WORLD 4: AWAKENING
Chapter Seventeen: Escaping the Hunter

Wes shook me awake.

“Mayla, get up,” he whispered.

My head whipped up from against the wall with a start. “What’s happening?! What is it?!”

“It’s time to go.”

Suddenly, I realized my mistake. I groaned and leaned my head back against the wall in shame. “Oh, no. I fell asleep, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, Wes.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s alright, we’re safe but need to get going immediately.”

I rubbed my palms against my eyes and tried to come back to reality. Wes had woken me sometime in the night for my scheduled watch. I’d fallen asleep and had forgotten to wake Baylen for his turn.

I slowly came down the aged stairs. Baylen was just sitting up, his untidy hair messy in the most adorable way, eyes still groggy from sleep.

“Slacking off on the job, huh?” he croaked with a smile.

I yawned and shivered a bit in the cold. “I was just trying to let you get some more beauty sleep.”

“Yeah, well I don’t have a mirror to check myself, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t work,” he chuckled.

“There’s no time to waste, guys, let’s get going right now,” Wes urged strongly. I nodded and looked to Baylen. We shared eye contact and a grin with each other for a few lingering moments before quickly gathering our things.

Wes carefully rolled up the aged map and tied it with a piece of delicate fabric from the skeletal remains. He also took one of the arm bones for the Science Officers to study, in the hopes that it could tell us more about the planet. Baylen had taken something strange he’d found: a short, hard stick with corroded metal sticking out of one end. He said it looked like some kind of technology, which of course excited him beyond reason.

Once ready, we climbed the staircase in silence. Wes had us stop and listen at the door for a good ten minutes before coming out, just in case Oberon was anywhere nearby. Our breathing was the only sound present in the dark upper landing as we listened intently. Once Wes was comfortable that we’d be safe, he gave the signal to exit.

He went first. The door made an agonizingly loud screech as it opened up the small amount. We took turns squeezing through. Once I was out, Wes grabbed my hand and we began our run back to the transport, still as quiet as before.

“Once we get going,” whispered Baylen. “It should take us about two hours to get back to the Colony.”

I pulled away branches from the transport as quietly as I could. “How far off from the route have we gone?”

“Not too far. I think we were going around in circles or kind of a zigzag yesterday. But we’re fairly close so that’s good.”

“Get in,” Wes ordered as he pulled away the last branch. He got behind the controls again and began to lead us out the way we’d come. Baylen and I fastened our daggers to our belts again. Wes took off his coat and put his vest back on so that he could keep the map screen on himself during the ride.

“Wes,” I said, leaning forward all the way so he could hear my hushed voice. “What if Oberon is waiting for us at the Colony? He might have just decided to go back because he knew we’d end up there eventually.”

He grimaced. “I know. It’s a possibility, but what choice do we have? We have to get back there.”

Baylen looked back at me. “Once we’re thirty minutes away, we’ll be in communication range and can contact your dad.”

My voice trembled, no matter how hard I tried to control it. “What if Arison is already there and killed everyone?”

“I don’t know, May,” Baylen said. He paused. “We’ll just have to figure it out.”

Our speed became faster. All of us had horrible looks on our faces — speeding up only made us louder. The hum of the transport’s engine increased. The branches underneath us crunched and snapped with an overly-loud crack. Everything seemed to echo painfully in my ears. I just hoped our noisy flight wasn’t calling out to Oberon like a dinner bell.

“Wes,” I said, leaning forward again. “What do you think those brothers have to gain from coming after us?”

“Revenge?” suggested Baylen. He turned to Wes. “Dad, maybe he wants you since you’re in a high-level position.”

“I guess it’s possible,” said Wes. He wrinkled his brow. “But I don’t think it’s just me he wants. He was eyeing you more than me, Mayla.”

“Me?!” I shouted. “Why would he care about me?”

“You’re the Commander’s daughter, May,” said Baylen.

