The Modified (The Biotics Trilogy, #1) (35 page)
Read The Modified (The Biotics Trilogy, #1) Online
Authors: C.A. Kunz
Lately, the thing I liked best about this deer gig was how
somewhere
else
it made me feel. With the sky over my head and the grass crunching under my boots, I could be anywhere. Add a book to the equation, and I wasn’t Milo Mitchell, girl pianist, airheaded over-thinker, tenth-grade chemistry straggler, secret wallflower, lover of anime. I was Catherine. Well… maybe someone slightly less insane. Daisy Buchanan? Okay, someone moderately less shallow. Haruhi Suzumiya.
Made-up (and insane!) though they were, those people knew what they were about. Knew what they wanted. Whereas me… I got my kicks sedating mule deer.
I pointed myself left, toward the mountains, and picked up my pace for the last half-mile to the pine grove. There was a bluff oak right at the front of the grove, beside a big pancake-looking boulder; next to the skinny evergreens, it resembled a pom-pom in mid-cheer.
When I was growing up, this had been my dad’s favorite spot. He and mom had come to Colorado to build the turbines—Mitchell Wind Turbines, his own patented design—but his real passion was outdoors stuff. As a little girl, I’d gone tromping through the fields and scaling cliffs with him. He’d taken me to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Death Valley and Yosemite, but he’d really loved to take me to the bluff oak.
“It’s an anomaly,” I could hear him say. “Supposed to be down South. Not out here with all the firs.”
And yet, it was.
I walked under its limbs and stared down at the etched stone marker:
Faulkner Dursey Mitchell
1964-2010
And then, under that, in tiny, sharp-edged caps:
IN WILDERNESS, THE PRESERVATION
OF THE WORLD
I didn’t like the marker, though I knew my dad had chosen it. In his absence, I’d grown irritated with the message. Preservation. What a stupid concept. My father wasn’t preserved under the headstone. He was gone, and he was becoming more and more gone all the time.
Still, that didn’t stop me from my pilgrimage. Since that awful day almost two years ago, I’d visited the marker and the bluff oak often. Actually, I’d treated this place like Mecca until two months ago.
It had been the first Saturday after school had started. S.K. spent the night but left early the next morning for her first date with Ami. Halah was at a cheer retreat, and Bree was…somewhere. I don’t remember.
I’d left at the same time as S.K., and by the time I got to the pancake boulder I was falling asleep on my feet. I took a nap—the boulder was that flat—but maybe an hour later, I was jerked awake.
I felt like someone was over me—I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck. I rolled off the rock and jumped to my feet, ready to bolt. But no one was there. I ducked a second later, because I felt it again, and then I yelped. A needle pricked where my head met my neck, and the pain was inside my
brain
.
The terrifying thing was, it felt invasive. Like someone was reading my diary—while I stood naked in front of my class.
I left immediately, and spent the walk home freaking out. But I found my way back the next day. And felt the same thing. It wasn’t as sudden, or as potent, but the feeling, like I was being
measured
, was still there.
And it was there Wednesday, when I went back after half a week: that stripped-down-to-the-cells, stuck-under-a-microscope, known-inside-and-out, freaky deaky looked-through feeling. Was I hallucinating? The last thing I needed was another mental health issue to deal with. Obviously, I needed to find another way to feel close to Dad.
After a lot of working myself up to it, I called the Department of Conservation and Wildlife, posed as my mother, and got permission to continue Dad’s mule deer tracking project.
I had all his old folders, stuffed with diagrams and data, so it hadn’t been hard to figure out who was who among the herd. After that, it was just a matter of coming out on Saturdays and tagging them.
It was easy to shoot the sedative gun, bring the deer down, and snap a bracelet over their hard, dark hooves. I spent my weeknights, after studying, watching the gob of blinking lights move across my laptop screen. I knew where they slept and where they roamed. I knew where they went mid-afternoon: the creek.
I made my way over to it now, crunching over fallen leaves from the seasonal trees that blazed orange, yellow, and red between the firs.
I heard the creek before I saw it, a gentle tinkling like a bowl of glass marbles pouring out. The smell of dirt and pine filled my nose and throat. The cold air whipped my cheeks. The sunlight swirled in spirals over the leaf-strewn bank. I thought about
Gatsby
and felt a dorky burst of excitement. I was right at the start of Chapter 9—the last chapter. I’d gone through the book too fast.
Reading the end made me feel either bursting full or empty. I walked faster, hoping this would be a day that I could enjoy the story without letting it gnaw at me. Otherwise it was going to be a long afternoon.
