Parched (23 page)

“Because all this comes at a cost,” I snap back. “Badlanders were attacked on the Northern Bridge last month so we can take a quiet stroll by a river!”

“Or maybe the Trust kept everyone safe from a bunch of dying people desperate enough to ruin things for the rest of us,” he says evenly. “Depends on your point of view, doesn't it?”

“Ruin it for the rest of us?” I'm almost yelling. “I can't believe you just said that! You sound just like the Trust!”

He blinks, looking like I'd just slapped him in the face. “I do,” he says, and his words have changed from defensive to surprised. “I sound just like them.”

I try to calm down. And I can't draw attention to myself, not here and not now. But I can't hide what I'm feeling. This side of him is so ugly.

“I've disappointed you,” he says, watching me closely. “You really care about the Badlands.”

“Of course I care about the Badlands, Hunter,” I say, my throat uncomfortably tight. “People are dying every day while we live like kings.”

“That is true,” he says, glancing out to the water and then back to me. “I've never met anyone like you before,” he says simply. “I feel like . . . you are changing me.”

Happiness balloons cautiously in my chest before I snuff it out. This is not my focus right now. And this whole conversation should never have happened in the first place. “I have to go.”

“Now?” He sounds disappointed. “I'll walk you home.”

I stand to leave, hooking my bag on my back. “That's okay. I'd rather go alone.” Then, on impulse, I push my hand into my pocket and twist my fingers into the softness of the scarf. “Give this to a Guider—” But my words fall short as I watch something small and white bounce to my feet. Caught up in the scarf was the security swab. I lurch forward and grab it from the promenade before anyone sees.

Hunter's voice is strangely cool. “Why do you have that?”

I freeze. Hunter didn't just ask, “What is that?” He knows what a high-level Simutech security swab looks like. How on earth would he know that?

“It's nothing,” I say, shoving the swab back in my pocket. My heart pounds jerkily.

Hunter's eyes are ablaze. “Tess, wait.”

“I have to go,” I say quickly. “I'll see you later.”

I spin away from him. Like lightning, he's in front of me again, a hand on my arm. I crash right into him in a flurry of swinging plaits and bumped foreheads. We're right in each other's faces. My heart is still bouncing wildly. His grip on my arm tightens.

I want to kiss him.

And he wants to kiss me. His eyes flick to my mouth. I feel myself gasp, short and sharp. My body is thrumming wildly with desire.

My eyes meet his. Green eyes. Open. Watching me.

What am I doing?

At the exact same moment, we jerk away from each other. My head whirls, like I just stumbled off a carousel. The almost-kiss lasted not more than a few seconds.

“I can't do this,” he mutters.

“Me either.” I back away.

“Tess, wait a second.”

“No.” I turn and start walking quickly along the promenade. My body feels like it's on fire.

I hear his footsteps behind me. I spin back to face him before he reaches me. And then, without thinking, without planning to say it, I throw a single word at him as hard and fast as I would throw a knife.
“Aevum!”

The word stops him in his tracks. His eyes widen, stunned. He knows. He knows about Aevum. His voice is faint, all but nonexistent. “How do you know that word?”

Oh no.
Oh no
. The river and the night sky swoop crazily around me and I have to plant my hands on my knees to steady myself.

“Tess—”

I right myself. Eyes narrow. Body taut. “Stay away from me, Hunter.” From across the river, bells start ringing from the Hive. Twelve bells. Midnight.

“But—”

“Just stay away from me. I mean it.”

The lights from the Hive look like bright, shimmering explosions. I turn away from him, and I start to run.

When
I jog into the darkened alley next to Simutech, the first thing I see are four parked floaters, then fidgety bodies dressed head-to-toe in black. Lana's whisper is full of relief: “There she is!”

“Tess!” Ling runs to greet me, hugging me hard. Her face is flushed, eyes bright and alive. “I was worried. Did something happen at Abel's?”

I shake my head, speaking in between gulps of air. “No. . . . Just took . . . longer to get here . . . than I thought.”

