Jake and Peter ran.

They ran in a long hall, and it was not their own. Jake and his Watcher, his only Watcher in the universe, had put their distance between themselves and their lavish mansion in Seattle. The Soynite pair had left safety.

Life had left their new friend.

Outside the building, a Freeman had pulled his laser gun's trigger, then a rushing laser had blasted from it. If that laser had made Jake's heart stop, Soy would have one less soldier to bring glory back to it, one less soldier to help Soynites, one less soldier to kill Freemans.

Maggie Up had saved Jake.

The hall was just one of the various halls within the building. Jake and Peter had run through other halls, and they still ran. Their shoes made contact with a floor, not the forest floor, and the ferocious Freemans stayed as real as the laser pistol Jake wielded.

Freemans had slaughtered many Soynites, individual people who had lived with their own emotions and personalities and wishes and goals. Soynites with their own personal histories and families had been killed. They had been killed by Freemans.

Freemans had reduced Jake's home planet to a ruined place where grass didn't grow. Trees and grass and forests grew on Earth, but trees and grass and forests didn't grow on Soy.

Jake ran in a hall inside a Freeman-occupied building, a great distance away from his home planet, which had been beautiful. That beauty was gone. It had been gone for a long time. And if Jake managed to bring beauty back to his home planet of Soy, the Freemans might try destroying that beauty. They had been successful at destroying it before. They could be successful at destroying a revived Soy in the future.

The Freemans' had ruined Soy. And they had ruined Soynite lives. They had drilled unpleasant misery into Jake by attacking Soy. The attack had shoved unwanted misery into Peter, who dashed next to the boy named Jake.

Like they had done during the attack on Soy, Jake and Peter ran. They kept running. The rushing duo had gone into the base, knowing the threat the armed and organized Freeman military and their dangerous monsters presented.

The Freemans were in the building. It was theirs. The gray floor underneath Jake's shoes looked like a floor. The gray ceiling above Jake's head looked like a ceiling. The building's pale occupiers had rushed into the structure, chasing the two intruders. Jake was one of those intruders, obviously. It was a big disappointment Maggie didn't run in terror with Jake and Peter.

After Maggie's death, Jake and Peter had made their way into the enemy base.

Jake would rather not be shot by a Freeman, which had already happened. He had been shot in the arm. Maggie had been shot in the head. She didn't have to worry about being shot again, and it was because she had become a corpse with no life. Maggie was lifeless. She had fallen and didn't get back up. Jake wouldn't die outside the Freeman base. He refused to become like the dead Maggie. And he refused to see Peter become what Maggie had been forced to become.

Good Soynites had been killed by Freemans. Good Soynites have been shot in their heads by Freemans. Maggie hadn't been the first of her kind to be shot and killed by a Freeman warrior.

Poor girl.

Maggie had saved Jake's life. He hadn't been able to save hers.

Peter didn't have to become Jake's next dead friend. The Soynite man ran with Jake at the present moment, alive. Peter was alive and not well.

But at least life stayed in him.

The healing glass Peter had given to Jake had healed the teenager, but that object hadn't been used to heal Maggie's fatal wound. Jake's Watcher had helped him. The man had failed to stop Maggie's death from happening, but Jake had failed to prevent the girl's death as well. Both the boy and his Watcher had failed.

With the healing glass's power, an injured Freeman enemy would be able to heal himself. Jake couldn't let that happen. Every Freeman deserved to bleed. After seeing a Freeman shoot and kill a Soynite on Earth, Jake clung harder to that belief.

Freemans deserved to bleed. They needed to bleed.

Maggie, Jake's dead Soynite ally, hadn't deserved to bleed, but blood had come from her. Life had shot out her body. The Freemans, they didn't have the will to protect Soynites. They didn't love any member of that race. The Freeman's killing of Maggie gave that truth more proof, more evidence it wasn't a lie Freemans only loved their own kind.

And the healing glass that hadn't been used on Maggie stayed safe in Jake's pocket.

