The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,57

smiled. “I told you to trust me, songbird. You aren’t the only one who doesn’t want Lucky to leave. Now, this way.”

They passed through the fluttering white curtains to the artificial outdoors, where she had to shade her eyes against the sun. She hadn’t been on the veranda since the first day, when Cassian had shown her the savanna. She knew it wasn’t real, just forced perspective and illusions, and yet her mind refused to believe that those scrubby hills didn’t stretch as endlessly as they appeared to do.

Dane started down the stairs.

“Aren’t we meeting him here?” she asked.

Dane jerked his head toward the savanna. “The light out there is better. Wouldn’t want him to accidentally snip off an ear, right?”

She ran her fingers over the engraved tag, tucking it into her dress, and slowly followed him down the steps. She’d never been on the lower level, where the soil was sandy and patchy with dry grass. This was where the real action was, not up in the lodge. The garage, with its artificial trucks that ran along a bluelight track, and the armory, row after row of rifles. Her heart skipped a beat, seeing those guns. She knew they wouldn’t work for her, and yet it seemed it would be so easy to grab one off that wall and blast her way to freedom.

Footsteps came from around the side of the garage. Roshian. Something about the way he carried himself made him loom despite his short stature. He let his eyes run down and up her body, settling on her hair. For a second, she wanted to go back on their deal. The idea of his hands on her, cutting away the hair she’d had her whole life, made her feel sick.

She glanced at the dashboard of the closest safari truck, where the rough carving had been made.

POD30.1

It gave her a small boost of hope. “Let’s get this over with,” Cora said.

“Yeah.” Dane’s voice had an odd tone. “Sure.”

She looked for scissors. Neither of them seemed to have a pair, and neither seemed in a hurry either, though Dane was giving off an anxious sort of energy. He pulled out his yo-yo, tossing it distractedly. A slow, uneasy feeling started to creep up her back. They had to do this fast so the others didn’t get suspicious of her absence. And did they really need to come all the way out here?

She glanced toward the veranda. Dane was standing between her and the stairs, legs spread a little wide. If she tried to bolt back to the lodge, he’d catch her in a second.

“What’s going on, Dane? I thought this was about my hair.”

“Oh, it is.”

Slowly, Roshian took out a long black case from the truck’s backseat. Cora took a shaky step backward. Roshian was bound by the same moral code as all the Kindred. As deranged and self-serving as that code was, none of them ever went outside of its boundaries. Kidnapping children was fine. Dragging them out to a savanna and shooting them wasn’t.

Roshian opened the case: a rifle, this one battered and dented. Not Kindred technology. Her heart started screaming for her to get out of there.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“I asked you once how fast you could run,” Roshian said. “Unfortunately, I never got an answer, but I have studied the way you move. You are flexible, and your reflexes are fast. I would guess that you can run quite fast when pressed.”

She leveled a wary look at him.

He couldn’t kill her.

He couldn’t. He was Kindred. Was this some sick joke he and Dane were playing? A game?

“I suggest you start running,” Roshian said.

24

Mali

THE LODGE WAS DARK during Free Time. Mali had never liked the inside of the menagerie—she preferred the wide-open spaces of the savanna, even if it was artificial, to the smoky air with the chained animals and clinking glasses. She couldn’t imagine that on Earth people really just sat around in dank rooms like this. If Lucky’s theory about POD30.1 was correct and they returned to Earth, would she have to spend so much time indoors too?

She tucked the backstage door key into the pocket of her safari uniform. She’d stolen it from Dane while he had slipped out earlier, claiming he had to help Cora clean up, which didn’t sound at all like Dane. So Mali had stayed behind a few extra minutes, pretending to repair the safari truck’s windshield, keeping her eyes open for something suspicious. That was when she