by Tania Hutley
Grabbing a scalpel from the doctor’s tray of instruments, I turn to my beautiful leopard.
The straps are so thick around its body, I don’t know how long it will take to cut them off. Frantically, I start sawing. Once it’s free, I can become the leopard and carry my human body out of here. It can dangle from my jaws.
There’s a noise from a long distance away, only audible because my hearing is sharper than it should be. Boots are pounding down the hallway. Stompers’ boots, getting closer. At least four stompers. No, six.
Of course, there must be cameras in here. They saw me get loose. And I don’t have time to get my leopard free before they’ll burst in here.
Shit.
I hesitate for several precious seconds, staring at my leopard, my hand in its fur, desperate to find a way out of this without leaving it behind.
The boots are getting closer.
No time.
Sobbing with frustration, I slam out of the lab room, turning away from the oncoming stompers. A hallway stretches out in front of me. I have no idea where I am. All I can do is run. My legs pump hard as I fly down the corridor. My feet are bare and all I have on is a hospital smock. Still, I’m faster than the stompers. Not nearly as fast as my leopard—
I push the yearning for my Leopard Skin away. No time for regrets now. If I make it out of here alive, I can figure out a way to get my leopard back.
The thumping of the stompers’ boots gets more distant as I race past more lab rooms, most with glass doors. Inside, I catch glimpses of terrible things. An ugly dog creature the size of a horse. A metal animal skeleton with a human face that turns to look at me as I run past. What looks like a human heart in a jar. It’s pumping, and wires snaking out of it connect to a pair of hair-covered legs.
The lab rooms are filled with doctors or technicians wearing white coats. I even push past some doctors in the hallway, but they’re too startled to try to stop me.
Sliding around a corner, there are windows in front of me. The ground looms far below. I’m too high up to jump, even if I could get the window open. I must be inside the Morelle scraper, higher than I’ve ever been, on a much higher floor than when I stayed here.
From up here I can see the streets of New Triton laid out in neat rectangular shapes. Through the holes in the center of the rectangles, Old Triton looks dark. A buried city. And there’s the wall between Deiterra and Triton. I’ve never seen it so clearly, but I don’t have time for more than a glance before I turn away. The stompers will be on me in no time.
A blinding flash of light from the window makes me duck. BOOM! The sound is so loud, it rocks the building. I brace my feet against the shaking, and hear glass crash in a nearby lab room.
Somewhere on this floor, people start screaming. Straightening, I see thick black smoke pouring from a nearby scraper. What the hell? Could a bomb have gone off in New Triton?
Was it the Fist? No, it couldn’t be. That was a massive explosion. The Fist can’t possibly have bombs that size.
Sirens shriek, and I clap my hands over my ears. Men and women in white coats pour out of lab rooms, hurrying toward a door marked with green.
I stare, perplexed, as they file through it. Beyond, I catch a glimpse of a stairwell. Is that the exit?
Making a snap decision, I rush for it, overtaking workers as I hurtle through the door. I run down the stairs, shoving through white-coated workers. Some are babbling about a Deiterran attack, but surely that has to be speculation.
More people are pouring into the stairwell from lower floors, filling the staircase and making it difficult to push my way through.
I could easily get trapped in here.
The next door I get to has the number 25 on it, so I must be on the twenty-fifth floor. Struggling down that many flights of stairs through all these people will take too long. Long enough for stompers to be waiting for me at the bottom.
A bunch of workers are streaming through the door, joining all the others descending the stairwell. I shove against the tide, working my way through them. They shout and protest, but I push with my head down and manage to struggle out the door.
The hallway on this floor is similar to the one above, with more lab rooms coming off it. But at the end of the hall, I spot a sliding glass door leading out to a balcony. I run and tear the door open. Outside on the balcony, I can smell smoke from the burning building, and hear the wails of fire engines, competing with the alarm still sounding inside the Morelle scraper. Flames lick the side of the scraper the explosion came from.
The wind whips up my hair and the hospital gown as I lean over the chest-high rail, peering down.
The ground is so far away, it makes my legs weak. But below me, on the next floor down, is another small balcony. And below that, another one. There are no balconies above me, so this must be the highest floor that has one. But from this floor down, there’s one on every level.
Even as I climb over the rail, I’m afraid I’m making a terrible mistake. It’s a long drop to the balcony below, and it’ll be tricky to land inside the balcony rail. If I miss, I’ll fall twenty-five floors, and bits of me will splatter all over the street.
If I still felt completely human, I wouldn’t even attempt it.
Taking a deep breath, my heart thumping, I lower myself over the side of the balcony. I dangle for a moment, then drop, twisting my body toward the building as I fall.
I land as well as I could have hoped for, though the force of the drop jars through my bare feet. But there’s no time to celebrate. I have twenty-four more balcony jumps to survive.
By the time I’m at the last balcony, looking down to street level, an ever-increasing crowd throngs the sidewalk. Seems like the entire population of New Triton is standing outside, gaping at the building that’s on fire.
A few are staring and pointing at me. They must have spotted me dropping from balcony to balcony. But there’s no sign of stompers, or of the director’s red-uniformed guards.
