The 17 Read Online Free Page B

were under a microscope from aliens or God or some other deity he had never even fathomed, they were surely not leaving a good impression.
    Zack’s eyes cycled through the others around the table, finally resting on Mizuki, who gave him a look that pleaded for him to just stay out of the way.
    Sound advice.
    Zill and Cass just peered down sullenly, as if scolded by their parents. Brock slid his plate loudly across the table, stood and towered over them. “We better get our act together and work as a team, or Harness will be right. We’ll be stuck here for an eternity.”
    Brock strutted away, glancing over his shoulder at them with a dismissive look. He ambled into the living room and sank into the opulent leather couch. He grabbed a book—Zack couldn’t see the title—from the oak coffee table and began reading quietly in the light cast by the brushed nickel floor lamp.
    “He told you, didn’t he?” Zill muttered.
    Cass clenched her jaw and made a fist. Before he knew it, Zack was doing what Mizuki had warned him not to do with her eyes: he was intervening.
    “Enough, okay? Just stop.” Zack made his voice as forceful as possible. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to find out who brought us here. I’d like to know why and how we get back home. Fighting each other isn’t going to accomplish that.”
    Brock lifted his eyes from his book and smiled, then began reading again.
    Jenai giggled softly. When is she was going to make some microwave popcorn? She was enjoying the strife way too much.
    Zill and Cass began to sulk, staring down at their half eaten and mushy Hot Pockets.
    Zack had gotten their attention, at least. “I know I just got here and you are all disappointed in me for dropping my sword, but we’re in this together. For some reason we have been thrown together in this situation. I have to believe there is a reason and I have to believe there is a way out of it.”
    Mizuki nodded. “He’s right, you know. Cass. Zill. Can you at least try to get along?”
    Mizuki peeked at Zack out of the corner of her eye and smiled. She had broken her own rule and Zack approved.
    Zack was a bad influence. “Yeah. C’mon. Who knows, you might find you’ll like each other.”
    Zill and Cass tried to suppress a smile, but both failed.
    “Yeah, I guess,” Zill said and held her hand out across the table to Cass, who stared at it, and then reached out and grabbed it firmly.
    “Sure. Why bloody not”
    “See. One big, happy family,” Mizuki said.
    Brock had wandered back into the dining room and so had Harness, who was sweaty, and dabbed his neck and broad shoulders with a damp towel.
    They all sat around the table now, united.
    Zack wondered just how long that would last.
    †††
    Zack held a military canteen in his hands, camouflaged brown and tan. He shook it and could feel and hear water sloshing inside.
    It didn’t take long for him to feel the full wrath of the sun that hung in a hazy blue sky almost directly above him, even though he wore a long white tunic and a headcloth secured with woolen coils.
    Heat rose from the sand beneath his feet and he could see the air ripple at the surface all around him.
    He couldn’t see the others, but he could hear the screams of Harness coming from the other side of a dune in the distance. Soon, Harness, wearing the same desert clothes as Zack, crested, followed by the others, who also wore the same garb. They marched toward Zack’s position.
    “There he is,” Harness bellowed as he stomped ever closer, leaving eddies in the sand as he walked. Finally, they all reached Zack and stood in a semicircle around him.
    It was quite intimidating.
    “Oh my God. They stuck us out here with no water!” Jenai shook her empty canteen vigorously. “What the hell?”
    Brock shook his empty canteen, and then Zill and Cass. Mizuki opened hers and turned it upside down, only a small trickle of water dripped out of it onto the sand. They all looked at Zack, eager to