Read Sanctuary Falling for Free Online

dreaming.
    “Are you ready?” Niri paused at the door.
    Annette looked at her and nodded, then followed Niri, out onto the walkway all the way to the elevator. Niri pressed the call button, and took the time to tap a brief message into her pop-pad. Niri’s pop-pad had already bleeped, indicating a return message by the time the elevator doors opened.   They paused before entering the elevator, “Annette, everything’s set for you to take the first test tomorrow. We’ll just get you situated in your quarters this afternoon. After that you can rest or do whatever you need to do to relax a bit before tomorrow.” Annette nodded and followed Niri into the elevator.  
    Niri took Annette the long way to the practice cavern and led her down the hall of instructors offices and from there to the dormitory elevators.   Then Niri took an abrupt left-hand turn down the hall to where the instructor’s quarters were. Annette glanced at the doors as they passed. They all had knobs, unlike most of the doors Annette had seen around Sanctuary, which opened by sliding back into the wall. Also, each door was labeled with a subject and a name, like Director, Chavez or Temporal Theory, Carlson.   Finally, they passed a door labeled Pre-Training Everett. They stopped at the next door which was un-labeled. “Here we are,” Niri gestured at the door, “Now, don’t go getting a swelled head. This is just until you qualify for training. Then you go down in the dorms with everyone else.”
    Annette blinked once, twice then three full times, before squinting at the door. Then she chuckled to herself, she must still be dreaming. There was no way she could have even temporary quarters in the same hallway as some of the people she’d admired since she was five. She turned and smiled at Niri.
    “Room, you are now assigned temporarily to Annette Peterson. She’s hoping to become a factor trainee,” Niri said out loud.
    “Excuse me?” A computer voice vibrated ironically from a concealed speaker. It didn’t sound like the usual computer voice. It was full of personality, mostly feminine, and Annette thought it sounded almost upset by the idea Annette was to inhabit it. “I was assigned to Corrine Dayton, last time I checked!”
    Annette sucked in a breath, Corrine Dayton?   She was one of the first factors, counted highly among Sanctuary’s founders, but she had stopped coming back to Sanctuary, since Sanctuary was separated off from the rest of the universe. Passing through the filters with her symbiont was difficult and painful for her. In the end Corrine had decided to make her home elsewhere.   If this was the room she had lived in, it had every right to refuse Annette.  
    Niri sighed, “And when was the last time you heard from her?”
    “Thirty-five years, four months and two days ago,” The computer voice answered.
    Niri nodded, “And do you at this time continue to contain any of her personal items?”
    “No, Angela retrieved them thirty-four years, three months, and eight days ago.”
    Niri nodded again, “So you’ve sat empty for thirty-five-ish years now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t you think you could let this poor girl stay here temporarily? I promise that it won’t be longer than a couple of months,” Niri asked.
    “I’m afraid I’ve explained this many times to that pinhead, Chavez. I do not recognize his authority! Therefore why should I recognize the authority of any of his underlings?” The voice muttered. Annette was trapped between utter shock at hearing such things voiced out loud where Chavez might hear them, and wanting to giggle in agreement.
    “Maybe because the girl I’m asking you to let stay here is applying counter to Sinclair’s previously expressed wishes,” Niri answered as though that would make all of the difference, “Frankly, it would piss him off to find out that you let her stay here.”
    A slight mechanical burbling passed through the speakers and there was a click. Niri tried