I walk over to a fallen tree and sit down on the rough trunk, rolling my shoulders back as I let my eyes slip shut. I reach out to each of my shadows and check in with them, seeing through their eyes and taking in the full perimeter of the small community we’re monitoring. Procel is inside the house with Mephis, both of them trawling through paperwork and anything else they might come across that could help us with this extraction.
They’re both safe and somewhere that they’re not going to be spotted, so I leave them and move on, one by one, until I’ve been through the entire town. I hear a lot of damning things, a lot of pro-Resistance chatter. This community thinks they’re safe here, and I’m thankful for all of the training I’ve done to sharpen my memory.
I’ll never forget the Gifted or the evil they’re talking about.
When I’ve gone through each of my creatures, I go through them again.
And then once more, just to be sure.
When I come back into myself, darkness has fallen around me. My muscles are all stiff and sore, my fingers are numb and a little blue in the cold night air, and my stomach is growling viciously.
I’ve been in the shadows for hours without noticing.
There’s a small, wrapped bundle sitting next to me on the tree, simple rations that I inhale without much thought and barely taste any of it. There’s not really enough there to fill me up, just ease away the edge of my ravenous hunger instead. Rahab is still sitting at my feet, his void eyes watching out over the trees protectively as he stands guard.
The girl must have brought me the food.
The shadows aren’t usually combative against North, Gryph, or Gabe, thanks to the years of trust I’ve built with them, but the recent issues I’ve been having with them all have meant that they’ve been more reactive, even to them.
Never with the girl though.
It’s just another thing I loathe about her.
When I stand up, my body cracking and stiff at the action, I make my way over to the small camp that Gryph has put together. It’s standard procedure to have the small camouflage tent set up on the ground and two more of my shadows keeping watch a few feet away. There’s silence inside, but they’re both awake. They’ll be communicating through the mind link they share, partially so they don’t disturb my work, but also so that we remain undetected out here.
I don’t want to sleep in the tent.
I’ll speak to Gryph and then take up watch for the night. There’s plenty of trees I can lean against and with my shadows out, I could sleep there without being any risk to us at all. Gryph’s Gift would also wake him if someone got close enough for him to hear their thoughts and… the girl's bond has always been good about keeping her alive. I’m sure it’ll wake her if needed.
I lift open the flap and hunch over to duck into the tent. I have to almost immediately find a spot to sit down. This thing is only made to keep us dry and unseen, not at all to keep us comfortable.
What did you find? Gryph says before I have the chance to address either of them.
He’s stripped off his jacket but he’s still fully armed. He’ll sleep that way too, always ready to wake with a gun in his hands. It’s saved our asses more than a few times. There’s a weariness etched into his face that comes with him using so much of his Gift, even with the extra boost he has thanks to his bonding.
I push the answer to the surface of my mind, the area that we had learned years ago that he’ll find without having to pry, and the only acceptable way I’ll allow him to use his Gift on me. He knows that boundary and has always respected it.
A lot of Resistance support and treachery, but not the targets. There are signs of them in the house though. I doubt they’ll be gone for longer than a day. His contact lenses are in the bathroom, and there’s a bag with her ID in one of the closets that I doubt she’ll just leave behind.
He nods firmly and sips at the bottle of water in his hands. When he sees me look at it, he leans over to grab another one out of his bag, tossing it over to me.
I down it in one go, and then finally, I look over at his Bonded.
Her hair sticks up in a fuzzy little halo of silver around her head, the cost of her Gift that no one has really commented on yet. The photo we’d originally been given of her showed a dark-haired little girl. Whatever experiments the Resistance had done to her, the testing of her abilities and the limits of what a Render like her could do, had leached all of the color away from her hair, and sometimes I wonder if it’s done it to her skin as well. She’s unnaturally pale, a stark comparison to the olive tones of North and I, but even Bassinger’s Eastern European lineage skin has more tone than she does.