The Renegades (The Superiors)

by Lena Hillbrand

  Silence fell again on the lot, but she couldn’t relax. Again she waited, her shoulders knotted with tension from lying stiff for so long. Finally she heard it, a scuffing sound very near and so quiet she almost thought she’d imagined it. But she could feel something, someone, coming near. Her skin prickled and she held her breath and didn’t even blink. She’d been found.

  The door scraped.

  She wanted to scream and scramble away, but some very last part of her still thought if she kept quiet enough, no one could see her. She covered her mouth and stared wide-eyed into the dark, waiting.

  The door moved aside and a figure filled its place. He slid inside smooth and fast, moving on top of her. She scratched his face, struggling in silence as his body pressed down on hers.

  “Cali, stop,” he whispered, catching her hands easily in one of his. “Awaken, Apsen, my jaani. Se moi.”

  “Lord and master, you scared me to death,” she whispered, her voice just a breath. Her heart, which had been slowly trying to pound its way from her ribcage, took off so fast she thought it might burst, and even in the cold, a thin film of sweat covered her skin.

  “It’s alright,” Draven whispered, stroking her cheek. “Still your mind. You’re safe, little pet. Are you awake now?”

  She didn’t tell him that she’d been awake, that she hadn’t been surprised out of sleep but only terrified. She turned her face from his cold, gentle fingers. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I retrieved your baby. He’s sleeping.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Here in this sling. We must leave quickly.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Onto the rooftops for the rest of the night. It’s too dangerous to stay here. We are fortunate no one has come to collect you yet.”

  “Are we going to live up there?”

  “We will leave in the morning.”

  “Can you go out in the daytime?”

  “We have to.”

  “Wait, you can go out during the day?” Cali tried to pull back to look at him, but she couldn’t see anything with the car doors closed, even a face just inches from hers.

  “If I must. I cannot carry you all day, though.”

  “How can you go out? I thought you had to sleep all day.”

  “Do you have to sleep all night?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “I’ll be weaker, and tired, but we must go nonetheless.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Superiors are active at night.” His cold breath, or maybe the thought of all those Superiors looking for her, sent a chill crawling over her skin.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” she said. “I packed your bag.”

  “Good girl.” When he kissed her forehead, his lips were like ice. “Thank you. Are you better now?”

  “Oh, well, yeah. You just scared me.”

  “I’m sorry. I did not intend to awaken you. I’m glad I’ve not frightened you.” He moved off her, and she pushed his jacket at him.

  “I used that for a blanket. Sorry.”

  “Use it.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “It only slows me. When it’s below freezing, it will matter more.”

  She didn’t really understand him, so she just said, “Okay.”

  They readied themselves in the dark, and when Draven slid the door back and they got out, Cali looked around in surprise at how much darkness remained in the sky. The inside of the car stayed so dark she couldn’t tell night from day. She had expected morning, but it looked like the middle of the night. When she stretched, the pressure in her bladder was almost painful. “I have to pee,” she whispered.

  “Go,” Draven said. “We’re leaving in a moment anyhow.”

  Cali went behind a car and relieved herself. She was glad to see her woman’s days had nearly ended. She hated how Superiors could always tell, and how they always had to comment on it, like she didn’t know she bled. She didn’t have anywhere to wash her cup, so she wiped it off as best she could on her underwear, which needed washing anyway. She needed an extra pair, too, but she couldn’t complain about something so personal to a Superior. Even a woman Superior probably wouldn’t understand, and Cali would never mention those things to a man as refined as Draven.

  As soon as she rejoined him, they set off walking in the opposite direction from where they’d come. They neared the back fence of the lot, then followed it and squeezed through between the end of the fence and a big brick building. Draven had to maneuver through with Leo in his arms and the pack on his back. When they made it through, they circled the building. At the corner, Draven jumped back and flattened himself against the wall, reaching back to prevent Cali from stepping around him.

