The Renegades (The Superiors) (7 page)

Draven
did not risk speaking, as he knew Byron’s hearing was even better than his own.
He turned, leaned down a bit, and grasped Cali’s hand and pulled until she slid
onto his back and clung to him. Her whole body shook.

“Tight,”
he whispered as he moved to the side of the garden and jumped.

Above,
he heard the door slide open just as he hit the ground. Cali’s weight jerked
down on him, and he nearly lost his footing. He caught his balance and her
weight at the same moment. The impact of the landing had jarred her hands
loose, and he caught her weight in his hands to prevent her from slipping from
him.

Byron
swore above them.

“Tighter,”
Draven whispered.

Cali’s legs and arms wound around him with all her force.

Once
again, Draven was running.

Part Two

Chapter 16

Byron
set his things on the counter and turned to the sapien behind him. The male
didn’t look nearly as impressive as the last breeder he’d hired, but then, that
one hadn’t produced the promised offspring, so he knew better than to rely on a
sapien’s appearance of virility. This one peered at him from flinty grey eyes,
a matching grey beard fraying from its weathered cheeks. It had spoken few
words, instead keeping its mouth shut in a tight line that matched its scowl.
It looked like a cold brute who wouldn’t know the meaning of the word ‘gentle,’
which was reason enough for Byron to rent it. Obviously, his female responded
better to harshness—if the bitch wanted gentle treatment, she’d have to earn
it.

“This
way,” Byron said, motioning the sap to follow. He opened the door of his sapien
apartment and pushed the breeder inside. Byron entered after it. His male
sapien sat on the bed, its back to Byron, holding the sapling in its arms. If
he’d gotten anything good since coming to Princeton, it was the sapling. He
tried not to let his conscious bother him, knowing that technically it did not
belong to him. But his neighbors had moved before he could return it, and he
hadn’t had time to track them down. They should have come and asked him, been
sociable, and he’d have returned it. Now they could never prove it belonged to
them—their male had gone to the blood bank, their female had been killed in the
massacre, and the sapling had not yet been chipped when they’d lost it. It was
untraceable.

“Where’s
the female?” he asked his sapien.

The
male did not turn, but it stopped bouncing the sapling, which made a babbling
noise and reached towards Byron.

“Answer
me when I speak to you,” Byron said, striding towards the mat where the filthy
creatures slept. Still his male did not turn. That was when he knew something
was wrong. The male always answered, always bowed, showed respect, acted as a
sapien should. It never failed to do its duty, except in one area, and even
Byron allowed a sap one deficiency. That’s why he’d brought another sap to
complete the task his failed to perform.

Byron
snatched the male’s scrawny arm and shook it. The creature looked up at him
with terrified eyes and tried to shrink back, but Byron dragged it up by the
arm. It clutched the sapling in the other arm.

“Where’s
the bitch?” Byron asked, shaking his sap until its arm sprang from the socket
with a wet popping sound. The sap let out a whine of pain in answer, and the
sapling began to cry. “Well?” Byron demanded. “Where the hell is your mate?”

“I—I
don’t know,” the male squealed. “She went outside.”

“Outside?
I told her to stay out of the garden.”

“I
know,” the male said, cowering, hanging limply from Byron’s fist. He dropped
the sap and stormed outside. He knew, but his mind refused to comprehend. She
had gone. She had escaped. Again. One of
his
saps, a two-time runaway.
Despite the orders to stay inside, the brand, the chain—Byron stopped gaping
and turned, searching for the chain. How had a human broken a thick iron chain?
He found it lying at the edge of the garden, almost complete. He sprang inside,
to the bed, and wrenched the male to its feet so violently that the sapling
slipped from its arms and crashed to the floor. Byron kicked it out of the way.

“Where
is she?” Byron asked, gripping the sapien’s neck and squeezing, forcing it to
its knees. Its eyes bulged from its head, and its face began to redden. With
detached fascination, Byron watched as a blood vessel burst in its eye and the
color of blood washed over the white. The sap gripped Byron’s hand with its
remaining functional hand, and its eyes, one red and one white, rolled back,
its eyelids fluttering. The sapling on the floor screamed in rage, its own face
red and twisted into a grotesque mask.

