inDIVISIBLE (30 page)

“There’s no permanent damage,” I said as I slid behind a scraggly tree.
“Which means they want me alive.” My throat hurt to speak as if it was full of thorns grating each time I drew breath.

His footsteps crunched as he no longer made any attempt to sneak, whether from his injury or his determination, I didn’t know. I scooted each time he stepped, trying to stay in sync with the noise he made.
“Alive was just a suggestion,” he said, stepping into view with a rifle to his shoulder.

The fear came then, filling the pit of my stomach with icy cold acid. It grounded me
by immobilizing my limbs. I moved my mouth to speak as his finger tightened on the trigger. His fingertip turned white even as a scurry to my right produced hope. Had the Freeman awakened?

I tried to push to my feet but my legs quivered
, and I fell back to my butt, jarring my spine all the way to my skull.

The footsteps crept closer and seconds later a thud against the left side of my head turned the entire world black.

CHAPTER
35

The gag stuck to my tongue when I woke. Pine needles embedded into the side of my face and my wrists ached from the cord that bound them. As I struggled to move, the flesh around my ankles pinched. I moaned, hoping T would respond in kind or that someone would hear me enough to let me know what had happened. My brain pulsed, feeling too big for my skull, and the light burned my eyes but I forced them open. They’d have watered if I’d had enough hydration. As it was, my eyelids scraped over my eyes with each blink, blurring my vision between brief moments of clarity.

The earth smelled dank, the soil cool against my cheek.
A cramp in my right hip brought on spasms and I stretched my legs while trying to ignore the biting cord about my ankles. As the spasm ceased, I bent my knees and released the tension on the cord.

My lungs longed for air
, and I sucked in through my nose but felt stuffy, like a bad cold had set in. The gag kept me from breathing deeply, and I pushed against it with my tongue, but it had been tied too tightly . I closed my eyes again and took short breaths, enough to satisfy some of the cravings—and I listened.

The wind blew. Leaves rattled.

Had they hurt T? Killed the Freeman? Guilt filled my chest for having hit the man when he could have helped, when he could have kept himself alive. I struggled again, my wrists chafing raw as I tugged at the cords. When my strength gave, I lay still and pried open my eyes again.

Shadows swayed
against the darkened sky, none of them resembling human form while a thin slit of a moon shone above, clouds scurrying in front of it to filter what little light it produced. The stars littering the sky had turned to dull glitter, and I searched the ground for any shadows that didn’t belong, lumps that would indicate another person here with me, preferably unconscious rather than dead.

I could only see a few feet before everything at eye level faded to black, but nothing moved, nothing seemed out of place. I rolled onto my back, my hands aching with the pressure and then pushed myself to my other side. I came nose to nose with
a man who didn’t move. His eyes wide open, he lay inches away with a vacant expression, mouth gaping.
The officer who’d tried to shoot me …
But if the officer was down, who’d tied me up?

I’d have screamed if I could have gotten more than a muffled moan beyond the gag. I dug my feet into the soil and pushed myself away, wiggling back and forth to put distance between us.

I’d seen dead people flash across my PCA since I’d been a child, proof that the Alliance protected us from terrorists … but I’d never been so close to one as now.

My chest burned
, and my mouth felt stuffed with cotton. I had to get this gag away so I could breathe or I’d suffocate. I scraped my cheek on the ground, trying to loosen the gag but it didn’t budge. I rocked my head back and forth, gasping around the thick fabric that filled my mouth. As I shoved one more time, my feet connected with a second body.

God
, I silently pleaded,
I need to know you’re there.

The body
moved, a moan escaped, and I stopped, holding my breath.

The body thrashed a moment before suddenly rising to its feet. Tall and lean, it hopped toward me and I nearly cried with relief. “T,” I tried
to speak.

He shook his head, meaning to silence me, I was sure, and crouched beside me. He dropped to his knees and bent over my face, his lips making contact with my cheek seconds before he tugged
at the gag with his teeth. I wiggled as he pulled until the gag fell over my chin, the corners of my lips so raw I could hardly close my mouth. I swallowed dry spit before I clenched onto his gag and tugged to free it.

Footsteps stilled us
, and T dropped to his butt beside me, the gag still settled firmly in the back of his mouth.

“Good morning, Brynn—T,” the Freeman said.

My strength returned in part and I rolled even as I pushed myself to a sitting position. “Who are you?” I asked.

The man scratched the stubble across his chin before saying, “Nobody.”

The sky turned red to the east, and I thought back to the day I’d left my home. What had it been—a week? Two? I couldn’t remember. And what of Cray’s body? How long had it been sitting in the woods, decomposing, waiting for someone to discover it and tell his mother that he’d “perished while lost in the mountains”?

I risked a glance at the officer behind me and for the first time saw the red stain across the sand beneath his neck.

“He was going to kill you,” the Freeman explained, his scraggly beard a mixture of red and gray.

“So you killed him instead.”

He nodded.

“Then you tied me up?”

T moaned, begging to have his gag released but the man ignored him. I moved my face closer to help but the Freeman yelled, and I snapped back straight.

My legs ached, stretched straight in front of me, the easiest on my ankles. I shifted my weight from one butt cheek to the other and pain surged up my back, my shoulders on the verge of bursting from their sockets.
“Please untie me.”

He laughed, squatted in front of me and uncapped a bottle of water. He drank so that the water spilled down the front of his filthy jacket and dribbled into the dirt between his feet.

My throat burned at the sight and I leaned forward, desperate for water.

