by Nick Ryder
She’d been tempted to share those concerns with Marie. More likely than not, the facility would be attacked while they were out searching for the tribe, and they would come back to a slaughter.
Lisa stopped abruptly. “Halt!” she called.
Everyone obeyed except Elaine, Cara and Marie, who gathered around Lisa, who had stuck her paw straight in the middle of pattern.
“She’s getting better, you have to admit,” Elaine said. “This one looks way more complicated than the last.”
“Do you think it means they were in this spot longer?” Cara asked.
“Maybe. It looks pretty fresh.”
“Wait.” Marie crouched down at the side. “They’re always completely symmetrical, aren’t they?”
“Normally. This one is too.” Lisa crouched down further too, grimacing at the disruption her paw had caused. It made it difficult to tell exactly what was where it was supposed to be, and what wasn’t.
“No it isn’t. Look at this corner.” Marie gestured to it with an outstretched hand. “There are a bunch of sticks missing to make it even to the rest.”
“That might be something Lisa did when she stepped in it,” Cara said.
“I don’t think so. She didn’t come near this bit, or the other edges.”
“So you think it’s unfinished?” Lisa asked.
“Yes.”
“None of the others have been unfinished.” Lisa stood and did a three-sixty turn. She frowned. “There’s no way they should have been hidden if they camped here. We should have been able to spot them.”
It was still early on in the search for the tribe and that meant they hadn’t gotten that far away from the village or the facility yet. This quadrant specifically Lisa hadn’t held out much hope for because it was mainly flat land. There was a small rocky formation nearby that would have sheltered them from the view of the facility, but only if there numbers were much smaller than anyone had previously thought.
“You don’t think there could be less than thirty of them, do you?” Lisa asked. “Surely not.”
“We haven’t seen more than thirty together at a time.”
“No, but they’re daring to challenge a village of two-hundred and fifty people. They must be stronger than thirty people.”
“We don’t know anything about them. That’s what they’re relying on. They came to my doorstep with twenty people and I let him strangle me and then walk away.” Cara started to pace. “They’ve been playing us for fucking fools.”
“It’s just a possibility,” Lisa said. “But I don’t know how else they could have camped here without us seeing. Not for long enough for someone to make a pattern that complex, either.”
“And it was unfinished,” Marie reminded them. “Maybe that means they had to move on suddenly.”
“It looks fresh.” Elaine crouched down at the side of the pattern and looked at the pattern. “It’s barely been covered by the sand at all. If Lisa hadn’t stood in it it wouldn’t have been disturbed at all.”
“They’re nearby.” Cara stood up and flexed her fingers. “They’re nearby. Come on, let’s go.”
“There aren’t any tracks.” Lisa wasn’t as quick to enthusiasm. “It can’t be that recent.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Elaine started pacing too. Her lizard shifted its weight in the sand, uncomfortable at the tension emanating from the group. The rest of the animals didn’t have a personal enough connection to be bothered by the stress that was beginning to show.
“They’re nearby,” Cara said. “They must be walking in each other’s footsteps, then smoothing their tracks away. It’s pretty standard practice if you don’t want to be followed through the sand.”
Lisa, Elaine and Marie looked at each other. They’d never bothered to do that. They were powerful, but they weren’t completely used to this life yet. It was still just a few months ago, seemingly, that they’d been living their normal human lives in the pre-Change world.
Desert-dwelling hadn’t become the norm quite yet.
“So let’s go then,” Lisa said. “We’ll only be searching the same.”
But it did make a difference. This time their spirits were lifted. They noticed things they probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Animal tracks that stopped suddenly but didn’t have an animal – dead or alive – at the end of them. Broken twigs with no explanation as to their origin. A carving on the trunk of a stumpy tree.
“It looks like a similar pattern, doesn’t it?” Marie asked.
“I’d have said so,” Cara agreed.
“There’s even less cover here than there was at the last pattern,” Lisa said, agitated. “Maybe they’ve split up into tiny groups. Maybe the patterns are messages for each other rather than a sign for us to follow.”
“Maybe they’re a trap,” Marie said uneasily. “I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it? The only sign they’ve ever left.”
“No,” Cara dismissed. “We know what it is. Now let’s keep following it.”
“We’re not following it, we’re walking aimlessly and stumbling across them. It’s not a path, there’s no way of knowing where the next one is. They’re not sheltering in places that have cover, or following any kind of logical pattern. It makes no sense.”
“I wish Sol was here,” Elaine said, kicking the dirt. “He’s good at figuring this stuff out.”
“We can talk to him about it tonight,” Lisa said. “But until then we’ll just keep searching. May as well get him as much information as we can.”
Elaine’s lizard shifted its weight again, burrowing down in the sand a little. Elaine went and patted its head. “It’s okay, we’re going now.”
