The Hunt

by Stacey Kade

  With an effort, I forced my attention back to Ariane’s words.

  Things have changed, and this is more dangerous than I realized. I can’t put you in any further risk.

  It had to be the letter. The one in the emergency duffel. Not that she’d told me what that letter had said. But that was the only thing I could think of that could have changed her understanding of the situation this dramatically.

  I’m leaving money for a cab to take you to your mom’s house. I wish I could go with you. I wish

  Whatever she’d wished, or nearly wished, she’d crossed it out so thoroughly, the paper had ripped beneath the point of the pen.

  —When you call for a cab, DON’T give them the room number.

  —Wait until you see the cab in the parking lot before you leave the room.

  —Don’t leave the room if you see any other vehicles waiting.

  —If you feel unsafe…

  I crumpled up the note without reading the rest, frustration and hurt warring inside me. She was trying to protect me. I understood that. But it wasn’t her decision.

  I wasn’t as skilled as she was—no big leap there—but I’d known the choice I was making when I’d left with her. Didn’t that count for something?

  I snagged the ball of cash off the dresser. Thousands of dollars for a cab ride that might cost fifty bucks. She was looking out for me, again, at the expense of herself.

  I shook my head, my jaw so tight my teeth ached.

  I’d been expecting this, sort of. The moment she realized that she didn’t need someone like me hanging around. Slowing her down, a voice in my head added. It sounded suspiciously like my dad, which only made me angry.

  But I’d thought there’d be a chance to try to talk her out of it. Or, at least, to say good-bye.

  The lump in my throat made it hard to swallow. I just wanted…I didn’t know what I wanted. But it wasn’t for this to end now, to never see Ariane again.

  In the too-loud silence of the room, I heard an engine turn over in the parking lot below, cough, and then catch.

  Electricity shot through my veins. Had I just missed her? Had I woken up just seconds after she left? It seemed impossible, the odds completely against me. If she wanted to sneak out and disappear without being caught, she could do it. And yet…

  I jammed the cash in my pocket and bolted for the door, jerking it open without bothering to check through the peephole first (even as Ariane’s instructions from the note nagged at me from the back of my head).

  In the parking lot, our van was backing slowly out of the spot where I’d left it.

  I threw myself down the stairs, taking multiple steps at once until I reached the bottom.

  By the time I got there, she was already shifting into drive—I could hear the change in the engine noise. If I tried to run toward the van, she’d easily accelerate past me, leaving me behind for good.

  That pretty much left only one option, one that banked on Ariane being more concerned with my safety than her own need for escape. In other words, an option that I wasn’t entirely confident in.

  I took a deep breath, and with the bitter metal taste of fear in my mouth, I darted directly into the path of the van, little rocks biting through my socks and into the vulnerable bottoms of my feet.

  The headlights blinded me instantly, tires squealing on the asphalt a second later as she hit the brakes.

  The van stopped about three feet in front of me, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “What are you doing, Zane?” Ariane asked, cold and distant but clear enough. She must have unrolled the window.

  “I think that’s my line,” I said, somehow angrier now that she was talking to me. “What the hell, Ariane?”

  “Get out of the way,” she said flatly.

  “No.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “By leaving me in the dark?” I gestured to the sky. “Literally.”

  “This…” She paused as if trying to find the right words. “This isn’t your problem,” she said finally. “I can’t ask you to take any more risks.”

  “Here’s the thing: you didn’t actually ask me anything. You just left.” I could hear my hurt and anger, and I didn’t bother to hide it. She’d sense it in my thoughts anyway, so what was the point.

  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” she said, that edge returning to her voice.

  “You’re right. Because you didn’t tell me!” I was shouting now and found I didn’t care.

  “Hey, is everything okay out here? Do I need to call someone?” I looked over to find the burly manager standing in the doorway of the office. With my vision temporarily impaired from the headlights, he appeared more like a human-shaped blob. But he was apparently a human-shaped blob with a phone and an itchy 911 finger.

  I faced Ariane, holding my arm to partially block the headlights. “I don’t know. Is it?”

  The tension of the moment spread out, a taut line between Ariane and me and a fainter tentacle stretching out toward the motel manager.

  I decided to push. I know you can hear me, Ariane, so let me put this in a way you’ll understand: If you don’t let me into this van and tell me what’s going on, I swear to God, when GTX finds me, and you know they will, I’ll happily tell them everything I know about Talia Torv and her Canadian citizenship.

  I sensed more than saw her shock. It was an ugly threat and not one I would have willingly followed through with, but it was the only one I had to make. If she was playing dirty, so was I.

  “Get in,” she said.

  I waited until I heard the engine shift into idle and the thump of her unlocking the passenger door before I moved.

  “No worries,” I said to the manager, who was watching suspiciously, as I climbed in. “We’re fine. No trouble here.”

  He grunted at me, indicating his disbelief in those statements. I wasn’t sure I could blame him.

