RENA
THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTHWEST MONTANA
“I’VE GOT TO GET THESE CUFFS OFF,” JAMES Kirk said.
They were running through the snow, or trying to, but Kirk kept tripping and falling. Already, five of their fifteen minutes had been used up. Soon, the seekers would be after them.
“Let’s keep moving,” Nemo said. “If we just keep going, we can get out of here and back to the highway.”
“It’s too far,” Kirk said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. That’s the whole point. This isn’t about hiding. This is about fighting back. But I need my hands free.” He nodded at Yo-Yo. “See if you can melt them.”
He turned around so that the plastic zip tie securing his wrists together was facing Yo-Yo. The boy reached out and placed his fingertips on it. “This might be a little warm,” he warned.
A spark appeared, turning into a small flame. Kirk gritted his teeth as the plastic heated up. As soon as it was soft, he pulled his wrists apart. He scooped up some snow and rubbed it on the burns. “Thanks,” he said.
“Now what?” Rena asked.
Kirk looked around. “We go farther up,” he said. “It’s harder for us, but it’s also harder for someone chasing us to have to climb.”
They started to move. Dennings had sent them out without anything but what they had on them, which wasn’t much. Rena and Nemo hadn’t been planning to hike around in the woods and were trying to sell their runaway story, so they had dressed regularly and didn’t really bring anything with them. Rena’s sneakers were already soaked through.
“Do you two have any way of communicating with Six and Sam?” Kirk asked as they made their way through the forest.
“Yeah,” Rena said. “We’ve got mikes and cameras.”
“And tracking devices,” Nemo added.
“Can they talk to us?” asked Kirk.
“No,” Rena said. “But they can hear everything we say.”
“Okay,” said Kirk. “Sam and Six, I don’t know our exact location, but I’m guessing you can follow our tracking devices. I’ll try to keep us away from whoever is following us long enough for you to get here. Dennings kept me in solitary, so I don’t know how many people are up here. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
“Why’d he take you, anyway?” Nemo asked. “And how?”
“Same way he got Ghost and disappeared back in New Orleans,” Kirk answered. “Someone with a teleportation Legacy. One second I was sitting in the cockpit, and the next I felt a hand on my shoulder. By the time I turned around, I was in the back of a van and someone was sticking a needle in my arm. I woke up in a cell in the basement of that lodge. The only reason I know where we are is Dennings talked about it. Almost like he wanted to be sure I knew.”
“Was Ghost in there with you?” Nemo asked him.
“I don’t know,” said Kirk. “Like I said, I was kept away from everybody. I don’t think so, though. I get the feeling there aren’t that many people here. Yo-Yo, do you know?”
“They just brought me here yesterday,” Yo-Yo said. “Told me I was getting a second chance to prove I belonged with them. They’ve been doing that—bringing kids here a few at a time.”
Rena, already having a difficult time breathing while moving, asked, “Who are these seekers, anyway? People who work for Dennings?”
“I don’t know,” Kirk said. “This is the first I’ve heard of them.”
“They don’t work for Dennings,” said Yo-Yo. His voice was tight. “They pay him.”
“You mean they’re his bosses?” said Kirk.
“No, his customers.”
Kirk stopped. He looked at Yo-Yo. “What are you saying?”
Yo-Yo checked behind him. “We’ve got to go,” he said. “We’ve got to hide. Quick.”
“I need to know what we’re up against here,” Kirk pressed.
Yo-Yo licked his lips. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “But I heard some things. There are people paying to play this game—people who want to see if they’ve got what it takes to catch kids with Legacies.” He hesitated. “And I heard something else. Heard it’s not exactly hide-and-seek. Heard it’s more like hunting.”
“Hunting?” Rena said.
He nodded. “You see all those trophies hanging on the walls in that place? This here’s a place where people come to hunt game. And right now, I think they’re hunting us.”
“And what happens if they catch us?” asked Nemo.
Yo-Yo didn’t say anything.
“Yo-Yo?” said Rena. “What happens?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard different things.”
“Like what?” said Nemo.
“Like some of the kids who got sent here didn’t come back,” Yo-Yo told her.
“All right,” Kirk said. “I think we should keep moving. Who these people are doesn’t really matter at this point. What does is that they don’t catch us, right?”
“And how do we make sure of that?” Nemo asked. “None of us can turn invisible, or teleport, or fly. The only one with a useful Legacy is Yo-Yo, and like Dennings said, we can’t use it without giving our location away.”