“But how would he even know what I look like?” I cried and buried my face in my hands. “This is so messed up.”

Wes turned his head to look my way briefly. He spoke to Baylen and me in a strong voice. “Listen, all we know is that Oberon is dangerous, he’s armed, and he knows who we are. We can’t lose our minds thinking about his motives right now. Just get focused on the most important task, which is getting back to the Colony. Alright?”

“Okay,” I said and leaned back again. Baylen nodded sadly.

We traveled as quickly as we could along a wide swath of grassland that stretched on for miles. A light forest laid to our left with the mountains looming in the distance to the right. The sun was shining brilliantly; Baylen and I stripped off our warming shirts and coats, back to Level colors, like Wes. I was at least grateful for the way the sunshine lifted my mood a bit. Even if it was for only a short time.

Only a couple of minutes later, Wes slowed us to a stop. I sat up tall, worried.

“Why did we stop?!” I exclaimed. A wide, shallow, slow-moving river spread across our path, blocking our way. “We didn’t cross this on the way here, did we?”

Baylen examined the map screen. “Not here, but if we go all the way around it will take us twice as long.”

Wes got up to his knees to look over the front more carefully. “But how are we supposed to get across this?”

“The transports can actually go over shallow amounts of water,” explained Baylen. “You just have to shut the power intake and re-route it to a closed cycle.”

The blank expression on Wes’ face confirmed that he was just as confused with that information as I was. Baylen groaned, signaled his father to switch places with him, leaned over and pressed a few buttons, then signaled we were ready. The transport crept up to the river’s edge.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked with extreme hesitation. Being swept off into a river was the last thing we needed.

“Yeah, yeah it should definitely work,” Baylen said in an unconvincing reply. There was no hiding the apprehension in his voice.

I practically screamed as we eased into the current. Baylen gritted his teeth and was up on one knee to get a better look ahead. Water reached three feet up the transport’s sides. We had to go at a very slow pace but miraculously, he was able to keep control. I closed my eyes in relief as we drove back up onto land at the other side.

“See,” he said with some leftover nervousness. “Told you guys it’d work.”

I took a few deep breaths and opened my eyes as we continued along the route. After a few minutes, a familiar glint caught my attention. I jerked my head and shoulders up completely straight; ahead of us and to the right, the glinting flickered even more.

“He’s there!” I screamed and pointed.

“What?!” Baylen sat up tall as well.

I pointed again. “That light I was seeing the last couple of days, I just saw it again! It’s got to be Oberon!”

Baylen’s face went white as he saw exactly what I was talking about. “Dad…”

“I see it,” said Wes. “Switch with me!”

The two men traded places again and Wes zoomed us forward. My heart was practically breaking my chest apart, I was so frantic. I kept my eyes scanning the areas around us at all times, looking for any sign of our killer. Another couple of minutes later, I was almost completely thrown from the transport by how suddenly Wes stopped us.

I slammed violently against the seat in front of me. “What are you doing! Why did —”

My mouth clamped shut as I saw what laid before us. Far ahead through the trees, a glint of light bounced off of something shiny and gray. It was a transport. My reflex was to hope that it was Gabring, but I knew it wasn’t. There was only one other transport still out that far in the wilderness with us, and it didn’t belong to anyone good.

“It’s him!” I shouted.

Baylen grabbed Wes’ shoulder. “Turn us around, Dad. Now!”

Wes obeyed. Spinning the transport quickly, we flew over the dirt and brush even faster than before. My nails dug into the seat in front of me to avoid being tossed out.

“Where can we go?!” I screamed forward. Neither answered me. I kept my face turned behind us and finally saw the transport in the distance again. “I see them!”

Wes held the map in his hand and looked back and forth between it and the terrain in front of him. “Baylen, see if there’s another way around that river!” he shouted and handed the screen over.

