by L. B. Carter
Had she fallen asleep in Lindy’s truck? Something soft was under her cheek, and she smiled a little, remembering that Ace had pulled her against his chest, cradling her in his arms and legs for safety. When he said he needed her, she had assumed it was for ulterior, professional motives, but the more time she spent with him, the more she was starting to consider the possibility that he had a crush and was just too nerdy to express himself understandably.
She snuggled further down, the smile still playing across her mouth. She didn’t know what was ahead, so she’d enjoy this nap while she could. Ace was a lot more comfortable than she expected… and massive, fully encompassing her body.
“I know you’re awake. No point in pretending.”
Henley’s eyes heaved open, all contentment flashing away in a flood of horror as her memory caught up in a rush. The car was too quiet to be Lindy’s, her cushion not that of a truck bed. And though it was yet another male voice, it wasn’t Buster’s… or the Stanleys’.
She lifted an arm to push her hair from her face, only to hear a clank.
“Handcuffs,” Stew informed her placidly like he was commenting on the weather. Although, the weather these days tended to inspire a more dire tone.
She shifted around until she could sit, lifting her eyes to narrow on her driver. “I thought you said I could drive,” she quipped, her voice raw and warbling.
He remained fully fixated on the road where traffic was moving incredibly slowly, honks and shouts surrounding them. He indicated that he had heard her only with a twitch of his mouth. “They’re my mom’s,” the kid added, looking away to nod at her hands. “They use them at the hospital on patients who are disobedient or criminal.” His dark, almond eyes flicked her way again. “You are both of those things, one of which we’ve already covered.” He shook his head.
Her gaze fell to her hands. The glove had completely disintegrated in the proceedings of everything, so one pale peach and one black hand were linked like a Yin Yang, cuffed one on either side of the seatbelt that crossed her lap.
That was only semi-considerate. If Henley didn’t herself work with the material used for seat belts, she would be amused he hadn’t chosen something less flexible, like the door handle. That material was robust. It also kept her facing her kidnapper. She didn’t bother pulling; it would simply engage the autolock on the seatbelt and restrain her movements further.
She did confirm, however, with a twitch of each digit, that her hand had garnered enough charge at the store to retain activity.
“Nice prosthetic,” he complimented with some honesty. Then he went derisive again. “Looks like you stole more than one piece of BSTU property. I just don’t understand why you’d leave. Boston Science and Technology University—” He pronounced the full name with pride. “—is an honor to attend.”
Henley actually had agreed at one time. “Actually, it’s my own creation,” she contradicted, rankled that such a place was getting all the credit and reverence the kid was radiating. She was proud of her work; she deserved that admiration… even if it was partially inaccurate; the newest coating was BSTU property, according to that dang contract, though it was borne of her sweat and blood—no tears, at least.
“Do you attend?” He looked too young, and she couldn’t recall having ever seen him there though he was no Bus, taking up half of the hallway and demanding you notice him without the courtesy to return that favor.
He scowled. “Not yet.”
Right. Henley’s drug-addled brain recalled Jen saying he was going to. That’s why he sounded like Henley four years and eleven months ago. Heck, even a few months to years in, she had held that veneration toward the opportunity she’d been granted—one of a small percentage of the country after the academic system crashed.
“My admittance was conditional,” Stew mumbled.
“On what? Kidnapping me?” BSTU was more amoral than even Buster had alluded to with the reveal of the contract’s true nature.
He shook his head. “No. You’re replaceable for them and don’t matter to me. They can fetch you themselves if they’d like. I want what you’ve been smuggling across the country. She’s mine. She was my discovery. She was my ticket to a future.” He visibly forced himself to pause and relax, lowering the shoulders that had been creeping upward marginally and dropping his hands lower down on the steering wheel. He said, more in control, “I need Sirena.”
Sirena was right to guess Stalker Stew wouldn’t give up. Henley almost laughed at the mimicry of the statement with what Buster had been using as a reason for dragging Henley with him. It seemed, like her understanding of that statement when used on her the first time, that he wasn’t interested in Sirena for personal or romantic reasons. He was using her for scientific and career advancement.
“She’s a who not a what,” Henley reminded absently. At least he’d used her name, unlike Bus who, she’d noticed, called her: “the experiment.” “And she’s not a discovery, she was a planned product.”
“I discovered her when they lost her; I uncovered what she can do.” He sounded like a desperate, grabby child.
Stew really was a younger Henley except he hadn’t yet produced his equivalent of developing an entire working hand and presenting it to the admissions board. He’d lost his—lost Sirena.
Henley didn’t even need to imagine how devastating that would be right at the end; she too had hit some kinks: the first, when she realized they couldn’t afford the plane ticket—for which BSTU had increased her scholarship, generously, gaining even higher esteem in her mind; and the second when, working late one night, she had spilled her drink across the prototype, rendering the requirement of replacing several important parts and another week of all-nighters to get it done in time to present for that year’s application round. That’s what had inspired the design of its new exterior.
The difference between the Henley of five years ago and Stew was that, in Stew’s case, Sirena wasn’t easily replaceable with a few extra nights’ work. He had to follow this one.
