Red Handed (5 page)

“Don't worry,” the man said. “This is for your own protection.”

I struggled against his hold. “Let. Me. Go!”

“Calm down. It'll all be over soon, Phoenix.”

I stilled, gulped. Panicked. What would be over soon? My life? Dear God. What had my mom gotten me into?

It'll all be over soon…
I tried to rip the hood from my head, but my hands were slapped away. I erupted once again, kicking and hitting with every ounce of my strength, striking blindly, sometimes connecting with my target.

He grunted.

No way was I going to be treated this way. No way was I going to be led—where? In front of a firing squad? Into a room filled with people who wanted me to be their piñata? All to punish me for a crime I hadn't committed.

“I did nothing wrong!” I growled. “For the first time I did everything right, damn it. I don't deserve this.”

“Be still, Phoenix, and be quiet.” The man was panting as he tried to subdue me, but his voice was surprisingly gentle.

“I've told you twice already. Let me go!”

“I'll gag you if I have to,” he said. In the next instant, my arms were banded behind my back, preventing me from reaching up. Laserbands bonded to skin, and would cut to the bone if I attempted to pull them off.

My teeth ground together as I continued to kick. I even tried to ram him with the back of my head, but I never made contact. The man—I needed a name for him—must have dodged my flailing limbs.

Finally he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. The scent of pine and…
roses
filled my nose. An odd smell for a man, especially a tough, hard one like this. Roses. I'd call him Roses.

“The others didn't act this way,” Roses said.

“She's going to be trouble,” a sweet female voice said.

“The good ones always are,” he responded.

“I told you, I didn't do anything wrong. I don't deserve this.”

Roses chuckled, deep and rich. “You're right. You don't deserve it, but if you try hard enough and apply yourself, you just might.”

Confused by his words, I paused. Then, suddenly, warm air was kissing my arms, my exposed midriff. We were outside, I realized. I could hear cars zooming past on a nearby road. I wanted to see, but couldn't make out anything through the black hood.

“Where are you taking me?” Straight to camp? Probably. They weren't going to let me pack my things, my holophotos. I'd be cut off from everything and everyone I knew and loved.

“We're taking you to a whole new world, sugar. Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Sweet Voice said.

“Enjoy? Enjoy! You can stuff your ‘enjoy' right up your as—” My words jammed to a halt as I was chucked onto a hard, uncushioned seat. A door slammed, and then there was only silence. I wiggled and squirmed, trying to dislodge the hood without moving my arms and disturbing the laserbands.

“That won't do you any good,” someone said. A new voice. A girlish, almost purring voice. “The hood is bonded to your clothing just like the laserbands are bonded to your skin.”

I froze, tried to force my gaze past the black fibers of the hood to see
something
. Anything. Again, only darkness greeted me. “Who are you?”

“A recruit, like you,” she replied, and there was a blend of happiness and frustration in her tone. “My name's Kitten.”

Was Kitten hooded, too? I asked and she replied with an angry yes. The knowledge calmed me for some reason—perhaps because I was not alone in this. Still, I wished I could see who I was talking to. “Why'd they blindfold us like this?”

A pause. A rustle of clothing, as if she was shrugging. “If we aren't accepted, we'll be sent home. This way, we won't know the location of the camp.”

“Accepted?”

“Yeah. Into the program.”

“I'm still lost,” I said. “Why do we have to be accepted?”

“Only the strong survive and all that crap.”

Great. Visions of being locked in a room with other “delinquent” kids and forced to fight to the death filled my head. Although, I might willingly take a beating if it meant being considered weak and sent home.

“What's your name, new girl?” the purring voice demanded.

“Phoenix.”

“Wait,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “You were named after a mythical bird?”

My head whipped to the left, in the direction of the new speaker. A boy. “Who are you? And how many more kids are in here?”

“I'm Bradley, and we're it. It's just the three of us. A ménage,” he replied happily.

The car suddenly jostled into motion, flinging me forward and causing my bands to pull tight. Grimacing, I righted myself.

“No one wants to hear you speak, Bradie boy,” Kitten said in that scratchy voice of hers.

“Like that's ever stopped me. I can't believe we've got a bird and a cat in the car.” Bradley chuckled. “I guess that makes me animal control. Nice.”

“I'm a Teran,” Kitten said tightly, “not a cat. And if I hear you call me a cat one more time, I'll scratch your eyes out. Understand?”

“Oh, I understand. I just don't think you'll like
what
I'm understanding, which is that you can't wait to get your hands on me.”

She hissed.

He laughed, but there was a trace of trepidation in the sound. “So…what do you know about Terans, Bird?”

“Don't call me that,” I snapped.

“Gotta distract myself somehow,” he muttered.

He was right. We had to distract ourselves however possible. Otherwise I might scream. “I know some Terans are covered in fur,” I said, answering his question. “Others simply have pointed pupils and pointed ears.”

“Ever seen one in real life?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Ever seen one attack a human?”

“No.”

“That's enough,” Kitten said, butting in. “You sound like an alienphobe.”

Did
I
fear aliens? “I'm not,” I said with assurance. I didn't have a problem with the otherworlders who lived among us. For the most part. The Sybilins, well, I wanted
them
dead.

“If a girl is hot,” Bradley said, and I was sure he was leering, “I don't care what race she is.”

“I'd already guessed that about you,” I replied dryly.

“Already wanting a piece of me, too, I bet.”

Kitten and Bradley continued to spar, ignoring me. I leaned against the back of my seat and drew in a breath. The air inside my hood was surprisingly fresh, light, as if there were air pockets sewn into the material. “What do you guys know about this bootcamp?” I asked, cutting into their heated conversation.

