Michael Vey 3 ~ Battle of the Ampere Read Free

already.”
    The chief frowned. “It is with great sadness that you leave,” he said. “You are Amacarra, Hung fa.” He turned and walked away.
    I let Tessa compose herself before I asked, “What’s a Chullanchaqui ?”
    “The natives believe the Chullanchaqui is a demon who lives in the Amazon jungle. It appears as a friend and lures people off into the jungle where they are never heard from again. The chief thinks Hatch is the Chullanchaqui .”
    “He’s right,” I said.
    Tessa nodded, then said, “I have a lot of questions. Do you want to go into my hut and talk?”
    “Sure,” I said. I followed her inside. Her hut was nicer than the one I’d stayed in. The walls were decorated with bright red and green parrot feathers, and the ground was completely covered with a thick mat woven from leaves. We sat cross-legged across from each other, my back toward the door.
    “Nice place,” I said.
    She grinned. “For a jungle hut.” She looked at my mud cast. “What happened to your foot?”
    “I hurt it while I was escaping from the Starxource plant. I woke up this morning with this mudpack on.”
    “Is it broken?”
    “I don’t know. I’m hoping it’s just sprained.”
    “The medicine they put on it will help,” she said. “Your face keeps twitching. Are you feeling okay?”
    “I have Tourette’s syndrome,” I said. “It makes me blink and gulp—stuff like that. Especially when I’m under stress.”
    “Tourette’s,” she said. “I’ve heard of that. Is it contagious?”
    “No. It’s genetic,” I said. “You won’t catch it.”
    She nodded. “Before I came to Peru, there were two of you that the Elgen couldn’t find—you and a girl. Did they ever find her?”
    “Taylor,” I said.
    “Then you know her?”
    I nodded. “I know her.”
    She looked at me for a moment, then said, “You like her.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I can tell by the way you said her name.”
    I didn’t realize I was that obvious. “She’s my girlfriend.”
    “Where is she?”
    “She’s out in the jungle with the rest of the Electroclan.”
    “What’s an Electroclan?”
    “That’s what we call ourselves. They’re my friends. Some of them used to be with Hatch. You might know them. Ian, Abigail, and McKenna. Zeus.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Zeus? You’re with Zeus?”
    “You know Zeus?”
    “I know them all,” she said. “I knew Zeus the best, since Ian, Abigail, and McKenna were locked up for insubordination. I’m glad Dr. Hatch finally let them out.”
    “He didn’t. We rescued them.”
    “And Zeus?”
    “He came with us.”
    “That surprises me,” she said. “But he always was a wild card.”
    “He still is.”
    “So how did you meet up with them?” she asked.
    “It started when Hatch kidnapped my mother and Taylor. I went after them.”
    “Have you ever met Dr. Hatch? I mean, face-to-face?”
    I nodded. “The last time I saw him he tried to feed me to his rats.”
    She grimaced. “Hatch made me watch someone be fed to the rats. That’s what he does to the guards who disobey him. How did you escape?”
    “I absorbed the rats’ electricity. It made me too electric for them to touch.”
    “You can absorb electricity?”
    “That’s how I stopped Nichelle.”
    She looked surprised. “You stopped Nichelle?”
    “Yes.”
    “No one’s ever stopped Nichelle.” Suddenly, Tessa looked up. “Ni yau shemma?”
    I turned. The young woman who’d been in my hut when I woke up was standing in the doorway looking at us.
    “Hung fa. Ta bi laile. Tade jyau hai hwaide. Wo syu bang ta.”
    “Hau, hau ,” Tessa said. She looked at me. “I guess you have to go.”
    “Where?”
    “She said your foot is still hurt. She needs to work on it some more.”
    I lifted myself up. “Yeah, it’s still a little sore. It was nice meeting you.”
    “Same here,” she said. “Though kind of surreal.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re kind of a legend. Like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness