Sage:
I catch his eye and we both immediately know what to do. I walk ahead of the group and look around. Before we got picked up by whoever is doing tests on us, we lived on a ravaged planet. There were few safe houses and we stayed in these wherever we could. Despite this, there were times where we had no where to go and we were outside for days on end. We usually went to forests as they provided more shelter. A small smile flickered across my face. At least they've given us an advantage here.
I'm looking around, scouting the area ahead of us and around us. Trees. Lots of trees. Mud squelches underfoot as I do a perimeter sweep. No one else apart from the 7 left of us. No animals I can see. Lots of tree stumps as well as well as small shrubs. Something glints in my peripheral vision and I frown. I follow the glint that caught my eye. It's coming from behind a bush right on the edge of the clearing. I crouch down and shift the fallen leaves away. Under the pile of leaves there's something made of metal. It's wrapped in green plastic and blending in well. That must be why I nearly missed it. I notice my hands are shaking slightly and my frown deepens into a glare. Get it together Sage. I unwrap the plastic and stop dead. I've seen one of these before. It's a weather controller. Ok. I guess I should explain.
Weather controllers as the name implies, control the weather. But it's extreme. It can drop a normal cold night down to below -50 degrees in under an hour. No one can survive that. It can also rise he temperature to above 100 degrees. No one could survive that either. Each one is different. Different limits. The one I encountered just under a year ago went down to -10 and up to 50. It said on the back. I swallow nervously and prepare to flip it over. Come on sage. It can't be that bad. So I flip it over, and my heart stops in my chest.
-100 degrees.
250 degrees.
Great.
I swear under my breath and look for an off switch. There's no off switch. That can only mean one thing. It's automatic. Which means that whoever put us in here can control it. I stand up and wave Magnus over. He jogs towards me, looking worried. I refrain from rolling my eyes and crouch down again. As soon as he sees it I know that he knows what it is as well. He looks at me again. I nod to confirm it and then point to the numbers on it. He goes white and looks at me, close to panicking. I'm starting to freak out now as well. If they lower it to -100 degrees then we are completely dead. So so so dead. But I need to calm down. Nothing's happened yet. And we have a whole forest of materials to protect ourselves with. I'm not giving up hope. Not yet.