“Now why'd you have to go and bring that up?” Bradley asked with a moan. “I was doing a good job forgetting where I was and where I was headed.”

“I don't know a lot,” Kitten admitted. “What I know, I know because my sister graduated from it several years ago. See, every three months a panel of—judges, I guess you could call them—picks a few students to come and basically try out. Half are sent home in the first few weeks.”

One, try out for a drug rehab? That was craziness. Two, half were sent home? Maybe I'd be one of the lucky half.

“So what'd you do to get sent there?” Kitten asked.

Another rustle of clothing. “I didn't do nothin',” Bradley said. “One day I was playing virtual football with a group of Arcadians, the next I was blindfolded and shoved into a car with two sexy-sounding hotties.”

I rolled my eyes. The fact that he hadn't been caught doing drugs surprised me. Wasn't this camp for drug addicts?

“I'm here because I beat the shit out of an Ell Rollis,” Kitten said. “And I'm about to beat the shit out of a human boy.”

“Bring it on,” Bradley said.

Ell Rollis…I flipped through my mental files, but couldn't picture one. Sensing my confusion, Kitten said, “They're huge. Like two musclemen fused together—even the women are like that. And they don't have a nose. I think they breathe from their ears or something.” She purred low in her throat, as if her words delighted her. “Beating an Ell Rollis makes you an asskicker extraordinarie.”

To win against a creature like that, Kitten had to be gargantuan, but the Terans I'd seen had been lithe and small and graceful. So…the camp was for fighters and—in Bradley's case—perverts, as well as flyers. Not wanting to admit where I fell in that equation, I kept my mouth shut about
my
crimes.

Bradley chuckled, saying, “That's a fight I would have liked to have seen. I bet there was no pulling hair or biting.” He paused. “Wait, scratch that. Biting would have been good.”

I'd only known the boy a few minutes, but I kind of expected the comment from him. “I wonder what they'll do to us,” I said. “The camp people, I mean. Not the Ell Rollises.”

“Who knows?” Kitten shifted in her seat. “A few tolerance classes, anger management, probably. That kind of crap. My sister never told me about that part. Said she was sworn to secrecy.”

I'd endured enough of those types of classes in rehab.
Tell us your feelings, Phoenix. Visualize a meadow of happiness, Phoenix. Deep breath in and deep breath out, letting all of your negative energy out, Phoenix
. What a waste of time. What a nightmare.

Nothing was more boring.

The car suddenly twisted, pushing me to the left. I couldn't catch myself since my hands were locked behind my back and ended up sliding into a warm body.

“Oh yeah,” Bradley said. “Me likie likie. Feel free to stay like this.”

When he didn't try to palm my breasts, I knew beyond a doubt that he was banded like me and the pair hadn't been lying. I straightened with a muttered, “Perv.”

“No better way to be.”

“One day a girl is going to cut out your tongue,” Kitten told him.

“If she does it with her teeth, I'm surprisingly okay with that.”

I held back a laugh.

After that, time passed in silence for a long while. Without the distraction, my mind wandered. What was my mom doing right now? Would I ever see my house again? Already a wave of homesickness hit me.

Finally Kitten sighed. “This sucks.”

Yeah, it did. The waiting…the not knowing…. A few minutes later, the road became bumpy, jostling me up and down. “Where the hell are we?”

“The devil's playground, is my guess,” Kitten said. “Although the entire last year of my life has been spent in that area, so this must just be another section.”

“I'd say we're in heaven.” Bradley belted out a laugh, but it once again held a trace of trepidation. “I'm betting this camp is co-ed and life just doesn't get any better than that.”

“God save me from perverts,” I said, trying to keep the amusement from my voice.

Bradley just laughed again.

“You don't need God this time,” Kitten replied. “It'll be my pleasure to save you from Bradie boy.”

Bradley cleared his throat. “I'm really looking forward to your attempt,
Cat
.”

Kitten hissed again. “I warned you. You won't know when and you won't know where, but you'll pay for that.”

“Cat-y, cat, cat.”

I pressed my lips together to smother a chuckle. Thank the Lord I hadn't been shoved into this car alone. The battling pair had saved me from untold worry.

Unfortunately, a sharp turn, several more bumps, and a jarring stop later, we arrived at our destination. My stomach clenched, and I lost all hint of amusement, no longer able to keep the worry at bay.

“We're here,” Kitten said, sounding nervous.

“Yeah,” Bradley said, his voice broken.

We once again lapsed into silence, this one laden with heavy tension. My nerves sparked, a little raw. What was going to happen next?

The slide of a door sounded, then footsteps. Then…nothing. Wait. A rustle of wind, the sway of trees. The chirp of insects. My hands began to sweat. I wanted the hood and laserbands removed
now
! These feelings of helplessness and vulnerability were almost as terrible as being taken from home, from the only life I knew.

“All right, you three,” Roses said. I think he brushed his hands together in relish. “It's showtime.”

“What, you're going to make us sing and dance?” Kitten demanded.

“If you make the girls dance,” Bradley said, “can I take off my hood and watch?”

“We're not performing monkeys,” I muttered.

Roses laughed with genuine amusement. “You will be if I tell you to be.”

“We'll see about that,” I told him. “Maybe
you'll
be the one to dance.”

“Trouble,” Sweet Voice said. “Told you she'd be trouble. She's already back talking.”

Roses said, “This is what's going to happen, children. You'll be taken inside one at a time and led into a room where you will be interviewed. You will answer each question honestly.”