“Look, it’s not what you think there. It appears wondrous, almost magical, what they accomplish—what they offer.” She shook her head, her hair shifting against her cheeks. “I promise you, that doesn’t last. It’s not their end-game.”
Stew scoffed. “Their end-game. I don’t care about the professors’ goals. It’s my project, my experiment, my career. They’re just a springboard.”
“Not the professors. BSTU themselves. The administration, the institution. They’re bad.” She winced at how ineffectively she was expounding upon what had taken her years to learn. Jen had been right when she said they sounded like a comic. “They won’t let you leave,” she blurted. “That’s why I had to run.”
“Fine by me,” he returned, rebuffing the dilemma. “Do you see this mess?” He waved a sweeping arm toward the windshield, gesturing to what lay in front of them.
Henley took the offer to observe how far he’d taken her. Kidnap rescue chances dropped considerably once the victim was brought to a secondary location. Water glinted to the right and again on the left, past the hood of another car and the roof of another several cars and past that even more cars, passing the other way at an equally lethargic crawl to their own.
A single bridge to connect the eastern and western halves of the nation with poverty and desolation in the middle? Henley could understand the congestion. It was already a feat that the bridge contained as many lanes as it did and still managed to be two hundred miles long. She wanted to meet those civil engineers. Secretly, she feared they might be more BSTU minions with this level of excellence.
“We did this—destroyed the Earth. The only thing to do now is adapt. Sirena is our chance to do that. I need her back.” The last sentence was spoken passionately through clenched teeth.
“You don’t think we should try amending our negative actions?” Henley was a little intrigued. Most either ignored the reality of human impact on the environment, blaming natural causes and fluctuations
, and others were like Nor and his brother, fighting to convince people to just recycle a little more, don’t litter, and consider alternative fuel.
The car they were in was definitely electric, given how quiet the motor was, taking into account the low RPM. Henley glanced at the dash. The screen was black, quiet, but it was impossible to know if Stew was playing tracker for BSTU via a more stealthy method.
“It’s too late now,” Stew answered. “Geologic feedbacks can’t handle the rapidity of the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere; the compensation works on much longer timescales than humans and their pollution output.”
Henley’s mouth dropped into a thoughtful frown. “What kind of feedbacks?” She didn’t know there were any. The other problem with getting a ‘terminal’ degree was that it was very niche. You became an expert in your field and in so doing, abandoned all other areas of learning; Henley’s knowledge was limited to electricity, robotics, material science, and the like; Buster lived in the math and computer part of his brain; Jen in climate and geology. Presumably, this kid was all biology and genetics and anatomy. Yet he was talking about climate. “How do you—?”
The whoop-whoop of a siren cut through the sentence, potentially answering Henley’s questions about the tracker. She whipped around, trying to see where it was coming from, jerking on her restraint, breath coming fast and short.
“It’s going the other way. Calm down. You’re going to hyperventilate.”
The dang kid was right on all counts. The SUV, lights flashing, wove between the cars on the other side, darting past them toward where the bridge met land—where she’d last seen her friends.
Were they friends now? Not accomplices?
Henley’s vision swooped, too much oxygen over-saturating her system.
“Head between your knees,” Stew commanded her, sounding more like a whiny teen annoyed at his mom for doing something embarrassing in front of his friends than a kidnapper ordering his victim around—or even her mentor or Bus, for that matter, telling her what was expected from her.
Awkwardly, she dropped her forehead between her legging-clad knees, hair flowing down her shins, with her right arm awkwardly pressing into her stomach, still trapped in the seatbelt and linked to her left wrist. Though she detested following his suggestion on principle, she needed to remain conscious. Bare toes curled into the fabric of the floor mat. Henley closed her eyes and slowed down her breaths, taking deliberate and extended inhales and exhales.
Her mind didn’t slow. Did the police’s inaction toward her predicament dictate that they were not, in fact, in collaboration with BSTU as her crew had feared? Or was there simply something else more drastic that required the police’s attention, and they entrusted Stew with the task of collecting her and her group, and therefore, Bus had been right to avoid the authorities?
She was still bent over when there was a sudden squeal of tires on cement and a loud metallic crunch. Her body jerked, lurching forward, almost going bum over head. Her back rammed into the console until her body had caught up with the sudden arrest of their forward momentum, and her butt returned to the seat.
The kid swore, the word comical in his barely-adult voice.
“Wha—?”
Before she could sit up properly, the kid had floored it, sending her careening sideways toward the driver in a tangle of seat belt and limbs and unkempt hair, still locked up as she was. As predicted, the strap halted and refused to budge, almost strangling her where she hung in the gap between their two seats.
Had the police come back around and they were actually rescuing her?
The number of jolts from each direction, that sent her trapped body swinging a little closer to Stew and then back toward her own seat where her butt still rested, indicated that there were some obstacles in the way of Stew’s escape route. The associated shattering and smashing noises said he was glancing off people’s cars, pushing their way through the traffic.
“Can you…?” Henley pushed out through restrained lungs, the strap tight around her chest and the upper part of it crossing her throat.