It was good the Soynite had the object and a Freeman didn't.

With Maggie dead, Jake and Peter might never find the spaceship the girl had mentioned before her death.

If the Soynite males didn't find Maggie's spaceship, they would still be able to get back to their car. The vehicle Jake and Peter had rode in waited for the High and the Watcher.

Freeman mobs had fought against Soynite groups. The three-person group Jake, Peter, and Maggie had formed no longer existed. The two running Soynites lived. Maggie being alive had helped prolong their lives. Jake knew that. But Maggie was deceased, dead. Just like Jake's parents. He and his Watcher were each other's only nearby allies.

A Freeman individual had taken Maggie's life. The Freemans hunting Jake and Peter would try shooting death into them.

No Save existed that could bring a person back from the dead.

Even though Jake ran, he didn't hold the dumb desire to leave the building without killing as many Freemans as he could.

Was it possible Jake would survive the attack on the Freeman base?

Yes.

It was not impossible for Jake to return to the mansion he and Peter had walked away from. They had to survive the Freemans first.

Dooming Soy, that had been the Freemans' work. Freemans in Washington state now sought to kill two Soynites. The teenager Jake ran close to the adult who had more experience with killing. Jake was eager to avoid letting a Freeman kill another Soynite. He craved life.

Jake and Peter, they were in a Freeman place. The large and gray building was the enemy domain. It was home to Freemans, not to Jake and Peter.

If Jake and Peter succeeded in making it back to their home, the mansion would receive two people.

Just two.

Years ago, many days before Jake's present plight, more than two Soynites had made their arrival on Earth. That arrival hadn't happened in Washington, but it had taken place in America. The arrival had been well-deserved. After suffering through the brutal invasion, Jake had earned the precious right to enjoy stepping onto Earth for the first time. A spaceship had gotten him to that point.

There had been interesting Watchers, Don Ascend's baby, and Jake himself in that spaceship.

Theo Majestic hadn't rode in the spaceship with Jake and the other High children. The man hadn't traveled with the kids he had turned into Soynite rulers, but it would have been better if the universe's greatest Soynite had traveled with the High kids, their Watchers, and the pilot. The Soynites needed Theo. Jake needed him.

If Theo were with Jake and Watcher Peter, the Freemans would have a harder time killing the fleeing Soynites.

Was Theo Majestic alive? Could outer space be where he lived?

Jake did not know Theo's location. He didn't know where the other Highs hid. The boy had met Maggie, another Soynite, but she hadn't been a High. And she hadn't been the former High named Theo Majestic.

Not even Peter knew where Theo hid. If Theo didn't hide, if he had been killed, Jake would continue doing whatever he had to do. The war between the Soynites and the Freemans needed to be won. The Soynites needed to be the conflict's victors. They deserved to win against Lock Tannis and the Freemans who fought for him.

Freeman space stations were real. They were as real as the Freeman base Jake moved in. Not only were Freeman space stations in the universe, but Freeman spaceships were real too. The murderous brutes who had driven the Soynite people into near-extinction knew how to spread.

If Theo was in hiding in a space station in outer space, Freemans might find him.

From what Jake knew, Theo owned several Soynite space stations. Freemans owned bases on planet Free and planet Earth, and their enemy called Jake ran in one of their bases on Earth. A Freeman could enter a space station belonging to Theo. A Freeman horde could enter a space station belonging to Theo.

Jake hoped Theo would stay cautious, because the man needed to be.

Having a powerful Soynite like Theo on Jake's side would improve the teenager's life, a life which was in danger.

Soynite High Jake didn't know when his death would happen. Not losing his life before midnight would be great. Both Jake and Peter had to survive to see the next day, and the Freemans needed to have their lives taken. They were too cruel, their willingness to slaughter Soynites too deep.

Theo, he was a Soynite who didn't deserve to be hurt or killed.

His absence was real. The Freemans in the building should be grateful they didn't have to deal with Theo.

