Sanctuary Falling

© 2004 Pamela Foland

All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

Tripping

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Annette Peterson felt, so small, so plain, like no one ever saw her. She knew they could see her, but sometimes it seemed like people put energy into not seeing her. It was because she couldn’t send telepathically, not even with a lot of amplification.
 
They could hear her but she was telepathically deaf, handicapped, so that was how everyone treated her, sometimes even her parents, make that foster parents.

Annette couldn’t remember her real parents. Both of them had been killed shortly before the factors rescued her and her brother, bringing them to Sanctuary. Annette’s brother, Morgan, and his wife were Annette’s only real family. Her brother was a telepath, if only a weak one, and his wife was an Agurian, a member of a shape shifting race that had lost the ability to shape shift. She didn’t see them often. They were tertiary factors, their job was observing an earth alternate that was somehow different from its neighbors.

Annette adored the factors.
 
They, out of all of the residents of Sanctuary, treated Annette like a real person, at least most of the factors did. Annette knew everything about them and about where they came from. She had studied the factors for years, from all the details about the foundation, to all about the different ranks that factors could attain.

Annette’s most secret and private dream was that someday she would become a factor. She dreamed about it like kids on earth dream of becoming policemen or firefighters or top gun air force pilots.
 
When Annette had been very small, she told her entire kindergarten class about her dream. Even Kevin, her only friend at the time, had laughed his head off at her. They hadn’t spoken since.

When she finished the sixth grade, Annette had been old enough to enter pre-factor training classes. Since then she spent every morning and every evening before and after regular school in the special training class. Annette did the best she could to do everything Niri, the instructor, asked.
 
Every day, Annette became ever more sure she would never live her dream. Niri pushed her so hard, sometimes it seemed like the woman wanted Annette to fail.

Annette awoke that morning like any other morning, at five thirty.
 
She dressed and ate breakfast from the food processor and left a smiley face note for her foster mom, who worked the late-night early-morning shift in the clinic. Then she woke her foster dad and left for class. Like always Annette was early, but this time,
 
Niri wasn’t waiting in the huge training hall. Curious, Annette crossed the cavern and went looking for Niri in her office.

Annette was just three doors down and noticed that voices were coming from inside. She almost retreated, having heard many lectures on how rude eavesdropping was, but she didn’t. Her curiosity was aroused by, Niri’s shouting, “Damn it Sinclair! You can’t just toss out the girl’s application before she even makes it!
 
She deserves consideration! Heck it’s not like you’re swamped with applicants from this class, only five seem serious about applying right now! Most are going to wait to decide until they’ve graduated. That girl wants this so bad . . .
 
I can taste it! Unlike some you’ve handpicked she isn’t afraid to work for it!”

Sinclair, Annette thought that had to be Mr. Sinclair Chavez, the head of factor training. He spoke next in his perpetually smug tones,
 
“Niri, hold your telepathic tongue! I’m the head of factor training. A big perk of the job is that I get to pick whom I train, and whom I don’t. I tell you that pathetic, Peterson-girl doesn’t have even one tenth of the potential of say, Simmons. It isn’t worth the time.”

Annette finally understood who they were talking about. Tears welled to her eyes; they were talking about her.
 
They had to be, and from the sounds of it she wasn’t going to make the cut.
 
Annette heard footsteps, possibly the sound of someone leaving the office. She couldn’t let them know she heard. Annette raced off to the training area, tears blurring her path. She didn’t care. Closing her eyes, she raced blindly ahead, right into the support pole of part of the obstacle course. She saw stars and lost her balance, falling to the hard stone floor. Her head made contact and everything went black.

Annette’s eyes slowly came back into focus. It didn’t take much to recognize the flat flawless white of the clinic ceiling. Her head throbbed and swam, with the ringing in her ears. Her first thought, other than that she was awake, was that she was late for class. Annette tried to shove herself up, but fell back, flattened by a wave of nausea. She briefly worried Niri would be angry, before the memories of how she lost consciousness came back to her.

Annette lifted a hand to feel for a dent on her forehead from the pole. No dent, but she had a lump, and probably a matching one on the back. Annette sighed, she wasn’t going to be a factor. Her ringing ears played back every taunting word of the argument. Slowly something sunk into Annette’s mind. Niri had been defending her. She used to think the woman wanted her to fail, but she distinctly remembered Niri’s emphatic support. For a moment, Annette wished she had never been born. After Annette had proved Mr. Chavez’s point by running head first into a pole, Niri would never say anything nice about Annette again. She closed her eyes to the blank clinic ceiling and willed them not to open again. Blindly she heard the door hiss open.

