The Almost Girl – ebook edition (25 page)

“Why are you staring at me?” Caden murmurs sleepily. An embarrassed flush invades my face and neck.

“I wasn’t. I mean, I was but I was looking through you,” I mumble.

“You were smiling.”

“Yeah, well I was thinking of ice cream and donuts,” I snap, irritated. “Come on, we have to get moving. The sun’s just setting and I want to get a head start.”

We gather up what we’ve used, and tuck them into the packs. Caden has Shae’s pack, since it’s more lightweight and durable like mine. His sabre is in its sheath lying along his back underneath the pack. Caden stares at me and grins.

“We look like ninjas.”

My mouth twitches. The description is appropriate. “We’ll need to fight like ninjas to get through the next two days.”

“What about the wrappers and garbage?” Caden asks looking around. “Shouldn’t we…”

“Forget it. It’s extra weight. Just leave it,” I say over my shoulder as I’m repacking the holo-tube at the entrance. “Don’t worry; it’ll get used by something out here. The things that live here use everything they can get their hands on. Think of it as natural recycling.”

The landscape is still red, but a different kind of red with tinges of gray along its edges. It’s seventy-nine on the temperature monitor. Here and there, we spot movement. I try not to let my tension show, but it’s a guarantee that we’ll run into some kind of trouble. Predators in the Outers are vicious. I wasn’t kidding when I told Caden earlier that the creatures out here use everything they could get their hands on. I meant it – they’d slaughter each other for hair, teeth, and bone. They’d rip us apart for less. A shiver races across my back.

“Here, let’s put these to work,” I say, grabbing Caden’s wrist and pressing one of the buttons on the keypad. “It’s a security protocol that identifies any metal, I mean, hybroids. You’ll feel a vibration and this console will flash.”

“How does that work?”

“Sound waves.”

We climb down the mountain quickly, moving across the terrain at a good pace. We keep our hoods off, as the warmth of the open air is comfortable for the moment. The sky is an odd mixture of crimson and gray and black. There’s no blue in the Neospes sky, but it has its own unique beauty. I realize that I’ve missed it, but a part of me misses the blue, too.

Our pace is grueling, but I’m relishing the chance to push my muscles hard, to run so that my heart is pumping like a piston in my chest. Caden keeps pace with me easily, and the realization that he’s fitter and stronger than I thought is a delayed one. He’s not as lean as Cale, even with their identical build, but I misjudged him. I wonder if he fights as easily as he runs… just as Shae boasted. She said that he could take me. I doubt that, but it doesn’t mean I’m not curious. Cale was good, but he could never take me in a one-on-one fight, not even with all his years of training.

I’ve always had a good sense of where people are going to be before they strike, like a fighting sixth sense. It gave me that extra edge that I put to good use in my unprecedented rise to the rank of general. No, Caden wouldn’t be able to best me, especially not having been trained in our ways from the beginning.

The landscape starts to change as the sun disappears and the moon rises into the night sky, covering everything in an oily silver veil. Normally, moonlight is beautiful, but out here it has different implications. Moonlight is ominous, insidious. It means hunters are on the prowl and predators out for prey. And so we have to be extra vigilant.

“What
is
that?” Caden huffs, his gaze drawn by something off to our right. I don’t want to stop, but I look over and my breath hitches just as the console of my wrist-pad vibrates and the light flashes red.

“Stop,” I hiss, and drop to the ground. Caden follows unbidden. Removing the infrared goggles from my pack, I stare silently at the group of six or seven raptor-sized creatures pawing and shoving into each other. They’re about a mile away from where we are.

“What are they? More hybroids or real things?” Caden whispers.

“Definitely hybroids. They’re pack hunters. Reptiles.” I’m hoping that they haven’t seen us… or smelled us. They’re machines that have taken on the most savage aspects of territorial beasts, and have fused themselves with horns and tusks, teeth and scales. Reptiles are notoriously hard to kill and even harder to outrun.

I turn the goggles to the left of where we are crouched. There’s a dip where the landscape shifts, a gorge of some sort. I hadn’t planned on going in that direction – as much as the inhabitants of the Outers live aboveground, the worst of them prefer the underground. Or so it’s rumored.

