The Departed (Working Title)

Chapter Seven

"Okay, crew, we need to have a family meeting," Jax announced as we all collapsed by the fire pit from our morning run.

It was the same course this morning - run to the cliffs, climb the rope, descend the other rope, and meet back at the fire pit. Only this time we came across a furry black bear digging through the bushes looking for berries over by the rope we were supposed to climb down. We all gathered around and watched as the bear was completely unaware of our presence. Reach even had the balls to try to draw attention from it by yelling at it and waving his arms around. He tried to touch it, but his hand went right through the damn thing. His hand had become complete translucent.

"It's the separation between planes," He tried to explain to us as we watched in awe. We all took turns trying to touch the bear, but no one was successful

When we returned to the fire pit, we were all beat. The course had really taken its tole this time, and I had the blisters to prove it. I was hyper focused on the blisters, picking at them, and allowing the sting to keep me grounded. I was still in shock from the night before. That little girl and her pigtails haunted my mind. Then it was a whole other thing watching the bear completely unaware, and seeing that we were indeed on a different plane. I guess it just never hit me until that moment, which was weird because isn't that what I observed during my shadow rounds with Jax?

I recalled my time in that hospital room with Howard. Not a single nurse or doctor had noticed Jax and I standing in the room with them. It was just surreal.

"Shawn?" The familiar baritone called to me.

I jerked my gaze up towards Jax who was staring back it me with those hardened, indifferent eyes. His arms were crossed in a standoffish position. It was like the Jax from the previous night never existed. I tried not to take it personally, because deep down I knew even if he wanted to he couldn't show favoritism towards me as our group leader.

I cleared my throat, "Yeah, I'm listening."

Jax casually nodded his head before unwinding his arms and burying them in his hands. When he finally dropped them, concern spread across his face. "The council is going to be making a visit."

We all glanced around at one another with equally perplexed looks on our faces. Clearly, this was not something that anyone in the group experienced before my arrival, not even Reach.

"There have been several more attacks on reapers... both at training camps and at reap sights." There were those lapis lazuli eyes staring back at me again. Why would he stare at me immediately after saying that? Had we narrowly avoided an attack ourselves? I made a mental note to ask Jax when we had a moment together... whenever that would be. "The council is debating whether or not to cease training new reapers until the attacker has been apprehended."

This sparked rage in some of the campers, particularly Reach, who jumped to his feet and shouted inappropriate comments. "They can't do that!" He finally said.

"They can... and they have before," Jax said stiffly.

"Well... what happens to us if they shut down training? Where do we go? What do we do?" Les said, emphasizing with hand gestures.

Jax started pacing back and forth, aggressively massaging at his neck. "You go into limbo."

Limbo? Wasn't where we were already a sort of limbo?

"It's a state of rest. You know how in those sci-fi movies where they put people in suspended animation? It's like that," Jax explained, and everyone gave him looks of disbelief - more to the fact that Jax appeared to be a sci-fi junky than anything else.

"When would we get out of suspended animation?" Les asked as she began to bite at her nails.

"I don't know, at least until the culprit has been caught maybe longer... but lets not focus on that right now. Right now we need to be proactive, and we need to show the council what we are capable of. We need to train harder than ever before... in fact, we're going to double down on conditioning and combat. And since everyone has completed their first shadow round, we're going to start training in other areas."