“Aren’t you tired?” she asked. They’d run all night. He’d run all night.
“We’re almost there,” he said, and dropped down the side of a building.
For a second Cali thought he’d finally lost his balance and fallen, and she clutched him in terror. Then she saw that he held a cable in one hand while supporting her with the other. He dropped onto a lower roof, and Cali’s legs slipped and her feet hit the roof after his. “Stay on,” he said, boosting her back up. “Just another minute.”
Suddenly, Draven dropped flat without warning. He twisted around in her grip so he could secure her with his arms, then lay perfectly still under her. Even his chest stilled, not rising and falling with breath, as if tension had frozen his entire body. Cali held her breath by instinct and did not try to struggle. For the moment, he held her only chance at freedom. She looked down into his face, every feature fiercely alert in the faint light of coming morning. For a second she wanted to touch the contours of his cold face, convince herself all of it had really happened. He held tight to her, though, so tight she couldn’t move her arms.
A tremor went through his body when lights passed close to the building. After they had gone, he stood and secured Cali’s legs around him. “We must hurry. People are leaving work now.” He moved along the steep roof as if he’d walked it every day of his life. At the edge, he detached Cali. “I’ll jump first, and then I’ll catch you. Can you be brave for me and jump?”
The last time she’d done that, on her last escape attempt, she’d jumped into the arms of her human escorts. She was fairly certain one of them had later died because of that. “I might hurt you,” she said.
Draven laughed, that warm, soft chuckle that didn’t fit with what she knew of Superiors. “You won’t hurt me,” he said. Then he jumped.
She tried to swallow—or breathe. A thought flashed through her mind that maybe this time he’d jumped wrong, and she’d see a splattered Superior when she looked over the edge of the roof. But of course she didn’t.
“What if I don’t jump?” she asked, peering down at him.
He stood looking up at her in the gathering light. “Then I will retrieve you, but this way is quicker.”
“What if I’m not coming with you?”
“What will you do? Live on a roof? For how long?”
“I could find another way down.”
“Then find one.”
Cali paused, thinking about the stupidity of that idea. Then she jumped. She didn’t give Draven warning, and she didn’t think about the stupidity of that, either. But he didn’t need warning. He caught her as if she weighed no more than one of the leaves she’d watched drifting down from the trees. She remembered falling on Herman and Martin, and how they’d all crashed to the ground and gotten hurt. The bruises from her fall had lasted for weeks afterwards, but they’d been lost in the bruises her master had added when he recaptured her.
Now she’d have bruises from where Draven caught her. Her landing might have felt like nothing to him, but his arms felt like steel to her. He had caught her as a mother might carry a child, cradling her. The force of her fall along with her weight would bring bruises along the two paths of his arms, and the sudden stop when she landed had jerked her head back hard enough to make her neck ache. When she turned her head, her neck moved in a strange, rubbery way, as if her head had started coming loose from her body.
When she looked into Draven’s face, very close to hers now, he smiled and arched one eyebrow. “I thought not,” he said.
She knew he could have jumped up and gotten her if he wanted, and she’d have nowhere to run on a rooftop even if she could outrun a Superior. But she wanted to know what he’d do if she defied him. He hadn’t beaten her like her Master, which encouraged her. But the pain in her back and neck dulled her excitement at the thought of escape.
Draven carried her in his arms for a short distance, until she started getting drowsy again. He stopped walking when they arrived at a high chain-link fence with razor wire on top. Cali knew about razor wire. It topped the walls of Confinements, where she’d spent most of her life. She’d seen people climb over razor wire to escape, and it could be a gruesome sight.
“Here we are,” Draven said. Cali looked at him, and back at the fence, and then through the fence. A lot of cars, missing tires or wheels or other body parts, sat idly inside the fence, staring back at her with their sightless headlight eyes.
“You live here?” Cali asked.
“Yes. Don’t touch the fence. I do not want your scent on it. Hold onto me only.”
Cali tightened her arms around Draven’s neck, but he pulled her away. “Not like that. On my back. How am I to climb with my arms occupied with you?”
“Well, how am I supposed to know?” she asked, circling Draven to get to his back without dismounting. She was getting better at the maneuver. He made a strange breathy sound, like he sucked in air through his teeth, when she settled onto him. But he started up the fence without hesitation.
She would have liked to see him climb without her on his back. He had a fluid grace she didn’t remember seeing in him before. He moved up the fence like a cat climbing a tree. At the top, he pushed himself up and over with one hand, reaching back to hold onto Cali with the other. He landed on his feet like a cat, too.
He moved quickly between the cars towards the back of the lot, stopping about three quarters of the way back. “This is where I live,” he said.
“What is this place?”
“It’s…essentially a car-yard.”
“What’s that?”
“Cars that no longer run are sent here.”
“But why?”
“They’re bought for scrap, and their functioning parts are stripped for reuse.”
“Use for what?”
“Some are used for cars, and the metal is made into other cars or whatever companies need metal for.”
“And…why do you live here?”
“Because I’m not in the system.”
“I’m a human.”
