Nightrise

as Joe had said, why would anyone be looking for them here? He examined the tepee where Daniel had been sleeping. It looked like the genuine article, made out of animal skin with a simple pattern of interlocking lines around the base. The sun was low in the sky, making the mountains glow a deep red. Nothing moved, apart from the fingers of flame, licking at the dead wood, and the trickle of smoke, folding in on itself as it climbed up.
    He glanced at Daniel. "How are you?"
    "I'm good." Daniel sighed. "But I'd like to go home now. Joe has a cell phone but there's no reception here. I haven't even been able to phone my mom."
    "Can you tell me about Silent Creek?" Jamie asked. He paused. "Can you tell me about Scott?"
    "There's not much to tell." Daniel sat down on the other side of the campfire. "They grabbed me when I was on my way home from school and they took me there. There were sixteen of us in the Block. I was the youngest. There were four girls. The rest were boys." He thought for a moment. "The first month was the worst. They did these experiments. They had this idea that I had some sort of power. That was what they were interested in. They were looking for kids with powers."
    'You saw into the future."
    "Did my mom tell you that?"
    Jamie nodded.
    "It only ever happened a couple of times, and it wasn't like seeing the future. It was more like having a bad feeling. There was a bus that crashed and I sort of knew it was going to happen and maybe that's how they found out about me, because it got into the newspapers. Anyway, they tried to make me do it again and when I couldn't, they hurt me. They had a special room. They said that was the only place in Silent Creek where my power would work, but it didn't make any difference because there was nothing I could do and after a bit they lost interest in me."
    That at least explained one thing that Jamie hadn't understood — why he had been unable to force Max Koring to do what he wanted. He had thought his power had failed. But it was the location of the prison that was to blame. A natural phenomenon — perhaps some sort of natural magnetism — had neutralized him. Nightrise had left nothing to chance.
    "They were searching for the Five," Jamie muttered. It was suddenly obvious to him.
    "They called it the Psi project," Daniel went on. "The other kids were from all over America. It was the same for all of us. They did the tests. They hurt us. Then they left us alone. After that, we were just kept in prison, which sucked because we hadn't done anything wrong. Billy was afraid they would kill us one day — if they didn't need us anymore."
    "Who was Billy?"
    "He was my friend. I'm sorry we had to leave him behind. I hope he's okay."
    "Tell me about Scott."
    "Scott was the last to arrive. That must have been three or four weeks ago. He had the cell next to mine and I saw him before they began on him." Daniel saw Jamie flinch. "I'm sorry…" he muttered.
    "How badly did they hurt him?"
    "Well, they took him away and I know they must have done a lot of bad things because after a few days he wouldn't talk to me anymore. He wouldn't talk to anyone. The bald man was working on him…Mr.
    Banes." Daniel paused. "I wish I'd actually seen that arrow hit him but I was looking the other way. Joe told me what happened.
    "We knew Scott was important to them, because this woman arrived. She was thin and scrawny with gray hair and a face like a sort of rotten fruit. We'd only ever seen her once before. Everyone was scared of her."
    "Do you know her name?"
    Daniel shook his head. "She never said who she was."

    There was one more thing Jamie wanted to know although he almost dreaded putting it into words.
    "What happened to Scott?" he asked. "What did they do with him?"
    "I don't know, Jamie. I'm sorry. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. Nobody knew where they took him."
    So that was it.
    It was the same as Joe had told him. Jamie felt a wave of black despair but he forced it away. He wasn't going to give in. He remembered everything that Matt had said. He had led an army and fought in a war…even if it had been in another world at another time. The strange thing was, there wasn't a single part of him that believed it hadn't happened, or that the whole experience had been some sort of fantasy, imagined while he lay unconscious. He knew it was real. And Joe recognized him for what he was. One of the Five. Whatever happened, he would find Scott — no matter how long it