THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

truth, but in the end she scoffed at me. “Don’t think to play tricks with me. They won’t work. You know very well where you are since there is no way for you to be here without a tek knowing. And what’s that on your leg? We don’t wear anything like that.” She pointed to the restraint banding my ankle.
    I hesitated to answer. I didn’t want to say I’d been cuffed as a security measure since that would give this bunch even more reason to think of me as a threat.
    Etoi’s smug smile deepened. “Obviously another tek device you plan to use against us.”
    “You’re wrong.” 
    Quick as a thought, Callan was once again marching only one step ahead of Etoi, his back an imposing figure that dwarfed her. She didn’t realize he’d returned. He swung his head around, dark eyes scanning over his shoulder. His gaze settled first on me, pausing long enough for me to cock an accusatorial eyebrow at him that turned his face even harder, then his eyes landed impatiently on Etoi.
    He spoke in a quiet voice ripe with iron authority. “Take a flank position, Etoi.”
    She tensed at having been caught disobeying his earlier order to be silent and clenched her lips in a rigid line before nodding. Moving six feet to my right, she took point over a string of children walking parallel with our line.
    I slowed briefly, thinking. How’d I know the word point meant to take the lead? Another puzzle piece slipped through my fractured thoughts.
    No one deviated from that arrow-straight direction until we approached a puke-green fog hovering just above the low-growing jungle vegetation. I could probably stretch my hands from one side to the other across the patch of mist. 
    “Is that green crap what I’m smellin’ that stinks so bad?” Tony asked no one in particular. “What is that stuff?”
    Callan lifted his hand and signaled to his line of children as he angled his direction to avoid the green mist.
    Never-let-it-go Tony quipped, “You fight monster croggles, but you’re afraid of a little fog?”
    When Callan once again didn’t respond, Etoi couldn’t pass up an opportunity as her group came closer to ours with Callan’s shift in direction. She clearly wouldn’t be silenced for long, which made me wonder at her status in this group. Her smile lacked kindness when she said, “As if you don’t know the fog will peel the skin off your bones...slowly, and painfully. However, if you wish to pretend otherwise, by all means step into it. I’d enjoy hearing you scream.”
    Tony scoffed at her. “Dream on, babe.” 
    Guess she didn’t rank being called sweet cheeks or sweet cakes.
    In the next few steps, the fog was just ahead and to the left of Callan as he shifted the line right, giving the stench zone a wide berth.
    I wrinkled my nose at the rotting sweet-sour smell. Just how dangerous could a patch of green translucent fog be?
    As deadly as a pretty flower?
    What gave it the rotting odor?
    I tossed a warning over my shoulder to Tony and Gabby. “Let’s not test it, okay?”
    Tony answered, “Got no plans to touch any of this crap even if it does sound like Amazon girl’s only tryin’ to yank our chains.”
    Etoi pointed at a small, pink lizard-looking creature with a perfectly round head and eyes at the ends of two prongs that stuck off the top. “Perhaps the eegak will teach you a lesson.”  She aimed her wooden sword to prod the funny-looking lizard that had brown and white dots splattered across its pink body. It scurried between the broad leaves of low-growing plants, the pencil-shaped body and tail stretched as long as my forearm.
    All at once, the lizard paused, head sticking up, tongue flickering. Etoi poked the sword tip again and the lizard took off at a run, bulging eyes locked ahead as it raced and lunged into the fog.
    At first contact, the lizard squealed a hideous high-pitched sound as its skin literally peeled off its little body. Small legs kicked at a phantom attacker as it writhed in a grotesque ball of muscle and bone. And then pifft , like water hitting a hot surface, it disappeared.
    That explained the disgusting smell.
    Gabby gagged as if she was going to throw up. “Gross.”
    Tony just whistled. “Daa-yum.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Etoi’s calm face during the whole event. I asked, “It doesn’t bother you to see something innocent die that way?”
    She kept marching forward as she spoke. “Most animals know to avoid the fog unless they’re being