Hunter

by Emmy Chandler

  Clutching Hansen’s knife at my back, I step out from behind the tool chest, hoping that with both hands behind me, I’ll look shy, rather than like I’m harboring a weapon.

  Please, please, please be into women, I pray as I slowly cross the floor, waiting to be noticed.

  I’ve made it past three of the off-line hounds when Greer suddenly spins toward me, one hand on the pistol at his waist. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  My trembling is real. “Officer Harris sent me.” I stare at the ground, but I can practically feel his gaze crawl over me. “I’m for the shift supervisor on death row.” Where Callum was kept for a year, without seeing so much as a single beam of sunlight or blade of grass. “But I got lost. Can…can you show me the way?”

  “Harris sent you down for Rylen? That fucker has all the luck.” Greer takes his hand off his gun and steps out of the glass room. His gaze is a toxic maelstrom of lust and menace as it slides over me. “Just what are you supposed to do for Rylen?”

  “Please…” The tremor in my voice is authentic. If I don’t have the nerve to see this through—or if I try and fail—he’s going to hurt me. And if he figures out who I am… “I’ll get in trouble if she knows I got lost.”

  Greer steps closer. He runs one hand over my shoulder and down my arm. “I’ll do you a favor if you do me a favor…”

  “I’m not supposed to—”

  One hand tightens around my arm, while he reaches for his zipper with the other. “Turn around and bend over. Hands against the glass. Spread those pretty thighs for me.”

  “Please…”

  When I don’t obey, he grabs my shoulder and starts to spin me around. I suck in a deep breath, then I swing my right arm up and around, using the motion he’s started for momentum.

  With a grunt, I shove the knife into his side. It hits his rib and stalls, then it scrapes past the bone with a grisly tearing sound. Greer gasps, his eyes wide. Then he coughs, and blood bubbles between his lips.

  I’ve punctured his lung.

  He stumbles back, grasping at his wrist com, and my knife goes with him, stuck between his ribs. I grab for it and wrench it loose, then I swing higher, desperate to finish what I’ve started. Terrified that I’m in over my head.

  I aim for his neck, but he keeps moving back and I have to stumble after him. The edge of the knife slides across the side of his throat instead of plunging into it.

  A thin line of red appears on his skin. Then blood pours from the wound, drenching the front of his uniform.

  Greer grasps at his throat, trying to hold the wound closed, but blood flows between his fingers. He falls back against the glass wall of his office, then slides to the ground in a widening pool of blood on the concrete.

  Across the room, the robo-dogs stare straight ahead, unmoved.

  Greer’s mouth falls open. His eyes take on a glassy look. Then it’s all over.

  Stunned, I sink to the ground in front of him. I don’t want to see what I’ve done, yet I can’t look away.

  He was complicit. I can practically hear Callum say the words in my head. Greer was part of the system that would have handed me over for rape and execution. His death is not a tragedy. He is not gone too soon.

  It was him or me.

  Yet even knowing the truth of all that, I don’t really believe it. All I really believe is that I’ve killed someone. Again.

  But the flip side of that coin is that I’m still alive. So, I push myself to my feet. I’ll deal with the psychological fallout later—if I survive.

  I locked Greer out of the hounds’ programming several days ago, which means I don’t need his system access for one part of my plan. But for the rest of it…

  Using his still-warm finger, I authorize my own prints for use on his wrist com and on the wall screen in his office. On my way back to the tool chest my clothes are hidden behind, I slide his screen onto my wrist. Since no one knows Greer is dead yet, I can access the system using his com without giving away my presence.

  Dressed, I type Callum’s name into the prisoner database on the large wall screen in his glass office, terrified with every tap that the screen will tell me I’m too late. That he’s already dead. Instead, it tells me he’s being held under armed guard on the ground level. One floor above the death row cellblocks.

  I can unlock his cage from here. I could let him out. But even if he managed to take out the guards outside his cell, there are at least a hundred more ready and willing to shoot him the moment they see him.

