by Amy Tintera
“The hunting team should have been back by now,” Micah murmured as he stared at the sky. “They were scheduled to return this morning.”
“Are they usually back on time?”
“Yes, when Riley goes. You know him. He doesn’t deviate from the plan.”
That was true. He’d been an even stricter trainer than I was. He probably would have let Officer Mayer kill Callum without protest.
“Where are they?” I asked. “Can you go look for them?”
“Let’s go see if they got one of the shuttles running,” he said. “They went pretty far, about a hundred and thirty miles north, but it won’t take us long in a shuttle.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. They went that far to hunt? They must have stripped the land clean in this area. Or did people always have to cover that much ground to hunt? I’d never hunted, so maybe that was normal.
We walked into the reservation and down the dirt roads toward the front gate. Reboots around us were busy erecting tents and cleaning away debris. They’d made huge progress in just the couple of hours I’d been with Micah. It was starting to look like nothing had happened at all.
Two shuttles were outside the front of the reservation. Reboots surrounded both of them, and a few others walked around picking up trash. One of the shuttles was in bad shape, its side completely smashed in, but the other one could have been worse. It was dented and dirty, and missing a small corner on the back pilot’s side, but otherwise wasn’t bad.
We walked closer to the good shuttle and I spotted Callum in the pilot’s seat, his brow furrowed as he fiddled with something on the dash. He had grease on his hands and arms, like he’d been working on other parts as well.
“Does this one work?” Micah asked.
Callum lifted his head, smiling when he caught sight of me. “Yeah. We replaced a couple parts with stuff from the more destroyed shuttles. And I just finished fixing the navigation system.”
Micah gave him a surprised look and leaned over him to examine the dash. “Thank you. Good work. Not that I know how to use the navigation system.” He chuckled.
Callum hopped out of the shuttle. “No problem. I can teach you sometime if you want.” He wiped his hands on his pants. “You going somewhere?”
“Our hunting party didn’t come back. I’m getting a little worried.” He turned to me. “Would you want to come? If there’s trouble I could use your help.”
I hesitated, taking a glance at Callum. I wasn’t exactly pumped at the idea of hopping onto a shuttle to charge into trouble again.
“We shouldn’t be long. Back tonight at the latest. And hey, if they’re all right maybe we can do some hunting ourselves.” Micah punched me lightly on the shoulder. “The hunt is pretty awesome. I think you’d enjoy it.”
He might have been right about that. It was probably sort of like hunting down the assignments in Rosa, except deer and rabbits could run faster. More challenging, with no humans barking orders in my ear.
“Yeah, all right,” I said.
“You can come, too, if you want,” Micah said to Callum.
He made a face at me like he’d rather not and I almost laughed. I couldn’t imagine Callum enjoying shooting animals. He didn’t even enjoy eating them.
“I think I’ll pass,” he said. He pointed at the other shuttle. “We were going to work on that one next.”
Micah nodded. “I’m going to grab Jules and Kyle, then.” He touched my arm. “You want to wait here for a minute? I’ll get you some weapons.”
I nodded and he jogged back through the gates and disappeared around the corner.
“Everything all right?” Callum asked, taking a step closer to me.
I nodded, a smile spreading across my face as I glanced down at his grease-covered arms. He looked happy and relaxed. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen that particular expression on his face before. “Good,” I said. I decided not to tell him about Addie and the birth-control chips. It was an awkward conversation, and not one that was relevant to us at the moment anyway.
I closed my hand over my upper arm, where my own chip was. I was going to leave it in, though. Just in case.
“You don’t mind if I don’t come with you, do you?” He grinned. “I think we both know I’d suck at hunting.”
I stepped forward, rising to my tiptoes to brush my lips against his. “I wasn’t going to say that. But yeah, probably best if you don’t come.”
He chuckled, leaning forward to kiss me again, keeping his arms at his sides. I rested my hands on his chest and melted into the kiss, not caring about the Reboots all around us.
“Tonight, when you get back, let’s do this,” he said, pulling away slightly and kissing my cheek. “No more attacking or socializing or hunting. Just this.”
“Agreed.” I ran my hands up to his neck and sighed. “Now I wish I didn’t have to go.”
“I think it’s nice you agreed. If we stay, hunting will probably be your thing here. Hunting and saving people. Your two favorite things.”
I let out a soft laugh. I didn’t know about the latter—he was the only person I’d ever saved—but hunting probably was “my thing.” It was nice to think I might have something I’d be good at here. I’d never been good at anything but hunting down humans for HARC, and that wasn’t something I ever planned to do again.
“Wren! You ready?”
I glanced back to see Micah standing by the shuttle with Jules and Kyle. A young Reboot sat in the pilot’s seat, and the shuttle roared to life. I stepped away from Callum with a sigh. “I’ll see you.”
“Bye. Don’t get shot.”
FIVE
CALLUM
I FROWNED AT THE CRUSHED FLIGHT CONTROLS IN FRONT OF ME, touching the spot where a button used to be. This shuttle was in worse shape than the one Wren and Micah had just taken off in, but it was possibly still salvageable.
“Need any of these?”
