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Chapter 1
I sized up my opponents on the other side of the frozen lake.
The sun made the wintry landscape uncomfortably bright,
but I could still make out the two silhouettes awaiting my next
move. I let out a sigh, and the hot air turned into a cloud in front of
my face. The snowdrifts that formed earlier this week didn’t look
like they planned on going anywhere anytime soon, but I wasn’t
complaining. It made it easier to set the tiny orange and red plastic
flags around the lake’s perimeter.
“Looks like it’s our turn,” Tracey announced as she slid up
to my right side with a hockey stick clutched in her mittened hands
and followed my gaze.
I looked over at my newest companion and grinned. Even
though she was wrapped up in layers of thick winter gear and
protective pads, I could still see her swooping curves and soft skin
in my mind’s eye, and the freezing temperatures had nothing on her
warm and conspiring smile. Tracey wore bulky ice skates similar to
the ones on my own feet, but she balanced herself with a kind of
poise I would have seen from a princess. The tall brunette could
have stacked books on her head and skated away without dropping
a single one.
I, on the other hand, had already come close to falling more
times than I wanted to admit.
“I gotta know,” I joked. “How have you not slipped out here
yet?”
“Deltacorp hosted an annual office party at an ice rink every
December,” Tracey explained. “We weren’t allowed to say ‘no,’ so
you either learned how or you dealt with Travis Parker teasing you
the other eleven months of the year.”
“Ah. Mandatory fun.” I twirled the hockey stick in my hand.
“We had a couple events like that at Bugslayer.”
“Excuse me!” one of our opponents shouted.
We both looked up to see Natalie, with her hands on her hips
in mock annoyance. The blonde woman tucked her hair into the
back hood of her parka, and her azure eyes glittered with
amusement even at this distance.
I marveled at how far she’d come in just a short time. It
seemed like only yesterday I’d first met the survival-hardened
Scavenger living in a nuclear wasteland.
“Pardon me for breaking up a tender moment,” she shouted.
“However, we’ve got a game going.”
“Unless, of course, this is your way of admitting defeat,”
Karla chimed in as she slid over to Natalie.
“Fat chance!” I hollered back, and then I looked at Tracey.
“You got the puck?”
“Game on,” she proclaimed as she pulled it from her coat
pocket with a soft grunt and held it skyward. She dropped it on the
lake and expertly maneuvered it with the long, wood toe of the
hockey stick, and then she looked at me and flashed a quick
“thumbs-up” gesture. “Go long!”
I pushed off on my back foot and propelled myself down our
makeshift hockey rink.
It had been a few weeks since our return from Dimension
Fifty-Seven, and not to brag, but the operation couldn’t have gone
better. Natalie and I found Tracey, the latest Wayfarer to join our
team, and thwarted the nefarious plans of an AI hellbent on taking
over the human race. Sure, I would have rather not had to deal with
an elite military strike team trailing us the majority of the time, or
the killer drones, but hey.
I had come to terms with the fact that these dimensions
weren’t ever going to be cakewalks after the whole “mutants
running amok in Chicago” adventure.
I crossed over the makeshift center line marked by two red
flags on either side of the frozen lake, and I realized the longer I
hung around, the less likely it seemed the Nash estate would ever
fail to impress. The one-hundred-and-fifty-acre property contained
the entirety of the frozen lake we currently skated over, and while I
wasn’t over the moon about the freezing temperatures lately, it did
open the doors to training like this.
I took a sharp right turn, and I skittered to a wobbly halt just
as Tracey launched the small black puck my way. From the corner
of my eye, I caught Natalie trying to blindside me in a rush of
movement, but I guarded the puck from the Scavenger and slid
backward.
The blonde tried for the steal anyways, and she dragged the
hockey stick against the ice in an attempt to snatch away the puck,
but her momentum caused her to shoot past me with a peal of
laughter. “Son of a—”
“Better luck next time, my love!” I pushed off once more
and kept control of the puck with small taps on the left and right
side as I moved forward.
Natalie and Karla had left their goal wide open, and Tracey
closed the distance between where we started and the best place to
take a shot.
“Hunter!” she cried out. “Pass!”
I pulled back my stick and gave the puck a satisfying slap.
The small black disc shot forward several feet, and its trajectory
was primed to reach Tracey.
Until a blue blur passed in front, and suddenly, the puck was
on the move in the opposite direction.
Karla Nash, our fearless trainer and guide through the
innumerable dimensions, had stolen my shot.
“Hell, yeah!” I heard a triumphant cheer from Natalie as
Karla skated away, but Tracey and I followed in suit and made up
the lost few seconds in no time flat. Proficient skaters or not, we
had the upper-hand as Wayfarers thanks to the enhanced abilities
that came with being united as one. Adding the former Deltacorp
employee to our ranks had enhanced our mental and physical
capabilities, and Natalie and I both benefited from the additional
boost of stamina that came from the new addition.
The three of us were like a symbiotic team benefiting from
the other and vice versa.
