After Fate Fell

28 • SIX

1 year, 3 months, and 16 days after it all
•SIX•

The final few hours of the car ride to Philadelphia go so slowly. I keep my foot down hard on the pedal, usually pushing upwards of ninety miles an hour, but the trip still seems to drag on, much slower than we'd like. John and I are in a mutual mood, a mutual annoyance with the slowing of time, a mutual desire to get to the others as soon as we possibly can. When we finally enter city limits, we both let out a sigh of relief. Almost there. Of course we still have the whole flight, and who knows what the takeoff time of a flight leaving for southwestern Africa will be, but neither of us are trying to think about that. We're just focused on moving. Focused on getting there.

We leave the rental car parked on a side street in a rich suburb-looking area. I honestly feel bad having to abandon it here for the rental company to have to find, because they didn't do us any wrong, but there's nothing else we can do. I grab the bone--it looks so much bigger now that I realize that I have to hide it--and I leave the keys locked inside so that nobody steals it. I try to conceal the bone within my jacket and hope for the best. I don't even know what airport security would think if they found this on me.

The airport is a couple miles walk from where we parked the car, so we walk into the Philadelphia International Airport sweaty and tired, but not complaining about it. We find a flight schedule and look through our choices. There are only two flights leaving for anywhere in Africa tonight: Windhoek Namibia and Dar es Salaam Tanzania. Both are in southern Africa, but Windhoek is the obvious choice. It's much closer to Francistown than Dar es Salaam. So we walk up to the desk and book two tickets for Windhoek, leaving in 3 and a half hours.

With nothing to do but wait, John and I sit down in some chairs along with a lot of other people. The easy part about air travel with us is that we rarely ever have luggage to deal with, which is a hassle. While everyone and their mother is fretting about whether they packed everything, and struggling with getting everything checked through the scanners, John and I can just sit and relax.
The thing that we do have an issue with air travel is paying for it. We never really worried about having money or any items of Earth, because they were of no use to us, they are of no use to us. We've had much more important things to worry about. But, with flying, you've gotta pay. The good thing is that we've always found creative ways to pay. I know Ella always offers the airport worker ringing her up one of the precious jewels from Lorien. I've never been like that. Instead, I go along with their charade, using money. The thing they dont know is that I've used telekinesis on the nearest ATM everytime, pulling the money right out of the maching with my mind. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Not that I really cared if it's the right thing to do anyways. I'm Six in case you've forgotten. Which you haven't.

John's snoring beside me. It's been a long couple of days for him, with going to Paradise and all, and before that, being held captive in D.C. by a bunch of government thugs. What a freaking joke. They think now that we've won the war, we are worth something to them. Slaves. For their army. So we can help them get some kind of political gain on other countries. What a fucking joke. What a....n American thing to do.

We escaped from them faster than they could count to ten. Agent Walker was the one who took the first move, jumping on one of the guards while John and I hit them with every Legacy from the book. We gained our legacies back when we needed them most. It was a glorious victory.

After escaping, we all ran into the city, looking for a place to hide. Just because we had escaped didn't mean we were safe. I knew how dirty the government plays...we all knew. Hell, Agent Walker was part of that, she knew what a mess it was. That's why she said she was leaving it. And John, him and I have seen everything the government can do first-hand. Bud Sanderson, that creep who was bought out by the Mogs in that stupid MogPro deal, wreaked so much havoc on the whole population of Earth. Because of his stupidity, the issue of the Mogadorians invading Earth became a subject that people were actually divided on, instead of being united behind us, and ridding this planet of the Mogs once and for all.

So yes, we've seen what the government can do, and it's not pretty. We hid in a stock room for a nearby mega-supermarket. We stayed there for hours, hiding out until we thought it was safe to come out. The plan was to get a rental car and go to another airport, because we knew the D.C. one was unsafe, but Agent Walker backed out last-minute. She said while she has fond memories of working alongside us in the past, she wanted to move on and start a new life. And she said that by telling anyone of where she was going, it would put others at risk. She had caused the government to find us once and she didn't want it to happen again. So she gave each of us a hug and disappeared, hopefully forever, for her sake.

So John and I got a rental car, but he changed his mind about the location. He was insistent upon going to Paradise. After a while, I knew it wasn't even worth arguing. He was going there whether I agreed or not. And then of course, the rest played out like anything else in our lives: freakish. He gave Sarah's family his condolences, which was the most normal thing that happened on our trip to Paradise, but when you really think about it, telling a teenage girl's family that she died fighting for her life against an alien race isn't normal. It shouldn't have had to happen, but all the same, it did.

Then, we went to Sam's house and went back down into the well in his backyard, searching for something because John heard a voice in his head telling him to go there and to search for something. When we found what we were apparently looking for, it changed everything. Along with the charm which numbered us which we had put on us back before we landed on Earth, when we were just little children, there was another, much darker charm that went along with it. Each of us, if still on Earth after the threat of demise by Mogadorians had been eliminated, had a death tied to our bodies. An imminent death, with no timer on it telling us when we would die, or which order we would die in attatched to it. Only a place.

And while I sit here in the Philadelphia National Airport, I just want to get out of this damned country just as badly as John wanted to get out of Paradise Ohio. Because my death place is Washington D.C., and I don't want to go anywhere near there ever again.