  For now, I leave him locked up. The only way this will work is if I implement my full plan. Unfortunately, while Greer’s access is higher than Dalton’s, it’s not high enough. There’s only one person on the ground at the Resort with the access I need.

  I pull up a map of the Resort and set it to show all the active ID chips. But there are dozens of them, all over the massive building. So, I filter the results for Commander Harris. She’s in an office on the second floor, two up from the kennel. The same level as the female inmates’ dorm.

  There are too many guards; I won’t be able to get to her. I’m going to have to bring her to me.

  I open a new message on Greer’s screen and address it to Commander Harris, second guessing every word because I have no idea how closely they know each other or what their interactions are typically like. If I don’t sound like him, she’ll get suspicious. After several rewrites, I decide that simple is best.

  Commander, you’re needed in the kennel.

  She answers seconds later.

  Something wrong?

  I groan as I struggle through a reply, aware that if I worry too long over wording this time, she’ll know something’s wrong.

  Maybe. Found something interesting in the hounds’ programming.

  Hopefully that sounds like something Greer might actually say, considering that when I found him, he was trying to undo my reprogramming of the hounds.

  On my way.

  I exhale in relief. Then panic hits me like a punch to the gut. The moment she steps into the kennel she’ll see Greer’s body, and since his office has glass walls, I have nowhere to hide it, except behind the tool chest. But if I drag the body around, I’ll leave behind a trail of blood I have no way to clean up.

  Shit. If I can’t stop her from seeing the body, I’ll have to incapacitate her before she can report it.

  I pull Greer’s pistol from his belt, then I set it to stun. But that won’t help unless I can authorize myself to use it.

  Panicked, I frantically search through Greer’s desk drawers for the device that plugs into a slot in the back of the gun, which will let me authorize my own trigger finger. I’m not sure what that device looks like, but a quick search of his office yields nothing that looks even remotely promising.

  The pistol is worthless without Greer’s trigger finger. Damn it.

  My elbows and the backs of my knees begin to sweat as I pull the body toward the far wall, between two of the offline hounds. From here, I have an unimpeded view of the door, but I’m not immediately noticeable. With any luck, the second it takes Harris to trace the blood trail to my location will give me time to stun her. Assuming Greer’s finger is still warm enough to operate the gun trigger.

  I position the body to face the doorway and place the gun in Greer’s hand, with mine over his. The grip is awkward, because my hand is so much smaller than his, and when my finger starts to cramp after a minute, I have to support my grip with my free hand.

  Minutes pass like hours while I wait for Harris to arrive, and as the initial adrenaline rush begins to fade, exhaustion creeps up on me like a slowly rising tide. Something’s wrong. She should already be—

  The door slides open. My pulse spikes painfully. My finger twitches on the trigger.

  A flash of red streaks across the room, and the man in the doorway collapses.

  Shit.

  In the second it takes me to realize Harris brought backup, five men pour into the room ahead of her, the first one
dragging his unconscious coworker inside. The other four all point pistols at me.

  Shitshitshit.

  “Miss Bishop.” Harris stands surrounded by her men, without bothering to pull her own gun. “You’ve been much more trouble than we anticipated.”

  Speaking won’t help me, so I stay silent.

  “So, we certainly didn’t expect you to walk in here and give yourself up.”

  That is not what’s happening.

  “Put the gun down and step away from poor Officer Greer. He’s been through quite enough today.”

  I keep the gun aimed at her chest, my pulse racing, fully aware that the gesture is pointless. All my stolen pistol will do is stun her, and in the instant that takes, I’ll be shot at least four times.

  “Did you forget about the cameras?” She points up into the corner of the room without taking her focus from me. I don’t look. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be cameras in areas where inmates aren’t allowed, but I don’t doubt she’s telling the truth. And that she probably watched me pull Greer’s body across the room after my fruitless search for the fingerprint programmer.

