The ride in the wagon was already tense. They traveled on a path through the forest, shelter, they hoped from the Sky Reapers. At least it was usually shelter. It was one of the "safe routes" that allowed transportation and communication between the scavenger settlements.

  Up front, Joric drove the team of horses with a sense of dread. Kallian's camp was not too far up ahead. In a couple of hours, it would be daybreak. This was the perfect time to present Kallian with this fake. Tiredness, combined with his drunken stupor, would help them. The others, Dukota and the "sisters of disaster", Jettal and Jarigal, were not as familiar with JaKaelath, not like someone who spent years around her. A fake might fool them as long as the Ponu stayed unconscious.

  As he got closer, the sense of guilt began to overwhelm him. He could not do this, as much as he had recent beefs with JaKaelath, the fact that this Ponu looked just like her, killing her felt wrong. "What the hell, Kragon?" He thought, "This is a stupid idea. Kallian is not to be messed with."

  He thought of years ago, JaKaelath extending him a hand, helping him when they trained in the wilderness, to scout, hunt, and survive. His people were refugees from a purge in Vulture town, and he had no idea how to survive out in the wilderness. JaKaelath was the one who helped him. Shouldn't he do this then, to help her get away? No, he thought, it still feels like I am killing her. I won't forgive or forget that easily what happened between us, but this is wrong.

  He stops the wagon, "JaLena, JaLena, let her go, I've decided I can't go through with it". He opens the back of the wagon and sees both the Ponu and the usually quiet scavenger woman, both gone.

  "Go with the speed of The Providers, my friend," he whispers, guessing JaLena came to the same conclusion he did and escaped.

  Over a mile away, JaLena tries to move through the woods as fast as she can, carrying the half-conscious Ponu woman.

  They are still much too close to Kallian's base camp for her comfort. They stop to rest, and Francesca slowly begins to come through. JaLena looks in her pocket for one of the needles Kragon gave her, but decides against it.

  After a few more moments, Francesca opens her eyes. "What...where, you, scavenger."

  "Yes, I am a scavenger. I am also a friend of your friend. You knew her as Kaela; we call her JaKaelath."

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  Francesca slowly regains her whereabouts. She sees the bandages on her head.

  JaLena informs her, "You had a pretty nasty wound on your head". As JaLena opens the bandage to check, she is shocked to see it is almost completely healed, just a tiny scar remaining.

  "Please let me go, we don't want to harm you, we just want to be left in peace," Francesca pleads through her dizziness.

  "Believe it or not, I am trying to free you. Our friend had a misguided plan to use you to help our friend JaKaelath live. That plan was stupid, and now I am freeing you," JaLena says.

  Francesca's head hurts too much to fully understand, but she gets the main point: this Scavenger does not plan to kill her, or she wouldn't be talking so much.

  JaLena gives Francesca a small kiss to the forehead and says, "Come on, this way, and we can get you to a vault, then you can signal your friends or whatever you do for the Ponu to come get you."

  They hear something, lots of somethings, moving towards them, quickly. Too fast, too close, too many. No chance to outrun, only hope that whatever they are is friendly.

  JaLena sees scavengers, lots of them, moving rapidly, in the front, a face she knows all too well, and dread fills her; it's Kallian.

  Kallian orders everyone to stop. He looks on in shock, there she is, the woman he had been chasing, the source of all his problems, from his humiliation years ago, to her recent disabling of the "Geeryo Guard", denying him his total victory. He seemed to pay no mind to JaLena standing there. JaKaelath had ruined his life, and now, he would end hers.

  Francesca could only look on in shock.

  Without a second thought, he pulled out the gun Jarigal had given him and fired, striking Francesca in the chest 3 times. She fell. JaKaelath's last biological family, the perfect Ponu, the pride of the cave, was dead.

  JaLena looked on in horror. Kallian raised his gun at her with a perplexed look, asking the same question he asked Kunan years earlier when he saw he was raising a Ponu, "Why?"

  Realizing it made no difference now, she reverts to the original plan, "me and Joric were delivering her. Joric caught her trying to sneak into the camp to see Kragon. He asked me to come with him. I was just along to make sure she was not in too much pain, to beg you to have mercy. She escaped the truck and ran into the woods. I had just caught her when you showed up."

  Kallian looks on. JaLena can't tell if he believes her or not. He tells his men to move forward with haste. One thing is for certain: whatever is behind them is more important to him than whether JaLena is telling the truth or not.

  She looks back at Francesca, lying on the ground, eyes open. A surreal, troubling thought flashed through JaLena's mind. With Francesca's body among the moss, the flowers, nature itself, it almost seemed as if she belonged to nature now.