Blurred Lines

Chapter Four: Fire

"So, north," Shawn simplified as we stood in the underground room, gathered around the map that Dillon had spread out on the table. I wasn't sure how long we'd sat on the ground-them holding each other and crying, me sitting there motionlessly, still trying to grasp that I was dead, that I had powers-before Shawn finally got us up and going again.

I'd explained everything I had been told to them, and after we got over that, we busted out the map-well, actually, we picked it up off the ground-and plotted our route.

"And we need to hit some of these other villages on the way, but I don't even know which ones. He never said specifically," I added. Shawn nodded and wiped her nose sloppily with her sleeve. Dillon spun the map so it faced him, putting a finger on our town, Borderline.

"We're starting at the very edge, so we have a lot more to cover. We're going to have to stop in every town," he explained, his finger tracing a zig-zagging path between the towns on our way to the palace, "until we have six more people like Eve, and then we make a beeline north. He mentioned an army, right?" he asked, turning to me. I nodded and he stared at the map for another minute.

"We could stop in the biggest ones, even after we find the others, and recruit as many people as possible. All seven should have the memory thingy, so we would be able to raise up a little army of our own to help us get through the defenses," Shawn suggested. Dillon and I nodded in agreement.

"Now the defenses," Dillon began, placing a finger on the palace on the map. There was a moat drawn around it, and soldiers standing at the ready around the moat. "will probably be pretty big. We have to fight through them, and we won't know for sure how until we see it, but I'm going to take a guess and say we'll have to split up. Half of us to get through the initial defense, the other half to fight through to the throne room. That's just a rough plan, though. We might want to hang around the palace for a few days, study it and figure out how to do this. We may be able to just sneak in, or we'll have to fight our way through," he explained.

"Were you like a tactician or something?" I asked quietly in awe. Dillon's plan on attacking the palace had accounted for almost everything, and every way we had a good chance at success.

He flashed me a brilliant white grin. "Captain of the football team," he said proudly. Shawn and I laughed a little before we went back to seriousness.

"When do we leave?" Shawn asked. Dillon shrugged, and they both turned to me.

"I-I guess we leave today or tomorrow, depending on what time it is," I stammered. Really, I wasn't sure where to begin. Planning it was one thing, but going through with it was an entirely different story.

Dillon seemed to understand this, because he suggested we go through the packs and see what we had to work with.

"He said three days to the next village, right?" Shawn asked as she opened up her pack. I unrolled the sleeping bag on mine, feeling the material. It was thick and definitely insulated, but I wasn't so sure about water and wind.

"Three days to the next town, on foot. From there we can probably figure out how far to the next one and pack up there," I affirmed as I unclippled my pack. I pulled out two bags of beef jerkey, a packet of water purifier, a metal water bottle that didn't weigh as much as it seemed, and a few other odds and ends, like an industrial pocket knife and some rope.

Dillon pulled out the pocket knife, flipping through the different blades. "This would work pretty well," he said admirably. "Do we all have the same things?"

I opened the fourth pack, quickly checking through it. It had all the same components as the other ones; food, container, knife, purifier, rope. "Yup," I said.