Andun put the st of the dishes away and washed his hands. It had been almost an hour since the two teens had left, and he had just finished cleaning up.

  “Well, it was nice ta have some company fer a few days,” he said to himself as he left the kitchen.

  “I have a feeling something's beginnin’ ta happen, Landen. We might see each other again soon.”

  Suddenly he heard a knock on the door.

  “They can’t be back already,” he said, heading to the door. When he opened it, he saw two men in Temurian military uniform standing outside.

  “Andun McGreen, correct?” said one with a small grey beard and sharp eyes. His companion, a younger man with short, light blonde hair and bulging muscles, stepped forward and drew a small gun.

  “You’re under suspicion for harboring dangerous criminals. We’re going to take you in for questioning, and we ask that you come quietly,” the first man said, procuring a pair of metal handcuffs.

  “So that’s how it’s gonna go,” Andun said, gncing over their shoulders. He saw at least three more waiting by the road, clearly not trying to conceal themselves at all.

  “Good thing I was prepared for somethin’ like this,” Andun said, reaching over and flipping a small switch next to the door.

  “What are-” the man started to say, but the ground under his feet suddenly gave out as a rge trapdoor opened up beneath him. The other man tried to raise his gun at the st moment, but it was too te.

  Andun smmed the door shut and raced down the hallway as they both fell into a rge rectangur hole, heading for the room where he kept his most prized possession. A barrage of gunshots pierced his walls and shattered the windows, destroying everything inside.

  Outside, the two men had retreated to the road after being helped out of the pit, and now stood watching as their forces advanced on the house with fmethrowers. They would burn down the house and anyone inside.

  Suddenly, they heard a sound fill the woods. It was the roar of an engine quickly approaching. A hoverbike erupted from the trees and headed straight at them, the rider wearing a bck helmet and wielding a massive axe.

  They dove to either side as it raced between them and continued in the direction of Mek.

  ***

  “Who the hell are you?!” the man in charge said, pointing his gun at the bounty hunter, who was still standing on the rooftop, looking down at the people below.

  The other men, unsure where to point their guns, turned their attention to the armored figure who seemed to be a rger threat than the three people they had been about to apprehend.

  Zan gred at the visor obscuring the face of the person who’d killed his crew while Rey took a step backward in fear. Landen was the only one who didn’t move, although he was weary of the new arrival based on how the people around him were acting.

  “Is he with you or-”

  “Damn, I came slightly too early,” the bounty hunter said, cutting off the uniformed man.

  “He killed a soldier! Shoot him! What are you waiting for?!” the man said, and his men started firing at the newcomer, but to no avail. The bullets simply deflected off his armor without even leaving a scratch.

  “Oh well, I’ll just kill everyone here except for the girl,” he said, jumping down from the building and throwing a bde in midair. The bde flew through the air and shattered a window on the opposite building, piercing the chest of the man inside.

  The bounty hunter nded on his feet and immediately raised his arm, another bde extending from it.

  “Run!” Zan shouted, as he grabbed Rey’s wrist and took off running. The men around them were too startled to stop them, and at the moment they were all paying attention to the more immediate threat.

  Landen had run in the opposite direction, and one of the men had turned to try and stop him as he ran past, but it was too te.

  The bounty hunter charged, an agility in his movements that allowed him to cross the distance between him and the two men that Landen had just passed in a matter of seconds.

  They had no time to react before they were cut down by his bde. One was stabbed through the heart and tossed aside, the other still stood for a couple seconds even after his head hit the ground.

  The bounty hunter turned on a dime and shot toward the remaining three men. As soon as they saw him coming, they split apart, one running down the alleyway after Rey and Zan, one jumping to the side, and the man in charge standing rooted to the spot.

  The man who had jumped to the side tried to run toward the broken window in hopes of climbing through it and escaping that way, but the bde of the bounty hunter caught his lower back, slicing him clean in half. By the time both halves of him had fallen to the ground, the bounty hunter had reached the soldier in charge.

  He snatched the gun out of his hand and fired at the back of the soldier who’d fled down the alleyway. He was hit on the nape of his neck and fell forward, killed instantly.

  The bounty hunter dropped the gun and sshed horizontally, slitting the remaining man’s throat. He crumpled to the ground, his life draining away in a pool of blood.

  The bounty hunter said nothing, only turned and ran after Rey and Zan, resolving to come back ter to pick up the bde he’d thrown through the window. He didn’t want to leave any solid evidence behind, and didn’t like to waste materials, which was part of the reason he didn’t like to use guns.

  He raced out onto the street and spotted his targets running down the street a few blocks down. He’d had the sve girl he owned take out the town’s electric grid with a bomb.

  He really only needed to disable the surveilnce system, but it was just easier to take it all out at once, and he knew that the ensuing chaos would distract the local authorities and make his job easier if they were too busy to deal with him.

  He would simply capture the girl and take the boy’s head, then leave in his ship that he’d hidden in the forest outside of town.

  Just in case, he was pnning to collect the bounty under a different name and face.

  Up ahead, they had turned onto a smaller street with fewer people, perhaps realizing that he wouldn’t hesitate to cut anyone down, innocent or not, that got in his way. He chased after them, and with each second that passed he got closer and closer.

  He had almost caught up to them when they turned another corner, briefly running out of sight. He heard a low humming sound just as he rounded the corner after them, but didn’t stop.

  Suddenly a riderless hoverbike smmed into him and sent him crashing through the brick wall of a building across the street. It had hit him square in the chest, knocking the breath out of him on impact. He came to a stop in a pile of rubble, the hoverbike lying on top of him.

  “That won’t hold him for long! We have to get out of here while he’s down!” Zan said, helping Andun up from where he’d fallen. “That was pretty reckless, you know?!”

