The Bounty Hunter's Trilogy: Chosen By Fate

Chapter 9. The Lonely Leader

Now I realized, after going through all of this, that my ankle was still broken, so Lacy helped me to my chair. "Man, he really got you. You're going to need a stitch in that lip."

"That's mostly from interrogation training." I sat down with my pant leg rolled up a bit and summoned more heat into just my palm, then I put my hand on my ankle and I felt the bone snapping back into place. It hurt just about as bad as if it were being set by a doctor. But it lasted for only a few seconds, then it disappeared. I did the same thing to my lip and cheek, feeling the aches left over from the fake interrogation disappearing. I stood up again and felt completely out of place. Two people were missing.

"Audrey, what do we do?" Henry asked as he came forward. Audrey looked at him, like he'd brought her out of a trance. She looked at the black sludge at her feet.

"We need clean this up. Nobody touch the sludge. After that we need a meeting. All of the minors are to go to the gym for defcon training."

Colby stepped forward from the small crowd, shaking his head. "Audrey, defcon is only for-"

"I know, only for war, but it's time." Colby shut his mouth, tight lipped and shocked. "We need to fight back. I'm done waiting for them to attack and kill us."

Nobody tried to protest. I stood up beside Lacy and felt my ankle click as the bones settled back into the joint. "Audrey." Audrey turned to look at me with pain in her eyes. "What do I do now?"

"You train like never before, as often as you can. Practice punching at home, run around, anything you can. Henry, do a roll call of all of the minors once in the gym and make sure nobody is in their rooms. We need to know who all was taken. And sweep the building as quickly as possible so we can shut off that alarm." She went past everybody and everyone went into action.

I followed her and caught up with her in the elevator so we were alone. The doors closed and she stood there with her hands folded in front of her. "Audrey? It's okay to let go sometimes." I knew she wanted to scream her head off. But she held it together. I reached forward and hit the emergency stop button. "I'm not letting you leave until you-" Audrey suddenly turned to me and hugged me tight around my waist. I hugged her back and she wept for a good thirty seconds. Finally she took a few deep breaths and was able to calm herself down before she let go of me and took a step back. She wiped away the tears that were streaking her cheeks and she tightened her pony tail by giving it a tug.

"Sorry about that."

"You don't need to apologize. I completely understand."

Audrey shook her head at herself and hunched her shoulders a little. "It's just that the last time this happened... we didn't get them back. It's horrible to know what they did to them... What they might do to my husband." A few tears fell down her cheeks again and she bit her lip as it shook in an effort to keep her crying to herself.

"What happened?" She took a deep breath.

"The bounties gain their strengths through us. That's why they took Beverly and Stan." She wiped some tears with her sleeve. "The sludge that thing turned into, if one of us comes in contact with it, in less than a year, we become one of them with a resistance to any powers we had plus any resistances the Bounty already had. It's how they're so strong and hard to kill. It's a long and painful process. Unfortunately I've had to watch it firsthand. The leader before me and Stan, Selena Fuller, she met that fate and she begged us to kill her while she was still sane enough to recognize us. We tried everything we knew how, but by the time we found what we needed, it was already too late." Audrey pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes as I tried to process all of this new information. "Knowing that's what Stan is going to suffer... I can't..." She started crying harder and I put my arm around her shoulders.