A Dangerous Game

by Madeline Dyer

  “She’s dead.” The words fly out of me, and all I see is him. And it’s his fault. His fault. He didn’t resist at all, can’t have—two days, it’s been two days at the most. He should be resisting. “She’s dead,” I scream. “Because of you. They got my sister, and now she’s dead.”

  I lose it.

  I scream, and I go for him.

  My fists hit his chest, the chest I so lovingly stroked two days ago.

  “Kee—” Red shouts, and then he’s trying to stop me, but I get a good punch in, under his jaw, and he makes a guttural sound.

  Get out. Get out. Get out.

  The mantra’s still going, and I know it’s right. I need to get out. One person isn’t enough for a rescue mission. What was I thinking?

  But I don’t get out. I kick him, kick him as hard as I can. He falls backward, hits the floor hard.

  I feel the power in me, and I advance on him. All I can see is him, and it fills me with anger. So much anger.

  If you’re not going to run, put your hands around his neck. Squeeze!

  “Who are the others?” I yell, heart pounding, trying to ignore my thoughts of how wonderful it felt before, killing Enhanced with my bare hands. “The others who were undercover?”

  I need to help them. Need to help them get out of here…if they’re still Untamed.

  “They’re safe now too!” Red shouts, trying to scramble back away from me. I see his hand reaching out for something, but grappling with the smooth floor. “You don’t need to worry, K. We can convert all your people too—”

  “No! Who are they?” My heart pounds.

  I kick him again, and he yells. There’s something about his scream that satisfies me. Pain—he’s feeling pain. An Enhanced One is feeling pain. Whatever augmenters he’s taken aren’t enough.

  He needs to hurt. He’s Enhanced, and, suddenly, he represents all the Enhanced. They need to die.

  He needs to die—I can ‘save’ him that way. Like Mila.

  And I’m already a murderer. What difference is one more going to make? And he’s Enhanced. They deserve to die. Each and every one of them.

  I go for him, throw myself onto him, straddling his torso. I grab him by the neck, dig my nails into his soft skin as I stare down at him. My hands squeeze, tighter, tighter, tighter. Not even the Enhanced can survive asphyxiation.

  Adrenaline courses through me, and I feel alive. I have never felt so alive, so ultra-awake. Warmth radiates through my body, and I stare at him as I apply more and more pressure, stare at his eyes—see myself reflected. See the satisfaction on my face as I squeeze tighter, tighter, tighter. He doesn’t fight me. His face isn’t changing color. He isn’t choking.

  You’re not squeezing hard enough! You’re out of practice!

  But this is Red! You love him! You can’t kill him! You should be running!

  I falter and—

  Red stretches his head up and kisses me.

  His lips, against mine. Soft and—

  I shove him away in disgust, my heart pounding. My eyes widen, and I try to climb off of him, but he holds onto my wrist, his grip suddenly so strong.

  “You think you can stop me with a kiss? Make me spare your life by kissing me?” I let out a bitter laugh that rumbles from deep within me, but I know it’s a reversal of before…but that doesn’t make any difference! “She’s dead because of you! You killed Mila!”

  And part of me knows that isn’t right. It’s not Red’s fault he was converted.

  “Who?” Red looks so confused and the artificiality of everything about him makes me feel sick.

  I swear at him.

  Strangle him, Keelie. Do it again!

  No, you love him!

  Just get out! Get out! Get out!

  It’s too confusing being in my head. Too many voices. And new ones are popping up all the time, and some agree with others, and some don’t.

  “No!” Red screams.

  I fight him, try to get his neck again, but he flips us over, so I’m under him, and I feel the way power kicks into him. He holds me down, leaning over me, and I struggle against him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he hisses. I see myself in his eyes, and it makes me feel sicker. “Keelie, I love you—and this is better for us both. So much better!”

  I struggle against him, get him to loosen his grip a little.

  “Keelie! I love you.”

  “You don’t!” I shove him away and manage to jump up. My heart pounds, but, for once, I don’t like the sensation. A horrible metallic taste fills my mouth. “You don’t love me. You might have done as an Untamed, but not as an Enhanced.”

  Red stands.

  “I love you, Keelie—I really love you.” He leans in closer, and I look down and—

  I swear as I see the vial in his hand, another augmenter. Where did it come from?

  I scream and try to duck under his arm, but he’s too quick. His hand slams into me, and I jolt back, my back against the wall. Pain swivels down my spine. I try to turn, but Red presses his body against me. He’s too strong. He’s Enhanced.

  “Let me go!” I scream.

