by Ryan, Matt
Max suppressed his boiling rage. Emmett was coming? How could Marcus send him when all he needed was another day? No, Marcus couldn’t be giving that order, Emmett had to be acting on his own again. Max slid his finger on the screen and found Marcus’s personal number. His finger moved over Marcus’s avatar as it had a million times before. What did he have to lose? Max pressed the picture and the line connected.
“Max.” Marcus’s sweet tone answered. The man had his old, solid voice back and Max’s chest warmed to the sound.
“Marcus, sorry to bother you, but I just talked with Emmett and he seemed a bit concerned about my acquisition of the girls.”
A pause. Max brushed his hair back with his free hand and paced next to the door.
“You’re really messing up that city, you know?”
“I know.”
“Good.”
Max smiled, he knew Marcus would understand. “Thank you, sir, and I just need one more day.” Just one more day and he could stab that little girl for making a fool of him.
“Listen Max, you’ve been a loyal member of MM for a long time. I’m going to help you out with this.”
Max felt exhilarated. “Are you coming out here?”
“No. One of those girls is on the net, it shouldn’t take me very long to find her and when I hand them to you, Max, I don’t want any mistakes with the Poly girl. I have need of her.”
“Certainly, and thank you.”
“I’ll let you know.”
The Panavice’s speaker went dead. Max kept it to his ear, wanting to hear three more words he knew he’d never hear from Marcus. After a minute, Max had collected himself enough to open the door.
Travis sat at his desk and pretended to be surprised by the visit. Max scowled at the man. If he wasn’t a senator, he’d have him buried in Ryjack, along with many of the others. The fool of a man offered a handshake. Max begrudgingly took his hand and felt the man’s shaking hand, power vibrated through his arm and the sweat beaded down his brow. The man looked to be struggling a great deal.
“What’s wrong with you?” Max asked.
“Nothing,” Travis gritted through his teeth.
Of course nothing. He was probably still upset about getting beat in a friendly duel yesterday. Max thought besting the man would keep his eyes off his throat, but now he seemed constipated to no end. Shame, such beauty wasted on such a pitiful man.
“We’ll have the girls out of your city today, tomorrow at the latest, and then you can have your little paradise back.” Why was he trying to put the man at ease?
Max sat down in the chair in front of Travis’s desk.
“How do you know?” The man shook in his chair with a red face.
“Don’t you worry about the ‘how.’” Max smiled. He enjoyed seeing the man squirm. He must have had some sort of soft spot for those girls. He’d have to be careful because Marcus wanted these girls alive, but if he got the chance, he’d make Travis watch while he killed each one of them.
LUCAS COVERED HIS EYES AS Harris’s aircraft kicked up sand. He lowered his hand and watched the black bird fly a few feet off the water, into the distant horizon. He adjusted his bow and glanced back at the jungle behind him. Glad to be away from the politics.
Spending the last week with Harris, Lucas saw heads of state and mayors of towns. He didn’t have a full picture of what Harris was doing, and when he tried to put all the pieces together, they didn’t fit. What he told some, he told others different. Harris said he was throwing so much out there that Marcus might not be able to wade through it all in time. Lucas felt as if he was in a whirlpool, circling toward a tragic center with Harris manning the controls.
It felt good to be contributing to something that got them closer to rescuing Joey and Samantha, something that got him closer to Julie. Thinking of her sent that shot of nervousness into his gut. He reminded himself that she was going to be okay. Poly would kill anything endangering them, and Julie could get them out of any situation. He needed to keep reassuring himself, if he said it enough times, maybe he would start believing it.
“You ready?” Hank asked.
“Hell yeah, let’s go find these mutants,” Lucas said with an upbeat tone. He wanted to keep his somber thoughts to himself, no point in bringing down Hank with him. Besides, Hank, ever since they split from Julie and Poly, hadn’t said more than a handful of words. The guy normally didn’t speak much, but he had become a near mute. Lucas might have asked him what’s up, but that would involve talking about feelings and stuff.
