Order of the Seers - Part 1 by LittleWing

a/n: Hi folks! It's been a long time. I hope you all are doing so so well. I have some news that I think is pretty exciting. On Sept. 4, 2012, Order of the Seers will be released into the world as a new sci-fi novel in paperback and ebook format. There are more details (including info. on how everyone who reviewed the fan fiction version can get a free ebook download) on my profile page, but for all those who had me on author alert and wanted to know about the future of Order of the Seers, you have your answer. I am still hard at work on the sequel, which is coming slowly, but I think you will like the results. I'm excited at least, so that's a good sign.

This will be the one and only chapter I will post on this site. It is in fan fiction format because that is what is required in order to post here, but you can read the first chapter of the final, original work on my website (see my profile page).

For those who may be offended by my decision, I assume this is the end of the road. Thank you for sharing what you could share. I wish you well. For everyone else, I look forward to sharing this journey with you in a whole new way.

All the Best,

LW aka Cerece

Chapter 1: The End

Edward was losing his patience. "Ah…come on! Are you serious? You can't want to ride this thing again."

Instead of answering her older brother, Alice remained in her seat as the Ferris Wheel conductor looked on expectantly - hand raised and waiting for another 2 tokens.

Watching the way Alice's skinny arms hugged her book bag while she stared blankly at the pressed metal floor of their "Fairy Land Caboose" made it hard for Edward to hold on to his temper. The sight of her looking so desolate broke him down enough to give the conductor his fifth set of tokens in less than 45 minutes. Edward settled back into his seat just as the lap bar clamped down uncomfortably against his thighs.

"Alice, say something. Why'd you drag me out here if you were just gonna sulk? I hate the carnival, you know that."

"I know something… okay... just… trust me. We have to stay here." Her voice was so low he could barely hear her over the wind-up music that was blaring from the overhead speakers.

"Did Mom say something to you?"

His question was met with silence and a barely discernable shaking of her head back and forth. He tried again.

"Alice! Did Mom…."

"Yes," she snapped.

They both fell silent again as Edward took in the new weird thing of the day. Alice had always been strange. Even when she was 5, she could beat Edward at chess lazily, without even thinking about it. She would find things and give them to you before you even asked for them. Before you, or even she, knew why. Up until a couple months ago, he thought she was just a freak. No biggie. All little sisters are like that, he told himself.

It was only in the past few months, after her prediction that he would catch his new girlfriend, Jessica, kissing his teammate Jake in the locker room right after their championship game, that his perception of her began to shift. At the time, he'd brushed her prediction off as meddling. Jessica wasn't even his girlfriend and his team was just starting the new basketball season.

He'd forgotten her warning completely until two months later when he ran back into the locker room after winning the championship to get the jacket he'd left behind and immediately smelled Jessica's perfume. When he found them, two thoughts overshadowed the scene taking place in front of him. The first thought was that what they were doing wasn't really "kissing" though he could see how a sheltered 13 year old would describe it that way. His second thought was that Alice was right. She was exactly right. He was so stunned by Alice's accuracy that he didn't even bother to disturb them, leaving his new ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend to their business. From that moment, Edward understood that Alice wasn't just a freak, or more accurately, that she wasn't a freak at all. She was special… gifted.

The sound of Alice's sniffling followed by the trembling of Alice's body as she began to cry uncontrollably broke the long silence that had fallen between them. What the….Edward thought as his mind swung from irritation to absolute bewilderment. He raked his hands through his hair as he fought the urge to shake the truth right out of her and end whatever this was. But he couldn't. She's so brittle already, he thought,without a single clue as to why. So instead, he reached out to envelope his sister in his arms, trying to comfort and soothe her from some unseen force.

"Alice, it's alright. It's alright. I'm sorry, okay? Don't cry. Just…tell me what's going on. Why are we here?"

He tried to wait patiently, to reign in the confusion and frustration that had been hacking through the calm day he had planned for himself when he woke up that morning, as cool and carefree as any 16 year old boy. It was Alice who had dragged him out of the house before he could even get in his second bowl of Honeycombs. "Mom said you have to take me to the carnival. NOW!" she demanded.

