THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

my gaze in the direction he pointed and saw a very small bear-type animal, all fluffy and furry until the critter’s neck extended once again as long as its body. Half its head opened up to expose three rows of lethal, slicing fangs that were almost as large as the animal’s wide paws.
    “What is that?” I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Callan made a snort sound.
    “It’s called a muttrapper.” 
    “Is it as lethal as it looks?”
    “Worse. Each of those teeth is tipped in poison.”
    “Nice mutt-whatever. Be a nice mutt-rapper,” I murmured as I sidestepped around the critter. “Guess this means you’re saving me for the croggle.” 
    He glanced at me, puzzlement staining his expression. “If I wanted to feed you to something, I’d have told you to pet the muttrapper.”
    He’d sounded insulted. What’d I say wrong? “Just joking. I appreciate the warning,” I said to his back as he marched ahead. This bunch didn’t have much sense of humor.
    Fine by me. Now, I could drop my mask of subservient prisoner and focus on the important things, like keeping track of where I was in relation to the village.
    Callan followed a trail deeper into landscape thick with vines as large as my legs, leaves of yellow, red and rust.
    I tried to memorize as many landmarks as possible in order to return on my own if I needed to, but the trees were so huge they blocked out any distant view. So I started noting shapes of trees like the one I’d just passed that hunched over like an ancient elder. Another towering one dead ahead split into five arms, with long, thin branches like fingers reaching toward the changing sky. Everything in this place seemed oversized, twisted and lethal.
    What made this place a sphere? That’s what Mathias had called it. Who were Callan, Mathias, Zilya and the others, and where had they come from if this was not their home?
    They clearly weren’t happy about being here and it wasn’t by choice, so what had happened? Were they prisoners, too? Maybe I could convince them to work with us and find a way home...but where was their home?
    And what was the possibility of Callan working with Tony–the one he’d deemed an enemy tek-nah-tee beyond any doubt–in any lifetime? Zero.
    That put me back to where I’d started, which wasn’t much of a place to be, considering I had no idea what the word “home” meant to me either. And if I didn’t get back to the Institute, I wouldn’t find out what information my fingerprints had revealed.
    Even if I did, would that give me my memory?
    What about that healer who was hopefully taking care of Gabby? Could he heal more than the body? Like finding my lost memories? I asked Callan, “Can your healer work on any part of the body?”
    Callan snapped at me, “You feeling ill?”
    “No.”
    “Then be quiet and keep up.”
    So much for a friendly conversation.
    I managed to stay on pace just fine and, like Callan, I moved ghost-quiet in this setting, which made me wonder if being in the wild was familiar to me. Had I hunted at one time?
    Slipping up close to him, I whispered, “Right behind you.”
    Smooth muscles flexed with his fluid movements. The mottled colors on his skin shifted a tiny bit. Did emotion affect the change? He’d never admit I’d surprised him.
    With Etoi and Zilya moving along seven to eight steps ahead of Callan, I tried once more to engage the hard-nosed warrior in a conversation. “Why are you here?”
    He wouldn’t answer.
    “What is this place? Did you get into trouble to be sent here?”
    He sent an implacable expression over his shoulder that should unnerve me if I had that kind of temperament, but I was finding I didn’t have many docile bones in my body.
    I kept verbally poking at him, telling myself it was only to get information. Not because I wanted to break through that stony wall and make him interact with me as someone other than a prisoner. “How long have you been here?”
    “Be quiet, tek-nah-tee,” he growled.
    “Thought I made it clear that I am not a tek-nah-tee.”
    “Anyone who walks with the enemy and protects the enemy is the enemy.”
    That told me the cost of defending Tony and stepping in to take his place. “You going to tell me what a tek-nah-tee is?”
    “Vermin. You’re all vermin.”  He spat the words.
    Vermin? That sounded familiar. “You think I’m a...rodent? A rat?”
    He shook his head as if to himself and muttered something that would be dark if it had