“I don’t know, but I’m taking that bastard out!” my uncle hissed, his eyes filled with a sudden anger.
Before any of us could even consider whether that was agood idea, he dipped down for a heavy stone, whipped out his slingshot, and fired.
His aim was true. The projectile hit the drone square in the face, and to my surprise the machine swayed instantly, its clawed metal feet losing hold as it toppled backward, then plummeted to the ground.
A loud splash followed a split second later, and we rushed toward the sound to find that it had landed in a deep pond.
We leaned over the edge, peering into the murky depths. Two blue lights blinked slowly at the bottom, casting an eerie glow up through the waters—once, twice, thrice—and then disappeared.
Broken, I assumed.
I took a step forward and crouched down, wanting to get a better look, but my father held me back. “Don’t touch the water,” he said. “The electricity might give you a shock.”
I actually hadn’t been intending to touch the pond—for fear of predatory turtles—but this sounded like a much stronger reason to avoid it.
“Thanks for the warning,” I murmured.
“Come on,” my uncle said gruffly. “Let’s go now.”
He turned and led us back toward the river. We traveled as quickly as we could manage, given the obstacles, while my mind raced over the implications of what had just happened.
Drones were man-made. Which meant that humans, from the outside, had sent the drone here. For what? It seemed only logical to conclude that it had something to do with the green fog—but in what way?
And why, exactly, had it seemed interested in following us?
I shook my head, realizing I was doing what I had told myself not to do right now: speculate. We were still in the middle of the jungle, and I needed my wits about me. I couldn’t afford toget distracted.
The one mercy was that journeys back usually went faster than journeys out, and that held true in this case. I’d lost track of the time, but the river came into view as a pleasant surprise, sooner than I’d expected.
When we passed through the last of the trees and walked out into the open, my head automatically turned upward, along with the rest of the group. I guessed we were all still feeling jittery and wanted to be sure no more drones followed us. Thankfully, none were. Except for the birds, the sky was clear.
We boarded the boat again, and I found myself much less nervous as we set out, having just endured two far more nerve-racking experiences. When we reached the other side, we quickly tied up the boat and then trudged through the remaining distance by foot, until we reached the ladder leading back up to the zip lines.
I sighed when we arrived at the top, leaning against a wooden post as I clutched my side—I had developed a painful stitch from the pace.
After we’d taken a brief rest, we attached ourselves to the zip lines one last time and zoomed off. The closer we got to home, the better I felt, and though I was wrought with tension as to what on earth had happened to my cousin and her community, being back in our own safe place would do a lot to comfort me. There was a reason scouts traversed the jungle as infrequently as possible, and I hadn’t expected a smooth journey, but what we had just been through… That, I could never have expected.
I had just reached the second to last zip line before the lookout came into view, when my father shouted out unexpectedly, “When we hit the next platform, stop, okay, Tani?”
I frowned, but yelled back, “Okay!” I didn’t have the energy to engage in a discussion while whooshing through the air. As the person at the front of the line, I did as requestedwhen I reached the next post, landing and then quickly stepping out of the way for the rest of my group to touch down. We stood around expectantly, looking at my father.
Every wrinkle on his face was pronounced, and his lips were cracked and parched. Honestly, I had never seen him so anxious.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” I asked, anxiety gripping me. Had he spotted another drone in the sky?
He exhaled, glancing tentatively at the zip line ahead of us. “It’s just… That’s the final line, leading directly to our home. And I… I’ve got a bad feeling in my gut about traveling so visibly like this, that I can’t seem to shake.” He looked down at the trunk of the tree, his eyes settling on the connecting ladder there. “I know this is the last thing any of you want to hear, when we’re one line away from home, but I honestly think we should travel more discretely for the last leg. I’ve had a feeling the whole way that we’re being followed, though I haven’t spotted anything. We just wouldn’t want to…” He trailed off, swallowing, and I knew we all understood what he meant. Whatever strange things were going on here, we didn’t want to run the risk of leading anyone, or anything, back to our base.
My uncle sighed, looking up at the sky and squinting. “Make ourselves such easy targets,” he finished. “You’re right. Taking a detour down to the ground might be a bit smarter, if there is anything up there…”
I swallowed, frankly hating the idea of going back down to the ground but trusting my father’s instinct. Nobody else objected, though Jessie’s face paled.
So, we dutifully descended one final time, our boots squelching in a particularly large puddle as we landed.
“We’ll go via the paddy fields,” my father said softly, taking the lead. “That path is the most sheltered, and it’ll lead us directly to the lookout anyway.”
I nodded, figuring that route made the most sense. We grew a good bulk of our food up in the trees, in wide, soil-filled platforms, but some crops took up too much space or were simply impossible to grow in the tree-top enclosures, and for those, we had carved out designated areas on the ground, surrounding them with fencing to keep as many animals out as possible. We’d placed the paddy fields in an area by the river that ran near our base, which was also close to the spring that supplied our fresh water.
As we made our way toward the fields, I realized it had been a while since I’d visited them. Harvesting crops on ground level wasn’t a job I volunteered for often, mostly because my mother was so uncomfortable with the dangers involved. She preferred me to develop my green thumb on the produce we grew up in the trees.
