Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Spencer couldn’t see anything when he first woke up. He couldn’t even see his hands, which were only a few inches away from his face. If it weren’t for the sound of the chugging engine, and the pain all over his body, he would have doubted whether he was even conscious at all. His ankle hurt the most. When he had fallen, he had hoped that maybe there was a small chance that he wasn’t injured too badly.

“Spencer,” He heard Eva whisper quietly, “You awake?”

“Yeah,” Spencer whispered back, “Where are they taking us? Do you know?”

“Some prison near the mountain,” Eva said, “No one will ever find us there.”

Spencer groaned. Everything was just going from bad to worse. “Why didn’t you run from them when you had the chance?” He hissed, “You could have kept running, but instead you chose to let them take you. Why?”

“Because,” Eva said, “Mom would have wanted us to stay together. Maybe we can find a way out of this mess.”

Spencer shook his head. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he couldn’t think of a single way to escape. They were on their way to be killed off. Their bodies would be unceremoniously discarded, as if they meant nothing. No one would ever hear of them again, but since they had no family left, no one would probably care. He imagined that maybe at some point, someone in Farrowin would remember the two orphan children that lived on the outskirts of town. Maybe they’d remember how they had mysteriously vanished one day, never to be heard from again. Spencer knew that no one in Farrowin had actually cared enough about them to go looking for them. This was the end for him and Eva.

“Don’t think like that,” Eva scolded.

“Well do you have any idea how we can get out of this?” Spencer demanded, “Because if so, I would love to hear it.”

“I’ll think of something,” Eva said, “Don’t worry.”

“Well, you’d better think quickly,” Spencer said, “They’re gonna kill us.”

“I know that Spencer,” Eva said in a frustrated tone, “I hear they’re thoughts. I only just woke up, but they’ve planned out like seven different ways to kill us.”

“Eva,” Spencer said, “How long do you think they’ve been doing this? Killing people, I mean.”

“Far too long,” Eva said, “They’re trying to cut back though because King Matthew has gotten suspicious. You remember when mom was telling us about those kidnappings a few years ago, right?”

Spencer nodded. He was only ten when his mother had heard that there had been some disappearances across the country. She had told both him and Eva that King Matthew had sent some men out to investigate various cases to see if there had been a link. That was all Spencer had been told, but he found out a few years later that it was believed that the Patrol may have had a hand to play in the whole ordeal.

“I remember that, yeah,”

“Well,” Eva said, “Turns out that most of it was the Patrol. They’re trying to get rid of us, but King Matthew isn’t making that easy for them.”

“D’you think he’ll send men out to find us?” Spencer asked,

“Dunno,” Eva replied, “Maybe. But Spencer, people don’t hear about these things overnight. By the time someone reports us as missing, we’ll probably be….”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but Spencer knew what she was going to say. They would probably be dead.

The train came to a stop. Spencer hadn’t realized that it had been slowing down the entire time that he had been awake.

“Are we here?” He asked.

“No,” Eva said, “They’re just stopping in Sampia quickly.”

“Sampia,” Spencer repeated, “Really? We’re so far from home.” Sampia was over two hundred miles away from Farrowin. Spencer had never imagined that he would ever end up so far away from his home. Not like this, anyways. He had always wanted to leave Farrowin at some point and explore the country a bit. There had been times where he considered moving away to a big city, and getting a job that actually had a reliable income. He knew that Eva would never let him though, so he never brought it up. He figured that she must have known that he wanted to leave, because it was something he thought about often.

“Where would you even go,” Eva asked suddenly, “If you had the opportunity to leave Farrowin?
Spencer was taken aback by the question. Eva didn’t usually ask him about his thoughts. And he had been thinking about leaving for such a long time, he had sort of assumed that Eva was just shrugging it off.

“I dunno,” He said, “Galtia, maybe.”

Eva hesitated before responding. “You know,” She said after a few seconds of silence, “Sampia is pretty close to Galtia. If we’re quick, we could escape and start over. The Patrol probably won’t come to Galtia. Not while King Matthew is so suspicious of them.”

“Really?”

“I… I guess so,” Eva said, “We don’t have many options, do we?”

“Well, where would you want to go?” Spencer asked, trying to keep the atmosphere light.

