Free daynight by Megan Thomason Page B

over seventy-five this evening alone. Should we be worried? Her Test results didn’t paint her as rebellious.”
    “Nothing to fret over. Everything is a puzzle to her and this one is incomplete. Just give her some pieces that’ll fit. Be creative.” Great, Ted. Encourage them to tell us more lies, because I haven’t heard enough already.
    I want to stay to hear the rest, but can’t risk being caught eavesdropping or late to the next training session. Things can go downhill quickly here if you start skirting the rules. I momentarily unhitch my towel to sop up the puddle of water below before heading to get dressed, committing the conversation to memory.  

    The two men sounded like my father with all the talk of Kira and I being ‘special.’ The last I time I heard those words was the day I passed through the Exiler-controlled exit portal from Thera to Earth. After my mother’s death, my father obsessed over finding a way to get my sister and me off Thera. He couldn’t be sure we’d have the ability even if a portal were found, but he’d promised my mother, so he joined every search party for nearly four years before the Exilers located and secured one. The problem with discovering new portals was that any portal exiting on land in Thera would enter in water on Earth and vice versa, making the passage extremely dangerous.
    A couple men lost their lives as they happened on a portal by accident, landing in ocean water with no boats in sight to provide rescue. Typically, Second Chancers led search parties, as they’d bounce if they hit one, but for some reason two Daynighters had set out early on one particular search. After they disappeared from view, but didn’t return by way of the entrance portal later, the Exilers decided to send the next men through with crudely made rafts. The plan worked, and these men then arranged to have a more permanent, albeit primitive structure erected, anchored to the ocean floor.
    My father dumped us in Doc Daryn’s care for six months after the find while he went to secure us a new home and identities on Earth. He hooked up with my ‘Aunt Jennifer,’ a childless distant relative of another Daynighter who’d been Exiled. She owned (and still owns) a modest house in a pleasant area of San Diego with good schools, a beautiful garden, and had inherited enough from her grandfather to support our family. Her location proved strategic for my father, being equidistant between the Exiler-controlled entrance and exit portals to the Garden City area of Thera.
    The four-night journey to the exit portal on foot sucked for my father with a five and eight year old in tow. He carried my sister most the fifteen-mile hike each night. We scrambled to reach Exiler-hosted shelters by sunrise, but the inland heat made sleep during the day uncomfortable. My sister begged to return to Doc Daryn’s house. I whimpered with every step, my undersized shoes blistering and bloodying my feet.
    The first night we passed the Eco barrier of Garden City, the canyon lights aglow in the distance. I’d only seen them once prior. Leila squealed and clapped at the spectacle, the only lights she’d previously seen being flashlights, cooking fires, and the sun. Upon visiting the outskirts of the city before, I’d envied the lights and seeming comfort of city life, but my dad and a near death experience soured my opinion. That day bad dreams haunted my sleep, making me slow and weary the following evening.
    Two bands of gypsies shared shelter with us on our trip. The first had been workers in Farm City and had been Exiled for resisting the extreme work conditions that included daytime harvests. Their leathery skin cracked and scaled like a desert lizard’s. I’d been shocked to see the unhealthy looking collection of ‘escaped’ farm animals that accompanied the party, including a horse, milk cow, goat, and mule. Since their Exile, the workers had traveled south in search of Exiler communities, trying to rally