“How’s my patient?” A sickeningly upbeat female voice asked. Annette pressed her lips together, of course they had been monitoring her, waiting for her to awaken,
 
“That good? Well, I can do something for the pain, if you’ll tell me where it hurts.”

Annette seethed, the pain in her head was nothing compared to her disappointment. Besides couldn’t the stupid nurse just read her mind? Everyone else could!

Again the saccharin voice chimed in, “Sweetie, you’ll have to tell me where it hurts. I’m not using my telepathy, just in case the nock to your noggin turned yours on high. It would hurt too much!”

As if she had any telepathy. Annette frowned, “Me or you!”

“Actually both of us a little, but more you. Now that you’re talking, where does it hurt?”

“Duh, my head!”

“Front or back,” The woman’s tone remained positive, ignoring Annette’s sarcasm.

“In, general,” Annette spat finally opening her eyes.
 
She regretted it the moment she saw the nurse’s soft, compassionate, blue-green eyes.

The woman smiled and raised a scanner into Annette’s view. “That’s not surprising, you knocked yourself coming and going. Personally I think it’s impressive,” The woman’s voice didn’t hold even a hint of sarcasm, just gentle amusement.

“My ears are ringing, and my head kinda throbs in tune.”

The woman, nodded, put down the scanner and placed a small padded device on Annette’s forehead. It hurt where it touched her tender lump, until the nurse activated it then all the pain drained out and the ringing in Annette’s ears subsided.
 

“Does that help?”

Annette started to nod, then froze, “Yeah, a lot.”

“Good, now, do you want to talk about why you ran yourself up a pole?” The woman asked.

Annette pressed her lips together again.

“I see, well my scans, not to mention the tear trails on your face, tell me you were crying, and Niri brought you in so that tells me this has something to do with. . . you wanting very badly to be a factor, and you finding out you can’t,” The woman said softly.

Annette frowned, “I thought you weren’t going to use your telepathy.”

“I’m not. I’m just very good at figuring out what’s wrong with a person, even on the inside. That’s why I became a doctor,” the woman answered.

“I thought you were just a nurse,” Annette mumbled.

“No, you’re a high priority patient, you rated treatment by the assistant director of medical services,” The woman smiled.

Annette’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and she wished she could believe the woman was something more than kidding.

 
“Niri used to be my teacher too. She brought you directly to me,” The woman paused and pulled a vibrating pop-pad from her pocket. She tapped the screen and read the message.
 
“Your mother is waiting outside, how about we sit you up to reassure her you’re okay?” The doctor lifted the device from Annette’s forehead and cranked the bed up so Annette was partially sitting. Nausea followed, and the throbbing returned until the doctor replaced the device. “Ready for me to let her in?” The doctor hesitated.

After this her foster mother would probably not let her do much of anything, finally holding proof in hand that Annette was too weak and pathetic. Annette thought about it, her foster mother probably wouldn’t even let her go to Niri’s classes anymore, not that she had much point to going. “Not yet.”

The doctor nodded and pulled a wheeled stool over by the bed. “According to your chart your mom is a night nurse. Does she talk about work much?”

“She’s just my foster mom. My real mom and dad died. She doesn’t say much other than,
>
go to bed,’ or
>
eat your veggies,’ or
>
do your homework’,” Annette answered.

“I’m sure she cares,” the doctor said, “generally if they don’t care they don’t bother to say any of that. Sometimes with parents they just don’t know how to tell you they love you. Whether or not a
>
foster’ comes up front.”

“Did you have foster parents?”

The woman smiled, and shook her head, “No, but sometimes I wished I did. There were times I would’ve traded my mom for anybody. You know about Penelope Harvey?”

Know about her? Annette’s head spun, in a way totally unrelated to her lumps.
 
Penelope Harvey was aunt to Angela, as in the founder of Sanctuary. Penelope was also one of Sanctuary’s most famous prime factors. She stopped the Riiad collective, almost single handed, and she was the mother of one of Annette’s all time heroes, Miranda. “Are you Penelope’s daughter?” Annette kicked herself, of course the woman was. The doctor had mentioned being assistant head of medical services. That meant her name was Tina, and she was Miranda’s little sister.