“And there he is,” Adam said into the microphone at his lips, staring out at the wall opposite him as he heard the hushed noises over the radio speakers mounted on the wall. He knew they were hanging on his every word as he retold his tale for the seventeenth time. It never got old. Every time he told it, it got a little bit more fantastic, but they were a boring town. The last time they had a thrilling tale, old man Jerry’s dog suddenly woke up without a hair of fur on it’s tail and all the fields had to be burned to get rid of the fucking ticks that caused it. “Standing just beyond the great white appleberry bushes I had very nearly tripped over - lost over! - stands Number One.” 

Adam still got gasps from that reveal, like it was the first time all over again. All except Larry, who thought Adam full of shit, but Larry was the town skeptic, so it was sort of his job to doubt things and Adam tried not to hate him for it.

“Yes.” Adam said, “I shit you not – he looks as shocked as I am! Only…” Adam pulled his blanket up higher, sinking lower into his mattress. “There’s something else in his gaze…what is it? What could it be?” He asked himself, playing it up for his crowd. “I want to say it’s anger – nay! Fury. Blinding fury. But if I’m completely honest with myself…it’s quite possibly excitement.”

“How can you see anything in his gaze, let alone fury or excitement? They’re blind, aren’t they? Eyes are a milky white? Can’t see no emotions in them.” Larry complains over the radio.

“His facial expression told me so!” Adam cried out dramatically, throwing his free arm up, as if he was reaching for something, slowing balling it into a fist. “It’s called taking artistic licensing, Larry!”

“I’m just saying, they’re blind. They don’t have gazes.” Larry continued on in crabby tone.

“Fine! Fine! He looked pissed and excited at the same time!” Adam said quickly, “But the point was-“ He paused, holding up a finger now, “He was there. He had found me. Again. After all this time.”

So there was only two things to do during the cold season – talk over the radio, and get laid. If you were single like Adam, the radio was what you lived for during these days. Eventually he’d be lucky enough to have someone there to waste time with, fucking until the cold wasn’t even on their minds, but until then the radio was his lifeline to sanity. Until the sun came back out, it was all he had.

When the sun did come back out, he began his work again.

Two sun cycles later and two of his nieces joined him for a sun cycle, and with their help he was able to further expand his field and while he would have been able to even save up extra for the next night cycle, he sent it back to the city with his young nieces to enjoy with his sister’s family.

It had been a good sun cycle and had made up for the worry of receiving his next notice, alerting him that he had been selected – again – for the run.

After the last run had made it clear that hunters from his past not only could make a reappearance, but very well might focus all of their attention on him...his chances of succeeding future runs dropped dramatically.

They were dropped off on the side of a massive mountain, covered in hills and the biggest fucking trees Adam had ever had the privileged of seeing. Before he ran off to try and put as much distance between himself and point A as physically possible, he heard someone mention the trees were the Ya-Ya trees that the Zerric made many things from, and Adam knew he would need to stay away from them.

Ya-Ya trees, as the other runner pointed out, had been great for many different products, but the sap they excreted was incredibly strong and if he accidentally touched it, he’d have to have a very strong soap to wash it off. Worst case scenario of all was him falling against a tree with the sap, because then he’d be stuck, sitting there like an idiot waiting to be picked off.

So yeah.

He needed to avoid the Ya-Ya trees.

Adam smoothed back his hair as he set a brisk pace, breathing in the cold, moist air as he looked around at his surroundings. Everything seemed to be slightly tilted, no ground completely flat. He looked up to see the weather was actually pretty pleasant, so rain wasn’t likely to be a factor. Rain did fall at some point though, he figured, because everything looked like it had been thoroughly soaked, the ground muddy and the trees all dripping down into tiny streams that went along down the slight slope of the ground.

He found a position to look down the mountain to see the slope led to more trees, a good sized river further down the mountain and leading toward what he could see was either or an ocean or a huge fucking lake.

Worse come to worse, he could just jump in the water and float on down it until the timer ran out.

Why they even made that a possibility was kind of stupid, since that would make this all very easy for his fellow man to get away, but maybe they thought the hunters needed a new challenge.

