Leo

Walking to my possible death wasn't something I thought I'd ever experience. Hazel and I had no choice. Either we did what Evansby said, or hundreds of people would be dead after the hour passed. I tried to think of every possible scenario in my mind of what could happen when we met up with Evansby. Almost all of those possibilities resulted in death.

At least I would get to share my last few moments with Hazel. Each time I swallowed, it was like trying to swallow down a huge pill. My heart seemed to be racing with every step. I could even feel Hazel's pulse thumping while I held her hand. All I could do was squeeze her hand tighter, silently reassuring her that maybe we'd be okay.

"Do you remember the way to the clearing?" Hazel asked, breaking the painful silence.

"We just need to follow the smell of gunpowder, I guess," I said. The faint smoky scent of gunpowder and explosives got stronger the further west we walked. We must be on the right path.

I hated how slow time seemed to be going. Part of me wanted to just get whatever this way over with. Yet I also never wanted to find out. But if we didn't hurry to the clearing, we might run out of time. We only had an hour, which is how long I felt we were walking through the woods.

Then that's when I noticed the amount of trees getting smaller. I remembered the first time Hazel and I explored these woods not too long ago. And how I saved her from getting shot, and when I almost broke my back when I was thrown against a tree. This area felt vaguely familiar. I think we've been here before.

As if on cue, the three specific trees began to rustle and wriggle. They slowly transformed into human forms, human triplets. I recalled seeing them before. They were the shape-shifting triplets we came across not long ago. And they still had the same micheivious grins on their faces, like they were waiting to kill.

"Well look what we have here," the girl triplet said, grinning. "The lovebirds arrived just in time for the boss."

"Now I suggest you two follow us to Dr. Evansby's location, or we're going to have to force you," the boy triplet on the left of the girl said.

I didn't want to fight them. It would only make things worse. Quickly, I glanced at Hazel, who's eyes began to water. She was thinking the same thing I was. There was no turning back now.

Still gripping Hazel's shaking hand tightly, I led her forward. The girl triplet grabbed a hold of Hazel's arm, and one of the boys grabbed onto mine. We didn't even try to fight back. The other boy led the way towards the clearing. Towards our death.

The clearing didn't even look like it was apart of nature. The grass and trees had been burned to the ground, and the whole area looked like a circle of plain dirt. Around the perimeter of the clearing were many mutants with gray uniforms. Some had guns, and I guessed the mutants who had destructive powers without gun power stood without any weapons. They were all there to make sure we didn't try to escape.

And right at the center of the circular clearing, stood Evansby. He was smiling with glee more than ever when he saw us. We were like Christmas presents to him. Evansby had a quality about him that automatically made you hate him. Maybe it was that smirk of his.

"Look who's here, everyone!" Evansby said to his army. They all hooted and shouted with excitement in response. Even they wanted us dead.

When the noise from the crowd died down, Evansby clapped his hands together and said, "Thank you for cooperating with us, Hazel and Leo. I honestly wasn't expecting you two to show up this easily. Now that you're here, we can sort out this little deal between us."

"Could you please enlighten us of what your'e talking about?" I asked him. I immediately regretted saying anything, because he snapped his fingers I felt the sharp pain in my brain again. It almost made me collapse, but luckily he stopped it.

Evansby smiled at me. "Now, Leo. We have rules here in Evansby's army. One of them is don't ever respond to me. Got it?"

I didn't want to learn that lesson again. My lips were seeled.

"Anyways," Evansby continued. "So as you are already aware of, the precious Mutant Colony is in perril once again. And from the telepathic message I sent to you two, I said that if you didn't do as I said, I would destroy the colony. I plan to do so using this device." He pulled out a small box from his back pocket and held it up. The box was black and had several buttoms on them.

"When I press this button, it will activate the several hundred pounds of explosives I had my dear friend Linus hide around inside of the colony. The colony will explode in flames, killing every mutant who had refused to join me in my mutant revolution. Now I suppose you wouldn't want that, would you?"

I didn't dare answer, nor think bad thoughts about him in my mind. He could easily read my mind, after all.

"What do you want, Evansby?" Hazel asked out loud. I was scared Evansby would hurt her like he did to me, but she didn't show any sign of being in pain. In fact, she looked pretty brave.

Evansby smiled. "Why, Hazel, I'm sorry I haven't explained this to the both of you before. But as you might have concluded from my attempts to contact you, you two are very important to my experiment. As a scientist, I'm always making new discoveries. In this case, I've been working on enhancing the mutations. But I'm afraid I've made a fatal flaw in one of my experiments, which happened to be the bombing of your school. My goal was to infect as many students there as I could with the mutation serum I created through the nuclear bomb, but my plan went horribly wrong."

Evansby began to pace in front of us as he continued to explain. "What went wrong was the fact that the school sensed the bomb and evacuated all the students. That's where you two come in. You two were foolish and decided to enter the school building, when the bomb was fixing to detonate. The mutation serum in that bomb was designed to be enough to infect hundreds of people. Not just the two of you. The amount of serum that absorbed into you was so much that it should've killed you, only it didn't. Now here's our problem. You two, just two 14 year old punks, have more power than I do. Your powers are much stronger than mine. I designed the mutation outbreak to where I could occupy as much power as I wanted, even if other mutants had the same powers as I did. But I'm supposed to be more powerful than all mutants. And I hate to admit that you two have more power than I do. And I called you to me because I plan to reverse your mutations."

This man was insane. He was going to take us and remove all of our mutant genes in our body. The process didn't sound fun. He seemed like he hadn't had experience in reversing mutations instead of making the mutations. And I sure didn't want to be his first test subject.

There were murmurs in the crowd of mutants around us. They were probably thinking of how lucky they were that they didn't have to experience getting their mutant powers taken away.

"So, do we have a deal? I will leave the precious Mutant Colony alone and no harm will be done to the mutants unless I change my mind in the future, if you two agree to come with me to my lab and participate in a year long process to rid of your mutations." Evansby looked eager, but stayed serene.

Did we have a choice? Hazel and I were going to probably be tortured for a year while we were getting our mutations sucked out of our bodies. I imagined the process would be extremely painful, possibly more painful than having dozens of needles injected into you at once. It could even kill us. But does it make more sense to sacrifice ourselves, or sacrifice hundreds of people?

I firmly grasped Hazel's hand again, and together, we slowly nodded yes to Evansby. We were too speechless and scared to say anything, so I figured the head gesturing would suffice. The mutants around us murmured again with excitement. It was strange how different Hazel and I felt compared to the mutants and Evansby. Especially Evansby, who smiled at the fact that he had succeeded.

"Excellent!" Evansby proclaimed. "The colony will be spared for now, and you have agreed to my deal. Shall we head to the vans and make our way to my lab?"

And with that, the triplets grasped our arms again and shoved us forward. I couldn't believe this over. I'd been through so much with Hazel, and now we were on our way to be in captivity by our enemy.

Suddenly, we heard the footsteps of several people coming from behind us. I couldn't help but smile when I saw Dr. Baker, (well, about 15 Dr. Bakers. I forgot she could multiply herself) Maxine, Dana, Sonni, and Jazz, who was in her terrifying werewolf form. They all looked exhausted and their clothes were either torn and burned, but they still looked like a group of heroes.

"You're not getting what you want this time, Charles," the center Dr. Baker said, who was the original Dr. Baker.