Byron
longed to stomp the sapling’s face flat, to hurl it into the wall to make it
shut the hell up—or to get his male sap talking. He released the male, which
fell to the floor, where it lay heaving and holding its throat. He snatched the
sapling up by the foot. It shrieked in terror, and his male reached up,
blinking through its tears, still coughing.

“What?”
Byron thundered. “Are you trying to say something?” He shook the floundering
sapling. “You tell me where that filthy cuntscab went or I’m going to start
swinging this thing at the wall.”

“No,”
the male croaked, clutching its throat.

“Where?”
Byron asked, shaking the sapling once more. It shrieked and flailed wildly. “I
can’t hear you. Open your souldamned mouth and spit it out or you’re going to
be picking bits of brain matter off your floor for weeks.”

“No,”
the male said again, louder this time. Speaking set him off into a fit of
coughing, but he clambered to his knees and reach for the baby. “I’ll tell
you,” it choked out between coughs. “Please Master Superior, give me my baby.”

“Your
baby?
Your
baby?” Byron glowered down at the groveling sap. “This is my
sapling, and if I want to beat you to death with it, I damn well have the
right. Now start talking.”

“She—she
left,” the male croaked. “I don’t know where.”

“Who
took her?” Byron asked.

“That
one, please, Lord Superior, Lord Master, please don’t hurt him…”

“What
one?” Byron shook the sapling, but it had turned the reddish purple of a fresh
bruise and gone silent, only drool streaming from its gaping mouth.

“The
one who comes, he comes to visit, I forgot his name…” Suddenly the male
scrambled forwards, tipped onto his injured shoulder and began squirming across
the floor like a frantic animal. “Don’t hurt him, please, Lord Master, put him
down, he’s gonna die…” The sap reached the counter and dragged itself up enough
to open a drawer, where it scrambled the contents blindly with one hand. Byron
knew it had nothing inside to harm a Superior, so he waited. He glanced at the
breeder, which stood near the door, its face set in the usual scowl. It showed
no emotion at the scene taking place before it.

“Here,
he’s here,” Byron’s male said, finding what it sought and lurching towards
Byron on its knees, hand extended, proffering a small square of paper printed
with an old photograph.

“What’s
this?” Byron asked, snatching it from his sap. He tossed the sapling onto the
bedroll, where it flopped on its back with a weak cry. Byron stared at the
photo, his mind as uncomprehending as when he’d seen that the female had
vanished into thin air.

“That’s
the one,” the male said, its voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper. “That’s
the one that took her. He’s—” A fit of coughing stopped the sap’s words.

“I
know who it is,” Byron snapped, throwing the paper at his sap. He took a
breath. Though he was always meticulous in his work, if he wanted a conviction
after conducting an investigation of a crime perpetrated against himself, he
must follow all protocols with surgical precision. All the while, he expected
rage to overtake him, but instead, only a coldness crept over him, hardening
him from within, as if he were slowly freezing from the inside out.

Of
course he knew who had taken Cali. He’d been waiting for Draven to turn up,
some part of him had, since he’d discovered Draven’s body missing from the
theater. Meyer had to have found him and set him free. And now Draven had
repaid his debt by stealing Byron’s sap. So the next question was, where would
he have taken it?

Byron
walked across the room and back into the garden, measuring his steps, not
hurrying. At first glance, he could find nothing amiss. Turning first one way,
then another, he began scenting, circling the garden, leaning close to the bars
and scenting each of them. He found the faint trace of Superior scent, familiar
Superior scent, on almost every bar along the left side of the garden. He
examined the bars. Draven could not have come into Byron’s apartment, so he
must have taken it from outside.

Byron
cursed himself for not locking the garden, for assuming a chain alone could
hold his much-coveted sapien. For trusting it to obey his command to stay
inside. For not seeing this coming, for not guessing that Meyer would try
again, since he’d failed the first time he’d had Byron’s favorite sap stolen.
This time, he hadn’t sent some pathetic sap to do the job. He’d sent a Superior.
Granted, a Third, but he’d raised the stakes nonetheless.

Byron
would raise the next stake.