At the sound of distant screaming Adam decided he wasn’t going to hang around on this level of the mountain and carefully started down the slope, listening to the chaos ensuring back at the starting point.

At the bottom he continued forward, glancing around at the Ya-Ya trees as he listened carefully to any signs of nearing hunters. When he heard someone cursing and screaming to not be fucking touched, Adam twisted to see a hunter and a runner struggling at the top of the hill he came own before they both tumbled sideways and started a very violent looking tumble down the hill before the hunter painfully collided with a Ya-Ya tree, his hand holding onto the wrist of his trophy with what looked like a death grip to yank him back toward him to slap a metal bracelet on.

Without the ability to see what they were going to crash into, the hunters were at a disadvantage. Maybe not a huge disadvantage, but still enough of one that Adam could exploit. As the hunter got a foot to his face from his trophy, the two struggling on the ground, Adam looked up the hill to to see if there were any other hunters on the horizon.

And there was.

Just one.

Number Four.

Adam felt a thrill of panic and he jolted at the sight of the hunter turning his head to listen before he frowned and looked down at the slope. After another beat of panic, Adam turned and started forward into the woods, pulling a face as he navigated around the Ya-Ya trees and the river of amber colored sap that dragged down their lengths, threatening to slow him down with just a touch.

Or slow down a hunter.

Adam grinned to himself as he glanced over his shoulder as Number Four slowly came down the slope with a determined, stony look on his face. He turned back forward and glanced around at the trees to find several trees that were very close together and he went toward them, turning sideways to slid in between them, glancing toward where Number Four was ripping through the brush to come toward him, the hunter jerked away when he touched a Ya-Ya tree’s sap with his glove, tearing it off with his teeth before he continued forward toward Adam as water droplets rained down on them from where they had collected on the higher up branches.

Adam pursed his lips as he slowly inched further into the cluster of trees, glancing down to make sure he didn’t touch any of the sap around him as he neared the exit of the group.

“Come and get me, Daddy,” Adam chuckled darkly, taunting him with a low “Woo-hoo!”

The hunter sneered and suddenly reached out for Adam but the human pulled back, the hunter instead grabbing a handful of Ya-Ya sap with his other gloved hand.

Adam clicked his tongue – “So close!” He laughed.

His laughter was cut short abruptly when the hunter suddenly moved forward into the cluster, his large body pushing in to crowd the small space as Adam tripped out of it to avoid the hunter’s free hand as it reached over to try and grab him.

Adam pulled back and watched the hunter’s attempts to follow after him earning him a shoulder covered in Ya-Ya sap. He jerked against it and freed himself to try and grab at Adam as the human inched further away, but the only thing he achieved was tripping and falling down onto a fallen Ya-Ya branch, also covered in it’s sticky sap.

Adam took this opportunity to scamper off, running until there was a long stretch of large rocks between them before he leaned back on a sapless tree to catch his breath. He looked across the rocks to see Number Four struggling to pull himself free of the thick, amber colored sap that coated the entire area Adam had lured him into.

He watched Number Four angrily strip out of his second glove, then dragging his sap covered top up off his body to avoid brushing his face, tossing it angrily aside as he tilted his head to listen, his hair falling down across his face to partially obscure it. With each hard breath through his nose a few of his rain slicked tendrils trembled, his heavily muscled chest heaving with his pants.

If Number Four was trying to win this by distracting Adam…

It was working.

But Adam could let himself be caught.

He had thought a lot about what that would mean this time, something he usually avoided, and he just could risk becoming the bitch to someone that was going to be ‘one of the good ones’, a master that wouldn’t take their anger out on him or worse, not only breed him but sell off his children to other hunters.

It was better to not have a master at all, and that mean the needed to not be distracted by the hard bod of a hunter. He took one last look at the hunter as Number Four leaned further toward Adam’s direction, listening, and Adam turned to start carefully walking through the woods toward the direction of the river.

And then suddenly it wasn’t just him and Number Four – another human raced past him with a hunter on their tail, another getting tackled into a tree hard enough to sound like it broke a few ribs, the human screaming in anguish. Adam navigated around it to hurry toward the river, hiding and dodging any other hunter’s attention.