  She knew exactly what she was walking into.

  “Drop the gun and stand up.”

  I remain frozen, Greer’s hand trapped beneath mine on the pistol, because I don’t know what else to do. I won’t get caught. I can’t die at the hands of Hansen’s son. I can’t let that happen to Callum either.

  “I’m going to count down to three. After that, if you haven’t dropped the gun, my men will fire, and when you wake up, you’ll be naked and handcuffed, waiting to entertain Mr. Hansen until he gets bored and decides to kill you. Live on camera. While your boyfriend watches.”

  That’s why Callum’s still alive. They’re going to make him watch whatever Hansen Jr. does to me.

  There has to be a way out of this. But I’m outmanned. Outgunned.

  “One.” Harris crosses her arms over the front of her uniform.

  The dogs. There are eight of them lined up right in front of me. Between me and the guards. If I put down the gun, maybe that’ll buy me enough time to wake them up. I’d have to type fast, but…

  “Two.”

  There’s no time to type. This will only work with a vocal command, but I didn’t register my voice with Greer’s wrist com.

  “Three—”

  “Wait!” I throw my left hand into the air. “I’ll put down the gun. But my hand is cramped. Give me a second.” As I slowly lower my right hand, taking Greer’s along for the ride, I glance at the tool box by the exterior door. Hansen’s wrist com still sits on top of the chest, where I left it when I got dressed.

  I’m not sure it’s close enough to register a vocal command from me, but that’s the only shot I have left.

  I uncurl my fingers, releasing both Greer’s hand and the gun.

  “Stand up slowly,” Harris orders. “Hands in the air.”

  I scoot away from the corpse and push myself to my knees, then I raise my hands as I stand. One of the guards holsters his gun and steps toward me.

  I say a silent prayer. Then I clear my throat. “Hounds. Online.”

  Flashes of red light up my peripheral vision from the tips of their tails as the robo-dogs lined up on either side of me come online.

  The closest guard freezes with his hand still on the butt of his pistol. “What the—”

  The dogs race forward as one, silent except for their steps pounding against the concrete floor. An instant later, the large room echoes with screams and the gruesome crunch of bone. The wet tearing of flesh. Bodies fall. Limbs flop. Blood arcs into the air. Then, everything goes still.

  The slaughter took mere seconds. The aftermath is a nightmare of torn limbs and crushed torsos. Sightless eyes and mouths open in screams that will never be heard again.

  Stunned—horrified—I suck in a deep breath. The bodies look like broken dolls someone splattered with buckets of red paint. And in the middle of it all, the dogs stand silent. Bloody. Awaiting their next order.

  I push through shock, trying to focus on what needs to be done next. Hiding Greer’s body would have been hard enough, but now I have six more dead guards, as well as the corpse of the commander. Someone will notice her missing. Soon.

  Breathing deeply to slow my racing pulse, I kneel at her side, trying to avoid puddles of blood, and use her still warm finger on her wrist com. Because while I can—and will—authorize my prints to operate her screen, it would take me forever to figure out how to give myself authorization for top level permissions and information she already has access to.

  First, I take care of the guns. All of them. With a few taps and a swipe of the commander’s finger, I wipe the entire firearms fingerprint database, effectively rendering every pistol and rifle registered to the Resort useless, except as a club.

  Next, I program my prints and voice for use on her wrist guard, then I slide it off her arm and wipe away all the blood before I take off Greer’s screen and replace it with the new one.

  I consider taking Harris’s gun, just for show, but there’s no real point, since I can’t fire it. Especially considering that I have a much better weapon at my disposal. Eight much better weapons, to be exact. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of their capabilities.

  Though I itch to get moving, I make myself slow down and take a quick look at the hounds’ programming again. Before, I focused only on the commands I had use for in the woods, but now…

  They’re programmed to obey vocal commands including HEEL, WITH ME, GUARD, STAND DOWN, and AS YOU WERE, which frees them of all imperatives except their primary directive. That directive is to kill anything fitting the parameters defined for “enemies.”

