Stacey Kade - The Hunt

I flinched, humiliation setting my face afire. This was getting better and better by the second. In my panic about the chip, I’d forgotten about the tattoo. Normally it was covered by a bandage, but I’d taken that off before the party a couple nights ago and never had a chance to put another one on.

Now Zane knew I was marked like cattle. I was a possession. A thing.

“Yeah. They did.” I bit the words off and waited, my shoulders tense. Any second now, I’d hear his uncomfortable laugh, echoing against the building, and the sound of his retreating footsteps. This would be the final straw, the piece that pushed him over the edge into seeing me for what I was instead of who.

But, somehow, miraculously, it wasn’t. “This is probably going to be cold,” he warned a second before applying the magnet to my back between my shoulder blades.

He was right. The sudden shock of metal against my skin made me gasp.

I started to shiver for real, then, and Zane stepped closer, looping his free arm around my shoulders in the front, a backward sort of hug, while his other hand kept the magnet pressed in place between us.

“Better?” he asked.

I could feel the rise and fall of his chest against me, the softness of his shirt on my skin, and, faintly, the solid and reassuring beat of his heart.

I wanted to cry, to turn around and bury my head against him. To cling to him, to crawl inside. Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “Yes.”

“Is it supposed to beep or something?” Zane asked a moment later.

“I don’t know.” I looked again to the letter, now crumpled in my hand. There were only a couple paragraphs remaining.

Third, and this is the most important part: you know about Arthur Jacobs, but he is the least of your concerns. He wants you alive so you can win the trials for him. But David Laughlin (Laughlin Integrated Enterprises, Chicago, IL) and Emerson St. John (Emerson Technology, Incorporated, Rochester, NY) would rather you were dead. One less competitor for the trials they have planned.

The trials. That’s what they were calling a fight to the death between the various “products” created by the three companies vying for a lucrative government contract to make supersoldiers/assassins/spies. (“Products” was the sanitized word for beings like me, lab-created hybrids of human and alien DNA.)

So now, as if the possibility of death in a formal competitive setting weren’t enough, I apparently had to worry about plain old murder. That was new.

A full body shudder ran through me, and Zane pulled me closer against him.

They’ve had informants keeping tabs on one another’s progress for years. Your escape won’t go unnoticed for long. And once you leave the state—GTX’s “territory” as designated by the rules they established to prevent sabotage—you’ll have all of them after you. Laughlin, in particular, will not hesitate at the thought of collateral damage if it means eliminating a threat to his success.

Dizzy suddenly, I felt myself swaying. I knew where this was going even before I read my father’s final words.

Cut ties to Wingate and anyone you care about, immediately. You’ll want to protect those who’ve been kind to you, but you’re a danger to anyone in your presence. Find somewhere isolated, preferably outside the country (the U.S. government is complicit in all of this, remember). Stay there.

Be good; follow the Rules I gave you. Take care of yourself. Again, I am sorry for my role in all of this.

Mark

“Are we good?” Zane whispered near my ear, his breath tickling my cheek. “Is it off?”

It took me a second to process what he was asking about. The chip. Was the chip deactivated?

I nodded numbly, even though I had no way of knowing if that was the case. Surely my father had not intended for me to walk around with a magnet permanently affixed to my back. And even if he had, there were now larger concerns.

With a quick exhale of relief, Zane removed the magnet and bent to tuck it inside the bag.

I tugged my tunic into place and put my jacket on, my head spinning with too many thoughts.

Cut ties to Wingate and anyone you care about, immediately. When my father had written that, he’d probably been thinking of my former friend Jenna or maybe even himself. But Zane…Oh God, he was most definitely included in that category, which meant I knew what my father would have wanted me to do.

My stomach ached. Here, at last, was the boot I’d been expecting, dropping to clobber me from a totally unanticipated angle.

The selfish part of me was shrieking “No!” at the top of her lungs. I couldn’t just abandon Zane, especially not here. GTX would snap him up in a second. Not to mention, I didn’t want to leave him at all.

I blinked back tears. But logically, reasonably, his safety had to come first. If I cared so much about him, I couldn’t be a party to his death or endangerment. Which left me with what?

Take him with you, my emotional side pleaded. He’s come this far. He’ll go.

Maybe. Maybe not. Going to his mother’s was one thing; going on the run for the rest of his life? I shook my head. I couldn’t ask that of him.

Walk away now, the cooler, calmer voice in my head advised. It’s the best choice for both of you. Jacobs will find him, but Jacobs is the lesser evil compared to the others. He will want to keep Zane alive to use as incentive.

I rocked back and forth on my heels, caught on twin prongs of misery and indecision. It was impossible to know what parts of my personality came from which side. What was human? What was other ? All I knew was that when it came to big choices like this one, I was torn between emotions that raged inside and the logic that tried to snuff them out—to the point where it felt like the fight between them might spill out into the physical world. Me arguing with myself, with no peace in sight. It felt like more proof that maybe someone like me wasn’t meant to exist.

“Are you all right?” Zane asked, startling me.

I turned to see him frowning at me. Then he grimaced. “I mean, I know you’re not, not after everything…but was the letter…” He trailed off awkwardly.

The absolute end of everything I was hoping for? “It’s fine.” I forced the lie out, hearing it thud in the space between us.

Zane squinted at me, reading something on my face that I didn’t want him to see. “Ariane—”

Tires crunched over loose pebbles on concrete on the other side of the building.

We froze.

Zane stood, lifting the bag with him. “Is that GTX?” he asked, barely audible.

At this point, I had to hope so. The alternative, that Laughlin or St. John had found me already, was even worse. It was laughable—a crazy person’s hysterical cackle—that GTX had become the best of all possible options.

“Probably,” I said, adrenaline kicking into overdrive, bringing details into hyperfocus. “Only one car, though, so far, by the sound of it. A scout, checking out the situation.” Like someone who’d caught the blip of my tracking chip’s signal before we’d disabled it. Or maybe it was simply someone making a U-turn in a convenient parking lot, but I couldn’t take that chance. My luck was just not that good.

“Then I guess we better run like hell, ‘Talia,’” Zane said. He tipped his head toward the trees and held out his free hand with a grin that hurt my heart.

I faltered, unable to move. How was I supposed to do this? How was I supposed to say good-bye to the one person in the world who knew the real me and had stuck around anyway?

“Ariane?” he asked, his smile slipping a little.

I couldn’t. Not yet.