  ZANE WAS BLUFFING WITH THAT THREAT. I was pretty sure. But all the emotion radiating off him made it hard to be certain. And determination ranked right at the top of that list. He wasn’t going to give up, and with that manager standing right there, ready to call the police, I couldn’t afford to waste any more time arguing with him.

  Damn it. I shoved the gearshift into park and then reached over to unlock the door for Zane.

  What might have been relief flickered over Zane’s face as he registered the sounds. Then, his mouth tight, he headed to the passenger side.

  I shook my head. It was like just getting the bleeding to stop and then reopening the wound.

  You never should have shut the room door. It woke him up.

  All I’d had to do was walk out and leave the door slightly ajar. Just enough to keep the lock from engaging—a sudden and loud click that might be disruptive—but not so much that it would be noticed by a casual observer outside.

  Easy, in theory.

  And yet, in reality, not so much.

  As I’d shut the door, I’d glanced at Zane one last time, sleeping and vulnerable, his limbs slack with exhaustion. His dark hair was a tousled mess, making him look younger and more at risk for harm.

  Leaving the door unlatched—and therefore, unlocked—meant leaving Zane open to attack. Not just by GTX or the others who might be searching for me, but regular, disreputable humans who might not hesitate to take advantage of him. Or the money I’d left for him.

  And wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to keep him safe?

  I’d imagined Zane waking up with a stranger looming over him, his fear and confusion, and my hand had jerked, as if an electrical shock had passed through the metal handle. The door had snapped shut, the lock engaging with a declarative click.

  And that had decided that.

  Who, exactly, are you attempting to fool? You knew the risks of that action and took it anyway. You wanted this.

  I winced. Great. The part of me that I counted on to be unemotional and logical—my “al
ien” side, as I thought of it—had apparently discovered the joy of sarcasm. Not that it was inaccurate.

  Zane climbed in the van, saying something to the motel manager who was staring at us, a cell phone clutched in his thick hand.

  “Thanks for getting him involved,” I said to Zane, as he closed the door.

  “Never would have happened if you’d just talked to me instead of skulking out in the middle of the night,” he pointed out sharply, surprising me a little.

  “I wasn’t skulking. Skulking implies shame or wrongdoing,” I said, stung. Stupid. It was a ridiculous response, but seeing him like this had thrown me. Struggling with my own mixed emotions, I hadn’t fully considered his feelings. Yes, I’d expected him to be upset when he woke and found me gone, maybe even feel a little betrayed, but I’d figured relief would outweigh both of those emotions. I mean, who wouldn’t want a free pass out of this nightmare that was my life?

  Not, of course, that I’d planned to be here when he was running that particular emotional gamut.

  You might not have planned it, but you certainly made it possible.

  Oh, shut up.

  Back in the world outside my head, Zane raised his eyebrows. “Really? That’s your defense? Arguing word choice?”

  By now, I was feeling slightly provoked and attacked from multiple sides. “I told you, I was trying to protect—”

  “Protect me, yeah. From what? What is so different now from a few hours ago?” he demanded.

  “It’s complicated,” I hedged, putting the van in gear and pulling out of the parking lot onto the road. The last thing we needed was the manager calling the police anyway, because we weren’t leaving.

  Zane narrowed his eyes at me. “This is about that letter, isn’t it? What does it say?”

  I hesitated. If there was the possibility I could get him to leave without dragging him deeper into this mess, all the better.

  He made a frustrated noise. “We’ve been over this already. If you don’t tell me—”

  “You want to know so badly? Fine,” I snapped. “Good luck trying to ever sleep again. I won’t be.”

  He waved his hand in a “give it to me” gesture.

  “According to my father’s letter, GTX shouldn’t be my primary concern. Dr. Jacobs wants me alive. His competitors—David Laughlin and Emerson St. John—do not,” I said flatly. “One less hybrid to beat in the trials.”

  Zane flinched.

  “And apparently, they aren’t particularly worried about taking out innocent bystanders if it means getting rid of me,” I said. “Anyone near me is in danger of being killed. Not captured, not tortured, not used for motivation. Dead. Do you get that?” I could hear the hard edge growing in my voice and forced myself to breathe.

  Zane let out a slow breath and slumped in his seat, rubbing his hands over his face.

  Disappointment crept over me, but I shoved it away. This was good. He should know the stakes, the odds against his survival.

  I pulled over into the mostly empty parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts and dug into my pocket for the key card to the room, which I’d kept for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely. “Here,” I said softly.

  His gaze flicked between the card and my face. “Do you not want me here? Am I…” He paused, as if searching for what to say, and then he exhaled sharply, frustrated with himself or me, I couldn’t tell.

  “Am I slowing you down?” he asked finally, the words coming out rapidly, as if he was afraid of the answer.

  I gaped at him, too shocked to respond at first. “No, of course not,” I managed. “I mean, yes, I want you here, but it’s too dangerous.”

  At that, he gave me a bitter smile, his white, even teeth flashing in the dim light. “Has it ever occurred to you that, even without crazy government people chasing me, I don’t have much to go back to?”

