My head whipped around to my new friend. “What the hell, Loren?”
Loren removed her hand from my back, and I wobbled. She held up both her hands, but not in a stop motion. This time, it was in a move that looked like a bid for patience.
“I told you,” she said. “He recommended I bring you here to ground truth the site and decipher the bones. I don’t know why he’s here now or how he was able to get down through the forest at his age.”
Xu straightened himself from his hunch. He cracked his neck left and then right, and stood at his full height. It was as though fifty years shed off his person. His hazy eyes twinkled and his perpetually cheerful grin transformed into something dark.
“Oh, great,” Loren muttered. “More super humans. Exactly what my day needed. If he starts howling at the moon
