The Renegades (The Superiors)

by Lena Hillbrand

“Yeah. I mean, yes, Master Superior.”

  “Of course he is. I’ll not harm you. You know that I won’t.” Draven extended his hand once more. This time, Cali stepped forward, dragging one foot behind her. Draven’s gaze fell to the chain she wore, not unlike the one he’d worn in his own cage. From the scent, he could tell she wore an iron chain, though, instead of steel like his. He looked to her face again. She showed no indication of pain, frustration, or embarrassment at wearing the heavy chain. He hoped her captivity was kinder than his.

  Cali took another step towards him but stopped just out of his reach. When he reached for her again, she came to him. He touched her shoulder and pulled her closer, pushed the hair from her face. A dull rage swelled in him when he saw the bruises on her cheeks and temple and over one eye.

  “Who harms you?” he asked. “Your mate or your master?”

  Cali dropped her eyes and let her hair fall over her cheek once more. “Master.”

  For a moment, he only held onto her and studied her. She did not raise her eyes to his. “Do you remember that night, what was said?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not very much.”

  “I came for you. I followed you, and I want to take you with me.”

  She raised her eyes to his now, but then glanced over her shoulder at the door. “I can’t.”

  He caught her wrist when she stepped back. “I’ll not hurt you. Come with me.”

  Cali kept shaking her head and refused to meet his eye again.

  “Well.” He shook her wrist until she looked at him. “I’ll not make you come,” he said. “Not until you’re ready. But if you’re not happy here, if you’re not treated well, I will take you.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, shaking her hair back and looking at him squarely for the first time. For the first time that night, he saw the fierceness in her that had always drawn him. “My home is here. My mate, and my baby. And I think Master will take the chain off soon, if I don’t do anything brainless.”

  “I will take the chain off.”

  “How?”

  Draven shrugged. “I’ll break it.”

  Cali paused, then said, “I’m just going to be good now. I want my normal, happy life back. Master was good to me before I ran away.”

  Draven still had her wrist, and he pulled her arm up between them. In the faint light of night, he could see the rash of beads under her skin where Byron had bitten her and not closed the marks. “This is good?” His thumb crossed the back of her hand, soft and puckered with scar tissue. He knew that scar, the mark of a runaway. How many sapiens had he returned to masters that branded them runaways? “And this?”

  Cali pulled at her arm, but Draven held fast until she ceased struggling and faced him once more. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want you.”

  “I can’t just leave.”

  “You can.”

  “No. I can’t. Not again. He’ll catch us again, and this time he’ll kill us all.”

  “This time it will be different. I’ll be with you.”

  “And my family?”

  Draven paused, then nodded. “If you like.”

  “You said if I didn’t want to, you wouldn’t make me.”

  “I won’t.” He dropped her arm. “But I’ll come every night until you let me have you.”

  “I wouldn’t be free, though. I’d just have a different master.”

  “I’ll be good to you. Wasn’t I always?”

  Cali hesitated and looked past him, into the cold, still night. “Yeah.”

  “When you ask, I will take you.”

  “I can’t ask you for anything.”

  “You may.”

  “Okay.”

  “And may I ask you for something?”

  “What?” Cali looked at him the same way her mate had, backing away as he had.

  “I’d like to draw from you.” Draven kept his eyes on hers, and she stopped moving and did not look away. “Please.”

  She pushed her tangled hair back and strode forward in a confident, purposeful manner that did not fit the station of a chained sapien. She pushed her wrist at his mouth. “Here. Take it.”

  He pulled her arm down, snaked his other arm through the bars and pulled her against him. Her warmth leapt onto his skin, striped with the cold iron bars. “I would ask for your throat,” he said softly, and he buried his hand in her hair and tipped her head back so he could see the slender curve of her neck. Her heart beat hard, the sap throbbing visibly in the vein at the side of her throat, and he could feel the current of fear coursing through her. Slowly he relaxed his grip. He let his mouth take her gradually, sinking his teeth as gently as he could, stroking her shoulder blades and her back with his thumbs until she relaxed and her breathing slowed.

