worry written in his face. When he had literally swept Ydara off her feet and taken her to their quarters, Joyanne had followed them because she had become so use to keeping Ydara safe. When Evender had turned on her, practically snarling like an angry tiger, she had backed off and returned to her own quarters. Ydara had found her the next day curled up in a ball of misery with her production rate soaring out of control. At that point, she had moved Joyanne to the Deferment Suite. So now she waited, alone with her memories and too much time.

***

"For death's sake, May, I have no intention of keeping him . . ."

Controller Ydara Makepeace rolled her eyes to the ceiling and listened to Controller Mayborne Archer rant about not being able to get decent help and how now that she finally had another First Order channel Ydara was trying to steal him away. Even through the phone line, Mayborne was loud and Ydara was very grateful that she couldn't zlin over the phone.

"I only want to borrow him for a week."

More ranting from the receiver. Ydara was holding it at arms length away from her ear and was still getting a headache.

"Yes, I know you're shorthanded . . . "

"May, I only want Andred for a week . . ." This was getting nowhere. Ydara sighed and shook her head. All right, that's it! "Mayborne, I'm calling in a favor. You owe me quite a big one for supporting you for Controller. I want Andred up here on the next train."

Ydara could still hear Mayborne spluttering and fuming as she hung up the phone. Mayborne, Mayborne. Ydara was worried about her friend. For all the loud bluster, the woman had a good heart.

With a grateful sigh, Ydara leaned back into the shielding comfort of Evender's embrace and the dancing fire of his nager. "I can't tell you how glad I am that you're home."

"I can think of a few ways," he chuckled and kissed her gently.

"Not now, Ev." But she didn't really mean it. When Evender wrapped his arms about her even tighter, she just let the soothing feel of him soak through her. Protection, solid as the earth, absolutely unshakeable, was the nageric marker of an Edrian Gen. The virtue of Trin Oren was based on it. She tilted her head back looked up at him and smiled. It had been quite a homecoming.

"All right, enough. I have work to do and I can't get it done like this." She tried to get up. "Ev, let go." Even though he wasn't strong enough to hold her physically, he could nagericly, and he was doing just that.

"You are going to stay right here and take a nap." His nager made it quite clear that he wouldn't hear any arguments to the contrary.

"I am not a child. I don't nap."

"You will nap today and everyday for the next week. Dara, don't make me pull rank on you."

With her back against him, she couldn't see his face, but eight years of marriage and a lifetime growing up together let her know exactly what his expression was. Evender was entirely too gorgeous for his own good or her peace of mind. He had been a pretty child, with his chocolate brown skin, soft blue-black curls and moonlit gray eyes. He had kept all of that and added a work-sculpted body that made every woman that laid eyes on him look twice. To make matters worse, any Sime within zlinning distance was immediately drawn to his nager.

"You can't. I'm the Controller." She knew this would get him going and tried not to laugh.

He nuzzled her neck and said, "Yes, you are, but I am still your Companion and this is my call. And don't argue with me, Ydara. I am going to severely injure Mayborne for sending you another Third--and a basket case, at that. So until I am sure that you are not damaged, you will do as I say."

"O, yassuh, massuh."

"That's a good little Sime." They both laughed at the old joke.

"She's not a basket case by choice." Ydara yawned under the very powerful nageric suggestion to sleep.

As the sleep that Evender was imposing strengthened its grasp on her, Ydara hoped that the help she had requested from Trin Oren would arrive soon as well.

***

Andred hated traveling when he was this close to Need. Mayborne still had not found him a Donor and now he was going to Broken Promise. Andred zlinned his escort. Peter had an incredibly clear and strong nager for a Second Order Donor. As the train made yet another turn on its way up the mountain, Peter's nager kept a steady wall of clarity around the channel. He was also the biggest Gen Andred had ever seen. Peter was every bit as tall as him and massed at least three times as much. The Donor had been keeping up a running conversation the whole time, while doing some of the finest ambient control work he had ever zlinned. It reminded him of someone; he just couldn't place who.

"Anyway, with the kids visiting, Jorden is too busy to notice me much these days." Peter looked sideways at the channel. This was not one of his favorite tasks. Playing escort to a First was more taxing on him than he would ever let on.