“Tess!” Benji high-fives me while Lana squeezes my shoulder, wide-eyed with excitement. Like Naz and Ling, pieces of sleek equipment hang from the harnesses they're wearing, including long loops of slim rope.

“Hey,” I greet them breathlessly.

“Here.” Ling hands me the protective gear everyone's already wearing. “Quick, put this on.”

I strap on shin, knee, and elbow guards. When I'm done, Ling gives me a shiny black comm. I slip it into my ear and hear a tinny voice. “Tess.”

“Achilles, hey,” I say. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.” It's comforting to know Achilles will be able to both hear and see us, thanks to the loading dock's hacked security streams.

“Rockwood.” Naz hands me a thick belt with gray and red things about the size of apples strapped to it. I notice everyone else already has one on. Naz points to the gray things first. “Smoke bombs. Hold your breath, pull the pin here, chuck it a few feet, get down. Nonlethal, just a basic get-out-of-jail-free card.” Next she points to the red things. “Grenades. Pull the pin here, throw
as hard as you can
, and take cover. These babies are serious explosives, okay? Only use them if you're actually
in
danger
.” She points back to the smoke bombs. “Someone sneezes, I throw one of these. The smoke should let us split safely.”

“Tess, don't use any of that unless you have to,” Achilles says. “We blow a smoke bomb tonight, there'll be fifty Quicks on this entrance tomorrow.”

Ling clears her throat. “Tess, you'll be my second-in-command—”

“What?” Naz gapes.

“She's the expert, Naz.”

“But I'm always your second!” Naz exclaims bitterly.

“Not tonight,” Ling says firmly. “If anything happens to me, Tess is in charge, got it?”

Lana, Benji, and I all nod. Naz spits on the ground sourly, then mutters something Ling takes as acceptance.

“This is it,” Ling says with a quick, sharp exhale. “Do or die.” She hands something black and misshapen to each of us. It's a stretchy mask with holes for the eyes and mouth. The skull area is hard and inflexible, like a helmet. I pull it on, then start at the sight of four masked people staring back at me. Kudzu's familiar faces are gone.

“From now on, code names only,” Ling says, and I quickly remind myself who's who. Ling: Samurai. Benji: Monkey. Lana: Angel. Naz: Pitbull. Achilles: Spike. And I'm Storm. Ling's eyes meet mine. “Ready?”

We've come too far for me to ruin everything now. Besides, even if Hunter is working for Simutech—which I still don't know for sure—that won't affect what we're about to do. I just wish I hadn't mentioned Kudzu. I find the tip of my warrior necklace, cool against the hollow of my throat, and press it once for good luck. “Ready.”

In single file, we creep around the corner of the alley until we're all out in the narrow street at the back of Simutech. Ling first, then Lana, me, Benji, and Naz. Ahead of us, the street continues on for another hundred feet to a plaza. I glimpse the tumbling water of a lone fountain catching yellow streetlight. Behind us, the street disappears into blackness.

The entrance to the loading dock is only twenty feet ahead. Beyond it, moonlight catches the glass windows of Simutech in small square pools of silver.

In the darkness, the Quicks' red eyes burn as they swivel left and right. They look even more threatening than in the holos; they're so
real
. My heart is thumping so hard, I'm afraid they can hear it.

Achilles' voice comes through our comms. “You're almost in the Quicks' range. . . . Almost.” We creep forward some more. “Okay, stop.”

Still in single file, we freeze like statues. Time passes achingly slowly as the robots' red eyes swing back and forth over us. Just as I think Achilles must have missed the one-minute-and-twenty-three-second window, I hear his calm voice in my comm. “Go.”

We scamper forward a few feet. I picture us in the narrow white river Achilles showed us back at Milkwood.

“Stop.”

The Quicks' gaze starts passing back and forth over us, unseeing. I'm enormously relieved to be proven right.

We keep moving like this, a few feet forward, freezing, then another few feet and freezing again. The plan is to slide past the Quick on the far left, the one closest to us. As we keep inching closer to it, I expect to feel fear, but instead my confidence surges. This is the best the Trust can do to guard their precious artilect? Ling is only a few feet away from the Quick on the far left. One more spurt of movement, and we'll be past it.

