Shifters

Chapter 36

LUKE

I was starving.

I sat up, yawning. Why was I in a tent? Oh. Right.

I groaned and flopped back down, but then my stomach growled and I pulled myself right back up again.

I maneuvered myself out of my sleeping bag, which the Facility had so generously donated in its helpful backpack—I hadn't gone through any of the bags' other contents, since I had been so exhausted last night. Thea and Will were the same. Speaking of them... On one side of me, only a mess of black hair revealed Will. On my other side, Thea's sleeping bag lay empty. Ren was also gone. I wondered what they were doing. I had spotted them discussing last night, but had forgotten to ask Thea what they were talking about.

I carefully stood up, trying not to disturb Will, and made my way out of the tent. Ren was building a fire while Thea sat on a log nearby, talking. She broke off when she saw me and smiled.

"Good morning, Luke! How'd you sleep?"

I shrugged. "Fine."

Ren said nothing. She was still wearing her green-and-brown outfit, and her dreadlocks were pulled back into a ponytail again. She was quite intimidating. It was then that I realized how much older than us she was. I had thought she was about our age, maybe eighteen or nineteen, but I saw now that she must've been in her early twenties, twenty-two or twenty-three. Her face looked young, but her manner and her eyes spoke of someone much older.

She made a spark, and the grasses and wood began to glow.

"Ugh," a voice behind me said, and I turned to see Will grimacing at the fire. "I don't have good memories of fires."

"Jeez, Will, brush your hair," I laughed. His hair was sticking every which way. He gave me a funny look.

"I don't have a hairbrush," he said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "And you're just as bad."

"You need a haircut," I observed, ignoring his comment.

"Honestly, Luke, just stop," Thea said. "Who cares about hair?"

I stared at her, pretending to be taken aback. "I do," I said, putting on an offended voice. "My perfect, fantastic hair—"

"Oh, shut up about your hair already," she groaned, burying her face in her hands as she probably remembered our conversation however-long-ago when we'd woken up to find the devices in our heads for the first time. I grinned.

"What's for breakfast?" I asked Ren.

She gave me a seriously scary look. "'What's for breakfast?'" she repeated. "You show up in my camp, decide to stay here, and ask 'What's for breakfast' like we're some happy family camping?"

"Ren," Thea said nervously.

Ren shook her head. "Never mind. We need to stay together."

"Why?" Will asked.

Ren didn't reply for a long time. "Because," she finally answered, and said nothing more.

None of us pressed the topic.

~~~

Ren had gone off to fill the water bottles in the stream, insisting that she didn't need any help. That left me, Thea, and Will alone together.

"So," I said, "who is this woman? She's against the government, she's Fallen, and she's against the Facility too."

"I don't know how she feels about the Facility," Thea said. "She obviously doesn't love it, but I don't think she knows that much about it. She knew it existed before we told her about it—"

"How?" Will interrupted. "The Facility's top-secret."

"I don't know," Thea said. "I don't think she actually knew what the Facility did, though. She wasn't surprised about our shape-shifting, but she was asking questions—either she didn't know the answers, or she needed clarification or proof."

"Do you think she found out all the information by herself?" I questioned.

"No, definitely not," Thea replied. "She has connections, that much I've figured out—last night she told me she couldn't tell me how she knew anything."

"So...another organization?" Will said dubiously.

"I don't know," Thea said hopelessly. "This is all so confusing. The government, the Facility, now another group?"

"They must be pretty powerful if they found out the Facility existed," Will added. "Though not stronger than the Facility?"

"I was thinking," Thea began.

"Oh no," I said.

"The wait-until-they-find-us plan is good, except...we're assuming there still is a Facility," Thea said, ignoring me.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The Facility was on fire," Will jumped in, seeming to understand what Thea meant. "I can't believe we didn't think about that earlier...I don't think much of it could've survived—not the tech, not the equipment...not the people. There's a good chance everyone and everything in the building was destroyed. There may not be a Facility at all anymore."

"Oh," I said.

"Surely there's someone connected to the Facility who survived? Someone who wasn't in the building, maybe? What if there's another building, another part or branch of the organization?" Thea asked.

Will stared at her. "You want the Facility to still exist?"

Thea sighed. "Not exactly," she said. "But they were our only chance of overthrowing the government."

"No, they weren't," a voice said from behind us.

I whirled around to see Ren, setting the full water bottles down by the tent.

"Oh—hi, Ren," Thea said uncomfortably.

"The Facility's gone, then?" Ren asked.

How much of our conversation had she heard?

"Probably," I replied. "Most of it, anyway."

"If there were another opportunity to overthrow the government, would you take it?" Ren continued.

"Definitely," Thea said immediately.

"Yes," Will said suspiciously. "Why?"

"You've probably guessed that I work for a rebel group," Ren said, eyeing us carefully. "Would you like me to bring you to them?"

I exchanged a glance with Thea and Will.

"Yes," Thea, the leader, said.

A/N: dedicated to @Fuzzybunny41