Lucas breathed in the ocean air, it had an odor to it, a salty organic smell, same as the Arrack Ocean. Stepping off the sand and into the palm tree forest, it changed to a musty smell of rotting foliage. He looked around the trees, searching for a path, but everything was covered in leaves or bushes. He felt his pocket for the Panavice Harris gave him.
He gripped the device with his fingers and pulled it loose from his pocket, it hummed with his touch.The screen lit as he held it in front of his face. An arrow displayed on the screen with 4,000 feet written under it.
“This way,” Lucas said.
Hank followed his quick pace. He jumped over the rocks and crawled under a fallen tree. 2,000 feet.
“You think they’re going to be cool with us just showing up?” Hank asked.
“Harris said he warned them we were coming. I think we’ll be fine. Plus, with all the noise you make trudging through this forest, they probably already know were here.” Lucas smiled.
“If they don’t hear me, they’ll definitely smell you.”
Lucas smelled his shirt. He was a little sweaty, but nothing that bad. “Wait, did you just make a joke?”
Hank laughed. He did make a joke. Lucas welled up with pride and jumped on Hank, grabbing him in a headlock. Hank held him in the air as he did.
“Look at my Hank,” Lucas said rubbing Hank’s hair. “Making his first joke. It took eighteen years, but he did it.”
Hank pushed him off. “I joke.”
“Only when you’re trying to get with Poly,” Lucas said with one hand over his mouth, and the other pointing at Hank. Lucas lowered his finger when Hank’s face looked hurt. “Just messing with you, man.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Hank pushed past Lucas.
“Dude, you know she’s into Joey, right?”
“He’s into Samantha.”
“Big guy, please. Joey’s man enough for both of them.” Lucas tried to run fast around a palm tree. “He’s got the moves like flash.” He busted out a “running man” dance on the forest floor.
Hank closed his eyes and his fists clinched. “I just want us all to get back together, like it was before. Don’t you miss worrying about small stuff?”
Uh oh, Hank had just opened the emotional can. Lucas struggled to find words, he didn’t want to talk about his feelings, but Hank’s face demanded a comment.
“Yeah, of course. You think I like this stuff? Not knowing what’s happening to my best friends, being away from everything I know? Look at us, in the middle of some freaking island jungle, on another planet, looking for mutants to help a man who may, or may not be helping us get our friends back.”
“You don’t trust Harris?”
Lucas adjusted Prudence on his shoulder, feeling the smooth string. “I don’t know, I’m just not sure if this all adds up to the Preston Six getting back together.”
Hank nodded his head. “We’re going to get them back, and we’re going to get back home.”
Lucas lowered his head. Hank pulled him into a conversation full of emotion and doubt, and now he was bringing him out of it with confidence and determination. He decided for a quick subject change. “Let’s get moving, might be getting dark soon.”
Lucas led them through the forest with Panavice in hand. He kept glancing back at Hank, seeing if the big man was okay. His face looked frustrated as they pushed through the last five hundred feet.
“Should be seeing something soon,” Lucas said looking b
ack at Hank.
“Stop,” a man’s voice ordered.
Lucas stopped, held his hands up, palms facing toward the voice. A young man holding a crude bow and a crooked arrow pointed in his direction. “We’re here to see Kris.”
“Who are you?”
“This is Hank and I’m Lucas.”
The young man lowered his bow and stared at Lucas. “I remember you, you’re one of Poly’s friends.” His eyes lit up.
“Yes. Yes, we are.” Lucas lowered his hands. Was knowing Poly a free pass here?
“Well, come on, the new village is right over here. Oh, and follow my path. We have a few traps set around.”
Lucas scanned the ground where he stepped, making sure to step on the same path as the young man. He saw the village through the trees and smelled fish cooking over a campfire. They passed the last tree and a woman hanging clothes on a line stopped to stare at them. Lucas smiled and waved to her, but she blankly stared at them as they walked by.