Isaac stood next to the shuttle door, a bag of assorted shuttle parts in his hands.
“Maybe,” I said, taking the bag and plopping it down on the seat next to me. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He slid his hands into his pockets and leaned against the shuttle door. His tendency to slouch made him look even shorter than he was. “You know, shuttle cleanup was the job most people were avoiding.”
I smiled as I sifted through the bag. “Probably because we had to haul out some body parts first.” I shrugged. “But I’m pretty good with tech stuff. I thought I might be useful.”
“Very,” he said. “Most Reboots come in without knowing much besides how to punch people.”
I rolled my eyes. HARC and their dumb priorities. “I’m sure.”
“Where did you say you were from?” he asked.
“Austin.”
“Never been. Never been to any of the cities, actually. Is it nice?”
I gave him a confused look. “You’ve never been to the cities? Were you born out here?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, were you born a Reboot?” I asked, surprised. Hadn’t they said the Reboot babies didn’t get numbers?
“Nope.”
“Oh.” I waited for more of an explanation, but he didn’t give one. He was holding something back and, given the way he was avoiding my eyes and frowning, it wasn’t good.
I took a quick look at the scene behind him. About ten Reboots milled around, picking up shuttle parts or working on the fence. Some of the somberness of yesterday was gone, but the reservation Reboots didn’t seem to be making much of an effort to talk to the new arrivals. In fact, no one except Isaac had approached me.
I returned my attention to the mess in front of me. I hadn’t approached any of them, either, so maybe we were all still adjusting. I picked out a button and tried to fit it in the hole on the dash. No luck.
“So, Austin,” Isaac said, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s nice?”
I shrugged. “It’s okay.” When I thought of Austin all I could see were my paren
ts slamming the door in my face. All I could hear was the gasp of that man I killed as I wrapped my fingers around his throat.
I closed my eyes, swallowing. Part of me was relieved the memories were returning from the time I’d lost. They’d started slipping back, little by little, last night. Jumping on top of that woman in the restaurant, the smell of her flesh overwhelming me. Waiting for Wren to grab Addie and getting distracted by movement in the next house over. Breaking the door in and pouncing on the man.
I opened my eyes with a sigh. Isaac was staring at me, his face scrunched in sympathy.
“You HARC people are seriously messed up, huh?”
“Probably,” I said with a hint of amusement.
“What’s it like there?”
“Being in the facility isn’t so bad. I got beat up a lot the first couple of days, but then that stopped and it was just Wren kicking the crap out of me and that was sort of fun.”
He gave me a baffled look. “Seriously messed up. All of you.”
“She was my trainer,” I said with a laugh. “She was nice about it.”
“Oh, well, if she was nice about it.”
“The assignments, where we had to go out and capture humans, were kind of awful. I’d probably have died in less than a year if I’d stayed.” I sighed. “The humans really hate us.”
Isaac nodded as he took a step back. “Well, they sort of have a point sometimes, you know?”
I looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I’d be scared of us, if I were them. We’re tougher and stronger and most of you can kick their asses, thanks to HARC.”
He did have a point. As a human I’d been more curious about Reboots, but I was definitely still scared of them. I never encountered a Reboot until I became one myself, but I might have run away, too.
Although I could say for sure that I never would have grabbed a baseball bat and tried to bash their heads in. I shivered at the memory of being attacked by humans in Rosa. I had understood Wren’s dislike of them, for a moment.
“Do you like it here?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I mean, it could be worse, right? I could be at HARC.”
“True.”
“It’s not so bad. By the time I got here, most of the kinks were ironed out. They’ve got stable crops and everyone is fed and clothed.”
“I used to work the fields in Austin, before I Rebooted,” I said. “I could help with that here.”
“Nice,” Isaac said, like he was genuinely impressed. “More useful skills. Micah might start liking you as much as he likes your girlfriend.”
I gave him an annoyed look and he snorted in amusement. It faded as he caught sight of something in the distance, and I leaned out the shuttle door to see Beth and Addie headed in my direction, their faces grim. I turned to Isaac again but he was already walking away.
I jumped from the shuttle, wiping my hands on my pants as they approached. Addie was pale and Beth was nervously tugging on her hair.
“Have you seen Wren?” Addie asked.
“She left with Micah.” I lowered my voice, stepping closer to her. “She’ll be back tonight. Is everything okay?”
Beth and Addie exchanged a horrified expression and a sick feeling started to build in my stomach.
“On the hunt?” Addie said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Technically she went to find the Reboots who didn’t come back, but I think they were going to hunt if they could.” I swallowed. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Did they tell her what the hunt was?” Addie’s eyes were big, worry mixing with fear.
“I . . . I don’t know.” I glanced from her to Beth. “What’s the hunt?”
SIX
WREN
I SETTLED INTO A SHUTTLE SEAT AS WE LIFTED OFF THE GROUND. Micah claimed the big seat usually occupied by a HARC officer, and a big pile of guns sat on the floor at our feet. Kyle One-forty-nine sat next to me, his wide shoulders taking up part of my seat. Jules sat on my other side and I avoided her gaze, worried she would start lecturing me about taking out my birth-control chip, too.
