Chapter 12

David made his way back to the hill from which he had first caught sight of the smoke from the twins' fire. He sat in the dark and gobbled up the beef as fast as he could - just like the twins, he thought he had never tasted anything so good.

With the worst of his hunger satisfied, he thought about what he should do next. David decided he liked the idea of setting himself up in a cave just like the twins. He knew he would need to journey far enough away to ensure that they wouldn't ever find him.

He curled up into a ball to try to get some much needed sleep, but as soon as the first rays of daylight appeared, he was up and moving. His first priority now was to put distance between himself and the twins so they couldn't catch him and take the replicator back.

Adam was the first one awake and it took him a few minutes of stretching before he noticed that something was wrong.

The replicator was gone!

"Fuck! Who's moved the replicator?" he demanded loudly.

Most of the group woke quickly given how loudly he had asked his question - Thomas as usual was a bit slower than everyone else was.

When they managed to make out what was upsetting Adam, they all jumped up and began looking for the precious unit.

"Look! The last of the beef is gone too. At a guess, I'd say that we've had a visit from David!" cried Sarah.

The group all looked to where the beef had been and saw that Sarah was right.

"I told you we should have killed that little bastard while we had the chance! Now he's stolen the most important thing that exists on this fucking planet!" screamed Adam.

"Come on, we might still be able to catch him," cried Ben, stooping to pick up his spear and the telescope.

Adam hefted the knife and slipped it into the belt of his kilt and then snatched up the axe too.

"If we catch him, we're going to do the job right this time."

The look on Adam's face left none of them in any doubt that this time he intended to kill David. He hadn't been able to take the responsibility after the attempted rape, but now the steely look in his eyes and the set of his jaw told all of them that he was ready and willing to take the other boy's life.

The girls all avoided locking eyes with Adam. The intensity of his look was unsettling and sent shivers down their spines.

"Come on, we need to hurry," called Ben and the two boys left the cave at the run.

The ground was still sodden from the amount of rain that had fallen and it wasn't difficult to pick up the tracks David's feet had left. The approach he had taken covered an area that none of the group had walked on recently so Ben and Adam were fairly certain this was David's trail.

The two boys had eaten and rested much better than David and had a distinct advantage therefore in terms of the amount of energy they had. In a head to head race there is no doubt that they would have overhauled David reasonably quickly, but David had thought of that and within half a mile, Ben and Adam ran out of footprints to follow.

David's trail ran out at the foot of a rocky hill. Neither of them was an experienced, trained tracker or they might have been able to pick out the slight bruising on some of the moss that covered the rocks or the odd blade of grass that was bent over. Instead they split up and ranged from side to side in a vain attempt to pick up the trail again.

Adam eventually found it, but they had lost nearly an hour and David had widened the gap between them.

David guessed that they would come after him. He knew how important an object like the replicator was and he himself would give anything to have it. That meant that the twins would move mountains to try to get it back.

He was also smart enough to realise that the twins would have an advantage because they had eaten regularly. That meant he would need to use his wits to get away. The replicator unit was also slowing him down, but there was no way he was giving it up.

At the very first opportunity he started running across rocky ground in an attempt at covering his tracks. He changed direction several times just in case whoever was following decided to simply run in a straight line when his trail ran out.

When he came to a stream, David leapt from the bank and began running uphill through the water. He kept going for what must have been a mile and then kept a look out for a suitable opportunity to climb out of the water without leaving any trail.

The stream curved to follow the contours of the land it was rushing through and David found what he had been looking for. A portion of the hillside had collapsed here and a large rock jutted out into the path of the stream. He was able to use the rock to climb out and then he ran up the scree from the landslide, making his way deeper into the mountains.

Exhaustion was gradually creeping up on him, but he held his 'prize' to his chest and forced himself to carry on.

"My heart and lungs can burst before I'll stop. Those bastards are not getting this back. Go faster, go faster. Ignore the pain, keep going!" he told himself over and over as he ran.

Hunger was also close to overpowering him when he realised how stupid he was being. Coming to an abrupt halt, he set the replicator down and spoke to it.

"One high energy bar."

A bar appeared and he cackled loudly at his own ingenuity before grabbing the bar and the unit and breaking into a run again. The energy bar was eaten as he ran and it wasn't long before he imagined he could sense the boost it was giving him.

David couldn't know it, but the pursuit from Ben and Adam was falling further and further behind.

"He's a tricky little bastard!" moaned Ben as they lost the trail yet again.

