The Almost Girl – ebook edition (15 page)

“Shae? What are you doing?” I whisper furiously into the dark. “We need to stay together. You’re hurt and you need me. Shae! Where are you?”

I’m still inching along when I sense the shift in the air and I swing around into a crouched stance, protecting my body instinctively with my forearms. The cold tip of an electro-rod presses against the soft spot just beneath my ear, and my body freezes. I forgot how quiet Shae can be, catching me unawares for years during training when we were little. I gnash my teeth in frustration. Her voice in my ear is soft with bittersweet notes of regret.

“I’m sorry, Riv. I can’t let you take him. Don’t try to find us.”

“Shae, don’t–”

“And I’m sorry for this, too.”

I feel a sharp zap against my skin, and then the darkness blinds me.

 

 

THE PREY

 

Lights blink in and out. Warm sun flickers against my eyelids. I can hear someone laughing, and I turn toward the voice from where I’m lying, hefting myself onto my elbows. Lights flash again, this time like popping light bulbs exploding behind my eyelids, as a searing pain lances through my shoulder.

Coughing, I taste burnt blood.

It all comes back to me in a rush. Caden, the Vectors, the dark tunnel… Shae. There is no sunlight, no laughter. Instead, I’m breathing in the rank, dusty air of the tunnel where my sister has left me. Pulling myself to my knees, I’m still groggy from the electro-shock. Obviously, Shae had set it to stun, but it still hurts something fierce.

Gingerly, I touch the welt along the side of my neck and wince. She’s been generous; this stun is more or less mild. I would have taken out an enemy – even if it were my sister – without a second thought. Those rods have a kill setting that could liquefy the insides of anything human, and melt the internal wiring of anything not human. But even so, one of the stun settings could knock a live person out for days at a time.

I look at my watch quickly, noting that I’ve only been out for a few hours. A quick check of my body, other than the welt on my neck and a cut on my lip from where I’d fallen, tells me that I’m otherwise unhurt. My pack lies off to the side, hanging drunkenly off one arm, and I hoist it onto my lap. They haven’t touched it. My blades are still snug against my back under my jacket. At least Shae hasn’t left me with nothing to protect myself, even though I wouldn’t have done the same.

I haul myself up against the wall and stand, trying to get my bearings and ignoring the dizziness that threatens to make my knees buckle.

“Get a grip, Riven,” I snarl to myself. “It’s not like you’ve never been on the wrong end of an electro-rod before.”

Grabbing my pack, I remove the first-aid kit and pour some cold liquid from a slim bottle onto a piece of gauze, careful not to let it touch my fingers. I dab it onto my neck, a shiver snaking through me as an icy sensation immediately dulls the raw ache of the welt. The liquid anesthetic hardens into a thin, flexible shell over the sore area, its under-layer seeping into my skin to deaden raw nerve endings and rebuild cells. Within seconds, the pain is gone, and within an hour I know my neck will be as good as new.

Normally, I’d just leave my wounds to heal on their own, but now I have no time to lose. The cell-regeneration remedy is yet another of my father’s inventions… and one that I’d steadfastly refused to use. Using anything of his makes me sick to my stomach, but now it’s a necessity to find Caden quickly. It’s a brutal reminder of what is at stake – I can’t let my hatred for my father affect my decisions and actions now.

Pocketing the bottle, I try to reorient myself. I shine my flashlight down one end of the tunnel, and it’s soon swallowed up by the blackness. I do the same down the other end. Eyesight isn’t going to help me, so I close my eyes, engaging my other senses and letting the flow of the stale air in the tunnel waft around me. The changes are subtle, but they’re there – the ones that tell me which direction has more movement in the airflow.

Without hesitation, I sprint down the tunnel on confident feet. Recalling the treacherous, veiny patchwork of the tunnel map, I know I can get lost with a single wrong turn, so I’m careful not to veer off the pathway. If I can make my way back to the place where the tunnels fork into three, I’ll be able to figure out which way they’ve gone and track them from there.

I run past several other tunnels and alcoves that I haven’t noticed before, refusing to let any fear enter my mind. But it does, inexorably. And I know I’ve made the wrong choice.

