Chapter 21

Sam had finally come back up, a good while since he had finished his bath. Tucker had calmed down and Sam was still tense but otherwise calm. The two had spent the majority of the time silent. He genuinely wondered if they were capable of reading each others' minds, and if he would be able to do that too—once he learned the entire English language, of course. Reading minds sounded strange but then, today had been nothing but strange.

He wanted them to go back to sleep. The sun wasn't out yet and the only light was the moon and Sam's lamp. He could sleep anytime but he knew they couldn't. The School Building forced them to wake up when they obviously didn't want to. The Outside wasn't kind to all English-speakers, he supposed.

"So what are we going to do?" Sam asked, the question more than likely directed at Tucker.

"About what?"

Sam pointed to him.

"What about him?"

She flopped backwards onto her bed while he watched from his corner. Tucker had decided to seat himself in the chair by her desk.

"We're just a couple of kids. What if we're in over our heads with this?" she replied.

"We've been doing pretty well so far."

"We were but now one of those things showed up. He tried to fight with it but I mean, I couldn't even see it, how could I help? And he would've died if Mr. and Mrs. Fenton hadn't come. They said they could get the rings out."

"Yeah, well, they could've been lying. What if they bring him back to some torture chamber? Could you live with that?"

She ran one hand through her hair before holding it out in front of her face and flexing her fingers a few times.

"He can't move his hands," she said. "He can't talk. He can't walk right. He doesn't know English—"

"We can teach him!"

"That's not the point, Tucker!" Sam took a deep breath. "Mrs. Fenton asked me if I knew he wanted to be like us every day. Did you ever think about that? Remember when we first met him and he cried because he couldn't talk like we could? And remember that time he tried to get one of the rings out by force, even though there was blood running down his hand? He learned to whistle and he pats you on the back, he copies us. He tries to be like us and we didn't even realize that."

"We'll teach him everything we know. One day maybe we'll figure out how to get the rings out without hurting him. And we can teach him to walk after that—"

"Walk?! Tucker, he can't walk like we can. Even without rings, getting him to walk right would require a lot of physical therapy and we would need to know how to do that. We don't. It'll be a really long time before we can. And even then he would require constant attention and we wouldn't be able to give him that with college and jobs."

"Well…the Fentons said they could fix his speech, so maybe we—"

"We're not speech therapists and they said they might be able to. Aren't they like, some kind of biologists? You'd have to go to school for years to even understand what that means."

"So what are you thinking about doing with him then? You think we should hand him over to people who helped make him this way? You think he would rather die than be handicapped?"

"Tucker, we can't help him."

"And we can't trust them."

Sam slammed a fist down on her bed and growled in frustration.

"What great idea do you have then?" she asked, more in a challenging way than out of curiosity.

"Keep him here, keep him safe, keep him alive!"

"Oh, so you want him to spend the rest of his life in a cage? That's not living, that's existing!"

"It's a little farfetched to assume he'll have a better life if he's dead!"

"I'm not saying that!"

"You're wanting to give him to a bunch of psychopaths!"

"I don't want to at all! But we can't take care of him like we should!"

"That's not an excuse, if he dies it's on us!"

"We're freshmen in high school. What makes you think we're qualified to do anything?"

"Do morals count as qualification?" Tucker asked as he folded his arms.

"Uh, excuse me? We both take care of Daniel, not just you. If I recall, I was the one who took him in when you thought it was a bad idea."

Tucker threw his hands up. "Well forgive me for protecting my best friend!"

"Just like I'm protecting Daniel right now?"

"HOW ARE YOU PROTECTING HIM?!"

"Because I'm acknowledging hard facts!" she retaliated. "We've done all we can, there's nothing else we can do for him!"

"We can keep him safe and out of the hands of murderers!"

"I don't want to take this risk any more than you do! I hate the thought of him going back!"

"Then don't make him!"

"Sooner or later I won't have a choice! If the Fentons are still working for whoever did this, they can call them up at any time and before I know it, a bunch of government lackeys will be storming my house! And you? You're my partner in crime, whatever happens to me will happen to you and Daniel still loses. If we keep him here he won't have a snowball's chance in Hell."

"Then hide him somewhere else!"

"Where?!"

The two continued arguing with each other for a long time and he wasn't sure whistling would calm them down this time. He just curled up and scooched back into the corner as much as he could, preparing to attempt to go back to sleep. The sensation that had woken him up was gone now and aside from Sam and Tucker's yelling, things were peaceful again. Time to get some rest.

He had to have been more exhausted than he thought because after falling asleep to the sound of anger, frustration, and obvious disagreement, the morning sun ambushed him. Sam and Tucker were both gone, most likely to the School Building.

He really felt the aftermath of last night when he noticed the throbbing in three of his four rings. Sam had been too upset to see the cut on his leg. The blood around the rings had dried and the cut on his leg was almost completely gone.

He hoped that whatever else had gone on last night, it hadn't affected Sam and Tucker's relationship. They were very close to each other and he didn't want to be the reason they had broken that closeness. There was little doubt that they had both been tired last night. Perhaps they simply needed rest. And maybe he shouldn't have rested. Maybe he could've helped solve their issues if he had stayed awake.

But how? He wasn't an English-speaker. He didn't know their ways. He didn't know what all they said that had upset the other so much they wound up yelling. It wasn't just a disagreement, it was an actual fight. He'd never seen them fight like that before. There had been last arguments but nothing that intense.