“I never really thought about leaving Farrowin, to be completely honest,” Eva said, “But I guess I’d like to see the ocean some time. I hear Coral Bay is pretty nice.”

“I hear Coral Bay has a huge pirate problem,” Spencer said.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Just something I overheard one time,” Spencer said. He couldn’t actually remember where he had overheard that. Or maybe someone had told him directly. Either way, it wasn’t really important. “Maybe we can go sometime,” He added, “We can find out for ourselves.”

“Once everything blows over,” Eva said, “We’ll get out of here, go to Galtia, and then…” She stopped talking mid sentence. Spencer was going to prompt her to finish her train of thought, when he heard it too. There were footsteps coming towards them. Spencer put his hands out in front of himself and began feeling around for a door. There had to be a way to get out.

Eva suddenly grabbed him and pulled him backwards. “Don’t,” was all she said.

“What about escaping?” Spencer said furiously, “What about leaving here and starting over in Galtia?”

“If we try to escape, they’re going to hurt us,” Eva warned, “I’m sorry Spence. It was a mistake to bring it up. Maybe there’ll be another stop along the way.”

Spencer was glad it was so dark. He didn’t want Eva to see that there were tears in his eyes. “We can’t just give up like this,” He said quietly.

Before Eva could reply, a door slid open and two young men slipped into the small compartment where Spencer and Eva were being held.

“Listen up,” One of them said, “The King has some men here that want to do a quick search of the train.”

Spencer looked towards Eva and smiled. Maybe this was their chance to get away. Maybe someone would find them after all. His heart started pounding with excitement, but the whole feeling was very short lived.

“You do anything to alert someone that you’re here, and you’re dead,” The man continued, “I mean it.”

“And it will be slow and painful,” The second one added.

The first man nodded in agreement. “In fact,” He said, “Why don’t we just stay right here and make sure they don’t try anything.” The two men looked at each other before closing the door behind them.

Spencer could feel himself trembling with fear. How could this happen? One minute he was talking about escape, and now he was paralyzed with fear. The possibility of escape seemed so much farther away.

“Scared?” The first man whispered into Spencer’s ear. “You should be,” He said when Spencer didn’t answer. Then, he clamped one hand around Spencer’s mouth.

Spencer didn’t really mean to do what he did next. The fireball just shot from his hand involuntarily, out of nervousness. The man instantly let go of him.

“We need to put it out,” The first man shouted.

“Why not just leave it,” The second man said, “We can just leave these two here and--”

“You idiot!” The first man said, “We have the King’s men coming in to do a search. Things will look pretty suspicious if one of the cars is on fire. Let go of the girl, and help me out!”

The fire was small, and was able to be put out pretty quickly by having the two men stomp on it. Once it was out, the first man went back over and grabbed Spencer. He shoved him to the ground and grabbed his arms, pinning them behind his back.

“The only reason why I’m not killing you right this second is because we have the King’s men right outside,” The man hissed. He looked towards his partner and said, “Hey, you’ve got the serum, right? Pass it over here. I want to make sure that this one doesn’t cause any more trouble.”

Spencer could feel the man’s grip loosen slightly as he reached across to take something from his partner.

“Do it quickly,” The other man said, “If he screams they might hear us.”

“D’you hear that?” The first man said to Spencer, “No screaming. Or we’ll hurt you even more than we’d intended.” Before Spencer could react, he felt a stabbing pain in his neck. He bit down on his lip to stop himself from crying out, for he did believe that the man meant what he said.

“Don’t worry,” The man said, loosening his grip once more, “It was just a needle. It’ll just knock you out for a bit, but as you’ll notice it takes effect rather quickly.”

Spencer was laid out on the ground. He struggled to fight the effects of the drug, but he knew he would succomb to it eventually. He thought he heard voices from the other side of the compartment.

“I can assure you sir, there’s nothing back here,” said one voice.

Spencer began to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Stay awake, He willed himself, stay awake.

“I believe you,” came a second, friendlier sounding voice, “but it’s policy. We need to randomly search a certain amount by the end of each month. It’s the King’s orders, sorry.”

Why? Spencer thought before he blacked out completely, why on earth would you believe him?

Author's Note

Is anyone even reading this?