THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

me. Something had changed in the way Mathias viewed me and I had no reason to believe it was a positive change.
    Callan snapped around, pointing at Gabby. “You, stay with Jaxxson. A warning. When I’m in the village, he can reach me telepathically if he needs me.” 
    So that’s what had been happening when Callan exchanged looks with Mathias and that’s how Callan had heard about the little boy being in distress. I asked Gabby, “You sure you’re okay with Jaxxson?”
    “Yes.” 
    I believed her. She didn’t have that empty, don’t-step-too-close look in her face she’d worn when I first met her. Something profound had happened while Gabby had worked with the children and the healer.
    Or  because of something Jaxxson had done to her. 
    “You.” Callan speared his finger at me.
    How did I end up as ‘you’ again? “Forget my name?”
    He ignored my sarcasm. “The girl is Hy’bridt and the escaped prisoner you call a friend is TecKnati. That leaves the mystery of who you are. I’m tired of guessing. You will answer V’ru’s questions. He can discover who or what you are. Follow me.”
    My heart hammered my chest with two fists. He hadn’t even suggested that I might be MystiK. Not that I wanted to be, but right now that was the only winning side in the war these kids waged with the TecKnatis.
    On the other hand, wasn’t that what I wanted? To find out who I really was? Could this V’ru know my history, know who I was? And where I came from?
    If these children were from the future, maybe V’ru had information on the past. 
    On the surface, that sounded somewhat encouraging, until I considered the alternative.
    What if this elite MystiK V’ru decided I had some type of connection to the TecKnati? Callan spoke of him in reverence and Mathias would make his final decision based upon what V’ru alone revealed.
    What would Callan vote to do with me if V’ru declared me the enemy?

CHAPTER 27
     
    What had happened to the jungle?
    Tony kept taking in this forest, trying to figure out where that TeK scout was going. This place was just as funky looking, but not as dense as the jungle Tony had traveled through right after being dumped out of the pod. He doubted the thickly wooded, tree-looking growths that towered overhead, or the more open terrain at the base of the trees offered any more safety.
    ‘Specially for a Camden-raised dude.
    Eyeing the red moon through the canopy of branches, he used that marker to keep track of his direction since leaving the village. That moon kept sliding down.
    What happened in this place when the moon set?
    He swatted low-hanging branches that smelled like petro-chemicals out of the way and kept that scout, Phen, in sight. The Tek guy wound through knee-high, berry-covered bushes and trees with twisted limbs. If you could call these things he ran past trees.
    Trees were supposed to have brown or gray bark, not chartreuse stripes and tubular leaves. Not puffy and corkscrew shaped things in shades of black, pink and purple.
    Tony stumbled over jagged breaks in the ground that could be roots and pushed through a clump of spiky bushes that looked like the barbed wire on top of prison fences. Sweat stung his eyes, streamed down his neck and soaked his shirt.
    Where was this scout goin’? Why hadn’t he headed the other way through the jungle? Didn’t he want to snag a pod, or transender as Mathias had called it, and fly home? The guy moved through this big-ass forest as though he had a specific direction in mind, but kept lookin’ around as if he watched for someone. Or wanted to avoid someone. Who?
    Don’t let there be any other crazies out here running loose.
    What if this guy stayed somewhere in this place, like in a guard shack, and was heading there instead of back to a transender pod?
    Don’t think that way.
    This whole place was jacked-up crazy enough.
    Tony had never touched anything that could screw with his brain, but just this once, he almost wished he was trippin’ on acid. That’d mean there was an end to this nightmare. But no, he was lucid and breathin’ hard from more exercise than a Jersey boy needed to work on computers. The muggy air he slogged through reminded him of a heat wave in Camden last summer.
    Xena is cut out for this native crap. Not me.
    But Tony wouldn’t admit that to anyone.
    Once he found a way home, he’d prove who’d had the skills for gettin’ away from here.
    The scout slowed down just before the woods thinned