Finding Sage (The Rogue Book 1) (28 page)
Read Finding Sage (The Rogue Book 1) Online
Authors: Logan Judy
55.
White. That was all that Silas could see. Infinite white all around him. He turned in all directions, not believing what he was seeing. What was this place? How did he get here? Where was Lilly? Alice? Eli? Tariq? Why couldn’t he leave?
The memories slowly came back to him and he remembered. He remembered everything. The speech he gave to the world. The sacrifice he made to save his friends. Rodge’s sheer rage at how Silas had beaten him at his own game. Yet, as he was beginning to realize, he hadn’t a clue what he was doing. It was intuition, all of it. But he appeared to be trapped, a prisoner of his own mind with not a way out of it. Even if he could get out, would he? Would that not put him right in Rodge’s hands? And so it seemed that he was stuck, doomed to live forever in his personal purgatory.
“You did good, kid. You did good.”
Silas was shocked by the presence of another voice in what he accepted as his own mind. How did it get in? Was it a figment of his imagination? He turned around and, to his surprise, saw the last person he would have thought of, and yet the first person he should have thought of.
“Sage. How did you get in here? What—are you a figment of my imagination?”
Sage chuckled slightly at the idea.
“Even you don’t have that much brain activity. I’m as real as you are.”
“Then how did you get in here?”
“Silas, the sooner you know that you don’t know, the sooner you’ll start learning.”
Silas wasn’t much in the mood for Sage’s riddles; then again, he never really was.
“Let me explain a little bit,” Sage said. “Just as Eli mistakenly saw me as an old man about to die, you saw me as limited and finite in my reach. Both are essentially the same erroneous view, and I’m helping you see that.”
“So why did I end up here? I did what you said. Is this some kind of test?”
“I wouldn’t call it a test so much as getting your grade back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember what I told you about Eli when you visited me in Australia?”
“Yes. You said he’d lost his way.”
“Yes. And you had too. You might not have done some of the things he did, but face it Silas, you didn’t have a clue what you were doing. Flying by the seat of your pants made things worse with every turn. You needed guidance.”
“And now I’m here.”
“And now you’re here. And I’m here to tell you a few things that you won’t have the ability to know otherwise.”
“Like what?”
“All of your friends made it out safe, just like I promised,” Sage said. “But even bigger than that, your little speech has made quite the difference. Across the world people are protesting, lifting up their voices to oppose the Great Persecution. In San Francisco, an entire legion laid down their arms and joined the people in protest. The United Nations is trying to keep it contained, but it’s getting out of their grasp and fast. It won’t be long now before the world is divided, and the U.N. will no longer have control of the globe, allowing people to use their abilities for the betterment of mankind. It worked.”
Silas couldn’t believe it. All of this because of what he said. Because of what he did.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
“Technically you don’t,” Sage said. “But I think we both know that I’ve given you more than enough reason to trust me.”
Silas smiled. He knew that. He trusted Sage. He didn’t understand him, but he trusted him nonetheless. As much as he hated to admit it, Sage was right. With every step and every turn, his own plans had ended in terrible misfortune. So many people had died as a result of his decisions, and yet, when he followed Sage’s plan, things went beautifully. How else could he have defeated Rodge while at the same time lying unconscious in his hands?
“Thanks to you I did it. And I did it . . .”
“Go on.”
“I did it without murder. I just showed people what free speech was.”
“Exactly,” Sage said. “There will come a time when your people need you again, Silas. They will want you to join them in a cause of violence, to slaughter the villains, the banes of their existence. But you can’t go with them. You must lead them, find the true meaning of being a leader. The leader is not one who is the figurehead of a riot, but rather is the voice of morality and forgiveness, albeit at times with a strong hand. You must show them the way; the way of peace.”
Silas nodded.
“I’m here, Sage. Send me wherever you wish me to go.”