Baylen pressed buttons and swept his finger over the screen in a panic. Finally, he turned to his father with a dreadful look. “We can’t go downriver because there’s a big canyon, and we can’t go up because it would take the transport too long to navigate all the rock and forest.”

“So basically our only option is to go across the river again?” I shouted forward. “That took forever — they’ll definitely catch up to us!” Baylen glanced back at me with the same frightful expression I carried.

Suddenly, Wes steered us off into the light forest at our right. “Get ready to jump out!” he ordered. He took the map screen from Baylen and threw it on the floor of the transport.

My eyes flew wide open in a panic. “What?! Are you crazy, Wes? We can’t outrun them!”

He began to navigate us through the maze of trees. “Oberon’s transport won’t be able to get through these trees very far and they’ll be forced to go after us on foot. We can try and lose them along the river.”

Before I could argue again, we’d gone as far as we could. The transport skidded to a stop.

“Get out!” shouted Baylen. He grabbed my arms and ripped me off the transport as I started to climb over.

“Follow me!” Wes bellowed.

The ground sloped downhill as we ran. Baylen’s face turned upward with an idea. “Trees, Dad! What if we hid in the trees?!”

Wes slowed down and looked up in consideration but a deep voice in the distance confirmed our fears — Oberon was coming.

“No good!” Wes said and pulled me back into a run. “I don’t think we could make it up high enough in time!”

Running down the forested slope, we rounded a bend and came to a new obstacle: the river we had crossed earlier blocked our way. But it wasn’t shallow and slow like we’d seen before; in front of us the river was wide, deep, and raging.

“We’ll have to follow it!” shouted Baylen. He took off running before Wes or I could argue.

We sprinted along the bank of the river. Tree roots and rocks seemed to jump out at us every few seconds, making the way much more slow-going than I was comfortable with. I didn’t dare look behind me, too afraid I’d see the enemy closing in. And I didn’t need to look, anyway; after only a few minutes, I could hear a very faint voice coming from behind. The words were unclear but the deep, booming nature of it wasn’t — it was Oberon.

“He’s catching up to us!” I screamed at the men. We pushed forward even harder than before.

Less than a minute later, the rushing flow of water became steadily louder until it turned into almost a roar. Up ahead, Wes stopped abruptly. My heart sank as I came to his side. In front of us, the river dropped off a cliff into a powerful waterfall.

“This is the start of the canyon we saw on the map,” Wes shouted over the noise. “We’ll have to jump!”

My eyes scanned the area. He was right; after the waterfall, there wasn’t much in the way of a riverbank. Sharp, jagged walls loomed up from the ground on each side of the river from that point on.

“There’s got to be a way around!” cried Baylen. His eyes were huge with terror; heights for him were almost as bad as small spaces were for me.

Wes knew very well how afraid his son was. He squeezed Baylen’s shoulder. “There isn’t, Baylen! We have to jump right now!” he shouted without sympathy.

Baylen shook his head. “It’s not deep enough!”

“Yes, it is!”

“But how do you know?!” screamed Baylen. He was on the verge of a breakdown. I grabbed his hand but he shook it out of my grip. He clenched onto the top of his head, panting in terrible fright.

We had no time to argue like we were. Wes put his face right next to Baylen’s. “Son, survival is what I spent years doing, I know what I’m talking about. NOW JUMP!!!”

Too much time had been wasted and I couldn’t take it anymore. Without a second thought, I launched myself from the waterfall’s edge. My feet hit the freezing pool first, followed immediately by my outstretched arms — they slapped hard onto the water’s surface with a loud smack. I screamed underwater; it felt like they had literally exploded off of my body. But the pain was immediately forgotten as the river took me.

I was tossed around underwater like a doll, flipping and spinning and banging against rocks. I let it have its way with my body instead of fighting it, and finally, it released its grip. My face sprung up from the surface, gasping and choking for breath, in shock from the cold temperature of the water.

I spun around. “Baylen!” I screamed. “Wes!”

