WORLD 4: AWAKENING
Chapter Fifteen: The Strangers

Three of them stepped into view. There was a man and a woman, both wearing red Colony uniform shirts. Another man in a black military top stood in between them. The one in black held up his hands in a surrender position as he saw our weapons and terrified faces.

“Whoa! Whoa, calm down, people,” he chuckled. He was tall and had powerful muscles. His short blonde hair had three lines shaved into it on one side — a sign of some kind of military rank. I hadn’t seen anything like it since before A-Day.

“Who are you?” Gabring asked loudly. His hand was poised at the ABW at his side.

The man’s dark eyes stared directly at me for a few seconds, then focused on Gabring. “I’m from Colony Three. We’re out here overnight on an expedition, just like you guys.” Aymin and Brynn breathed out a huge sound of relief and put their daggers away. The man pointed at his companions. “These are some of our people. This guy is Roscoe, and her right there is named Leasor.”

Roscoe wasn’t nearly as tall as his lead man but had muscles almost as large. Leasor was a short woman with red hair worn tightly back. I’d only ever seen hair that color on a few people in Colony Four; it was rare and very beautiful. Neither Roscoe nor Leasor showed even a hint of a smile. All three of the strangers wore both an Air Burst Weapon and dagger at their side.

Gabring stepped over to stand next to Wes, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of the lead man even once.

“What’s your name?” Gabring asked again. I could clearly hear the apprehension he was trying to hide.

The man pretended not to have heard the question and pointed at Wes with a wicked grin. “Don’t I know you?” Wes didn’t answer. “I said,” he growled and took a step closer, “what’s your name?”

Wes’ face stayed unflinching as he ignored the question yet again.

There was so much tension in the air that my heart had started pounding on instinct. Something wasn’t right; there was just an odd kind of confusing negativity that I couldn’t decipher and absolutely hated feeling. Soren must have decided he would try something because he walked out in between our two groups, attempting to create some peace.

Flashing a neutral smile, he put on a pleasant tone. “Now everyone, there’s no need for any kind of conflict here. We’re all on the same side, right? Let’s just go our separate ways and do our work.”

The man in black hadn’t taken his eyes from Wes. He smiled widely and cocked his head to the side. “Second Commander?”

There had to have been something wrong — regular officers from a different Colony would almost surely have no idea who Wes was.

With lightning fast reflex, Wes dropped his dagger, snatched the ABW from Gabring’s belt and pointed it at the man in black, who lifted his own right back. Roscoe and Leasor followed and aimed theirs to the rest of us.

We erupted in fright. All three Science Officers shrieked and took several steps back; I jumped and started to inch my way behind Wes and Gabring; Baylen backed up and frantically looked back and forth between myself, Wes, and the stranger in black.

“Stand down, everyone!” Gabring bellowed. “Stand down!” He slid out his dagger and held it up firmly.

“Dad, what are you doing?!” Baylen exclaimed. “What’s going on?”

The man in black lifted his light eyebrows as he smiled. “So this is your son, Second Commander?”

“Put your weapon down, Oberon,” Wes warned in a low voice.

“Oh, so you do know who I am!” said Oberon. He pointed at himself with a bright expression. “Wow, I guess I should be flattered.”

Again, Gabring tried to regain control. “Everyone just relax!” he ordered loudly. “Let’s put our weapons down and just have a talk, alright? Put them away…please.” He slowly lowered his dagger, but Wes didn’t move.

With a chuckle that was both playful and wretched, Oberon pointed his weapon to the ground and motioned for his people to do the same. “It’s alright, guys, you can lower them.” Roscoe and Leasor put their weapons back on their belts, but Wes didn’t budge. “You too, Wes.”

“How does he know you, Dad?” Baylen whispered loudly. Wes didn’t answer. “Dad?!” Oberon’s face was serious as he and Wes looked at each other. Finally, Wes began to lower his ABW.

“You’re very wise,” said Oberon.

“Yes, you’re both very wise,” Soren mumbled loudly. He shook his head at the fighting and macho displays. “We all know you’re big strong men, so let’s just be on our way.”

Oberon continued his stare-down with Wes when the evil half-grin began to creep its way across his face again. Suddenly and quickly, he raised his Air Burst Weapon and shot Soren directly in the chest, sending him flying backward into a tree.

“Soren!!!” screamed Brynn. She flung herself down next to his sprawled-out body and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him and desperately sobbing his name.