"I don't care. I'll find him if it's the last thing I do," said Adam grimly.

Just when the boys thought they had settled on the trail and were going to close the distance between themselves and David, the other boy did something else to through off their pursuit.

By the time midday arrived they were hungry and no closer to their quarry. It had taken them hours to figure out how David had used the stream and only some excellent guesswork by Ben had figured out how David must have used the rock to cover his tracks.

They sat down for a rest, not as exhausted as David, as there had been long periods when they couldn't run because they had no tracks to follow.

"I warned you all that he would come back and do something sneaky," Adam snapped.

"Okay! You were right, but that doesn't help us."

Ben stood up and put the telescope to his eye. He scanned the ground in front of them in a hundred and eighty-degree sweep, but there was nothing to see apart from rocks, grass, trees and some wildlife.

"I think we've lost him," he said.

"You can give up if you want, I'll never give up," replied Adam and the tone in his voice underlined his determination.

Ben shrugged and the pair started forward again. Several hours later they still hadn't managed to pick up David's trail again and Ben knew that if they didn't start back, they would be stuck out in the open for the night. He fingered the little pouch hanging from his waistband and he contemplated trying to use the nuggets to influence his friend.

"Adam's losing all sense of reason. Finding the trail now is virtually impossible and we're putting ourselves at risk the longer we try. It's not as if we don't have another replicator - we just need to find some raw material for it."

He slipped the nuggets from the pouch and held them tightly in his palm as they walked.

"You're beginning to feel that this is pointless. The replicator doesn't matter - we've got another one. It's dangerous leaving the others on their own; you should be there to protect your mate.

Ben was a little worried that Adam would hear his voice in his head, just as Sarah had, so he was concentrating on changing how he projected the thoughts at his friend. He repeated the same words over and over for several minutes before he had his first sign that it was working.

"Shit! This is pointless, we'll never find his trail at this rate."

"Maybe we should turn back and try to make it to the cave before dark?" Ben suggested.

It was a measure of how determined Adam was that he disagreed and argued for them to carry on for a little while yet.

Half an hour later Ben knew his use of the nuggets had succeeded when Adam stopped and turned to him.

"You're right. We've lost the little bastard. I guess we're just going to have to hope we can get the second replicator to work. Come on, let's try to make it back to the cave."

They had gone all day without any food and were starting to feel really hungry. That reminded them both that they wouldn't be able to simply order up a steak anymore and Adam cursed David yet again.

Adam tried to work off his residual anger and frustration by running as fast as he could, leaving Ben a little behind. Rather than wade through the stream, they ran alongside it until a point where they could cross. Adam splashed across quickly and Ben tried to keep up but as he entered the water, he saw something glinting at him from the streambed.

Ben faltered and bent down to snatch up what had caught his eye. He stood in the water and held up another nugget of metal, this one a silvery-blue colour. He began to search the streambed for any sign of other nuggets, but nothing else caught his eye.

"What's keeping you?" Adam asked, having doubled back to find out what was wrong.

"Nothing, I just wanted a drink of water," Ben replied and began to jog once more.

As he ran, Ben slipped the nugget into his pouch alongside the two nuggets of silvery-white metal already there.

The fact that they didn't have to stop and cast round for signs of David's tracks meant that the return journey went much faster than either of them had thought. There was still plenty of daylight left therefore when they trudged through the trees and climbed the hill to the cave.

The girls had spotted them coming and rushed out to meet them.

"What's happened?" asked Sarah.

"We found a trail, so it was definitely David who stole the replicator, but we lost him somewhere deeper into the mountains," Ben replied.

The disappointment was clear on the girls' faces, but Sarah tried to make light of things.

"I managed to spear some fish while you were away. You must be starving, why don't you come in and rest and have something to eat?"

That sounded like a good plan to the boys and they slumped down beside the fire - opposite Thomas, who was lying in his usual position.

"Lose him?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah, he's a slippery little shit. You wouldn't believe the dodges he pulled to cover his tracks," said Ben. "At least I got to test the compass - I think it works fine by the way."

Sarah served up some cooked fish for both of them and the group was once more all together around the fire. The contrast between the excitement and joy of the night before and the atmosphere now was stark. Disappointment was now very much the order of the day.

"I suppose we'll just have to try to get the other replicator working now," said Sarah, "I've also been thinking that it might be an idea to try to rig up the protection field from the propagation system to guard the entrance to the cave."