Repatriate Protocol Box Set 3

by Kelli Kimble

  Silver shook his head. “She’s faking. None of those details demonstrate intimate knowledge.”

  “You sound like a searcher.”

  “I sound like someone who doesn’t want to invite the enemy into my home,” he said. “She could be dangerous. Whether she knew your sister or not, she’s not worth the risk.”

  Tabby was silent. I left my body so that I could get closer. She was looking through the branches, at the sky. Then, she turned to Silver with tears in her eyes. “I have never once regretted leaving my entire family and everything I knew to come out here and be with you. All I’m asking for is this opportunity to find out something about the people I left behind. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.”

  Silver’s face hardened. “There’s never been anything stopping you from going back.” He withdrew a gun from his jacket and pointed it at me. “This ends now.”

  My abilities strained to burst free, but a memory surfaced. “Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “She told me a story once. One she said your mom used to tell you. About a rabbit who was so busy keeping the burrow clean that she would send all the bunnies out to be tended by an older rabbit they didn’t like. She was mean and smelled bad. But they did what they were told and went with the old rabbit and learned the lessons she taught them.”

  “And?” Tabby prompted.

  “That’s it. She only told me the story once, and I fell asleep before the end,” I said. The effort of holding back the urge to unleash my abilities was making my eyes water.

  Thankfully, it had a tenderizing effect on Tabby. “See? She knew Abbey. I knew it.”

  “That’s just a generic kids’ story,” Silver said.

  “Did you get told stories?” Tabby asked. She pointed a finger against his chest.

  He looked down at her finger and pushed it away. The hand with the gun hung limply at his side. “You know I didn’t,” he growled.

  “Right. Not everybody did. I know this story. They told this story at school. But only my mom told it with a smelly old rabbit.” She smiled and held her arms out to me. “Come here, my girl. I don’t know who you are, or why you’re here, but if my sister told you that story, then she must’ve really cared about you.” She folded her arms around me in a hug. I melted against her, helpless in the face of human kindness.

  “The old rabbit’s name was Dame Rudy,” I said. My words were muffled into her shoulder.

  “Ruby,” she corrected. “But that’s close enough.” She put an arm around my shoulder and began to guide me through the woods in the direction they’d come from. “Get her things, will you?” she asked Silver over her shoulder. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

  Silver snatched my pack and the tablet from the ground, his lip curled up in a sneer. But he didn’t object.

  Right then, that was all I needed.

  Chapter 15

  Tabby welcomed me into their home as if I were her own daughter. She set up a space for me in the public room of their two-room hut. It was just a corner, but she dragged a large, flat bag stuffed with dried grass into it, and she heaped it with blankets made from old scraps of cloth. She collected things to make me comfortable: a hairbrush, a clean nightshirt, a towel. After she clucked and mothered over me, she took me outside and introduced me to the others. Everyone was nice — though openly curious about me. None of them seemed suspicious. Nobody asked if I was a searcher.

  Silver eyeballed me openly whenever he was in sight. He made me nervous, and I tried not to look at him. This only seemed to make him more aggressive. Tabby told him more than once to stand down, but he persisted.

  It was dark by the time Tabby had finished taking me around the settlement. She led me back to the hut after showing me where I could relieve myself (they called it “the privy”) and wash up before bed. I went back to the hut, and after she banished Silver to the other room, I changed into the nightshirt.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said to me. She guided me to my bed and tucked a blanket around me, then smoothed my hair. “Tomorrow, we’re going to spend the whole day together, and you can tell me all about Abbey, and your journey. Sound good?”

  It didn’t sound good. I didn’t want to revisit her death, nor her injury, nor how I’d not always been as understanding as I should’ve been. And how could I explain any of our journey without revealing my abilities?

  I sighed. She seemed to take it for a sound of contentment. She smiled. “Great. I’ll see you in the morning.” She retreated into the other room.

  I lay awake long into the night, staring at the ceiling. I’d worked so hard to get there, and now, my abilities were going to muck it up. Couldn’t I be accepted for what I was anywhere?

  ◆◆◆

  I woke up to Silver standing over me. I clutched the blankets to my chest. “Relax,” he said. “Tabby wanted me to tell you she’d be back in a bit.”

  I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and sat up. “Where did she go?”

  He was already nearly out the door. “Visiting a sick neighbor,” he said over his shoulder. He left without another word.

  I got dressed and went out to the privy. People were bustling around. Some of them said good morning to me, and I knew I’d met them, but I couldn’t recall anybody’s names.

  Then, Red bounded up to me, his gangly limbs making him look a bit like a giant, stuffed toy. “Hey, Nimisila,” he said. “They let you stay, huh?”

  I nodded. “Hi, Red.”

  “I’m going out to the field with Tikka. You wanna come with us? You could help.”

  “That’s a great offer,” I said. “But Tabby is looking forward to spending the day with me.”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat and looked away, his cheeks flushed. “I’ll see you around, then?”

  “Of course,” I said. He moved on, not quite as bouncy as he’d been before.

  Tabby waved at me from the hut door, and I hurried back.