Excerpt from A Gray Crusade
2,013. 2,014. 2,015. The numbers kept coming. They never stopped. They were always in his head, continuing the count without a reason. He couldn’t stop to think. He barely stopped to eat. Sometimes they came with places. Occasionally there were voices. But more than anything, there were the numbers that kept pounding away at his brain with all the force of a jackhammer into concrete.
Or was that the man in blue?
“Tell me where they are!!!”
Teddy tilted his head away from his interrogator, still muttering under his breath, still counting the numbers. He was at 2,035 now. He used to count because he was under compulsion, his brain allowing him no other recourse. Now he did it as a means of escape. Because the more they beat him, electrocuted him, stuck his head in a bucket of water, and did all other kinds of terrible things to him, the more his mind seemed to wander. The painful irony of it all was that he hadn’t the ability to tell them what he knew, even if he knew anything.
Pain flared through his temples as the man in blue struck him with a hard wooden club and blood trickled down the side of his face. His voice quivered as he continued counting, his pounding headache threatening to pull him into unconsciousness, the cuts on his wrists from the nylon ropes driving him further into madness.
Suddenly there was another man in the room. He was also in blue. The two officials spoke to each other. The words were meaningless to Teddy, but he noted a rising anger in the first blue man’s voice. The second man turned around and left, leaving him to his wrathful interrogator.
“Listen Teddy,” the man said. Teddy’s eyes opened wider at the mention of his name, but he still kept his gaze straight ahead, still counting. He was at 2,104, still rising. The blue man continued speaking. “I don’t want to be here anymore than you want to. I want to stop coming back here. I want to stop hurting you. But I can’t do that unless you tell me where they are. Jackson Knight. Alice Mays. Their friend called Eli. Tell me where they are.”
Teddy tried to call out. He tried to say he didn’t know where they were, that he had no way of tracking individuals, and that he couldn’t even match places with names, or voices with numbers. But even as one of his many selves within him screamed the response, the only things he spoke were numbers.
Then, as he screamed harder and harder, he stopped counting. The man in blue crept closer. Teddy started stuttering, mixing up syllables and unconnected words. The man in blue was confused by the gibberish, then enraged by it, taking it as a sign of his being further uncooperative. He raised his hand to strike him again, but the other blue man grabbed it.
“Stop it. This is progress. Reward progress and he might talk more.”
“You call this progress?” the first man snapped. “It’s gibberish. This gives us nothing. More pain might give us something.”
“We don’t know what this kid is capable of,” the second man replied. “Do you want to end up like those guards in Chicago? They underestimated Knight and he killed them with his hands tied. Using his brain. We have to be careful with these people. And we have to show him that we can follow through on our promises.”
“Fine, fine,” the first said in resignation. “But you’d better be ready to give your side to the Prime Minister, because he’s going to fry the both of us if we don’t give him something soon.”
“Could we hook him back up to the machine?” the second asked.
The first shook his head. “It doesn’t work anymore. None of these world-renowned scientists seem to know why. And none of them can get inside the stupid kid’s head, either. Apparently he doesn’t have any normal kind of mental problem. Go figure.”
“It doesn’t matter. We won’t burn for this, trust me.”
“You must be out of your idiotic mind,” the first said. “You’ve seen our loving new master. He lit Brook s up like a Christmas tree just a month ago. You don’t remember that?”
“These guys aren’t subtle, Rick,” the second replied. “It won’t be much longer before they screw up, and then he’ll know where they are. He’ll move past this kid before long, don’t worry.”
“And what happens when he does? What happens when they find us before we find them? When they wake Knight up?”
“On the day that happens, God help us all.”
“Then we best put them down first,” Rick said, “because the both of us will burn in Hell.”
The plethora of cuts, gashes, and bruises all over Teddy’s body mutely affirmed this. Even as the gibberish continued to flow from his lips, he hoped and prayed that these people, whoever they were, wherever they were, would storm the place. Because they were his only hope. He was counting on them.
And although they didn’t know it, so was the rest of the world.
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Other Books in The Rogue Series