  “They’re not government. At least not yet. For now, it’s just the corporate.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to correct him, to pick at minute points of his argument rather than the main one. Maybe it was because I was having trouble finding fault with it; maybe it was because I didn’t want to.

  Zane rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He shifted in his seat, turning more toward me. “Ariane, do you think I can go home again? Do you really think I can live with my dad after all of that?”

  I remembered the shade of reddish purple his father’s face had turned when Zane defied him. There was no love lost between them now, if there ever had been. That much was clear.

  I shook my head. “But you have everything. You have a future. You’ve got…prom and graduation and college.” All the things I wanted and could never have.

  “Your reasons for keeping me away are so that I can attend lame school functions?” he asked.

  “You’re being deliberately obtuse,” I said, exasperated. If he could throw around “skulking”…

  He smirked. “My favorite color.”

  “Funny,” I said dryly. Then I shook my head. I wouldn’t let him distract me. “Okay, so going back to Wingate isn’t an option. We already figured that anyway. But your mom—”

  “Vanished in the middle of the night more than a year ago and hasn’t made contact since. Left a note full of apologies.” He gave me a piercing look.

  Ah, that explained why he’d reacted so badly to what I’d done. I grimaced.

  “Is it so hard to believe I want to be here? With you?” he asked quietly.

  I froze. God, how was I supposed to respond to that?

  I took a deep breath and worked through my choices. Could I force him out of the van? Yes. Would he be safer without me? Probably. Maybe. I wouldn’t be there if someone came after him, which was its own trouble. And he did, through my own foolishness, know my new identity. Which was a vulnerability that could be exploited, even against his will.

  I had only the truth to give at this point. “I can’t…I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you because of me,” I admitted.

  He turned toward me. “Yeah? How are you going to stop it? Especially if you’re not around?” His tone was gentler than his words.

  “You’d be safer without me,” I blurted out in an approximation of my worst fear. Better off. He’d be better off without you.

  Zane seemed undisturbed. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think you can know that,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can. Besides, even if that’s true, even if it’s more dangerous for me to stick it out with you, don’t I get to choose?” He leaned closer, bracing one hand on the dashboard, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Isn’t that why you hate GTX? Because they took away your choices? You want the opportunity to make decisions for yourself. Why do you get that freedom and I don’t?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again without saying a word. I didn’t have an argument for that.

  You don’t need one. Just remove him from the vehicle.

  No. I tried the other way. Maybe he’s right.

  I sighed and shoved the arguing parts of myself to the back of my mind. There would never be agreement on this matter, I knew that much already. “What do you want to do?” I asked Zane.

  To Zane’s credit, he didn’t react as though this was the capitulation he’d been seeking. He just sat back in his seat. “I want to go to my mom’s and make sure she’s okay.”

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  He shot me a look. “If they’re willing to kill people to get to you, she might be in danger because of me. And I need to warn her at least. You owe me that much.”

  He was right. I’d wreaked enough havoc on his life. I could do this one thing for him to try to set things right.

  “Okay, but then what?” I asked. “I need to get out of the country and—”

  “Run for the rest of your life? Find an abandoned cabin in the woods somewhere and hope for the best?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said.

  “You’re willing to fight for everybody else but not yourself,” he said, more to himself tha
n me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, bristling.

  “I mean, all of this started because you couldn’t stand to see Jenna suffering and then you were willing to do whatever it took to keep them from hurting me. You saved Rachel even after everything she did to you.” He shook his head in wonder. “But you won’t give yourself the same consideration.”

  I didn’t like the direction of this conversation. Hearing the names of my former best friend, my only friend, and my high school nemesis only reminded me of the wreckage trailing behind me, a past I couldn’t escape. “Do you have any better options?” I asked tightly.

  Zane shrugged. “I don’t know. What about going public?”

  My jaw dropped. “Oh, yeah, that’ll end well,” I said. “Zane, in case it’s escaped your notice, there’s just one of me. Up against three very powerful companies with unlimited resources and, I don’t know, eventually the United States government maybe. I’m not human. I may not even have rights. They could classify me as an enemy of the state or a terrorist or something.”

  “I think an argument could be that you’re as much human as anything else,” he said.

  I tried not to wince. Is that how he thought of me? Is that the only reason he was okay with me? Because I was “as much human as anything else”? It was and was not true. Part of me was human, most definitely, but I would never be human “enough.” There would always be something other about me. It was just part of who I was, who I would be forever, the struggle between human and not.

  “But fine,” Zane continued, completely unaware of my inner turmoil. “Even if that’s not the right answer, my point is that there are other possibilities. You just haven’t given yourself a chance to figure them out.” He paused. “You deserve more, Ariane. You deserve a life of your own.” His fierceness was unmistakable. He meant it.

  Hope flared in me and stubbornly refused to go out. Was Zane right? I wanted so badly to believe him. Wanted to believe in the idea that there might be something to my future other than hiding. But I’d had this same feeling twenty-four hours ago, when fleeing GTX, and trusting in that little bit of hope again was more than I could do right now.