Unleashed

  His sigh gusts above my head. I don’t acknowledge him there even as I can visualize him looking down at me. I wait for him to go. He does, his steps a soft tread on the tile. It’s not until the door to the infirmary opens and shuts that I finally let go of the breath I’ve been holding.

  * * *

  SAN DIEGO TIMES

  April 17, 2018

  * * *

  A killer is still at large in the greater San Diego area. The latest victim is student Shannon Gomez. She is the third young woman to fall prey to a murderer police are no closer to apprehending. A source close to the case claims they are seeking Hoyt Mackenzie, a registered carrier and Ms. Gomez’s neighbor, for questioning and are unable to locate him. . . .

  TEN

  DARK EYES SHOWS UP AGAIN. I’VE DECIDED TO refer to him in this way until I can come up with an actual name for him that doesn’t seem snarky or disrespectful. Ghost just seems somehow belittling and brings to mind old Scooby-Doo cartoons. And Guy-I-Killed doesn’t fully capture my guilt. It’s a hard thing.

  He sits across the room on one of the stools beside Phelps’s lab table. He watches me with those eyes that glitter like flaming coal, hands braced on his knees, his posture as quiet as he is, his mouth a deep slash of lips, unspeaking. Brown eyes. Bullet hole. Black-red blood.

  I wish he would speak. If he just broke out in speech like a normal person, not a dead-come-back-to-haunt-me person, then I could talk to him. Reason with him. Explain why I had to do what I did. Then maybe he would be at peace. And so would I.

  “You’re back,” I say, and then realize just because I don’t remember him being around in the last couple of days doesn’t mean he hasn’t been with me all this time. That’s a sobering thought. Maybe he’s been here every time I close my eyes. I was just too sedated to notice.

  He’ll never really leave me. I know that.

  I glance around the room. There’s a small glow of light coming off some equipment in the corner. Dr. Phelps sleeps behind a curtained-off area. His gentle breathing scratches the air.

  When my gaze swings forward again, Dark Eyes moves from his seat. In a fraction of a second, he’s before me, bending at the waist in an eerie, unnatural way, crouching in front of me so I can see the shine of his eyes.

  Gasping, I lurch back, but his hoarse voice fills my ears. A single word. It travels through me like a deep vibration, settling in my head and spreading outward through the rest of me.

  It’s urgent and desperate, the syllables stretching long, sinking deep and biting into me. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaake.”

  Wake. Because I’m asleep.

  The sound reverberates in my ears as though someone had truly just shouted for me to wake up, and my eyes fly wide open.

  Relief rushes over me. I was dreaming. I drag in a lungful of air. My chest swells, holding the breath in before expelling it in a silent rush.

  I can practically feel my pupils dilate to take in more light. It’s in this eerie little moment, flashes of something . . . innate hit a chord, a buried memory of when humans were more animal than man, both prey and predator, and I feel my instincts take over.

  The same faint blue glow suffuses the room as in my dream. Peering into the shadows, I see that Phelps is gone, however. The curtain to his sleeping area is pulled back, revealing his unmade bed. Maybe someone got sick and he had to go to them. Whatever the case, it’s just me in the infirmary. That’s my thought as I roll onto my side, hoping to get back to sleep and that this time no visitors wait for me in the dark of my mind. Especially ones sporting a bullet hole to the head and who appear to be growing more vocal. Wake? Why would he have wanted me to wake up?

  I rub at the center of my forehead and release a shuddering sigh. Closing my eyes, I settle back onto the mattress. With a small snort, I remember that he was just a fabrication of my subconscious. He didn’t command me to wake up. I did.

  I did. . . .

  My eyes flare wide open. The room is pitch-black now. The low blue light is out, and I know that someone plunged the room into darkness. Someone. Someone who is in the room with me.

  My scalp pulls and tightens under my hair. I know, with the same instinct that tells me I’m not alone, that it’s not Phelps or Rhiannon. It’s not even Caden. Whoever’s here is not friendly.

  I can feel his intent, rolling in dark, malevolent waves toward me. It’s almost a tangible odor. Like burnt leaves in my nose.

