“You’re human,” he breathed.
“Yes. You’re not far from College, that’s our enclave.”
The brat put his head down in relief and dropped his weapon. “I have to talk to your elders.”
I wasn’t sure they’d like us disobeying orders, leaving the back ways, and bringing in a stray, especially one like him. But I couldn’t leave him here to die either. Fade watched me in silence, as if testing me somehow. I made my decision, knowing I’d probably face worse than a day patrolling the back ways over it.
“Can you carry him? I don’t think he can walk.”
“He won’t weigh much. I can, but if we run into trouble you’ll have to take up the slack. Can you do that, new blood?”
I enjoyed the hint of nerves in his voice. “I guess we’ll find out.”
In answer, Fade slung the brat over his shoulders and climbed out of the container. I sheathed one knife and clenched the other in my teeth to follow. Thankfully, I’d been watching our turns and counting; I passed him and set the pace at one he could keep, bearing the brat.
“We’re likely to see trouble,” he said softly, beneath the splash of our feet in the stagnant water.
“Freaks can smell weakness,” I agreed.
And if Fade was right, and starvation drove them toward our enclave, then that made us meat on the move. In sufficient numbers, they could take a hunting pair. Hunters died—it was part of the job—but never without a fight.
At the four-way, they hit us from all sides.
Ambush
They lunged for Fade and the boy he was trying to protect with one arm and one knife. I whipped my club from out of its sling. This time, there were four, so that called for a bigger weapon. Winding up, I swung hard and cracked one’s skull wide-open.
The other three spun, correctly judging me the greater threat. I braced for the lunge, and at the last moment, rolled away. Filth smeared the back of my shirt, and I came up behind them. I took one across the back of the knees at the same time I launched a sideways kick.
Close up, I could see these Freaks were starving to death; Fade had been right. In comparison, I was fast, strong, and well fed. There was no contest. They didn’t fight as a unit. They lunged and snarled and lashed. I met each advance with a kick or a well-placed slam of the weighty end of my club. Blood spattered into the dirty water and bone crunched. In the end, we had a pile of corpses that the other Freaks would eat.
Best not to think about it.
The brat on Fade’s shoulder wept. I guess if I was forced to listen to that while hanging upside down, I’d cry too. Fade patted the boy on the back until he quieted. I’m not sure it qualified as comfort so much as warning. Shut up, shut up already.
“Did you notice how they hit us?” he asked.
“Yeah. From all sides.”
Judging by his troubled look, he shared my concern. If the Freaks were getting smarter, we were in real trouble. Right now, they lacked the ability to plan or strategize. If they evolved, became more like us in their thinking, well—we were barely hanging on as it was. Any shift in the delicate balance could wipe us out.
Still, we had to get back to the enclave before they missed us. If Silk heard from one of the other Hunters that we weren’t investigating the back ways, as she’d asked, there would be hell to pay. The only way to handle this mess was to get there first.
Vaulting the bodies, I led the way back to the barricades without a single misstep. Pride swelled. I’d only seen the route once, and I remembered all the turns. I glanced over my shoulder at Fade, but he didn’t recognize the accomplishment.
Instead he’d shifted the brat from his shoulder to the crook of his arms. The guard stopped us, not surprisingly, when we came back in. “You’re not supposed to be off duty. And what’ve you got there?”
“I have to talk to your elders,” the brat wheezed.
In the better light here, he didn’t look good. His small face was sunken with hunger and dehydration. Dirt crusted his skin and he had sores at the corners of his mouth, where his lips had cracked. The white of his eyes gleamed even more unholy and disturbing. When the guards got a good look at him, they recoiled and blocked our path, weapons drawn.
I just knew this wasn’t going to go well.
“What’s going on here?” Silk demanded.
I glanced at Fade, who lifted a shoulder. I guessed that meant I should do the talking. “We found him in an emergency shelter, and he says he has important news.” That was an exaggeration, but I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t been tough enough to leave him. The Hunter’s number one tenet: “The strong survive.” I’d proven myself soft today, when it came down to it, and who knew how Fade would tell the story.
“I do,” the brat wheezed. “They sent me from Nassau.” He named the closest settlement, three days in the tunnels if you were fast and strong. I couldn’t imagine why they’d chosen him. “They sent me because they could afford to lose me,” he went on.
That, I could believe. It sounded like a decision our elders would make.
“They had no Hunters to spare. We’re surrounded by Freaks and they hoped if I got through, maybe you would send help.”
Unlikely. Though College traded with Nassau, we had no terms of alliance, no policy of rendering aid. Each enclave governed itself and survived—or not—according to its own strength. But Silk had wanted information on whatever had the Freaks so stirred up; this counted. Maybe I could use this as my defense when I was accused of weakness and dereliction of duty.