Maybe when Sam came back he could calm her down, somehow, and then she could calm Tucker down. They would be close again. They wouldn't fight again. All the negativity would leave and everyone could be happy. Things would go back to normal. They would go back to normal.

He decided to spend the rest of the day flipping through his books and mentally pronouncing each letter. He couldn't read the majority of these words but he could sound them out in his head and get somewhat of a clue as to what it meant. He preferred to do this with the same book many times before considering shifting to a second one. That was rather intimidating because, well, what if he got lost? What if the boy in his book, Ben, didn't have the same momentum anymore simply because he stopped reading about him? It was pure neglect. How could he do such a thing to Ben?

While mentally sounding out the letters, he also couldn't stop thinking about earlier this morning—about the creature that had come here. Sam was clearly unable to sense or see it and only became aware of some kind of presence when she heard his rings clash against the metal blades of the creature. Only then did she scramble to safety. And what of Tucker? Sam was just one person, it was easy to distract the thing from her. But if Tucker has been there too…what would he have done? Neither Sam nor Tucker could see it. He would've still had to fight alone but unlike Sam, who tended to know his habits better, Tucker could've been seriously hurt…or worse.

It was quite some time later before a very unusual thing happened—Sam didn't come back alone. Tucker accompanied her. They both had this look of distress on their faces and as they threw down the bags they wore on their backs, they look him straight in the eye. This time it was scary, to a degree. They were never violent, they would never hurt him, they were patient, and for the most part they were understanding. He wasn't as afraid of them so much as what was going on with them.

"You want to be the one to tell him or should I?" Tucker asked Sam.

Sam pushed some of her hair behind her ears and bit her lower lip. Tucker seemed to take this as an answer and sat at Sam's desk, where the computer was turned on. The screen flickered for a moment before displaying the translator they always used—they would press keys on the keyboard which would show up on the screen, then this arrow would go to a button on the screen and a whole new set of characters popped up on the other side.

Sam kept staring at him while Tucker tapped on the keyboard. Suddenly he paused and then held one of the keys down. All the characters disappeared one by one. He repeated this many times, to the point where he assumed the computer was somehow preventing them from translating. But they were English-speakers. They could fix it, right?

"I don't even know where to start," Tucker murmured.

His main concern as of now wasn't their relationship, it was why everyone seemed to be so downcast. That wasn't normal. It disrupted the only stability he ever had in the Outside and he hated it. Things weren't supposed to be like this, not with them.

Sam clenched her fists. "I don't have the heart for this."

Tucker stood up and kicked at the ground, his foot leaving a little mark on the carpet.

"Me either," he said.

"He won't understand what's going on," she replied, her voice beginning to crack.

He didn't want to see Sam cry. In the past she only cried if she was extremely frustrated or stressed. This was different. This was very different.

Tucker came up beside Sam and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Sam, you want to just head back and I'll meet you there?" he asked.

"What if we're doing the wrong thing?"

"We don't have any more options…"

Tucker turned to him and held up one wrist. This was also unusual considering Tucker despised his rings and typically hated getting near them. But Sam had invented what she called a "wrist-bump". It was the only alternative she could think of to a "fist bump". She and Tucker sometimes curled their hands into fists and punched the other's fist. It was a behavior he had never seen at the facility—or anywhere in the Outside either—but they were never upset when they did it. Sam seemed to pick up on his inability to punch their fists and had instead compensated but putting her wrist out, then having him bump his wrist against hers. Tucker never did that though. His rings were too close and Tucker just…never could take them. Tucker didn't mind anything else about him but the rings, no. So now, to have Tucker risking contact with one of his rings, was proof that something was too wrong and he had everything to do with it. He only hoped this wasn't a result of early this morning…

He hesitated for a moment but eventually bumped his wrist against Tucker's. He halfway expected Tucker to jump back but that didn't happen. Tucker kept smiling at him. It wasn't a happy smile though… Something was about to happen.

He heard a quick, very loud sound coming from the direction of the window. It sounded like an alarm of some sort…? Except…it wasn't obnoxiously repetitive like the others he had heard. It also wasn't high pitched. Why was it not repetitive or high pitched? But it was loud like one. What kind of alarm was this?

Tucker slowly inhaled and held his arm, leading him downstairs. Sam followed but for some reason it felt like she didn't want to. It felt like she wanted to stay holed up in her room to avoid whatever was coming. So…what was making her this uncomfortable? Perhaps he did something and didn't know it.

Tucker helped him carefully move down each step. It was a long process with the pace Tucker was allowing. It led him to believe they were both procrastinating. But why? Did Tucker not want to come too? Had he done something to upset both of them? What did he do? Why was he going downstairs? Was it all the exploring he'd done around Sam's room? Did she become angry over it? Why weren't they telling him anything? Why bother with the computer if he would only be met with silence anyway?

Finally the last step was reached and Tucker continued onward towards the front door. He wasn't being yanked or pulled but Tucker's grip tightened considerably once the door was opened. He didn't know why but…there were the two Outside English-speakers from earlier.

A/N

So sorry about the late update, I had plans to update this much sooner but I didn't have the time to write it fast enough. But it's been like what, three weeks? That's not all too bad, I don't think. It's almost 1 am where I live so I'm hitting the hay. I hope you guys liked it!

Oh, and I see this fic may be picking up some of its former popularity again. :D I sure hope so! One of the very best things about writing this is to read reviews on it. Believe it or not I check constantly to see if anything has changed. I enjoy your thoughts and opinions and I hope to keep reading some!

'Til next time~! (I'll try to squeeze out another chapter before three weeks but I do have a busy month ahead so please bear with me!)