The accident that had made him a Second had taken Jorden away from him, at least where transfer was concerned. He truly missed having transfer with her. Jorden had the sweetest touch he had ever known. There hadn't been a channel since who could give him what she had given him, that total sense of shared joy.

So now he got this kind of work. And every month a Second Order channel who never did more for him than strip his field down. Of course he couldn't really complain. This assignment would let him check on Joyanne.

He remembered the image of her standing with another little girl, who was clutching her as if her very life was at stake. And Joyanne had clung to the other girl, looking at them with pleading green eyes, begging them silently to take them both together. But at the time they could only manage the one. Jorden had been pregnant at the time and didn't think they could manage two children on top of the baby.

That image of Joyanne was burned into his mind forever. His heart had nearly broken as they had separated the two girls. The little blonde had screamed for Joyanne, reaching for her, nearly breaking the hold of the two large Gens who were taking her away. Joyanne had merely watched them drag her friend away with a silent sadness that never left her. Peter remembered too well the tears that had streaked her face and the fact that she had been silent after that day for nearly six months.

It had been Anisia's birth that opened Joyanne's heart again. She had marveled at the tiny human being. She had taken Anisia into her heart with a vengeance. She had cared for her when she could get time off from her Donor training. The first word that Joyanne had uttered had been Anisia. And with that Peter knew that Joyanne had finally forgiven them for taking her friend away. But the sadness became a quiet reserve. He had watched Joyanne grow and even learn to go through the motions of happiness, but he and Jorden had known she only pretended. She pretended so well that after a time it seemed she had begun to believe it herself.

A sudden jolt as the train switched tracks brought Peter out of his reverie. He found Andred staring at him with a pained look on his face. Peter never guessed, when he met the channel the first time, that he would be spending any amount of time with him. Ah, well, duty calls. "Sorry, Hajene, I was wool gathering. I will be more attentive."

"Wrong time of the month." Andred managed a weak smile. "I'm just a bit over-sensitive."

Peter nodded his sympathy, making conciliatory noises and reinforcing his control of the ambient. When he was sure of his grip on the fields, he asked the question that had been on everyone's mind back at Keepsake Hill. "Is it true that you and the Controller are cousins?"

That took Andred completely by surprise. "Yes, first cousins." He answered before he thought about it and berated himself for his Need-slowed thought processes. Well, slowed for anything that didn't involve transfer, anyway.

"Ah, well, the rumor mill being what it is, I thought I would just ask."

Andred made a noise that could have been an acknowledgment or caused by the sudden shift as the train switched directions again and continued the climb up Promise Mountain.

***

Joyanne turned at the sound of the door opening. She knew it must be Ydara coming to take her field down again. When she saw Evender standing there instead she was startled. In her current condition, the shock caused her to loose her balance and nearly fall. He was there just before she hit the floor, holding her up with an easy strength. "Thank you," she said. "Sorry to bother you like this," and she regained her balance.

"No bother. Sorry I startled you." He looked down at her with those moonlit eyes that she had only recently gotten used to with Ydara. If she hadn't known they were married she might have mistaken them for siblings.

Joyanne watched him for a moment, wondering why he had come. Deciding that she should sit down before she fell again, she sat in the only single chair in the room. Evender took the hint and sat on the couch.

"I owe you an apology," he said, looking directly into her eyes. Joyanne got the feeling that he wasn't just looking at her. He had a very Sime-like feel. She set herself to listen intently and got the distinct impression that he was doing the same thing.

He smiled at her. "Ydara said you have a very strong sense of fields."

This startled her, but as she was already sitting she was safe, relatively speaking. Joyanne retreated behind her walls immediately. Gen or not, this was a First sitting across from her and her reflexes took over.

"Joyanne, I'm sorry for, well, snarling at you when we met. Ydara is, well, you know she's my wife, but she is also Sectuib in Trin Oren. With having to be away before transfer, not to mention the fact that I wasn't here last month either, I was a bit overwrought."

She looked into his incredible moonlit eyes, so much like those of the only First she had ever called friend. She couldn't get a feel for him. Joyanne tried again to see if she could figure him out.

Joyanne felt the touch of his field, like one of Peter's bear hugs. She gasped and tried to back away. It didn't work, as she was sitting in a rather substantial chair.

