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a Keeper. She’ll be difficult to test. Her talent is not that straight forward; it is more passive than yours or Sarah’s. Nathan’s a Watcher. That won’t be easy to test either. His is mostly passive as well and only reactive to very specific situations that will be difficult to simulate,” their Teller insisted. The smaller boy did not like the sound of that. It suggested that he might once again end up the pawn in Francis’s experimental game.
    “ What about this Royce boy?” Sam grumbled, his thoughts reflecting some of his displeasure. Francis frowned again, still not facing him.
    “ Controls can’t be tested, and there’s no need to. They aren’t part of a talent-group in the same sense as the rest of us. They are different.” Francis’s thoughts wavered slightly in response to the notion of Royce and the other Controls. There was something about them that made Francis uncomfortable, something that he was not sharing with Sam and Sarah.
    Francis was evasive again after that, and conversation dwindled. They finished their meal, packed up their new provisions, and Sam reached out to find Bryan again. After getting the expected curt response to his prodding, the small boy re-established his lines of direction and the three set out towards the Hub again.
     
    * - * - *
     
    Sam woke up to the sound of Sarah crying – inside of course, rather than outside. Francis was still asleep, and the younger boy noted a distinct lull in the connection. Most of the people on the island would be asleep at this point in time. That meant that he and Sarah could actually talk in private. The idea intrigued Sam. He had not had any real sense of privacy since he had awoken to the screams, no matter how badly he had wanted it. Francis had said that they would have a lot to learn, and that was the primary purpose for the Gathering. Sam was hoping that this included learning some way of blocking everyone else out, and letting only those desired in.
    Truthfully, Sam wanted to run as far away from the other children on the island as possible, not make a conscious effort to move towards them, the way that they had been as they had advanced upon the Hub. The more distance he put between him and another Connected, the more tenuous their link.
    “ What’s wrong?” he said quietly, reaching out to touch her mind as gently as he could manage.
    “ Oh...Sam. I had a dream. I dreamt that I could see again, and that Sasha was still with me. I miss those things so much. I don’t like all the noise in my head. I don’t like the way Francis makes me feel sometimes. I don’t like all of the changes. Why did this happen? Why didn’t things stay the way that they were?” she murmured.
    “ I miss Maria, too, Sarah. I miss being able to hear things. I think Francis knows a lot more about what’s going on here than he believes he can tell us. I don’t think that he’s holding out on us to be mean. I get the feeling that other people are keeping him from saying as much as he wants to, or that he’s convinced that by telling us it will hurt us somehow.”
    Sam paused, letting his thoughts trickle out towards the blond haired boy to make sure that he was still asleep. There was only stillness there, so he continued.
    “ I can hear some of his thoughts sometimes, ones that he doesn’t want me to hear. He was thinking something earlier that made me wonder if you and I are going to be different from the Bigs, the ones that we’ll be living with, other than just in age and size. He thought something about the Bigs being chosen for this, and about the Littles being made. I couldn’t understand what he meant, but I think it was important.”
    “ Made...why would he be thinking something like that?” Sarah whispered.
    Her vacant stare looked out at the stars, and Sam felt a twinge of sympathy. He could not imagine how difficult this was for her. His issues seemed serious enough, and hers were worse.
    “ While you were distracted with doing