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I wondered if the Changelings could see us here as they had in our room. I was certain they could. The idea I was in an alien reality TV show had, unsurprisingly, never occurred to me before. Thinking back, I couldn’t place the camera locations. They must have been so small they were virtually invisible.
Now I was the star of a hit dystopian show. I always thought taking part in reality television would be fun. To claim my fifteen minutes of fame. But now I was there, I didn’t think it was very fun at all.
Especially not with my life on the line.
Our task was simple. Get to the beacon the devices at our hips indicated within the next twenty-four hours and leave this place. It was the best motivator I could think of.
“We should run,” I said. “We can get there in half the time.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Chax said.
“You might have worn me out last night but I still have a little left in the tank.”
I heard a growl in the back of his throat.
“I’m going to have to make sure to give you both barrels next time,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I could stand it—I barely managed to survive last time.
But I was certainly up for the challenge.
We began at a gentle jog. It took a little time to get into a rhythm. Chax looked surprised I kept pace alongside him.
The field came to an end at a narrow stream that divided this field from the next one. It tinkled softly.
“Do you think it’s clean?” I said.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
He dropped down to his hands and knees and cupped a handful of it. He sniffed it, eyeballed it, listened to it—that last one came as a surprise—and then finally tasted it.
He nodded.
“It’s clean,” he said.
I slurpped as much as I could without bloating myself. I wiped an arm across my mouth and followed Chax up the opposite bank.
He dropped down onto his front and peered over the side.
“Why are you crawling around?” I said.
“The trackers will be out looking for us by now,” he said. “Best not to draw attention to ourselves.”
He focused on the sprawling countryside below. Nestled between two hills and half-shrouded in mist was a small farm. The paint was faded and half the windows were smashed. The barn looked in better condition with a newly-tarred roof and a fresh lick of paint.
“What do these trackers get out of this?” I said. “Maybe we can do a deal with them.”
“At a guess?” Chax said. “Money. And fame. The usual reasons someone would want to hurt somebody else. There’s nothing we can give them that the controllers of the show can’t. I’m afraid it’s us against them. Come on. We have to move.”
We hustled down the other side of the embankment and made a beeline for the barn. We paused at the flimsy handmade fences and ducked between the two horizontal bars.
I checked the farm field was empty before jogging across it. We reached the barn’s rear and slowed to a stop. I bent over, bracing myself on my knees to recover from our run.
The barn was in worse shape than I thought. The paint did a poor job of concealing the damage it’d received recently.
“Looks like fire,” I said.
“Looks like,” Chax said.
