It’s well after dark when the group of five make camp off the side of the road, deep in the woods surrounded by hills. No fire, no light. All electronics turned off, and the batteries pulled out. Rachel looks around; Touch is unrolling his sleeping bag for Anea to sleep in. Touch and Rachel would alternate her sleeping bag when they alternated watches. Anea sits beside Rachel and they both lean up against a tree, rough bark pressing into their backs.

  Anea stares at Touch. She’s been stealing glances at him all day. Now she seemed to be wholly entranced by the sight of him. Rachel considers asking about it, but everyone seems as drained as her mind and body felt. Arch was already curled up next to Dill, fast asleep as their tiny chests rose and fell in a steady, asynchronous rhythm with each other.

  She didn’t want to get up. She didn’t want to talk. But there was still work to be done. She waits for Anea to go fast asleep in the bag before rising with the body of someone twice her age. She looks at Touch and juts her chin off to the side before walking in that direction herself. He follows.

  She leads him to a clearing well out of earshot, if they kept their voices down.

  “That can never happen again.” She states.

  “I know. I put everyone in danger. I’ll control myself next time. I couldn’t let them take her away, scared and alone.” He says, averting his gaze, keeping his voice flat and controlled.

  Rachel lets out a small laugh through her nose. “Oh no, we are most certainly doing that again. I’m talking about getting trapped in the city like that, and keeping secrets. If we are going to keep traveling together-” Touch suddenly looks up at her, eyes wide, before casting his gaze back down again with slumping shoulders.

  That’s what scares you, isn’t it? That I’d abandon you. That’s why you keep acting like a fucking dog that just shit all over the carpet.

  Rachel pushes aside any sympathy or pity for him as she continues.

  “-then we have to trust each other completely.” She puts a hand on his shoulder. He twitches away at first, then he stands up tall and looks at her.

  “We are all we got out here…” she says slowly.

  Even in the moonlight, Rachel can see tears well up and shine in her friend’s eyes.

  “What are y’all talking about?” Anea says from behind Touch, yawning and rubbing her face.

  You spooky bitch. Rachel thinks with a start as her hand falls to her stylus.

  “Nothing important. Go back to sleep.” Touch says with the kindest and firmest tone she had ever heard from him.

  “No, but what were you talking about, precisely.”

  Touch looks to Rachel, his tight lips pulled into a smirk.

  No more secrets. The two of them think in unison.

  “Ok, fine, let’s head back, and we’ll talk.” Touch says.

  Everyone gathers in a circle: Dill, Arch, Anea, Touch, and Rachel, who leads the discussion.

  “If we are going to make it out here, we can’t have any secrets or lies. We all need to know who we are dealing with, and what we are capable of, if we are going to stay a step ahead of the people who want to capture us. Kill us. Imprison us. And exploit us for their own gain. I’ll start.

  My name is Rachel Ross. I animated cartoons on the internet when the meteors fell. I had two pets birds, Aristide and Talia, who were drafted into the military mutation program after the first wave of wild divs proved unmanageable. I loved them like they were my own children, so I enlisted to become their handler.

  Together, we were all scouts for a little over a year before the government collapsed. Then we sought work with the Atla Corporation for half a year, doubling as a scout, mute trainer, and rehabilitator, before Aris and Talia joined a coup to overthrow Atla, thus giving birth to AriCorp.”

  “My stylus sword,” She continues, holding up the device. ”was a gift from my daughter, Talia... She was always so smart and caring...

  It was part of a project she was working on with Atla’s R&D department. It’s made from Aether, that’s all I know about it. It takes the energy and raw materials from the stylus and shapes it into a flexible, unbreakable katana that can cut through anything.”

  “So, theoretically, it can be programmed to take other shapes?” Touch beams.

  “Maybe. I ran away when my kids told me what they were planning. I’ve been on the run ever since, because someone wants me dead, and I don’t know who. It could be my own son, or someone close to him.”

  Rachel opens her mouth as if to keep going, then closes it and looks down.

  A pause.

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  “Okay. My turn.” Touchstone says before rising slowly and pacing, looking everyone in the eye and talking with his hands in short, strong gestures.

  “I joined the military a year before the meteors fell. I was poor and needed the money, and I needed to get out of my abusive household. I wasted my time with months of busywork and watered down, useless ‘training’. When I heard what the government was doing; the trafficking, the secret police, gunning down civilians, I spoke out. I wanted to get my message heard, but I never got a trial. Pretty soon prisons and brigs were filling up across a country that was tearing itself apart. When the government was on its last legs, they started selling prisoners to corporations. I was sold to Atla.”

  Rachel takes in a sharp breath. “You mean we were in that same building? Maybe for months? I thought Atla didn’t do that.” She stammers.