  A switch flips inside me as instinct takes over. Everything drags to a slow crawl. My heartbeat stutters to a deep thud in my ears. I sit up on one elbow and pivot my neck, scanning for any shapes, a flicker of movement against the blanket of dark.

  Muscles tense, I push the covers off my legs and drop to the cold concrete. I step slowly in the direction of Phelps’s lab table, going after a weapon. I can see the medical instruments in my mind, where Phelps left them on the stainless-steel rolling tray.

  I move blindly, listening, seeing with my memory, feeling with my skin.

  I jump as wheels roll across the floor with a whir. A gurney hits a wall with a violent crash. I spin around, staring, my breath a loud saw of air.

  Then I hear it. Someone else breathing, too.

  Too late, I realize my mistake. I should have kept going for that weapon. I let myself be distracted. My training from Mount Haven kicks in, and all at once I hear my instructors’ advice drilling into me.

  Be faster. Outrun your opponent.

  I take off for Phelps’s tray table of instruments as those voices play out in my head.

  Get your hands on a weapon.

  My bare feet smack hard over the concrete.

  Embrace the fact that they will always underestimate you.

  I feel him behind me before I actually feel him. The rush of air as a hand swipes near my head. Fingertips graze strands of my hair and then latch on, knuckles curling hard into my scalp and then yanking.

  Crying out, I drop, counting on the weight of my body to break his hold. Tears spring to my eyes as hair rips free from my scalp. I let gravity do its job; my feet dive first like a baseball player sliding into home. I crash into the stand holding the tray of instruments. Everything rains to the floor in a deafening clatter.

  Hopping up in a crouch, I pat the ground until I find something. Fumbling, I wrap my hands around cold steel. The sharp tip of it scores my palm, and I quickly reposition it sharp end out. It’s slick in my bloody palm, so I clench tightly and stand. I swing blind, again and again, in every direction, hoping to make contact. My weapon whistles on the air, but nothing. No contact.

  Wild, animal-like sounds escape my lips, but over the sounds I can hear the ragged breathing of another person.

  Something crashes into my cheek. I go down hard, fall on my shoulder, and it’s double the fun. I still manage to keep my weapon, but I’m stunned, the pain in my shoulder worse than the throbbing in my face. Something wet trickles down my back and I know I’m bleeding again—the stitches ripped free.

  Panting, I shake my head, trying to force myself to move, to think. A body pins me, the weight heavy, punishing. Thighs straddle me and I know I’m screwed. He’s bigger and I’ve lost the upper hand, if I ever had it.

  He scoots up until his knees find my shoulders, anchoring me there, fixing me to the floor, incapacitating me. It’s agony. White-hot agony. The pain is so intense I can’t even struggle. A scream starts at the back of my throat but is swiftly killed as two hands grab and squeeze, crushing my windpipe. My lips work, choking, gargling for speech as those hands clench tighter.

  Do something! Fight! Move!

  I swing, embed the slim blade into flesh. A deep shout tells me I hurt him. I’m not sure where I’ve struck. His arm or his side. The hands on me loosen for a brief moment before tightening again with renewed determination. Clearly I didn’t hurt him badly enough. Or he’s just so unhinged that pain takes a backseat to his thirst for killing.

  He shakes me as he’s choking me, and the back of my head cracks against the flo
or. Bright spots flash over the darkness. I flex my hand around the weapon and yank it out, then plunge it in again. This time there’s no shout. He stiffens above me. Wetness spills over my fingers like a geyser, and I know I hit something vital. His hands release me, fingers slipping from around my throat, and he slumps over me.

  I struggle to push my face free so that I can breathe. My fingers claw an opening for myself, and I suck in air.

  I can’t move for the longest time. Even as my body grows wet under him, soaked in his blood, I just lie there in the dark, spent.

  My muscles spasm and quiver. I’m a useless lump. If someone wanted to finish me off right now, they’d find no resistance. Every breath hurts passing through my ravaged throat. I try to inhale through my nose, but I’m too starved for oxygen. I can’t stop my lungs from pulling air in and out of my mouth, even though it feels like nails clawing the inside of my throat.

