Chapter 22

Chapter 22

          It took all of their strength and a lot of manipulation from Ellie for them to escape the capital. Then they ran. And they ran. Feet pounding pavement, trying to mask the sounds of their steps through Ellie’s manipulation, all the while Sloane kept his gun pointed out, ready to shoot whoever came at them. Rafe’s face remained taut, but not speaking. None of them spoke, they just relied on one another to keep the others safe. They ran for hours, going towards the site of what once had been Ellie’s home.

          When they stopped running, no one spoke. They found spots to sit and caught their breath, Ellie falling onto the bench, Sloane leaning against it, and Rafe slipping to the ground. It took them twenty minutes of slowly breathing, looking between one another, and regaining their natural color, before anyone spoke.

          “We told Loqi we would meet him at the burned remains of the house,” Sloane said, staring at what once had been Ellie’s house. His heart broke for her, but she seemed to mostly be over it, or at least taking it in stride. He kept forgetting she had already dealt with the heartache of this situation. That combined with exhaustion was likely making it hard for her to feel much more.

          “We can’t stay here,” Rafe said. “Eleanore will need to sleep at some point, and she will not be able to hold up the manipulation any longer. We have to leave before she starts slipping out of consciousness.”

          “We need to check on Baye,” Ellie said. “Rhapsody sent these… things after her. These wolf-like creatures, but they were too big to be wolves.”

          “They are wolves,” Rafe said.

          “Let me guess,” Sloane said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “more expriments?”

          “Unfortunately, yes,” Rafe admitted. “One of the ones that was not a failure.

          “Let’s go back to the mountain,” Rafe suggested. “We can get someone to keep an eye for Loqi, but we need to check to see if Baye made it back.”

          Ellie gave one last look at the burned house, and Sloane did not know if she was saying goodbye to it, or looking for something else, before the three of them began to move. While the mountain entrance was not a long distance, it was still a ways up the mountain, and none of them were in the best of shape. Even Rafe seemed to be shaking with every step.

          “You can’t walk without your gift?” Ellie asked without preamble, watching him struggle.

          “No,” Rafe admitted.

          “What happened?” Ellie asked.

          Rafe sighed and said, “A long time ago a train tore my legs apart. A healer put them back together, but now without my enhancement ability I can no longer walk.”

          Neither Sloane or Ellie asked another question. They were both horrified by the stories that went through their heads of how exactly it had happened. Rafe was still a closed book to them, not offering much up of his life. A train tearing up his legs could have meant he was playing on the tracks, or he could have been held down to the tracks, or he could have fallen off of the train. There were too many ways and neither dared to breathe the question.

          Rafe offered no respite from their curiosity, simply continuing to move up the mountain to the opening that would lead them to Baye and the others.

          “Their experiments could have kept you from using your powers to walk one day, correct?” Ellie asked.

          “It’s possible,” Rafe agreed, “but it isn’t worth what it’s costing.”

          Ellie’s questioning stopped again, most likely to contemplate what he had just told her. Sloane knew she was weighing Rafe as a person. How much had she been doing just that in the last week? Everyone she thought she knew had betrayed her, with the exception of Sloane. Instead he had betrayed his other friends to stay on Ellie’s side. He had joined Rafe, knowing after he had seen Hako that whatever it was the president was doing was wrong. He had wanted to listen to Ellie when they were in the caverns, but he also knew she was manipulating him to make sure she did what she asked.

          “Almost there,” Sloane huffed.

          “Something’s wrong,” Rafe said, holding out his arms to stop the other two.

          Both slid to a stop . Listening and trying to feel what Rafe had felt, but neither was as attuned to the mountain as Rafe was. He looked down at his feet, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows in concentration. “I feel nothing.”

          Wasn’t that a good thing? Sloane looked around the mountain, the wind rustling tree branches around them. He could hear an owl in the distance letting out a familiar “hoo”.

          Rafe charged up the mountain, shouting, “You two stay there!”