  “Correct. We might have shared our first day on the job. Atla did their experiments in secret. We were technically volunteers working off our prison sentence.” He says, sneering vehemently at the ground.

  Then he straights up and resumes.

  “So yes, I was sold as a human test subject to Atla for their next project, a second wave of super soldiers. During the coup, my handlers panicked, and deployed me to see them out safely. I’ve been on the run ever since.”

  Anea doesn’t wait.

  “I can sense people’s emotional state.” Everyone’s heads jerk in her direction. “The best way I can describe it is like seeing a swirl of colors and feeling an array of forces radiating off of a person at the same time, in a sort of aura. My orphanage was too close to a meteor crash site, and I gained my abilities naturally. I can sense intent and general temperament, which is how I knew that one enforcer would play along and cover our tracks for us to save his own reputation. ‘It’s like a gut feeling on steroids’ as a friend of mine once put it…

  Everyone in the orphanage who showed powers, eventually disappeared. Sold to gangs, the government, corporations, doesn’t matter. I kept hidden and learned to use my powers as much as I could, but as they ran out of orphans to trade, they started taking a closer look at me, so I ran before they tried anything. I’d been using my powers to stay a step ahead ever since. They eventually caught up to me, though. One unlucky break and it was all over. Or so I thought. Y’all came to my rescue, and you know the rest…”

  A pause. Anea looks down, tears drip silently to the ground. Rachel glides over and embraces the little girl. Everyone was thinking of the couple that took her in. Now at the mercy of the enforcers.

  There was no going back for them.

  The story between them and Anea would remain unspoken for now.

  Anea straightens up and sits back down. Rachel waits until she is more than a hairsbreadth away from breaking down before continuing.

  “These two can’t speak for themselves, so I’ll do it.” Rachel motions to Dill and Arch with her hand.

  “We found Arch caught in a trap on the road. He’s a powerful electric type. He converts metabolic energy into electric energy. He’s intelligent enough to understand speech, but lacks the organs to speak. He’s not a pet. He’s a person. Same with Dill. He is a chick with no known powers. Though he is old enough to be a full grown rooster, he retains the body of a chick with bright unnaturally vibrant orange coloration-"

  Dill rises and starts dancing around and showing off to accentuate the point.

"-which could point to slowed aging or stunted growth. He is soft and extremly warm, which indicates accelerated metabolism.”

  Dill jumps up and down while Arch rotates his head back and forth as if to shake water off. Their versions of a nod in agreement.

  “What’s our next move?" Touch asks.

  “We’re not done yet.”

  “Hmm?”

  “We’ve all shared the extent of our powers.”

  Touch looks around…

  “Fine. Give me your hand.”

  “What?”

  “I’m about to trust you with my life. The least you can do is trust me with your hand.”

  She walks over grabs his hand and looks at the stone man.

  Touch looks down at their hands and she follows his gaze.

  Rachel’s hand looks slightly toasted brown alongside a cheap, warm, lifeless, latex knockoff off her friend’s hand.

  Rachel gasps, then runs her hand up the Touch’s arm, washing away his skin’s dark pallet wherever it goes, and staying white as if she were sucking the life force from his arm.

  “What the fuck…”

  Touch pulls away, and color slowly returns, like blood reinvigorating his body.

  “My powers work on a subconscious level. I can’t control them. My skin turns back to normal if I get too close to a woman or child. Or someone I trust.”

  “Except in combat. Or training, when your guard is up.”

  “Like some kind of defense mechanism. My guard was always up in captivity, so neither Ari nor AtlaCorp know about this. If they ever did-

  “You could never trust anyone ever again. They could be a spy trying to seduce you into dropping your guard.” Anea says.

  “Exactly…”

  A pause.

  “So, where do we go from here?” Touch asks.

  “I’ve got a few ideas…” Rachel says.

---

  “It’s been a week since Aliston Global had their run in with our little gang.” major Sanders says. “Turns out, they’ve been hiding out there for the past two months, living undercover among the squalor. Probably recruiting malcontents like themselves to their cause. Meaning that our operations here must have had great success in dwindling their numbers, which is how we’ve avoided being attacked again since the jail break.

  The girl they took is a mute with minor psychic abilities, according to AlGlobal. It’s now thought that her powers are much stronger than anticipated, given the risks our fugitives took to get to her before AlGlobal did. Aliston has their people scouring the coast for the three of them, plus two more mutes; an electric fox and a chicken of some sort.

  I already have my men packed and ready to go. Just say the word. Me and my team can set up a joint task force to bring these guys in, or neutralize them.”

  “No,” colonel Dunn says, “Your orders are to pull your men out and come back here. I can’t leave you in the field this long without the wrong people asking questions. I’ve outsourced this job to another company to keep our hands clean.

  They left several days ago and are en route to the targets as we speak.”