My eyes searched the river’s surface until I finally saw them. Their heads popped out from the water upriver, gasping just like I had. My body relaxed, incredibly relived that Wes had convinced Baylen to make the jump.

“Bayl —” I began to call out. But my cry was interrupted by a powerful cracking sound. The rock right next to me exploded apart.

Sharp pieces flew in all directions, scratching up my face and sending me underwater again. When I re-surfaced, I looked up to see Oberon, standing tall and menacing with Leasor on the waterfall, an ABW in his hand. He raised it to shoot again.

“Mayla!” Baylen screamed from the water. “Go under!!!”

Immediately, I dove. I swam in different directions underneath the surface, hoping beyond hope that Oberon couldn’t see me from above. A loud blast sounded near me in the water, but nothing else happened.

I stayed under until my lungs felt like they were literally being shredded apart from lack of oxygen. My head surfaced. I choked, sputtering, trying to regain my breath. I cried out in relief as I realized the river had carried me around a corner in the canyon, out of Oberon’s sight. But Baylen and Wes were nowhere to be seen.

I began screaming their names, feeling incredibly exposed by myself in the cold water.

“WES! BAYLEN!!!”

My breathing became rapid and desperate. If they’d drowned or been shot by Oberon, then I wouldn’t have just lost two of the most important people to me, I would also be totally alone in an alien wilderness with no idea how to get back to the Colony. I was almost hyperventilating by the time I heard him.

“MAYLA!” Baylen screamed upriver from me. I turned frantically and saw his head bobbing up and down in the water. We both swam to each other and embraced tightly.

“Baylen!” I gasped and gripped him even harder.

He stroked my wet hair and breathed into my ear. “I thought I’d lost you, May.”

We pulled away and stared into each other’s terrified faces. “You’re bleeding, Baylen,” I said tenderly and touched his forehead as we floated along. There was a gash that bled down his cheek.

He reached up and felt it. “There was rock flying everywhere. You’ve got one, too.”

I put my hand to my cheek and felt the warm blood oozing out.

“Guys, get out over there!” ordered Wes, swimming to us. He pointed up ahead to a muddy piece of bank amidst the rock.

We reached up and grasped onto the slimy edges of nearby rocks to pull ourselves up onto the mud. I crawled across the bank, just barely being able to get to my knees to recover, heaving great breaths of exhaustion. All three of us were coughing up river water. My hand went to my waist; the belt with my dagger had been washed away in the current, leaving us with only Baylen’s as a weapon. Not enough to fight off Oberon. But there was no time to waste worrying — all three of our heads lifted in fear as we heard voices again.

They were coming.

“It’s them, we have to go!” I insisted.

We took off running once more, trying to make as quick of a speed as we could, despite all the mud and spent energy. My dark gray boots were heavy with water which only made it more difficult to motivate my legs onward. My mind was going crazy, screaming like a maniac at my body to work harder. I wasn’t going to be able to keep pushing like that forever.

Soon, the river began to grow louder again — there was another waterfall.

The three of us carefully stepped to the edge as we came up to it. Twice as high as the first, there was a slight mist coming up from below and a deafening roar as water pounded down into the pool.

I pulled away some of my long, wet hair sticking across my eyes. “Can we make it?” I asked, breathless.

Wes squinted. “I think so, as long as we’re careful.”

Voices sounded behind us again. I heard Leasor shouting something angry.

“They’re getting closer — we have to jump!” I shouted. Baylen was staring straight into the pool below, shaking his head, his breaths coming in quick spurts. I grabbed his arm to try and calm him, give him a pep talk, even just throw him over if it meant we could get going. I turned to Wes for help. “Wes, come on!”

But he wasn’t at the edge anymore; his attention was fixated on a group of rocks behind us on the riverbank.

“What is it?” I shouted. “We have to go, now!”

He shook his head and pointed to the rocks. “There! We go in there!” Right away he stripped off his vest and hurled it over the waterfall. I looked from the lower pool back to him, completely confused.