In the city, scary tales of the Outers filled our ears from birth. They were the stories that people whispered into children’s ears: “the monsters from the Outers will get you!” or “break the law and risk exile to the Outers.” That one had been the worst one – to be banished from the city and forced to survive was a fate worse than death. Many traitors had killed themselves to avoid the outcome of the Outers. No one exiled there had ever returned.

“Follow me,” I say to Caden, making a decision. “We’re going to crawl over there to where that drop is, got it?” Caden nods. “Just try to move slowly, without any jerky movements.”

Commando-style, we inch our way across the dusty ground. I can feel the dirt like grit against my teeth, clogging my windpipe. The fine dust is everywhere. I cough softly and spit to the side, and my saliva is rust-colored. My elbows and knees are burning from the scraping against the hard earth, but we’re almost there. I can see that the cracks along the ground are starting to widen. Soon they’ll be big enough for us to drop into and at least be safe if the hybroids do see us. Once we’re out of sight, we’ll be out of mind.

I look back triumphantly to Caden, and he’s a few feet away, his face screwed up and frozen. He looks as if he’s just stuffed an entire lemon into his mouth.

“Don’t–” I warn. But it’s too late. The sneeze echoes across the open ground like thunder. In the next second, all we hear is the rumbling of distant hooves and screeching that could rival an oncoming hover-train. “Run, Caden, run! To the chasm! Run!”

And we are sprinting for our lives as the thunderous rumbling draws closer. I don’t want to look back, but I do. I have to see how close they are… whether we have a shot in hell of getting away from them. One we can probably take, maybe two, but definitely not six. With their breath hot on our backs, now I understand why anyone exiled to the Outers would prefer death. They’ll capture us and take us back to whoever their tribal leader is, and then we’ll be stripped for parts – skin, bones, organs, blood.

“Don’t look back,” I gasp to Caden, but his face is already a mix of pain and terror. Ignoring my own advice, I glance back again. One of them is faster than the others and gaining on us with every leap. It’s the runner. All the pack reptiles have a runner – the quick one that snares the prey, and then the others follow to immobilize it. They’re all fast, but the runners are faster.

I run out in a wide arc veering away from Caden. “Keep running to that gap, OK,” I scream. “No matter what.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to keep us alive.”

And then I can’t think as I’m running into the reptile runner head on, ninjatas in both hands. I have thirty seconds before the others close the space between them and the runner. It’s smaller than the ones I’ve seen before, about horse-sized, but I know it’s no less lethal with its heavily muscled and metaled body. Its eyes glow white as its pointy snout gapes open, full of sharp, cracked teeth. Angled plates curve down its back and tail into some kind of pike.

We are seconds from head-on impact, and in full sprint I roll head over heels, slashing out with my blades at the same time, snapping through the intertwined wires and tissue at the base of its hooves. I don’t stop. Momentum keeps me going, and I’m on my feet and running back toward Caden, but I hear the thump and screech of agony as it bowls forward onto its face. A grim triumphant smile graces my face for a second… It won’t be running for a while, that one.

I’ve earned us a sliver of time; the rules of existence in the Outers mean that the others will fight to pick the fallen apart. It’s survival of the fittest and strongest. Sparing a look behind me, I see they’re already converging on their fallen pack-mate. I dash harder, pumping my legs like pistons until I’m almost flying. I have no idea where my extra strength comes from; I just go, taking advantage of my second wind. The pounding of hooves behind me echoes the pounding in my chest.

Ahead of me, Caden barely squeezes into a tight gap, and I throw myself down behind him, crashing into his back and sending us both spiraling into the rock walls of the narrow grotto. We’re both hauling stale air into our lungs and clutching each other with numb fingers, even as dirt, rocks, and sour saliva fall on us from the creatures already snapping their mouths above us, trying to get in. We crouch farther down into the shaft but we’re safe. They’re too big to follow.

“You OK?” I gasp.

“What is wrong with you? You could have killed yourself!” I’m startled at the reprimand and his snarky tone, but I smile a tired smile.

