Chap 107: Thunder and Rain

The thunder drowned out the ticking of bugs in the bushes behind them. Tall, solid statues surrounded the compound as they sat on one of the benches.

Kie sprawled on one corner of the bench, one leg half on it, brushing against Tee’s. She sat with both legs on the bench, her boots—taken off—resting nearby on the ground.

Thunder rolled, but neither moved. Darkness spread across the sky above. A gentle wind blew Tee’s bangs over her eyes as she focused on Kie’s tab, trying to guess the password.

“I took away all the rules, yet you still have barriers?” she asked.

“That was your decision,” he smirked.

“You’re hiding something on this tab, or you’d give me the pass,” she pressed, imagining pictures of his family or something to learn more about him. Geesh.

“Got it!”

Kie leaned up, brows knit.

“Your birthday is the pass, but you won’t tell me. Am I right?” She asked, studying him for cues to see if she was correct.

“The answer to that is either yes or no,” he replied, laughing and leaning back into the bench.

Tee couldn’t stay mad at that spiteful mock, especially with those cute dimples. She blinked long, dismissing the thought that he was softening her, and began guessing his birth month.

She knew all her Sentinel comrades were born in the same month as her—thirty options. Easy.

“But you only get five tries before the tablet locks for twenty-four hours,” he grinned.

Doing some quick mental math, she said, “That means the probability of success is essentially sixteen percent. Not bad.”

Kie zoned out at the sound of math. A headache crept in as he glanced around to confirm he wasn’t in a classroom.

Though they were both nineteen, there was a chance he was older, which narrowed her options. Her super sense picked up rain falling from the sky. Kie leaned up, alert, and their eyes met. The rain poured down, and she grabbed her boots as they rushed under the eaves of a building.

Kie scowled at his wet hair, growling at the rain.

Tee held his tab over his head. “Is this thing waterproof?”

“You’re lucky it is,” he snapped, missing it as she lifted it higher.

She grinned, holding the tab aloft, but the rain soon became too loud to speak over. A clap of thunder and chilly wind forced them closer together.

He finally grabbed the tab, but Tee didn’t mind. She hugged herself against the chill, looking down at her boots, thankful the tiled ground under the roof didn’t sink into mud. Primus had excellent drainage, and they watched the water flow to different areas.

Her mind drifted to a rainy day at school, waiting for Tetra to pick her up… Tetra’s happy face made her eyes sting with tears. Who would have thought Tetra would be gone so soon?

“You alright?” she heard him ask in her mind.

Kie kissed her cheek, dissolving any lingering anger she felt at his intrusion. One of those smooches he only gave when least expected. She smiled. Who would have thought an MG off-wanna-be could be so charming? She bit her lips at the thought… and who would have thought she was a Xeno-victim? What did the elders call her… Hybrid.

She wrapped her hands around his closer arm and kissed him back on the cheek.

There hadn’t been a Harbinger mission in quite a while, but the Sentinels weren’t concerned. The Harbingers didn’t possess the Omega Stone or anything of the sort. They enjoyed the break from pain and went on other assignments the Commander had for them. One such mission took them to distant lands far from the supercontinent Geovalon, slot canyons.

The mission base disappeared into layered bands of high rock formations. Those red, coarse walls formed passageways of varying widths, their tops glowing bright orange under the sun, contrasting sharply with the blue sky.

Everything below the sunlit marks was cast in shadow. On the dim, uneven ground of a passageway stood the five teens who had teleported there. They moved through the shallow green waters, alert for anything unusual.

Zod lowered his sword and looked down at the water lapping halfway up his boots. “At least this isn’t a Prodigy mission. Unlike the deathless Sheena, we’ll actually kill whatever Leak we were sent here to deal with,” he said.

“Yes, whatever Leak we were sent here to deal with,” Sadea said, emphasizing ‘we’ as she gave Tee a meaningful look.

Tee thought Zod spent too much time with Saeda. His loud mouth was rubbing off, and since he needed to say everything out loud, they had to hear it.

“I’ll scan for the beast,” she said after blinking twice at the high red walls. “I’m not used to this place, but since I’ve mastered my foreseeing, it shouldn’t take long.” With her chest held high, she added, turning to Kie, “It’ll take me five minutes to scan this entire place.”

“You have three minutes,” Kie said, turning to her. When his eyes met her pale ones, his lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. That was a mission—he needed to stay focused.