The man capped the bottle and tossed it toward his pack, ignoring my need. That’s when the rage began, a small ember in my chest that grew hotter and brighter even as the water droplets on his shirt fade
d away.

The Freeman nodded toward the dead officer and then again a little further down the mountain. “Their sensors contain GPS locators so the Alliance can retrieve their bodies when their vitals shut down.”

I glanced at T, the rage mixing with panic.

“They
’ve been dead a couple hours so it won’t be long now before they swoop in to retrieve you all.” He glanced at his watch and grinned. “Which means I’d best be out of here.” He stood and stretched before picking up his pack. He gathered up the water and swished it in the bottle a bit before he dropped it back to the ground.

“Why are you doing this to us?” I yelled.

He drew closer again and his thumb traced my cheekbone, the skin rough and sickening on my face. I flinched away. “Aren’t you a cute and feisty one?” He stepped back, his face split in a huge grin that left as quickly as it had arrived. “There’s enough water left for a swallow. I figure you need it before they begin on you.” He stood.

“Begin what on me?” I asked, eye
ing the bottle nearly thirty feet away.

“I just hope they don’t mess up that pretty face,” he said.

T made it to his feet but the man punched him hard enough to knock him flat. T yelled what sounded like a string of obscene curses, and the man simply laughed.

He kicked T in the ribs before he squatted down and said, “Your knife is all the evidence they’ll need to put you away for a long time, so long, you’ll wish they still had a death penalty.”

He brushed his palms across his knees and stood straight, ambling off toward the trees. He whistled and I cringed, scooting to T, who lay balled up to protect his ribs.

Paper crinkled and I turned as the man pulled our map from our pack. “Leave that alone!”

He folded it back up and shoved it in his pocket before disappearing. I made a mental note of the trees he passed on his way out before I crouched over T. I bit down on the gag and pulled while he worked it out of his mouth. As soon as he had freed himself of the band, he sucked in a deep breath and let it out in one long groan.

“T, you okay?” I asked.

His eyes didn’t focus for a moment.

“T?”

“I think it’s broken.”

“
No.”

He struggled to sit but his gasps were unbearable
, and I scooted around behind him until our hands touched. With trembling fingers I found the knots that bound him and tugged. Tight as they were, I tugged and tugged, determined not to be captured again. One loosened, then another until he jerked his hands free. Carefully, he pushed himself from the ground with one hand while holding his ribs with the other. By the time he sat, his breathing had turned to a wheeze, and I scooted around to his feet where I worked at the cords until he kicked his feet free, his face scrunched up in pain.

He glanced around the meadow
before crouching over the dead man, his bloody knife beside him on the trampled ground.

“What are you doing, T?”

He grabbed the knife and hobbled back to me, cutting my ties away, and I gasped as the blood flowed freely into my hands and feet, returning with the force of a thousand needles.

He crouched a second time and unbuttoned the officer’s jacket. He poised the knife above his chest before making a quick downward motion, cutting away the bottom half of the dead man’s shirt. He half-stood, his breathing pained as the knife fell from his hand.

“A bandage,” I mumbled, stumbling toward him even as the feeling returned to my toes. T lifted his shirt, and I touched his swollen side, the broken rib already surrounded by blue and black flesh. Even my light fingers brought a scowl, and I wondered how he’d handle a bandage.

He pushed it into my hand and said, “Just make it tight. I’ve got to have some pressure on there if I’m going to be able to move.”

I took the shirt and wrapped it around his torso holding the rib in tight.

“Tighter,” He whispered.

I tugged the shirt around tighter and he winced. “Sorry.”

He shook his head as if discarding the apology. “Right there. Tie it. Quickly.”

I tied the shirt in a knot before I bent down to retrieve the knife. T took it and slipped it into his pocket, not even trying to clean away the dried blood.

“We have to leave,” I
whispered, my voice hoarse.

“Search him,” T said, pointing to the man whose shirt he had just stolen. “I’ll find the others.”

“The others?”

“There were three, remember?”

I remembered, but how had that one man taken out three officers? I knelt over the dead man, T hobbling through the trees to where his attack had taken place. His neck gaped open, exposing windpipe and muscle. My stomach roiled and I turned away. “Do it, Brynn,” I whispered. I clenched my teeth and held my breath, my fingers delving into the man’s pockets. They’d been emptied. His guns had been taken. He had no backpack.

I pushed th
rough the pathway T had left in the vegetation and found him hovering over an officer, pressing another piece of ripped shirt to the officer’s throat.

He gurgle
d.

I stumbled. “Is he—” my voice caught.

“Yes, he’s alive,” T said.

I inched closer, my heart thundering in my chest. “What are you doing?”

T took a second piece of fabric he must have cut from the other dead man and wrapped it around the man’s neck. “I couldn’t leave him here like that,” T said. “I’m not a killer.”

I crouched beside him. The man la
id unmoving, blood beneath his head, but the swishing sound of air still worked from his lips. “What do we do now?”

T looked around, his eyes so serious it pierced my chest. “We try to get him to hold on until help arrives. They’re on their way, remember?”

I took the bandage from T and finished tying it in place so he could relieve the pressure on his ribs from leaning over the man. As I finished, his eyes shot open and his hand clamped around my wrist.

I squealed and tried to pull away but he had more strength than I would have expected, his eyes an intense green, golden flecks around the pupils. He was beautiful, terrifyingly strong,
and familiar. I relaxed and said, “I’m just trying to help. You were cut.”