Jake and Theo were the Freemans' enemies. That was something else they had in common. No Freeman had murdered their ancestor Hase Majestic, but there was a horrible possibility a Freeman would murder Jake or Theo.

At the present time, as he ran, Jake's heart pumped blood. He was not like Maggie. He lived and he breathed. The power to keep resisting the Freeman enemies was Jake's, and that was great.

Lock Tannis's people had arrived on Soy as invaders, unwelcome and unwanted. They hadn't succeeded at killing every Soynite. Jake hadn't defeated every Freeman, but he had made sure to kill Maggie's killer. And he would end other Freeman lives. Their hearts needed to stop. The lives they lived needed to end.

Their ruler deserved death.

A Freeman warrior had shot Jake in the arm. That Freeman had tried killing Jake, without success, and Jake would try ending the life of Lock Tannis.

The friends and family Jake had known on Soy, they were absent and dead. The Up girl had met her demise. She was another person who had been killed because of the choices Lock Tannis had made.

Jake would rather choose to make Tannis receive punishment.

Under the hard ceiling, Jake and Peter didn't stop running.

"We need to hide!" Peter said.

Peter ran to a door located at the side of the hall. He opened it, then he and Jake went through it. The man slammed the door shut.

Jake bent over and placed his hands against his knees, letting sweat from his palms meet the fabric of his pants. He breathed in short pants.

The boy wished the other five Highs were in the building with him.

Jake remembered a time when no Freeman could hurt him. That time, that time spent inside a spaceship, had reached an end. All six Highs had been together during that time.

They had separated.

It was bad enough that Jake had witnessed an enemy kill a different Soynite teenager. Only one High wasn't a teenager, and no Freeman would show that young High mercy just because they were eleven years old.

Being dead, being killed, at sixteen years of age was not what Jake desired.

He was in Freeman territory. The structure he breathed in doubled as home for his armed and dangerous enemies, enemies who honored the universe's worst Freeman, enemies who would love to maim and kill Jake, Peter, and everyone they loved.

Jake hadn't known Maggie well enough. He never would.

But seeing Maggie had proved to Jake that he and Peter weren't the last living Soynites. Unless Maggie's death had given Jake and his Watcher the status of the last two members of their species, at least one other living Soynite existed.

In any case, Maggie's death had happened.

"He killed her," Jake said.

"I know, Jake," Peter replied. He placed a hand against Jake's back. "Lock Tannis got another Soynite killed today. We gained another reason to kill him."

A Freeman working for Tannis had fired a laser beam into Maggie's skull. It had been red. Just like the laser Jake had been shot with. Jake had survived that attack. The laser that had blasted through Maggie made her unable to get back up.

Peter moved his hand away from Jake's back, then the younger Soynite stood straight.

Another hall, that was what Jake and Peter stood in. This hall was long. Just like the one the pair had walked out of. At the hall's end was a black door. While the light in the space shone against him, Jake kept his blue eyes pointed at the black door, and he ran a hand through his hair.

The building was a much more dangerous place than the mansion Jake lived in, a mansion that didn't provide residence to Freemans with the urge to kill Jake, Peter, and other Soynites who had come to the humans' planet.

Planet Free and Freeman space stations were far from Jake, but the Freemans themselves were in the same structure the High boy was in.

Maggie crept into Jake's mind. Jake could think about her, but he couldn't talk to her. He could think about the High children he had traveled to Earth with, but he couldn't talk to them. No matter how badly he wanted to, the boy couldn't help his co-rulers.

Perhaps they were as dead as Maggie.

And maybe Don Ascend's baby had been killed as an infant. Maybe that Soynite's small skeleton rested somewhere on Earth.

Maybe the other Highs had died a long time ago and Jake had never gotten the memo.

If all the Highs except Jake had been killed, the boy himself wasn't dying. A Freeman had never stopped his heart. His organs worked. Blood flowed in him.

He wasn't a skeleton.