  If he hadn’t stopped her, she would have missed the sound of tires in the parking lot and stepped out for anyone to see. The car door clicked shut, and footsteps approached. “I savor a sap,” a man said, his accent so familiar that Cali’s heart caught with the power of her sudden homesickness.

  “No, man, that’s your own face,” a second voice said. He talked like everyone here, not like the first man, who talked like the people back home. “You eat like a heathen. Sap all over your face…” They were both laughing now, and then a door on the side of the building slammed shut behind them, and their voices disappeared. They had sounded so normal, like they could have been anyone, human or Superior.

  What if Cali had run just then? Maybe she could have escaped with the man who talked like people back home, and he’d have taken her home, and everything would have been like it had been… But that was silly. Draven came from back home, and he hadn’t made her a kid again.

  Draven took her arm and pulled her along. She had to run to keep up. But soon he’d ducked into a side alley, and minutes later, they were on the roofs again, moving across them as they had all the last night. “How long were you gone?” Cali asked. “When will it be morning?”

  “Not long,” Draven said.

  “Are we going to do this all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Cali said. “It felt like you were gone for a long time. There were these awful noises outside, like something was ripping the car-yard apart…”

  “They pull the cars into that building and strip them for parts. I told you that.”

  “Oh,” Cali said again, feeling foolish. Of course dragging cars through the lot would make an awfully big racket. “Well, when it stopped, I thought it was morning.”

  “No.”

  “So why’d they stop? What time is it?”

  “To eat, I imagine.”

  Cali gave up on talking to him. He did have a lot to do, what with carrying her and Leo and a backpack. So she tried to ignore the pain in her muscles, and instead focused on formulating an escape plan.

  Chapter 21

  Byron swore up and down, paced and threw things like a child. He didn’t care. What the hell was the world coming to? He’d lost his sapien, the one he liked, the good one. And now the sapling. It hadn’t taken him long to beat that out of Shelton. At least the male had loyalty like a good sap. So what if it was infertile. Byron would take it any day over the bitch he’d brought all the way from back home.

  Cali had run away twice. Twice in as many years. Sure, he knew it’d run twice before, but he’d always prided himself on his well-behaved sapiens. And now this, on top of Meyer Kidd, and his unsolved case, and the man in charge of the assignment telling him he’d be taken off it if he didn’t quit harassing innocent citizens. Meyer, an innocent citizen? He’d bet his ass Meyer was anything but innocent. But he had the act, all right.

  And now Byron came home to find the sapling gone. He had lost two saps in two nights. All he had left was the male, which said it had ‘lost’ the sapling. That’s all it would say when Byron beat it, until it couldn’t say anything anymore.

  Byron didn’t have much to lose at this point. He’d already lost two sapiens, and he knew Shelton had told the truth about the female, that
Draven had stolen it from the garden but the male hadn’t seen it happen. It couldn’t say how Draven had climbed the building, but apparently he’d done it before, something Byron would have noticed had he not been so distracted by the souldamned case. He’d never imagined the skinny Indian cocksucker would come back for another one, something so far beyond humanoid that he knew Meyer had sent Draven to taunt him, show how easy it was to lose two saps, as Meyer had. But Byron had lost his to theft, not stupidity.

  But where the hell had Draven taken them? Byron couldn’t find any trace of him outside the apartment building, although he circled it a dozen times. He’d sent a catcher after his sap, too, but by morning, the catcher had turned up empty-handed. After Byron’s authorization, she had connected her pod to the sap’s locator chip. She’d watched as the chip wove haphazardly through buildings all over the city, but when she began to intersect the course, the sap wasn’t there. Either Draven had stopped to remove it before the catcher set out, and somehow attached it to some other moving object, or more likely, someone had hacked into the chip’s footprint and scrambled it.