  Red flicks the lid off the augmenter. I smell it. My first reaction is to gag, but then I smell the sweetness and—

  No.

  I try to move, but there’s no space between us, and my back’s against the wall. I try to move down and to the side, but he stops me.

  You knew it would end like this. No one plays with fire without getting burnt. Maybe this is when you were always going to die, just like Caia-Lu said.

  “This will be better,” Red says, and he sounds happy—deliriously happy.

  I scream then quickly shut my mouth, heart pounding. Mustn’t make it easy for him. I bring my leg up, try to knee him where—

  The door flies open.

  “Keelie!” Esther cries, and she stops, seems to do a double take.

  Red pulls away from me, his hand shaking.

  Then Esther pulls out a gun. She shoots at Red’s legs, and I stare as he falls. As he crashes to the ground, still smiling. Smiling because he’s an Enhanced—because he’s full of artificiality.

  Because he’s not who he once was.

  Red screams, but he’s smiling, and blood pours from his left leg.

  “Come on!” Esther darts forward, grabs my arm, and pulls.

  Red starts yelling, and his hand snakes out for my ankle. I see it in time and jump, clear him.

  “You swallowed any?” Esther drags me from the room.

  “What?”

  “Augmenters—did he—”

  “No!” I start to turn back, see Red and—

  What are you doing? Get away.

  “Good!” Esther yells. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here and find Elf before it’s too late.”

  Esther hands me a spare pair of dark glasses, and, somehow, we make it out of the compound with no problems at all. I don’t feel anything.

  We reach the truck. Everyone is there waiting. Bea’s got her ear defenders on, and she’s sitting in the corner of the truck bed, rocking back and forth. Finn’s trying to talk to her, but she keeps shaking her head.

  Mila’s in the truck bed, and I know Bea’s trying not to look at her. They’ve wrapped her in a tarpaulin. I expect to feel the need to brace myself when I look at her—my baby sister, whom I was supposed to protect—but I don’t.

  She’s sleeping. It’s fine.

  I climb into the truck bed too. The cab is already full with Rahn, Kayden, and Sajo.

  The engine starts. We drive away.

  I can’t concentrate. My head is just…full. It’s pounding.

  No one looks at me. No one talks. They’ll all have seen the bullet wound, and everyone knows the Enhanced don’t use guns. Keelie or Sajo? That’s what they’re thinking. Sajo had the gun when the others arrived, didn’t he? Or did they see him take it from me? I can’t think. My thoughts are too busy. We’ve lost Untamed before in raids and rescues—at the hands of the Enhanced�
��but those deaths were accidental. When the Enhanced Ones were trying to restrain them and accidentally cut off their oxygen for too long. Or something like that. Those types of deaths used to happen a lot.

  But everyone will know that Mila didn’t die like that.

  The gunshot wound was visible. And there was one gun between Sajo and me. Him or me, that’s what they’ll be thinking. Or maybe Sajo told them what happened when I was with Red?

  And I’m sure they can see that the blood is on me. The look of horror in Bea’s eyes told me she saw the mark of death on me, clinging to me.

  My ears crackle as I swallow. But it doesn’t feel… No, I don’t feel…feel what? Angry? Upset? Guilty? I just feel numb. Numb like it’s not setting in now—it was before, when I went after Red, but not now.

  Hell.

  I killed her. Sajo knocked me, but I pulled the trigger.

  No, she’s sleeping. You’ll see her again, when you’re both awake.

  And Red? He could be dead now too, could’ve bled out.

  I let out a shaky breath. We’re driving fast, and the wheels churn dust up behind us. I think we’re going in a roundabout way back to Nbutai. Corin sits by the tailgate, with a pair of binoculars, looking out for any signs of us being followed.

  “You okay?” Finn asks, and his voice makes me jump. “Heard one tried to get you?”

  “One had already got her,” Esther says. “If I’d been a second later, he’d have had an augmenter down her throat.”

  I try to tune out their voices. They’re talking in that excited tone that we nearly always use after a successful raid. But this wasn’t a raid, and it wasn’t successful. Why are they talking like that?

  I gulp.

  The truck moves onto difficult terrain. I hold onto a handhold on the side. The bumps and jolts go right through me. Mila’s wrapped-up body is in the middle of the truck bed, and I watch as every bump jostles her.

  “We need to send her body off. Are we finding somewhere now?”

  The others seem startled by my question, and they look at each other blankly for a moment.

  Dead, dead, dead, a little voice whispers.

  Corin, the farthest away from me, pauses for a moment, then shakes his head. “We’ve got to find Elf first.”