  “That hoverbike was on its st legs anyhow,” Andun said, standing up. He was scraped and bruised, but otherwise fine after jumping off a moving hoverbike. He’d dropped his axe moments before jumping, and now retrieved it as they started to flee.

  They ran down street after street, winding their way into the back alleys of the shopping district that y outside the airport.

  “We should find a pce to hide for the rest of the day,” Zan said, coming to a stop to catch his breath. “What about your pce?”

  “Can’t,” Andun replied. “They already burned it ta the ground.”

  “That’s no good. It’ll be tough to avoid getting caught if we keep running around, but I don’t know where else we can go.”

  Suddenly gunshots filled the alley. Zan saw two men in familiar uniforms step out into the open as they continued firing rounds at the trio.

  Zan grabbed Rey’s hand and pulled her along as he and Andun sprinted behind the nearest building and into a space only a few feet wide.

  “Crap, already?!” Zan said, scooting further in as fast as he could. There was a windowless, iron door several feet further in on the left side, but with the three of them all trying to squeeze into the narrow space at once it wasn’t easy.

  Zan tried the door handle, but it was locked. They didn’t have time to go another way, and he couldn’t break the handle on his own.

  “Quick, give me some energy!” he said.

  “Um, okay- I’ll try!” Rey said, startled. She focused on their connection, instinctively opening her mind to his and allowing her energy to flow between them. Immediately Zan pulled his hand away and smmed his elbow down on the handle, which snapped off as if it were only glued on.

  He kicked the door in and pulled Rey into the darkened room, Andun right behind her. As soon as they were in, Andun smmed the door closed behind them.

  Though dim, there was still light in the room, and Rey saw boxes piled along the walls, shelves packed with tools and miscelneous items, and a low metal table in the center of it all.

  The light came from another door that led into what looked like a kitchen. She could hear voices coming from the room, along with the sound of pots cnking, something sizzling, and the smell of various foods cooking.

  There was a banging on the door they had just closed, but Andun was leaning on it to keep it shut.

  “Come on, through here,” Zan said, hurriedly running through the second door. Rey followed, and they entered a small kitchen. The two chefs looked startled, and one pointed his knife at Zan as the other dropped the pan he was holding back onto the stove.

  Zan ignored them and was about to run out into the front of the restaurant when someone stepped in front of him. Zan stopped short when he saw the man raise a gun.

  The man fired, but he wasn’t aiming at Zan, who was right in front of him.

  Rey let out a short cry as the bullet grazed her left side just above the waist. She fell to her knees holding her hands over the wound, dark red blood soaking her white clothing.

  Zan, who had only stood still for a few seconds, suddenly lunged to the side and grabbed a knife off of a cutting board. He spun and threw the knife at the man before he had a chance to fire a second shot.

  “Gaah! ga…” the man fell to the floor, the handle of the knife protruding from his right eye socket. Zan leaped forward without hesitation and grabbed the gun out of the dead man’s hand, but there was no one else in their way.

  He looked back to see Andun at Rey’s side, tearing off a strip of cloth from his own shirt and holding it to the wound. The chefs were huddled in a corner, one still clutching a knife.

  “We gotta go,” Andun said, looking up at Zan. “She can’t keep runnin’ with this wound.”

  “Yeah…ok. Let’s go. You carry her, I’ll lead the way.”

  Sweat dripped off of Zan’s forehead, and his hands were trembling. He hadn’t taken a lot of energy from Rey this time, and it was almost gone already.

  Andun stuck his axe in his belt, then picked up Rey as he followed Zan out of the kitchen. Zan pushed a girl to the side as they cut through the dining area and ran out onto the street. Rey barely had time to gnce at her, but thought she looked familiar somehow. But the pain drove out any other thoughts as they ran down the row of shops and ducked into another alley.

  A soldier stepped out of the storage room and looked at the body of his comrade lying in the doorway across the kitchen, then at the small puddle of blood on the floor in front of him.

  He tapped his earpiece.

  “Commander Raska? This is team twelve. We have one man down, but we acquired a sample of the girl’s DNA.”

  Zan paused by the backside of a nondescript brick building close to the airport. Andun knelt, still holding Rey in his arms.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Somewhere. We should keep searching for a pce to hide.”

  “We need somewhere I can treat her, fast.”

  “I know, I just don’t-” Zan sighed, looking around. “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” he said, getting increasingly frustrated.

  Suddenly a door on the building next to them opened. Zan drew the gun he’d stolen and pointed it at the young woman who’d just emerged from the doorway.

  As soon as she saw them she gasped, her eyes going wide. She shut the door in a hurry, only to open it a few seconds ter. She was staring at the girl in Andun’s arms.

  “Wait, she’s…” she started to say, then saw the blood soaking through her clothes.

  “Who are you?!” Zan shouted.

  “Wait…Zan, she’s the book girl…” Rey said, struggling to say it loud enough that he would hear.

  “Don’t try and talk,” Andun said.

  “Please help us!” Zan pleaded. “They’re after us, and we need a pce to hide. The cameras are down, but they’ll find us soon. She might die if she doesn’t rest soon.”

  Zan was becoming desperate as he ran out of options.

  “…Quick, come inside!” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “Hurry!”

  They followed her inside, and she led them to a small room with a desk and stacks of boxes. A light brown couch sat against one wall, facing the desk.

  “Lay her here,” the woman said. Andun y Rey on the couch and knelt beside her while Zan watched the woman stand nearby, looking like she didn’t know what to do.

  “What’s your name?” Zan asked.

  “Chisay. Chisay Bringenbrook,” she said nervously, fidgeting with her hands.

  “Alright. Help Andun with her while I keep watch.”

  “Oh, yes, okay,” Chisay said nervously.