Survival

3

I met the boys at the dock of Morris in the morning. Kit was already gone when I woke up, Whitney was present however.

Full cooked breakfast though...no complaint there. She even gave Coop some bacon and sausages. Bribe?

But Coop followed me to the dock, something he had never done. He stalked behind me like a guard, ears up and head low.

"Body guard there Tor?" Shelton asked as I approached them. I turned to see the mutt sitting up tall, eyes watching all four of us.

"It seems so" I muttered, stepping onto Hugo. It felt weird having Ben coming back to Bolton after a while of him being gone, but it was good to have him back. He perched next to me on the bench as Tom started the engine. Just as he was about to take off, Coop leapt onto the boat and sat on my lap. I yelped loudly, not expecting it.

"Sorry dog-breath. No dogs in school" Hi said, splaying his limbs all over the bench. Tom looked back at me, but I read the message.

"Coop, down. I'll be back later" I lightly shoved him off, but he growled at me and went to nip my fingers. I snatched them back. "Cooper!" was he about to bite me? He gave me an apologetic look, licking my cheek. "Down" he whined. I rolled my eyes.

SNAP

The flare soared through me, and for a moment I almost panicked that Tom would see my eyes, but he knew about it. He watched fascinated as I drilled my gold eyes into Coop's blue ones.

I'm going to be late to school, mutt. Get down and tell me later , I ordered, admittedly a little harshly. Coop barked loudly.

Danger. Must protect. I sighed, rolling my eyes. Instead I swung my arms under his belly, lifting him up. If I wasn't flaring, he would have flattened me. He whined and yelped as I dumped on the ground of the port.

Stay. Tell me later, and just to make sure Coop didn't get the chance to follow me, I motioned to Ben. He told Tom to move the boat out a little. Once it was a metre and half from the dock, they all turned. Coop narrowed his eyes at me. "See you later boy" I turned and leapt towards the boat. I landed lightly in the centre, and looked back as Coop barked wildly.

Tom laughed as he motored us towards the school. I diverted the boys questions with 'I don't know's. Coop had had a spell of protectiveness after the incident with Chance and Hollis, that I couldn't even go to the toilet with him following and standing out the door. It seemed that side to Coop was back, but why?

School was pretty normal, apart from the fact everyone was nice to us. Some even asked if we'd stopped any other psycho's  recently. Maybe I preferred it when they didn't speak to us, I couldn't walk through the corridor without someone calling out to me. How did celebrities cope? How did Tempe manage?

I met the boys at lunch, and we ate at our usual bench. Whitney had prepared me a chicken salad sandwich, and boy was it nice. I think even Hi was jealous, and it was salad. Admittedly, I think we were all a little bored, we had nothing to do. Sure, I didn't exactly want to get involved in anything potentially life threatening, like the last three adventures we've had, but eating in silence was not really something I generally enjoyed.

Of course, there was one thing we were still trying to figure out. Karsten's notes on the memory stick. We had spent hours reading, and re-reading the whole drive. Every document was read by each of us individually in case the other three missed something. Nothing explained our new condition.

It didn't even explain the telepathy bit, we just used our initiative on that bit. Karsten didn't expect any one to get infected, let alone four teenagers. Nor did he expect the flaring to even happen, or the linking to the wolfdog. But it did, and we were completely alone now.