“Better me than you. Come on.”

Caden doesn’t return my smile. He stands in front of me, staring at me with fiery eyes. “Riv, you can’t do that anymore, OK? I know you’re way better than I am navigating this terrain, but moving forward, it’s both of us or neither of us. Got it? We do it together.”

I nod, an involuntary smile curving my lips again. Something in his voice makes me feel funny deep down inside, like he wants to protect me. People don’t tend to question my orders, especially here in Neospes. I lead and they follow. The smile grows into a full-on grin as I imagine what Caden will do once he finds out that I’ve been a general, commanding an entire legion here, or even worse that I’m now some kind of marked-for-death, dangerous renegade.

“It’s not funny, Riven,” Caden hisses, misunderstanding my expression. “I already lost Shae. I can’t lose you too.”

“I know,” I agree, his quiet comment slapping the grin from my face. “Together, from here on out.”

Above us, the reptiles are still scrabbling – they’ll do anything to get in here as long as we remain this visible, including digging out a bigger hole, which they’ve already started to do. The foul steam of their breath swirls around us. I stare at Caden, and we both nod at the same time. We need to move. They’ll give up eventually and move on to some other target once we’re out of sight.

The gap opens out to a deep gorge, above which the reptiles are furiously digging, but underneath the crack to our right, the tunnel burrows downward, disappearing into darkness. We don’t have much choice but to follow it.

“Let’s go. Be vigilant,” I whisper to him, switching on the halogen lights on our suits. I’m torn between taking the lead and having to worry about him behind me every step of the way, or letting him go ahead and having to face any dangers head-on. In the end, I decide to take the lead. “Stay close, and don’t stop for anything. Got it?” Caden agrees and then we are off, moving as quickly as we can deeper into the gritty tunnel.

I sigh inaudibly, feeling the weight of the dark earth on all sides of me. Why does it always have to be tunnels? They’re everywhere – in Neospes, in the Otherworld. I’m no longer claustrophobic, but tunnels still irk me. I was locked in a box underground for hours at a time to learn to face and harness my fear of enclosed spaces. It sounds cruel, but it worked. A key part of our mental training means I had to face and understand all of my fears.

Shae had had a fear of heights, so she’d had to jump off the tallest point in Neospes every day for four weeks. The day she did it without crying was the day she overcame that fear. She was still be wary of heights, but it no longer weakened her. One of the trainees in my group had a fear of snakes. He ended up dropping out, unable to take the counter-fear measures.

The system is brutal, but it’s effective. An initiate can always lie about their fears, but it’s counterproductive. Facing fear in a controlled environment and trying to overcome it without any preparation in a hostile environment are two vastly different things. In Neospes, fear is the paper-thin difference between life and death.

The tunnel widens a bit and I drag my gloved hand along the oddly-hewn edges of the rock. It’s curiously smooth in areas and roughly chopped in others. I frown. My instincts warn that it’s probably because some combination of living tissue and metal had grated against it, but a part of me wonders whether I’m being overly paranoid after the run-in with the reptiles above ground.

“Cade, you OK?” I whisper back. He’s tucked his hood around his neck, and even though the temperature is dropping consistently, there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. His eyes are dark in the stark halogen lighting of our suits.

“Yeah. Where are we now?”

I consult the holographic compass and map, which works just as well underground. We’re still making good time and heading in the direction of the city, about a quarter of the way there, but it’s far slower now that we’re not running. I squint at the map, noticing that it has now placed us below ground. The technology of the suit has dynamic virtual properties that allow its various operations to self-adjust, depending on external stimuli.

Curious, I touch a spot on the base of the hologram that is highlighted with an “S.” The map is interactive and immediately shifts to show the entire network of the subterranean tunnels around us. Caden’s gasp is soft beside me, but I’m still staring at the intricate web of tunnels that connect nearly to the edges of the city so many miles away.

Have those always been there?

“Wow,” Caden breathes. “So I guess this means we can pretty much stay down here and not have to deal with those things up there.”

“We don’t know that things
exactly
like that aren’t down here,” I say flatly. “Or worse.”