“Wait,” Lisa said. The lizard only got agitated when others were agitated, and they’d just come to an agreement not been arguing. She watched the lizard continue to fidget even as Elaine stroked its back.
Cara’s lizard was struggling to stay still, too.
“There’s something here,” Lisa said. “Something the lizards don’t like.”
“He just doesn’t like the disagreeing,” Elaine soothed. “We’re normally nice and friendly to each other.”
“We weren’t disagreeing.”
“We are right now.”
“Just listen to me,” Lisa barked, and everyone was immediately quiet. “There’s something here.” And they believed her. When she gave a command, it wasn’t usually something that was argued with.
“Something like what?”
“Something that’s making the lizards unhappy. It’s like they can sense something.”
“They must be able to hear or smell it,” Marie said. She lifted her own face to the sky, but her sense wasn’t as advanced as the lizards. “I can’t smell anything.”
They became deadly silent for a moment, waiting for inspiration to dawn on them. For something to move and them to hear it, or a whiff of whatever the lizards had caught a scent of to pass underneath their noses.
Instead they got a dart straight to the chest of one of the wolves.
It cried out in pain, but didn’t go down. It eased the crossbow bolt from its chest with its jaw. It must have just missed the heart.
But there was no one to fire back at.
“What’s happening?” Marie asked, voice wavering.
“Crossbows are short range,” Lisa hissed. “They’re nearby.”
But there was no cover, and they couldn’t see anyone.
Then the glamour fell.
The tribe appeared all around them, weapons pointed inwards. There were nearly fifty, all stood and ready to fight.
“Shit,” Cara hissed.
One of the tribe must have a superpower that allowed then to shield the group from visibility. No wonder they’d been able to camp without anyone noticing. It was a powerful thing, and Lisa’s first thought was to wonder what Sol could do with a superpower that strong.
Her second thought was to dodge out of the way of an arrow headed straight for her face.
; She bent her back and twisted away, having only a few seconds to take stock of their predicament and start giving orders.
But the orders were the biggest question mark. Everyone would be able to hear whatever she shouted, and that left her at an immediate disadvantage, especially given that she could see the man who had been leading the group that raided the facility among the crowd. He could already read their moves before they happened somehow – if she started shouting instructions she would have given him an even bigger advantage than he already possessed.
So she could think of only one order to give.
“Retreat!”
It felt comical to shout such a thing, but there wasn’t a chance in hell she was actually going to shout run the fuck away.
But their animals had instincts of their own. They could follow any command that Lisa gave them, but that didn’t mean they didn’t possess their own autonomy. They had enough wherewithal to interpret her general intent to concrete actions that would achieve the right ends.
And that left Lisa free to try and make her own escape.
Shouting the command had drawn attention to her as a leader, and she drew immediate attention because of that. Three men dived on her, swords and daggers drawn and aimed straight at the most lethal areas.
But they were just human, and she wasn’t. She drew her own daggers and easily dodged the attacks by the tribe.
When her dagger sliced through the throat of the man beside her, she experienced a sudden and crippling doubt.
Another human. Someone just like her and she’d killed them without hesitation.
That doubt meant she was struck in the side of the head with the butt of a knife and momentarily knocked off balance.
She wouldn’t hesitate again. This wasn’t the same world that she’d just left behind. This was something new and different, somewhere where the same rules didn’t apply.
It was her or them, and she fully intended it to be her.
The two men were dispatched with her next move. Dodging beneath their simultaneous attacks and then stabbed through the chest with her daggers when they were recovering from their attempted strikes.
She had a brief second to look around. They were following her instructions, acting in tandem to create a pathway through the surrounding tribesmen to charge through.
She knew that on land they had a speed advantage. They’d been bred for speed, it was one of the easiest things to add to a hybrid creature. But to get that free path across the desert they needed a way out, that it wasn’t presenting itself.
Brute force was their only option to break through the line of attackers. Lisa angled herself in the same direction as the rest of her army, and for a change, followed their lead as she attacked.
The biggest question mark was Cara, who Lisa saw from the corner of her vision as she leaped toward a group of four people, her halberd gleaming with the electric effects of her super power.
She was heading in the wrong direction.
Lisa had fought with Cara before when they’d defended the village against rogue attackers, and Cara had always been a passionate fighter, but it wasn’t erratic. She hadn’t been someone that had lunged out at the nearest enemy, determined to prove her brute strength.
Maybe the power struggle in the village was affecting her more than she was willing to let on.
It wasn’t Lisa’s concern, anyway. She sought out Elaine to make sure she hadn’t clocked Cara and decided to throw away her own logic to help her. Elaine was busy fighting her way through the line of enemies with her lizard, though. She was heading in the right direction.
Retreating, like Lisa had said.
Elaine might like Cara, but Lisa knew her command wasn’t in any doubt. She had the trust from her subordinates. It was for two reasons. Both because she didn’t assert herself as being in charge unless it was absolutely necessary; that she treated them with compassion otherwise. But also because her command had been tried and tested in dangerous situations countless times by now.
