Chapter 17 -Sam

Even though she fought them, the force of Sam’s Morphid impulses pulled her closer and closer toward the condemned, homeless woman who sat on her cot, despondent and oblivious to anyone around her.

Sam took one impossible step after another, her legs trembling, trapped by her same indecision. She resisted all the way there but, as she came close enough, her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees.

“Sam!” Greg called out.

“What the hell is going on? Let me through. You kids are in a heap of trouble. This is trespassing,” Mateo said in an agitated tone.

Subdued to a kneeling position, Sam realized that fighting these impulses was taking her nowhere. This was going to happen, whether she wanted it or not.

You can erase her pain. You just have to be strong, her Morphid side said.

Be strong!

She had to think of later. Now was not important. After she helped this lost soul, everything would be alright. The pain would be erased.

Sam swallowed, looked up to catch the woman’s eye. “I’m going to help you.” Her words carried more conviction than she actually felt.

Nothing. No reaction at all.

“What’s her name?” Greg demanded of Mateo.

The man gave a growl in response.

“What. Is. Her. Name?” Greg repeated. Another scuffle followed.

“Elizabeth, I think,” Mateo finally said, the edge of fear marking his words.

At the sound of the name, the woman blinked. “Elizbe,” she said in a barely audible, unintelligible voice. Her eyes met Sam’s for a moment before settling back down on the floor.

Elizabeth was as good a guess as any.

“I’m going to help you, Elizabeth. It won’t hurt.”

I think.

It didn’t seem to have hurt Bernard.

“Help,” the woman murmured. Her eyes moved from side to side, trying to focus, but failing.

Gentleness wasn’t necessary, Sam knew, but the suffering emanating from the woman was so vast that there really was no other way to do this. Slowly, Sam took Elizabeth’s hand. As she squeezed it, a jolt ran up her arm and the great pain she’d only glimpsed revealed its real magnitude.

Sam gasped as the agony revealed itself and its true depth. There were years upon years of pain, loneliness, emptiness. There was a whimper and it took Sam a moment to realize it was her own. Her eyes had closed. She forced them open. Focusing on her breath, making each one count, she allowed her eyes to narrow.

Elizabeth’s vinculum materialized. It floated above her head, languid and pale. Sam narrowed her gaze a little tighter. Something was wrong with her eyes, or maybe it was the light in the room. Whatever it was, Elizabeth’s link to her Integral looked . . . muffled. Not brilliant like Sam’s own link to Greg looked, or subdued the way her broken link to Ashby did. But ghostly.

Had Bernard’s severed link looked like this? Sam couldn’t remember. She didn’t think so, but sometimes it was hard to recall those events, as if her mind were trying to block them to spare her the brunt of the many painful memories forged that day.

Perhaps the broken vinculums faded with time. That was Sam’s best guess. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter now. It was time to help this poor soul.

Armed with only her instincts, Sam let go of Elizabeth’s hand and, in one swift motion, took hold of the broken vinculum above her head. With one half of the link properly secured, Sam reached upward with her other hand and beckoned with her fingers for the missing other half.

None came.

A feeling of wrongness filled Sam’s chest. Her breaths came short. Something was different.

In her trance, she beckoned again, just the way she remembered doing with Bernard. There had been a great brilliance that day, a miracle that everyone there had experienced—not only Sam. Greg had seen it, too. He said it’d hurt his eyes with its intensity. But there was no brilliance tonight, and something told her there wouldn’t be.

She beckoned again, curling her fingers one at a time, pouring all her will into the request.

Nothing.

The other half of the vinculum didn’t materialize.

It just . . . wasn’t there.

“No!” The word escaped her lips in a hot breath. She refused to believe it.

This woman couldn’t be allowed to continue living this way. Death was preferable to this misery. Sam had to do something to fix it, but what?

Oh, God.

She beckoned again and again, even against the gut-wrenching certainty that she was wasting her time. Her chest felt at the verge of imploding as she fought to comprehend this wrongness, this failure to find the missing piece.

Just stop. Stop!

Her beckoning fingers froze.

It’s useless.

She knew it was true. The other half of the link was . . . unreachable?

Yes, maybe that’s it.

Sam wanted to believe this explanation, but that wasn’t it, was it?

Stop thinking.

Thinking was getting in the way. Her instincts needed to be in charge, if she was to figure out this problem.

She took a shuddering, deep breath, and pushed all thoughts aside. As her mind cleared, her movements became involuntary, like breathing or blinking.

Elizabeth’s presence sharpened, and Sam could see the woman in her mind, her sad face framed by tangled hair. Gray had started to appear at her temples, even though she wasn’t old enough for that. A part of Elizabeth desperately quested out, searching for something that wasn’t there. Sam felt the erratic, unrelenting probing. The search was exhausting, yet that part of Elizabeth had no choice but to keep on looking, even when the rest of her being knew it was hopeless.

But all wasn’t lost. No.

Sam knew just what to do. Her hands held the key and they moved like butterflies through the air, soothing Elizabeth’s broken link, holding it gently and coaxing it into stillness. The faint ribbon of light was in Sam’s hands. It lapped at the air, weakly trying to get away, until some innate muscle memory in her fingers played over the surface of the vinculum and made it go still.

With confidence, the way her hands moved when she handled utensils in the kitchen, Sam began to pluck the strands that made up the ribbon of light. She touched them one by one and, as she did so, she felt a slight surge of energy in her fingertips. There should have been more, like the electrifying power she’d felt when she held Bernard’s link to Roanna’s, but this was weak.

As if aware of what Sam was trying to do, the vinculum offered some resistance, just enough to be felt and to make Sam question her actions. But she wasn’t truly in charge anymore and the only thing to do in a situation like this—her Morphid side informed her—was extinguish what little energy and life Elizabeth’s vinculum still held, so she could stop searching and find peace.

What?! No! She’ll die.

Sam fought against this knowledge, against the instincts that had proposed such horrible solution. But it was useless. She had relinquished all power, and even if her actions seemed inexcusable in her mind, her Morphid self unapologetically went on with them.