"Hold on, you're going to tip the chair over." He eased his contact with her slightly but not entirely. "You were trying to see who and what I am. Go ahead."

She looked at the man that Ydara had chosen to marry. She had seen people she liked make bad choices for mates. But there was something in his eyes that made her want to trust him. Or was he manipulating her with his field? Joyanne listened to him intently and found to her amazement that he felt very much like Ydara when she wasn't projecting her show field.

Evender cocked his head to the side and looked at her. "Well, what do you think?"

"I think you are either very trustworthy or an excellent liar. What do you think?"

"I think you are in awful shape and pretty close to burning yourself up with selyn overproduction."

Joyanne nodded, "That is how Hamlin Gens die."

Evender let out a slow breath and looked directly into Joyanne's sea green eyes, "You don't have to die."

She sat looking at him for a long moment, "If I don't, then the rest of us died in vain. I couldn't let it happen before you arrived, but now I can."

"Why do you have to die?" Evender looked at her searchingly and listened intently.

"Because there can't be a single success out of the Hamlin disaster. It has to stay a disaster or the Tecton will try it again." Joyanne had no fury left, no tears, no feeling at all. She had spent too many hours remembering, too many hours crying, too many hours raging. It was all gone now.

"And if I tell you that you are not the last one, what then?" Joyanne stared at him. Why was he trying to lie to her?

"There is one other still alive." Evender continued to listen to her, trying to gauge her reaction to the news. So far he had heard nothing from her. He waited.

"I've kept up with every last one of the Five. I am the last one." The fact that Evender felt absolutely truthful frightened her.

As far as she knew, she was the last. One year to the day after their separation, she had received a letter from her friend Rielle. It was basically a suicide note. In that note there had been a thin gold chain. Joyanne still wore it. She had never taken it off since that day.

Cyntha had suicided in transfer during their first few months in Donor training.

Desmin had slit his own throat with a straight razor in the middle of class. She would never forget the insane grin on his face as he waited until the visiting First order channel was standing just outside the locked classroom door. Desmin had stared at him through the reinforced glass panel set in the center of the door. She would also never forget the taste of his blood as it splattered in her face. Her mouth had been opened to scream at him not to do it, but no words had come out. Desmin had looked directly into the channel's eyes as he ended his own life. Not even augmented speed was enough to stop him. The channel had survived the deathshock, just barely.

They had taken Jestin away then. He had been very close to Desmin and had become nearly catatonic after the incident.

Joyanne had lost track of Jestin for three years until she read of a tragic "accident" involving a channel-Donor team who had been trying to save a changeover from being murdered by her own parents. Jestin had found a channel who could stabilize him. They had fit so well together the Tecton had never even tried to separate them. Of course, the fact that the channel in question had been of such a high capacity that there wasn't another Donor alive who could even come close to meeting his Need had probably been the determining factor. That is, no other Donor except Joyanne.

"No, I am the last one." It did not matter to her that Evender believed otherwise. She knew he was wrong.

The chair she sat in seemed to be constricting around her. Joyanne jumped out of it as if she were escaping a trap. The feeling of being entombed was one she had wrestled down from time to time since her confinement to the Deferment Suite. Again she returned to the window to view the majesty of Promise Mountain and the wind dancing of the fallen leaves. Slow steady breaths calmed her racing heart and washed away the memories that Evender's question had brought screaming back.

Joyanne hadn't heard Evender rise or the opening of the door. She hadn't heard him leave or someone else enter.

"Joya?"

Joyanne froze, literally, in place. No one called her Joya, no one except . . .

She didn't dare turn around. Ree?

NO! Not now, not ever, not in this lifetime or any other; Rielle was dead! Ree?

Wasn't dreaming while awake a symptom of dementia? This was a dream that she'd had many times in the months after their separation. She had even dreamed this dream after she had received the letter and the necklace. But never while she was awake.

The pain she had buried for nearly two decades exploded in her heart. The whispered question finally escaped her lips.

"Ree?"

"Yes, Joya. It's me."

She couldn't move. There was no power left to her. A sudden silence engulfed her and the darkness pulled her down.

~*~*~*~*~*~

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