“That’s too many. I can only handle four before I need to recharge.”
“How do you recharge?”
“Without access to my ship? Sleep.”
Right. I should have been able to figure that out. The stress of everything that happened made me overly tired and I wasn’t thinking straight. Hopefully I was thinking straight about John. Hopefully I was right about him helping us.
“We’re only three miles away from the lab,” Vidar explained, “Will their scanning devices be able to pick us up?”
I reached into my pocket and found my cellphone. A lump formed in my throat.
“What is that?” Vidar asked, snatching it out of my hand.
“Cellphone.”
“A primitive communications device? They can use this to track us, right?”
“Yes.”
“My implant may be able to redirect the signal somewhere else. That should throw them off our trail for a while.”
He stared at the phone and a thin beam of red light projected from his eyeball. I gasped in awe. Vidar ignored my childlike fascination with technology that to him was quite normal.
“I’ve projected the signal about fifty miles South. That should put them off the trail for a while.”
Vidar snapped my phone in half. A pang of pain surged through my chest. That phone was my last chance at contacting my parents, my friends, or anyone. I’d have to disappear now, completely. On the run from the United States, I’d never be able to live in peace again. If Vidar detected my uncertainty, he said nothing about it.
He snuck his hand in mine and then pulled me in close for a hug. I barely came up to his chest, but I could rest my head just beneath his rib cage as he held me.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, “In a few hours, we’ll be safe and tomorrow, we’ll find a way back to my ship.”
“Okay.”
“Trust me, little earthling.”
I wrapped my arms around him, clutching the broad muscles on his back and feeling safer. The sun went down and the temperature dropped. I started to shiver as Vidar remained impervious to the shift in weather. From our experimental data, I recalled that he could withstand both extreme heat and extreme cold better than most humans.
Vidar kept me in his arms until it was time for us to leave. His body generated more than enough heat to keep both of us well insulated from the chill.
I hadn’t expected Maryland to get that cold at night. My nerves might have had some effect on me. Every time I shifted my arms or legs outside of his grasp, I became immeasurably cold. Finally, Vidar whispered, “Are you ready?”
“Yes. I’ll give you his address, but I can’t give you coordinates.”
“That’ll do.”
I told him John’s address. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking through his route. I bit down on my lip, not wanting to interrupt him. Then, with his arms wrapped around me and skin pressed against mine, we teleported the first five miles.
Again, I had the wind knocked out of me as I landed on another patch of forest near the highway. Sure enough, we were five miles closer. I could hear sirens from the city as we approached.
“Georgetown, here we come,” Vidar murmured.
“One moment,” I begged, gasping for air.
Television and books made teleportation seem ultra-appealing but in real life, I hated that total loss of control and how the instant of teleportation seemed to slow down to an excruciating rate where I was all too aware of where my molecules were being sent.
I caught my breath and nodded, indicating to Vidar that I was ready for another round. My legs swept out from under me and we landed even closer to the city, on one of the sidewalks. People are so attuned to their environments, so focused on their commutes, or their dinners, or their Tinder dates, that no one seemed to notice us appearing out of thin air. At least this time, I didn’t have the wind knocked out of me.
I was getting used to this. Vidar grabbed my hand and asked, “Ready?”