“Oh, right. That means…I don’t want to explain right now. I cannot rent a place. So I stay here.”
“Who else lives here?”
“There’s a lame dog, and some rats and things.”
“No one else.”
“We won’t stay long. No one works during the day, so they will stop looking until evening. I’ll sleep a few hours, and we’ll leave before they begin again this evening.”
Cali stifled a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t have to feed anyone but him, and if he went to sleep, he didn’t have any Superior friends to guard her.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.” Draven opened the door of a long black car and scooted Cali inside. She liked the other cars better, the ones with pretty pictures and words and colors all over them. Something about the car he chose, the way it reminded her of her master’s car, made her uneasy.
Inside the black car, the seat’s coldness immediately began soaking through Cali’s wool jumpsuit, and she wrapped her arms around herself. Draven scooted in next to her. “You may take the seat. I will sleep behind,” he said.
She looked behind the seat at the small square area of floor and felt a little bad for accepting his offer. But she didn’t want the floor either, so she didn’t say anything. Draven climbed over the seat and rooted around in a pile of what looked like the junk her sisters made their houses from. Little pieces of this and that. He came up with a tattered, thin wool blanket and handed it to her.
“You live like a runaway,” she said.
Draven didn’t look at her but started undoing his shirt, so she lay down and covered herself with the holey blanket. She wondered if now was the time to run. Superiors slept most of the day. But surely he’d tie her up before he slept, and he probably knew some special Superior knot-tying skill to make knots that humans couldn’t untie.
Maybe he’d forget, though. Maybe he’d leave her untied, and she could make a run
for it. She’d never seen a Superior out in the middle of the day, so she thought she’d wait until Draven slept a while. She lay still, heart pounding, waiting for him to remember and come to bind her hands and feet. But after only a few seconds, her eyelids started fighting to settle in together for the sleep she’d missed that night.
“What would you do if you woke up and I’d run away?” she asked.
“If you mean to run, let me know now so I can remove you from my home. If you walk out, you’ll leave your scent on everything, and Byron will come straight to this car and kill me. I don’t imagine I’ve been so vile that you’d want to do that, but if you must, I cannot do much for it.”
She sat up and looked over the seat. He hadn’t even gotten mad, and it didn’t sound like he planned to restrain her even after she told him what she’d been thinking. She almost said something else, but Draven had his back to her, and when she caught sight of it, she forgot to answer him. Instead, she stared at him in horror. It looked like a thousand black bugs had bitten him and burrowed into the skin, and he’d scratched at them until they bled. Big red welts with black centers covered his skin.
“What’s wrong with your back?” Cali asked before she could stop herself. If some kind of skin-tunneling bugs lived there, she sure didn’t want to sleep anywhere near him.
“Nothing,” he said, quickly pulling a shirt over his head.
“Is that…something that will happen to me? Are there bugs in here?”
He frowned and pulled off his shoes. She thought about how bad Shelly’s feet smelled when he wore his slipper-shoes, and she waited for the stinky-feet smell to hit her, but like the rest of him, Draven’s feet didn’t smell like anything.
“They’re gone now, it’s too cold.”
“Then what are those things in your back?”
“Nothing. Take some sleep.”
She watched him lie down, curled on his side, and after a minute she lay down, too. Though she thought she’d fall right to sleep, for a while she couldn’t. She lay awake, thinking about Shelly and the baby, and how she hadn’t even said goodbye. Shelly knew, of course. She’d asked him to go with her, begged, but he wouldn’t budge. So she’d told him she wouldn’t go, and then she’d left without saying goodbye. And the baby—would little Leo miss her? He wouldn’t understand. He’d only know she’d left him. Maybe he’d be sad and cry when she didn’t wake him up in the morning dragging her noisy chain around.
And what about Master? He’d chased them, and if he’d lost them, as Draven thought, he’d go back home. And then he would beat Shelly to get an answer out of him. Maybe he’d hurt the baby. And he’d do it in front of poor Shelly.
Cali sat up. “We have to go back for the baby,” she said.
But Draven had already fallen asleep.
Chapter 18
Meyer Kidd stood in the doorway to his bedroom looking at the solemn parade of sapling faces turned to him.
“Now you all know I love each and every one you,” he said. “But for now you have to go stay with someone else. She’s a very nice lady, and there are lots of mummies there to take care of you. Don’t worry, I’ll come visit all the time.”
Four of Meyer’s girls patrolled the hallway ensuring the saplings behaved.
“Now come and give Daddy a hug,” he said, bending to hug a tiny boy who was so busy pulling apart a scrap of cloth that he barely noticed Meyer. “Now don’t be rude,” Meyer said, snatching the cloth away. “Give me a hug.”
The boy began crying and reaching for the cloth, but before returning it, Meyer held it out of his reach until the sapling hugged him. The boy wiped his teary face and toddled along looking appeased but not entirely happy. What an ungrateful little snot. Meyer should have just let him rot in a Confinement somewhere.