“Do we have enough fuel?” I asked. Last thing I wanted was to get stuck a hundred miles away from Callum.
“We do,” Micah replied, leaning back in his seat. “Although we may take a trip down to Austin soon to get more fuel from those helpful rebels. Seems like the kind of thing they’d be good for.” He smirked in a way I didn’t quite understand, like he was being sarcastic, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I hated feeling indebted to those humans. I almost felt like I needed to stick up for them.
The shuttle flew through the air smoothly, like there was a HARC officer in the pilot’s chair. “How’d you guys learn to fly the shuttles?” I asked.
“We fixed the ones we shot down and taught ourselves,” he said, stretching his long legs in front of him. “It’s not hard; I teach all the younger Reboots how to do it. They’re made so HARC monkeys can drive them without any trouble.”
The Reboots laughed but an image of Addie’s father, Leb, popped into my head. Not all the HARC officers were bad.
I took a quick glance around. That wasn’t the sort of thing I could say here. I sat back in my seat and everyone quieted down. It was like being with the One-twenties at the HARC facility. The silence was comforting.
“You look better today,” Jules finally said, smiling at me as she pushed her long, red hair over her shoulder. “You seemed overwhelmed yesterday.”
“You did,” Micah said, his voice sympathetic. “I’m sorry. You must have had a hell of a few days, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said with a short laugh. I’d told them the story last night, an abbreviated version of our escape from Rosa and break into Austin to rescue Addie and get Callum the antidote. It felt like a million years ago, even though it was just early yesterday morning that I’d been running down the halls of the Austin HARC facility.
“You were at the Rosa facility how long?” Jules asked.
“Five years. Since I was twelve.”
“You were shot, weren’t you?” Micah asked. “Riley told me that’s how you died.”
“Yes.”
“Who did it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was a common question, but not one I could bring myself to care about. It was some drug dealer or shady friend of my parents’, and it didn’t matter now. Chances were good HARC had caught the human who killed me and my parents and executed him anyway.
“Humans,” Kyle said with a roll of his eyes. “Go around killing each other all the time.”
Micah shook his head, running his hand along the stubble on his chin. “It’s like they want to be extinct.”
Everyone was amused by this, but once again, I wasn’t sure I got the joke. I shifted in my chair uncomfortably.
I cleared my throat and pointed to the stack of guns in the corner. “Where’d you guys get all the weapons?”
“We took some from the HARC shuttles that attacked us,” Micah said. “We made some. But we scavenged most of them. Well, I shouldn’t say ‘we.’ They. The very smart Reboots who evaded HARC years ago immediately started scavenging weapons left over from the war. Even though they’d lost, they were still in battle mode.”
That made sense. HARC had rounded up all the Reboots and killed them after the war, before they figured out they could use the young ones to help clean up the cities. The Reboots who managed to escape would have needed to be well protected.
“HARC was busy with the new cities in Texas and building their facilities and by the time they sent crews out to the old military bases north of Texas, they were stripped bare.”
“Hank used to tell this story about driving a tank right past a HARC officer one day,” Kyle said with a laugh. “He just rolled right on by and the HARC guy never looked twice. They had no idea they’d missed so many Reboots, and they were out there, stealing stuff.”
“And back then, HARC still thought we had limited brainpo
wer,” Micah said. “I actually think the Reboots’ organized plan to strip every military base from coast to coast is what prompted all the experiments HARC does on us now. They realized they didn’t know crap about us. Or what we were capable of.”
“But the Reboots didn’t attack back then, did they?” I asked. I’d never heard of a Reboot attack after the war.
“No, the numbers were too small. They just stockpiled the weapons for protection. When I moved everyone here out to the open, we brought them all with us.”
I opened my mouth to ask why he would move everyone into the open, leaving them vulnerable to HARC attacks, but the shuttle started to descend and Micah walked over to the pilot. He sat down in the passenger’s seat, pointing at something to the east as he murmured to the driver.
“They’re right in front of us,” he said with a smile, turning to us. “Looks like everyone is okay.”
I slid forward in my seat to see a few figures below us. The flat earth that surrounded the reservation was gone, replaced by huge stone structures, almost mountains. It was like someone had carved a random huge hole in the middle of Texas.
“You should see the one farther north,” Kyle said, catching my expression. “Makes this canyon look tiny.”
There was a river not far away, and the land was dotted with trees. This area seemed much nicer than the location Micah had picked for the reservation.
The shuttle landed softly on the ground. Kyle handed me two guns—a shotgun and a handgun—and extra ammo. These Reboots really didn’t take any chances. I had to admire them for that.
The door to the shuttle slid open and a burst of anticipation zipped through my chest. I didn’t know how to act around Riley outside of HARC. I might have counted him as a friend, but one who barely spoke to me.
I stepped out from behind Jules, scrunching my face up against the powerful wind that slammed against me. Less than a day, and I was already entirely annoyed by the wind here. I’d never felt anything like it.
Micah climbed out the door behind the short Reboot pilot and raised his hand at something in the distance. I squinted, lifting my hand to block the sunlight.