“What are you doing?!”

Baylen checked out the area his father had pointed to, just as perplexed as I was. Suddenly, he lit up in understanding. He hurried back to me, then pulled me toward the rocks. “He’s right, Mayla, come on!” he shouted over the sound of the waterfall. As he guided me into the knee-deep water with him, I finally saw what they were talking about. My body stiffened, paralyzed with fear.

The rocks at the water’s edge we were coming to were flat and had space under them, kind of like a small ledge or cave. Unless Oberon was looking for it, it would be easy to miss. The space went far inward enough for the three of us to hide, but was extremely low and tight.

My worst nightmare come to life.

“No,” I whispered and my complaints became louder. “No, no, NO!!!”

I pulled back on Baylen’s hand but he didn’t let up. Wes had to join in and pushed me from behind.

“I jumped off that waterfall, you can do this too, Mayla!” said Baylen.

“It’s not the same!” I screamed. “I want to jump, I’ll jump and keep running! Let me go!”

Anything sounded better than that watery cave. A waterfall, Oberon, an Air Burst Weapon to my head — I would have taken them all before choosing to be stuck inside those rocks.

“Mayla, please!” Baylen begged desperately, trying to push me down. I couldn’t help it; primal fear overtook me and I fought him back. I couldn’t get in willingly.

Wes was done being nice. He grabbed my head tightly with both hands and shouted straight into my face. His eyes were hard and absolutely uncompromising.

“You listen to me, Mayla! Oberon is about to find us. If we hide, then he’ll see my vest down in the water and think we’ve jumped. If we don’t hide, then he’ll catch us, and he will kill us. We will die, Mayla! You, me, Baylen — we’ll all die if you don’t get in there right now! We have ONE chance!”

My face exploded into lunacy. “NO! I CAN’T DO IT!!!”

He squeezed my face even more tightly. “YES, YOU CAN!” he bellowed. “Because THIS is how you survive! Now get in!” He let go of me while I sank to my knees in despair.

Wes slid in first. He had to lay on his back and scoot himself sideways to fit underneath. As he disappeared, I could finally make out Oberon’s words:

“I can hear another waterfall, come on!”

It propelled me forward just enough to let Baylen push me onto my back. As Wes pulled me to him underneath the rock, the sobbing began. Intense, irrational sobbing. I instinctively tried to rip my hand out of Wes’ grip. Baylen pushed me from the outside and scooted himself in next to me. He took my hand as we continued to slide further underneath.

“Close your eyes, Mayla!” he ordered. I clenched them shut, but it didn’t do much. I could feel exactly how tight we were.

I was on my back in the mud. Water went up almost to my ears, sometimes lapping over my mouth with the current. The rock was only two inches above my nose, and there was no way out — Baylen and Wes had put me in the middle on purpose. My tiny excuse of a shower on the Colony was an absolute luxury compared to that watery hell. At that moment, I would have even welcomed death as an alternative.

My eyes were a bright blue. I was wailing uncontrollably like a psychopath, panic rising more rapidly than I’d ever experienced before. I let go of Baylen’s hand, reaching to the rocks above us. I pressed upward until my arm muscles burned, trying desperately to shove them up and off, knowing very well it was useless. Shrieks of all different volumes poured out of me over and over again. Absolute, unimaginable terror pulsed through my body and filled every single ounce of my being. It controlled anything I was thinking or doing without my permission; there was nothing I could do to stop the panic. I clawed at the rock, screaming at the top of my lungs.

Wes threw one hand over my mouth to stifle my cries. It didn’t quiet me; I just screamed even harder into it. His other hand grabbed onto mine and he spoke softly to me. “Squeeze my hand as hard as you can to get the fear out. Don’t worry, as hard as you can.”

I did what he said and practically broke bone, my grip was so tight. But the panic raged on.

