"Maybe," Sike muttered, and stared out at the trees as if searching for something. "The auras feel… lukewarm, if that makes sense. They don’t feel fully here, so maybe that lends more support to our Immortal Plane theory.”
I wouldn't know what an aura felt like at all, but I trusted him.
Sike curled his lips with worry. "They're getting closer."
I heard the voices again, but they sounded as if two people were speaking much closer to us. The unsettled sensation inside me melted into excitement. This could be an interesting development. I leaned forward and tried to focus on the sounds as Sike did the same. If he said the auras were faded, we didn't have a physical threat to worry about. Dealing with voices all night was far from ideal, but I could work with it.
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” a soft voice whispered. My interest spiked.
Mostly, I had hoped the voices were Dorian. I longed to hear his voice. He had bravely gone after Cam, but we were separated because of that… and he’d used his necklace, which meant he would be exhausted. They might run into beasts along the way, or worse, the creature who’d hunted us in the airplane. I hoped he and Cam had landed somewhere relatively safe in the Leftovers… as safe as someone could get in a place like this.
Sike fell back on his bedroll to listen. So much for sleep. I paid close attention to the voices. They sounded young, really young. I couldn't tell what species of creature we were dealing with, although I ruled out wildling, since they had throatier voices on the whole.
"We can't," one said. It was higher than the other. Was this one younger, perhaps, or a girl?
"Joining them may be best," the other replied. Two people, definitely, I decided. They might mean joining us. Sike frowned at that, but the conversation was more than casual. It was an argument.
"It's dangerous." The first one again. They sounded less confident than their companion.
The second added in a drier tone, "We risk danger by not joining." I barely heard the phrase as the voice suddenly faded to a much weaker volume.
The voices lapsed into a silence for a minute. I imagined several different faces, trying to connect the disembodied voices to something I could envision, and yet, nothing fit them. I heaved a sigh as the conversation turned from joining us to food.
"He will need—"
My heart hammered against my chest. He? I sat up straighter. They could be talking about anyone. Dorian, maybe. Or us?
"I want to go home," said the first. The voice wavered, and the image of a lost child appeared in my mind. My heart tugged with compassion. They didn't sound like they wanted to hurt anyone; they sounded truly scared. I wished I could help them, but I didn’t know how.
"Home is too dangerous." The second was unafraid to speak bluntly. "We need to hide. It's almost time.”
Fearful anticipation pricked at me as I struggled to catch everything that was said. The scanner was beginning to fail, showing the lines fading as the screen went dark from some kind of interference from the Leftovers. Their voices grew softer, like ghostly murmurs in the night just brushing by my ear.
“Hello?” I whispered cautiously. We had no idea if these guys were dangerous.
"We need to go to the new one. He will be frightened," the higher voice said worriedly. He or she was almost gone from my hearing now. "Can we trust him?" So, they were wondering who they could trust, too. They likely posed little threat if they were worried about others hurting them. Combined with their age, they must have been lost kids looking for a way to survive.
Sike tried again, “We’re here.”
"He was brought here—he must be okay," the second one answered evenly. They hadn’t heard us. "Perhaps we can trust him. Joseph—" The voice faded completely, cutting off the sentence before we could hear anything else… but I had heard enough. My pulse staggered with surprise at the sound of a very human name. I looked at Sike, and our eyes said everything.
Joseph. The name on the letter we’d found in the Black Rock office.
Maybe our missing survivor was alive. If it was him, it sounded like he had company.
12
Dorian
Cam peered through our makeshift barricade in the stone tower. “The forest sounds absolutely wild out there.”
What was wild was that we were safe and alive after that plane crash.
I had luckily held on to Cam in the ensuing aftermath of the plane splitting apart. Lyra’s horrified face still haunted me. I wished I had been fast enough to yank Cam back, but now, we were separated from the rest of our team. We’d barricaded ourselves inside the crumbling remains of a stone building with materials from the Mortal Plane that somehow involved a tower. What mortal building used to have a tower? I was beginning to think the Leftovers were just messing with us at this point. We’d been lucky to find this place before sunset. It was odd how perfectly we found the pathway leading to this place, but there were no creature auras around except for one. It wasn't the beast that had attacked our plane, so I wasn't too worried. This area did smell of death—old, not new. I kept those things to myself for the moment. Humans didn't particularly like knowing that death was in the air, no matter how old. We had placed discarded wooden planks over the hole in the wall to barricade ourselves inside. One lantern from our gear bag cast a small, warm circle of light.
I blinked my tired eyes as Cam glanced back at me. “You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” I muttered. It was a lie. I was exhausted. Passing out wasn’t exactly my style, but the world had gone black when we had landed. I’d woken to see Cam’s frightened face. His concern poured out of him. My body reacted to his