He had started to head upstairs to mount his appeal when his eye caught his mother's note on the refrigerator door. 'Take Alice to the fair. NOW. – Love, Mom' it read. He knew that meant his mother had left the house early; there was no appeal to be made. Begrudgingly, he slipped on his sneakers and grabbed the car keys, all the while wondering if she was still too young to be left at the fair by herself.

His earlier thoughts of abandonment brought him back to the form of his sister beside him. Not knowing what else to do, Edward simply held her tight as her convulsing turned to trembling, and finally, back to stillness. At the top of the Ferris Wheel, she finally spoke.

"It's over now, we can go home," she whispered. But as impatient for answers and a reprieve from big brother duties as he was, Edward could tell that things were anything but over. The tone in her voice was haunted. It made him want to stay on the Ferris Wheel he'd been begging to get out of a few short minutes ago. As the music died down and their feet got closer to the ground, he felt simultaneous instincts to stay where he was and rush home to his mother. Something was wrong and he knew it. So did Alice.

When he pulled his father's 2002 Saab in front of the small brick house, everything seemed as it always did - quiet, predictable, modest but comfortable. They had lived in a much bigger house before his father died, but Edward never minded sharing a bathroom with his mother and sister. Everything material that had mattered to him before became insignificant the moment his mother told him that his father would never come home again. As he got out of the car and began to take the front steps two at a time, he noticed that Alice had stopped at the tree stump his mother had cut down the week before. Sitting down, her eyes remained on the ground. Just as his mouth formed the shape of the question, she spoke.

"No, you go. I can't see it again."

Edward didn't stop to ask what she meant. Whatever she meant, it was worse than he thought. He tried to hold back the black hole expanding in his chest as he ran to the front door, but all of his emotions went spinning down the moment he turned the knob and it opened – easily. They never left the front door unlocked.

When he stepped into the house, he actually felt the life, the person he had been, rush past him and out the door as his eyes took in the overturned, splintered remains of their living room. It was a feeling he'd felt only once before. But what made it worse, made it permanent, was lying in the middle of the floor, with its contents thrown everywhere. It was his mother's purse; it had not been there when he left that morning.

"Mom!" he shouted as he raced up the stairs to her room. "Mom. Please!" he shouted again, but no one answered. In every room he looked, it was the same - scattered clothes, broken mirrors and silence – a deafening silence that rang louder than the hardened sound of his own breathing. If he took the stairs at lightning speed to make it to the 2nd floor, an age could have passed during his descent. The entire house consisted of 3 bedrooms, 1½ bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a small open dining area that you could see clearly from the front door. As he walked down the steps, he knew there was only one room left to check. His mind was frozen on what to hope for as his hand reached the end of the banister railing. If she wasn't in the kitchen, then she was taken, but at least there was a chance she was still alive. If she was in the kitchen, it was unthinkable.

Alice's words came to him just as he rounded the doorway to the kitchen.

"No, you go. I can't see it again."

He found his mother sitting with her feet planted on the floor, shoulder width apart, bright eyes open and cast to the ceiling, with a hole blown right through the middle of her chest.

Edward braced himself against the door frame as the sounds of his own sobs came to him from some place very far from where he stood, but he could not look away from the horrific image before him, this last image of his mother. He stood there with wide-eyed, tear-stained pain as the last measure of his youth drained from him like blood rushing from an open vein. When it was done, his body slid to the ground.

"We are alone," he whispered. "There's no one left."

Edward knew ever since his father died that he lived in fear of this day, in fear of losing her. Unable to take his eyes away from her body, he could hear her vehement denials that there would ever be a time when she wasn't with them. "Never," she would say. Never, he thought, has finally come.

Though Edward had been staring at her body since he entered the kitchen, he had not noticed the gun in her hand until he noticed a fly land on it. Years of training to keep the gun out of Alice's sight made him jump to his feet until he remembered that Alice was still outside. He knew the gun well; it was his mother's. She had taught him how to use it and to keep it out of Alice's reach when she was small.

At first his mind could not decipher the meaning of the scene before him. Was he meant to believe that she did this to herself? Why would the people who broke into their house ransack the place and then try to make it look like a suicide? But he couldn't think straight, couldn't figure out the logic or the answer to any of the crazy questions running through his mind. Why would she kill herself? He was sure the answers were obvious; he just wasn't making sense. None of this was making any sense.

