Carter's POV
Carla has been gone for fifteen days now. We only looked for four days and at this point we were losing hope in finding her. Several meetings have been held on the issue, but everyone else's main concern was that we couldn't attack Valerie without Carla. It was like they forgot that Carla was our friend. Hannah and Nathan were the only other people who agreed with me. We never told the community about Carla being missing, they looked up at her like a leader, even if we had a council system. If we told them she was missing then they'd take it in their own hands to find her. And at this point, I was starting to think the risk was needed. We could send out search teams of volunteers to find her. I just wanted to see her smile again.
Somehow this was worse than watching her slowly die in that bed a few weeks ago. That time I knew we were doing everything in our power to keep her breathing but this time it was like she wanted to die, because she wanted to be alone.
I wasn't scared for her health, Carla is more than capable of destroying everything and everyone in her path. I was scared for her wellbeing. I knew how lonely she can get in an empty room, if she decided she never wants to come back then I wish her to find a friend.
The council had decided that she has her destiny in her hands and she's choosing to run away with it. They decided on the fifth day that the searching would end due to the fact that if she wanted to come back, she would. The vote was five to three in favor of stopping the searches.
They had good points but the only thing I could bring out of my mouth was that if we stop looking then she's going to think we don't care. I couldn't fathom what she was going through out there. And yeah, if she was captured or someone decided to fight her, then she has more than enough powers to lay them down, but would she? She felt so bad about all the people she's ever hurt. Would she want to lay people out? Would she even try?
I still looked for her, I didnt care what the council voted on, she was my best friend and I wasn't going to abandon her. Nathan had rigged up a monitor to try to track her. He had put a tracker in everyones new radios for an occasion such as this one. Carla was smart though, she had turned her radio off which cut the power to the tracker.
Whenever she listened in on the radios a few days ago the signal to the tracker was wonky. Nathan explained that that means she's at a really high altitude or she's extremely far away. Probably both.
We went about our days normally. Nathan and I kept on radio constantly. I was waiting for her coordinates to chime in so I could run over to her and Nathan stayed at the monitor to give me said coordinates. I wandered through the woods most of the time though. She never seemed to check the radio when we're out here.
Hannah offered to help too, she walked northwest and I walked north along the ocean. I figured she'd want to be by the ocean since she loves it so much, it always brought her peace.
"We've got something," Nathan quickly stated in a bouncy and happy voice, "The signal is low but I'm got coordinates. Sending them to your watches now."
Nathan had rigged up some old computer watches to be like little phones on our wrists, it was a concept that Hannah came up with. They had gotten a lot closer lately.
My watch chimed and a little map popped up, she was fifty miles north along the beach, moving at least thirty miles an hour. She was probably in a shifted body.
"She's going really fast," Hannah responded.
"Carter can catch her," Nathan added before sending me a visual on her. Hannah had helped him create a drone to help us find Valerie, it worked with finding Carla too.
The feed that popped up on my watch was a huge white wolf running with a small black wolf. "Is that Valerie?" I asked into the radio as I ran in the direction of Carla.
"No it's too small to be Valerie," Hannah answered. I could see on the map that Hannah was catching up to me on her vehicle. It had no doors, no roof, and no backseats. She usually used it to go on supply runs but lately she's been using it to keep up with my speed to find Carla. I didnt run as fast as I wanted to, I wanted to supersonic speed myself up there but that would create a sonic boom and I wasn't sure if that would scare her off. I wasn't sure if she was in her own head.
It took about a twenty minutes to get to her, she had ducked into the woods and we lost visual but the radio was still on. Nathan had suggested that she probably accidentally hit a button and doesn't even know it's on.
I didnt care if she accidentally hit the button or not, I wanted to see my best friend.