Unnaturals #2 Page 11

  Runt opened one eye. “Did you hear that, Flicker?”

  The centipedes started running. There were so many it looked like the floor was moving. But Runt and the lizard weren’t jumping forward to gobble them up. Instead, they were just jumping straight into the air.

  Soon both dog and lizard were shaking wildly.

  Runt was shaking off his coat and barking, but the lizard was actually screaming. Kozmo had never heard a sound like it.

  The lizard’s accent was quite strange, now that she was talking. “What is it, what is it? Get them off me!”

  “It’s food!” Kozmo screeched at them from her hidden perch above. How did a lizard not like a delicious, leggy insect? Maybe it had to do with whatever the Yellow Six had done to her, Kozmo considered. Maybe they had erased Flicker’s instincts? That was a horrifying thought.

  But Kozmo couldn’t help laughing, too. It really was quite funny to see them dancing around like that.

  In the end, they bolted down the tunnel, leaving all the writhing delicacies behind, and Kozmo feasted on them herself.

  She was just finishing up when she heard something in the distance. Kozmo snapped to attention. She could feel tiny vibrations in the walls. The fine hairs inside her sensitive ears twitched. Someone was coming.

  Kozmo didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to get the intruder’s attention, but she felt this strange desire to protect the other animals, too. She needed to know how far away the intruder was, at least—how much time she had. She let out one high screech, and the echo bounced back to her almost immediately. There was more than one. And they were close.

  Runt and the lizard didn’t even know they should run. Kozmo had to warn them! But if she showed herself now, she’d have to explain, and there wasn’t time for that. If she could scare them into running, maybe they stood a chance to get away.

  She hissed, and she screeched, and she flapped her wings.

  Unfortunately, it worked too well. The dog and the lizard were terrified. Instead of running, Runt reacted how he always did in unfamiliar situations: he started yelling his head off.

  The barks were ear-splittingly loud, and they got the attention of whatever was on its way.

  Kozmo felt the vibrations quicken. Whatever was coming was headed right toward them!

  30

  CASTOR AND JAZLYN WERE CERTAINLY FAR AWAY FROM humans now. They were in one of the darkest tunnels, with no more vegetation, no man-made light source, and only their senses to guide them.

  The tunnel smelled like stone walls and metal tracks and sulphurous river water leaching in, but underneath it all, Castor caught a note of green.

  “The Greenplains are this way, I know it,” he told Jazlyn.

  The rabbit-panther had paused, though, a little less eager to bound down the path. For Jazlyn, fear lurked around every turn. “You can’t only follow your nose, Castor,” she warned. “There’s something up ahead. Listen.”

  Castor’s ears stood up. His body went rigid. “Runt?” he whispered.

  Castor felt light-headed with a sudden surge of joy. His heart quickened in his chest. Before, when they’d first escaped, he had thought he was hallucinating. Now, there was no mistaking the sound of his brother’s voice.

  Or the distinct note of panic in it—something was wrong.

  “RUNT!”

  He didn’t know exactly where his brother was, but instinct took over. Castor shot forward, and it was like his muscles belonged to someone else. Someone stronger. Faster. He bounded blindly, his legs churning with such speed that not even Jazlyn could keep up.

  Through the mud, over the tracks, down into unknown darkness, Castor’s eyes barely registered the turns and dips of the path. He was focused on something beyond this tunnel.

  He saw his little brother, bounding after him down their alley in Lion’s Head on too-big puppy feet. He saw Runt, breathless with excitement on their first hunt, zipping around Castor so fast he got tangled in his legs and tripped them both. He saw Runt hunting, and sleeping, and playing—always somewhere close behind Castor’s shoulder. He saw the curiosity in those wide brown eyes as he asked Castor to tell him again about the latest news headlines and the Unnaturals reality show, and his dreams of the Greenplains. He saw Runt as he’d seen him in dreams during those long months in his cell at NuFormz: frozen in time on the dock in those moments just before the men had come and changed everything. Goofy and trusting and vulnerable and full of love for his big brother.

  Then he saw him for real. Up ahead, silhouetted under the dim tunnel lights, was a shepherd dog. Thinner than Castor remembered and with mangier fur, but familiar all the same. More than familiar. That particular stance, that angle of the head, that flop of the left ear was unmistakable.

  “Brother!” Castor barked an ecstatic greeting. He had lost so much. He couldn’t believe Runt had come back to him.

  “Castor?” Runt gasped. Then his teeth shone in the dopiest, most welcome grin Castor had ever seen.

  “Broth—oof!”

  Castor didn’t know what hit him. The way it cracked his skull, making the overhead lights turn into an explosion of stars, it could’ve been a Crusher Slusher. It felt like someone had thrown one of the weights he used to train with back at NuFormz at his head.

  He felt an immediate surge of nausea, and Castor flopped to the side as he dry heaved, blinking fast and waiting for his vision to clear.

  Then there was a whoosh of air as the thing circled back, and Castor ducked down, flinching for a second hit. But it wasn’t coming for him this time. He saw a shock of orange, a flash of wing, and then Runt’s wide eyes as whatever it was—some unidentifiable creature—latched its teeth onto the scruff of the young dog’s neck and, lurching awkwardly with the dog’s unfamiliar weight, carried him away.

  No. Castor blinked at the empty tunnel. No no no no no.

  He scrambled to his feet, swaying with dizziness after the blow. He tore after them, and soon Jazlyn was by his side again, recovered from her terror.

  “My . . . brother . . .” He panted an explanation. “Have to . . . find . . .”

  She gave a quick nod and shot forward, the dirt spraying up behind her. Jazlyn was impressively agile, weaving around pipes and bounding over gaps in the tracks, but the head injury hit Castor harder than he’d thought, and he struggled to keep up in the darkness.

  I will not leave him, Castor vowed, squinting for a glimpse of those dark wings flapping ahead. When he couldn’t see the wings any longer, he tried to focus on just the screeching, but it seemed to be bouncing all around the caves and echoing through the tunnels, so it was impossible to find his way.

  I can’t . . . lose him, Castor thought. Not again.

  But try as he might, his muscles were starting to fail him now. His legs grew clumsy, and his talons snagged. Castor stumbled, then lurched, and finally collapsed, and he was left in darkness.

  31

  LEESA HAD SAID THEY NEEDED PROOF THAT OTHER PEOPLE were involved if they were going to help Pete, but being grounded, Marcus didn’t exactly have much access to other people. He did have access to Bruce, though, and for the first time, Marcus was actually looking forward to spending some time with his stepdad.

  That it was for the sole purpose of discovering incriminating information that would ensure Bruce was locked up forever was beside the point.

  Marcus’s parents were arguing a lot lately, and Bruce was spending a lot of late nights at work. Marcus took the opportunity of the building family tension to do some snooping. He snuck into Bruce’s office and took a look around.

  The walls were covered in boring sciencey stuff—biology illustrations and food-chain diagrams and charts of elements. Everything was pretty organized on the desk. There wasn’t much in the drawers except an old tablet and a stack of notepads—Bruce was so ancient he actually still took notes. Like, with an actual pen.

  Marcus heard the squeak of Bruce’s tennis shoes and realized he had lost track of time. Just before Bru
ce opened the door, Marcus dove behind one of the white curtains covering the windows. A ton of dust bunnies crawled up his nose, and as Marcus held his breath to keep from sneezing, he heard Bruce giving a voice command on his handheld.

  “Eris.”

  Bruce waited a beat while it connected. Then Marcus heard a volley of words on the other side, and listened to Bruce’s frustrated inhales as he kept trying to cut in.

  “I know,” he kept repeating. “I know. I’m not backing out.”

  More sighing, and Marcus heard his fingers tapping—must be accessing the slipstream.

  “I have the data right here, and I’m telling you we’re not ready to move to H-trials yet. That timeline is impossible without more experiments.” He sighed. “Fine. I said, fine! But it isn’t right.”

  Bruce huffed and stormed out of the room, and Marcus scrambled out from behind the curtain.

  Of course his notes would be on the slipstream—easily accessible from home or the office! Marcus had to get out of here, though. That was close, and if Bruce found him in his office, Marcus wouldn’t just be grounded, he’d be strapped to his bed in a straitjacket.

