I think this is the longest chapter I've ever written. It actually took 20 times longer to write than the actual break took! But well, I've finished it and I'm proud of it so enjoy! :)
(For the people who didn't notice: this happens just after chapter 2.)
As soon as the students left the classroom, Caine confronted Jurrian.
"Alright, I want to know anything you know of this place, and of you." he said, narrowing his eyes.
"Hey, no need to be aggressive! I came to you, remember? Calm down –"
"Why did you approach us in the first place?"
Sam quickly came to Caine's side. He could only hope Caine wouldn't spoil their only chance of comradeship in the school.
"Because I'm a nice guy and…uh… Well, you are here because of what you did –had to do– in the FAYZ, but the FAYZ wasn't your fault, you know, so I think I should do my best to help you with the gangs…"
"How did you plan to 'help' us?"
"By warning you and trying to befriend you. People usually don't bother me: I'm white, non-religious, not part of any minority, I'm not ugly, or fat, or anything. Plus that I might be kind of scary for some people because of my length, so they won't look for a fight with me. Maybe that way I can help you that Bastian and Cathy won't bother you."
"Yeah, maybe…" Caine continued in a less demanding tone, but still wasn't convinced of his motives. "Why didn't you try to help Lance?"
"I did, but we didn't like each other. He rather stayed with his own group of friends. They didn't seem to like you, is that possible?"
"That's very possible –" "SAM!"
Before he could finished that sentence, Sam was caught by a loud, flying, familiar projectile.
Holding a baffled Sam tightly in her arms, Brianna began pouring out her heart, blabbering on about how much she had missed him, how lonely she had been, how worried she had been, how angry she had been when she had heard Dekka had died, when Edilio had been taken away after saving her live, when Jack had been ripped apart by the gaiaphage…
At that point she burst into tears and starting sobbing hysterically in Sam's shirt. Sam tried to comfort her, patting her awkwardly on the back, feeling like losing it himself. But he couldn't, he had to be strong, for Brianna, he couldn't be selfish, not now. As always…
Caine had stopped interrogating Jurrian, and followed Sam along with the two Europeans to an empty table nearby.
When she sat down, she regained her composure. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let myself go this way." "It doesn't matter."
"Shall I… go get some friends?" Sam nodded, and let Jurrian walk away. He hadn't addressed Marco, but he went after him nonetheless. Meanwhile Caine had silently sat down at the table, at Sam's right hand so he wouldn't have to sit near Brianna, and looked the other way.
"So," she smiled weakly as she tried to wipe her face clean. "how are you doing?"
"Better than two months ago." He joked, trying to lighten the mood. She nodded absently in response.
"That's good. That's good… Me too." She took a deep breath and turned serious. "I'm glad you're back."
A moment of silence fell, but Sam didn't mind, as his thoughts raced through his head. He been there when Jack died, they had all been there, and it had been a horrible sight to see. But Sam could live with that, even though it shouldn't have happened. That had just been the FAYZ. Far worse had been Dekka's death. The last time he had seen her, was when he had left with Caine to defeat the gaiaphage. She had stayed in Perdido Beach, with Brianna and Edilio, to keep the children save. When the FAYZ had ended, he hadn't heard anything of anyone for days, he only discovered she had died when her name appeared on the endless death list, read out publically by the mayor. It still made him furious. No one would tell him anything, they didn't know, couldn't reach him through security or just didn't see the need. But he longed to know, he wanted to see her one last time, wanted to know where her grave was, so he could mourn over her tragic but probably heroic fate.
"Sam?" He came out of his embittered pondering. "Is Caine going to stay with us?"
An irritated Caine bowed forward to get a view of Brianna. "Is that a problem for you? If so, you might try to find some other friends, cause yes, I'm going to stay with Sam as he is my brother and it's not like I've had much time to get to know other people. But unfortunately you'll be bound to stay with us anyway: apparently you lack the social skills to make friends yourself."
"Social skills!? Who's talking about social skills? Or do you mean the skill to threaten people so you get what you want?"
"Oh, come on! You've been here for at least a month and you still haven't found a single person to socialize with? That's just ridiculous! Who's your roommate?" New tears glistened in her eyes.
"Caine, back off! She has very good reasons to mistrust you!"
"So you're choosing her side now? Of course! Found an old buddy, and immediately we start the hate-Caine-club again! You know what, shall I dig up Drake in the meantime? Then we can revive the good old times!"
"GOOD OLD TIMES! You sick, disgusting –"
"Guys, please! No one here sees the FAYZ as good old times! No one want to be here! And no one here can find their way here alone –they hate us!– so we have to stick together!" He ran his hand desperately through his hair and looked across the canteen. Near the unbreakable windows at the other side of the room Jurrian and Marco were chatting with a couple of girls.
