Free Blindsided by Natalie Whipple Page A

they walk by me. Once they’re a few yards off, I risk craning my neck to watch them leave. I don’t dare get up—there’s no telling how much dirt is now sticking to my butt. As the trucks drive off, I stand and brush off as much as I can.
    Something rustles the bushes near the waterfall, and I whirl around in a panic. Did they leave guards? There’s a figure barely lit in the moonlight, and when I recognize the broad shoulders and thin build I wish it were a soldier.
    I duck behind the nearest bush, mortified, and spit out the paper. It’s now semi-transparent thanks to my mutant spit. “Seth! What the hell are you doing?”
    “That guy started yelling—I thought you were in trouble!” He tosses something at me, and it lands in the bush. My shirt. Then come my sweater and pants and shoes. “So sue me for wanting to come to the rescue.”
    “You looked?” I scramble for my clothes.
    He sighs. “Is it really so bad for me to see you naked? It’s not like we got together yesterday.”
    And there it is. I’ve wanted to pretend he’s okay with us not going further, but he isn’t. I wish I could tell him how weird it is for me, except that would probably make him feel even worse. Besides, now is not the time. “They left because of intruders at the factory, so we better hurry and make sure everyone’s okay.”
    He cusses. “We need to find Brady. He’ll get us there fast.”
    “Yeah.” Now dressed, I grab the crumpled formula papers and stand. As I head toward Seth and the path up the cliff, I carefully pull open the sheets and hope my spit didn’t mess them up too badly.
    “What’s that?” Seth says when I get to him.
    We waste no time, climbing the slope as we talk. “Remember how Graham asked if we might have come across what they’re looking for? Well, I think we have.”
    “What?”
    “Their scientist girl said the element is a liquid , and it’s supposed to glow or something. She was doing a test to see if the waterfall contained any of it, but it was negative.”
    “Shit.” Seth doesn’t need to say more for me to know he gets exactly what I’m trying to say.
    I hold out the papers. “This is the formula, so we can test the cave water ourselves. Then we’ll know just how much trouble we’re in.”
    “Whoa.” He stops just shy of the top. “You stole that from the Army?”
    The way he says it makes me feel an inch tall, but I’m already mad at him for looking at me when he promised not to. “Yes. I stole it, just like they stole our knowledge of this place through an unnecessary interrogation. Do you have a problem with that?”
    “Of course I do!” he says as we run for the booming sounds to the west. Brady must be that way. “They’re gonna notice, Fi. And who do you think they’ll suspect when they do?”
    I don’t answer for a moment, because he has a point. “They could think it slipped out of the folder when they were rushing to pack everything up.”
    It may be dark, but I can feel his eye roll. “Or they’ll realize you’re the only one who could steal that with no one noticing.”
    “Well it’s done, so we’ll just have to deal with it.” I squint into the night, hoping to see Brady or some clear sign of him. There’s a dark spot on the horizon that seems to change shape like dust. “You think Brady’s making that cloud?”
    “Probably.” Seth pulls a laser pointer from his pocket and turns it on and off. In the darkness it should stand out well enough to catch Brady’s eye. “So how much trouble are they in at the factory? Are we gonna have to break them out?”
    “I don’t know. All I heard was that an alarm was tripped, and they didn’t have a visual.” My heart pounds from both the running and the fear of what could happen to Miles, Carlos, and Graham. If any of them are caught, they’d be tied to us in a heartbeat.
    Maybe all of this was a horrible idea.
    The ground starts to shake beneath my feet, and we both stop running. It’s impossible