  We spent most of the day talking — which got progressively more difficult as she asked more detailed questions about our trip. Eventually, she’d had enough of my vague answers. “Look,” she said. “I believe you knew . . . Abbey. Gayle.” She noticed I preferred to use the name Gayle had called herself later in life. “But I don’t believe about 99% of anything else you’ve said. I don’t want to have to send you away. So, why don’t you just spill it?”

  “Um,” I said. My face felt hot, and a prickle of sweat began to form on my back.

  She patted my hand. “We can keep it between us. Whatever it is, you can trust me.”

  I wanted to believe she would keep my abilities a secret. But it was a big thing to ask, and my stomach was flipping end-over-end. A large amount of saliva collected in my mouth, and I gulped it down.

  She sighed. “Gayle was my best friend. Even when the tumor made me act strange, she was always there for me. Always. I couldn’t be there for her. But I can be there for you. She brought you here, so I could take care of you. I know it. Please, won’t you let me take care of you?”

  A voice inside my head was telling me to shut up, but my mouth wouldn’t listen. “I’m different from the others in the city,” I said. “I didn’t have a chip. I went to a special school for kids like me. We were looked down on. Substandard. So were our parents because they couldn’t give us what so many other parents could. They wanted to, of course. But, the tech shortage . . . it just wasn’t in the cards for my family.”

  “I’m sorry. It sounds like you had a rough time.”

  “There were others like you. People who — for one reason or another — could afford a chip, but it wouldn’t work, and some of those people got an idea. They thought they could develop the ability to be telepathic naturally. Without a chip.”

  Her eyebrows knit together, and she frowned. “What’s wrong with just talking?”

  I shrugged. “Those people realized they could do experiments on us kids. They knew nobody would stop them; we were just poor, vocal kids. Our parents were powerless, and
so were we. We didn’t even know at first. We weren’t even the first group of kids they experimented on. But I was in the group that had a breakthrough. They took me and some of the others to a secret lab. I was there for a long time before I escaped — though I don’t know exactly how long. At least six months. Maybe even 18. It felt like an eternity, though, because they finally understood the best way to stimulate our telepathic capacity was to torture us.”

  She gasped. “Torture? Like what?”

  “It’s not important,” I said.

  “No, no. It is. I want to know.”

  My mind flashed to an image of the box. “It’s hard to talk about,” I said.

  “I’m sure it is. But you need to talk about it. To heal.” She clasped my hand and leaned forward tenderly.

  “The hardest for me was the box,” I said. “They’d lock me inside. It was just big enough for me to lay flat in. Then, they’d fill it up with water. They wanted me to unlock the box and release myself.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “The lock was on the outside,” I said. “They wanted me to open it with my mind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They did. They understood if they could make me feel desperate enough – to the brink of death, even – I’d be able to do what they wanted, and I did. But that didn’t stop the experiments. They made it more difficult: They electrocuted me. They put rats and snakes and spiders in the box. They used a liquid that was thick, like honey. Any way they could make it harder, they did.”

  “Oh, Nimisila,” she said. She put an arm around me and drew me close. “That’s no way to treat a child.”

  “They got what they wanted,” I said. “I developed abilities beyond anything they could ever imagine, way more than simple telepathy or telekinesis.”

  She pulled back and looked into my eyes. “What are you saying?”

  I’m saying I can talk right into your head, and you can hear it, because I don’t use a chip to do it.

  She clapped her hands over her ears and jumped away from me. “Oh my – how did you do that? My chip doesn’t work.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not the chip.”

  She started pacing the floor in front of me. “This can’t be real,” she said.

  It is.

  “Stop doing that. I don’t like it.” She stopped in front of me. “Wait. You can do more? Like what?”

  I turned towards the mattress in the corner. I’d left the coverings disheveled. I imagined them smoothing out, and the blanket spread itself out to cover the mattress nicely.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  I mentally lifted her from the floor and moved her across the room. She flailed her arms around and started to scream, but I clamped an invisible hand over her mouth. “Please, don’t scream,” I said. “I was only trying to show you what I can do. You asked.” I released her mouth.

  She let her mouth hang open while she inhaled ragged breaths. “This isn’t really happening,” she finally said.

  “I’m not trying to scare you,” I said. “You wanted me to be honest.”

  “I don’t know if I can keep this from Silver and the others. Not in good conscience.”

  “You promised.”

  Tabby wrung her hands together.

  “You said I could trust you,” I reminded her.

  Tabby blinked, and her gaze shifted to the door of the little hut. “You’re right,” she said. “I said we’d keep it between us.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “If I have any inclination to believe you’re a danger to us, I’ll have to tell Silver.”

  “I’m not a danger, I promise,” I said. “I only want to feel . . . normal.”

  She frowned. “Don’t we all?”

  ◆◆◆

  Red was after me all the time to go out to the field with him and Tikka. After a week of politely declining, I couldn’t think of any more excuses. Red’s eyes lit up with a huge, goofy grin. “Let’s go find Tikka,” he said. I followed him in his search for her. She didn’t seem to mind when Red proclaimed my involvement, and we set off to the burned field.

  “Do you mind if I ask what exactly you’re doing with the field?” I asked.