The other nine children all gave him hugs, some of them with tearstained faces and some with big smiles and some with somber eyes, depending on their age and inklings of the significance of the move. Of course, none of them knew the real reason, or the real significance. It was all because of those blasted Enforcers snooping around in his business. Meyer had seen three of them since his latest conversation with Byron, and one had even followed him to and from his last Furr-Bines Inc. meeting. So it seemed like a good time to act rather than react.
When he’d hugged the last child, he stood. “Very well, girls, let’s get them loaded, shall we?”
The four girls herded the children along the hall and down the stairs to the back entrance. Some of the saplings climbed into the boxes themselves, the older ones helping his girls pretend it was all a game. Big laughs.
Meyer stood at the bottom of the stairs watching, his hands in his pockets. It was best this way. He couldn’t have so many of them around with Enforcers crawling down his back all the time. At any moment, Byron might decide to make an accusation, and then the whole lot of them would come swarming into his house, pretending to be polite when really they were thinking how they’d like to steal his things or that he should never have evolved at all.
Oh, Meyer knew all about them. All about how ‘adult’ Superiors acted and thought towards him. First shocked, then condescending and overly sweet, talking to him as if he were simple. Then they started getting jealous.
They’d already searched his homes once, and he wasn’t going to risk any last minute fixes like he’d done that time. This time he was prepared. He watched the girls load the boxes into the hauler. When the truck pulled out, Meyer closed the door and went upstairs. He took off his shiny black shoes and lined them up with the backs exactly even with the edge of the bed. Military precision. Or boarding school precision.
He removed his clothes and rebuttoned his shirt, zipped his pants, and folded them in perfect squares. He opened his dresser and put them back in. Then he opened his pajama drawer. Meyer loved pajamas, but most of them were too festive for this morning. He chose a navy pair with a subtle pattern in the fabric and dressed before climbing into bed and turning on his wall screen.
“Miss Ginger Tolemy,” he said, and the screen began searching for a confirmation. After a few seconds, she accepted and her creamy porcelain face appeared on the screen.
“Hello, Meyer,” she said, smiling. Miss Tolemy’s smile was something to behold.
“Hello, Miss Tolemy. Listen, I had some extra sapien food around that was getting a bit stale, so I sent it over on a Furr-Bines truck. It should be there in five or ten minutes. Might be too late to unpack for the day, so I told my driver to just unload them in the kitchen.”
“Very well, thanks for letting me know. I’ll let my sapiens know and they can unpack the boxes. I don’t know where they keep all their food, anyway.”
“Right, of course. I never can keep up with what they like. I just let mine have passes to go buy their own food, and they always end up getting too much. I hate to see it go to waste.”
“Well, I have plenty of saps. I’m sure they’ll eat it before it spoils.”
“Good then. How’s your farm? Are your saps all in good health?”
“You know how they are, always getting sick. What can you do?”
“Yes, I know. Well, nice chatting with you, but as you can see, I’m all set for bed.”
“Of course, Meyer. Thanks for thinking of us.”
“I always do, Ginger. Listen, it really has been too long, and I’m thinking about getting a new sap to take on my winter vacation. Mine are all so dull. Maybe I’ll come by in a few weeks.”
“You know you’re always welcome to browse, Meyer. It’s your special privilege. You’re my best customer.”
“Yes, I know. Good day, then.”
“Good day to you. Have a good sleep.”
Meyer blew her a kiss, just in case Byron or one of the Enforcers was monitoring his communication. Miss Tolemy blew one back with her shiny pink lips, which had been the objective. Meyer turned off the screen and lay back in bed. He tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite muster one. He loved his saplings, and now he had to g
ive them all up. As if they heard his sadness, his four girls came in a few minutes later and crawled into bed with him. Nice, but he still missed the squirmy little warm bodies.
His youngest girl snuggled up to him, and he put his arm around her absently. He’d never evolved anyone else as young as her. Once, he’d considered evolving a baby, but he wasn’t certain of a successful outcome, and he’d just hate it if he killed one by mistake. Kelsie was eight, and sometimes he even had doubts about her, so he hadn’t put any younger ones through the evolution process. Maybe it was time to try.
The five child Superiors lay in his big bed together as the day outside grew brighter in the Texas heat, and soon, the five of them slept.
Chapter 19
Draven woke and dressed quietly so as not to awaken Cali. But when he looked over the seat, he found her already awake. She lay on her back holding the warped paper book he’d had the night he found her garden.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She started and dropped the book. “Nothing.”
“Surely you can’t read?”
“No,” she admitted, avoiding his eyes.
“Then what were you doing?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because. I feel stupid.” She looked at him from under her lashes.
“You’re not. You just don’t know a lot yet.”
“And you’re going to teach me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I imagine I could teach you some things.” He smirked at her but looked away quickly. What was he thinking? Crazy thoughts, as if she were a real person.
“Well,” she said after a moment, “that’s what I was doing.”
He cleared his throat. “Teaching yourself to read?”
“No,” she said, retrieving the book. “I was pretending to read. Making up what it said.”
Draven chuckled and rested his chin on the back of the seat. “What did it say?”
“You know.” She shifted on the seat and rifled through the pages. “How to be a Superior and stuff?”
The Renegades (The Superiors) Page 8