He
examined every bar of the cage, but he saw nothing. He went over them again,
not hurrying, scanning from top to bottom, scenting. And then he caught a
stronger whiff of scent, newer, and he closed his eyes and inhaled, teasing the
faint Superior scent from beneath the overpowering animal stink of the bitch.
He had it, culled from the scents in the garden, those of his own three
sapiens, of dirt and weeds and traces of mold under the plastic tarp; the
scents on himself, the hint of the breeder’s scent from when he’d touched it,
his own Superior scent, the scents of his clothing; the mountains, the
different types of trees, the air itself. All his senses converged into one
brilliant point of energy, which he cast upwards, along the thread of scent to
its source. He opened his eyes, and smiled.

Chapter 17

Cali’s grip kept slipping, and she had to urge her strength up again and again. After all,
Draven was doing all the work. She only had to hold on. He had to run and carry
her at the same time. But although her strength had increased some since the
baby came, she hadn’t done much hard work at the apartment. Soon her arms grew
tired, and then cramped, and then numb as she held on with renewed force.

Draven
stopped and looked around. It seemed like he’d been running for days. Cali kept wanting to look back and see if Master had followed them, but she didn’t dare.
Draven didn’t look back, either. He lifted his face, and the wind blew cold and
wet against them.

“Good,”
he said. “Rain.”

He
boosted her and slipped into a dark passageway, and Cali couldn’t see anything
for a minute. Draven slid her off his back, held onto her waist and lifted her.
She groped in front of her and found metal bars to hold onto. Draven moved
beside her, then swung up on the bars and pulled her onto some kind of
platform.

“I
will jump, and if it is not difficult, I’ll try with you,” he said. He was gone
and back before she had time to register that he’d left. The platform swayed
only slightly when he landed on silent feet beside her.

“Hold
onto me tightly,” he said, pulling her onto his back again. He crouched, then
launched himself into the air. Cali’s head spun with how fast it was all
happening. Dizzy with fear, she held on as the side of building rushed at them
with startling suddenness. Draven’s feet hit the wall, and they fell.

Cali
clung to him, burying her face in his neck and suppressing a shriek. If she’d
known it would be this terrifying, she might not have come. But then she
thought of the breeder looming in her doorway the last time, and she was glad
she’d run. He terrified her more than Draven—funny, since Draven had hurt her
and sucked her blood, and the breeder had only mated with her.

Draven’s
feet hit the metal platform, and this time they made a big sound and he
staggered.

“
Merde
.”
He stopped still. Cali could hear his inhalation over the sound of the wind
high above them. “On the front,” he said, shifting her around him without
pausing to let her dismount. “Don’t let go for your life,” he said, then
crouched and leapt again. This time she couldn’t see the building coming at
them, but her arms almost jarred loose with the impact of his feet hitting the
wall. He landed back on the platform without staggering or noise, his arm
around her waist.

“
Merde
,
Cali. I said don’t let go for your life. Hold tighter.”

“I’m
holding on as tight as I can,” she said. “I’m not a Superior, remember?”

“Hold
on tighter or the only thing either of us will be is dead. Byron is close.”

Draven
twisted around in Cali’s grip, and she held on with all her might with her legs
and arms. She hoped she’d squeeze him so tight he couldn’t breathe. He acted
like she should be able to do everything he could. He was the one who’d wanted
her to escape, who’d promised to keep her safe.

The
next moment they tumbled onto a rough black surface. Draven rolled over her,
and she came loose, and then he stood over her, smiling big enough to show his
two scary teeth. “We did it,” he said.

She
sat up and rubbed her head.

Draven
crouched before her. “Are you intact?”

“I
think I’m okay.”

“Good.
We haven’t time to rest.”

“Why?
Where are we going?”

“To
the place I’ve been staying. We’ll go this way a bit to stay downwind of Byron.
We are fortunate to have this wind. It makes tracking us more difficult, and he
may not realize we’re on the rooftops. I will circle back when I can.”

Draven
bent and scooped up Cali and stood. “I’ll carry you on the front so I can hold
onto you if you slip. But do your best that I won’t have to. Yes?”

“I’ll
try.” With her legs around him, she twisted her feet together for a better
hold. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nestled her face against his
shoulder. He smelled strange, not like a person or sweat or skin, or anything.
He had no smell at all, like a vacuum, and the very absence of smell made an uneasy
dead spot in the air—not unpleasant, just unsettling. She’d never noticed it
before, had never been so close to a Superior, wrapped around him and buried in
him.