“Her kids were killed in the last raid,” the young man whispered.
“So much for that standing ‘no kill’ order,” Hank whispered to Lucas.
Lucas remembered the smoke plumes and the dead bodies lying around the village. He had tried not to look at them, but seeing the faces of those who lost them was just as unbearable.
“Looks like you guys have rebuilt,” Lucas said. The huts spread around the village, some with people looking through their windows. A girl with a similar haircut to Poly ran by and had wooden knives in her hands. She threw the knives at a tree trunk and ran to gather them. Another girl joined in and threw her knives.
They stopped moving as Kris walked up to them. “Lucas, Hank.”
Lucas smiled and extended his hand. “Don’t get all rough with me again,” Lucas said pointing at his mutant arm.
Kris laughed. “I’ll be gentle.” He shook his hand fast and hard.
Lucas pulled his hand back and tried not to rub the pain from it. Kris found this just as funny. He shook Hank’s hand in a soft and easy manner. If he had Hank’s size, he would wring Kris’s hand off his arm.
“Good to see you guys again,” Kris said. “Let’s go to my hut and we can discuss why you’re here.”
They followed Kris into his circular hut, no more than fifteen feet across. Lucas and Hank sat in chairs made from branches. Kris sat on the edge of his bed.
“We’re here to tell you it’s time,” Lucas said, trying to imitate Harris’s diplomatic tone. Hank looked at him and shook his head.
“Good, we’ve wanted to create some havoc for the city folks. How we getting there?” Kris leaned forward.
Lucas glanced at Hank. “We have a transport ship coming tomorrow.”
Kris clapped his hand and smiled. “Good.”
Lucas smiled and rubbed his hands together. It was exciting to finally get back into the action, something to keep his mind off Julie.
“Lucas told me about what happened last time, how are you guys doing?” Hank asked.
Lucas frowned at Hank. He didn’t want to get in this guy’s business.
“Thanks for asking. We lost some great men and women that day.” Kris looked at the ceiling. “But at Mutant Isle, we don’t get sad about the past. The more we look back, the sadder we become, then we’d just be sobbing babies, looking for mommy’s tit. No, we look ahead, because ahead will be better, we’ll make it better.” Kris looked from Hank to Lucas. “I wanted to thank you for giving us the chance to make it better, even in a small way.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do tomorrow?” Hank asked.
A wicked smile came across Kris’s face. “We have some ideas of what to do.”
Kris brought them to their hut for the night; a ten-foot circle with bamboo walls and a palm leaf roof. Lucas felt the stiff bed and gawked at the open window, bugs would likely get through it during the night.
“We’re having a fire outside, you’re welcome to join us,” Kris offered.
“Thanks, we’ll be out in a few minutes,” Hank said.
Kris left the hut through the draping leaf door.
Lucas stared at the thin door. “What do you think they have planned?”
Hank shrugged and pushed on one of the walls. The hut swayed. “These huts are pretty shoddy,” Hank said.
“Thanks, Bob Villa, but aren’t you a little curious about what’s going to happen tomorrow?”
“No.” Hank studied the bamboo wall.
Lucas sighed and leaned his back against the wall. Hank had already gone back to being a one-word man. Well, maybe now he wanted to talk about what’s going on. He felt their lives could depend on it.
Hank glanced back at him. He must have seen something in Lucas’s face as he walked over and sat on the bed next to him. “What do you think about Harris?”
Lucas frowned at the question. “I don’t know, he’s saved our lives a few times.”
“Yeah.” Hank let out a long breath. “But don’t you get the feeling he’s using us?”
Taken back by the question, Lucas asked, “What do you mean?”
“He’s split us up, Joey and Samantha, Poly and Julie, and you and me.” Lucas saw the hurt in Hank’s eyes. “We’ve never been apart like this. . . .”
