| |
“Jack!” I grabbed his arm and yanked him back. The arrow snapped centimeters from his face and pierced the tree beside him. He cursed, eyes wide.
The man had another arrow notched. Aiming.
I mentally yanked the branch he was standing on. The branch shot forward and the man dropped his crossbow. The man caught the branch and grappled to keep his hold. He shot me a glare, then withdrew a knife from his side, holding the branch with ease.
He jammed the knife into the branch.
My world flared in a blaze of the plant’s pain as the man calmly dropped several meters from the tree and landed in a crouch. I gaped at him as I nursed my throbbing arm. He should’ve broken his leg, and my arm hurt. It was like he’d stabbed me when he stabbed the tree.
The man stood, popped his neck, and then held the knife with its point to the sky. A ruby pendant on his chest sparkled in the sunlight, stark against his white armor.
“Community...” I hunched closer to the ground. That pendant... “Master Matoska?” Only international leaders wore those pendants, and though Master Matoska rarely made public appearances, I’d seen enough videos of him to recognize his face. The set jaw, the dark, watchful eyes. I’d heard Sam gush about how handsome he was—“too bad he never makes a public speech,” she’d said.
With the white body armor and the knife in his hand, I’d argue that he looked far more comfortable out here than on a public stage.
“Run,” Jack said coldly. He unsheathed the katana from Lance’s side before Lance even realized he’d done so.
Lance gaped at him. “But we’re a team. We can take him—”
“No, you can’t. Now run.” Jack raised the katana and barreled into the forest while Master Matoska waited, toying with the knife in his palm.
I shook my head, feeling dazed and confused.
GROARRR!
I staggered and fell on my behind. I turned my attention to the jungle ahead. The trees spread into bushes, then ascended into a large, grassy clearing. Just past the bushes, several men fought a giant, not-quite-human monstrosity. It towered over the locals, hulking muscles extended beyond human capacity. Blood seeped from a gaping hole near its ribs and stained the tattered remains of its clothes.
The beastie’s attacker wove back and forth, leading the beastie’s dull eyes. The creature had a thick brow, wiry hair, and its legs and arms were too long for its torso. It hunched, snarling, then swiped a bulging hand at one of the locals.
My whole body trembled. It’d been human once. Now it was hideous.
“Come on!” Lance shouted. “Run!”
Tim was already ahead of us, skirting the outer edge of the clearing and dashing into a thicket of leaves. Lance ran the opposite direction.
“We’re supposed to stick together!” I shouted. But they were too far out to hear me.
I followed Lance, since he was closest, and we huddled in the leaves, taking shelter from the fight. A local rushed the monster, but the beast grabbed him by the throat and yanked him from the ground. Bones snapped and his screams fell short.
“We’ve got to help,” Lance said.
I wasn’t sure if it was his heart or mine pounding double-time in my ears. The beasts were brutal. No wonder Inese gave me her gun.
Behind us, there was no sign of Jack or Matoska, and I couldn’t hear anything more than a mingled mass of screams and shouts. Ahead, more beasties darted through the field, half-loping, half-running. One was lanky and pale. What little clothing it wore was hooked over its bony waist. Crusted blood and clods of dirt plastered its skin. A feline eye stared my direction. The other was swollen shut. Other beasts were bulky and heavily muscled, swinging swords or metal clubs, bashing in the locals’ skulls if they got too close. A large glob of water hovered around a beast that stood straighter; more human than the others. The creature lunged at a man and water splashed onto the electric spear. Static traversed the metal shaft. Both man and beast crashed to the ground as electricity coursed over the beastie’s water-slick skin.
I couldn’t keep my spear steady. This was all so impossible.
A local yelled and jabbed the giant monstrosity in the clearing. The beast brought its fists down, attempting to crush the man. He tumbled and drove his spear into the beast’s side, then flicked the switch. The creature roared in pain. It crashed to the ground, and a moment later, the local tugged his spear from its side.
Nearby, a beastie with flames flickering around its blackened, scarred hands sent a plume of fire from its fist. Flames ran across the beast’s skull, and its arms were scabbed to the elbows, like a charcoal-covered turtle shell. Back and forth, it slunk through the tall grass before standing on its hind legs, straight as a soldier. Tim fired his pistol from the trees, but his hands shook so badly that his shot fired wild and missed the beast altogether.
