by Kelli Kimble
We arrived back at the settlement.
But something didn’t feel right.
I paused on the path, and Tikka kept walking. The pole yanked off my shoulder, and the deer fell on the ground.
“Hey,” Tikka said. She turned to chew me out. She paused when she saw the expression on my face.
I concentrated on feeling everything around me, sensing who was nearby, what they were doing, and how they were feeling. Something hostile was lingering around the fringe of my feelings.
“What is it?” Tikka dropped her end of the pole and came to stand next to me. She scanned the area with her eyes. “Where is everyone?”
A prickle of surprise rolled through me. I could feel people in their huts nearby, but nobody was outside, and that was odd.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Something nearby means to do us harm.”
She followed the direction of my gaze. “Something over there?” She started walking in that direction, fearless as ever, but I clamped a hand on her shoulder.
“We should find Silver,” I said. His hut was nearby, and I mentally scanned it. He was there. So was Tabby. “Come on.” I grabbed Tikka’s hand and pulled her towards Silver and Tabby’s hut. I didn’t stop to knock; I still lived there, though I’d never really thought of it as my home.
They were eating lunch, and they looked up when we entered.
“I wondered if you would be home for lunch,” Tabby said. She pointed to a bowl on the counter, next to the crock of soup. “Help yourself.” She leaned forward to see Tikka behind me. “Hi, Tikka.”
“Something’s going on outside,” I said. “I feel someone hostile nearby.”
Silver rose from his chair. With one hand, he checked for the knife sheathed on his belt, while he swiped away remnants of stew with the other. “Show me,” he said. He was starting to get old, and while I wanted to believe he could protect everyone because he always had, I wasn’t so sure he was still up to the task. He walked with a pronounced limp, and the color of his hair – what was left of it – seemed to be his namesake. He was aging prematurely, just like the rest of the original group. All except for Tabby; she hadn’t gestated in a tank.
Tabby must have felt the same way I did. “You should send Red and Nimisila, Silver. You don’t need to go.”
“Like hell, I don’t,” he said. “I’m not sending my people into something hostile.”
“Nim can take care of herself,” she argued.
He pursed his lips. “She isn’t impervious.”
“And neither are you,” I said. “I’ll go with you. You and me, okay?”
He bristled at the coddling. “I don’t need a nursemaid, Nimisila.”
“That isn’t my intention. You know I’m uniquely suited to a situation like this.” I deliberately avoided mentioning my abilities. Even after four years of living with me and getting to know me, he was still suspicious of what I could do and when I would decide to do it.
“Please, Silver. Take her with you,” Tabby said.
“Fine. Let’s go. Keep up, all right?” He moved out the door, his limp making hurrying unnecessary. I followed him, giving Tabby a last glance over my shoulder.
“Be careful,” she said.
I nodded and closed the door.
“Where are we going?” Silver said, pulling up short with a huff.
I pointed in the direction where I could still feel the presence. He made off that way, and I walked beside him.
“Searchers, you think?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Why now? They’ve left us alone all this time.”
“Why ever? They’re animals, is why.”
I nodded, trying to squish the guilt by association. I was from the city, where the searchers came from, and I was naturally affiliated in Silver’s mind. I didn’t point out Tabby had a much stronger association, since she was also from the city, and her father had once been a searcher.
“I smell smoke,” Silver said.
I stopped walking and lifted my thoughts out of my body to float above us. I drifted up to see if I could see the source. A curl of grey smoke was rising above the trees in roughly the same direction.
When I snapped back in to my body, Silver was glaring at me. “You know I don’t like it when you do that,” he said.
“The smoke. It’s them.”
He harrumphed. “You think?”
“I just wanted to be sure.”
“The only thing that’s for sure is that someone’s not going to like the outcome of this meeting.” He cast a sideways glance at me. “You shouldn’t have come. It’s dangerous.”
“That’s exactly why I should be here,” I said. “My abilities are the most advanced weapon we have. I’m the best protection we’ve got.”
“I know that,” he said. “That’s why I wanted you to stay behind with everyone else.”
And I’d thought he was just being stubborn.
I didn’t respond. After a few beats, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “There’s nothing to be done for it now,” he said. “Let’s just make the best of it, and you be careful, see? If it comes down to only one of us surviving this encounter, it has to be you.” He stopped and turned me to face him. “It has to. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You’re out here representing the settlement – at your own insistence, may I remind you. If shit goes down, you’d best be prepared to shovel it.”
I nodded, and after he squeezed my shoulders for a long moment, he turned to continue. He’d never been the affectionate sort, and I’d learned to take these small gestures as a stand-in. Today, they fell short, but my pride kept me from forcing anything more out of him.
We continued in silence. Every few minutes, I would stop, warn Silver, and send my mental self ahead, looking for any sign of people. Eventually, I found not one, but three people. Men, sitting around a campfire.
Confident they couldn’t see me, I approached and listened.