  “Thank you,” he whispered when he’d closed the puncture wound. “I will return each night, until you let me have the rest of you.”

  He pushed off the side of Cali’s garden and dropped onto the bars of the garden below hers, crossed that cage and swung down to the street below. He passed from street to street, more focused than he had been since he’d arrived in Princeton. His intensity disconcerted him slightly. He did not know what to make of Cali, of himself, of his reaction to her.

  It had been so long, that was all. He’d wanted her and thought of her and made her into a totem. He’d just had the sap he’d fixated on for two years, and with it, a taste of justice. Cali represented everything wrong that he could make right. If he had her, he would have what society owed him, what Byron and the government had promised when he’d hired himself out as an assassin. He would not have killed a man if he’d known he would get only money for it. He had done it because Cali was his reward. And when he had her, justice would be done. The world would be right again, would make sense. He wouldn’t be a fugitive, a traitor, or a shiftless leech draining the dredges of society.

  Draven circled a building and came upon a large trash receptacle. He had an advantage on this side of town. Most Illegals frequented the sectors or seams between them which featured cheap restaurants offering overdrawn saps and off-the-menu services. Not many restaurants or businesses operated in this sector, which featured only apartments and an occasional boutique shop. As for outlaws, it belonged to Draven alone.

  Bracing himself against the side of the bin, he strained against the lock until it gave way and he could throw back the lid. The stench of rotting vegetable matter greeted him. Sapien scraps. He held his breath for a moment before he thought better of it. If he intended to own a sapien, he’d have to tolerate the odors that came with them. Placing a hand on the lip of the bin, he cleared the edge easily and dropped inside. His feet sank into the soft layer of trash within. A rat squealed and retreated to a corner, eyeing him but not giving up its territory.

  “Hello,” Draven said softly. The creature watched as he tore open a bag and shook the contents around his feet. “I don’t want your food. I’ll leave your things and you leave mine. We’ll make the most of what we find.” He tore open each of the bags, shaking them into the bin while watching for anything useful. The rat watched as well, chewing on a scrap even a sapien wouldn’t eat.

  When Draven climbed out, his denim trousers were dirty again, but he had a pair of sunshades with a missing strap. He slipped them into his pocket and moved away into the night, leaving the rat to the spoils of his labors.

  Chapter 10

  Byron sat at his desk in Milton’s office trying to get something done. The office didn’t have enough space for all the desks and Enforcers who had to work there, and it was always crowded with local Enforcers who came in to talk about their cases or hear about Milton’s. Getting anything done seemed at the bottom of everyone else’s list.

  Byron scrolled through the list of missing persons for maybe the hundredth time. He kept thinking he must have missed something, there had to be something. Where was it? Why couldn’t he see it?

  He had to think about Angel, and Meyer, and Herman, and ma
ybe Draven, too. But he couldn’t find the connection, no matter how he looked at the four. Who was running the whole thing—Meyer or Angel? Not Draven or Herman, obviously. Maybe Draven had gone crazy, gotten sucked under Angel’s spell. Lord knew he wasn’t too gifted in the brains department. Courageous and impulsive, yes. Brave in the humanoid sort of way. Strategic and intelligent—not among Draven’s characteristics.

  Byron tapped his stylus on the desk and stared at the screen in front of him. He went back to his theory that Meyer had started raising saps somewhere out in the woods. Maybe feeding on them with Angel so the two of them could become more powerful. But for what purpose?

  Meyer already had more wealth than he could possibly spend in the next thousand years, so he could buy all the saps he wanted. And he didn’t seem the greedy sort—he ran a charity for pathetic, homeless Thirds. And Angel didn’t want to be seen, let alone take over any sort of government. He’d somehow escaped even after Byron had shot him with his Deactivator, and no one had seen or heard from him since.

