Layne took deep breaths in an attempt to control his heartbeat when the Carriers rushed them into a straight line.
That was it.
Remy sobbed by his side. It was almost encouraging, in a way – at least they weren't alone. It seemed like the light buzzed louder than ever before – or it might have been coming from inside his mind.
When one of the Carriers grabbed Layne's wrists, he instinctively jumped to defend himself, forcing one of his arms free and throwing his elbow back into the man. He missed. Nonetheless, the action resulted in a harsh punch to the back of his head.
His wrists were bound in cuffs, the cold steel slowly warming up from the heat of his body. One of the RCI employees pulled Remy back in a sudden motion – so much that he gasped and barely not fell to the floor. As he was lead out of the room, Layne expected it'd be his turn. Instead, another Carrier grabbed Coden from his other side. The third one skipped Malia and Alana and went straight for Troy.
"What are you doing?" Layne addressed the last of the officers, who now paced back and forward with a gun still ready in his hand.
"Shut it, Reject."
"Where did they take them?"
Instead of an answer, he received one more punch to the back of his head.
To distract himself, Layne tried thinking about something nice – except for the fact that he didn't have that many nice things to think of. All the things he had lost – his niece, his parents, his freedom, followed every happy memory. Perhaps, he was to lose his life next.
When that didn't work, he couldn't help but wonder why Remy, Coden and Troy were taken, but not the rest. Couldn't have been from the date they got there. Definitely not the alphabet. Their crimes? A possibility. Layne chose to ignore the thought about their height - it was too depressing to think that only Alana was shorter than he was.
The three Carriers returned. Without a single word, Layne was seized by his handcuffed wrists and pushed out of the room.
* * *
Sat in a helicopter, strapped in and blindfolded. He only knew that just beside him, Malia and Coden were having the same treatment. Likely, all the others as well.
The trip was long as uncomfortable to say the least. Layne has never flew in a helicopter before and he did not enjoy it. He hated everything starting from the noise and finishing with the feelings of helplessness that came from his situation.
The helicopter was still in the air when someone removed his restrains. Layne didn't have the time to comprehend what was happening before he was pushed off the open door. Luckily enough, the fall proved itself not to be very long – just enough for some aching sores. More bodies fell next to him. One – on top. They crawled away from each other and pulled off their blindfolds.
The helicopter was already rising up again. The noise diminished together with the silhouette. The six Rejects were left alone.
In his first instinct, Layne scanned the environment. He was sitting surrounded by long, around knee-length grass, each stem covered in droplets of evening dew. The sun was sinking behind the tall trees surrounding the field they were in.
One after another, the Rejects got back on their feet and rubbed their aching body parts.
"Is no one going to question this?" asked Malia.
Layne shot her a side glare. "Is there even a need to do that aloud?"
The girl blushed and bowed her head down.
"You think it's... You know...?" Coden looked around with his arms folded by his sides. He may have been trying to appear confident, yet the shaking knees gave him away.
"The 'Land of Rejects'?" Troy finished in a low voice.
"Couldn't be," said Alana. "Those are rumours. Stupid ones nonetheless."
Layne crossed his hands over his chest. "Do you have a better explanation then?"
Alana didn't reply.
The five people stood in a close circle, absorbed in the conversation. Only when Coden backed away, Layne saw Remy standing further away from the group. Pale as always, head down and shaking.
"Remy, you're ok?" called Layne.
The lean guy just looked at him. Coden whispered something to him and they had a short conversation, after which the redhead led Remy to the group with a hand on his shoulder. Both of their lips curled into slight smiles as they nodded to each other.
"What do we do now?" asked Coden, still holding Remy's shoulder.
"They wouldn't just leave us here," stated Alana. "We have to wait."
Layne rolled his eyes. "Really? Because it's pretty clear that they did leave us."
"Maybe it's a test."
"A test for what?" The man laughed. "Let's get a bunch of Rejects, blindfold them and drop them off somewhere to test them for something for some reason."
"And what's your explanation?"
"They probably just got rid of us or something."
"They wouldn't have done that," said Malia.
"We're Rejects, Malia," opposed Troy. "We don't matter."
Layne nodded. "I think the rumours are true. We're like, standing surrounded by the evidence of that."
"Don't be stupid," argued Alana. She kept eyeing him the whole conversation, her hands fiddling around no matter how hard she pressed them to her sides. "That stupid gossip was probably invented by the RCI themselves to scare people."
"And now we're here. Alone. For reasons. To... Scare us?"
"Well, that could be, right?"
"Sure, except good would scaring us give? We're already Rejects."
"You can't predict anything before you find out what they're even doing with those like us." Alana's lip corners shivered, the words were coming out faster with every sentence and her speech kept getting louder. For a second, Layne almost wanted to back down just to avoid making her cry, yet that wish just wasn't strong enough.