It was relatively flat here and so it was easier to navigate, and on this level of the mountain he was reminded of his third race, which was great, he thought sarcastically. It wasn’t nearly as humid – the weather here actually very comfortable, but with the Ya-Ya trees and the muddy ground, it was very easily the messiest of his runs.

But he kept inching along, crawling under trees and through bushes, pausing until the coast was clear as he continued to the river. For a while, there wasn’t any hunters or humans that he could see as he crawled, so when he cut his hand on a sharp rock while crawling through a bush, he felt safe enough to stand and try and rinse his hand off on the water dripping from the Ya-Ya leaves.

He was making good timing – with Number Four occupied and most of the other hunters no where in sight, he might just have cleared the worst of it. He figured he could just keep going to the river, follow it down and wait out the clock like that. He liked water – hell, he loved it. Didn’t really get a huge chance at seeing to much of it because water was a scarce resource back on the moon, but humans were mostly made of water and water quenched his thirst, so it couldn’t be all that bad, right?

He froze at the sight of a figure dropping out of the trees that he had just been crawling under, the hunter’s gait distinct enough for Adam to recognize it miles away as he followed the path Adam had made on his hands and knees.

Number Three.

Adam felt his blood pressure shoot up, his heart pounding against his chest, and true to Number Three’s character, he watched the hunter slowly lift a hand to cup it behind an ear, turning his head with a shit eating grin to listen to Adam’s increasing panic.

When Number Three’s mouth dropped open around his sharp smile and he suddenly whipped his head around to look in Adam’s direction, Adam jolted and turned to sprint like mad away from him, breaking out into a cold sweat as he heard Number Three’s cackling nearing.

He had forgotten how fucking fast and agile Number Three was, every one of Adam’s movement’s shadowed by the hunter as he frantically tried to get away. Occasionally Adam would outsmart the hunter and the hunter would hit a low branch or trip on something, but Adam wasn’t able to do anything that put enough distance between them to give him any ability to actually think something through.

He vaulted over fallen logs – so did Number Three – slid under low branches – as did Number Three – and hop scotched along rocks – Number Three doing exactly the same.

Adam saw a long muddy down slope out of the corner of his eyes that dropped down into the river and decided to take the chance, quickly running for it to slid down on his knees, bracing a hand against the hill for balance as Number Three followed after him.

He saw a rock sticking out of the hill and he grabbed it with both hands, Number Three sliding past him-

The hunter reached out and grabbed onto Adam’s pants, curling his long fingers around Adam’s belt. When Adam saw the hunter and his grin reaching back with a free hand toward the pouch on his thigh that held the bracelet that would effectively kill Adam’s freedom, Adam hung from the rock by one hand to reach down with his other hand and quickly undo his belt.

Number Three visibly panicked and he slid down the hill, Adam instinctively holding onto the other end of the belt and supply the hunter with the only thing keeping him from sliding down the long hill and into the rushing river below.

Adam winched and looked up at the rock he was holding onto, swallowing thickly before he slowly looked down the belt he held onto to see Number Three swiping a hand up with his bracelet to try and get Adam’s ankle. Adam scowled and curled his legs up as far as they could go, keeping them just out of reach of Number Three’s long arms as he swiped the bracelet back and forth to try and stick it on him.

When it became clear that Number Three wouldn’t be able to successfully tag him, the hunter let his other hand hang back, frowning as he seemed to think on their position.

“Do you only join in races where there’s woods like this?” Adam drawled, blinking away the water droplets from his eyelashes as he strained against hold the hunter’s weight. He’d have to let him go soon, but he figured that he might leave on good terms since this crazy fucker seemed to be most likely to track his ass down in the next race.

“No…” Number Three said, shrugging a shoulder, “I only join odd number years. Even numbers I’m stations undersea.”

“Oh, so you won’t be here next year.”

“No, no I won’t...so…” He tilted his head a little, trying to convey something to Adam that Adam was ignoring. “If you were my pet, you’d get to see what Zerric looks like two thousand feet under the waters.”