June 1997

  “Wake up.”

  “No,” Rachel muttered, rolling back over, away from the voice. She pressed her ear to her forearm, doing her best to drift back to sleep. Viv shook her again; Rachel’s eyes cracked slightly as she acknowledged the thudding of the floorboards beneath her, the sound of steel wheels ccking against track, and the inordinate amount of drool that had made its way down her forearm.

  “Train’s moving,” Viv said matter-of-factly. “We’d best be off of it before it gets too far.”

  Rachel managed to sit up, meeting Viv’s amber eyes as she used balled fists to rub her own. The train was indeed moving; the floor beneath them gave a low rumble and she could feel the vibration as the woodnd scenery just outside the door rolled by.

  “We can make the jump?” Rachel looked to the door, then back to Viv, who nodded. “Alright. Together?”

  “Unless you want a repeat of Seattle,” Viv said, without the slightest trace of humor in her tone. Viv turned away from her and pulled on the backpack that she’d left beside the doorway. She held out her hand for Rachel who took it hesitantly as she remembered the st time they’d jumped from a moving train.

  Rachel closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath; when she opened them again, she took Viv’s hand, stepping toward the open door. She felt the slight wind against her face, and took note of the trees rushing by faster and faster as the train picked up speed. They’d taken shelter in the boxcar after a particurly rough night, and now that it was moving, there was no time to wait; they’d be too far from their destination in no time.

  Viv closed her own hand, gripping Rachel’s tightly, and then, without warning, leapt from the train, pulling Rachel along with her. She registered Rachel’s yelp of fear as they sailed almost violently from the boxcar and into the forest. She’d waited, at least, until they’d been close to a clearing in the trees, but not all went according to pn. She heard Rachel’s small, eleven year old body smash against a nearby branch and her horrified scream was lost in her throat as they tumbled down a ravine, head over heels toward a small, shallow creek. Viv tried to keep note of her surroundings as they fell, but the world spiraled around them; ground became sky, sky became ground, again and again and again.

  They came to rest with a thud with Viv smming into the dirt, and Rachel spshing into the shallow creek. Viv was on her feet in an instant, though a massive pain in her side and her head registered immediately. She groaned and brought her hand to her side, feeling her torn shirt, and her fingers coming out with bright crimson blood at their tips. She craned her neck to see the ceration in her side and groaned as her head continued to pound.

  “Rachel?” she gasped, looking back toward the creek at her friend who had worked her way to her knees. She was in far worse shape than Viv; her right arm was broken at the elbow and a gash against her forehead more than confirmed that she’d struck a tree on the way down. Viv watched her breathe heavily, then cough, blood bubbling on her lips as she did so. Viv shook her head. “That wasn’t exactly smooth.”

  “You’ve done better,” Rachel gasped. She doubled over, brown hair spreading out around her as her forehead touched the dirt.

  “None of that, now,” Viv said, dropping heavily to her knees in front of Rachel. “I promised your mom I’d take care of you.”

  “You’re doing a great job,” Rachel said sarcastically. The blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and pooling on the dirt beneath her.

  “Come on, sit up,” Viv ignored the sarcasm and id a hand on Rachel’s shoulder, gently pushing her up into a kneeling position. Viv met her eyes again and then moved her hand down to Rachel’s arm. She closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing the break, and then let out a soft breath as the energy flowed through her. She liked to imagine it as a white light flowing through her and emanating from her fingertips, but in reality, it didn’t look like anything. She heard a crunch, and a yelp from Rachel’s lips as the bone was repaired, and then she quickly moved to the chest where she detected a fractured rib. Another breath, another round of concentration, and the rib, just like the arm, was fixed. “Better?”

  “You have to teach me how to do that,” Rachel said breathlessly as Viv got to work on her own ceration.

  “When we have more time,” Viv assured her. It was a pointless exchange, of course, as both of them knew the ability couldn’t be taught.

  They climbed to their feet, surveying the forest around them. Viv pointed to the right, indicating a small trail worn into the dirt with human feet, lined by broken branches and trampled briar patches. As they walked, Rachel occasionally gnced up at the tree canopy overhead, catching glimpses of blue sky and white clouds as they traversed a winding path, crossing a small footbridge and eventually coming to a clearing.

  “What do we do?” Rachel asked her. “We need to eat.”

  “For starters, speak English,” Viv reminded her. “We’re on Earth now. We have to use their nguage.”

  “I don’t like the way it sounds,” Rachel admitted, probably for the thousandth time since they’d arrived through the Waygate. “It’s…complicated.”

  “It’s a combination of various human nguages,” Viv expined, probably for the thousandth time as well. “They call them ‘Romance’ nguages. At least that’s what I read in the database.”

  “Romance,” Rachel said, trying the word in her mouth. “Are you sure we have to talk like this?”

  “Humans are paranoid,” Viv reminded her. “If we show up speaking some nguage they’ve never heard, they’ll destroy us.”

  “Destroy?”

  “Um…kill,” Viv corrected herself. “They have so many words for that. Destroy, kill, eliminate, eradicate…”

  “So do we,” Rachel pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Viv nodded. She pulled the backpack off of her shoulders and set it down on the ground. From the side she opened a small pouch from which she pulled a worn bck shovel with a telescoping handle. Pulling it open, it extended to almost two feet.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel frowned.

  “Your parents didn’t send you here to be homeless,” Viv said as she pushed the head of the spade into the hard dirt. “They wanted you…us to have a life. Aaron was supposed to…”

  Viv stopped short as she mentioned the name, pausing with the shovel in the dirt. Birds chirped and whistled overhead.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Rachel reminded her. “He…”

  “We’ll worry about it ter,” Viv said, continuing her dig. “We’re going to bury our supplies here and move into the city.”

  “We need those supplies!” Rachel protested. “What if-”

  “They’ll be right here if we need them,” Viv assured her.

  “Can we at least take the gun?”

  “No,” Viv said firmly. “You’re eleven, I’m thirteen. We can get by on this pnet without one.”

  “Don’t you remember, back in Wheeling-”

  “How many times has that happened since then?”

  “What if someone from our world comes looking for us?” Rachel protested again., grabbing the handle of the shovel. Viv met her eyes with a look of annoyance.“We need to be able to protect ourselves!”

  “I disabled the Waygate,” Viv reminded her. “If they wanted to come after us, they’d have to do it in a ship, and it would take hundreds of years. Earth is…it’s not even in our gaxy.”

  “What if there’s another Waygate?” Rachel still held tight to the shovel.

  “There isn’t,” Viv said ftly, pulling the shovel away from her.

  “You said we were going to find a way to fight back!” Rachel said angrily, reaching for the shovel again; Viv pulled it away from her.

  “That was when we had Aaron,” Viv reminded her. “Aaron had contacts back home. We have nothing. Look around you, Rachel. Look at this world! Green grass, clear skies, clean air. The people are free. They can do whatever they want. Worship whatever god they want. We can do that too.”

  “But my friends-”

  “Forget about them,” Viv said firmly.

  “But what if-”

  “Forget about them,” Viv repeated. “Now stand back and let me dig this hole.”