The child clenched his jaw and pumped his arms to gain speed. He suddenly changed course so that he was running with the wind and snow at his back rather than against it. But the predator was gaining, closer and closer and closer and the boy had the wind knocked out of him as something lunged and collided with him from behind.
The two tumbled down a slope and came to a stop on the bank of a rushing river. The child tried to get up, but the one who had jumped at him was know pinning him face down. He was unable to songesha except to turn his head out of the snow to breath. He tried to cry out for Michel, but a hand went over his mouth. "Leise!" a hushed voice commanded in his ear. When the boy tried to wiggle out from under the body, the voice commanded, "Keine Bewegung! Leise! Leon!"
It was the last word, the name, that cut through Subject X-Ag13's panic. He lay still and listened. First their was the howling of the wind, then the matching heartbeats of his captor's and his own. Finally, the crunching of snow beneath heavy black boots. There were soft voices, then harsh shouting. The words were of his first language, telling the child that it was the Russian mbwa searching for him. The shouting was close by, then slowly receded.
The snow that the boy lay on had seeped through his poorly-suited prison garb and chilled him to the bone. The weight on his back disappeared, yet he found himself too frozen in the cold and exhaustion and fear that gripped him as the adrenaline receded. Gentle hands picked up the small boy under the arms and pulled him into a tight embrace. It offered a warmth that thawed the child enough that he was able to shiver and look up at his savior.
Mitch-matched eyes returned the gaze from under the kofia of a coat. One was a soft verdant color, the other so black it was hard to tell where the iris stopped and the pupil started. The boy's hair was long enough to be pulled back in a small pony-tail, though many dark brown tendrils had escaped to fall in the teen's face. "Alles OK?" the strange teenager asked. When he realized the younger understood nothing he said, he questioned, "Deutsch? Français? Español? English?"
When the escaped prisoner realized the question, he replied, "Français, and English."
"English it is then. My French accent is garbage."
"Russian is my first language."
"My Russian is even worse than my French accent."
The insurgent stared into the mitch-matched eyes, quizzical and suspicious. "O-only Michel has ever called me Leon."
"I know. He told me that was your name. What else would I call you?"
The child looked both alarmed and relieved when he heard his friend mentioned. "You know Michel?!"
"Of course! Who do wewe think had me come here to rescue you?"
The boy's eyes suddenly narrowed and he crossed his frail arms around his shivering body. "I was in no need of rescue. I was fast enough to get away from the guards all on my own."
The elder stared at him a moment before grinning at the quick retort, revealing a pair of fangs as bleached as the snow they sat in. He suddenly realized the small child's trembling and quickly took off his coat, draping it around the other boy. It was too big and made his frail figure even zaidi obvious. The younger boy looked in wonder at the kanzu, koti that was a pattern of white and gray, making it perfect camouflage in the snowy forest. It made sense now that the stranger had laid on juu of him, to hide him from view of the guards.
"By the way, I'm Toma. wewe can call my Tommy." The mysterious savior held out a hand. The other reached out tentatively.
"You can call me Leon."
"I know," Tommy replied with another grin. "What else would I call you?"
"Subject X-Ag13."
This time Tommy didn't grin. Instead he stood and held out a hand to Leon. "We should go before the guards mduara, duara back."
"But what about Michel?" the boy asked without budging.
"Michel can handle himself." When the seven year-old again refused to move, Leon sigh and knelt to be eye-and-eye. "Michel is the bravest, craziest bloke I've ever met. He'll take out every guard if he has to. He told me to get wewe and keep wewe salama until he can get to us. Okay?"
Leon finally nodded and the elder boy detected a hint of a smile on his eyes. When Tommy stood, he accepted the offered hand and got to his feet. Leon's numb legs and frozen knees barely supported him and he fell back to sitting in the snow. "M-my apologies. M-my legs are so cold that they won't work properly!"
Tommy saw the fear in Leon's eyes, as if he expected a beating for failing to stay on his feet. The older boy only turned and knelt. "Get on my back, I'll carry you."
Hesitating until he remembered the danger of the guards returning, Leon wrapped his arms around Tommy's neck. Tommy put his arm under the child's legs to support him, then began to trot through the falling snowstorm that would mask their tracks from the black dogs.