Perception (30 page)

“He doesn’t know I
added the tracking system. So even though you removed Zoe’s chip, like I knew
you would if you ever got to her, I could still track her as long as she took
the pills.”

“But I stopped taking
the pills two days ago,” Zoe said.

“It stays in the
blood stream for a couple of days, and I have to say, I’m impressed with my own
work. I’d have found you sooner, except for a small blip I’ll need to work out
in the future. The tracker signals fade out when they’re near the magnetic
fields in the road systems.

“Enough chit-chat.
Zoe, let’s go.”

Now that Jackson was
closer, the fire reflected off the metal mesh wrapped around his forearms and
biceps. He’d been outfitted with cyborg parts. The experiment hadn’t stopped;
it just switched from Liam to Jackson.

“Zoe!” he demanded.

She clung to my arm.
“No.”

“Fine,” he said, his
face hardening. “If that’s the way you want it.”

I dove for my
backpack, but Jackson was on me with unbelievable speed. Zoe fell to the ground
and cried out. Jackson rolled me away from the fire towards the trees, then
sprung to his feet in a super-human fashion. He gripped me by the neck lifting
me off the ground like I was a rag doll. I thrashed my legs, choking.

“Jackson!” Zoe
shouted. “Stop!”

The cocking of a gun.

“Drop him, Jackson.”

Jackson loosened his
hold on me as he stared at Zoe. She had a gun aimed at his head. He lowered me
to the ground. I collapsed, holding my throat, gasping for breath.

“Why Jackson?” she
said. “Why did you keep going with the experiment? Don’t you know Grandpa V is
just using you? You’re nothing more than his pawn.”

“I’m no one’s pawn.
I’m my own man. I’m powerful, intelligent and strong. And I accomplished what
Liam didn’t. I’m the first one, Zoe. It’s just a fused cyborg encasement, but
it’s the first step to full non-organic human existence. I will live forever.”

“Unless I shoot you,”
she said.

Jackson took a small
step toward her.

“Don’t move, Jackson.
I mean it.”

“No you won’t. You
and I, we belong together. We’re a team.”

“You’ve never wanted
me,” she said. Her voice sounded amazingly strong. “You just wanted my name.
I’m sorry, but I’m not your ticket into the family.”

“But, I love you,
Zoe.”

Zoe scoffed. “You
don’t love me. You love yourself.”

She pulled the
trigger.

Jackson screamed.

She pulled it again.

Chapter 43

The bear had appeared
out of nowhere, standing on its hind legs, reaching over Jackson, ready to
attack. Zoe shot Jackson in the calf so he would drop to the ground.

Then she shot the
bear.

Jackson cried like a
baby, gripping his leg. The bear was dead.

Zoe ran to my side.

“Noah?” She stroked
my face, “Noah, are you alright?”

 “I think so.” My
voice was dry like sandpaper.

Zoe crawled over to
Jackson. “Sorry about that, but I actually saved your life.” She pulled the ComRing
off his finger and called 911.

***

The ambulance drove
away with Jackson inside. Zoe wore my ball cap, stuffing her hair down her
shirt. She’d played ignorant when the medics arrived, like she didn’t know this
guy. He was some kind of tech-wacko. Maybe they should contact the senator.

A paramedic had
examined me and given me pain medication for the bruising on my neck. A
conservation officer arrived to take care of the bear.

“He just attacked,
without provocation?” the officer asked.

“It was dark,” I
said. “And this other situation was going on.”

“Probably looking for
food and was startled by the fight. I hate to see a bear gunned down, but
better it than you. We do what we can to keep the wildlife away from humans,
but it’s difficult when we interface so often with their habitats.”

The officer’s team
tagged the bear then moved it by forklift onto the back of a truck. Asher was
there with an emergency light. “Haven’t had this kind of excitement in camp for
a long time.” He looked at me warily. “How long are you folks staying?”

“We’re leaving now.”

“It’s late, but yeah,
I can see why you’d want to move on,” he said.

I packed up the tent,
while Zoe grabbed the food. When everything was loaded in the trunk, I gathered
up the backpack, then opened the passenger door for her.

“Where to now?” she
said after I got in.

I leaned over and
nuzzled her neck. “I don’t know. How does Canada sound?”

She kissed my
forehead. “It sounds cold. Let’s go.”

The End

Lee
Strauss writes historical and science fiction/romance for mature YA and adult
readers. She also writes light and fun stuff under the name Elle Strauss. To
find out more about Lee and her books check out her
facebook page
. To find out
about new releases sign up for her newsletter at
www.ellestraussbooks.com
.

I
hope you enjoyed Perception— I’d love it if you could leave a review on Amazon.
Thanks!

Thanks!

Coming
Soon

Jars
of Clay – October 2012

Broken
Vessels (Jars of Clay Volume Two)

Playing
with Matches- (November 2012)

Read on for an excerpt from VOLITION, book 2 in the
Perception Series, coming 2013

VOLITION

By Lee Strauss

PART ONE

NOAH

Chapter 1

Fugitive.

That was a word I’d
never have dreamed would be attached to my name, yet here I was on the run in a
used two-seater electric car with a weak battery, and a beautiful girl in the
passenger seat.

Some might say I was
her kidnapper but I knew the truth. I was her
rescuer
. Her grandfather,
who happened to be Dr. William Vanderveen, current senator of the state of
California and presidential candidate, was the real villain here. He funded an
illegal experiment that resulted in the death of his grandson, Liam Vanderveen,
and had ordered the execution of another scientist.