  With dawning fury, Byron realized that this had all been set up and planned far in advance. Draven was too humanoid to figure out how to tamper with a locator chip even after working as a catcher for many years. Meyer certainly wasn’t. And he was just sneaky enough to write a new footprint that would lead a catcher all over the city and waste an entire night of searching. By now, he’d probably hidden Cali away somewhere, maybe letting Draven feast on the spoils of his labor as a reward.

  A flash of memory shot through Byron, his sap on the balcony with the scent of fresh sap all over her. Irritated with her brainlessness, he’d given it little thought, had assumed she’d had her cycle. But it had been the scent of fresh sap, not the foul odor of discharge. Draven had been there that night, already feasting on Byron’s sapien, stealing from the very man who had once encouraged him to purchase livestock and honored him with the opportunity to earn enough money to do so. Worse still, Byron had actually enjoyed Draven’s company, had taken a genuine interest in his life despite his lowly station. He had seen the wasted potential in the Third that now Meyer had harnessed and turned against Byron.

  Byron should have known a Third Order scumbag would never understand something as evolved as loyalty. Thirds were little more than saps, only after their own hedonistic interests and never looking to the good of the people. They were easy to use, as long as the cause suited their interests. Once, Byron had been Draven’s greatest ally. Now Meyer’s cause now suited Draven’s interest, so he turned his back on Byron without a thought for the man who had nurtured his career so selflessly.

  Meyer thought he’d have the last laugh, steal Byron’s favorite sapien and rub his former friend’s betrayal in his face at the same time. He’d even taunted Byron about it the last time they’d talked. If only Byron had known the smug little shitstain’s plan.

  He didn’t plan to sit back and let it unfold before his very eyes. If Meyer wanted a fight, he’d get a fight. He may have the whole Enforcement agency fooled, but he couldn’t fool Byron. Byron was too smart to fall for the kid’s act.

  So he’d go find them. What did it matter? Everyone thought Byron had lost his mind. Suspension from the assignment altogether would come next. No one would miss him. He had no friends. It had only gotten colder with winter coming, and Byron had no desire to spend another winter holed up in the mountains hiding from the cold. So he’d take a little break from the case, come back with fresh eyes. Or a fresh kill, if he came across Draven, or Angel, or Meyer Kidd, on his way.

  He’d sleep before he packed up his things, took his sapien, and went hunting. He’d follow that thieving rat-bastard to the ends of the earth to exact his justice. No one mocked Byron and got away with it, no one crossed him or got the better of him. And he’d be damned if he let someone make a fool of him. If Meyer thought he could send that third-rate backar chodu to make a fool out of Byron, Byron would show him. He’d make a meal out of Draven.

  Chapter 22

  Draven took a roundabout route to smuggle Cali from the town under the light of day. He tried to find a seam between residential sectors, where people would be passing on their way home or lingering late on porches. All morning he waited with mounting impatience for the second bells, the ones that signaled the sun had risen. As soon as they finished their final chimes, he gathered Cali, her baby, and their belongings, and bid his final adieus to the car lot. When they reached the city’s outskirts, he approached a sapien supply store he had scouted soon after he’d found Byron’s apartment. Now he stopped and pushed Cali behind a trash bin.

  “Stay,” he commanded.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, drawing her sleeping child to her chest as if for protection.

  “I have to get some things.”

  Draven removed his sunshades before he entered the store. Although the morning was cloudy and thunder-ridden, the muted light stung his eyes. He squinted and pulled the door closed behind him. Most Superiors shopped at night, so only a few stores stayed open in daylight hours when not much could be done about theft, if it happened. Although most Superiors did not commit crimes, occasionally one risked arrest, usually a paperless Third like Draven. He’d scouted stores open during daylight hours, and this one lay closest to the edge of town.

  Scanning the store with his senses, he confirmed that no one else shopped at such a late hour this morning. He relaxed a bit. Still, he had yet to become adept at criminal activity, and his gut clenched at the knowledge of what he had planned. Careful to hold his hands steady and his eyes relaxed, he chose a scanner bag that he could place on the counter to register its contents all at once. But he would not be buying anything that day. He didn’t have an anya to his name.

