The Tag Bearer

Chapter 13 - On the Edge of Grace

Maurice held his face like a two ton-truck had just slammed into it. His chubby cheeks grew rosier by the second as his blood flowed to the affected area and the nerves left a stinging pain in their place. Disbelief cascaded through his crystal-clear eyes as he glared back at me, tears touching the tinges of his eyes.

"Stay back!" I yelled at him, jumping to my feet and squatting ready to lunge out of the way if he came after me. I felt like I was playing a game of Kill the Drone, the knife poised in my hand as I waited in suspense for the perfect moment to strike. "I will hurt you!"

"You already have!" he whined before turning to face the tent. "Bryce! Bryce! Help!"

"What now?" a course reply echoed as Bryce emerged reluctantly and somewhat guiltily from the tent. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts and assess the scene, before it sunk in. He knew I had no intention of being sold, and slowly, he reached into his coat pocket.

Without taking a second guess at what was in his pocket, I sprinted as fast as I could towards the trees and leaped over the yellow puddle Maurice had left behind. I ran straight for the gathering frost as it gathered lower in the clearing. It was unusually low tonight, but that was the weather these days. The People's War had left the terrain so ruined, plants didn't even know what season it was. Flowers bloomed where winter once stood in a magnificent array of yellow and purple.

"Fuckin' hell Maurice!" Bryce shouted from behind me as he raced after his escapee.

I made out the muffled sound of Maurice vaguely apologizing as he followed Bryce into the forest. It never occurred to me that this would be how I escaped from certain death, but somehow, I felt like I was heading towards it instead. Maybe it was the sound of their footsteps becoming louder that threw my senses off? But whatever it was, the gnawing feeling in my stomach didn't release its grip.

The lack of food and sleep produced a poor amount of energy and the shear will of running drained every ounce of strength from my limbs. I stumbled over my feet and slid across the dirt in a frantic fashion I didn't recognise in myself, unable to get any grip on the slippery surface. I leaped over fallen logs and swung wildly around thin tree trunks, all whilst routinely checking over my shoulder at the advancing duo.

Maurice quickly began to fall well behind Bryce and I sprinted harder, allowing pure fear to flood every ounce of me. The last time I had felt this way, I'd been hunted, and it wasn't even in a game of biased tag. It was in a game of Kill the Drone gone wrong.

Kill the Drone was the game to play for youngsters during the height of the Secret Rebellion. Like a game of neighborhood tag designed to cure boredom, the game was widely regarded as fun by the youth of the Rebellion effort. It required an unsuspecting attacker, a crowd of watching children to confirm the kill, and of course, an unsuspecting Drone. The whole aim of the game was to creep up behind the Drone, distract it and as soon as it turned to you, thrust a knife into its field vision scanner. The more you killed the more you were regarded as a hero, and the annual hunting season provided a perfect way in which my brother, Allan, scored most of his hits. 

Allan wasn't really my brother, not biologically anyways. He was just the guy who lived around the corner from me and my father, and just so happened to be the neighborhood scout leader. From the moment we first met, it was decided that I was his second in command and he would raise me up through the ranks of teenage proprietorship. He was the best of the best and thought it was about high time I learnt how to kill a Drone myself. 

The pair of us had taken refuge down an alleyway and were watching the late afternoon street traffic go by. Soon enough, his scouted Drone hovered into view. He lurked out from behind the dumpster waiting for it to go by, a large grin on his face. He glanced back at me, his green eyes shimmering with delight, and nodded, trying to reassure me he knew what he was doing.