Chapter 39 – The Path

  With the impending mission, Cole wanted to be going in at his best—and that meant carving out time to figure out this divergent evolution business. Before anyone else could figure out ways to interrupt him (like Roxy inevitably pounding on his door when her stomach told her it was dinnertime), he took the rental truck Sophie had secured for him and then headed off post and turned south.

  The DOR compound wasn’t in the middle of town, but it wasn’t exactly off the grid, either. And Cole was channeling his inner Besson, wanting to be as far from other people as possible. Or, rather, wanting to wrap himself in the natural world. It was no wonder that his meditation took the form of a hike through the Georgia boonies the first time. Walking alone through the woods while hunting or hiking had always helped him center himself.

  Cole drove south, with a state park in the truck’s GPS. It took him about an hour to reach it, and it was closed by the time he got there, with a locked gate barring his vehicle access and a sign in his headlights that read Park hours, sunrise to sunset. Suggested donation $10.

  He parked, hopped the gate, and continued on foot.

  Back on Earth, now absent his Lewis Field enhancements, he needed a flashlight again. Though it was late summer, the trees still made the shadows long enough that the park trail was already in twilight. Only the crickets and the sound of his footsteps on the gravel trail accompanied him into the woods as he held up his small survival flashlight—just bright enough to see the midges and the gnats flitting through the air, really.

  It wasn’t Georgia. But it wasn’t that far off. He recalled the guide in the analyzer and began his breathing exercises as he looked for a place to cut off the trail and into the woods.

  The sound of his steps became a rhythmic tempo. The sun all but vanished, and soon enough, his small, bobbing flashlight was his only source of illumination. The night bugs chirped along to his steps. Each call and cry resonated with something deep within him.

  Cole stopped. He swept his light around the forest. Gone was the gravel path, and the small plaques describing the conservation efforts of the park offices. Instead, the wild tangle of the Georgia woods surrounded him. Even the air felt different, taking on the cool, humid tang of the Smokey Mountains. He kept his breathing even and purposeful. Once again, he could sense the reservoir of power further down the trail. He walked towards it, mile after mile, until the forest opened up into a clearing with two divergent paths.

  A figure sat on a flat rock at the fork, in what Cole took to be old Norse armor. A bow and spear was across his lap, and a feathered cloak hung from his shoulders. Curved horns sprouted from a helmet of black stone that covered the figure’s entire face. But their shoulders rose and fell in time to steady, slow breaths. Was this a personification of his own class? Literature class in high school had novels with this kind of cheesy thing—personal allegory and symbolic imagery. Cole hadn’t understood it then, either.

  They didn’t look up as Cole approached. Cole stopped in front of them, waiting. After ten minutes, the sitting figure finally looked up. “Were you waiting for an invitation, boy?”

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  Cole took a step back. The warrior had spoken in the voice of his own grandfather. Maybe there was some merit to all the metaphorical bullshit. Or maybe he had PTSD and needed serious therapy.

  “I’m just not sure which way to go,” said Cole.

  “I can’t make your mind up for you.” The figure gestured to the ground in front of it. “Rest them feet a minute. Feel it out, Amos. There’s power here, but you gotta be the one to give it a shape.”

  Cole lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged, and feeling for that power. It was there, deeper. Either path would lead him to it. But as he focused on each one in turn, they offered different cadences. On the left, crickets chirped a short, clipped staccato, bursting with violent energy. On the right, a fast, steady buzz, constant and swift, never wavering in pitch or volume.

  It didn’t take a genius to puzzle out which was which. Meteoric bullets to the left, ground skim to the right. Cole stood, choosing the left-hand path and walking towards the burst of chaotic energy. The reservoir at the end of the path flickered, and he could feel the power changing as he walked the path. The wind gusted through the trees, tugging this way and that. His heart hammered in his chest. His footsteps became clipped and sharp in the cooling night air, reverberating off rock as the energy reflected and dispersed.

  Cole’s chest became tight as pressure in the air increased. The reservoir of power rang in his ears like tinnitus, slowly morphing into a hollow siren as he emerged from his path once again. He clicked off his flashlight. Before him, a tiny, pulsing star illuminated the clearing—a blue-white solar body spinning violently at uneven intervals. Every few seconds, a small flare erupted from the star, spreading its energy as it scoured the ground.

  This was his alpha path. Cole knew it as soon as he laid eyes on the star. As soon as he touched it, his class would evolve with the ability to imbue his Meteoric Leap into a handful of bullets to cause sudden, violent havoc among his enemies.

  “Is this what you want, boy?” his grandfather’s voice whispered. “Ain’t no walkin’ back in this forest if you get lost. What’s done is done.”

  Cole stepped forward and thrust his hands into the body of the star. It felt like a level-up times ten, sapping the heat from his body and dropping him to his knees. The star roiled, questing tendrils forcing their way through his skin and into his body. The charges that buzzed in the back of his mind—subtly, without the Lewis Field, changed pitch and cadence. His class evolved into something more. More power. More finesse.

  For a moment, the star’s flash revealed myriad branching paths beyond that split and spiderwebbed out further than he could see. And then the star winked out, completely absorbed into his being.

  He gasped, once again back in Virginia, with his flashlight laying on the ground next to him. The sky was the soft glow of predawn as he picked himself up and dusted off his clothes. He still shivered from the feeling of the class evolution sapping his body heat. Cole looked around. He was off the park trail, deep in the woods.

  “Where the hell is my truck?”

  Luckily, the sunrise and the compass on his watch band made for easy navigation. It took him twenty minutes to find the trail he’d left, and by dawn he was walking back just in time to see one of the guides unlocking the gate. She startled when she saw him walking out of the path but relaxed when she realized he wasn’t a wild woods psycho or an illegal hunter.

  “That your truck?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said.

  Her brows drew into a frown. “The park is closed after dark. You need to wait ‘til it opens. And you can’t leave a vehicle on the road like that.”

  Cole shrugged and walked past her, then stopped to pull out his wallet. He took a $10 bill and folded it up before stuffing it in the donation box.

  That didn’t mollify the park worker, who continued to glare as Cole got back in the rental truck and headed back to the DOR compound, feeling as though he’d gotten a full night of sleep.

  Maybe he was a bit of a wild woods psycho.