His confusion gave him the lack of awareness needed for him to move closer to her body, kneel down beside her, and take the lifeless hand that dangled at her side, the one not holding the gun. Though his eyes were still filled with tears, they were no longer breaking through the barriers of his lower lids. It gave him the filter he needed to have the courage to look directly into her face and see her open smile. It knocked him down and back into the base cabinets. She was smiling. She was smiling, he thought. She had known what was coming and was smiling.

Suddenly he remembered his mother's constant warning every time they went to the shooting range. "Don't pick up a gun unless you mean to use it. There can be no hesitation. Do you understand me?" she would say firmly. Edward knew Esme Masen was skilled in how to use a gun. If she had a chance to draw her gun, no one could take it from her. The implications made him immediately sick and angry before the full meaning could even register.

As if wrenching the contents of his stomach into the kitchen sink made room for clarity, he suddenly understood the reason behind her smile. She had killed herself. She had done this to herself - on purpose. He threw up again in a wave of protest against the notion that she would abandon them, even as the resentment of her betrayal took root. When he was done, he didn't want to turn around, didn't want to face her.

How could she do this? She wouldn't do this? She promised.

As he held himself up at the sink, his thoughts turned to Alice. Is this what she saw? he wondered, fighting a new wave of nausea. No wonder she cried like that. No wonder…. Rather than try and sort out the conflict of thoughts and emotions inside him, he decided to check on Alice and make sure that she remained outside while he tried to figure out what to do next.

As he peered over his shoulder toward the doorway, his eyes caught the folded cuff of his mother's sweatshirt, which was turquoise save the blood, and a little corner of white paper that was peeking out. He knew his mother hid things in the cuff of her sleeve all the time. It was one of the many old lady habits Edward enjoyed teasing her about. He forced himself to bend down and retrieve it, avoiding the angle of her face that would have forced his eyes to meet hers. He could feel something stiff inside her cuff with the piece of paper. When he rolled down her sleeve to get it, the key to his gym locker at school slipped out before he could fully unroll the note. When he did, it broke open a whole new avalanche of questions upon heartbreak over questions.

In his mother's tiny handwriting, the note read, 'Go now. Protect her.' A new level of understanding peeled back as he read her note again. He began to see the very real possibility that perhaps his mother had not wanted to do this to herself. Perhaps she was forced by the same people who came into their home. The same people who she wanted him to protect Alice from now. Edward grabbed the key off the floor before rising to catch his mother's eyes one last time. They looked so different from how they did even two minutes ago and held so much he couldn't understand, couldn't handle right now. He closed his eyes and placed a soft kiss on her forehead before running out of his home for what felt like the last time.

Edward closed the front door behind him and turned to find Alice sitting exactly where he left her twenty minutes before. He had only two objectives at this point - verifying that she was safe, and getting the hell out of there. As Edward scanned the neighborhood for anything suspicious, he took in the studied quiet of his block. There was no one on the street at 10:23 am on a beautiful Sunday morning. Where is everyone? he wondered, suddenly suspicious of the neighbors he had grown up with. How had no one heard a gunshot go off and why didn't anyone call the police?

The tremor in his neighbors' curtains gave credence to the sensation that they were being watched, but no one would step outside to help them. This realization came over him with a bitter clarity that cast itself over all the sorrow he had just endured. They had all been witnesses, he guessed, but they would no longer be friends.

As Edward finally crossed the front lawn to reach her, looking so much older than he had that morning, Alice could see everything there on his face - anger, sorrow, betrayal, and a fierceness emerging that she did not yet understand. Her face crumpled into agony as she trembled under the weight of her own choices.

"I'm sorry, Edward," she begged in between sobs. "I know you're mad at me for not telling you. Mom told me that if I didn't do it, they would kill you. She said I had to be strong enough….strong enough to save you."

"Sshhh, Alice. It's alright. We'll talk about this later. Don't cry. Sshhh." She knew he meant his words to be soothing, but they came out as just words with no feeling behind them. She looked up at him to see him scanning the street with the same look of fierceness, but now she understood it for what it was - determination to keep her alive, to protect the only family he had left.

"We need to go," he said as he led her to the car.

"Where?"

"I don't know, Alice. I don't know."