Just backtrack,
I tell myself silently.
Follow your feet, and trust your instincts
.

I can hardly help the next thought that follows that one – as my instincts had told me to trust Shae? But they hadn’t; my emotions had. I grit my teeth and press on, clearing my mind of any thought but getting to the end of the tunnel. And within minutes, I do.

Only it’s a dead end.

I punch my fist into the wall and a shower of pebbles scatters at my feet. How could I have missed a turn? I stayed straight, didn’t I? Could I have missed it somewhere?

Think!
I urge myself. I retrace the path in my head, then backtrack about half a mile before I see it – a barely discernable twist in the path. I had veered in the wrong direction into what was now clearly an offshoot from the main tunnel. I take a deep breath to calm my racing nerves. Things could be far worse. I could have ended up running in circles or gotten even more lost.

Back on the right track, it’s no time at all before I am in the area with the four tunnels – the one that we’d come from, and the three we’d chosen between. Squatting down, I notice faint scuffmarks in the dirt in front of the tunnel on the far left. A slight color change in the ground suggests that this tunnel has been used more than the others. I check my watch. Shae and Caden are probably near the other end, if not out already, but the window of opportunity isn’t completely closed for me to track them. Still, I have to move, and fast.

I’m just about to enter the leftmost tunnel when something stops me dead in my tracks – the sound of something heavy moving, something coming from behind me… something big. The hairs on the back of my neck stand at stiff attention, because I know that it can’t be Caden and Shae. They would never have gone back.

It has to be Vectors. They’ve found us. Or more precisely, found me.

I deliberate between making a beeline down the tunnel and facing them head-on. But I have no idea how many they are. For a second, my body feels like it is splitting down the middle with equal urges to fight and flee pulling me in opposite directions. It’s not in my nature to run, but fighting an unknown number of Vectors in such an enclosed space will not be to my advantage, despite my skills.

I decide to wedge myself into one of the many alcoves lining the walls of the cave. I’ll get some idea of their numbers and assess potential attack options. And, at the very least, their tracking technology is far better than mine, and we are looking for the same thing.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend
.

Not that I’ll ever align myself with Vectors, but I will use them however I need to, and then get rid of them when I don’t. Hoisting myself up the cave wall, I find a recessed nook and crawl inside to wait, pressing my body back into the dark space until rocks are digging painfully into my flesh.

My eyes adjust slowly to the muted dark of the outer cave. I’ve covered my scuffmarks in the dirt and sprinkled myself with anti-tracking dust from the bottom of my pack. They probably aren’t even looking for me, but I have to play it safe on the off chance that they are. My father has his own reasons for wanting me back in Neospes.

It isn’t long before they enter the big cave: three of them, with one a familiar face, the ruthless commander from before. My teeth clench. The smell of them hits me like a rolling wave, the pungent scent of formaldehyde. Even though I’m used to it, it’s something that automatically raises the hairs on my whole body. In Neospes, we cremate our dead, except for the Vector soldiers, who are put through an unnatural rigorous embalming-like process. They carry the smell of death like armor.

Halogen lights on their uniforms illuminate the cave. I watch the commander carefully. It was a tough fight earlier, and its ability to speak had been unnerving. I can’t help noticing that its bullet-ridden body has been completely repaired in a matter of hours. It’s nothing for our reconstructive technology – the technological differences between my world and this one are like night and day. But then my mind flashes back to the abundance of water in this world and extravagances like Caden’s waterbed. Limitless water over advanced robotics is a no-brainer. So is a world without creatures like these, without the Vectors.

With inhuman stealth, the Vectors move purposefully, examining the ground in front of the three tunnels. The big one turns to study the rest of the cave, and I imagine his eyes slowing and stopping at my alcove. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears and the shakiness of my breath in the dead silence. I’m barely breathing, and even though I know he can’t possibly see me, for a split second, it feels like our eyes connect. Adrenaline rushes through my bloodstream, but then the moment is gone as he turns back to his subordinates, pressing a series of buttons on the wrist-pad of his suit to initiate the tracking device.