"Brianna, please listen. You may not like this, but I want you to be friends with Caine –" "And I don't have a say in this!? What makes you think I want to be friends with her!" "Dude, let me first talk to –" "Sorry, Sam. But the feeling is mutual." "AT LEAST ACT CIVILLY!"
Finally they were silent.
"You can hate each other as much as you want, but not while I'm around, okay? I'm not going to act as your mediator, and neither am I going to turn my back on any of you because you can't overcome your grudges! We are the only three Perdido survivors around –apart from the Human Crew, but they don't count– so we all need to at least attempt to forgive each other and start over again. So, Caine, try to be nice to Brianna, just like you're nice to me. And Brianna," he sighed.
"please trust Caine. He can't do anything anymore, and he's in the same boat as us, so I want to build up a normal brother-brother relationship now. And you'll help me with that, deal?"
After a few seconds of consideration, Brianna reluctantly agreed. However much she hated to admit, Caine was right. She was friendless. No one had seemed to have compassion, most people avoided her. And those were the nice ones…
"And about my roommate, she's just some manic-depressive girl who ignores me most of the time. Her name is Emily, she's from Southampton, but we never talk. I don't mind her, she's probably afraid she'll lose her friends if she associates with me." She glanced at a certain person she did mind however. "You share a room together?"
"Yeah. We arrived at the same time, we are in the same class… So they automatically placed us together, I guess. I'm not sure how the room system works, actually."
"Who are those guys you were talking with?"
"The blond one is Jurrian, the other one is Marco. We met them during English, turns out they want to help us with some cliques. They're very nice, although Marco doesn't talk much. They think we shouldn't be judged for what we did in the FAYZ."
"You actually believed that?" exclaimed Caine on a surprised tone. "Sammy boy, sometimes you are so incredibly naïve. Surely, he is aware not everything the media says needs to be true, but we aren't entirely innocent either. In comparison with us, most students here are rather harmless. Our fault or not, we've murdered people, Sam! And he must know that, and yet he tells us he thinks we're victims, because 'the FAYZ wasn't our fault'. Then why isn't he helping others? We can't possibly be the only ones who are here by accident, it just can't, and we're certainly not the only ones who'll face problems with cliques like the neo-Nazis, those guys hate the half world. So why us? Why Lance?"
Sam just stared at him blankly, wondering whether Caine had always been this paranoid.
"I'll tell you why: he's obsessed by the FAYZ, and especially by us, the freaks. That's also the reason he couldn't get along with the Human Crew very well."
"And how exactly is this a bad thing?"
"That depends on why he's interested in the FAYZ, so we need to get to know more of his background before we can decide what to do." He saw the skeptical look on Sam's face. "At least, that's what I'm gonna do."
A cheerful Jurrian with a Marco and two younger girls were coming their way.
"Sam! Caine! I want you to meet some people! This," he put his arm around a pretty looking girl with brown hair and eyes, "is Esther, my best friend from Deventer, and this is her friend Marilou," he gestured at the other girl, who had curly dark brown hair, glasses and freckles, "she's from Canada!"
"Jurrian. Can I ask you something?"
He laughed out loud. "It actually surprises me you ask."
"Why are you here?"
The laughter stopped and his eyebrows knitted together in a confused frown. "I already told you, I want to help you –"
"No. I mean: why are you here at Dorothy Hills. So far, I've seen Perdido survivors, sect members, neo-Nazis, someone who's manic-depressive and I thought some of the students were hallucinating during the lessons, so what's your disorder?"
"Oh," he sounded bored, as if he regarded it as something nonsensical, "they think I'm crazy because I believe Esther that the world is going to end soon." Their expressions varied from surprised to questioning as all eyes turned to the girl just introduced as Esther.
"Uh, well. I think I need to explain. So, I am Esther, Esther Meuldijk, and I'm fifteen years old. I know Jurrian already for quite some time, we used to live across the road during our childhood and I've always been a very good friend of Jurrian's sister, Femke, so we've been seeing each other regularly. He also knew I had a kind of sixth sense since… well, I've had it my whole life actually.
It's like I can feel what's going to happen, just like other people kind of feel when is the best moment to ask a question, for example. That way I can predict anything, things like earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor strikes but also things like public reactions to big events, the newest trends, the weather. Usually, it depends on how big it is and soon it will take place how clear I can feel it, you know.
So well, for some things I've felt them coming for whole my life, like the FAYZ and also what Jurrian called the end of the world." Her sarcastic tone earned her a annoyed look from Jurrian.
"Hoezo, 'what Jurrian called the end of the world'!? Zo noem jij het zelf ook de hele tijd!"