I was the next name
on his hit list. I knew all about the botched experiment and the Senator’s
involvement, plus I had his grand-daughter, Zoe Vanderveen.

Zoe was a GAP, a
genetically altered person, a clone, and lost girl.

My eyes shifted from
the lonely and bumpy forest road somewhere in the mountains of Oregon, to Zoe
whose head rested up against the passenger door window. She had her eyes closed
but I could tell she wasn’t sleeping.

The tear tracing down
her cheek was a giveaway.

Senator Vanderveen,
with the help of Zoe’s old boyfriend, Jackson Pike, had erased her memories—all
the ones that revealed the truth about Liam’s death and all the ones about me.
It took a couple days off the drugs they were feeding her before they came
back.

But she wasn’t the
same as before. She
remembered
things, but she wasn’t
feeling
the
same way.

I reached for her
hand and threaded my fingers through hers. I waited for the squeeze of
acknowledgement—something to signal that things were back to normal between us,
but it didn’t come. Her hand stayed limp and I withdrew mine. My heart
tightened with worry.

I thought I’d gotten
her back, that she remembered us. I worried that I was wrong about that.

“Time for a pit
stop,” I said, as I pulled to the shoulder.

Zoe straightened up
when she felt the car slow. “Are we really going to Canada?”

“We might have
trouble getting across the border,” I said. “And we have to recharge before we
can go much further. Asher told me about a couple places we could try for
lodging off the grid.”

Asher was the manager
of the camp we’d left a few couple days ago, where Zoe had shot and wounded
Jackson Pike, and had killed a bear. He’d told me about camps in Oregon and
Nevada. I told him we were heading for Nevada.

I took one of the two
loaded guns from my pack and handed the other to Zoe.

“In case you
encounter another bear or any type of unfriendly wildlife,” I said.

She took it and
turned to the woods.

I left for the
opposite side of the road. At least I didn’t have to worry about Zoe running
away from me anymore. I’d had her chip removed from her hand so she wasn’t
traceable by GPS, nor could she communicate with the outside world.

It angered her when
she first realized it was gone, but now she understood why it had to be done.
She was with me now of her own free will.

I waited by the car
until she joined me.

“Can’t wait to see a
real toilet again,” she said. “Not to mention a shower.”

She never had to
rough it before, and I felt a little empathy. I pulled her into an embrace. She
sighed heavily into my shoulder.

“Are you okay?” I
whispered. She wrapped her arms around my waist but remained stiff. “Zoe?”

“I’ll be fine,” she
muttered.

I lifted her chin and
studied her eyes. Beautiful, pale-blue, but empty somehow. My heart ached for
her. In just a few short weeks her life had been completely turned upside down.
She’d lost her whole family, her identity, her home. Her future that was once
mapped out and rosy was now unknown and frightening.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She shrugged. “This
isn’t your fault.”

My gazed moved to her
lips and she forced a smile. Then she pulled my head to hers and kissed me
hard. Not with romantic passion, but some kind of desperation. I didn’t like
it, but I kissed her anyway. If this was what she needed from me, I would give
it to her.

She pulled away just
as suddenly. Without glancing back at me she got back into the car.

Asher had given good
directions and before too long we pulled into the Oregon camp. We’d spent the
previous nights cramped up and cold in the car and I didn’t want to have to do
that again. A guy wearing a flannel jacket and old jeans came out to greet us.

“Sorry, we’re shut
down.” He motioned behind him and that’s when I noticed the buildings were
boarded up. “They’re gonna tear it all down.”

Zoe flashed me a
worried look.

“Can you recommend a
place?” I asked. “Off the grid?”

“Off the grid, huh?”
he smiled crookedly before giving directions to another place two hours away.
“I’ll warn ya, though. The folks there are
different
.”

I thanked him and
prayed our battery would make it that far.

Zoe reached for a
water bottle rolling around by her feet. “We’re almost out of water,” she said.

Not only was the car
not going to last much longer, we were out of food and water. My gut pinched
with frustration.

Zoe squeezed her eyes
shut and rubbed her forehead.

“Another headache?” I
asked. That was one of the nasty side-effects of the memory inhibitors her
ex-boyfriend had given to her.

“I’ll be fine. Just
tired.”

“It’s going to be
okay,” I said, stroking her arm. “We just need one night somewhere to get a
proper sleep. Tomorrow we’ll find a way to get the battery recharged and be on
our way.”

“To where?”

I didn’t know.
Instead of answering I fiddled with the media center. It didn’t respond to my
touch or my voice commands. “Nothing’s working,” I said. “Must be the
mountains.”

A light
tap, tap,
tap
hit the windshield. Rain.

I switched the wipers
on. “Or it could be the weather. The sky looks pretty dark.”

Zoe ducked to peer
out the front window to stare at the brooding, gray clouds that had fallen into
the valley.

She shivered.
“Oregon’s cold.”

“Take my hoody,” I
said. “It’s behind my seat.”

“Don’t you need it?”

“I’m not cold.
Besides, I have another.”

She drew the hoody
out from behind my seat and put it on. I liked seeing her in my clothes; it was
intimate somehow. I hoped it reminded her of how she used to feel about me.

We traveled in
silence and I was glad when the weather cleared a little.