For
a second she wanted to detach from him and apologize and bow, or do something
that would remind her of reality. In reality, Superiors didn’t set her free or
help her escape. In reality, she couldn’t hold onto a Superior in a way that,
if not for the circumstances, would have been jarringly intimate. In reality,
people didn’t jump onto the roofs of apartments and cross them like the
sun-gathering solar robots that stored power for the buildings. People didn’t
break chains with their bare hands. But Draven did.

Cali
kept her head down as he took off running again. After a while, she got used to
the rhythm of their pace—bursts of speed, pauses, weightlessness for one
airborne moment, a jolt when they landed and Draven’s arm went around her
tight, a split second of regaining equilibrium, and then the cycle repeated.

A
long time later, Draven stopped instead of just pausing. The movement and the
late hour had lulled Cali halfway to sleep, and she separated from him with a
kind of dreamy realization. She had been so scared, so impulsive. She hadn’t
stopped to think about what she was doing. But she was free again.

Except
of course she wasn’t. She hadn’t run away. She’d been sapnapped. She had simply
traded one master for another. But she didn’t think she’d have much trouble
losing this one.

“On
my back again,” Draven said. She could see him better now. The sky had
lightened a little, but tall clouds held back the morning. With arms stiff and
numb from holding on so long, Cali struggled to climb onto his back. Soreness
penetrated the inside of her thighs, from his hipbones pressing into them, and
the underside of her arms, from his shoulders.

“Aren’t
you tired?” she asked. They’d run all night.
He’d
run all night.

“We’re
almost there,” he said, and dropped down the side of a building.

For
a second Cali thought he’d finally lost his balance and fallen, and she
clutched him in terror. Then she saw that he held a cable in one hand while
supporting her with the other. He dropped onto a lower roof, and Cali’s legs
slipped and her feet hit the roof after his. “Stay on,” he said, boosting her
back up. “Just another minute.”

Suddenly,
Draven dropped flat without warning. He twisted around in her grip so he could
secure her with his arms, then lay perfectly still under her. Even his chest
stilled, not rising and falling with breath, as if tension had frozen his
entire body. Cali held her breath by instinct and did not try to struggle. For
the moment, he held her only chance at freedom. She looked down into his face,
every feature fiercely alert in the faint light of coming morning. For a second
she wanted to touch the contours of his cold face, convince herself all of it had
really happened. He held tight to her, though, so tight she couldn’t move her
arms.

A
tremor went through his body when lights passed close to the building. After
they had gone, he stood and secured Cali’s legs around him. “We must hurry.
People are leaving work now.” He moved along the steep roof as if he’d walked
it every day of his life. At the edge, he detached Cali. “I’ll jump first, and
then I’ll catch you. Can you be brave for me and jump?”

The
last time she’d done that, on her last escape attempt, she’d jumped into the
arms of her human escorts. She was fairly certain one of them had later died
because of that. “I might hurt you,” she said.

Draven
laughed, that warm, soft chuckle that didn’t fit with what she knew of
Superiors. “You won’t hurt me,” he said. Then he jumped.

She
tried to swallow—or breathe. A thought flashed through her mind that maybe this
time he’d jumped wrong, and she’d see a splattered Superior when she looked
over the edge of the roof. But of course she didn’t.

“What
if I don’t jump?” she asked, peering down at him.

He
stood looking up at her in the gathering light. “Then I will retrieve you, but
this way is quicker.”

“What
if I’m not coming with you?”

“What
will you do? Live on a roof? For how long?”

“I
could find another way down.”

“Then
find one.”

Cali
paused, thinking about the stupidity of that idea. Then she jumped. She didn’t
give Draven warning, and she didn’t think about the stupidity of that, either.
But he didn’t need warning. He caught her as if she weighed no more than one of
the leaves she’d watched drifting down from the trees. She remembered falling
on Herman and Martin, and how they’d all crashed to the ground and gotten hurt.
The bruises from her fall had lasted for weeks afterwards, but they’d been lost
in the bruises her master had added when he recaptured her.

