The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,65

up, but she shook her head.

“Promise me, Cassian. Leon isn’t a problem. He’s living in the shipping tunnels, that’s all. You don’t have to turn him in.”

Did he know that this went far beyond Leon being loose on the station? Did he know about her plan to cheat? Did he know everything? She thought back to their last training session. He had already been suspicious when she’d pressed him to help her learn to read minds, until she’d turned it on him and said it was because she wanted to know him better.

Did he know that was a lie too?

He turned to Leon and said quietly, “I suggest you disappear back into whatever hole you crawled out of, and never show yourself again. Another Kindred would not be as forgiving as I. And you, Mali—return to Free Time and do not say a word about what has happened here.” He turned back to Cora. “I will return to take care of Roshian’s body.”

“But . . .”

“I will take care of it.”

His words had an edge, though his face was blank. Even cloaked, he had never been good at hiding his emotions. She didn’t have to be psychic to read the anger and hurt just beneath the surface.

He picked her up as though she weighed nothing. His hand held her under her knees, flooding her with that electric sensation. His chest against her cheek was thudding hard with his pulse, which was pounding too fast for someone supposed to be cloaked. When she looked up, his face was only inches from hers.

Just a few days ago, she had told him: I want to know you, the same way you know me.

He looked away from her, and she saw a flicker of something else beneath his cloaked mask. Pain.

Oh yes. He knew.

He carried her up the rest of the steps silently.

27

Nok

SERASSI, DRESSED IN HER white uniform with the row of knots down the side, blinked at the three-dimensional image on the glowing surface. “What a sweet little baby.”

“Sugary,” Nok corrected. She was getting the hang of this lying thing. Maybe, if they ever saw Earth again, she’d study to be a lawyer. “What a sugary baby, you mean. That’s what we really call babies, not sweet. Your books were wrong again.”

They were in Serassi’s genetics laboratory, where she had taken Nok for testing. Serassi’s head swiveled toward her as though she had forgotten Nok was lying flat on the examination table with tubes snaking into her veins. Something had changed over the past few days. Serassi had been spending more time in the house, not just observing it. She rarely input research findings into her hip computer, even when Nok made up a really juicy lie about baby-raising practices. And last night, Serassi had hung photographs of Sparrow on all the dollhouse walls. Simulations of what she would look like as a baby, and as a toddler, and as a little girl in a lavender dress. Serassi had superimposed herself in all the photos, like a doting mother. Nok and Rolf weren’t in any of them.

Now, in the lab, Serassi dismissed Nok’s correction. “Yes. Babies are sugary. Not sweet. Of course.” She turned back to the three-dimensional model of the baby on the glowing surface. The image glowed a little itself, but otherwise it looked alarmingly realistic. The projected baby was crawling, which meant she had to be around six months old, if Nok had learned anything from reading all those parenting books.

She ran a hand over her belly and accidentally brushed one of the sensors. The image of the baby flickered like static on a television set and then righted itself again. Serassi punched a few more commands into her hip pad, and the baby fast-forwarded until she was twenty pounds bigger and was walking now, unsteadily, waving her little arms.

There was something in Serassi’s face that hadn’t been there before, as she watched the projection. Even though she was cloaked, there was a glisten of pride and desire all mixed up together that made Nok’s heart race with fear.

Serassi punched a few more keys, and the toddler fast-forwarded again. Now the baby fat was gone, and the child’s black hair, slightly curly at the ends like Rolf’s, hung down to her shoulders. The little girl skipped in a circle.

Nok pressed her hand again against her small belly bump. The fetus was just a little over twenty weeks old, yet here she was as a four-year-old. She had Nok’s eyes.

Serassi punched