The Descendants Series Vol. 2

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The three of us made it down the stairs.  And when I moved, I couldn’t feel my side.  Well, it didn’t hurt.  It actually felt like I didn’t do anything to it at all.  But the stitches didn’t help convince me since I could feel them when my arm brushed my side.

“So she lives,” Xander said from the table.  Ryder and Lyric were sitting, too, eating bowls of soup.

“Yeah, I live,” I said, taking the seat beside Lyric.  “I will never die.”

He snorted.  “It seems like it,” he said.  “When Kade brought you in, dripping a trail of blood behind you…”  I gave him a look and looked at Lyric and Ryder.  “Oh, sorry.”

“Rayney, are you okay?” Lyric asked.

“I’m fine now,” I said.  “You don’t need to worry about what happened.”

“But you were hurt,” she said.

“I’m not hurt anymore,” I said.  “Peyton and Grandma have fixed me up perfectly.”

“Good, because I don’t like seeing you hurt,” she said, and went back to eating.

“So where did Kade go?” Grandma asked.  “He just walked out when Rayney woke up.”

“And you popping up and scaring the crap out of us didn’t help either,” Peyton added, taking the empty seat beside Ryder.

“Sorry about that again,” I said.

“He went out.  We don’t know where, though,” Ryder said.  He had the same device in his hand as the day before. 

When Peyton saw me looking, she explained.  “Ryder’s very good with electronics.  That’s how we have most of our stuff.  He can rewire anything to do something else.  Who knows how he does it, but at least he’s able to.  We would have never been able to stay out here without the Directrix finding us if it weren’t for him.”

“What’s that you’re working on now?” I asked him.

He looked at me and stayed silent for a moment.  Then he jumped, so I guess Peyton had kicked him underneath the table.  “Um,” he stammered, “it’s a tracker used to find the coordinates of the Directrix helicopters and ground vehicles, so it helps us know where they are at all times.  That’s how the Directrix knows where all of their Guards are and everything else.  It worked up until this morning, so I’m trying to fix it.”  He went back at it with a screwdriver.

“We’ve found a lot of the trackers that the Guards use,” Peyton said, and Xander snorted.

“’Found’ wouldn’t be the right word,” he said, smiling at her. 

She smiled and I sensed something go between them.

“Then what do you mean by found?” I asked.

“Huh?” Xander asked, coming back to reality.  Peyton looked away, blushing.  “Oh, yeah.  The Guards that we’ve come across don’t really need any of high tech stuff after Kade took care of them, so we’d bring everything back here.”

“We’ve got everything,” Peyton said.  “Trackers, messengers, wireless headsets.  Basically everything that the Guards have.”

“What about the trackers on all of the equipment?  The Directrix usually keeps tabs on where everything is.”

“I deactivate everything.  They can’t track any of it anymore,” Ryder said.

“What about the helicopter?” I asked.  “How’d you get a hold of that thing?  And where do you keep it?”