Ignite

One || Scrabble

 Hey!

Okay, I just want to thank all of you who have followed onto this book. It means so much to me. And guess what? Because of you guys, Ignite has been on the Fantasy charts for four straight days, the best ranking being #135! That. Is. Amazing! And it's because of you. Yes, YOU, reading this or voting or commenting. So thank you so much!

That amazing feat aside, this chapter is dedicated to LunarEclipseShewolf because she's been very helpful, supportive, and I love it when the username shows up on my notifications.

Anyway, here is your chapter. I hope you like!

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    "Cabotage isn't a word!" Jensen exclaims as Stella places down the pieces carefully on the Scrabble board.

    "Yes it is." She replies calmly, smiling at Jensen's obvious annoyance at losing.

    "What's it mean then?" Jensen demands. "Sabotaging someone with a cabbage?"

I hold back a snicker, because his guess is as good as mine. The entire orphanage is watching the game, including Sparky, though his attention span is equivalent to a flea.

I am of course, enthralled to be watching this incredibly exciting game of Scrabble, and not at all thinking about other things. Probably the only reason I haven’t left already is because I enjoy laughing at Jensen’s expression as he comes face to face with Stella’s monstrous vocabulary.

    "The definition is coastal charting, or the legal rights of a country to their coastal borders." Stella says.

Jensen sighs in defeat and leans back in his chair, pushing it onto the back two legs. "Alright, alright, fine, it's a word."

He barely lasts two more turns.

    “Ratoon?” Jensen cries, nearly tipping the chair back. “What the heck is a ratoon?”

I’ve been antsy the entire game, and as the orphans cheer for Stella, who they’ve adopted as their new mother while Makuahine is out, I slip away down the hall to the room with the computer.

Who else survived?

I had checked the beach every couple of hours for the two days we had been here, desperate to find someone else, but also sickened at the thought of another body floating in on the waves.

No one had turned up so far, I had looked out the window and scanned the coast, but now I’m searching the news online to see of any of the other beaches had mysteriously washed up corpses. I give a sigh as I find no trace of anything. I’m about to give up when a headline catches my eye.

Aircraft Carrier Wreckage Found Thirty Miles Off Shore

I click on the article and skim the contents, feeling nauseous as I read through the body count. There are survivors, but there’s no mention of a tall blonde woman, dead or alive. I frown, squinting as my eyes pass over readings about two “adolescents, both deceased.” The clones.

Suddenly I have to close the page. My head is swirling, stomach twisting. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to control my breathing.

When I open my eyes again, the computer mouse is floating around my head, pulling on its wire. I clench my teeth and slam it back onto the desk, yanking all the other floating pens and sticky notes down too.

Elementals, I type furiously into the search engine, then add experiment after a second thought.

After sifting past all the irrelevant articles and wild conspiracy theories, I find some sites with reports in Russian.