The Scavenger's Clue
I still remember Finn's hurt howl, and it scared
me. Had I made him suffer more with that
moss? The moment I saw his old self in his
eyes before they went blank gave me a little
hope, but I was still afraid of his weapon. We
had to move fast. The noise would have told
others where we were. We really needed food,
water, and a safe place, but going into human
land was very risky. Jax knew it, but I just
didn't trust it.
My stomach hurt from hunger,
but I was more scared of the human world.
Jax looked worried as he led the way. He
could hear and see human things better than
me. He moved carefully around the edge of a
small town. He used to be in charge, but now
he was hiding, like a bad person. He looked
uneasy; the normal human sights and sounds
now felt strange and dangerous. But he
wanted to live, and maybe he felt he needed to
help me, so he kept going.
"Stay close," he whispered, looking around the
empty edge of the town. "And try to… look like
you fit in. As much as you can." His words
reminded me that I was different. A werewolf
could never really look like a human.
I felt like a shadow in a bright
world, always someone who didn't belong.
The old trash place for machines looked like a
skeleton of broken human things. Broken
screens shone in the weak sun, wires were
everywhere, and it smelled like metal and rot.
It was a mess, showing how humans threw
things away. For Jax, it was a place to find
things; for me, it felt like a dangerous maze
with things I didn't know.
"Be careful," I told Jax. Humans might have
left, but other dangers could be here.
Jax nodded, holding a rusty metal pipe he had
picked up to protect himself. "You too. This
place… feels wrong." He felt the same unease
as me for once.
The quiet of the trash place felt
like it had hidden power, a secret waiting to be
found.
We walked through the broken things, our feet
crunching on glass and plastic. There were so
many broken machines. How could humans
make and throw away so much? It felt
wasteful compared to how careful things
were in nature.
Jax looked for food and water, checking old
containers and scraps. But I looked at the
broken machines, trying to find anything that
could tell me about the chips and the control
system. That weak energy feeling I had felt on
the first chip was now like a light in my head,
guiding me through the trash.
The thrown-away machines felt
like pieces of a bad secret, waiting to be put
together.
In a pile of broken tablets and phones, I found
another chip. This one was smaller and more
broken than the first. Its case was cracked,
and you could see inside a little. It looked like
it was too broken to work. But when I held it, I
felt that weak, familiar energy, like data, was
still inside.
"Jax," I called quietly, feeling a little excited. "I
found another one."
He came over, looking like he didn't believe
me. "Looks like junk, Elara." His human eyes
couldn't see what might be hidden in the
broken chip.
"I can feel it," I said, holding it out to him. "The
same energy as before. I think… I think there
might be more information here."
My feeling for the energy was
like a string pulling me deeper into the
mystery.
Jax sighed, but he didn't say I was wrong. He
had seen too much strange stuff lately to not
believe my feelings a little. "Okay," he said.
"But can you even get anything off that thing?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's more broken than
the last one. But I have to try." The thought of
finding more pieces of the truth made me
want to try hard.
We kept looking for things we needed, feeling
like we could be found at any moment. Jax
looked worried the whole time, reminding me
of the danger. He kept looking around, his
hand close to his pipe.
Every far-off sound made us
more scared. The thought of being seen was
heavy on us.
As we got ready to leave the trash place with
the few things we found, I saw something
else in the junk – a small, metal thing that
looked okay and had a weak blue light. It
wasn't like anything I had seen before, smooth
and strange. When I carefully reached for it, I
felt a strong jolt of energy, stronger than the
static near Finn and the drone.
My body told me to pull back, but I really
wanted to know what it was. It seemed to be
making the same energy that messed with the
control. Could this be important? A tool? Or
another trap?
Just as I was about to touch it again, Jax
grabbed my arm, his face pale and scared.
"Elara, no! Look!"
He was pointing to the entrance of the trash
place. Standing in the bright sun were three
figures. Not the armored people, but
werewolves. And leading them was Bram. His
empty eyes were looking right at me, and he
had a calm, scary smile. In his hand, he held
something that looked just like the thing I was
about to touch, with a weak blue light.
Bram raised the thing in his hand,
and the static in the air got much stronger, a
loud, sharp sound in my head. My eyes went
blurry, and I felt sick. Through the blur, I saw
Jax fall to his knees, holding his head in pain.
Bram spoke, his voice loud and changed by
the thing in his hand. "Elara… we have
something to show you. Something that will
make you… do what we want."