          Ellie and Sloane exchanged one look before charging up the mountain behind Rafe. They ran the rest of the way to the entrance and found it completely collapsed in. After Sloane and David had destroyed it, it should have been open, but instead there were rocks that were too large to have been put there purposefully by the people inside. Rafe pounded on the rocks and they shifted, shook, but they did little more than shift under the strength he threw at them. Sloane had not been expecting that from Rafe, that the man could literally have moved the boulder from a mountain.

          Rafe pulled his fist back and punched the center of the boulder. Ellie and Sloane had to duck as the rock shattered, shards flying outward. The sound of shards hitting the ground around them sounded like a hard rainfall. Looking out Sloane spotted some of the shards, but most just turned to smaller pebbles.

                    The world rumbled and rocks fell downward, sealing the entrance again as the boulder shifted away. Three sets of eyes looked to the top of the mountain, almost expecting it to collapse with the rocks. It seemed they all realized what had happened and knew that what used to be beneath that entrance was gone, as were the people inside of it.

          Rafe turned to Ellie and said, “Please, try something.”

          Ellie looked at him helplessly, then back at the mountain. Sloane was not sure what she was doing was necessary for her gift, but neither was she. She flattened out onto the ground as best she could, putting her forehead to the rocks surrounding her, closing her eyes. No words went through her lips, but Sloane felt the manipulation entering his mind all the same. When he let out a cry she shifted her focus and he felt her release his mind. Rafe had cried out as well, he had released any hold he had on dampening a skill.

          Focus shifting, Ellie flattened herself further on the dirt. Sloane had had the sudden urge to scream, so she had to be asking them to make noise, to let her know they were down there. Rafe clenched and unclenched his fists. He was waiting, letting Ellie do what she could without interruption.

          Ellie sat up and shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “That was horrible and I never want to do it again,” she said. “I could… I could connect with the dead, those who did not have their brains crushed. I felt remaining thoughts of an avalanche, I felt their pain, I felt their screams, but there is… no one left. There was nothing I could connect with. Rafe…” She started sobbing, wrapping her arms around herself and then the sobs turned into screams of anguish.

          Rafe, who had to be hurting, he just found out the family he had in that cavern was gone, reached out to her and pulled her into his arms, letting her scream at him. Fists beat at him as she released the suffering she felt. Sloane was helpless, unable to imagine what that thought process could have done to someone.

          Ellie calmed, slipping down in his arms and repeated in a raspy, whispering breath, “No one down there survived.” Her eyes closed from the exhaustion and she was out.

          Rafe looked at Sloane and for the first time Sloane saw emotion on his face. His face was twisted in regret and sorrow. “I didn’t know she could do that,” he said to Sloane, pleading with Sloane to forgive him.

          “I wouldn’t have thought that was her talent either,” Sloane said on a sigh.

          “We need to move,” Rafe said. “Whoever did this was deliberate, and they did it for us to find. All of those people… because they are searching for us.”

          Sloane looked Rafe in the eye and asked, “Is it still worth it?”

          “I don’t know,” Rafe said honestly. “It’s always been about saving lives, but tonight the price we paid to fight has been high. We need to get to the port and to the islands.”

          “What about Loqi?” Sloane asked.

          “He will either find us, or he won’t,” Rafe said. “We can’t stay here, and we can’t stay at the burned remains of her house.”

          “He risked a lot for us,” Sloane said. “I might not like him, but I think abandoning him doesn’t make us any better than the soldiers who are taking us down.”

          “Loqi isn’t joining us,” Rafe sighed. “I don’t want Ellie to know, especially now. Loqi’s illusion broke when we were fighting Rhapsody. Remember, I can sense when gifts are being used. His was suddenly snuffed out. Whether he’s dead or not, I don’t know, I can’t tell that, but I do know Bastian has him. There’s no sense waiting for him.”

          “Can’t we rescue him?” Sloane asked, hopeful.

          “We can’t rescue ourselves,” Rafe said, hefting Ellie into his arms. “This is going to be a long walk carrying her.”

          “We’ll trade off until she wakes up,” Sloane sighed and followed Rafe around the mountain.