Later, I would never be able to recall exactly how I got home. I presumed I flew there without any trouble, but I couldn't remember it in the slightest. The next thing I knew after taking off from the forest floor, I was walking in the front door of our house, looking around to make sure everyone was there who was supposed to be there.
Well. Everyone except Zane.
Nya was sitting at the breakfast table, staring blankly at the plates and cups that still sat there. I noticed instantly that she wasn't in her usual spot. Instead, she sat where Zane always did.
Kai and Jay were curled up on opposite ends of the couch. Kai had his face buried in his hands, and I could hear him hiccup every now and then, literally. He was so worn out from crying that he'd given himself the hiccups. Jay had his arms wrapped around himself and, for once, not a word escaped his mouth. His lips were pressed together firmly, but his chin trembled, like he was trying not to sob.
Cole was leaned against the wall looking absolutely exhausted. He turned a little toward the sound of my footsteps as I entered but he didn't say a word.
I didn't say anything either. Instead, I went searching for the first aid kit. Eventually, I found it in a cupboard in the laundry room. Returning to the others, I started dispensing bandages and ointment, moist towelettes and painkillers. We fixed ourselves up in a terse silence that was only broken by the occasional grunt of pain from cleaning a particularly nasty wound.
Jay, of course, was the one who finally spoke as I put the remainder of the first aid supplies back in the kit. "What do we do now? We need, we need a plan or something. We can't just let them take Zane."
"We already did," Cole pointed out unhelpfully.
Before Jay could turn on him, I interjected quickly, "We didn't let them take Zane. We fought hard, and we fought well. But this time, that wasn't enough. So we'll have to do better next time."
"Next time?" Kai repeated, raising his face from his hands.
"Yeah. We're not giving up. The Flock are not quitters," I said firmly.
"So what do we do?" Jay asked again. "I mean, the helicopter is gone. We don't know where it went. We can't track it or anything."
Kai sat up straight. "Or can't we track it? Jay, you made a metal-detector two weeks ago, didn't you?"
"A faulty one," Jay grumbled. "It kept going off whenever Zane was around."
"Yeah, it was kinda messed up, but it still detected most metals. Could you somehow, uh, make it work on looking for big things like helicopters?" Kai asked.
Jay considered that for a moment, then he shook his head. "I don't think so, and even if I did, there'd be no way to figure out which helicopter we'd be looking for."
"Then can you make the metal detector look for Zane specifically? It did always go off whenever he was near it," Kai pointed out.
"I don't think that would work either," Jay said glumly. "The distance is way too big, and we don't have a clue where they would go to start us off with."
I coughed. "Um, actually, there's a good chance we know where they're going."
Cole nodded, and Nya winced. They knew what I was talking about.
Jay and Kai, on the other hand, didn't. Kai furrowed his eyebrows at me, and Jay wondered, "What? How could we know where they'd go?"
"They're going back to the same place they came from," I said grimly.
Jay gasped in horror, and Kai's eyes went wide as he asked, "You don't mean-"
"The School," Cole, Nya, and I said together.