Stew huffed an irritated breath at the distraction but pushed her back into her seat with one hand while weaving madly with the other.
She fell against the door as he veered. “Thank you,” Henley said and immediately felt ridiculous. He was her kidnapper; Sirena’s wanna-be kidnapper.
She craned around in the seat, trying to see out the rear-window, but nothing stood out to her. Had they lost the cop car?
Another, louder, more proximal screech of tires sent Henley jerking backward, the seatbelt catching her in a cocoon, and her head snapping backward with a painful whip.
“What?” Speaking in tandem, Henley had the same question though hers was more confused. Stew’s dripped incredulity and annoyance.
Wriggling back to face front, she spied what had stopped them.
A large, black car was parked perpendicular to their lane, barricading them from exiting the bridge. Henley had been asleep—or drugged as it were—longer than she realized. A lanky platinum blond woman stood in front of the SUV, several meters directly ahead of their hood, feet braced shoulder-width apart and hands on her hips, staring right at them.
“Jen—?” Excitement replaced the fear. The crew had caught up to save Henley. Well, with Reed’s jeep, she suspected that wasn’t hard. Wait, had they picked up Bus and Nor and Sirena, too? She hoped for Sirena’s sake they hadn’t. Henley looked around for the others.
The other lane was snaking slowly through the gap left in front of the SUV’s hood with the approval of a group of people in suits, who were stopping and inspecting each one it seemed, though they abandoned that to turn and stare at Stew’s sudden and dramatic arrival.
“Professor Tate,” Stew spat and slammed his hands down on the wheel in rage as Henley suddenly felt a lot colder than the air seeping into the car.
Henley turned back, noticing that behind the strong stance of the woman who had passed along her resemblance to her daughter, the road wound away into a forest, trees with chestnut bark laced delicately over thick trunks wider than seemed possible, thrusting up into the sky.
Henley had made it home. So close and yet so far. Buster was supposed to bring her here and to her family, not Jen’s. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
◆◆◆
Henley had barely a chance to admire the beauty of the scenery before the BSTU suits headed toward their SUV, and Stew tried to reverse, immediately smashing into the unlucky traffic jam behind.
He swore again then flung open his door and grabbed for her handcuffs, attempting to drag Henley with him as he dropped down onto the ground.
The seat belt tightened like a noose again, bulging her eyes. The kid gave an aggravated half-moan, half-growl and stepped back up onto the edge of the car to lean across the driver seat and untangle her, clicking the seatbelt free.
Unfortunately, in his haste, he forgot that with her hands were linked around it. The attempt to liberate her actually just pulled her body from him when the released seatbelt simply slid past her face as it returned to its resting place against the door frame, pressing up the middle of her chest.
He climbed into the SUV but not before one of the BSTU squad had made it to her passenger door.
Thus, Henley became the rope in a game of tug of war—except in this case, the rope was also knotted, latched to itself as it were, so the strain was just on her elbows.
Thankfully, the competition was unbalanced and the game short, Henley being wrenched from the car and Stew’s slippery grip, as she ended up back against the man’s chest next to the bridge’s railing, still lassoed to the car. For a moment, the position was again reminiscent of when Buster had been her seat belt; this man was equally huge and silent, his massive hands enveloping her upper arm and—
The other came around, loosely sliding over her windpipe. Henley’s blood rushed to her bare feet.
“Unlock her, or else.”
Henley glanc
ed over at the woman, whose cold, unfeeling tone was nothing like Jen’s passionate one and almost an octave higher, making the threat a little less impactful. Henley wasn’t sure the threat was all that wise in the first place; Stew didn’t care for Henley’s life any more than BSTU did. The two were after the same goal: they needed Henley to lead them to Sirena.
“You won’t kill me,” Stew said, uncertainly.
Ah, another BSTU-er had Stew in the same hold as Henley on the other side of the car, except some kind of taser was held to his chest instead of a hand to the throat. She could see him nervously swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing from over the car seats, the interior alarm softly dinging a reminder that both doors were still open while the keys remained in the ignition.
Henley agreed with his statement; the taser wouldn’t kill him. With how high his chin was being held in defiance, it was likely he hadn’t recognized that the weapon wasn’t a gun.
So BSTU wasn’t quite so amoral. The guy behind her could easily asphyxiate her until she passed out rather than fully murdering her or do nothing but hint at choking.
The woman decided to play to Stew’s mistake. “Won’t I?”
“Professor Hutchinson will be—”
“Professor Hutchinson was the one who told me where you’d gone.”
Stew’s mouth opened and closed, aghast. “He wouldn’t betray me. I’m his—”
“Protégé? He says that to every prospective student, enticing them to do some project for his bidding. They’re usually duds.”
“Sirena isn’t—”
“Sirena is mine. The only reason BSTU thinks your idol is worth keeping is because of his work with me. I convince them. But she was my idea. My baby. I raised her.”
“Until you lost her. I found her!” He was too far away to really confirm, but Henley was sure Stew was sweating profusely now, his voice full of a heady mix of desperation and zeal.
The woman shifted to cross her arms. “And who’s lost her now, hmm?”
