Renegade

Chapter twenty-four

Dita shot them a grin around her lollipop as she went to stand behind them. Makoto felt a breeze around his hands, followed by the slashing sound he had heard earlier, then the cuffs were off. 

He brought his wrists around, massaging some feeling into them and winced as pain flared in his shoulder. Minah noticed.

"Are you injured?" she asked immediately, her expression growing serious.

"Gunshot," Makoto nodded. "I think it opened up again."

"Rafael can patch you up back at camp," Eddie said. "But before that, let's get rid of those nasty collars."

He motioned the pair closer and reached out to graze the collars. There was a faint clicking sound then both devices fell to the ground. Eddie kicked them aside. They slipped over to David who reduced them to dust with a single stomp.

"Wrists," Eddie said throwing a pointed look towards their bracelets when Makoto stared at him in confusion. "Gotta disable the tracking device."

Makoto's eyes widened in shock upon hearing that. The CS could track them through their wristbands? No wonder they always showed up at the most unexpected times! 

He frowned as that thought crossed his mind. If they could track them, how come they'd only had a few encounters until now? Surely they would have been captured already if the CS had a constant eye on their whereabouts. 

The two of them had just spent a full four days in somebody's house and no one came searching for them. They only showed up after they crossed the water. After they both activated their abilities... 

Eddie chuckled humorlessly as understanding dawned on Makoto's features.

"Yep, you got it," he said, fully aware of the Vermilion's train of thoughts. 

Eddie tinkered a few seconds with the red band, then released his wrist and moved over to Amanda.

"But how? Why? What?" he had so many questions to ask, the words escaping his lips made no sense.

Eddie seemed to understand him nonetheless.

"What we know to date is that the negating devices, like the collars or cuffs or muzzles, have a built-in tracking system that is always active. The bands only turn on when we use our abilities," he patiently explained. "Why? I don't think anyone outside the CS really knows. The other main difference is that collars are a lot more fragile and can be broken by anyone but the wearer. Whereas we have yet to find a way to take the bands off."

"You can't take these off us?" Makoto asked in a pained voice.

Ethan scoffed and raised his own wrist to display the yellow bracelet attached to it.

"This is not a fashion statement," he said derisively.

"Stand down, Ethan," Eddie said, turning back to Makoto who was grinding his teeth in annoyance. "No we can't, not for lack of trying though."

"And boy did we try. Scissors, knives even power tools!" Dita added with a wide grin, shoving her hand in his face to show off the silvery scars that adorned her skin. "Tried acid, too. Raf was not happy with us after that one."

She jerked her head towards Eddie at the mention of acid whose smile grew impish. Taking a closer look, Makoto could see faintly discolored spots around his wrist.

"Short of explosives, I think we tried pretty much everything," Dita happily related. "We didn't get to use 'em 'cause Raf said if we were stupid enough to blow ourselves up then we deserved to suffer."