“We should rest up and head in there tomorrow,” one said. “There’s no telling how many of ‘em are left, and we don’t want to leave anything to chance.”
Another shifted in his seat. “I’m still not comfortable with this, you know. After all this time, what threat are they to us?”
“Anyone who isn’t one of us is a threat. You know that,” the first man responded.
That was enough. I snapped back to my body. “I found them,” I said.
“And?”
“Definitely hostile. I suppose they’re searchers. They’re planning to rest today and come tomorrow.”
“Then, we’ve got the element of surprise. Let’s go.” He pushed ahead of me, towards their camp.
“No,” I said. I rushed after him and put a restraining hand on his arm. With his limp, he had little choice but to stop so that he didn’t lose his balance. “I’ll go,” I explained. “Alone. You stay back here. Surprise anyone who gets away from me.”
“I can’t let you do that,” he said. “You know what has to be done here. You’re just a kid.”
I sighed. “Silver,” I said. “I am not new to this kind of fight. I know I’m young, but I’m not a kid anymore. I stopped being a kid a long time ago.”
He arched a brow at me. I hadn’t yet told anyone in the camp what had happened to me in the city, or how I’d broken free of it – of them. Even after all this time, I wavered between thinking I’d done what I needed to do and thinking I’d killed innocent people out of nothing more than a temper tantrum.
“Fine,” he said. “I know you can keep me here, if that’s what you want. Please, just be careful.”
“I will,” I said.
He searched my face for a moment. “I don’t know what happened to you there, but I’m sorry for whatever it was.” He leaned forward and planted a kiss atop my head. “You’re a good kid.”
I blinked in surprise.
“Go,” he said. “Time is wasting.”
I nodded and dashed away before he
could see the sentimental tears collecting in my eyes.
When I could sense them just beyond my view, I hid my physical body alongside a fallen log and sent my mental self to their camp.
They were still sitting around, eating what looked like beef jerky from a bag. My mouth watered at the thought – I’d not had beef since we left the city – but I had to put that aside.
I approached the nearest one from behind, and I was raising my fist to slash a blade of air through his body, when I suddenly felt jostled. I had only a second to wonder who was disturbing my body before I snapped back into it.
When I opened my eyes, I found the face of a stranger, leering over me as he lashed my hands together.
Then, the world went dark.
Chapter 2
Someone was saying something nearby. At first, the words seemed faint, but they increased in volume. They were inside my head.
“. . . what the big deal is. Just kill her.”
“This isn’t like I thought it’d be,” another voice said. “She’s pretty and young. She can’t even be 20 years old. It’s not right. Not right at all.”
“Fine,” a third voice said. “If you two idiots won’t do it, I will.”
My eyes started to flicker open, but I clamped them shut. My hands and feet were restrained, but that was a problem for later. Right now, I had to make sure I didn’t die.
In my mind’s eye, I floated above and saw I was at their camp, not far from where they’d found me. I knew there were at least four of them, but right now, there were only three. I needed to know where the fourth was.
A man was approaching my body. He was holding a sharp knife in his shaking hand. I imagined a sliver of air and pushed it so fast that it became a blade, sharper even than his metal knife.
It only took one blow to separate his head from his body. His head tumbled off to one side, and his body toppled clumsily to the other.
“Jee-sus!” one of the men exclaimed, jumping up from the fire. He didn’t move any closer.
I trailed an imaginary finger through the flames and up his pantleg. He was engulfed in seconds. He screamed and flopped to the ground, trying in vain to smother the flames, but the flames weren’t real – not in that sense. He couldn’t do anything at all to stop it.
The third man stared at his friend until he stopped moving, then looked at my body, open-mouthed. A full beat passed before he tried to run in the opposite direction. I couldn’t let him go, though; I needed to know where the fourth man was. I tripped him, and he fell onto all fours. He scrabbled around, looking for the unseen in a panic. “Please,” he begged. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.
He stilled, lowering his eyes to the ground. “Where are you? What do you want? I’ll give it to you. Just please, don’t hurt me.”
“Untie the girl,” I said. My physical eyes were still closed. My features looked peaceful and relaxed. It was how I always looked when I wasn’t occupying my body.
He eyeballed me with obvious suspicion. “How do I know you aren’t going to hurt me anyway?”
“You don’t, but I’ll definitely hurt you if you don’t do what I say.”
He crawled over to my body, looking around as he made his way through the dirt and the dead, fallen leaves. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”
“Seems to me you’re out here for no reason but trouble.”
He reached my body and untied the bindings on my feet. His touch caused a familiar tug at my belly – an urge to let my mental self snap back into my body – but I wasn’t ready to reveal myself.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“You’re searchers, aren’t you? From the city?”
“We’re from the city, yeah, but we’re not searchers. We’re Horsemen.”
I mentally pushed the air around him, roughing him up just a little. He squealed and moved away from me, batting at the air.
“What’s that?” I asked. “I’m from the city, and I’ve never heard of a horseman.”