  When he got back to his room, Marcus took out the mess of cords and stream accessories from the box he’d shoved in the corner. He’d been locked out of the simulink before, but now that Marcus had a real purpose, he had a little more initiative and creativity. Using gaming codes from a defunct role-play set that connected players from all over the world, Marcus was finally able to get on to the slipstream. And after that, it didn’t take him long to hack into Bruce’s storage and access his files.

  Pro tip: do not make SexySciFi your password. And definitely don’t tape it under your tablet so you won’t forget.

  Also: don’t be an idiot jerkwad.

  Meaning: don’t be Bruce.

  That’s how, under the guise of gaming in his room, Marcus managed to hack into Bruce’s slipstream. He would take his time browsing all this highly confidential information on his floor-to-ceiling warp screen.

  Unfortunately, the only thing on the data storage in the slipstream was a slideshow.

  Marcus watched it eagerly, expecting images like the ones the mayor had shown of Pete: bad people doing bad things they would pay for.

  Instead, Marcus saw images of his mom and Bruce’s wedding, of tiny Pete holding tiny Marcus’s hand, of Bruce looking nervous and scared but a lot more daring than Marcus could ever remember him looking since.

  It almost made a tiny part of him feel for his stepdad. Almost.

  But regardless of what Marcus thought of Bruce, he still hadn’t fond any clues about the mayor’s motives. Another dead end.

  32

  THE SCHOOL LEESA ATTENDED WAS IN A TIDY ONE-ROOM apartment in the Drain. After class Leesa lingered at her teacher’s desk until the room had emptied out.

  “How’s everything going, Leesa?” Ms. Hoiles asked. Her teacher had short hair and a small nose that seemed to always be able to sniff out when something was bothering one of her students. “I saw your picture on the mayor’s broadcast, and I wanted to commend you for what you did.”

  “I don’t know if it turned out in the best way.” The animals had been recaptured, and now Pete was in jail.

  “Still,” Ms. Hoiles said. “It takes a lot of guts to stand up for what you believe in. You’re just like Fern in that book I gave you, eager to protect animals.”

  Leesa reddened. In all the commotion in the arena, she had managed to lose Charlotte’s Web.

  “I’m actually reading a new book now,” she said, pulling out the Nancy Drew novel.

  Ms. Hoiles reached for it and ran her hand along the old, cracked cover. “Why does this look familiar?” She opened the cover. “Oh! My goodness! Of course. It’s the book I gave Francine Eris, though it was quite some time ago. However did you get it?”

  Leesa looked away guiltily. “I, uh, borrowed it,” she said with a shrug.

  “I’ve been wondering how Francine was doing. Is she still very ill?” Ms. Hoiles’s eyes crinkled with concern.

  “I didn’t know she was sick.”

  “Well, I guess that’s good—she must be doing a lot better, then.”

  “What was wrong with her?” Leesa pressed.

  “She had some very severe environmental allergies. Poor child was so sensitive to the sun, that the UV rays even affected her through the walls. By the time I was visiting her for private schooling, Francine was bedbound.”

  “Well, she’s definitely not anymore,” Leesa said. She’d been in Francine’s bed, after all.

  “Perhaps she was sent to Paloma,” Ms. Hoiles mused. “They have a lot more resources and vegetation, and I know the climate is much milder.”

  Leesa shifted in her desk, confused. Paloma, the city to the south?

  “I thought no one from Lion’s Head was allowed in there. After the great gate went up?”

  Ms. Hoiles leaned against her podium. “Yes, last I heard Francine had been rejected for a mercy migration. Her family was pretty devastated, as they were running out of options. If you do see her, will you give her my best?”

  “Sure,” Leesa said. She felt bad deceiving Ms. Hoiles, who had always been kind to her, but this sounded like another clue, even if Leesa didn’t quite understand how yet.

  What was it that Mayor Eris had said about the world being complicated?

  This was for the greater good.

  33

  LEESA’S PHONE DINGED ON HER WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL.

  “Pls Lees, let’s talk.”

  Not again.