Baylen had an idea. He could just barely turn his head to me. He placed his mouth up against my ear. “Mayla,” he began softly. “You’re not here, you’re back in your room lying on your bed. Your blue armchair is in the corner and you have your mother’s yellow sweater on. I’m lying next to you. Do you hear me?”

I didn’t answer him; the screams kept coming. He repeated the statements twice more.

“Do you hear me?” he asked again. Finally, I nodded. My loud, piercing shrieks into Wes’ hand turned into intense sobbing again. Baylen paused for a few seconds, then continued.

“Do you know when I first fell in love with you, Mayla? Even if I didn’t totally realize it at first, I know it’s been a while now. I think I’ve always loved you in some way, but only recently accepted how real it was. Do you remember that one night we spent together months ago? Ty and Tarin were working late and we sat in the lounge for hours, talking and laughing. Even though I was with Tarin, I realized that night that it was you I was in love with and not her. I should have told you back then, but I was afraid, and you were with Ty and…” His voice trailed and he paused again. “But I’m not afraid anymore, May. And you don’t have to be either.”

My crying turned into a whimper. Baylen’s words commanded my attention so forcefully that my body finally calmed down without even realizing it. If I’d had the capacity to speak, I would have told him that he was right, that I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. And that I felt the same way about him. I fumbled to find his hand in the muddy water when my body tensed up again. But not from claustrophobia — there were voices.

Oberon and Leaser had made it to the falls. Finally, I was grateful for the tight nightmare I was concealed in. They splashed in the water only feet from our hiding place. I could hear Oberon’s dark, threatening voice but couldn’t make out words.

Wes and Baylen’s bodies shivered in the frigid water right along with mine. We held our breath as the sound of Oberon and Leasor continued for a minute longer. Soon, they drifted away, becoming more faint and distant until disappearing completely. The three of us chattered a huge sigh of relief.

“Wait!” Wes shouted in a hushed voice as Baylen immediately began to slide sideways. “Wait a minute, just in case.”

The minute was terrible. Just knowing that freedom was so close made panic start to wash over me once more. My breathing and shivering intensified and Wes had to grab my hand again. Finally, he gave the order to get out.

As soon as the first breath of fresh air entered my lungs, the devastating sobs returned. I sat up on the riverbank, completely free, crying into my hands at the aftermath of such a traumatic experience. I could barely move; my irrational claustrophobia had incapacitated me so greatly that Wes had to pull me up under the arms just to be able to stand. He put up a finger to signal us to stay quiet.

“Go back up the way we came,” he whispered and took off.

Baylen and I followed. It was slow and agonizing, trekking over the very narrow, muddy banks, but at least the exertion was warming our bodies again. Once we got to the first waterfall, we gave a collective cry of happiness — Oberon and Leasor had tied ropes to a tree at the top of the canyon to scale down, still hanging over the edge. We used them to help us climb up the rocks and greenery to the top. Baylen still had his dagger; he cut the ropes so that Oberon couldn’t use them, then we ran into a full sprint. After what seemed like an eternity, we finally spotted our transport still parked in the trees.

Wes sat behind the controls while Baylen climbed into the back with me. “Let’s get the roof up again and I’ll turn the warm air circulation on to dry us,” said Wes. “Change into your warming shirts.” He pushed a button near the front corner and the clear, glass roof began to rise up from the sides. He threw our dry warming shirts to us in the back as he got the transport going. I stripped off my boots along with my wet Med Lev top, not caring anymore about modesty.

As soon as we were on our way, drying off and gliding smoothly across the terrain toward our Colony, I could finally relax. I leaned against Baylen with his arm around me. He squeezed my shoulder softly and rested his cheek on my head. I was so tired and traumatized by our experience that I didn’t have the energy to have a real conversation with him just yet. But I made a vow right then: the second the ordeal was over and we were safe again, I would tell him the truth of how I felt. The truth that had taken far too long for me to realize.

I loved him, too.

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