Ki Book One by Odette C. Bell Page A

offering to stand guard.
    “ I won’t kill you,” she pushed her lips
into a frown.
    “ I don’t need to sleep, yet. We’ve got to
keep on moving. If we can make the pass by nightfall...” he trailed
off.
    “ We aren’t equipped for travel through the
mountains,” she said, mirroring his own thoughts. “Isn’t there some
other way? What if we come across more of those wolves? What if the
soldiers come back? They may not be able to track me anymore, but I
know they can distinguish between different biological readings
with their scanners. They’ll be able to tell two humans are up
here, and they’ll take a wild guess that it’s us.”
    He’d thought of all these things already.
Nodding, he grabbed at the scanner, bringing it
up . “You said these
things have a range of 3km? I think it’s more like 5.”
    Her cheeks slackened, despair obvious. It
was hardly reassuring news, after all . “Jackson... what do we do? Isn’t it just a
matter of time before they come back for us?”
    He nodded resolutely. Of course it was.
Soldiers like that did not give up easily . “There might be another way. I’ve been playing
with this thing while you were sleeping. It’s got an optimum range,
but different things affect it.” He walked over to show her the
device.
    “ What do you mean?”
    Leaning down he plucked up several stones
by his feet. Placing one directly in front of the scanner, he
tipped the screen so she could see . “Some of the mineralogical deposits in these
rocks appear to affect its range. I tried it against one of those
large boulders, and the scanner could only just penetrate beyond.
There are heavy ore deposits all the way through these
mountains.”
    “ So we stick to where the ore is most
concentrated?”
    He ticked his head to the
side . “I wish it were
that easy. Though there are heavy deposits, they aren’t everywhere.
Whole sections of Paladin’s Pass will leave us exposed.”
    She deflated, her long eyelashes brushing
against her cheeks as she half closed her eyes.
    “ Don’t give up though. There’s another
way,” he winced as he mentioned it.
    He really, really didn’t want to have to
take it.
    “ What do you mean, Jackson?”
    He shifted his jaw from side to side, a
habit of his whenever he was uncomfortable. If Ki had known him for
more than a single day, she would have recognized it as a powerful
sign something was up with him.
    “ Jackson?” she got to her feet. Still
pressing a hand into the rock behind her to steady herself, her
lips puckered with concern.
    “ There’s a cave system. It’s long, goes all
the way underneath the pass and pops out under Paladin Mountain. It
opens on the Hydra plains. And from there it’s a simple walk onto
the highways that feed the Capital.”
    Despite how wary his tone was, she smiled
instantly at his word s.
“That’s fantastic news. Let’s take the cave system. It will be
warmer in there, presumably we’ll always have access to ground
water, and the Zeneethian scanners won’t be able to penetrate down
that far.”
    “ Ki... it’s dangerous.”
    She clearly did not understand, because
she dropped her head to the side and shrugged her shoulders
easily . “And the pass
isn’t?”
    “ That cave system is treacherous. It moves.
There’s heavy limestone deposits. Whenever there’s rain in the
ranges, it floods. There’s cave-ins all the time. Plus, neither of
us are equipped properly.”
    “ I would prefer to take my chances with the
cave knowing the Zeneethians can’t find me there, than Paladin’s
pass,” she answered.
    Her voice was so quiet he could hardly pick
it up. He understood the sentiment though.
    Perhaps she was right too. The caves could
flood, the rocks could move, and they could run into a dead end.
But at least the stones would not shoot at them, scan them, or
throw futuristic concussion grenades their way.
    “ Those cave systems are geologically
active,” he tried to underline his point by nodding