Tee bit her lips, nodding to suppress a smile as well. Kie’s seriousness was clear in giving her less time, but she saw the spark in his eyes when they met hers. She blinked his face away and activated her foreseeing.

It had been seven days of no rules with Kie, but she wouldn’t call it having him wrapped around her fingers. She still hadn’t learned anything about his parents or anything else she could use against him. She stopped trying to force him to talk.

Not hearing the terrible things done to poor Xeno-victims made the mood feel strangely romantic. She no longer encouraged it. Less talking was better. The callous jerk she thought he was had a hidden caring side, and she couldn’t get enough of it. While not on painful missions or enduring training, he was the best way to spend her time.

In the silence, with little space between them, she listened for the beat of their hearts. It had been too long since she’d done that with Jack. Despite the number of times she had kissed Kie, she was surprised she wasn’t tired of it. It made up for Tetra’s warm morning hugs, and she didn’t want to think about the day it would end. Spending a month with him and then breaking his heart would be a hotter burn. But what she was doing was for every Xeno-victim, not personal gain.

While Tee stood frozen, Kie watched her. He no longer feared her eyes catching his stare. In fact, he wouldn’t have minded. But since they were on a mission, he refrained, observing from behind.

He had a thing for slim necks. He noticed the hair at the back of her neck was wavier than usual—but it wasn’t wet. Someone secretly had curly hair and was hiding it.

Saeda removed one glove and approached the wall to touch it, unaware of Kie, who was fascinated watching Tee. She had already proven herself useful, so she didn’t fear any degrading comment from him.

Zod and Miko thought it was also wise to move around while Tee searched for the Leak from across the Veil. They doubted Kie would notice if they were snatched by some bloodthirsty monster. It was time to admire the scenery in the three minutes they had.

Saeda’s aura sensing picked up nothing, and she sighed. She continued brushing her fingers along the coarse, layered walls as she moved. The cool air and shallow water brushing against her boots were calming. Where had the Commander teleported them?

Miko didn’t speed through the waters, fearing she might slip. Memories of what Sade the sorcerer had done to her still flashed terrifyingly through her mind. She stooped down instead, staring at her green, jiggling reflection in the shallow water. At first, it was funny, but she gasped when she saw a fish the size of a nail clipping, its two large, beady black eyes staring back at her. It was cute, and just as her attention began to drift, she spotted another. She froze, holding her breath so as not to scare them away.

Zod saw the low waters over the ground as a problem. They wouldn’t leave any tracks from the monster, so they’d have to rely entirely on Tee. He had no clue about the number of legs or the size of the creature, and knowing Tee, she wouldn’t give them any warning. He would be in for the shock of his life when he saw it up close.

His super sense alerted him to something approaching his boot. He glanced down at the colorful, layered rock the water lapped against, but before he could react, Kie’s voice came from his left wrist.

“Tee found our Leak. Let’s move.”

He rushed to join his teammates, following Tee as she led the way. Their splashes in the water didn’t matter. Whatever monster they faced would want to eat them anyway, and moving toward it was practically doing the Leak a favor.

Tee summoned both her swords. Her teammates kept their eyes on the lower walls of the wide passageway, but deep tremors and ripples in the water forced them to look up—and that’s when they saw it.

A boulder-sized snout shot from around the edge of one wall, stabbing their hearts with terror. The monster’s full head emerged from behind the wall, but the rest of its dark body remained hidden. Its snout split into upper and lower sections that spanned its full height, revealing a long throat lined with sharp teeth bolting toward them.

Kie channeled the meager Ultramana energy he had into his swords, making them glow blue. They cut through the air toward the monster’s mouth, but Zod’s energy blast was faster, slicing past all their swords like a missile.

None of their attacks reached the monster’s mouth. It released a powerful sonar wave, pushing the waters ahead into a thin, high wall. Their swords and Zod’s blast were pushed back toward them.

The Sentinels evaded the projectiles, and getting splashed wasn’t a problem. They separated fifteen feet from the creature and sent more swords at it, but Zod needed time to recreate another blast and stopped running.

Except for Tee, the others saw the beast vanish. Their swords continued through the air, embedding themselves into distant walls. They didn’t watch long enough to see sections of the walls crumble into a mini-avalanche. Dark clouds formed in their minds as they blinked nonstop.

Tee’s eyes widened. She realized all their attacks had passed through the monster as if it were a hologram. Yet the beast still charged toward her, and her mind urged her to act. She jumped aside, swinging her sword at the right side of the creature. Her blade completed a full arc to the other side—hitting nothing. Her heart sank.