Shit. Shit. Shit.

Rachel digs through her pack.

It’s not here. Shit shit shit.

Rachel dumps the contents of her pack on the ground and starts rummaging through the mess, laying everything flat as Dill flutters away to avoid the fallout.

She left her journal behind. She lost it the other day when Touch asked for her help over lunch in the courtyard. Then she had to run off before she was late for work.

Suddenly Anea comes hobbling out from the brush, in the middle of zipping her pants up.

“What’s wrong!?”

Rachel straightens her face, then remembers hiding her feeling is useless with an empath, before taking a deep breath to truly calm down.

“Probably nothing.” She says, taking another breath. Rachel walks over to the other side of the camp where Touch is reading to Arch down by the river.

“Touch, you didn’t happen to grab my journal the other day, did you?”

“No. It was gone when I stepped out, thought you grabbed it.”

“Shit, Touch, it’s got names in there. Tara, Ortega. I mentioned the hostel. Shit! What am I going to do!”

“Hmm… How specific were you?”

“Names, jobs, nothing really specific. But that’s all they need to start digging and going after people!”

“Yeah… All we can do is give everyone a heads up. The towns have tens of thousands of people. Unless the journal falls into the hands of the people after you specifically, it’s unlikely to be seen as a serious lead.”

Then he looks at the air in front of him as his hand drifts to the his tablet by his side. He clicks it on and jots the screen with his stylus. “The western corporations are at odds with the others,” he says, almost to himself “so they are unlikely to be sharing information right now… but it can happen, if the price is right.”

So the two set about warning all their friends about the slip up.

“I’m so sorry.” Rachel says to Tara.

“It’s fine, honey. We’ve been under investigation before. We know how to handle this. Just obfuscate your diary a little next time, that’s all. Stay safe.”

They spend the next two weeks traveling the back roads from town to farm to roadhouse. Rachel learns pretty quickly how to fit in. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Just get what you came for and be on your way. Again, it was mostly Rachel going in and gathering supplies. She took the opportunity to lay down false rumors everywhere she went; telling one man at the counter that they were going across the northern border, the guys at the farm they were going south to catch a boat to Japan, and the mistress at the roadhouse they were going to stay put at a nearby farm for a while.

Everyone knew she was lying, of course. Everyone had phones. Everyone knew she was wanted. So long as Rachel didn’t acknowledge it directly, and she gave them a plausible lie, most people seemed happy to take her money and play along. A few dumb ones tried to get her to stay for more than a few minutes. A few sharp ones asked her to leave immediately.

Apparently, there was an AlGlobal task force out there somewhere sworn to hunt them down, but they’d seen nor heard no signs of them, aside from a few vague statements made by AlGlobal officials, which worried her more. Why did she have to go and write a damn journal.

---

Rachel was bathing and rinsing out her clothes alone in the cold ass river when it hit her.

I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.

She has so many people depending on her now. Anea, Touch, Arch, Dill. She had no long term plans. No idea what to do next. They had gathered supplies for everyone and gear for little Anea. But what now? They had to keep moving, but where could they go without getting into trouble? Where could they all possibly be safe? If it wasn’t for Anea, they could just keep traveling and see what came their way. But this was no life for a kid.

Rachel dragged her kids into this life. Look how that turned out…

She needed to find a home for Anea.

---

  Rachel stepped to the side as she caught one of Touch’s dull blades with her walking stick and shoved it in the path of his follow up saber.

  Touch flowed around her, dancing around the blade and the stick as he tried to deliver his second blade into the small of her back, forcing her to disengage and reposition.

He didn’t let up, pushing forward mercilessly, striking far harder and faster than he should be. Like a calculating, fearless automaton, no movement wasted.

  Every time she managed to break his advance and start to turn things around, he collapsed into some kind of mournful dancer’s pose, a fluid defense that allowed him to slip away from whatever counter offensive she started, just long enough for her to slip up and then he was back to being a merciless machine.

  “Touch, slow down, we’re practicing.” She says between breaths.

  “Make me. Quit holding back.”

  He kept pushing forward. He’s been like this ever since they escaped the city. Rather than calming down, he was getting more and more comfortable with this brutalistic training regiment.

It was time to set some boundaries.

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  They reengaged, rather than letting him advance, Rachel keeps thrusting her staff to break up his form and force him to adapt and defend. Touch played along, allowing himself to go on the defensive, before suddenly catching with his blade and advancing with the other.

  Rachel was already circling to the side, away from the follow up strike. Touch shuffles to face her as he presses forward. Rachel presses her free hand to the to the top of her staff and used her legs and arms to shove Touch’s blade into his face. Combined with his shuffling to keep up, throws him into a stumble.