"We're not going to become like Maggie," Jake said. He shifted his attention to the gun in his hand, then looked at Peter's laser pistol. "We have our guns. That gives us a fighting chance."

"Maggie had a fighting chance," Peter responded. "And she's dead. Don't mistake an optimistic belief for the truth, Jake."

Jake's weapon made it more possible he would walk out the Freeman base with his heart still beating. He had shot and killed a Freeman outside the building, and other armed Soynites had put Freeman lives to a stop. The sixteen-year-old expected his blue gun to help keep him alive.

Jake and Peter would have to shoot their guns. They would have to kill to make sure they survived. The Freemans had attacked and ruined planet Soy, and they could bring two certain Soynites their deaths. Jake the High and Peter the Watcher stayed in the hall, away from their armed adversaries, away from the dead Maggie Up, away from the powerful Theo Majestic.

It had been so long since Jake had last seen Theo. Jake's father, Jalen Majestic, was Theo's fifth cousin. Jalen, like Lizzie Majestic, was dead.

Jake hadn't been successful with saving his parents and Maggie, but he had been successful with surviving so far. He knew it would be better if he reunited with Theo, found the other Highs, and helped all those people take the fight to the menacing Freemans. It would be wonderful if Theo and Lilly Majestic had brought sixth cousins for Jake into the universe, but that had never happened.

Theo Majestic had no children.

Did he regret the fact he had never made a Majestic with his wife?

Jake didn't have a sixth cousin. He didn't have a sixth cousin who would fight and kill Freemans, because Theo and Lilly were childless.

Jake, still in enemy territory, was a Majestic.

Former High Theo Majestic was not able to protect him. Jake was a High. His father's fifth cousin had made him that way, but that man hadn't been in front of Jake in a long time.

Behind Jake, the door Peter had slammed shut stayed close. Theo didn't open it and go through it. The man who had been leader of the former Highs, both the former Highs and the current ones. Theo hadn't gone into the building with Jake and Peter, two Soynites with the intent to kill Freemans. Theo was enemies with the Freemans too. He had been Jake's leader, but those days were over, and the teenage Soynite was aware of it.

The Freemans' leader had many warriors at his disposal.

As a child, Jake had looked at a photograph in a textbook from planet Free. The photograph displayed Lock Tannis wielding a Strife sword. Lock, he had the same too-pale skin as the other Freemans. He had the same Soynite-hating nature as his fierce fighters.

Every Soynite had a natural weakness to Strife. They had been born with that weakness. Hase Majestic, Holy Majestic, and Theo Majestic had been born that weakness to Strife. Even Jake had been born with it.

Freemans didn't carry Strife all the time. It was possible for a Soynite to have Saves and not have them temporarily taken away during each encounter they had with a Freeman. During the Freemans' attack on planet Soy, not every Soynite warrior had Strife in his possession, but Soy had been ruined. Freemans had made Soynites die. Soynites, they had been murdered.

But the Freemans had failed to destroy the entire Soynite population. Jake was proof. Peter was too. And Maggie had been proof of that truth.

It gave Jake more hope. Not what had happened to Maggie, of course, but what gave the broad-shouldered High hope was the fact his species wasn't extinct.

Unwanted chaos and unpleasant sadness had stabbed into Jake's life. But he hadn't become like Jalen Majestic, Lizzie Majestic, Maggie Up, or any other Soynite he knew was dead.

"Anyway, I didn't see any cameras while we were running," Peter said. Still armed with his Soynite laser pistol, the man placed his free hand against the nearest wall. He exhaled. "But the Freemans are going to find us. This is their base, after all. Before we leave, we need to get to the prison wing. There's bound to be one. We know what Freemans do to Soynites who end up at their mercy. That's why we have to get to the prison wing, then free any Soynite we find there. If I were locked inside a prison cell in this foul place, I would want someone to do the same for me. I don't know if we will make it out of this building still breathing, but I hope for it."

Maggie hadn't even been able to step into the building.