  As I’ve defined the term, the dogs’ enemies include anyone implanted with a locator ID chip. Which should be every guard on the planet.

  “With me,” I command, and to my utter astonishment, all eight dogs head in my direction, where they make up a protective cocoon around me. When I move toward the door, they match my pace as if they’re one unit. Birds in a flock.

  No, wolves in a pack.

  I can’t resist a smile as I step out of the kennel into the hall. This is gonna be so much fun.

  21

  CALLUM

  I look up as the door slides open and a guard steps into the room. It’s Cooper. He’s taken a special interest in me since the day he tried to bash my head in with the butt of his rifle, back in the enclosure.

  I’ve taken a special interest in him too. When I get out of here, he’ll be the first one I kill.

  “Time to go.” Cooper’s wrist com translates. He ignores the guard on duty and steps past the red line, right up to the bars, as if to prove he isn’t afraid of me. And he isn’t, with that gun on his hip. But that’ll change.

  “Go where?” Not that I give a shit. The only thing I care about is that the guard on duty is pulling a set of wire cuffs from his belt. Which means they’re going to let me out.

  This VIP cage isn’t much like the built-in concrete cells on F block. In fact, the only things they have in common are the hole in the floor, for disposing of waste, and the windowless room encompassing the cell.

  My cell is made entirely of bars, and it sits alone in the middle of the room—a cage within a cage—outlined by a red line that defines the ‘safe’ area outside my reach. Not that I can reach through this cage. All of the bars, including the ones making up the ceiling, are electrified. If I close my eyes and listen closely, I can hear the hum of the current.

  At first, I found the sound annoying, but after a few hours, the true inconvenience became clear—without any concrete walls, I have nothing to lean against. Which means there’s no real way to relax.

  That might seem like a petty complaint, considering that I’m about to die, but after a day and a half of either lying flat on the concrete or sitting upright in the middle of the floor, I’d give just about anything for my old cell.

  Not that I’d tell the guards
that.

  Cooper watches me while the guard on duty taps on his wrist screen. The hum of electricity fades into a blissful silence, and I clench my teeth to keep them from seeing how satisfying that is for me.

  “You’re headed to the executive suite.” Cooper holds one hand out, telling the guard to wait, instead of opening my cell. “That’s where you’re going to die. But first, you get a front row seat for the main event. Your girlfriend practically turned herself in.”

  “You’re full of shit.” The translation doesn’t do the insult justice, but Cooper seems to get the point.

  “They found her in the kennel. Evidently, she was trying to break you out.”

  Fuck. That does sound like Maci.

  Cooper laughs. “Believe me now, don’t you? That little bitch is a firecracker!”

  I say nothing as he takes the cuffs from the other guard.

  “Turn around and put your hands between the bars.”

  “Where is she?” I ask instead.

  “Harris went to retrieve her from the kennel, with an entire squad for backup. By the time we get to the suite, she’ll be waiting.” He shrugs. “I’m actually a little jealous. You get to watch the show in person, and I have to settle for the wall screen. I hope she puts up a fight, don’t you?”

  The edges of my vision darken until I can see nothing but his face. “I’ll kill anyone who touches her.”

  “Do I look worried? Put your hands between the bars, Fischer, or I’ll stun you and drag you upstairs.”

  I stare at him, picturing his face after I’ve smashed his nose, blackened his eyes, and cut his lips open on his broken teeth.

  They say visualizing your goals keeps you in a healthy frame of mind. I’m feeling really fucking healthy right now.

  I step toward the bars, trying to figure out how I’m going to do this. There will be an opportunity. There’s always an opportunity, if you’re willing to wait long enough.

  “Stop where you are!” The shout comes from the hallway, where there are two more guards posted outside the door. Because they’re finally taking me seriously around here. “I said stop!”