Free Wild-born by Adrian Howell

crawled along its morning route altogether oblivious to my impatience. At every stop, I was torn between the need to get farther away from the hotel and a panicked desire to get off the bus and find a place to hide. In the end, I rode the bus to the end of its line, which turned out to be a large city square surrounded by a shopping center, some tall office buildings, and a giant train station.
    I first ran into the shopping center, which had just opened its doors for the day. I bought a new pair of shoes, socks, and thin gloves. Then I headed to the train station where I got a ticket to a neighboring city.
    At the time, it didn’t matter to me where I went, as long as it was far away. Ralph had said he wasn’t much of a “finder,” but that he could find power. Whose power? Mine or the berserker’s? Ralph had shown up a moment after the berserker. Perhaps Ralph couldn’t find me. Perhaps he had been following the berserker, and that’s how he found me. As my train pulled out of the station, I didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief, but I felt that, for the moment, I was probably safe.
    Nevertheless, when I got off the train a little before noon, I immediately started looking for a way to get even farther away. I was inwardly hoping that a chair to the head would have convinced Ralph that he really didn’t want me in his group, especially since Ralph himself had said that I wasn’t much more than cannon fodder anyway. But I didn’t want to take any chances. I guessed that Ralph’s “gathering” would include many other people with powers that could find me from a great distance away. I had to keep moving.
    After a fast-food lunch, I took a two-hour bus ride to yet another city. Even though I was calmer and dressed properly this time, some of the passengers still looked at me curiously. An elderly woman who had the seat next to mine asked me where my parents were, so I told her that I had been visiting my relatives and I was going home before school started. I had always been a little small for my age, and the woman didn’t seem to believe me when I told her that I was twelve years old.
    As I got off the bus in the early afternoon, I discovered that Ralph’s wallet was already running on empty. Now I was faced with questions of survival. I’d be thirteen in another month and a half, but that was a long way off from being an adult. I knew I couldn’t find work, and it was only a matter of time before I got picked up by the police. As soon as the new school year started, which I realized was now only two days away, I would look out of place on the streets in the daytime. Even if I had the money, I couldn’t just check into a hotel, either. The world simply wasn’t designed to accommodate children on the run.
    For the rest of the day, I wandered the streets alone, resting on park benches from time to time. At night, finding nowhere better to go, I snuck under some bushes in a public park. The night air was chilly, and I hugged myself to keep warm.
    My parents had been killed just two days ago, and here I was shivering under a bush with nowhere to turn and, for all I knew, being hunted by people who had powers I couldn’t even begin to imagine. It was a while before I realized that I was crying.
    I wondered if perhaps I should just turn myself in to the police and explain, or at least try to explain, what was going on. But I remembered what Ralph had said to me on our first night in the car: “Governments know.” What did that mean? How would they treat me? Somehow, I felt that I didn’t want to find out.
    I was still very worried about Cat, but even if I had the money for the return journey, which I didn’t, I was deathly afraid that there might be a trap waiting for me back home. I managed to convince myself that Ralph was probably right about my sister. The police would have found her by now and perhaps sent her to my uncle’s place. I wanted to call my uncle and check, but I didn’t know his phone