Rachel finishes with a brutal strike across the stone man’s back, the staff splitting with a savage crack that bounces deep into the trees.

  “Good job.” Touch beams at her as he regains his footing.

  “We can’t keep going like this Touch. Someone’s going to get hurt.” Rachel holds up the staff of split wood. “We can’t keep wearing ourselves out and breaking out stuff.”

  “We need to make up for lost time.” Touch says, drawing his eyebrows together.

  “And we will. We have to give ourselves time to recover. I couldn’t have beat you if you weren’t being so reckless and predictable.”

  “The people out to get us aren’t going to let us take a breather.” Then the stone man sighs, “But you’re right. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

  The two made their way back to the others. Part of Rachel wishes she rehabilitated more human divs, so she knew how to better help Touch. She still has no idea what was going through his head half the time, she could understand his fear of setbacks and his anger for not doing better, she’s seen plenty of that before.

  He’s starting to remind me of Aris.

  But her son always projected his anger outwards, onto other people. He saw human’s trafficking divs and got angry at the traffickers, then at the people who didn’t stop them, which grew into a resentment of people in general.

Touch keeps all of his anger targeted inwards. He sees all the same problems Aris does, either keeping a cool and calculating head while he picks apart and breaks down the situation so he can write up a solution, or he burdens himself with guilt for not doing enough.

  So why this? Why suddenly start taking it out on me? Does he blame me for something? Why go so hard and risk an accident?

  ‘The people out to get us aren’t going to let us take a breather.’

  He’s been nothing but gentle and patient with the others. Anea especially. Maybe he pushes me because I’m the only one who can handle it, and he wants me to be ready. He was terrified when he thought I would leave him, it makes sense that he would be just as terrified of us being hurt or killed on the road.

---

Rachel holds her pencil to paper under the tree. What to draw? She was in the mood, her hand itched for a pencil and a blank page, her mind didn’t want to focus on anything else, but nothing concrete actually came to her. She’s running through a list of possible ideas when Dill hobbles up. He looks up at her with wide eyes and starts chirping and bouncing around in little circles.

“What?” Rachel smiles at him. “What do you want?”

Dill pauses. Then redoubles his happy dance, pausing and stareing at the grassy path to the river whenever he was facing that way.

She gets up and let’s the giant orange fluffball lead her to the river where she sees two butterflies, one an intense purplish blue, and one plain and brown, chase each other around, dancing around in a romantic tango and playing some game of tag.

As they come dancing back from the lazy river, Dill looks at Rachel, lets out a loud chirp, then proceeds to scurry up to the pair and join their game. Hopping up to them when they flew too high.

Rachel notices her face pulled into a wide grin. She settles down on the grass and puts pencil to paper once more, scribbling furiously, letting her hand take a mind of it’s own when she looks up at Dill and his new friends.

Part of her wished she could share this moment with the others, but Touch had taken them all out scouting, so this sketch would have to do. Part of her was glad for the peace and quiet, to have this moment all to herself.

---

  “And what are you looking for?” Touch says to Anea, who is looking down at a glossy laminated map.

  “I don’t know, you won’t tell me.” Anea sighs and rolls her eyes.

  “If you had to make an educated guess.”

  “How am I suppose to do that without an education? Why won’t you just tell me?”

  “Using what you already know and your powers on deduction. Test first lesson after.”

  The girl takes too long releasing a steady gust that smells of eggs and toothpaste from her lungs. Then she straightens up.

  “We are unlikely to find anyone on patrol. This is too wide a perimeter for one team to manage effectively. But I’ve noticed you’ve taken us close to several points of interest. The hill, the rocks, now back down to the river.

So my guess is that we are sight seeing, taking note of area for future use… That’s not all-”

  “Try not to use your powers-”

  “It’s not like I can turn them off, not like I can ignore them.” She mumbles quickly.

  “We are also investigating for signs of human activity, any activity, in the area. Any one of these places would make for an adequate camp for the night.”

  “Right and right. Good job. The third reason is so we can use these landmarks for coordinating with each other when we need to. For example, if we get separated, head to the river. If we get attacked, fall back to the rocks. But that is thrown in with your first answer, so I’ll grant half points, deducting for lack of specificity.

After we learn them, I can ask Arch to go patrol around these places, then we have two teams patrolling. It’s also good to establish a baseline-”

  “Shhh.” Anea says, holding up her hand and scanning the woodland.

  “What?” Touch whispers as he perks his ears up. He takes a slow deep breath of sweet, fresh air through his nose. Nothing peculiar, nothing man made, aside from them and their gear.

  “Getting a baseline of all environmental factors; sights, sounds, smells, animal activity, climate.’ Anea says though a tight lipped smile. “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

  Now it was the stone man’s turn to sigh and roll his eyes.

  “Let’s keep moving.”