  Antonio had been sending dozens of texts begging her to meet with him so he could explain. Leesa had ignored every one, but for the first time, she reconsidered. Now she actually wanted someone to explain. Something. Anything. Her head hurt from trying to sort through it all.

  Instead of texting back, she headed straight for his house. He and Vince lived in one of the train cars on the defunct green line. It was a slum, but it was home; even when Vince had gained power, they’d stayed in that same caboose cab. Leesa rapped hard on the metal of the car, and several of the neighbors peered out. The Drain wasn’t much for privacy.

  Antonio finally stumbled to the door, and his eyelids, which were half-closed from sleeping all morning, flew open when they saw her.

  “Leesa!” He lunged forward to hug her, but Leesa put up her hand.

  “First, why weren’t you there?” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “Why. Weren’t. You. There?” she repeated, practically yelling it the second time.

  What she meant was, Why did you betray me? Tears sprang to her eyes.

  Antonio’s cheeks got all red, like he’d been slapped, and when he didn’t answer, Leesa continued her assault. “Tell me about the mayor.”

  Tell me why I’m wrong. Tell me why there’s hope. Tell me who to trust.

  “She’s different than we thought,” Antonio said. He gripped her shoulders, his eyes bright. “It’s the revolution, Leesa. Finally. Us Drainos are finally going to rise into the light. She even put Vince in charge of the Kill Clan.”

  Leesa narrowed her eyes. “What the heck are you talking about? Does this have to do with the shot that Pete gave the Vicious?” Pete had said he thought it had to do with something bigger, right?

  “You mean your friend’s stupid brother? That vet tech in the news?” Antonio snickered. “That was, like, beta level. Vince says they’re way past that now. Bruce is getting close.”

  “Close to what? And Vince is involved with Bruce’s world?” Leesa really didn’t like the sound of that. Antonio’s brother was a gang leader who had his hands in just about every pot of illegal activity in the Drain.

  “Look, I can’t talk about it here.” Antonio looked around at his neighbors. The makeshift houses were practically on top of one another, and lots of eyes had appeared through cracks and flapping plastic windows. “But I’ll take you somewhere where I can prove it,” he said into Leesa’s ear, s
tanding a little too close to her.

  For one second, Leesa wanted to believe everything Antonio said, she wanted to believe that everything could go back to being easy. And then Antonio finished his thought.

  “All you have to do . . . ,” he whispered, a smile in his voice, “. . . is be my girlfriend.”

  Leesa recoiled backward, almost stumbling off the platform onto the tracks.

  “I already told you I don’t like you like that,” she snapped. “So, what? You think you can blackmail me into it?”

  “Leesa—”

  But Leesa had heard enough from Antonio. She turned and ran, blocking out the sound of his voice following her down the platform.

  34

  WHEN CASTOR CAME TO, HE SMELLED SOMETHING FOUL, and his nose wrinkled as he opened his eyes. That was even more unpleasant, since the first thing he saw was a furry white face with two glowing red eyes, inches from his own. Its whiskers were poking Castor in the snout—that’s how close it was—and Castor caught a flash of a white fang.

  “Ah!” He flinched instinctively, aware of his vulnerable position. But Castor wasn’t going to die in an ambush, lying prone on the floor. An instant later, he was scrambling to his feet and barking wildly.

  “Whoa!” Jazlyn skittered out of the way just before Castor sank his teeth in. “It’s just me!”

  “Sorry.” Castor sighed, relaxing.

  It took Jazlyn longer to recover. When he saw how his friend’s usually sleek panther’s coat was frazzled in alarm, Castor had to laugh.

  “You’re puffed up all the way down to the tip of your panther tail!” he snorted.

  Then Castor remembered another puffed-up tail with its flash of orange disappearing down the tunnel with his brother, and his smile fell away. He sank back down, hanging his head.

  “Here,” Jazlyn said gently. “Have something to drink.”

  The suggestion seemed strange—other than a bit of mud seeping down from the walls, liquid was scarce underground—until he realized that the dull rushing sound in his ears that he’d attributed to the headache was actually running water. Looking around him, Castor was surprised not to recognize his surroundings at all.