  I nearly choke. My brother. Gods. He’s still out there. I swallow with difficulty, feeling sick that I’d forgotten about my own brother. Or maybe I feel sick because of everything else…because Mila’s not going to be sent off soon, and the longer we wait, the harder it will be for her to reach the New World. And what if we’re too late for her, and she’s trapped and… No, she was converted—the Enhanced don’t make it to the New World, do they? Why would the Gods and Goddesses and spirits let an Enhanced into the New World?

  Mila wasn’t Enhanced for long, but was it long enough?

  I force myself to stop thinking about it, feel the tears welling up inside me. But I can’t let them out. Mustn’t. Elf. Need to concentrate on him.

  We drive around for what seems like hours. Going different routes, the truck leaping and jolting across holes. Everyone’s looking for Elf. Far ahead, I can see the meeting point where Red was supposed to meet me, the place where it all happened. We don’t go up to it though. Good. Need to keep our distance, in case any Enhanced are still there.

  I turn, swiveling on my knees to look in the other direction. The sky’s still light, but I’m exhausted, and it feels like it should be nighttime, but the sky has forgotten to change.

  “He’s not here,” Finn states the obvious.

  We drive around some more. My chest gets heavier, and there’s a sinking feeling inside me. What if the Enhanced got Elf as well? What if I was close to him in the compound, without realizing, and now I’ve left him there…and I didn’t even look for him. It didn’t even occur to me.

  “We have to go back to the compound,” I say. “Elf could be there, being converted.”

  Seven tells me he isn’t, because she checked the rooms.

  They try to reassure me. They say that Elf could be back at Nbutai now.

  In the end, we drive out toward the Old Waters. It doesn’t take long to get there, and, all too soon, they’re unwrapping her body.

  Her clothes are covered in blood. So much blood.

  Rahn and Corin lower her body into the water. Feeling hollow and like none of this is real, I walk forward and say the Spirit Releasing Words and then make the sign of the Journeying Gods and Goddesses over her body, begging them to help Mila’s soul make it to the New World. She mustn’t be trapped, left behind.

  Then the men let go of Mila, and the water takes her away. I watch for as long as I can, but my vision blurs.

  I catch Sajo looking grim. My eyes narrow, and a fierce pain burns inside me.

  “It’ll be all right,” Esther says.

  But it’s that lie. The lie everyone hates, yet everyone still says it. We can’t know anything, but the one thing I know for sure is that it can never be all right with the Enhanced still out there.

  Elf’s not back at Nbutai—I know this the moment we arrive. We’re twins of the stars, and I know this sort of thing.

  Immediately, Nico corners me, doesn’t even let me go after Bea as she runs into our hut, her ear defenders still on. He seems to know everything—everyone seems to—and he draws me into a tight hug that I can’t escape from.

  Behind, I can hear Corin and Rahn arguing. Corin says we should go back to New Kimearo at first light tomorrow, in case Elf’s there, but Rahn says it’s too dangerous, that you don’t make trips to an Enhanced town on two consecutive days. We’d be expected.

  I want to join in—back up Corin—but something in me stops me from moving away from Nico. If Elf is there, and I go on the rescue mission, I might kill him too.

  Being dead is better than being Enhanced.

  You’ve saved Mila, anyway. She was Enhanced—and you can’t reconvert people anyway. They’re never the same, even if it’s less than a week. First taste is enough—and she looked like she’d had more than first taste.

  And being dead is better than being Enhanced.

  I know it’s what we say, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. And it makes me think about my parents. My Enhanced parents.

  I scream into Nico’s shoulder, tears blinding me. And I know I shouldn’t be standing with him, holding onto him, but I am.

  “Come on,” Nico says when I’m through. He steps away from me, but takes my hand. “You look exhausted.”

  He leads me to his hut—the one he shares with his brother, but Yani’s not here.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if you were killed like that,” Nico says.

  He takes a seat on his bed and draws me down next to him. I look across at Yani’s bed, feel numb.

  “It tears me apart, thinking about it,” Nico continues. “And…and I don’t know… Other people react to death. But I’d just… I’d shut off, Keelie. People would think I didn’t care. Everything in me would shut down, and they’d take notice of other people grieving for you—like Elf and Bea and Katya and Five—but they’d forget about me. They wouldn’t even see me, and it kills me to think that if your soul was looking down at me, you’d think I didn’t even care. That you’d notice the others and not me.”

  I want to scream at him to shut up. But I don’t.

  “Going to New Kimearo is risky,” