7 --- 1

*"Nathaniel! Nathaniel! You are not listening; if you try this he would kill you."*

*"It won't be the first time he tried."*

*"Are you willing to risk everything for this?"*

*"Of course people's lives are at risk here. Are you with me?"*

*"That's a stupid question. You know I am with you to death."*

*"I knew I could count on you, Lucy."*

*"Nate! Nate!!"*

Nate groaned and opened his eyes, his mouth was dry and his skull felt like it was going to split open. "Are you okay? You took a bad tumble when you came through the portal"

He blinked to clear his vision. "How long was I out?"

"A few minutes." Anna answered. He tried to get up but a sharp pain lanced through his back, he groaned loudly in pain. "Take it slow, I think Victor managed to hit you before you got through."

She helped him sit up. "How bad is it?"

Anna took a quicklook at the wound. "Like burnt toast but I think it is healing."

With his focus back, Nate looked up to see four teenagers looking at him. "Did we get them all?" He asked Anna.

"Everybody except the redhead, I opened the cuffs and the next second she was gone."

Nate sighed, if she was in the wind, Victor could find her so she was in serious danger. He surveyed his surroundings. They were in a room, a very much disorganized room with tables and chairs turned over and the bed looked like someone took a sledge hammer to it.

"Where are we?"

"We are in Brian's room, he portaled us here." She motioned to a tall and thin boy to his left.

"Sorry about the mess." Brian spoke up. "Those guys trashed the room when I tried to fight them.'

Nate's mind became alert "This is where you where you were kidnapped?" Brian nodded "Why would you bring us here? This is the last place we should be right now, portal us out of here now!"

"I can't." Brian replied hopelessly "I don't even know how my powers work. I barely even brought us here."

Nate sighed again as he thought of his situation. He was protecting a bunch of breakouts against one of the most powerful willers in the world. *Yup, we're all going to die.*

"What are we going to do?" The blond girl in their midst asked.

"What is there to do? We have to run away." Another boy beside Anna spoke up "You heard what Victor said, I am not interested in losing my memories."

"That was just three of them." Brian added "They still got Bennet, Minx and Genk. Guess we don't have to worry about Carl." He glanced at Anna who glared back at him.

"How do you know so much about us?" Nate asked with a confused look on his face.

"Social media." Brian said slowly like he was talking to a child "You don't see much of willer stuff on the news but you can follow through social media and various chat rooms."

All this was news to Nate.

"I am not running, my family lives here but New York is a big city. I am sure there are a lot of places we can hide."

"There is no place to hide; Victor has a way of tracking willers that I don't know about yet."

"So he knows where are here?" Alarm crossed the girl's face.

"Probably." Nate shrugged.

"So we run then?" The boy beside Anna said.

"Running is not an option either, what Victor tried to do isn't exactly accepted. If he can't make money off of you, he will destroy any evidence of his actions and that means going to the edge of the world to kill you."

"So what do we do?" A brown haired boy who hasn't said anything since Nate woke up asked.

"We fight." Anna said raising a clenched fist.

Brian paled visibly. "Are you nuts? How are we supposed to fight them?" The rest said nothing but it was obvious that they agreed with him.

"We will figure it out but first we have to get out of here." Nate groaned and tried to stand up, ignoring the stabbing pain in his back. Anna noticed his discomfort and helped him up. "Since you all already know my name I would like to know yours." He asked with a smile despite their current situations.

"Brian Garret." Brian reintroduced himself.

"Roger Deaton." The quiet boy added.

"Samantha Knight. But you can call me Sam."

"Kurt." The last boy added but gave no last name.

"Sorry we had to meet under this situation but I promise I will do everything in my power to help you."

"You can barely walk, how are you going to help us?" Samantha blurted out.

"Be a little bit grateful, bitch." Anna hissed at her. "He is the reason you are not a mind controlled soldier in china right now."

"That's okay." Nate calmed the brewing storm. "I know everybody is afraid but we have to be calm, if we are going to make it out of this alive. Right now we have to get Brian to portal us out of here."

"Don't we all have the same powers, why can't you do it?" Roger asked.

Nate shook his head as he realized how little these kids knew about their powers. "Yes, we all have the same powers but some are special than others. I suppose none of you can open portals like Brian here." They all shook their heads.

"Maybe if you can tell me about how they work, I can try." Brian suggested.

Nate thought this for a moment, it wasn't really a brilliant idea but he didn't have a better one. He looked around for something to illustrate before crouching to the slightly dusty floor.

He drew a dot with a circle around it. "You are what we call called a porter. This is you." He pointed to the dot and this is your range. He pointed to the circle. "The range is a circle around in which you can open a portal to any location as long as you know how the place looks like. The more powerful a porter is, the wider the range.

"So I can't open a portal to say California."

"At this stage, that will be well outside your range."

"But I could try somewhere like Staten Island."

Nate cocked his head to the side. "That is possible."

"Okay I am ready to try." He steadied himself and stretched out his hands. After a few second he began to glow and a small circle started to open. Hope flickered in Nate's mind but it went out just like the light went out.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know I will try again." He did the same thing and the light appeared again but it went out sooner than before. Everybody in the room groaned in unison.

"Is there anything else you forgot to tell me?" Brian asked hopefully.

Nate shrugged "I have told you everything I know about porters."

"Well that sucks." Anna said.

Nate looked out into the night "Looks like we are going to have to get out the old fashioned way."

He walked out of the room into a corridor before walking out of the house entirely. He looked back and saw that the others followed him. They hadn't walked up to a few meters away before they ran into Ronda.

She smiled sweetly at them "Hello kids."

Nate looked back "Anna, get everybody out of here, I will handle her."

Concern filled her eyes "Are you sure? You are still injured."

"Go, don't worry about me." She looked at him for a second before turning the others in the opposite direction away from Ronda and Nate.

Ronda reached into her long leather coat and unsheathed two short swords with the smile still on her face "You have no idea how long I have wanted to do this."