THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

spend time and resources on creating a new habitat, though we may have to as more and more children are sent here. Besides. . .”  He swept a look from side to side. “This area has its own threats, different than the jungle and the denser forest, but just as lethal.”
    I had so many questions to ask, it was hard to figure out where to begin. But I didn’t want to lose the chance to learn more with him willing to share.
    “Tell me what qualifies as a tek-nah-tee?”  When he made a grumbling sound at that, I added, “Please. If you’ll answer my questions, I’ll answer yours.”  
    Either my offer, or my tone, must have gotten through to him. Tension loosened in his shoulders.
    “Tek-nah-tee seek to control, and destroy, the world through technology.”
    “That leaves me out then.”  I pushed a mottled green leaf the size of my head out of the way of my face and admitted, “I don’t care one way or the other about technology. How else are you different from them?”
    Fine lines formed in his face when he frowned. “Tek-nah-tee have no gifts and don’t believe in ours.”
    “Gifts? Such as?”
    “Healing with hands or divination...via scrying, to name a couple of simple ones. I’ll not share all our abilities.”
    I didn’t blame him. Never give an enemy that kind of information and I was still marked as enemy. Gabby had just such an ability, or a gift. 
    But I wouldn’t expose her.
    Callan called that a simple ability...and healing with hands? Hadn’t we just done that? But what about the internal power I’d used to kill the vine and the croggles?
    Would he consider that a gift? 
    “You asked me to explain healing so how did you kill that croggle?” Callan asked again, as though he’d lifted my thoughts.
    “I was just thinking about that. Can you hear my thoughts?”
    “No. We have no bond.” 
    I didn’t know what he meant, but let it go to answer his question. “You felt energy when you helped me heal, right?”
    He nodded, albeit reluctantly.
    I explained the only way I could. “I start feeling this thing inside me, an energy, something stronger than just being a human. That’s as good as I can describe it. Anyhow, that energy starts building and releases when I need it...like when I had to kill the flower vine and the croggles.” 
    He didn’t need to know that I’d tried and failed to call up the energy a couple of times today. That’d make me, and Gabby and Tony, too vulnerable. Better to let him think I had a weapon I could use against him and Mathias should my group need one. Though I’d given my word I wouldn’t use it against Callan, neither could I let them kill my friends. If it came to that, I’d have to figure out something.
    Muscles in his jaw pulsed as he thought deeply. “How long have you had this power?”
    “I don’t know.” Seeing his quick temper flare, I held up my hands. “Before you get angry, give me a minute to explain.” 
    He sent a curt glance my way that warned he was losing patience. “I’m listening.”
    “I woke up this morning in the middle of a desert with no memory of who I am or where I came from.”
    That surprised him. “What desert? And how can you not know?”
    “I might have hit my head. I don’t know, but when I came to, a beast was chasing me and I ended up getting caught by people I didn’t know, then taken to a school I’d never seen.”
    “You recognized nothing?”
    Hearing interest in his question, I rushed on. “No, well, that’s not true. I did recognize the land and the mountains, but had never heard of the place where the school was located called Albuquerque.” 
    “I don’t know Albuquerque.”
    “What about the Sandia Mountains?”
    “No.”
    “Then you probably won’t know The Byzantine Institute of Excellence that we came from.”
    “No. Is this the school where your friend Tony said the computer sent you here?”
    I was encouraged to see him considering everything we’d told him even if he had slurred the word friend to remind me of my association with his perceived enemy. “Yes, but it didn’t really send us here so much as we got sucked into it and landed in what you call a transender.”   
    “Are you sure someone was not playing a prank on you? Could this computer be an advanced Cyberprocessor?”
    Colors flashed behind my eyes and alarms went off in my head. I’d heard that term. “I don’t think we were tricked since there were only three of us in an enclosed room when it