Jake stood close to his Watcher, and he hoped any Soynite they managed to free from Freeman imprisonment would be good to him. Free's people were not gentle, but their population was massive. They outnumbered the Soynite race too much. Even before their attack on Jake's home world. There were too few Soynites, and the High in the hall needed to meet and befriend another one.

He would.

Out of Jake, Peter, and Maggie, only two of them had found success with making it into the Freeman base. Jake and Peter, as well as whichever Soynite they would liberate from the Freemans, would survive what was to come.

Jake's enemies had killed off members of his race. And he had killed a Freeman, killed him outside the building's hard walls. The justice of that had been awesome. If only Jake's parents had witnessed him killing the Freeman. Jake had killed the Freeman who had killed his ally, and the Soynite ruler wished that girl had survived the shooting, just like how he wished his parents had survived the attack on them.

Would Jake ever see Maggie's corpse again?

Life had withdrawn from her, and it had been a murderous Freeman's fault. Maggie, she had gone to Earth. She had never returned to Soy. The potential to go back to the Soynites' lifeless home world was there for Jake, the boy ruler who lived.

He had been on Soy years ago. Because the planet was now a place with no trees and no water, it wasn't a great location to live on. A Soynite could take a spaceship there, reside in it while keeping it parked on Soy, but Jake himself didn't view living on Soy as a desirable option. Maybe the Freemans, knowing how much of a ruin Soy had become, didn't bother to search for Jake's people on that planet.

Earth.

Soynites had gone to Earth.

Freemans wanted to spill their blood. They wanted to spill High blood, royal blood.

Planet Soy's kingdom had stopped being a place where royalty was born. No, Theo Majestic had invented a government system involving Soynite rulers being made. He had stood in front of Jake. He had pressed Hase Majestic's Soynite pendant against the boy's skin.

Jake was a royal High, yes, but Freemans would still try killing him if he had never become a High. No Soynite was exempt from being hated by the Freemans.

Freemans had used their weapons on Soynites. Soynites had used their weapons on Freemans. The war raged.

The Freemans, led by the worst Freeman of all time, refused to give up. They would rather kill Jake than let him stay unharmed, but he was not going to let that happen. Peter didn't plan on letting the Freemans kill the person he took care of. The Watcher had known Jake for years, Jake had known the Watcher for years, and they fought in a war together.

At the Watcher academy he had attended, Peter had learned how to fight. That combat training had been put to good use. Watchers had been taught how to kill. Because there had been the possibility Freemans would attack Soy. The Freemans had done that, and their horrible actions had forced Jake and other Soynites to flee to Earth.

Soy and Earth, those were two planets Jake and Peter had been forced to deal with hateful Freemans on. The Freemans' attempts to take Jake's life had failed.

A Freeman had shot Jake's friend to death, but the teenager held a gun. He was armed. Freemans he might meet in the future would try killing him, but Jake had a weapon. He could defend himself. He would defend himself against more Freemans. Jake was still capable of that much. Even though he had a dead ally and distant friends, the Soynite could hurt and kill Freemans.

Jake and Peter had weapons. No swords, no daggers, no weapons but laser pistols.

Freemans had weapons and war animals. Freeman weapons were in the large building, wielded by the pale brutes themselves. And maybe rooms within the base contained Freeman weapons. Jake didn't hear vicious roars, but creatures from planet Free might have been locked inside the building.

No Freeman was in the hall. No dangerous animal from Free was in the hall. Only two Soynites with two guns stood in it, and they wouldn't regret increasing the number of dead Freemans.

The Freemans hadn't regretted increasing the number of dead Soynites. They had shown no mercy to Soynites they had murdered, and they hadn't shown mercy to the lifeless girl Jake and Peter had been forced to distance themselves from. The teenager and the man had left Maggie's body outside, but that was because Freemans had pursued them.

Jake and Peter had lost their determined opposition. The pale warriors who hunted the two hadn't found him in the hall.

As Peter kept his hand against the gray wall, he and Jake stayed not far from the hall Freemans might rush into.

