The Differents | ✓

T H I R T Y

We said farewell to our little clearing. It wouldn't seem like much to someone at first glance, but I would always remember it. So much had happened in that clearing in only a few hours. I did a final sweep of the area we had stayed in and then we were off. I tried to stick to the trees and not the clearings or the banks of the streams we passed, even though that meant it was a little harder to walk. We didn't know who or what could be lurking nearby and I didn't want to find out.

It took longer than I expected to get to the site of the crash. From on top of the rock, it had seemed like it was quite close by, but now that we were on the ground, it was a lot further away than it had looked. It took us a few hours to get there, and even then, we had to face difficulties like getting lost or running into obstacles. But once we got near, I could tell. It made my muscles tense and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Not to mention that the forest was obviously wrecked from it and I could still smell burning, although it was fainter than when the plane had first crashed.

We were close to the wreckage, looking at it through the trees, when Sniper stopped. "Did we ever see the planes leave?" he said, his voice low.

I thought for a moment. We had seen the planes come, we had seen them hover above the wreckage and then come down, but we had never seen them leave. I shook my head at him, crouching down to get my gun out of my bag. He did the same.

"We should find somewhere to easily see the wreckage," I whispered. "If no one is there, then we can see if they left anything and be on our way."

"But if we never saw them leave, where are they? They must be somewhere, right? Unless they left while we were asleep or in the cave? The waterfall might have blocked out the sound of the planes flying."

I slung my gun over my shoulder and headed toward a sturdy-looking tree. "I'm going to climb up to see if anyone's there. If you're not coming I suggest you find somewhere to hide in case they come looking."

He nodded and went to find some rocks or bushes to hide in nearby, and I started up the tree. It was difficult to climb at first. I wasn't used to the weird texture of the trees outside the Core. However, I quickly got used to it and used the bumpy, uneven texture of the tree to my advantage. All the bumps and ridges in the tree's exterior made it easy to find things to hold on to.

Once I got high enough to see over the majority of the trees, I looked for the wreckage. It was still billowing a steady stream of smoke, although it had thinned a bit since I had last looked at it. From here, it looked relatively unassuming. The animals still hopped around, chirping to each other, and the trees that weren't destroyed still rustled their leaves when the wind came by. It seemed as if the three planes had left after all. If they hadn't, I would be able to see them, right?

From here, the damage the plane had done to the forest around it was impressive. I could clearly see the long trail of wreckage it had left behind it, and the ground it had turned over in the process. Looking at the plane itself, I was surprised that Sniper and I had even survived with only minor injuries. There were bits of metal everywhere and the plane looked much, much worse when I could see everything that had happened to it. Thinking about the damage reminded me of my arm, which I had forgotten about until now. I took off my jacket and pulled back my sleeve to see if it had gotten any better. I wasn't sure. It didn't look much different to the day before except that there was no longer any blood. I realized I really hadn't been taking very good care of it. I was so used to having the nurses fix everything that having to fend for myself, even if I knew how, came as a surprise to me. The cut looked like it needed to be cleaned though, and I knew what would happen if I didn't clean it.

I crossed my fingers and hoped there would be people in Old Victoria who could help us.

Climbing down from the tree, I whisper-shouted Sniper's name until he came out from a small pit underneath a rock and left me wondering how in the world he fit under it. He joined me, stretched his limbs and asked if I saw anything.

"No," I replied. "It all looks pretty much the same as before. No other planes, either. They must've left sometime last night."

"But still, be careful," he said. "Some of the planes have technologies we wouldn't even be able to imagine."

We edged toward the wreckage as quietly as we could, our guns loaded. My reflexes were as fast, if not faster, than Sniper's but he was a better shot, so he led. Once we got to the last ring of trees that were still undamaged, he stopped for a moment.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I did this?"

"Yeah, kind of," I said, smiling a little. "But it's not your fault. Something went wrong and the plane crashed and it just so happened that you were flying it at the time. I'm fifty percent sure it was my fault for crashing the plane anyway. I think I might have pushed something that made it go down."

"No, that's not why I'm asking," he said. "I'm actually kind of happy. It's one less plane the Core can use to their advantage. But I think I hit my head when we went down so I don't remember much of what happened."

I took a step out of the forest. The ground was dry and brittle under my feet and something under my foot disintegrated into ash when I touched it. "Well," I said, taking another step, "When I woke up from the crash, you were still unconscious, so I got the guns we have now and managed to break the glass and get us out. And then you woke up and looked at the crash and started laughing and I had to half-lead, half-carry you out of here."

He cringed, then laughed a little. "Sorry about that."

We slowly made our way into the heart of the crash site. More often than not, I had to step over broken branches and pieces of metal, as well as other things flung from the plane when it had crashed. Amongst those things I found an explosive, which I flung as far away as I could after making sure it wasn't activated, a boot, which must have been an extra one kept in the plane, and a few tools and pieces of technology, all of them no longer working.

We had approached the plane from its side, so it didn't take long for us to get to the part of it that was the most intact; the part we had been sitting in. We did a full circle around it, Sniper stopping to stare in shock at the path we had crashed through the trees, before coming around to the front. I sat on the rock the front of the plane had crashed into and thought. Sniper was picking around the wreckage, seeing if he could find anything. Now that we were here, I knew which way we were supposed to go, but the three planes confused me. Had they really left at night? Because it was a long time between the time they landed and when dusk fell. And they couldn't have left in the early hours of night because I would've heard them while I was on watch. I had this strange feeling in my gut and somewhere in the back of my head, my mind kept saying they hadn't really left.

I jumped down from the rock and went to find Sniper. He had climbed inside the plane and was looking around the inside. "It kinda sucks how we ruined this plane, even if it did belong to the Core," he said, looking at some of the wiring in the ceiling. He took hold of a wire and pulled it loose from the rest. "It really is quite a nice plane. We could've used it as a shelter if we hadn't crashed it."

I wrapped my arms around my middle. "I think we should go. I don't like it here and I get the feeling that the Masks haven't really left and that they're just waiting for the right time to swoop in and kill us."

He let go of the wire he was inspecting and turned to me. "Okay, as long as you know where we're going. Oh also..." he dropped into a crouch and opened his bag, where he pulled out a knife. "I found this in one of the compartments. It will be useful."

I caught the one he tossed to me and we climbed out of the plane. I took a moment to get my bearings and then started in the direction I was almost completely sure was the right way.

"Besides," Sniper said, trailing behind me. "The Masks wouldn't kill us now. If they found us, they would most likely just try to catch us and then bring us back to the Core. Then they would kill us. And they would do it in front of everyone, like they did to that Mask. To make an example of us."

I walked a little faster. "All the more a reason to get out of here."