“Two trails,” he says. His voice is guttural, and as before, it chills me to the bone.

A red light streams from his wrist as it scans the entrances to both tunnels. Yellow markings spin through the red, more on the right than the left: heat readings. The commander moves over to that tunnel pressing another series of buttons, and the light switches to a pale laser-like blue. A long noise bleeps on his console, loud in the silence and almost making me jump.

“The tracks return,” he growls and studies the device before stepping over to the far left tunnel to repeat the sequence. This time there are three short beeps, and he nods, satisfied. “The boy went this way. Move out,” he commands.

The other two nod and immediately obey, disappearing into the tunnel. For a moment, the Vector commander turns around and re-scans the room. His gaze doesn’t stop at my hiding place this time, but I can feel his suspicion, and this, too, is unlike the traditional programming of the Vectors. They operate by computer rules and programming algorithms, not instinct. Can he somehow sense me? He punches another sequence of numbers into the wrist-pad, different from the ones he used before. Unconsciously, I press myself deeper against the wall and ignore the searing slice of stone against my skin.

My heart jumps into my throat as he flashes the same blue tracker in a slow clockwise circle. I can only hope that the anti-tracker dust will do its job. As the blue light filters into my cave, I can see the analysis data in the light discoloring its surface, and I hold my breath. These scanners are built to analyze individual scent – yet another advanced biometric profile weapon incorporated into the suits – almost like electronic sniffer dogs. Terrified, I wait for the beeps that will surely come if he’s looking for me, but there’s no sound.

The light moves past my cave, but I don’t exhale until the Vector Commander has completed his scan and followed the other two into the tunnel. My muscles remain clenched until enough time has passed by, when I scramble out of my cramped hiding space. It takes only a couple minutes for my blood to recirculate through my body, but I am already moving, digging through the bottom of my pack and locating the infrared glasses I couldn’t find earlier. There’s no way I can see in the dark or use the penlight – they’ll see me coming from a mile away.

I head into the tunnel, walking as quickly as I dare. I am tracking on scent alone, the unique smell of their dead flesh wafting on the stale air in the tunnel. The sharp odor of it makes me remember the first time I saw one of them.

It’d been during a time when my whole family was still together – my father, my mother, Shae, and I – a time before betrayal and lies ripped us apart. At only six, and one of the youngest recruits, I’d been released from training early and called to my father’s underground experimental lab. At the time, he was the head scientist in the advanced robotics and genetic testing facility, and already navigating the waters of reanimating the dead with cyborg technology.

Using my unrestricted passkey – being his daughter had its privileges – I found him on one of the lower levels in one of the test labs. Unnoticed in a corner of the outer office, I stared fascinated through the glass wall into the room beyond where my father had just finished decontaminating a corpse on a long silver table. Decontamination, my father once explained to me, meant getting rid of all internal bodily fluid and unnecessary organs, and preserving the remaining husk and heart with an electro-chemical solution.

“It’s all biological,” he said to me. “The body is a capable host, even though it’s no longer alive. With the nanoplasm, we can use and program these shells to operate almost as well as a fully functioning
live
person would. And they would make even better soldiers, as there’s no emotion, just programming.” He paused then to look at me with dark, narrowed eyes. “And the beauty of them is that they’re expendable. One command, and the nanoplasm shuts down. No loss, nothing compromised. Think of it as a type of recycling.”

“How do they go to the bathroom?” my perfectly logical, then six year-old self asked in all seriousness. My father smiled widely and lifted me onto his desk.

“Smart question,” he answered. “The simple answer is that they don’t. We remove all the parts that we don’t need, like the kidneys or the liver or the stomach. We keep the heart because it moves the nanoplasm around the body, and we keep part of the brain and spinal cord to process the information we give it.”

“What makes it go, then? Like how does it work? What do they eat?” I cocked my head and frowned. “It’s not a
robot
, is it?” Even then I couldn’t keep the trepidation out of my voice, having learned about our violent history in my civilization lessons. The Tech War had obliterated our world, leaving the sparse little we had now as a harsh lesson of the perils of artificial intelligence.