I focused on the grass around Tim, urging it to grow, and when that didn’t work, I set sight on the bushes beside him. It’d be like a sunflower, maybe, or how trees grew full during summer. I imagined the leaves growing thicker and greener. The branches extended, piece by piece, until new sprouts of green blossomed into large pink flowers.
Tim froze. The beastie sniffed the area, fire licking the palm of its hand.
If I kept using my powers, I’d draw attention to him. So I stopped, waited, and after a second longer, the beast’s attention shifted to a local and his rifle. I let out a sigh of relief. Tim glanced my direction and mouthed, “Thank you.”
I nodded. I didn’t want anybody getting killed, let alone my friends.
The air whooshed, drawing my attention back to the clearing. A fireball engulfed one of the locals. I shielded my eyes and took a deep breath, unable to block out his terrified scream. My back felt sweaty and cold. Cold and hot. Too much noise. Too much pain.
Without warning, Lance hurtled from the trees’ shadows. I clutched my spear, rooted to my spot, too distracted by his battle cry to pay attention to the surrounding battle and anyone who could use my help. Lance plowed into a squat, burly monster with a thick forehead and wild, uncombed hair. It tilted its head, sluggish, its eyes dull, lost... then opened fire from its rifle.
“Lance!” I fumbled with my pistol, straining to free the safety lock before firing. The bullet shot into the branch over Lance’s head. My shot had been too close. Too poorly aimed. Why couldn’t Inese have given me a bit more training before now?
I grabbed my spear and stood, but Lance was already ahead of me. The beast cried out as he stuck his sword into its back. My stomach roiled as the beastie grappled for its fallen gun and clasped it between thick fingers, then swung the gun like a club.
Lance blocked the blow with his sword and staggered at the impact. Panic stabbed me—I concentrated on the grass around the beastie’s feet. The grass sprung up like honeysuckles around a fence post, but the creature swatted the grass as if it was nothing more than a pesky mosquito.
Like morning glories on a wooden trellis, I told myself, picturing the gun being flung as far as I could throw it. The long strands of grass flicked the gun half a meter out from the beastie’s grasp and I yipped, giddy with success.
The beast froze, and for a split second Lance had the same puzzled expression.
Come on, Lance...
He recovered from his surprise, then stabbed his sword into the beastie’s chest. I held my breath, waiting to see if he’d killed it. Lance braced himself with one foot on the ground, one foot on the body, and removed his sword.
I cringed. Leaves clustered along my ankles, comforting. We could do this. We could fight the beasties, stay alive, and find Gwen. We’d do it together, just like we’d promised.
More beasts appeared over the hill and charged our diminished team. One had blackened skin, fire lacing its arms and hands, while another beastie, female, raced through the clearing with terrifying speed, lunging to rip out a local’s throat with its teeth.
Beasties are tough, Jack had told us, a pain to deal with, but they’re brutal, not smart. The question goes to how smart the beastmaster is.
The beastmaster!
Blood pounded in my ears as I scanned the horizon, trying to spot the culprit.
There.
At the top of the hill, two human soldiers stood silhouetted against the sun, too straight and proud to be beasts. One kept a sharp eye over the events while the other held an assault rifle. Both were in Special Forces uniform.
The beasties raced past them, uncaring.
I hunkered in the leafy bushes. Of the two men standing on the hill, the one scouting everything was my most likely candidate for beastmaster. He was the one to blame for this; he had to be. I didn’t trust my aim with Inese’s gun, but several long vines draped in loose coils from the branch above him. I focused on those vines, drowning out the sound of electrical zaps, bullets, and screams.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Grow for me.”
The vines coiled and tightened, wrapping around the mossy branch until the vine extended downward, revealing a tip that slid toward my target’s head. I closed my eyes, imagining the vine coiling around the beastmaster’s twitching body. If I killed him, maybe the beasties would stop their attack.
The vine grasped the beastmaster’s throat and he snatched at it, screaming wordlessly.
I had to keep my eyes open. I had to see what I was doing. “Keep holding,” I whispered, trembling. “You’re a strong vine.”