As I dangle from the last balcony, I crane my neck, peering down to see the people below pushing and scrambling to get out of my way. I drop onto the sidewalk, conscious of how strange I must look to them in just a hospital gown, with my hair blowing messily around a face that looks nothing like theirs.
But the thick crowd is a blessing. I can disappear into the throng.
Dashing through them, I keep my head down. My blood is pumping, and I know I can run faster than I used to.
A big guy just ahead is holding a raincoat. I come up behind him, jerk it out of his hand and take off. He shouts and tries to come after me, but I lose him easily.
The coat’s so big, it hangs to my thighs and covers my hands. Good. I pull the hood up so it flops over my eyes and hides my face.
On the other side of the street is a glass barrier. It’s there to stop people accidentally falling into Old Triton. But that’s exactly where I want to go. Though I’ve already dropped twenty-five stories, I have another twenty-eight to descend.
Climbing over the barrier, I find a foothold underneath the street. Thick metal beams hold up the road, and below the beams is a building. Old Triton is twenty-eight stories high, and almost all of our buildings are exactly that tall. Every inch of Old Triton’s space is used. Our city is overcrowded, dirty, and dark.
Perfect for hiding in.
The side of this Old Triton building is brick. There’s a fire escape a little way along, and I inch across, hanging on to the metal beam that holds up the New Triton street, until I’m above the fire escape. I should be used to dropping from heights by now, but this fall is the scariest one yet.
Heart racing, I let go of the beam and drop. I grab hold of the top of the fire escape, cutting my hands on the rusty metal. Then all I need to do is climb down the ladder.
Once I’m finally at ground level, the Old Triton gloom feels like a comforting blanket that wraps around me to hide me and keep me safe. I take off down an alley that leads to exactly the kind of place I need, a long und
erpass where a solid section of New Triton stretches overhead in all directions, turning the dimness into pitch black.
From the buildings around me, faint lights shine half-heartedly out of grimy windows. A few weeks ago they would have been barely bright enough to guide me, but now my night vision’s sharp and I move fast, sure of every step. I’ve spent my whole life in Old Triton, in darkness. This is my arena.
I can hear the tiniest sounds, detect even the faintest scents. In one apartment, an old man is frying food with the window open, and his sweat stinks even more than the charred meal. He calls to a woman, but I can hear her snoring. Next door, canned laughter comes from a holo. Above them, a mother shouts at a child. Washing lines are strung from windows, the clothes stinking of damp, of never drying completely. These people live too close and work too hard. They’re people of darkness. My people.
We’ve let ourselves be pushed down for far too long.
In a boarded-up doorway, I find a place to catch my breath. I sit with my back against the boards, waiting for night to fall and for New Triton to get as dark as it is down here before I go back up there.
From the moment I walked through her door, an impostor wearing a stolen band, Director Morelle must have known she could use me however she wanted. I was her private science experiment. Cale too, probably. No wonder she didn’t stop us training at night. Much better to watch and see what happened. Easy enough to get rid of us afterward.
But without knowing it, she gave me exactly what I needed. I don’t know how I have the leopard’s abilities, but maybe it’s because I refused to give them up.
For the first time in my life, I’m strong.
The only question is, what am I going to do with what I’ve gained?
For too many years I’ve let myself, and the people I love, be pushed around. We’ve been bullied, relocated, assaulted, and beaten. I’ve let everyone I care about be taken away.
No more.
Curling my hand into a fist, I clench it hard. It’s time to stop being a victim. I’m going to fight back, and I know exactly what I want. I’ll save Ma and Tori from the director’s factories and shelters, and William from her academy. And I’ll get my Leopard Skin back.
Without a working band, there’s only one place I can go for help. 133 Birchel. As soon as it gets dark up top, that’s where I’m headed, to the address that Doctor Gregory gave me. The doctor will know where Cale is, so I can find him too.
Rescuing the people I love won’t be easy, but for the first time, I think there might be a way. One thing for sure, I’m done with running from the director. Now I’m ready to show her just how sharp this leopard’s teeth really are.
Whoever I am now is up to me to decide. What matters most is that I’m very much alive, and somehow the leopard’s alive in me.
So watch out, Director Morelle. You think I’m unpredictable? You won’t even see me coming.
Dear Wonderful Reader,
Thank you so much for travelling into Milla’s world and trying on her Skin!
Milla’s determined to get her family and her Leopard Skin back, but it won’t be easy. Without a working band, she’s going to struggle to survive, let alone fight the most powerful woman in the world.
She’s also about to find out why parts of Triton are being bombed. Is it war with Deiterra? Is it the Fist? Either way, the people she loves are in terrible danger.
Maybe Cale will be able to help. Or will he walk away when he finds out Milla’s been lying to him about who she really is?
What comes next may shock you, but I hope you’ll come with me for the rest of this wild ride.
Get Skin Rebellion on Amazon now.
- Tania.
Also by Tania Hutley
Skin Hunter
Skin Rebellion
Skin Dominion
Copyright © 2019 by Tania Hutley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
