CHAPTER FOUR - BEING DIFFERENT
843 Words
No one says it out loud, but everyone knows.
After what happened, I’m no longer just with the hunters.
I’m between them. Different from them.
No one sits too close to me when we make camp again. No one jokes. No one meets my eyes for long. Even George watches me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks.
I hate it.
Scarface breaks the silence. “We move in pairs tonight.”
His eyes flick to me. “She doesn’t go anywhere alone.”
“I’m not a prisoner,” I say.
“No,” he replies. “You’re something we have never seen, and we don't know what you are capable of yet."
George bristles. “Back off.”
Scarface ignores him. “Skin walkers learn fast. And now they know you exist. They will come in droves, we need to leave".
A chill crawls up my spine that has nothing to do with the cold.
That night, the sounds return.
Not voices this time.
Scratching.
Soft, rhythmic taps against the ice, like fingers drumming patiently.
George lies beside me, pretending to sleep. His electricity hums faintly beneath his skin, a nervous habit.
“They’re close,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“Why aren’t they attacking?”
I listen harder.
“They’re waiting.”
“For what?”
I swallow. “I am not sure." I respond, feeling a cold dread settle in my bone.
A shape forms beyond the shield—tall, wrong, unfinished. Its skin hangs loose, like it hasn’t decided what to be yet.
It tilts its head.
“Cold-born,” it whispers.
My breath stutters.
George sits up. “Don’t talk to her.”
The thing smiles using someone else’s mouth.
“She does not belong to you. She is one of ours, yet different, familiar, yet strange. A poison!!!" It hissed out with Venom.
I stand.
George grabs my wrist. “Ava, don’t—”
“I need answers.”
The creature steps forward and immediately recoils, shrieking as blue frost blooms across its chest.
Fear flashes in its eyes.
Real fear.
“You burn us,” it hisses. “Your skin rejects the gift.”
“What gift?” I demand.
“Us.”
It vanishes into the snow.
Scarface swears. “That settles it.”
“Settles what?” I ask.
“We finish the hunt and go back to the Wall,” he says grimly. “Before the Wall decides you’re the hunt.
The ER signal they give to us monitor what is happening, that's how they know who is dead, and who is not. They will find out what happened here, and the lesser they know, the better for you."
We don’t find the skin walkers the next day.
They find us.
It starts with a scream from the rear guard—cut short, sharp, final.
Gunfire erupts. Wielders began to retaliate, some with fire, some with electricity, the white Ice grounds cracks
Lightning flashes as George unleashes his power, electricity tearing through the white haze.
I hear a plea for help.
I run toward the sound.
“Ava, wait!” George shouts.
I don’t.
Two hunters are already dead when I reach them. A third is being dragged under the snow by something laughing with his own voice.
I slam my palm down.
The ground freezes instantly.
The skin walker erupts from the ice, screaming as frost devours it from the inside out.
I stagger back, gasping.
Then someone shoves me toward it.
Hard.
I hit the ground, breath knocked out of me. My skin opened up, and Jane stands over me, weapon raised.
“What are you doing?” George yells.
Jane’s eyes are wild. “You see it, right? She doesn’t fight like us. She doesn’t bleed like us.”
“I can bleed,” I snap.
“Not yet,” another hunter says. “But you will. And when you do, what comes out? Fire? Another specie of aliens?”
My heart pounds. “I saved you.”
Jane doesn’t lower her weapon. “Or you’re saving us for later.”
George steps between us, electricity crackling violently around him. “Touch her and I drop every one of you.”
The standoff breaks when a horn sounds from afar, faint, but a clear signal to return.
Retreat.
Reluctantly, Scarface backs off. But the look he gives me promises this isn’t over.
As we move, I hear whispers again.
Not from the snow.
From the hunters.
“She’s definitely not human.”
“She’ll get us killed.”
“She’s worth more than all our skins combined.”
I walk faster.
George falls into step beside me. “Ignore them.”
“I can’t,” I say quietly. “They’re right about one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m changing.”
He looks at me then, really looks.
“So am I,” he says. “Every day out here changes a person."
I want to believe that’s the same thing.
I’m afraid it isn’t.
- Writer