“We’ll worry about that when we have to,” said Kirk. “Right now, let’s get some more distance between us and them. Do any of you have a watch?”
“I do,” Rena said. She looked at it. “It’s been ten minutes.”
“We won’t get far in five more minutes,” Kirk said. “So let’s make them count.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Nemo suggested.
“No,” said Kirk. “I take it none of you has wilderness training. But I do. Follow me.”
They pushed on. The ground was getting steeper as they rose up the mountain. Making things worse, the snow had stopped and the clouds had dispersed. The moon, full and silver overhead, illuminated the woods where its light slipped in through the branches of the fir and pine trees. It was beautiful, but it also did very little to hide the four of them as they sought out a place to hide.
They were still climbing when a sound rent the air, a blast from an air horn.
“They’re coming,” Yo-Yo said. “The hunters.” His voice shook with fear.
“What if we climb up in the trees?” Nemo suggested.
“Then there’s nowhere to go if they find us,” Kirk pointed out. “We need to stay on the ground.” He looked around, surveying the forest. “All right. Here’s the plan. We hide. We wait for whoever is coming to move past us up the mountain. Then we head down and figure out what’s next.”
“Maybe we could get back to the lodge and take the ATV,” Rena suggested.
“We don’t have the key,” Nemo countered.
“I can start it without a key if we can get to it,” said Kirk. “But that’s later. Right now, we need to get under cover. We also need to make them think we’re still going up.”
“How do we do that?” asked Rena.
“You three hide,” Kirk said. “Get behind or under anything you can find. Use pine branches to sweep away your footprints. I’m going to keep going so that there are tracks for them to follow. Once they’ve gone past me, I’ll come back this way and we’ll regroup and plan our next move.”
He looked around at the three teenagers’ faces. “It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Just keep calm.”
“What if they find us?” Yo-Yo said.
Kirk pointed at Yo-Yo’s hands. “Then you send a fireball at them and run,” he said. “Now, go.”
He turned and left them. Rena pointed towards a part of the forest where the trees grew more densely. “Let’s go that way,” she said. “There’s more cover. I’ll go last and wipe away the tracks. Try to step in each other’s footprints so there aren’t as many of them.”
“How are we going to erase our prints?” Nemo asked.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Rena.
Yo-Yo went first, taking big steps as he moved deeper into the darkness of the trees. Nemo followed. “Hey, longlegs,” she said. “Can you shorten up the steps? Some of us don’t walk on stilts.”
Rena, going last, paused and concentrated on the snow. She focused her telekinesis and pushed, urging the snow to fill in their footprints and smooth them over. It mostly worked, and she hoped it was enough to fool their pursuers. At least the moonlight was shining on the prints Kirk had made leading up to and away from the hiding spot. That might save them.
The three of them found a place where two trees had fallen over. Although their branches had long since lost the needles that once covered them, the trunks were thick and provided something for them to hide behind. Nemo, Yo-Yo, and Rena crouched there in the snow, waiting. Afraid of making any noise, they didn’t talk, and for a while the only sound was that of the wind moving through the branches of the trees.
Then they heard the soft crunching of footsteps on snow.
Rena, who was in the middle, reached out and took Yo-Yo’s hand in one of hers and Nemo’s in the other. She squeezed them gently, her heart racing. When a bird somewhere in the forest hooted, startling her, she bit her lip to keep from crying out.
Two shadows detached themselves from the darkness and moved into the moonlight.
“What did he say they could do?” said a man’s voice.
“Fire,” answered a woman. “That’s the boy. One of the girls breathes underwater. The last one I didn’t quite get. Something about bringing dolls to life.”
The man snorted. “Not much of a challenge,” he said. “Except maybe the fire kid. We should have asked for a discount.”
“I think that’s why he threw in the military guy,” the woman said. “At least he’s got survival training.”
“Looks like they all stayed together,” the man remarked. “That’ll make it easy.”
“And boring,” said the woman. “What’s the fun of catching them all at once? I told you we should have gone on a big-game safari hunt instead.”
“Anyone can do that,” said the man. “Come on. The tracks go this way. Might as well get it over with. Didn’t Dennings say if we catch them within two hours we get half our money back? We could still take that safari after all.”
The two figures disappeared into the trees. Rena felt her heart slow a little, and she was able to breathe more easily again.
“Now what?” Nemo whispered.
“We wait for Kirk,” said Rena. “That’s the plan.”
They waited. The cold had soaked right into their skin, and crouching behind the trees was uncomfortable. After what felt like an hour, Rena looked at her watch. Only ten minutes had passed.