It was chaos. Wes immediately shot his ABW, but missed as Oberon dove into the nearby bushes. Gabring hurled his dagger at Roscoe before he could fire; the Air Burst Weapon was knocked free from Roscoe’s hand to the dirt. Leasor shot at Aymin; it skimmed his arm and sent him to the ground, bleeding. The very next second, she turned and picked a new target: Baylen.

“No!” I screamed and bowled into her. The ABW flew out of Leasor’s hands and I exploded into a rage. I’d never experienced that kind of animalistic reaction before; I knocked her to the ground and clawed at her face, slamming into her with my fist and screaming at her in a frenzy.

She fought back, using her knees to pound into my sore belly. I gasped with the hardest blow and she pushed my body off of her, then came up to her knees. Her hand gripped onto her dagger’s handle, ready to use its deadly blade on me. Suddenly, she was yanked from my body by Baylen. He punched her hard three times, knocking her out cold.

“May!” he heaved in a panic, lifting me from the ground. He shook out his throbbing hand.

“Guys!” Gabring stumbled to us with bloodied palms. His forehead gushed red down his face. Behind him, Roscoe was moaning on the ground, half-conscious.

A gurgling sound came from far off. In the chaos of fighting, none of us had paid attention to Wes, but could now see his feet sticking out from behind a group of bushes. While Gabring went to retrieve a weapon, Baylen rushed forward and was absolutely frantic; Oberon was on top of his father, clamping two enormous hands around his neck. Baylen roared and jumped onto Oberon’s back. It didn’t do much. Oberon weakened his grip enough to elbow Baylen in the face, sending him to the ground, then went back to the strangulation.

Immediately, I remembered something. Grabbing the laser scalpel from my vest pocket, I jumped onto Oberon’s back and dragged the laser blade down the length of his cheek. A painful howl escaped him as blood rushed down his face. He threw himself backward in desperate pain, giving Wes enough room to roll away. The wind was knocked out of me as I was thrown off and pounded flat on my back. Baylen kicked Oberon hard in the face, then stepped quickly over to Wes to help him control his breathing.

Gabring sprinted to us gripping one of the Air Burst Weapons and slammed it hard into Oberon’s head before he could get up again. He laid still.

“Wes!” I cried and helped him up to standing. Even though his breathing was raspy and he couldn’t quite speak yet, he signaled to us that he’d be okay. Still, Baylen’s face was horrified as he examined his father’s neck; Oberon had definitely left his mark.

I looked from Oberon’s unconscious body to Gabring. “Why didn’t you kill him?!”

“You want to do it?” he exclaimed with attitude, holding out his ABW for me. His glare moved to Baylen. “Any of you feel like killing a person? Because that’s not something we just go around and do like it’s nothing.”

His stern face told us we better listen. And he was right, anyway — I couldn’t have pressed the trigger on that weapon. If Oberon had been coming at me at that moment, ready to kill, then possibly I could. But ending the life of someone unconscious and helpless on the ground was quite different.

“No more time to talk — we’ve got to go, now!” shouted Gabring.

We ran to where we’d started. Brynn continued to sob over Soren’s body, while Aymin crouched at her side, rubbing her back and holding his bleeding arm across his front. Not too far from them, Roscoe was alert and writhing on the ground. His knee was at a terrible angle from where Gabring had kicked it in.

Wes’ expression hardened and he grabbed Gabring’s ABW, then strode right up to Roscoe with a face full of hate.

“Why are you after us?” Wes demanded in a hoarse voice. He pointed the weapon straight at Roscoe’s head.

Roscoe smiled. His teeth were smeared with blood. “Wouldn’t you like to know, old man.”

“Tell me!” Wes slid the setting up a notch to maximum air burst.

“Do it!!!” screamed Roscoe. He began to laugh hysterically.

Wes stared down at him, unsure of his next move, his teeth clenched in frustration. With a huge, raspy growl, he finally turned the weapon and sent it flying into Roscoe’s head, knocking him out like the others.

“Brynn, we have to go,” Aymin begged her. She was clenching Soren’s shirt, her forehead against his cheek.

Even though I’d been brought along to help with injuries, I knew that what we were dealing with was much more than that. Soren wasn’t injured — he was dead. There was nothing any of us could do.

“Brynn!” I shouted. “Come on!”

“I’m not leaving him!!!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, then went back to sobbing.

