Free Hyde and Seek by Viola Grace Page B

snorted. “I can understand that.”
    He offered her a canister. “Hot tea.”
    She settled in and opened it. After a few hours of weirdness, she was delighted to be back in the realm of the familiar. The unfamiliar would commence at nightfall.
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    Only one monitor was active, and it was watching the sky. Amly had learned the ins and outs of the ship and was comfortable with moving around in the near darkness.
    “The shower is beginning. Strap in.” Shadow beckoned to her.
    Amly settled in the second seat, and she slipped into the harness that she had learned by the pale glow of the globes scattered around the ship.
    The moment she locked in, the ship powered up and rose a few inches upward while gliding out of the cave. The moment that the ship was completely free, they tilted upward and the escape began in earnest.
    Amly sat quietly and watched her world fall away beneath her. A tear tracked down her cheek when she saw the dome where so many of her people had met their ends.
    Flickers of light were within the dome, and that puzzle made Amly wipe at her tear with a smile. Something was going on in the prison for talents, and the more they could get riled up, the better.
    “I am taking you to Sector Guard Base Morganti. If you are amenable, they would like to understand how your body works.”
    Amly laughed. “Good, I would like to know how it works myself.”
    “I think that is the greatest punishment that the government of Resicor has inflicted on its talents. Ignorance. If you do not know how your talent works, how can you gain the control you need to master it?”
    “Good point. My lack of control caused me a lot of issues when I was maturing.”
    They were talking calmly but flying through the incoming meteors.
    Amly observed, “This is the third meteor shower this year.”
    Shadow grinned at her. “You don’t say.”
    That one sentence let her know that something was up. “The showers are arranged somehow?”
    “So I have heard. All I know is they tell me where they want me to be and I go there. I have been watching you for two weeks, but this is the first time they told me to go in.”
    “That isn’t creepy at all.”
    “It is what it is. I hide in plain sight and so do you.”
    She couldn’t argue with that. She sat back and watched the stars. She had never craved them as other talents did. She just wanted to get through her life without hurting anyone or being hurt by them. It was a small thing that had been made impossible by the ruling body of Resicor. For that alone, she wanted to punish them, but to gain the strength to help restore balance to her world, she needed to get away where she could learn what her body was completely capable of. She knew she had only scratched the surface and she wanted to do more. She knew she could do more.
    The path through the stars took hours in silence until he said, “Prepare for a jump.”
    She only had time to ask him what he was talking about when the world jerked and twisted for a moment before settling with an entirely different set of stars around her. “What the hell was that?”
    He looked at her with surprise, and then, he smacked himself in the forehead. “Right. A star jump is orchestrated to link two portions of space for an instant, creating a collapsing doorway that puts a ship in two places at the same time for a few heartbeats.”
    “Well, that explains why I can taste whatever you fed me for dinner.” She patted her chest.
    “I apologize. I misread the ration labels. Your people have a finicky digestion when you first leave your world. The types of food you can digest will expand as you spend more time away from your own planet. There will be a little trial and error, but you will get through it. I am guessing your body is infinitely adaptable.”
    “I don’t know about infinitely, but I am managing to keep the meal down.” Amly smiled.
    “Good, because we are going through three more jumps before we get to