“They’re all over Nassau too?” Silk asked, her face somber. “Our elders do need to know this. Thanks for the news.” She turned to Fade and me. “As for the two of you…” She smiled.
Yes, I could see we were going to be sorry.
“Since you thought it best not to follow your orders and we now have new information, you can check it out. You’re going to Nassau.”
I froze. “Just us?”
Silk truly didn’t like Fade. I saw it in her eyes. “Do you have a problem with your orders, Huntress?”
“No, sir. What would you like us to do there?”
Her smile turned ugly. “If they are present in such numbers as the brat reported, I don’t expect you to kill them. This will be recon. If you can, find out what’s causing this behavior shift. In the old days, they attacked the enclaves nonstop and then they learned to fear us—our weapons and our traps. Discover why they don’t fear us anymore. It may be important.”
“What about him?” Fade lifted the boy in his arms.
Silk shrugged. “He’s served his purpose. Even Nassau doesn’t want him back.”
Part of me wanted to suggest giving him food and water, having the medicine man look at him. I froze beneath the weight of her cool eyes. With a flicker of distaste, she handed the brat over to the guard, who handled him as if he were already dead. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood. I had to be tougher. Had to be. Or I’d never make it as a Huntress. Rarely, people lost their jobs. They couldn’t take away my marks, but they could make me cover them with cloth armbands. They could still make me a Breeder.
A good portion of the enclave occupied that role. It kept our numbers up. Far fewer became Builders or Hunters, and the new blood always heard about our Breeder heritage from the older ones. Maybe you should be a Breeder after all, they’d say. It did no good to point out, but nearly everyone comes from Breeder stock. Defending the claim only threw fuel on the fire, and there were always those elite few whose sire and dam had been Hunters before age rendered them unfit.
So I said nothing. The brat was crying again, but this time Fade didn’t comfort him. He stood beside me, silent for his own reasons, and I had the unmistakable feeling—it buzzed about me like an insect—that I’d disappointed him. I felt sad and sick and scared, because tomorrow we had to go to Nassau. I didn’t think Silk expected us to survive. I might’ve been the best of the last group, but I wasn’t irreplaceable. She wanted me to know that—and if I lived, to come back cowed and ready to follow orders, no matter what.
“Are we dismissed?” Fade asked.
“Yes. Be on time tomorrow,” Silk said smiling.
He took my hand in a painful grip and dragged me through the warren of partitions. I didn’t know where we were going, until we stopped at a random living space. By the way he stepped inside, it had to belong to him. One simply didn’t treat anyone else’s home with such disrespect.
For that reason, I stood outside the curtain until he said, “Get in here.”
It wasn’t the politest invitation I’d ever received. Frowning, I stepped in. His space looked more or less like mine. We all had the same amenities. “What?”
He dropped onto a crate, elbows on his knees. His face held an emotion I couldn’t read and had never seen, but it hit me in a raw place. My skin prickled. I needed to go wash up and take care of my weapons; my club especially needed a good cleaning. I was in no mood to spend another minute with him. He’d been nothing but trouble since the first moment Silk stuck me with him.
“They’re going to kill him,” he said hoarsely.
And how I wished I didn’t know that—or care. As a Huntress, I wasn’t supposed to. I should care about the greater welfare of the enclave. My job existed to keep our citizens safe. Protection didn’t extend to brats we found in the tunnels, unless they were like Fade, strong enough to survive on their own. We couldn’t afford to feed and care for weaklings.
“I know.”
“That could be me.”
“It couldn’t,” I pointed out. “You’re not defective.”
He glared with black eyes that burned like coals, lunging to his feet. “That’s disgusting.”
When he stepped into my space, I didn’t back away. “Then why do you stay? I’ll tell you. Because it’s better than being out there.”
“Is it?” he asked. “How would you know?”
I flushed at the implication that I was ignorant and inexperienced, but I didn’t back down. A Huntress wouldn’t. “If you had anything better waiting, you’d be long gone. You hate it here, and you hate all of us too.”
“Not all of you. At least, not until today.”
“Because of the brat.”
“Get out,” he said, wheeling away from me. “I was stupid for thinking I could talk to you, for thinking you’d understand anything.”
Grinding my teeth, I shoved through the curtain and out into the warren. A passing Builder leered at me. “You know you can get in trouble for visiting a boy’s personal space. But if you do something for me, I won’t tell anyone.”
Oh, not today. Yes, I’d broken a minor rule by going in without a chaperone, but I was in no mood for this. “I wasn’t in there long enough for anything to happen. If you shut up and walk away, right now, I won’t shove your nose through your face.”
When I reached for my club, the boy ran. Apparently he had some brains. Sure, he’d probably report me, but it was my word against his. And since I was heading off for Nassau tomorrow—and might not make it back—minor disciplinary action for uncivil behavior didn’t bother me much.
