Prodigy Returns (book 3)

Chapter Sixteen

They had been walking all morning and were about to stop for a much needed rest. Alex's stomach growled, but she didn't say anything. Kyodin had a bit of water with him, but for the most part travelled pretty light so he didn't have much food. He offered Alex some water whenever he needed a drink, but even that was running low.

"Wait..." Kyodin said, stopping dead in his tracks.

"What is it?" Alex asked worriedly.

"Do you smell that?"

Alex took a whiff, but couldn't pick up what her brother was detecting. Kyodin looked around at the ground as if he were standing on a large map.

"What do you see?" Alex asked.

Noticing some indented soil, Kyodin crouched down and said, "These tracks are fresh."

"What tracks?"

Kyodin stood up and approached a tree behind where Alex was standing. "You see this?" he asked, as he plucked some fur from the bark. He studied the fibres carefully and then smelled them.

"What is it?"

"Pitdador," Kyodin said. "It's close."

"What's a pitdador?"

"That beast that was chasing you the other day — that was a pitdador. They're really nasty creatures... but they taste good."

Without hesitation, Kyodin activated his suit, causing his mask to come down and conceal his face. "Stay here," he instructed as he unholstered his blaster weapon. Tracking the beast using a type of radar system on his arm, Kyodin glided through the air.

Alex remained still and out of the action, but she tried to listen to what was happening. Everything was calm and silent, but then she heard a loud roar and the ground began to shake. Even though she had only met Kyodin the day before, she cared for him and wanted him to be safe. She reminded herself that he was an expert hunter and had been through situations like these a hundred times. While his suit protected him in hand-to-hand combat, it would be no match for a gigantic monster. Alex wanted to run toward the action and help her little brother, but decided not to. She put her trust in Kyodin and obeyed his command.

Alex heard the roar again followed by snapping branches. Then she heard a single electric pulse of Kyodin's blaster weapon being discharged. With one final moan and loud thud, Alex inferred the beast had been subdued.

Alex walked toward the sound of the action and saw Kyodin busy at work, taking something out of his kit.

"Nice work," Alex said, congratulating her brother on his catch.

"Thanks."

"Did you kill it?"

"Oh no," Kyodin assured. "Like I had done earlier when the pitdador was chasing you, I shot it with my blaster. I do this with all of them when I hunt. It doesn't hurt the animals, it just temporarily immobilizes them. I have to haul this thing back home, which can be a bit tricky. It may take me several days to get back and I don't want the meat to spoil within that time. So I keep them alive."

"How do you move an animal that weighs several tonnes?"

"First I need to keep it immobilized with this frequency transmitter," Kyodin said, holding up a device attached to his arm. "It matches the frequencies of the brain and keeps it in a comatose state. This is just a safety precaution. I then use another set of scramblers to make it light as a feather."

Kyodin took out a small device and attached it to the massive frame of the beast, causing it to have a large force field around it.

"Why do you put a force field around it?" Alex asked.

"It's actually an inverted force field. I've reversed the polarity so that the beast can't escape if it were to ever wake up."

"As a safety measure?" Alex said.

"Yes, exactly. You can never be too safe out here. One mistake could cost you your life."

"I see, so once it's trapped and you remove the weight, you just drag it like a truck pulling a trailer?"

"A what pulling a trainer?"

"Sorry, I forgot you don't get a lot of my references. Never mind, I understand how you move it."

With a cable attached firmly around the pitdador's head, Kyodin and Alex carried on, dragging the large mammal through the jungle. They walked until the trees began to thin out. It appeared as though they had reached the edge and were about to exit the jungle for the first time since Alex's arrival. From her vantage point, she saw nothing more than a glade, which didn't appear to be cool in any way, but she remained optimistic and once again followed her brother's lead.

"Okay, are you ready to see something really cool?" Kyodin asked.

"I'm ready."

"Then follow me."