The beastmaster’s fingers tightened around the vine, trying to tug it free, but my grip was tighter. I curled the vine into a noose, like I’d seen in history books. The sentry next to him fumbled to unhook a knife from his pocket.
Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.
Don’t let go.
Memories of dead locals and the eyeless beastie ran through my head. I squeezed the vine tighter and the beastmaster lifted from the ground, his neck caught. The sentry yanked his knife free and for a simple, horrible moment, I remembered the pain of the knife stabbing into the tree and I withdrew my power.
The vine severed, but the beastmaster struggled and went limp. The sentry stared at his partner. The beasties hesitated. One turned and tackled the sentry. I looked away, staring at my hands. My fingers were covered in moist dirt where I’d dug my nails into the underbrush.
What if he wasn’t dead, and he was suffocating? I found the severed vine in my mind and urged thorns to erupt from the vine’s cell walls. They found resistance, then hardened in the beastmaster’s throat.
If the man wasn’t dead earlier, he was now.
I gulped for air and huddled in the bush’s embrace, my arms wrapped around my knees. I’d just killed a man. A potentially evil man, but a man nonetheless. This had to be a lie. A horrible, completely unfounded hallucination.
I opened my eyes. It wasn’t a hallucination. The beasties still fought each other or ran deeper into the jungle. One leapt over me and disappeared among the trees. I held my breath. The broad leaves rustled and the wind whispered through the ferns as birds returned to their playful calls.
The beasts were gone. So were the locals.
I silently counted the remains. The seven human bodies belonged to the locals who’d been helping us, and the rest belonged to a countless number of beasts.
“Jenna?” a voice called, quiet at first, then louder. “Jenna!” Lance stood at the top of the hill. He paused to wipe his sword in the grass. His shirt and pants were stained with blood. Tim followed behind, frantically looking around him, pistol in hand.
I loosened the vines around my arms. Humid air flooded through my sleeves where the cool leaves had cut the heat, and I tried to wipe away the tear stains from my face. Dirt smeared on the back of my hand and cheeks.
“Jenna!” Lance called, cupping his hands around his mouth.
“I’m here.” I wanted to stretch my arms and legs, but I shook too hard to steady myself.
Lance flung himself at me and wrapped me in a bear hug. “I thought you were dead.” I coughed, trying to breathe. “When I couldn’t find you—” He pulled away and checked me for bruises.
“I didn’t run into the middle of the battlefield,” I reminded him. How could he worry about me? He was the one who’d been out there, trying to kill beasts! A nervous half-laugh choked in my throat. Lance was alive, but the beastmaster was not. I’d ended that man’s life on a hunch, on a guess he was the one controlling the beasts. What if he had a wife? Children? Surely the wife could support them; the Community would assign her a new partner if it was more efficient. But she might have loved him.
A lump formed in my throat as the mental image of the beastmaster’s broken partnership morphed into an image of my parents. What if something terrible like that happened to them? I shook my head quickly, my skin clammy.
Something terrible like that had happened. Right now, I was the one who was missing. The one they probably thought was dead. How would Mom and Dad feel if they knew I was out here?
My limbs felt heavy as I trudged up the hill. Tim and Lance followed. The sentry had been dragged halfway across the field by a rampaging beastie, his body in shreds. The other man, the one I’d targeted, was blue in the face, clearly dead.
The sleeve of his uniform revealed a small patch with “Beastmaster” labeled beneath it. I pried the thorns from his neck, wincing as blood seeped from his fresh wounds. The beasts had scattered when I killed him. He must have been coordinating those attacks. Ordering them to kill people. To burn them alive. I clamped my hand around my spear, furious that he could do such a thing.
Lance nudged my shoulder. “You okay?”
“He was controlling them,” I said bitterly. “Using them to attack us.” I explained what happened. How the beasts stopped fighting and ran once I’d killed him. I’d wanted proof, and this was all the proof I needed. “We need to find Jack.”
Lance nodded and wiped sweat from his forehead. He took a swig from his canteen, eyed it, then frowned.
We were getting low on water.
“Let’s go,” he said, hooking the canteen next to his empty scabbard.
We stuck close to each other as we scouted the area, but there was no sign of Jack or Master Matoska. Just broken tree limbs, trampled berries, and deep ruts in the dirt from their boots. All the signs of a struggle, but no sign of the parties involved.
