At the edge of the tree line, a girl stood half in the shadows. Black hair tangled around her face, and her green eyes were wide and red-rimmed. Her clothes had been torn, and her hands shook.
Magic sputtered around her in chaotic bursts.
She had to be the witch who escaped.
“I called ten minutes ago,” she choked out. “Itjusthappened. Please, please find my friends.”
“Hey,” Koa said gently, hands lifted as he approached. “You’re okay. We’re here. I’m going to heal you, okay?”
She nodded, sniffling.
He scanned her quickly, his glowing blue flames moving over her arms and legs. She was covered with small cuts and bruises, like she’d crashed through underbrush in a blind panic. She was free of a tourmalyke injection site, though.
“They didn’t get you,” Koa reassured her.
“How did you escape?” Eleanor asked softly.
She shook her head, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I heard this humming, and then something hit the others. I panicked and teleported. I didn’t even see their faces. I shouldn’t have left them. I shouldn’t?—”
“Hey.” Eleanor’s voice was smooth and steady as she fully stepped in beside Koa. “You did what you had to do to get help. That’s brave. No one blames you.”
The witch’s breathing started to slow as Eleanor continued to talk her through this evening, grounding her with soft, patient questions.
“Hey, Sylver,” Zuko shouted from the other side of the clearing.
“Yeah?”
He pointed to a hooded cowl he’d found in the underbrush. The inner lining glinted with a faint shine. “I think it’s Tourmalyke-stitched. Probably masks scent and aura from humans, right?”
“Let me see that,” Slater said, running over. He ran his fingers over the fabric, eyes narrowing as Snakey faded, and he jerked his hand back. “Yeah. Those idiot humans stitched tourmalyke crystal right into the fabric.”
“It will block magical detection within a certain radius.” Sylver walked over and inspected it, lips thinning into a line. “Definitely tourmalyke. They’re getting innovative.”
“Surely they’ll exhaust Tourmalyke at this rate.” Katie pushed her glasses up higher on her nose. “I dug deeper into the off-record research division from the drone’s footage. That facility sits about thirty miles from this location.”
“So that’s our likely target,” Solon stated.
“Yeah,” Katie confirmed. “Rogue lab in the human territory.”
“How eerily accurate to real life,” I muttered under my breath.
“Well, that was the point,” Solon mentioned.
Eleanor finished soothing the witch, giving her one last squeeze on the shoulder before getting to her feet.
“We’re going to send another agent to take you to HQ,” she told her. “You’ll be safe. We need you to stay put there for now, okay?”
The witch nodded reluctantly.
The simulation spawned an NPC agent, the man stepping out of the trees with a reassuring smile.
“Hi, I’m here to take you to HQ.” He led the witch away toward an extraction point.
Our mission pulled us the other way, toward the border.
rune
. . .
