Chapter 9: Tracking

Chenn rolled out of his sleeping bag, groaning at the stiffness of his muscles. He hadn’t slept on the ground much before. In fact, the only time he’d ever done so was when his family occasionally went camping. But that had stopped when he was eight because his dad had died, and his mom hadn’t wanted to go. She’d taken him to museums instead. Even that had stopped three years later when his mom died in a car accident. So mundane and unoriginal. So normal. He wished every day that she hadn’t died. Now no one but he remembered her.

He’d gone into an orphanage after that. Five years after that, the accident had happened and he’d gone to jail. He still had nightmares about the girl’s pale face and the scream of heartbreak that had torn from the very core of the other girl. He remembered the wide eyes of the living girl brimming with tears. He remembered nothing but those eyes. Those tears because someone she loved was gone. He’d only found out months later at his trial that the girl he had supposedly killed was the weeping girl’s sister.

Shaking his head to clear those memories, Chenn stood. He rolled his sleeping bag up, still trying to work the kinks out of his muscles.

“You look really stiff this morning.” A soft voice drifted into his ear from a few feet away.

He whirled around, surprised. His heart thudded for a few moments, adrenaline pumping through his veins hot and wild. Then he saw who it was, and he calmed down. Kallie stood there in a sleek, formfitting nightgown and tight leggings.

He rubbed his neck. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

She looked at the ground, scuffing at the dirt with her bare foot. Shyly she looked up into his face and said, “I could help you. I used to work in a massage shop before I joined the MBC.”

Chenn shook his head, smiling gently. “Thanks, but I’ll live.”

She gave a slight smile in return. “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will.”

She turned and walked off. Chenn wasn’t planning on changing his mind. He didn’t like being touched, and he certainly didn’t want Kallie’s hands on his body. He’d had worse problems with his muscles, and a quick run would loosen him up. No need to deal with Kallie.

***

Nari tossed in her sleep. Somewhere an alarm was ringing. Sirens wailed. Her sister’s body lay before her. Blood everywhere. Her sister’s sightless stare.

Then her scream. The raw pure agony that couldn’t be suppressed came out. The boy stood still. He stared at her with his brilliant sapphire green-blue eyes. He held the gun loosely in his hand. Smoke lingered in the alley.

Nari gasped as the cold air hit her bare arms. She had kicked off her sleeping bag and was thrashing around on the ground. That needed to stop. She had to get good sleep at night. Besides that, she needed to be quiet while sleeping if she was going to sleep when her quarry did.

Worse yet, she was wet. It had rained during the night. She checked her equipment. Soaking wet. It was entirely useless. Just great.

She had set out to catch up with Amory’s party just two days ago. They only had a half hour start on her when she was briefed, but she’d had to spend another day to get equipped. If they had traveled through the night, they probably had a good two-day start on her.

Sighing irritably, she flicked her bedraggled hair out of her face.

She got up off the ground. All she wanted to do was banish the boy from her mind. The way his sapphire green eyes had stared at her in shock scared her. Her sister’s own sightless brown ones nearly caused her to double over in pain. She just wanted to forget the boy who had killed Hanna, and she wanted to forget the way Hanna looked when she was dead. She wanted to remember Hanna as she was before she died. Happy and beautiful. Hanna had been one of the most precious, beautiful parts of Nari’s life.

Shaking off her melancholy mood, Nari pulled a piece of wafer bread out of her backpack. It was wet too, but she didn’t have anything else. She set it aside and put all of her sleeping gear back onto the back of the backpack. Wet or not, she had no option but to keep moving. No time for stuff to dry. She hooked the backpack up onto her back, and then she picked up the wet wafer bread.

She started walking at a brisk, but maintainable pace while she ate. She knew she should be catching up with Amory’s party sometime in the next day, so she kept a sharp lookout for the group because she didn’t want to accidently stumble upon them.

The silence of the day nearly drove her mad. She wished she could sing, but that would be a terrible idea. If she were to come upon Amory’s group unawares, it would be a very bad outcome if they knew she was there before she knew where they were.

Around midday, Nari stopped to eat and rest. She checked her communication equipment again. Still wasn’t working. It didn’t even turn on. As she was doing so, she heard strange noises coming from ahead of her and to her right. People were laughing.