Baylen wiped sweat from his forehead. He looked around the group, uncertain and very antsy to get going. “We can’t just leave him, right? Or can we?”

“Yes, we can!” shouted Aymin. “Soren would understand, let’s just get out of here!”

Brynn let go of Soren long enough to slap Aymin hard across the cheek. “You guys leave, then! I’m staying with him.”

“Ugh,” I exasperated, “let’s just grab him and get out of here!”

Without any more time to argue, Gabring and Baylen took Soren by the arms while Wes and I took his legs. Aymin dragged Brynn alongside him and helped clear a path for us as we carefully came down the mountainside.

My brain couldn’t focus of much else besides getting back to the transports as fast as possible. On a normal day, hiking down would have been a little slow-going, but with a grown man to carry, it took five times as long. It was agonizing, not knowing when our attackers would wake up and come chasing after us. After what seemed like forever, we finally made it down.

“Dad, how did that guy know you?” Baylen panted out as we stumbled up to the transports. “Why did they attack us?!”

“I’ll explain everything once we leave. Lift him inside!” commanded Wes, his voice almost back to normal. We heaved Soren’s body over the side of the transport. Brynn sat in the back with him, stroking his still, colorless face.

Wes turned to Gabring. “Take your transport and use the map to go around toward the hillside areas in a big arc until you get back to Colony Four. We’ll travel around these mountains. Keep an eye out, go as fast as you can and don’t stop for any reason whatsoever!”

Gabring didn’t even take the time to answer but sprung into action. He leaped into the transport and sped his group away in the direction Wes had instructed him.

I sprinted to our transport and climbed into the back. Wes got behind the controls with Baylen at his side and launched us forward as fast as possible.

“The map, Mayla!” shouted Wes. I took the screen out of my vest and made a grim realization.

“It’s not working!” I cried and shook it a little. A long crack spread across the screen. “I think it got banged around when I was fighting with Leasor!”

“Let me see!” Baylen held out his hand. I turned it over to him and he played around with it for a few minutes before making the same realization. All he had to do was look at Wes.

“We don’t need it,” Wes said with determination, furrowing his brow.

“How do you know where to go?!” I cried frantically.

“I don’t! I’ll just have to figure it out!” he shouted back at me, then lowered his voice. “I can figure it out.”

Baylen was as panicked as I was. “Won’t they be able to follow our tracks?”

“Maybe,” said Wes. “It doesn’t really matter at this point, though, we don’t have a choice!”

We entered an extremely rocky section in our route. The transport jolted and bumped so hard with our speed for a few minutes I could hardly speak. Once it let up, I remembered something important. “Guys, I’ve been seeing things behind us in the distance since this morning — it had to have been Oberon following us!” I leaned forward to them. “Wes, do you know him?”

He didn’t answer.

“Dad!” Baylen shouted. “Tell us who that guy is!”

Wes pressed his mouth together into a hard line. “I dealt with him indirectly during The Five Years, and I knew his Commanding Officer, Kyrone, in the World Wars. But Oberon isn’t the biggest problem. His brother, Arison, is the worst of the two. That guy…” Wes let out a sad chuckle, “well, that guy will gut and skin anyone who doesn’t agree with him. They’ve been trouble since before A-Day. Kyrone has spoken about those two several times over the years and I can tell you he doesn’t like them one bit.”

“How did they ever get brought along, then?” I shouted forward. “You’d think they would have just been left behind on A-Day.”

“The two brothers were in charge of…a specialized unit,” Wes explained hesitantly. “They were assured a place because of it.”

“The government didn’t care about any promises they made to people,” said Baylen, his voice full of loathing. “If they really hated Oberon and his brother, they would’ve just been secretly killed before we ever left the planet.”

“What kind of a unit?” I asked. No reply.

“Dad?” asked Baylen. His voice grew louder. “DAD!”

“They were in charge of the killing force!”

I gasped and remembered what Sirone had told me at lunch the other day. “The people who went around making sure nobody talked about the asteroids?”

“Secret Keepers?” cried Baylen. “Oberon was a part of that? I thought the government killed all those guys off before we ever left!”

“They did. Most of them,” Wes said uncomfortably. “It’s not something Archauus or I were ever okay with. We were very vocal about not going that route but the government took it upon themselves to do it anyway. Didn’t want to bring such violent killers on board.”

“So they hired a bunch of people to go murder anyone who spilled the secret, then went and murdered those murderers right before A-Day?” I asked.