Peter turned, then took a step toward the door. He pressed his ear against it.

"I don't hear any Freemans," he said.

Regardless, the pair would see Freemans again. Jake didn't doubt it. The armed warriors would try to kill the duo.

Jake didn't direct pity to the Freeman he had blasted to death, and he would rather not be kind to the Freemans who were still alive. Beyond the hall, Jake's enemies searched for him and his Watcher.

The armed pair remained safe in the long hall as Maggie remained dead outside. A Freeman had blasted a hole into her head, and that was the reason why the girl didn't stand near Jake and Peter. A High had killed her murderer. That same High, Jake, hadn't been able to learn much about Maggie. Peter had been the only Soynite Jake had interacted with for way too long.

Then Jake had met Maggie in a forest. Against her will, she had gotten killed.

If luck was on Jake's side, Soynites who had never gotten killed were going to attack the Freeman base. Maybe Boris Endman would be one of those Soynites.

Did he find his lost granddaughter?

Bloodhounds had left Soy. They had searched for Alice Endman. The Bloodhounds had given up the search when they had been in outer space. Boris had assumed his granddaughter had traveled in a spaceship.

If Jake made contact with Alice, he would tell her about himself, and he would help her fight Freemans if they attacked her. Meeting Alice would be great.

She would be a teenager now. A teenage Soynite who wasn't dead was what Jake needed in his life. And his life was in danger.

Serious danger.

Jake was in a long hall at the moment, not dead, but his opposition wasn't dead either. Freemans searched for him and Peter, like how Bloodhound Soynites had searched for Boris Endman's missing grandkid.

But the High and his only ally were not in outer space's vastness. They were in a hall. That hall was part of the Freemans' territory, and the Freemans themselves could find Jake and Peter. If that happened, the pale brutes would either imprison or kill the pair.

And that pair had caused the Freemans trouble. Freemans had massacred Soynites who hadn't even caused them deliberate trouble.

Jake and Peter had brought trouble to the Freemans. They had done it on purpose.

There was a chance the teenage ruler and the man would be captured and tortured. What had been good for Jake and Peter hadn't been good for the Freemans, and the warriors with the too-pale skin would love to release stress by stabbing pain into the Soynite intruders.

"They're going to find us," Peter said. "Or we are going to find them."

Right.

If Jake and Peter managed to find and recruit Theo Majestic, the odds would be in their favor.

A laser beam couldn't blast a hole into Theo. A sword couldn't slip into the man's flesh. Theo wasn't like Jake.

He was indestructible.

Jake was not. He never had been. Peter and Maggie had seen the boy bleed, which had been the result of a Freeman shooting him in the arm. The alive Peter knew Jake wasn't an indestructible Soynite. He knew his charge could be hurt and killed. Theo had gained the power of indestructibility, and Jake was still able to be destroyed. He was destructible.

If Jake died, one less High would be able to govern the Soynite people, Peter's people.

And, of course, all the years Peter had spent caring for Jake made the Watcher more willing to keep the High alive and well. Jake was aware of that. Peter was like a father to him, and the teenage royal knew it. Jake hoped the Freemans wouldn't lock him and Peter in the prison wing that might or might not be in the building.

He didn't want to grow old and die inside a Freeman prison cell.

If the Freemans caught them, they might separate the pair, keep Peter inside the current Freeman base, send Jake live at a different one.

"We're going to make our way to the prison wing," Peter said. "That's still the plan. I just wish we knew where it was. We need to free some of our people. If we do that, they're going to help us survive our time in this awful place."

"And we'll be able to become friends with them," Jake said.

"Correct," Peter replied. "That poor girl got shot and killed outside. We need to do our best to make sure that doesn't happen to any Soynites we find here."

"Where are we going to go?" Jake said. He turned to the black door at the hall's end. "Should we go see what that door leads to?"

Peter nodded.

"I don't see why not," he said.

It was the pair's duty to rescue any of their people in the base.

Jake would risk his life to do it.