A shriek of laughter cuts my cockiness short.

The Quick on the far left whips its head around so fast I don't even see it move.

Behind me, I can hear two girls coming out of the alley.

“He was looking at
you
—”

A giggly squeal of outrage. “No, he
wasn't
!”

I am rooted to the spot. It's as if the terrifying Quick is staring straight at us. If it identifies the girls as a threat, its vision will change to infrared, and we'll become as clear as day to the machine. I hear the girls tottering up the darkened narrow street, away from us. If they have seen us or the Quicks, they don't care. Their laughter bounces off the silent buildings as their footsteps recede.

The Quick closest to us resumes its scanning. For a second my insides relax, until I hear Achilles. “Guys. Don't move.” His whisper is masking low-level panic. “The scans aren't in the same pattern as before. Now you're always going to be in one of the Quicks' line of vision. Don't say anything back to me,” he adds in a hurry. “You're too close, they'll probably hear you.”

We stay frozen. A minute passes. Then two. Panic simmers inside me. On more than a few occasions in the Badlands, I'd been followed by a marauding gang of unsavories, so I'd grown adept at melting into shadows to hide. But I'd never had to stay this still for this long.

More minutes pass. My left arm is raised at a 45-degree angle from
my body. It starts to ache. Then hurt. Then it starts to feel like knives are slicing it open. My whole body screams for movement.

“Good work, guys, just stay there. We're trying to think of something,” Achilles says, sounding more worried. What can he possibly do?

I hear a small scuffle. Without moving my head, I slide my eyes to the ground. The noise belongs to something the size of a football. It's an enormous black rat.

Eden is free of pests and invasive species, but Simutech still clones rats to use for experiments. This one must have escaped. But it's no ordinary rat. This is a cloning experiment gone bad. I know because the rat has three heads.

Two heads, with separate pairs of beady eyes and twitching noses, jostle for space on the end of its thick neck. And a third head grows out of its back, around where its shoulder blades are. It is, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. And I ate
pourriture
for an entire year.

The three-headed beast scampers forward, then stops, then comes closer still. The Quick ignores it. Doubtless it is programmed to ignore things like this. The rat stops at Lana's boot, all three noses sniffing it excitedly. In front of me, I can see her breathing getting quicker.

Don't move, Lana
.

The rat moves past Lana's boot, and I momentarily relax. Until it stops at my boot. Then crawls up onto it.

Every instinct I possess wants to kick the disgusting thing off me as fast as I can. I scream at it silently in my head. Get off me!
Get off me!

“Hang in there, Storm, don't move,” Achilles warns. “It's probably going to leave you alone in a second.”

The six-eyed rat begins climbing up my leg. I can feel it through the fabric of my pants, about the weight of a puppy. It is at my kneecaps. It is on my thigh, clinging to my pants with its sharp little rat feet.

A wave of raw disgust surges inside me and I almost wretch.
Please don't be sick, please
 . . .

The rat crawls up to my stomach. It is like a giant, deformed baby, coming for my face.

“Don't blame me, you're the one who lost it!”

“Shut up! It must be back at the restaurant—”

The girls! The Quick whips its head around, training its vision in their direction.

I can hear them behind me, giggling as they head back into the alley.

We all remain frozen. Even the rat.

The Quick starts moving its head again. Is it back in the old pattern? I can't tell.

And then I hear the sweetest word I have ever heard any human utter.
“Go.”

Silently, we shoot forward the final few feet, safely past the Quicks.

As soon as we're through, one swift flick of my knife sends the rat arcing up off me, like a nightmarish shooting star. I give myself a second to clear my head and shake out my aching limbs. Then I gesture for the others to follow me.

Silent as ghosts, we make our way past the yawning, empty loading dock. No lights are on—a good sign. When we reach the open kitchen window, barely visible six floors up, Lana slips the rope from her torso. Benji hands her what I think is a sleek little sub, the size of a hamster. Lana fits the end of our rope into an opening in its back, then tests it to make sure it's tight. Glancing up at the window, Lana presses some buttons in its back, then rests it against the wall in front of us.