THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

Soon.”  I gave her a meaningful look I hoped she understood – that she had to be in shape to run the minute we found a way out of here. When her infection-dulled eyes lit with understanding and she nodded, I turned to Tony. “I don’t know what a bus is, short or otherwise, but I’m not throwing you under anything. Take care of Gabby while I’m gone and...be ready when I return.”
    As if the day hadn’t been filled with enough surprises, for once Tony not only was speechless, he actually looked like he agreed with me.
    I then rose and strode over to the three waiting for me. I nodded toward Callan. “You ready?”
    “Rayen!” Gabby pushed up to her knees, refusing Tony’s offer to help her up, which would have meant his fingers touching her exposed arm.
    Seeing her in such pain twisted my gut. “Yeah, Gabby?”
    “Be safe.” Her eyes said a whole lot more. “And come back.”
    “Plan on it.”  My gaze slid to Jaxxson who had waited next to the opening that had once again appeared in the wall. He didn’t look any happier about the arrangement than I was, but I didn’t care. My words were as hard as stone when I warned the healer, “I promise you I will be back, and I had better find her safe and healthy.” 
    I didn’t wait for a reply as I turned, following Callan and Mathias out the door into the purple light that was becoming a noticeably darker reddish-purple.
    Once outside and far enough away from the hut that neither Gabby nor Tony could easily hear them, Callan glanced over his shoulder at me. “It’s unwise to offer promises you have no way of knowing for sure you can fulfill.”
    “What? Telling Gabby and Tony that I was coming back?”  I’d already fought one croggle practically alone, so how much harder could it be this time? If he hoped to rattle my confidence, he wasted his breath. I simply pointed out, “Croggles don’t seem too hard to kill.”
    Callan’s lips curved with a knowing smile when he cast another look at me. “The croggle you fought was a clumsy adolescent. The ones living around the transender site we go to now are full-grown creatures. Three times as large. Can’t be stopped with a spear and not the least bit clumsy.”
    Now he tells me. “So how do we kill it?”
    “That is the problem of the one keeping it busy if there is a child to save.”
    I didn’t even waste my breath asking who he intended to send out to be croggle bait.
     

CHAPTER 18
     
    If I die here, how long will it take my dad to notice I’m missing if the school doesn’t notify him?
    Months. And Gabby considered that generous on her part.
    One school hadn’t noticed when she’d missed classes for two weeks.
    She followed along behind Jaxxson, ignoring him since he ignored her. Outside the isolation unit, everything in the village was cast in intense reddish-purples from that jacked up sky. Moving around had given her a small burst of energy, or an adrenaline spike over facing a new unknown. She kept forcing one foot in front of the other, struggling to catch her breath in the humidity that wrapped around her and squeezed, reminding her of childhood summers in Saigon, Bangkok and Singapore. Mostly Singapore. Surviving that had been hard enough after her mom cashed out, but then her dad buried himself so deep in his work he’d forgotten he had a daughter.
    A burden he’d pawned off on one private school after another since then.
    She coughed and stumbled, catching her balance. Must not lag behind the grouchy healer from this weird world.
    “Drink more of the water I gave you unless you enjoy coughing,” Jaxxson said without turning around. The only words he’d spoken to her since leaving the neon-green hut this group used for a jail. “And keep up. You’re not the only one who needs my attention.”
    She caught what his terse words hadn’t said, that she imposed on his valuable time. Especially since he considered her an enemy, some freaky whatever they kept calling her, Tony and Rayen–techno-somethings. As if.
    She had the brain power to be a techno-whiz, but lacked the passion for anything mechanical or electronic. Numbers she loved, the rest? Bleh.
    Jaxxson crossed into a less dense area. Not wide open like the grassy space where the metal pod had spit them out, more like trails wrapped in between trees where the underbrush had been cleared. Lots of trails, tons of big trees but no people, except for the sound of children, but she couldn’t see any. The trees