It wasn’t unusual in and of itself. After all, Nari was walking through a preserve that had placed camping grounds within its borders to allow campers to be near some of the site’s most interesting features. It was lunch time, though, so most campers would be out eating somewhere or still visiting special spots in the preserve. Not many of them would be sitting in a spot like this. There wasn’t even anything interesting to see.

She quietly packed her water and communication devices away, and then she crept towards the bushes. Her silent, lithe strides carried her quickly to where the group was.

In an instant, she knew. It was Amory’s group.

She crouched down in the bushes letting their voices drift to her.

Amory was speaking to the group.

“Alright, listen up men. We are, as I’m sure the smartest of you have figured out by now, heading for East Gate. We will be taking over East Base. With any luck, my contacts and friends will already be working on taking it from within. I’ve contacted them already, and they said that they thought they could have the Base taken before we get there. Once we have East Base, we will work on fixing my fool brother’s mess. We will kick him and his cronies out of the MBC, and then we will establish a system that works far better!”

Nari wanted to laugh. The men were laughing and roaring their approval. Good thing they were out in the middle of nowhere or they would have been arrested for being so uproarious and crude. Not to mention the fact that they were talking about attacking something. Although humans would have no idea what the East Gate or Base was, so Nari supposed they would probably just put all the men into a mental facility for being insane.

She thought about what Amory had said. He hadn’t said anything at all about how he was going to fix Andrew’s “mess”. But he had acted as though Andrew was the villain. This made Nari think that perhaps Amory was tricking some of the men into following him. Would they all still follow him if they knew that he was the one behind all the reports of problems on Earth?

Andrew had checked the systems before she left, and it was quite clear that someone had been setting the sudden wave of magical creatures from the Dark Realms very carefully. All the evidence pointed to Amory.

She stayed silent, and then she heard a calm, resonant voice begin speaking.

“You say that we’ll take over East Base. Fine. You say you have agents in place there already. We don’t have any way of knowing, but we’ll believe you on that. But when you say that you’re going to establish a system that works better than the one currently in place, I have to ask you what. The problem here isn’t the system. It’s your brother, Andrew, and all of his minions. So why get rid of the system unless you have some hidden motive for it?”

Here was a rational mind. Nari was glad someone was using his brain instead of mindlessly following Amory’s fraud.

She heard Amory laugh. “Are you questioning me? Chenn, lad, question my brother if you must question someone. Don’t forget that Andrew rearranged the systems when he became the MBC leader. If anything, the system itself is corrupt too because my brother set it up.”

Nari gazed about from her place of ensconcing trying to locate Chenn.

She saw him then. He was standing in a steady, unwavering stance, arms folded across his broad, muscular chest, feet planted in a warrior’s stance. He stared intensely at Amory.

“That isn’t so, Amory. Andrew didn’t reform the overall system. We’ve had the same system for decades. He didn’t even remake the security system that you’re about to say he did. You remade that.”

Nari glanced back at Amory. His face had gone red, and he was staring hatefully at Chenn.

Good job, Chenn. The first thing you do is make enemies with the person who leads the little group you joined. Smart. He can make life miserable for you, but making him angry isn’t a problem. Nari sarcastically noted.

“I wasn’t going to say any such thing about the security, Chenn!” Amory answered.

His face was tight, and his jaw muscle twitched. His voice was controlled, but the things that he wasn’t thinking about, such as the twitch of his fingers and jaw muscles, betrayed his true feelings. Not only that, Nari could tell from his rigid posture that he was lying. He would have mentioned the security system, but Chenn had cut him off. Not a smart move with someone like Amory.

What did Chenn think he was doing? Did he want to end up dead? Idiot. Making Amory mad, and stripping him of credibility was a foolish move.

She remained, watching silently from behind the bushes.

Chenn shrugged at Amory’s comment. “You’re the boss, so whatever you say.”

Amory gave a tight smile. Chenn was mocking him even in apparent submission, and Amory knew it.

Nari wanted to shout at Chenn in frustration. She paused in her thought stream a moment. Why did she care if Chenn made an idiot of Amory and got himself into danger? It wasn’t as if she really cared or liked Chenn in any way. It’s because I’m a decent human being, and I don’t want anyone to get killed for mistakes like this. She shut the thought off. She couldn’t help Chenn anyway. No one could know she was hearing them, and if she stood up and started shouting at Chenn, she’d immediately incriminate herself. They’d probably kill her if she did that, and more than likely, Chenn would simply stand by watching and approving.