“Where is he?” Yo-Yo said.
His voice was too loud, and Rena shushed him. A moment later, a light flickered over their heads. Someone had turned on a flashlight and was now shining it around the trees.
“I hear you,” said the voice of the man they’d heard before. “Nice trick, trying to make us think you’d gone on ahead.”
The three teens froze, saying nothing.
“Come on out,” the man said. “Game’s over. Let’s all go back to the lodge and get warmed up. No sense freezing to death, kids.” He laughed, and the sound sent shivers down Rena’s spine.
Yo-Yo squeezed Rena’s hand, and she realized they were all still linked together. She looked at her friend. He shook his head no. His eyes were wide, filled with terror.
“All right,” the man said. “If you want to keep playing, we can play.” A second later, a dull thud sounded, and snow tumbled down from a branch above where Rena, Nemo, and Yo-Yo were hiding. Rena looked up and saw an arrow sticking out of the tree trunk a few feet above their heads.
“I’ll count to three,” the man said. “If you’re not out by then, we’ll do this the hard way. One.”
None of them moved. It was as if time had stopped. Rena felt her friends’ hands in her own, but her body wouldn’t move.
“Two.”
Rena felt Yo-Yo’s hand slip from hers. She turned her head and saw him starting to stand up. He had brought his palms together, and a ball of light was forming between his fingers. The glow was already spreading as the ball of fire grew stronger.
“Yo-Yo,” Rena said.
It was too late. Yo-Yo stood up, revealing himself.
“Three,” the man said, just as Yo-Yo flung his hands out. A fireball shot forward. The sound blasted through the night. A tree somewhere in the vicinity of the man burst into flame. Then Rena heard herself scream as an arrow whizzed past her head.
Another fireball was forming in Yo-Yo’s hands, and he flung it at their attacker as Nemo and Rena stood up and looked around, trying to see what was going on.
“That’s more like it!” the man shouted.
“Run!” Yo-Yo told the girls. “I’ll take care of him.”
“No,” Rena objected. “We stay together.”
The boy raised his arm to lob another fireball. Then he gave a shout of pain, and the ball flickered and went out. Yo-Yo hunched over, clutching his hand to his chest. “Get down!” he shouted at the girls.
“Are you okay?” Rena asked, kneeling behind the trees again.
“It grazed me,” Yo-Yo said. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”
He showed her his hand. Blood was dripping from a slice on the side of his palm. Rena knew they had to bind it up, but before she could do anything, another arrow thwacked into a tree beside them.
“We’re sitting ducks here,” Nemo said. “We’ve got to move.”
“What’s going on?” The voice of the woman they’d heard before rang out. She sounded excited.
“They’re pinned down in there,” the man said triumphantly. “I think the fire starter is wounded. What did you find?”
“Nothing,” the woman said.
Rena’s hopes rose. She hadn’t caught Kirk. But where was he?
She got her answer a moment later when he emerged from the shadows behind them. “We need to make a run for it,” he said. “Yo-Yo, can you do your thing?”
“I think so,” Yo-Yo said.
“Then now’s the time,” said Kirk. “Biggest ball you can make. Throw it right at them, then we’ll run back the way we came.”
Yo-Yo nodded. He held his hands together. The wounded one was still bleeding, and it shook as he focused hard on the empty space his fingers made. There was a spark, then another. Then a ball the size of a grapefruit bloomed, swirling with orange and red flames.
“Don’t miss,” Kirk said.
Yo-Yo stood up and threw the ball of fire. It struck something and burst into flames. There was a scream. He had hit the man.
“Run!” Kirk shouted.
The four of them darted away from the tree. The man, who was on fire, was staggering around as the woman yelled for him to drop to the ground. Nemo, Yo-Yo, and Rena dashed into the trees. Kirk, bringing up the rear, shouted at them to hurry.
Rena heard a grunt. She turned and saw Kirk stumbling towards her. The front of his jacket was open, and on his chest a stain was blooming around the shaft of an arrow that protruded from his body. Then there was another whistling sound, and another stain. Kirk jerked and his mouth opened, blood spraying out and covering the snow.
He lurched forward. Rena held out her hands. Kirk clutched at her, his fingers grabbing at her necklace. He fell, and the necklace was pulled away with him. He didn’t get up.
“Rena!” Yo-Yo shouted. “Come on!”
Rena looked down at the body in the snow. She bent to retrieve her necklace, and an arrow whizzed over her head, making her fall back without the piece of jewelry. She got to her feet, turned, and ran into the darkness.