“Can you contact Inese?” Lance asked Tim.
Tim shook his head. “I don’t have a radio. Inese should be able to catch the nearby Camaraderie signals, but she doesn’t use wireless.”
“What about GNSS?” I asked, thinking of EYEnet’s navigational satellites. Surely we could access them, even out here. “Can we get a map of the area?”
“Maybe.” He fiddled with his tablet controls. “Nope. That’s odd. There’s no signal here. There is some sort of tech to the north, though. If we follow that transmission, we might find people.” He looked up at us, his cheeks flushed from the humidity.
Lance ran a hand through his longish hair. Though all of us could have used a bath, he’d taken the brunt of the physical toll. His hair was a mess of crushed leaves and broken twigs, and he was covered in plant stains, mud, and drying blood. “We should stay here, in case Inese brings the car this way.”
“Does she even know this path exists?” I rested my head against the tree, not welcoming another trek through the jungle. I was tired, hungry, and scared. If we didn’t find people soon, we’d spend the night here alone, and I didn’t know what our chance of survival was with those beasts on the loose.
“If we find people, maybe they can lead us to Gwen,” I suggested.
Lance stared at me. “We’re not in any condition to stage a rescue.”
“If the people are part of the local village, they’ll know how to contact Inese. If they’re part of the Camaraderie, they can give us their version of the events. I want to know why they would use beasts to maim and kill.”
Lance frowned. “We should wait.”
“The tech signal is moving away from us.” Tim swiped his finger across the tablet. “They’re currently about thirty-five minutes north of us, but it won’t take them long to get out of reach.”
Lance sighed. “Fine. Let’s get moving. We’ll be on our guard, just in case. And keep an eye out for Inese,” he said firmly.
We each took sips from the remainders in our canteens, and then headed the direction Tim indicated.
Forty minutes later, the trees thinned and gave way to tall grass. My feet ached and blistered, and we’d slowed to a sluggish gait. For all that I could use my powers, I was starting to feel like I couldn’t sense anything but plants. Grass. Trees. Shrubs. Roots. Roots everywhere, crowding the soil...
“Where are they?” Lance asked, coming to a halt. He’d sheathed his sword after his arm muscles tensed. “Tim—”
“I don’t know!” Tim worried his lip and cast a fearful glance at us. “They should be right here!”
Lance looked over Tim’s tablet, his lips twisted in frustration. He grunted. “So what do we do now? There’s no telling how far out we are.”
I stretched my legs, not daring to sit. “Is there any chance we could send a flare of some kind? Smoke signal? Someone’s bound to notice.”
“With what?” Lance pulled at his pockets. “I’ve got a sword and an empty canteen. Admit it—we’re lost.” He glared at Tim.
“It’s not my fault!” Tim protested. “You agreed that this was our best option. We could’ve stayed back there. Isn’t that what your Special Forces training would suggest? Stay in a known area until rescue comes?”
“I’m not Special Forces! I’m not even fully trained in security!” Lance tucked his arms over his chest and wandered several paces away. “Now we’re lost.”
“It was my fault,” I said. “I’m the one who suggested we walk.”
“I agreed to it,” Lance grumbled.
“We all did,” Tim reminded him, his voice meek. “And we’re not going to survive if we don’t stop fighting.”
Lance’s shoulders sagged. “Don’t split up. That’s one of the rules. Have a partner back you, and don’t fight with partners. Any disagreements can be settled when you aren’t strained and frustrated.” He sighed. “Now what?”
The sky above was bright blue, hinting on the first signs of evening though I couldn’t see the angle of the sun. No sign of invisible flying cars, either.
Stupid invisibility.
There was movement in the corner of my eye, a flash of light in the grass.
I raised my spear, hesitant. “Is someone there?”
Please be someone, not something. I wasn’t sure what kind of predators might try to make a meal of us.
“Behind you!” Lance shouted, drawing his sword.
I spun around. A large form in gleaming metal armor stood up from where he had been crouching in the clearing. The long grass wavered around him. His silvery white armor plates blinded me with spots from the sun, and even his silver half-cape with its green trim fluttered brightly. His ruby pendant glinted.
How in the Community had we missed him? His armor made him look like a silver mirror.
Master Matoska crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “What are you three doing so far from the Community?”