  Byron himself, along with Milton and a team of Enforcers from town, had searched the ghost town. Nothing. No link to Meyer, no evidence of any kind. Plenty of evidence of Angel, but it didn’t help them trace him once he’d fled. And unlike Thirds, Angel didn’t have anything to trace—no pod, no pin. He’d left a basement with six dead girls lain with flowers and love notes, and a decrepit movie theater full of drained sapiens, but no clue to how he’d escaped or where he’d gone.

  In hindsight, it was a shame that Byron had killed those saps and left them. He should have drawn them to death. But they’d armed themselves well, and he hadn’t been thinking about eating when they’d ambushed him. Instead of gaining strength and having a good meal, Byron had left them dead. Unfortunately, Angel and that little worm Draven, both supposedly paralyzed, had somehow survived to feast on the dead and gain all that strength that should have been Byron’s.

  Draven, who turned up his nose at pure Superior blood, wasn’t too good to drink a dead sap’s.

  Byron threw down his stylus and rose from his desk. He needed to stretch his legs, shine his mind. He went outside and smoked a cigarette. The air chilled him. Not even October and already the nights had a bite to them. Not like back home, where he never had to worry about the discomfort of cold.

  He needed to check his Deactivator again. He’d checked it after both men he’d shot had fled. But the gun showed no sign of defect or damage. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to test it on a real person, not just look at the parts and run it through a diagnostics machine. But firing it could get him fired if he didn’t play his hand right. He couldn’t just go shoot a Third on the street, as tempting as the idea was. He couldn’t even shoot a prisoner or a criminal unless the perpetrator resisted arrest. Fortunately for him, Superiors had retained much of their instinct for self-preservation and pain-avoidance. He could think of a few ways to make a man resist arrest.

  Byron crushed out his cigarette and went inside to wait for a call. Some worthless Third would slip up and break a minor law soon enough, and Byron would put him to good use for once in his miserable life.

  Chapter 11

  Draven returned often to Cali. He couldn’t help himself and he didn’t try. She fed him nearly every night, and although he wondered why she allowed him this privilege, he did not ask. When she denied him, he did not take offense or argue or press her for more. Instead, he spoke with her while she fiddled with her garden.

  Sometimes her mate entered the garden, looked at Draven and shook his head, but he rarely spoke to him. His activity in the garden appeared more purposeful than Cali’s. Sometimes, too, the baby came outside, at first shying away from Draven before coming to know, and largely ignore, him. Draven ignored the child in return. He called upon Cali for one reason, and while there, he did not concern himself with anything beyond avoiding Byron and earning Cali’s trust.

  Some nights, Cali spoke with Draven and fed him, while other nights she went about her tasks as if she did not notice him watching her. He had a strange fascination with her, but he avoided finding a reason for his particular interest. She would be his soon enough. He needed to understand sapiens better, know their habits and manners before he owned one. When he thought on it, he knew very little about the upkeep and care of saps. He studied her because she let him, and he studied the others in her small family because they didn’t seem to mind as long as he did not harm them.

  Draven wondered if Cali’s mate knew that she fed him, and if he objected. He must think it strange that she voluntarily gave her sap to a Superior other than her master. But if her mate disapproved, he kept it to himself, and if he and Cali disagreed over it, Cali never let Draven know. Draven watched the male sapien, and though he didn’t imagine him as the proper mate for Cali, he didn’t seem a bad sort. He appeared to care for Cali, and Draven approved of the match for this reason alone.

  If her mate treated her well, her master made up for it. Cali remained on her chain, and she wore bruises from his abuses that did not disappear but simply rotated across her face and arms. Draven watched her array of bruises, the faint and the fresh and the ones between, coloring her skin like rainbows. He knew Byron’s disgust for saps, but his violence against Cali seemed excessive. Still, Draven could do nothing. He could not report animal cruelty. According to the database, he wasn’t a resident or a visitor of Princeton. He wasn’t a legal, registered Superior, or even officially an Illegal.

