As she felt her way through the drainage tunnel her father had dug into years before, Storme knew he must have foreseen the chance that he and her brother could be caught doing whatever it was they had been doing.
She had known for years that they were frightened of the people they worked for.
That they couldn't leave. That only Storme had the ability to travel back and forth from school in America to this small community her family lived within.
The place her mother had died just after Storme's birth.
Had those who had killed her brother killed her mother as well?
This place, these Breeds--because of them, because of her father's loyalty to them, everything she had held dear had been destroyed. They had destroyed everything that was love and security to her.
She shouldn't be alone. Her father and her brother should have come with her.
They should have saved themselves and damned the information they were so desperate to destroy.
Information that her father swore would destroy so many innocent Breeds. Were any of those creatures truly innocent?
As she made her way through the damp, muddy tunnel, the sight of her brother's death flashed before her eyes, over and over. The memory of the Coyote's head bending--
canines curved and wicked, flashing in the light of the explosions outside and tearing into his throat--sliced through her mind.
There was nothing that could numb that memory. Nothing that could erase it or the nightmare vision that insisted on invading her soul at the thought that her father was suffering the same fate.
Breeds. Killers. Animals. They were monsters. Evil, wicked monsters that man had created, that man was now losing control of, just as her father had warned them they would lose control. The Breeds were turning on their creators, escaping, killing, turning the world into a place of conflict where their very humanity was in question. There was no redemption for the Breeds; they had no mercy, no compassion, just as the other scientists had always warned her father. A Breed was a Breed. A Coyote was still a Breed, and a Coyote had just destroyed her world.
They were without souls.
And now Storme was without family.
As she reached the metal ladder below the drainage gate just outside the small Chilean town, Storme forced herself to find the energy to climb to it and push it open.
The serene calm she had seen in the town during short visits didn't exist now.
People were pouring out of their homes, standing and watching the display of light and explosions on the mountain above their homes.
Storme slipped silently along the edge of the crowd, her gaze locked on the mountain. Howls echoed from above, enraged and filled with fury as gunfire and explosions continued to rip through the night.
Moving quickly, hurriedly, she began to run through the shadows to the house outside of town. The one her father had promised he would meet her at.
He wouldn't be there. It wouldn't matter how long she waited, he would never be there. Only death would find her there if she waited, and she had promised her father she wouldn't allow death to find her.
As she reached the house, she didn't wait around. Racing into the small attached garage, she threw the canvas from the old, rusted pickup that sat there.
It looked like shit, but she knew it would run. It was strong and fast; the tinkering her brother had done with the motor had ensured that whoever drove it would have the best chance possible of escape.
The passports were still in the glove box, the small box of cash was still hidden in the back of the seat. Birth certificates, records needed to hide their identities if all escaped together--everything was still there.
Carefully, she pulled her father's and brother's papers from the glove box, pushed them into the backpack, then shoved the key in the ignition.
She knew how to drive. She knew how to shoot the powerful gun strapped to the door, and she knew how to fight. She was only fourteen, but her father and brother had been planning this for years.
They had taught her how to survive in case the worst that could happen, happened. As though they had known, despite their assurances to her, that they wouldn't be with her.
As she accelerated from the garage, lights off, nothing but dust moving in her wake, she was aware of the heli-jets lifting off from the mountain.
Breeds or scientists, she didn't know which. Whoever it was, they were no friends of hers. She had no friends, she had no family, there was no one to protect her until whoever her father had been working with found her.
If he found her. And when he did, he damned well better be sure he had proof of who he was, because Storme knew in her soul that she could never trust anyone after this.