"Oh yeah and now we just have to stay around here while it's getting dark. That was obviously the Carriers' plan all along! Soon enough they'll come out of the bushes to congratulate us for passing their test and proving our obedience to the system so we can go home to our families. Oh wait, Rejects never return. Probably because they all fail the test or something."
"You don't need to make fun of me!"
"You don't need to make stupid decisions and expect us to follow them." Layne hushed his voice down, hoping that Alana would do the same. She didn't.
"I'm trying to look for solutions! What do you want us to do? We don't even know where we are. Do you expect us to just go... Have a walk in those forests until it gets too dark to see?"
"Better than standing around here."
"We'd probably die."
"We probably will here, too." Layne turned around on his heels. "They left us here for us to figure it out. That's probably their promised 'chance of survival' or however they phrase it. Do whatever the hell you please, tho."
The rest of the group watched silently how Layne began walking away in a random direction. Towards the forest surrounding them.
"Layne!" called Coden.
He didn't listen. Most of all, he had no desire to stay around to argue with Alana. For some inexplicable reason, Layne was almost getting nauseous just thinking of the possibility to stand around doing nothing, letting the situation play out. His whole body called for him to act upon the circumstances and he was prepared to fulfil that desire.
That is, until Troy's deep, stern voice stopped him where he stood. "Layne Marks, get back here."
The man took a deep breath and turned around. He returned to the group and stood Troy by the side, his arms crossed over his chest, refusing to look anyone in the eyes. Standing next to that man made him feel uncomfortable – most likely because didn't even stand as tall as his shoulders.
"You sound like my father," he muttered, his gaze wandering around the Rejects' feet.
Troy ignored his remark and continued talking, "we should look around. Staying here won't help us, but going to random direction ain't gonna do any good either." With the last sentence, he eyed both Alana and Layne.
Everyone nodded, even Remy moved his head in agreement. Layne caught Alana glaring at him before he turned away to go with their task.
Each Reject, except for Coden with Remy, spread out to different directions. Just like everyone else, Layne made his way to where the forest started and walked alongside the trees. Time from time, he turned deeper into the woods just to find even more trees and some humps of grass, moss or tree roots.
All of it seemed purposeless. There was no way to find anything without at least walking further away from where they were dropped off – yet too dangerous to go deep into the forest alone. As much as Layne was prepared to do so earlier, when given a task, he felt obligated not to stray away from it.
It appeared as if the sun was setting faster than it would back home. Perhaps, it was because there in the civilization, a whole bunch of lights would turn on one after another, turning the night into just one more part of the day.
Either way, the moment the sun would hide below the horizon completely would be too late for them to find anything.
"I found something!" Malia's high-pitched yell sounded from the other edge of the outskirt.
Rejects emerged from different sides and hurried to the girl, who stood there, one hand high in the air, waving. So did Layne. When he reached her, Malia was already showing Coden and Remy her discovery. Alana and Troy soon joined them.
They were looking at a narrow path that seemed to be leading far into the depths of the forest. It wasn't being used very often, in fact, the only indication of it being there was the way the grass was growing shorter and sparser there, plus the greenery wasn't as lush when compared to the rest of the forest. If it were to have gotten even darker, this little path would have been impossible to find.
"Seems like our safest bet," commented Coden.
"We don't know that," said Alana. "We don't know where it leads nor who left it."
"I know a certain way to find out." Layne grinned and looked up at Troy who was standing silent behind the rest of the group. He gave a nod and Layne was first to follow the path.
The forest drowned in the shadows of the trees, making it even darker than in the outskirts. Layne strained his eyes in order to make out the little signs of the path. Everyone was following his footsteps, to which he was already making up comebacks as to why did he got them lost.
The end of the path was still nowhere to be seen while the last drops of light they had slowly diminished. The man couldn't make out anything in front of him.
"We're screwed," he whispered under his breath as he realised he has only been guessing the way for quite a distance already.
"Knew we should have stayed," Alana proclaimed in a victorious tone.
"Knew we should have left sooner."
"Doesn't matter, we're here," said Coden, walking right behind Layne.
The man grabbed a tree branch, which was in a way of his path and not so carefully released it straight into Coden's face as he passed.
"Be careful!" He nudged Layne's shoulder and held the branch out for Remy. "I'm right behind you."
"Hmm, must have missed you in the dark."
Coden said something else, to which Layne didn't pay any attention. Instead, he was focused on a tiny yellow dot glowing in the distance.
"There's something there," he announced, pointing at the source of light.
No one said a word. The Rejects exchanged looks and took off at the direction of the object.
The tree roots protruding from the ground had become invisible in the dark. Layne stumbled upon them quite a lot, each time grasping the nearby trees for balance.
The sounds of their breathing, swearing after stumbling upon something and heavy steps obscured everything else. The glowing dot grew larger, eventually lighting up the view around it and revealing a silhouette of a man.
"There you are!" the stranger called. "Hurry up, it's dangerous here at night!"