The tree house hung above a bend in the creek. Dad and I selected the strongest tree for its base: a horse-chestnut on the opposite bank. To get to it—if I didn’t want to wade through chilly, waist-deep water—I had to climb a spiral staircase around a buckeye tree and sway across the rope-and-board bridge we made the summer after second grade.
The wooden stair rails were cold, even through my gloves. I slid my palms over the ropes and crossed the sanded cedar planks. Waiting for me on the other side, the tree house was a thatch-roofed dome attached to the chestnut’s trunk by beams that angled peaceably through its branches.
I pushed through the small door, surprised, as always, by how pretty it was here. The walls were warm cedar, and my Dad had built a bench that wrapped around the circular room. We used to get new cushions every year, but the green and red plaid we’d put out two Christmases ago would probably stay until the years ate through them. I had no plans to replace them.
I found my binoculars in the box where I’d left them, along with a blanket, a tin tub of almonds, and a little pile of air-activated hand-warmers.
I sat my pack down, grabbed the binoculars, and shed my gloves. Much as I wanted to stay warm, I couldn’t fire the darts with padded fingers.
I gave myself a few minutes inside the house, designed with small gaps in the floor for circulation, but no windows (to hold heat in). Then I stepped back onto the bridge and sat with my back against the door. My gaze roved the forest, stopping at stray branches, odd-shaped stumps—anything that remotely resembled deer. Too early. I’d spotted them this morning near Mr. Suxley’s woods, where they sometimes bedded down. It would take a little while for them to reach the creek.
I read. Nick Carraway, meeting up with Tom downtown. Leaving the West Egg. I sipped warm water from a metal thermos and tried not to think about my hunger, which couldn’t be satiated in nose-range of the deer. The sun climbed higher, raining a kaleidoscope of golden light over Dad’s bulky suede jacket and my camo pants. As I read, my hair sparkled in my periphery, a blanket of glossy brown, with red highlights glinting in the sun. I blew into my balled-up hands. Applied a scentless beeswax chapstick.
I couldn’t warm up. I cursed, Klingon swear words S.K. and I had looked up in sixth grade. Tracking deer was a terrible idea. I could be playing paintball.
I flipped to my favorite scene.
“Gatsby believed in that green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the—”
I heard a loud crunch, and my eyes leapt from the page. Blitzen! The herd’s largest male had a star-shaped scar across his shoulder and a weathered coat. He stood by a holly bush ten or fifteen yards away, sniffing the air, his nostrils snorting out puffs of steam. Right behind him was Madonna, the alpha female, and then Brutus, a younger male who sometimes challenged Blitzen. Soon they were all there, including little Ashlyn, one of the youngest fawns, and my target.
Crap!
I should’ve been crouching, but I hadn’t expected them until closer to four. Since there was no way I could sight Ashlyn—or any of them—from my spot flat on my butt, I stood slowly and ducked through the bridge’s two rail-ropes, rising into a sort of squirrel-eating-nut position, with my arms up near my face and my feet balancing on the edge of the cedar planks. A lesser woodswoman might have fallen, or scared the deer, but I’d been doing this for years.
My fingers folded, steady, around the handle of the gun. I leaned my head down, peering through the sight. A breeze rocked the bridge; the rope above my head brushed against the top of my hair. My body felt pinched. Stiff. And then, finally, I had her. Ashlyn side-stepped, her small flank bumping into teenage Aiden’s long, strong throat. Aiden strode forward, and there!
In the moment that the dart shot out, I felt a rush of pure elation. As it sailed toward little Ashlyn, I watched the frozen herd, processing the milliseconds till the dart would hit, Ashlyn would fall, the rest would bolt.
But that’s not how it happened.
As my breath puffed out, creating a pale cloud that lent the scene a gauzy haze, I felt a bite of what could only be described as shock. My limbs and torso locked; my lungs went still. There was a flash of golden light, like a solar flare, except for one protracted second it was all there was. All there ever would be.
Then it receded, twisting the trees’ shadows, mangling the forest floor. The creek spilled forth on fast forward. My blood boomed like a gunshot in my ears.
I searched for Ashlyn’s body, but she wasn’t there. A boy was.
Contents
Chapter Two - The Shrouded Facility
Chapter Three - The Escadrille
Chapter Five - Becoming Acclimated
Chapter Seven - Defensive Measures
Chapter Eight - Strategic Maneuvers
Chapter Nine - Division Assignment
Chapter Ten - Final Assessment
Chapter Eleven - The Magnus Ball
Chapter Twelve - The Fortification Division
Chapter Thirteen - The Takeover