He hadn’t untied my hands, so I began to mentally untie them. He didn’t notice. “It’s what they call our group: The Horsemen.”
My hands were free, so I returned to my body and sat up. “What do you want, then? Why are you here?” I said out loud.
His lip curled up in a sneer, and he glared at me. He was bred to think talking out loud was vulgar. “We’re here to deliver a message,” he finally said. “I need to talk to your . . . parents.”
“My parents are dead, thanks to animals like you,” I said. “Where’s the other one? The fourth one?”
“He’s around. Somewhere.” His eyes skittered back and forth, probably looking for help from the fourth man, but in his efforts, he’d noticed the head of his friend, its eyes gazing at the canopy of trees in surprise.
“It took a few minutes,” I said.
He looked at me but didn’t respond.
I gestured towards the head. “I could feel him. He was still alive for a few minutes, having thoughts and trying to make sense of why his muscles weren’t working. He was just about dead before he realized what happened. Not the brightest guy, huh?”
He blinked. “You did that?”
“Yeah.”
He looked back at the ground. “We thought you were dead.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m right here, and I’m waiting for some answers. What do you want?” I punctuated the question with a blast of force to his chest. It thrust him back a few feet, dragging his butt across the ground.
He let out a muffled grunt. “I told you. I’m here to deliver a message. I need to talk to the leaders, Silver and Tabby. They’re still here, right?”
“Tell me the message. I’ll take it to them,” I said.
He shook his head. “I can’t do that. I can only deliver the message to the leaders. That’s the way it works.”
I changed my tactic. “Why don’t you have a horse?”
“We did have horses. They died in the mountains. We had to eat them.”
A sharp pop a dozen feet behind me made me look around. The fourth man was back. I opened my senses and scanned for another person, but I could only sense myself and my prisoner – who, upon sensing a break in my concentration, was trying to scuttle away into the woods. This time, I knocked him so hard that his head hit a tree trunk. He dropped to the ground, unconscious.
I rushed over to him and tied his hands behind him with the lash I’d removed from myself, then I turned in a circle, looking for the fourth man. “I know you’re there,” I said.
He laughed – at least, it was his version of a laugh. To my ears, it was more of a series of grunts. It gave away his location. He was leaning against a tree, still back in the forest. I reached out to him with my senses, but I still couldn’t feel him. Shaking my head to clear it, I took a step towards him and felt for him again.
“You won’t see me. Not like that,” he said. He pushed away from the tree and casually walked into the clearing. The fire separated us, and I moved to keep it between us. “We thought you were dead, but I’m glad you’re here. Makes this more of a challenge.”
“The experiments didn’t stop.”
He shook his head once. “Nope.”
“I thought – I thought they were all dead.”
He scowled. “You only killed the weak ones.”
“No. I destroyed the entire facility. All of them. Even the leader.”
“You’re a stupid girl. A girl who didn’t learn anything about their kind. There’s always more, always another. Someone they report to or live with – even the janitor, for Christ’s sake. After you gave them the proof they needed, it’ll never end.”
“No,” I said, louder.
He shrugged. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I’ve waited for this day for a long time.” He took a few steps to his left, and I moved to mine, as well.
“What’s special about today?” I asked.
“It’s the day I
kill you,” he said out loud. His voice was scratchy and grizzled. He hocked up a wad of something and spat it towards the fire. It hit a rock at the edge and sizzled.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Think what you want, but if it wasn’t for you, my life would have been a lot more pleasant.”
“I’ve never even met you,” I said, but the crushing feeling inside my chest told me it didn’t make a difference. The people who’d made me into a freak had made him one, too, and by the sound of it, he’d been treated a lot worse than I had.
“Hey, about that old guy,” he said. “The one you were with?”
“Silver?” A flutter of panic rushed through me. I’d forgotten about Silver. Where was he? I immediately stretched out my thoughts, feeling for him.
“You won’t find him like that,” he said.
“Silver,” I yelled. “Silver! Where are you?!”
The guy’s grunting laugh brought me back to the fireside. I studied him. It was daylight, but the trees above us kept us in deep shade. The jumping flames illuminated his face. There were two long scars down both sides of his face, highlighting the sharpness of his cheekbones. For a second, I thought his teeth had been filed to points, but it was just my imagination. I blinked away the image.
“That wasn’t in your head,” he said. He stretched his mouth wide, and a forked tongue lolled out of his mouth and flicked up and down before snapping back between his lips.
The panic surged into a wave. My arms and legs were starting to feel wobbly, and the almost-forgotten sensation of desperation flooded me. My abilities wanted to surge out of me and kill this obvious threat, but something held it back.
“Wow,” he said. “You really do have a magnificent amount of power. Legendary, really – at least, it was legendary. Until I came along.”
I sidestepped to my right just as burning logs erupted from the fire and sprayed over the spot where I’d just been standing. I raised my arms and pushed a deflecting puff of air away from me. Then, I held the air in place, effectively shielding me from whatever else he might try.