  The door to the infirmary suddenly opens, and I hear the click of a switch the second before fluorescent lighting hums to life.

  * * *

  Dear Davy,

  I haven’t heard from you and I know I shouldn’t expect to, but I can’t not write to you. The house is so quiet without you. Mom and Dad try to act like everything is okay, but they hardly talk to each other—or me. Our family just isn’t a family without you. It’s like you were our captain, steering us through life, and we didn’t even know it.

  I watch the news every day. I’ve joined a group. We protest the Agency . . . make posters and circulate petitions. Next week a huge group of us are rallying at the state capital. I tell myself I’m doing something, but it doesn’t seem enough. I don’t know how long I can stay here. Not with everything that’s going on. Not with you out there.

  I hear the rumblings about the resistance cells. Word is they’re popping up all over the country, smuggling carriers from checkpoint to checkpoint, working toward undermining the Agency and camps. The media insists it’s all exaggeration, but I think the Resistance is real. They’re out there and making a difference. There are more people questioning the validity of HTS. Things have got to change soon, Davy. Just hold on.

  —Letter sent from Mitchell Hamilton

  Destroyed upon receipt at Mount Haven

  ELEVEN

  BY THE TIME PHELPS ROLLS MY WOULD-BE-ASSASSIN off me, he’s made enough noise, shouting and calling for help, that a mob quickly crowds the infirmary. I wheeze, speech impossible.

  Caden isn’t the first one to the room, but there’s a shift in the air once he arrives. He may claim not to be in charge, but everyone looks to him when he bursts through the door, shoving past bodies. Even Marcus looks at him. Or glares really. But Marcus has been glaring since he got here and crouched beside me and the dead guy, looking back and forth between the two of us with the oddest expression in his eyes.

  Caden searches the room, takes it in with one sweep. His eyes light on the body of the man I killed. He’s still right there beside me, the copper-rich scent of him indistinguishable from my own smell. I reek of death. The entire room does.

  Since the light flipped on, I’ve studied him, too. My would-be-killer. Another face for my nightmares. Although I won’t suffer guilt this time around. Not for this one. He didn’t have to creep into my room in the middle of the night and try to choke the life out of me. No one forced his hands around my throat. That was his choice. Killing him was mine, and I don’t regret it. Not when it came down to him or me.

  I recognized him at once. The creeper.

  Caden’s gaze locks on me. He moves to stand beside Phelps, who still inspects me, prodding at my neck, and it takes everything in me not to shrink away from the contact. Right now I really don’t feel like being touched. “Choked you, huh?” Phelps murmurs.

  Caden’s hands lift, slightly flex on the air as though he’s not sure where he can touch me. If it’s okay. If I’m not spinning toward death even now. Whether the copious amount of blood covering me and the floor isn’t mine.

  I stare at Caden’s hovering hands, hoping he doesn’t touch me. I don’t want the comfort. I need to remember hard, crushing hands strangling the life out of me. That will keep things in perspective. Keep me sharp. Alert to danger, to threats. I can’t let someone lull me with a tender touch. I’d dropped my guard here, and it nearly cost me.

  “You’re bleeding?” It’s more question than statement as his eyes do a quick dance over me.

  “No.” The word is a hoarse croak. His eyes narrow in on my face, that fiery brown warm and alive in the unkind light. “Well. Maybe.” I wince and shift my shoulder as much as I can bear. “Most of it is his.” I nod toward the dead guy.

  “Your voice—” Caden starts to say, but Phelps cuts him off.

  “She’s alive. She’s fine.” Phelps lifts a hand and pats Caden on the shoulder.

  As though being not dead is all it takes to be fine. I bristle, wondering how he knows that. I want to shout at him, I don’t feel fine. I’m not fine. But I pull myself together with a rough breath.

  “Get that out of here.” Phelps motions for a few of the guys crowding the room to grab the corpse and then he’s behind me, arms hooking under my shoulders. There’s fresh pain, but I barely register it as he drags me off to the side, away from the wide puddle of blood. I glide easily enough over the floor, the blood slick under me. My entire body feels like it went toe-to-toe with a semi. It could be worse. I guess Dr. Phelps is right, because I could be dead and not feeling anything at all anymore.