Sol had been kept in the dark about a lot of their goings on in the world outside the facility, but in reality they ran into danger a lot more often than he suspected. Mutant creatures who, although not equipped with a human brain, were a genuine threat to the party, had attacked them plenty of times. They’d come away with scrapes, and they’d come away with bigger injuries they’d spent entire run home thinking of ways to hide from Sol so that he didn’t restrict their adventures outside the facility.
Because as sure as she was of her authority over the rest of the girls, she knew that Sol’s authority was even more concrete. He had brought them all together, and his main motivation was always to keep them and their home safe. He knew what he was doing, and they would always cede to his command.
Just like with her, they could have a discussion, but when he said his piece in the voice that told him he was serious, they would rally behind him in a heartbeat.
Elaine, Marie and the rest of their army were doing that right now. Fighting tooth and nail to to get through the crowd of people ahead of them while watching their back against the tribesmen that had already realized what their strategy was and were heading them off.
Lisa put Cara out of her mind and focused on the task ahead.
She didn’t know why they were bothering to ally with Cara in the first place. Sure, Cara knew more information about the tribe, and sure she was willing to volunteer fighters in the cause against the tribe, but Lisa had absolute faith in Sol, the facility, Elaine and Marie and the animals they lived with. They didn’t need Cara, no matter how powerful she was.
No matter what she’d said to Marie, she had doubts about Sol’s focus on his body too. She wanted him to hurry up and get into one, so that they could move forward together toward their real objective, which Lisa had always thought was discovering the truth about what had happened and trying to make the best of the new world, not just for them, but for everyone.
Right now there wasn’t going to be anything to focus on if they didn’t get out of this alive though.
One blast from Cara’s powers in their direction and they would have been home free, but she had her own agenda and other things in her mind, things Lisa couldn’t read.
She wondered if one of these people had the super power of reading other people’s minds. She might forgive Sol for being obsessed with getting that one.
She was a fighter in her own right though, and she didn’t rely on super powers, per se, to win her battles.
Her daggers hit their mark time and time again as she dashed forward, easily dodging attacks and sending enemies to the ground, dead or with injuries.
Not everyone was as easy to take down.
She bared her teeth when she came up against the same man that had led the attacks into the facility.
He looked lethal, spurred on by a glint of true hatred in his dark brown eyes. He was going to give nothing but his best, and it had taken the releasing of a feral eagle to stop him in his tracks last time they’d met up.
But Lisa had been thinking about their fight, about how she’d been unable to best him. This time she was more prepared.
She was going to have to rely on faked attacks if she had any chance of taking him on. She could call for help from her creatures, but they were making good work of breaking through. Distracting this guy by herself would give Elaine and Marie the best chance of escape.
She fully committed to attack on his right side. Any pulling of her punch until the last minute would give him the knowledge to dodge her. They’d decided it must be either heightened reflexes or the ability to read micro movements that telegraphed intent that he must rely on.
So she had to go hard, twisting only at the very last moment to the left. She was horizontal in the air for a moment, dragging her daggers across the stomach of the man. They didn’t pierce his furs, but it did throw him enough that he raised his arms. That was when she made her real move, twisting so she could stab her right dagger into his armpit.
But it was the kind of attack that took it out of her, that made her weak for a few seconds afterward as she landed heavily in a roll. She caught her breath and hoped she may have startled him enough to put him out of action. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d ever been in a situation where he got hurt before.
She miscalculated. She should have known, based on her other interactions with him, that it would be rage not fear that took control.
He barreled toward her, but his attacks were significantly worse than his defence and Lisa rolled again, easily avoiding him.
Now she had to land another attack though. Dodging forever would exhaust her eventually, and that was if she didn’t make a mistake that got her severely injured first. He might lack technique, but she had to remember that he could read which way she was going to dodge, too.
And then there was the time that he’d jumped into the air and stayed there far longer than any human should have been able to, too. That was a wild card she didn’t fully understand.
Thoughts swirled as she dodged again. This one was much more narrow, and she felt the tip of his sword nick her forearm.
It was all or nothing when she decided to attack.
So she intended to make it count.
She ran at him suddenly, going low to avoid his outstretched swords with the intent of pulling up at the last second to plunge her daggers into his throat.
She made a major miscalculation, she realized, when he lifted his boot to counter her.
“Shit,” she hissed, trying to stop herself in her tracks, but moving too fast to do so. She’d forgotten the blades on his boots. How could she have forgotten? She’d watched the footage of the invasion of the facility so many times, spent so many evenings thinking every aspect of it through while Sol fixated on his body and Marie and Elaine relaxed together.
All that preparation and she’d faltered at the last minute.
This was why they needed Sol. She was powerful, she commanded respect, but she hadn’t spent over ten years as a soldier. His direction would have saved her life.