  “Help you with anything?” the clerk asked. Draven counted as good fortune that she sounded as thoroughly bored as she looked.

  “I know what I need, thank you,” Draven said.

  He browsed the aisles of the store, which contained generic items saps might need for daily life, but lacked some essential items he knew Cali would need, such as food and clothing. He tried to neither hurry nor linger too long and bring attention to himself. All the while, he forced his eyes not to dart towards the counter or any place likely to house hidden security cameras. Instead, he concentrated on the merchandise, on placing items in the bag—water-purification tablets, a flashlight, sealable plastic bags saps used for holding food, four spools of string, and packages of freeze-dried food, the only kind the store carried. He could not guess what else he’d need, or if he’d use all the items he’d chosen. Whatever looked useful went into the bag.

  Each moment in the store lasted an age. He could not prevent his mind from racing with thoughts of Cali, with images of her running while he could not see her, or of another Superior stumbling upon her as he had the first time they met. Nerves tightened every muscle in his body as he prepared to make his escape. Just then, however, he spotted a section of cheap sapien shoes. He chose two pairs, estimating on the large side. When he’d filled his bag and could think of nothing else they might need, he tossed in a treat for Cali.

  As he wandered towards the door, he glanced at the cashier, who stood chewing a hangnail and staring with blank eyes at the window. The blinders had already engaged, so he knew the store would close soon. He was likely her last customer.

  Without another glance towards the counter, he pushed the door open and ran.

  It sounded as if twenty alarms went off at once, one for each item he had stolen. He did not stop. Daylight meant that only one cashier manned the store, and though she would call the Enforcers, she would not leave the store unattended to pursue him. If she had, she could have caught him two streets over when Draven stopped to gather his live burden. A cumbersome load hindered him on every side—the bag from the store, Cali, the sapling, a heavy backpack. Although the weight did not prove much of an issue, the clumsiness it caused might become one.


  He hurried towards the edge of town without any obvious followers, despite the alarms. Daylight offered their best chance of escaping capture, despite the active search for him and his cargo. Just as he reached the last building at the city’s edge, he heard a car. A trash bin blocked his view of the street, but it also blocked anyone from seeing him. He tightened his grip on Cali and crouched beside the building.

  Back pressed to the wall, he waited. When the car had passed, he let out his breath and relaxed his grip on the human. He stood and hefted the large camping pack to his chest and laced his arms through the straps. The bottom of the pack hit his thighs with every step, but his back provided a perch for Cali and the baby, however uncomfortable for all of them. Draven could feel every splinter in his back each time Cali or the baby pressed against them. Her baby began fussing, but Cali shushed it so forcefully that it immediately fell silent.

  “Who was that?” Cali whispered.

  “Light watchmen,” he said. He checked the streets several times before slipping from his hiding spot and setting out, the backpack bouncing against his legs as he ran.

  “Are they looking for us?”

  “Possibly.”

  No other cars passed, and no one ventured onto the streets in daylight. Draven passed a house with two sapiens and a sapling bagging leaves in the yard. He did not slow or acknowledge them, although the sapiens stopped working to watch him pass with his burden. He hurried onwards through the deserted streets, out of the city and along a road that wound into the mountains. They saw no one else, and after a time, Draven began to have hope of succeeding in this mad venture.

  Sometime during midmorning, the sky burst open, and although Cali made a few small complaints and her baby many loud ones, Draven was glad for it. The rain would give them an advantage by hiding their scent at nightfall when trackers began hunting in earnest. He would also have to do something about her locator chip, a task he dreaded almost as much as facing a tracking team. He did not mention his concern to Cali. A small town like Princeton wouldn’t employ light watchmen except in rare circumstances. Circumstances such as an Enforcer being robbed of two very valuable pieces of livestock. Or perhaps something more dire still, but if that was the case, Draven didn’t want to know of it.