"Nee… Ik zei dat er een soort oorlog zou komen, een geheel nieuwe wereldorde, maar niet het eind van de wereld."
"Jawel! Dat zei je letterlijk, die eerste keer al dat je het erover had: 'Weet je nog, Jurrian? Dat grote ding wat ik de hele tijd aan voel komen? Volgens mij is dat het einde van de wereld.' Dat zei je! Echt!" Esther shook her head with a wide grin on her face.
"Can you please stop talking gibberish and tell us why you ended up here!?"
She chuckled. "Of course. So well, I felt a lot of war and chaos coming and wanted to warn others so we could prepare ourselves. Most people didn't take me serious, but Femke did and soon she involved Jurrian and we created our own little 'Apocalypse' group." Jurrian mumbled something unintelligible around the word 'Acopalypse'. "By then, I knew it would be a very violent time, because people would fight over something worth live or death, so we started to train and we searched for any information which could be useful, while still trying to persuade our friends to join us.
I can tell Jurrian and Femke weren't entirely sure either, but I was really frightened, it really was like I saw a large, menacing thundercloud coming up, you know? But what I said was impossible, so it was understandable they didn't believe me, until…" She swallowed and looked at Sam, like she felt sorry for him for some reason.
"Until the FAYZ came up, and my impossible predictions started to play out. That was when realization really hit, that that war was going to happen soon, and everyone would have to fight for their lives, so… we needed to be able to protect ourselves."
"And then I started skipping school, really practiced fighting, started using all kinds of things as weapons, like knives, hammers and uhm, axes, and a lot of, uhm… Hoe zeg je prikkeldraad?" "Barbed wire." "Oh ja, and I bought an electric weapon from a farmer and then guns and munition of a guy in Belgium, but those things are illegal in the Netherlands and people became afraid and they told us they would give us up by the police. So at a certain point we tried to drive to Germany but there we were arrested for under age driving." He took a breath, like he wanted to say something, but then shook his head as if he couldn't find the words.
"Yeah… I came in a youth prison, but there they saw it was useless to keep me there, so they sent us to Dorothy Hills at the end of the summer, Esther to the third and I to the fourth because I had totally missed the fourth year."
"So, to sum up," Caine looked Jurrian deep in the eyes, trying to find any hidden motives there. "The girl is a kind of fortune teller, you have been sent here for skipping school and collecting a weapon arsenal and there will be a third world war in a few months?"
"That's about it."
Yes, Jurrian told the truth. This was the reason why they had been sent to DH, they wouldn't invent such a lengthy, detailed story to answer the question "why are you here". So they really believed in what they said. They had to be really sure of Esther's predictions, and if she indeed had foreseen the FAYZ…
But it did explain why he was interested in them, and that had been Caine's main goal. Esther had predicted the FAYZ, and maybe she knew more, so of course they were thrilled to see them: they wanted to know what had happened. How far her visions could be explained. And frankly, he wanted to know it too. It was unique, fascinating and most of all: valuable information he should use. Plus, having some guy who apparently knew how to fight was always a great advantage on your side.
Sam rather felt a little dazed by the things he had heard, of course he could have expected that everyone at Dorothy Hills would have an eccentric past, but somehow he hadn't expected Jurrian to have such extraordinary ideas, or to go to such an extent to carry them out. He had seemed so… normal. But well, he wasn't one to judge: Sam himself wasn't exactly normal either. Sam himself was much worse.
While Caine went on questioning Jurrian and Esther about their skills and willingness to cooperate, Brianna had more urgent things on her mind.
"Sam…"
The school bell rang, indicating the break was over and the students should prepare to go to their next lesson. Everyone stood up to leave, to therapy, as Jurrian and their schedule said.
"Sam!" Brianna grabbed Sam's arm and turned him away from the stream of students walking to their classes.
"What is it?"
"I still wanted to warn you for something."
"Neo-Nazis? Christian extremists? Jurrian told us already –"
"No, no. The Human Crew. They are back, and they want to take revenge on you."
"Of course, I'm a –"
"Let me finish! Antoine is here, he's a kind of martyr in their eyes, he has set everyone against you!"
"Antoine…" Sam felt kind of embarrassed he couldn't really understand what Brianna was talking about. He saw Caine standing beside Jurrian, urging him to go.
"The kid you shot during Zil's fire! Lana healed him, but he still has a hole in his back the size of a saucer!"
That news startled him. How could it be he hadn't known?
"Sam!" Caine had never been patient, and now the guards in the nearly empty canteen were walking their way.
"I… I have to go. Thank you Brianna, see you at lunch!"
He hastily walked away as Brianna went to her class.
"What were you two talking about!?"
"Antoine is here at school. He still has a scar from when I burned him."