Read Exodia for Free Online

matched. A sheen of sweat glints off
her face. She glows.
    The road dips and I stumble.
    “ Easy,” she says and grabs
at my arm. She pulls me to a stop and scans around us. Barrett is
right there; he never lagged behind and I’m amazed to see that his
breathing is not labored and he hasn’t broken a sweat. I wipe my
forehead and follow them both off the road. They swing their
backpacks off in unison and drop them in a clump of weeds that are
speckled with tiny purple flowers.
    “ We can rest here a while.
Right, Barrett? Do you hear anything?” Lydia raises her
eyebrows.
    Barrett stands with his head cocked
bird-like and waits a beat. “Nothing,” he says. “No trucks are
following. No one on foot either.” He directs his gaze northward.
“Pretty quiet ahead, too. Just birds.”
    I stare at him and wonder if he could
be a GMFRE, a gemfry. Most likely a second generation gemfry, born
of one of the first gemfries who immigrated here. The people with
Genetic Mutations From Radiation Exposure were concentrated along
the west coast. I’ve heard stories. Jamie told me he’d seen several
where they used to live. Special powers sometimes. But mostly
horrible deformities.
    “ I know what you’re
thinking,” Barrett says as he eyes me. For a second I fear he has
some psychic ability, then he says, “You’re worried we’re gonna
lead you into a trap.”
    I let my breath out in a half-chuckle
and shake my head. “No,” I say, “what I think … is that you’re a
gemfry.”
    He juts his chin out, looks ready to
fight, then he sits easily down among the flowers. “Yup, and it’s
lucky for you that I am.”
    I remember what I heard about him being
a spy for Ronel’s people. It makes sense that they’d use a kid, a
special kid with exceptional hearing, and the ability to run for
miles without getting winded, but why lucky for me?
    Lydia drops to the earth and I find my
own soft spot. We make a loose triangle, with two of us still
breathing deeply.
    I voice my question and Lydia answers,
“Lucky for you because Barrett will help you get away with no
chance of falling into one of Battista’s traps.” She speaks my
grandfather’s name with a snarl. It makes me wish it wasn’t my
name, too.
    “ Traps?” I’m not so eloquent
out loud. My head is stringing together full sentences, but my
mouth defaults to single words.
    She sighs.
“ He may be glad you left so he doesn’t have
to kill you, but he’s not going to be happy that you took such
vital information with you. He’ll do all he
can to get you back. Safely or not.” She pulls a small purple bloom
and holds it above her lip, sniffs. Sitting here my heart rate
should be slowing down, but it’s not. I fix my gaze on her mouth
for a bit too long, drop my eyes, then raise them to try to focus
on a distant hill.
    I process her words. I don’t know what
vital information I could have, but I can no more contradict her
than I can give a speech in front of thousands. It occurs to me
that Barrett, or perhaps Lydia, has some odd power over me. My eyes
drift back to her. The flower is tucked behind her ear now and she
is rummaging through her backpack.
    “ Here,” she says. She offers
me and Barrett each an apple, then takes a smaller one for herself
and twirls the stem off.
    I work up the words to ask Barrett why
he isn’t sweating. Between bites he explains all of his gemfry
gifts.
    “ No one noticed at first. I
guess I discovered my uniqueness on my own. My mother died when I
was four and my father used to leave me with a woman who cares for
kids while their folks work all day. I always knew when my dad was
returning. I could hear him speaking with his companion as they
walked back from the project. A quarter mile away.” He nods to
himself, his face softens to the memory. “I figured it out when I
was eight or nine. It isn’t just my hearing that is better than
yours. Nobody can hide stuff from me. I can sniff it out. My night
vision is pretty useful,