Now
she’d have bruises from where Draven caught her. Her landing might have felt
like nothing to him, but his arms felt like steel to her. He had caught her as
a mother might carry a child, cradling her. The force of her fall along with
her weight would bring bruises along the two paths of his arms, and the sudden
stop when she landed had jerked her head back hard enough to make her neck
ache. When she turned her head, her neck moved in a strange, rubbery way, as if
her head had started coming loose from her body.

When
she looked into Draven’s face, very close to hers now, he smiled and arched one
eyebrow. “I thought not,” he said.

She
knew he could have jumped up and gotten her if he wanted, and she’d have
nowhere to run on a rooftop even if she could outrun a Superior. But she wanted
to know what he’d do if she defied him. He hadn’t beaten her like her Master,
which encouraged her. But the pain in her back and neck dulled her excitement
at the thought of escape.

Draven
carried her in his arms for a short distance, until she started getting drowsy
again. He stopped walking when they arrived at a high chain-link fence with
razor wire on top. Cali knew about razor wire. It topped the walls of
Confinements, where she’d spent most of her life. She’d seen people climb over
razor wire to escape, and it could be a gruesome sight.

“Here
we are,” Draven said. Cali looked at him, and back at the fence, and then
through the fence. A lot of cars, missing tires or wheels or other body parts,
sat idly inside the fence, staring back at her with their sightless headlight
eyes.

“You
live here?” Cali asked.

“Yes.
Don’t touch the fence. I do not want your scent on it. Hold onto me only.”

Cali
tightened her arms around Draven’s neck, but he pulled her away. “Not like
that. On my back. How am I to climb with my arms occupied with you?”

“Well,
how am I supposed to know?” she asked, circling Draven to get to his back
without dismounting. She was getting better at the maneuver. He made a strange
breathy sound, like he sucked in air through his teeth, when she settled onto
him. But he started up the fence without hesitation.

She
would have liked to see him climb without her on his back. He had a fluid grace
she didn’t remember seeing in him before. He moved up the fence like a cat
climbing a tree. At the top, he pushed himself up and over with one hand,
reaching back to hold onto Cali with the other. He landed on his feet like a
cat, too.

He
moved quickly between the cars towards the back of the lot, stopping about
three quarters of the way back. “This is where I live,” he said.

“What
is this place?”

“It’s…essentially
a car-yard.”

“What’s
that?”

“Cars
that no longer run are sent here.”

“But
why?”

“They’re
bought for scrap, and their functioning parts are stripped for reuse.”

“Use
for what?”

“Some
are used for cars, and the metal is made into other cars or whatever companies
need metal for.”

“And…why
do you live here?”

“Because
I’m not in the system.”

“I’m
a human.”

“Oh,
right. That means…I don’t want to explain right now. I cannot rent a place. So
I stay here.”

“Who
else lives here?”

“There’s
a lame dog, and some rats and things.”

“No
one else.”

“We
won’t stay long. No one works during the day, so they will stop looking until evening.
I’ll sleep a few hours, and we’ll leave before they begin again this evening.”

Cali
stifled a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t have to feed anyone but him, and if he
went to sleep, he didn’t have any Superior friends to guard her.

“Where
are we going?”

“I
don’t know.” Draven opened the door of a long black car and scooted Cali
inside. She liked the other cars better, the ones with pretty pictures and
words and colors all over them. Something about the car he chose, the way it
reminded her of her master’s car, made her uneasy.

Inside
the black car, the seat’s coldness immediately began soaking through Cali’s
wool jumpsuit, and she wrapped her arms around herself. Draven scooted in next
to her. “You may take the seat. I will sleep behind,” he said.

She
looked behind the seat at the small square area of floor and felt a little bad
for accepting his offer. But she didn’t want the floor either, so she didn’t
say anything. Draven climbed over the seat and rooted around in a pile of what
looked like the junk her sisters made their houses from. Little pieces of this
and that. He came up with a tattered, thin wool blanket and handed it to her.

“You
live like a runaway,” she said.

Draven
didn’t look at her but started undoing his shirt, so she lay down and covered
herself with the holey blanket. She wondered if now was the time to run.
Superiors slept most of the day. But surely he’d tie her up before he slept,
and he probably knew some special Superior knot-tying skill to make knots that
humans couldn’t untie.