Wes nodded. “Wanted to get rid of any evidence of that terrible organization, apparently. Like I said, I wasn’t okay with anything having to do with that program. I never knew exactly how many of the Secret Keepers were killed off by the end. It’s possible that Arison and Oberon were the very last of them, the ones that killed the rest off at the government’s orders.”

Baylen slumped back against his seat. His hand ran through his tousled hair, eyes enlarged with fear. “The last of the hit-men. We’ve got actual, legitimate hit-men after us right now.”

“I still don’t get how they’d end up on board if they were such trouble,” I said.

Wes scowled. “I don’t know, either.”

“Why does he care about us?” asked Baylen.

“That’s the biggest question, isn’t it?” said Wes. “The fact that he would come all the way out here just for us is not a good sign. Plus, he shouldn’t know who I am or where we are right now. I know who Oberon is because I was in a high position during The Five Years and had discussions about him with other leaders, but him…he shouldn’t be able to recognize me. There’s a good chance the whole Colony is about to be compromised, if it hasn’t been already. We’ve got to get close enough to contact Archauus.”

“Compromised?” I asked. “You mean like they’re killing people there, too?!” My gray eyes began to turn a bright blue as tears found their way out of me. I imagined my father, Jinna, Kasley, Maxx, and my sweet little Sam, all being hunted by people like Oberon. “Wes, what if Arison is already there?”

Baylen reached back and took my hand. He tried to give me a reassuring look but there wasn’t much truth behind it; I knew he was feeling the same despair that I was. I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I had to concentrate on keeping myself alive if I was going to make it back to help my family.

“Do you have any idea how close we are?” I shouted forward. Wes just shook his head. I threw myself back hard and stared ahead at the seat in front of me.

“It’ll be alright,” Baylen said to me. I didn’t respond.

A few hours went by and we were still lost. As the sun began to dip lower, I knew we had to take cover for the night. I leaned in again. “We’ve got to stop, Wes. If we’re traveling in the dark, Oberon will see the transport lights from miles away.”

He sighed. “See if you notice anywhere we can go.”

It took another half-hour but Wes finally slowed the transport down, craning his neck up higher to look at an area more closely. Nothing looked particularly significant to me, but he seemed content that it was a good spot.

“We’ll stop here!” he announced. He’d brought us to the sheer side of a mountain that was covered in layers of thick rock towering hundreds of feet high. There was a heavy section of forest that would provide good cover for the transport, but apart from that, I had no idea where we could hide. But I had to trust him — Wes was in his element. He’d spent years of his life learning how to survive outside, how to live through a disaster. Listening to him was our best ticket back to the Colony. We had to hurry, though — the pink sky was darkening. Night would soon be upon us.

“Where are we going?” Baylen asked as he jumped out.

“I think we can hide here,” said Wes, turning in a circle. “Put some supplies in a bag and let’s get this thing covered.”

I grabbed a few medical supplies and stuffed them into a small gray bag along with a container of water, then retrieved my coat from the transport floor.

“You guys ready?” I asked, pushing them to hurry.

“Yeah,” replied Baylen, shutting the storage compartment. “We need to replace stuff to cover this with.”

All three of us gathered any amount of branches, brush or leaves that we could get our hands on in an attempt to camouflage the transport. Wes broke off a large branch with leaves still attached to it, sweeping our tracks out of the immediate area. After ten minutes, it seemed to be half-decent.

“I think it’s okay, right?” I asked and stepped back to check it out. I looked over at Wes for approval.

“It will have to be,” he replied. “We can’t stay out here any longer.” He grabbed Baylen’s arm and pulled him along toward the mountainside.

I ran in line with them and lifted my head upward; a huge section of rock covered in greenery towered hundreds of feet above us. I pointed. “I bet there’s a cave somewhere up there!” Baylen stopped next to me and examined the mountain as well.

“Yeah, I think she’s right, Dad!” he said. “Do you think — wait, where is he?” Baylen spun around; his father wasn’t with us anymore. We quickly spotted him far ahead, staring forward at one particular spot. We sprinted to him.

“Did you replace a cave?” I asked in relief.

But what he was staring at didn’t look much like one. There was an uneven surface of some kind in the vertical rock wall, covered in layers of thick vines and vegetation. Wes began to rip away at everything. Baylen and I copied, yanking greenery out or stripping the vines free of leaves to reveal what was behind it all. I gasped and stumbled backward as I realized what we were looking at.

It was a door.