“Yeah.” Lucas’s thoughts were on Julie and Poly, alone with Travis in Sanct. Harris said they were safe from the MM soldiers, but as far as he knew, they were captives right now, being carried off to MM’s bunker.
Hank placed his big hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “I’m scared about tomorrow. That’s why I insisted on coming with you. I don’t think it’s going to go like everyone is saying. Something seems off.”
Hearing it spoken, brought Lucas to the realization he too had felt something was off. Was the plan a playful distraction, or was it something entirely different? Oh man, why did he even want to talk about their feelings?
JOEY STRUGGLED TO BELIEVE HIS eyes. The Alius stone, they found it. Samantha smiled and stared at him.
“This is it, right?” Samantha asked.
“Yes.” They stood with the door open, looking into the domed room.
The chapel around them lost its color. The tile under their feet turned flat and then white. The buildings around them dissolved to the floor until there was nothing but white surrounding the open door.
“Stop,” a man yelled.
Joey turned to see a man running toward them, dressed in all black with an R7 on his chest.
“We’ve got to go,” Joey said, rushing to the stone. Its top had the divots and bumps like the one in Preston. Joey touched the divots. He’d seen Lucas do this a few times, but he couldn’t remember exactly what he did.
“I don’t know the codes.” He looked up and saw Samantha closing the steel door. The seven had reached the door and banged on it. The sound resonating around the room with each thump.
“Just get us out of here, anywhere.”
He pushed in a code as best as he could remember, the stone hummed to life and the dome room went black. Extending his hands, he felt the air around him. “Samantha?”
“Right here.”
Following the sound of her voice, his hand bumped into her. She pulled his arm, hurting the many puncture marks on it, but he didn’t care. He hugged her. They did it, they escaped.
“You think we did it?” she asked.
“Let’s find the door and see,” Joey said. He took her hand in one of his and walked until he felt the cold steel of the dome. In a few minutes he found the door and pulled the handle.
Light flooded into the room. He covered his eyes while adjusting to it. Thin grass covered the ground just outside of the dome, but he couldn’t see any further. A thick layer of fog blocked his visibility. Stepping onto the grass, he felt the moist air of fog.
“Where are we?”
He didn’t know, but anything was better than where they came from. Samantha’s worried face stared into his. If his thoughts weren’t clouded from procedures, he could say something t
o her intelligent, comforting. “Not there, I think. And that’s all that matters.”
Samantha glanced back at the open steel door. Was she thinking the same thing? They may never see anyone they have ever known again. Joey didn’t know the codes and knew most likely he would choose an unfamiliar place. He rubbed the steel bracelets on his wrists as he tried to look deeper into the fog. A few small bushes materialized and what looked like a path.
“I think I see something,” Joey said.
Taking her hand, he pulled her, but she pulled back, not moving. “Wait.” She ran back to the steel door and dragged her foot toward him, creating a line in the grass. “We need to make sure we can get back here if needed.”
He should have thought of that. He dragged his foot as well, making two lines to the dirt path. Samantha pulled branches off a nearby bush and created an arrow on the ground, pointing toward the door.
The preparations made him nervous. Something existed here, a path was laid out in front of them. It went in both directions.
“Which way?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Left.”
Not able to see more than ten feet in front of them, they walked down the path lined with manicured bushes. Joey felt for his guns that weren’t there.
“You hear that?” Samantha asked.
He did hear it, the sound of water trickling. The path ahead ran around a fountain with a woman pouring out water from a pot. Joey sighed in relief as the statue depicted a human. They were on a world of humans. Maybe, with some sort of luck, they were on earth. He had feared they could end up on a planet with Arracks, or worse, Ryjack. The water in the pond below the statue was murky and as they passed it, Joey put his hand in the spilling water and smelled it. It didn’t have any unusual odors.
“Look,” Samantha said.
The fog rolled around the edges of a stone building. As they got closer, the shape of the building emerged—two stories tall, with a chiseled stone exterior, wood windows, and a tile roof. Like a medieval manor.