  “It’s a method the Native Americans used,” Tikka said. “They burned the grass down, and it left behind a clear field, fertilized with organic matter.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Silver doesn’t like it,” Red said. “He thinks it’s too dangerous.”

  “It does sound kind of risky,” I said. “What would you do if the fire burned out of control? It could wipe out your whole town.”

  Tikka scowled at me. “That’s why we dug the ditch.”

  “Oh,” I said. It still didn’t seem like the best idea, but I didn’t want to argue with her.

  “If we can solve our food shortage, it would mean a lot to everyone,” Red said. “We really need to have an agricultural strategy.”

  “You don’t have enough food?”

  “We have enough protein. Seafood, small game. That kind of thing,” he said. “We just don’t have enough fruits and vegetables.”

  I nodded. Nobody I’d met in the village seemed malnourished — but it wasn’t winter yet.

  The trees parted, and we were at the field.

  “What do you do now?” I asked. “You start planting?”

  “No. First, we have to till the field,” Tikka said.

  Red leaned towards me. “We don’t know how to do that,” he said.

  Tikka scowled. “We just haven’t figured it out yet. That’s all.”

  “Do you have any tools?” I asked.

  “Shovels,” Tikka said. “But the ditch-digging wore them down. The one we have left won’t last much longer.” She pointed to a shovel, carved entirely of wood, leaning against a tree. The blade was well-worn and splitting in several places.

  “We need something to fashion a plow,” I said.

  “We know that,” Tikka said, rolling her eyes.

  “Hey, you asked me to come and help. If you don’t want my ideas, then I can just go back to hang out with Tabby.” I turned, as if I were heading back to the settlement.

  “No, wait,” Red said. He elbowed Tikka in the ribs, and she let out an involuntary squawk. “Apologize,” he muttered under his breath.

  She waited just long enough for me to get a few steps away. “Just a second, Nimisila,” she said. She sounded like she was gargling glass shards. “I apologize. We know the city has agriculture, and we could use your help.”

  I didn’t mention I’d never so much as caught a whiff of one of the farms that sustained the city. “I’d be glad to help,” I said.

  “Great,” Red said, smiling his gigantic, goofy grin. “Now, what were you saying? About a plow?”

  “I was saying I think you need a plow. Preferably, one made of metal. But I bet we could make one out of stone or wood.”

  “There’s no way we could come up with enough metal,” Red said. “Stone or wood could work.”

  “Wood would be more lightweight, but I think you already know the drawbacks,” I said, nodding towards the shovel. “We could try rock. Do you know anywhere we could find some big rocks? Maybe this big?” I mimed a cube about two feet across with my hands.

  Red’s face clouded over as he thought.

  But Tikka beat him to it. “I know,” she said. “That section of the beach. Where the seals gather.”

  “Yeah, that’s good,” Red said. “Come on; let’s go.”

  ◆◆◆

  It turned out seals were kind of aggressive, so getting in close to the rocks to select a good candidate wasn’t easy.

  “I want one that is kind of triangular,” I said. “The sharp point will get through the dirt nice and smooth.”

  “It’ll be heavy,” Tikka said. “How will we move it?”

  “The weight is good,” I said. “It’ll help anchor it into the ground, so it won’t go skipping over loose soil.”


  Tikka nodded. We circled the area with the boulders, slowly getting closer and closer to the seals. After a time, they seemed not to notice us as much. Tikka finally spotted one that could be useful. “There,” she said. She pointed to it. She was excited and jumped on top of several other rocks to get to it.

  There was a sudden barking. A male seal who’d been sunning himself out of sight on top of the rocks reared up and moved towards Tikka.

  Even though I’d never seen a seal before, I could tell from its posture that it was aggressive and meant business. “Tikka, watch out,” I said.

  I had to help her, and I was going to have to use my abilities. But I didn’t want them to see.

  I rolled the rock Red was climbing so that he fell off and out of my sight. Then, I yelled for Tikka to duck. I mentally picked up the seal and rammed it backwards so that it knocked against a wall behind it. Then, I picked up a rock from the ground with my hand and bashed it in the head before Tikka could turn and see what happened.

  “Oh—” she said as she turned towards me. Her eyes were wide, and she stared at the bloody rock in my hand. “You killed it,” she said.

  I worked to settle my breath. I was gasping, as if I’d run a hundred miles. I dropped the rock. “I thought it was going to hurt you,” I said.

  “It was,” she said. “I . . . I don’t know what to say. Thanks, I guess.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  A moan from further down the rocks reminded me I’d knocked down Red. I jumped down to see him. His face was white as a rabbit tail, and he was grimacing. I saw why when I came around the rock that was blocking my view of the rest of his body.

  The rock had rolled onto his hand, and it was trapped. Blood was seeping out from underneath the rock.

  “Oh, no, Red,” I said. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

  It was a ridiculous question. But he didn’t seem to care. “My hand is caught,” he said. “There sure is a lot of blood.”

  I mentally scanned his body; only his hand seemed to be injured, which was a relief. But, judging by the blood coming out from under the rock, it wasn’t a trivial injury.