Chenn smiled back at Amory. It was a cocky smile. It screamed I’m in charge, and Nari didn’t like the way things were shaping up at all.

Amory took a deep breath. “Well, now that we’ve settled that, let’s move out. Everybody get your gear packed. We’re only a day’s march from East Base.”

Nari’s stomach tightened. She felt like throwing up. There was no way that she could stop them from reaching East Gate on her own, and there wasn’t enough time to get help to stop them. Not only that, if Amory was telling the truth, there were many people on East Base who were traitors. East Base would fall before anyone could do anything to stop the inevitable.

She stayed crouched in her position behind the bushes. It was uncomfortable, but at least she wasn’t going to be spotted. Her own clothing was the same green as the bushes, fortunately, and she wasn’t moving.

She watched as the group packed up their gear. Her heart thumped rapidly in her chest as a few people passed right by her bush, but she kept her breathing soft and unnoticeable. They passed by, and she was safe.

She had to wait nearly fifteen minutes before she could be sure they were gone. Her muscles screamed in agony as she clambered out of the bush, trying to keep quiet just in case. She took off at a dead run, eager to put as much distance between herself and Amory’s group as possible. She had to tell Andrew what his brother was planning. It wouldn’t make much of a difference, she knew that. But it might make some. Despite Amory’s vagueness on his true plans, Nari now knew he wanted to control the MBC. And if Andrew had been right about his brother’s motivations, Amory wanted not just the MBC, but also Earth. He wanted to be ruler of it all. If all those people knew that’s what he is planning, how many would follow? They aren’t likely to be allowed any important part in ruling the world if Amory succeeds. They’ll probably be killed or sent into exile so that they can never compete with Amory’s command again. And Chenn… He just set himself up for assassination. He’d better watch out or he’ll be dead as soon as Amory can manage it.

About a mile away from the clearing, she stopped, pulling out her communication equipment. She had to let Andrew know about the danger. She tried to turn the equipment on, but it wasn’t working. Oh, darn it all! The rain had destroyed the thing completely, and she couldn’t contact Andrew to tell him about the attack. She wouldn’t be able to reach him in time to prevent it either. She was three days away from West Base, and there was no way to get there before the rebels reached East Gate in one.

She would just have to hope that her communication device would start working again. Otherwise, East Base would fall. Of course, it would fall anyway even with her information. There was no way they could possibly get reinforcements to East Base in time to stop Amory and his thugs. Sighing, she put her stuff away again and trudged on.

***

Something wasn’t right. Chenn felt the hairs on his neck prickling as though someone was watching him. Of course, that was foolishness. After what he’d just said to Amory, everyone in the group was watching him. But it didn’t feel right.

Someone was watching and they weren’t supposed to be there. Chenn scanned the group and the surrounding area without making it apparent that was what he was doing. Amory might not think that anyone could possibly be watching or tracking them, but Chenn knew Indri. Indri and Andrew would send someone to spy on the rebels as soon as they got word about the escape.

If word had reached Andrew soon enough, the agent they sent could have caught up with them now. Whoever it was could be watching them now. The only consolation that Chenn had was that Amory was being vague on his plans. He had said that they would take East Base, but he hadn’t said anything detailed about what he was planning after that.

But that vagueness needled Chenn too. Why wouldn’t Amory tell his group what they were going to be doing? Why was he determined not to tell them what he was going to do with the MBC after he overthrew Andrew? What were his motivations? All of these questions were important and Chenn wanted answers. He was already starting to believe that following Amory hadn’t been the wise choice, but if he tried to run or escape from Amory’s little crew, Amory would chase him down and kill him. Chenn knew how relentless Amory was, and he had no wish to end up dead, so he would have to stay and see how things turned out.

Sighing, he dropped the fight that he’d picked with Amory. He simply shrugged his shoulders and told Amory he was boss. Even there he was behaving in a conciliatory way and telling Amory that he wasn’t boss, but Amory was the only one who knew it.

He packed his stuff up from lunch, and then he pulled on his backpack. He trudged along after everyone else, passing by the bushes boarding their clearing as he did so. He still felt jumpy and skittish, and he looked around the rim of the clearing, trying to locate the source of his discomfort. But he didn’t see anything, so he shrugged and walked after everyone else.