  He had dropped from the system as countless others had. One day he had registered leaving a city for vacation, but he had never arrived. He had simply vanished. No, not vanished, exactly, but entered limbo. According to the system, he was traveling and would be perpetually traveling until someone noticed his absence. That could take years. After all, who would register him as missing? His closest friend had been Byron, and he didn’t imagine Byron would search for him anytime soon.

  Worried that Byron would discover him with Cali, he kept careful watch of the Second’s coming and going. He wondered where Byron thought he had gone, if Byron thought of him at all. Certainly Byron knew that Draven had not been recovered with the other bodies the night of the massacre. Had Byron searched for him, sent out a bulletin? Was Draven a wanted man? And for what crimes? Although Draven recognized this as paranoia, he let himself indulge it. After being held captive by Sally’s family, he wanted nothing less than to spend more time as a prisoner. He’d risk living as a traitor and fugitive rather than learn of his status from a jail cell.

  When he finished his visit to Cali’s garden each night, Draven collected things. He came to know the streets and alleys, the effective hiding places, the rewarding trash bins and those that smelled rank and those that held only garbage. Sometimes he found small treasures—an ancient copy of a book missing its cover and half the pages, a stained pair of trousers that fit with a few alterations, a harmonica, a pair of worn-out shoes with stained but salvageable laces. These things and many others he took back to the car lot.

  After his home was repurposed for scraps, he moved deeper into the lot, into a Rosso that had retained its parts and shape when the engine failed. A crash had disfigured the hood and silenced the motor, but the shell of the car remained intact. Instead of a diamond layout, the old model had bench seats of luxurious, supple leather. The blinders remained in place to prevent the inside of the car from sustaining sun damage until the lot sold it for parts. The inside of the Rosso could hold Draven and most of his collection, unlike the smaller car he’d previously occupied. After allowing his treasures to dry and air out, he spread them behind the back seat of the Rosso.

  The nights grew colder, although the days remained tolerably warm. Because the Rosso’s blinders darkened the windows and helped to warm the car during the day, Draven slept comfortably. Once he’d fitted together a blanket from old clothing scraps to wrap about himself while he slept, he had no complaints.

  One night a week, he skipped calling upon Cali and trekked to a smal
l lake formed at the base of two mountains. He washed himself, any clothing he’d scavenged, and other acquisitions that needed washing. After bathing, he wrapped the bar of soap Sally had given him in its crumpled wax-paper package and wondered about her, as he did each time he ventured up the mountain. But he would never return to her.

  Although he let himself think only of Sally, the one bright spot in the eight months he’d spent with her family, the knowledge of those months would always stay with him. He carried the memories on his body a year and a half later, just as Cali carried her bruises as a reminder of her escape attempt. Draven could not lie on his back, although he’d dug the splinters from his skin everywhere he could reach. Those in his back, he would live with, having made a few minor adjustments and not allowing anything to touch his back more than necessary.

  Chapter 12

  Cali wandered into the garden, even though the plants had died and the cold pierced her woolen jumpsuit in minutes. She poked at the dirt, looked around. The moon sagged round in the sky, almost full, like a belly in the eighth month of pregnancy.

  “What you doing out there?” Shelly asked, poking his head out the door.

  “Oh, nothing,” Cali said, kneeling to push at the edge of one of the garden beds. The plastic border strips had begun to crumple, letting dirt spill out. They’d have to be fortified next spring, after the thaw.

  Without another word, Shelly slid the door closed. Cali wrapped her arms around herself and glanced up.

  “Are you looking for something?”

  The warm, low voice startled Cali, and she jerked upright and spun around, catching her free foot in the chain. She stumbled and almost fell before Draven caught her arm. “Steady there,” he said, smiling at her in the most gentle, un-Superior way. Sometimes she almost forgot what he was, forgot the impossible distance between their species, the unforgivable difference. “May I draw from you tonight?”

  And then he reminded her of it.