  Rhiannon helps him get me up on an exam table. At least I’m not on the floor now—I felt too vulnerable with everyone towering over me—but all the movement has made me dizzy.

  Caden stands off to the side, listening to something Marcus is saying, but his gaze flits back and forth between me and the body with a scalpel sticking out of its neck. That’s where I stabbed the winning blow.

  Marcus’s hands slice the air and his voice lifts. I can’t focus on the words, but Caden doesn’t look happy with whatever he’s hearing. He shakes his head and tries to step around him, but Marcus stops him with a hand on his arm. Caden knocks it away. Marcus’s face turns several shades of red, and I know they’re about to get physical. And then Terrence is there, stepping between both of them, speaking in a low voice impossible for anyone but the two of them to hear.

  My gaze slides away, drawn to my attacker. His body is gathered up into a sheet and hauled out the door. There’s so much blood left behind on the floor.

  Rhiannon touches the back of my hand lightly, and I flinch.

  She pulls away, her expression sliding into something cautious and distant. “Let’s get you showered.”

  I shake my head, still staring at the dark puddle of blood like so much tar on the floor.

  “You can’t stay like this. You’re covered in blood, Davy—”

  “I can’t walk.” This last word catches, vanishing in my destroyed throat. My eyes swing to her, resenting that she’s making me say it. At Mount Haven they taught us, Never show weakness. But here I am. So weak. A broken bird. I have no fight left.

  Rhiannon looks toward Phelps, and her gaze must communicate something because he places cool, gentle fingers at my neck, peering closely. I’m not sure what he can determine. Most of the skin there is covered with ink, but he frowns. “Is it too uncomfortable to speak? Can you say something more for me?”

  I moisten my lips, my gaze slipping to the pool of blood and back to him again. “Y’all really need to work on your welcome here.”

  His mouth lifts in a half smile. “Your voice should recover.” His gaze flicks to my shoulder. “Anything else wrong?” He peels back my collar. “How are your stitches?”

  I shake my head.

  He nods. “Okay. I’ll stitch you back up, but shower first.” His lip curls as his eyes skim me. “You’re a mess.”

  I glance down. Every inch of me is covered in blood.

  “C’mon. You treat carriers.” I swallow against my ravaged throat. “You mus
t see this all the time.”

  “We rarely have violence here,” Rhiannon defends, a touch of accusation in her voice, a sharpness to her eyes. Like I somehow brought this with me.

  I grunt. “It’s just me then. I incite violence by . . . taking up space.”

  Her lips compress.

  Just then Caden approaches, the lines of his face set grimly as his amber eyes assess me.

  I look up at him and swallow before speaking, trying to work moisture into my mouth and ease the words out. “Rhiannon was just telling me about what a peace-loving operation you run here.”

  The corners of his mouth pull downward, and he suddenly appears older than his nineteen years. “This isn’t usual.”

  This only aggravates me further—and the fact that I had started to believe myself safe. That I was beginning to relax here.

  He continues, “Hoyt has been with us for a while and never showed any signs. . . .” His voice fades. A muscle ticks in his jaw. He glances to Terrence, who stands silently beside him, taking in our little play.

  “Never showed any signs of violence,” I finish for him. “Right? That’s what you were going to say?” My last few words are just a rasp, a scratch of whispery sound, but he hears them.

  “That’s right,” he agrees, his eyes like molten earth as they peer down at me, his expression unnerving in its intensity.

  Am I the only one here who hasn’t forgotten what we are? No one is trustworthy. Deep down they know that, or they wouldn’t be concerned about blindfolding people.

  Marcus materializes beside Caden and Terrence. “Why should he have wanted to kill you?”

  “I don’t know,” I growl. “I didn’t know him. Did he need a reason?”

  Marcus snarls. It’s the only word for it, and I go from strongly disliking him to hating him right then. I was the one nearly strangled.

  “Maybe you invited him in here and then turned on him?” Marcus arches an eyebrow like he’s landed on some genius possibility.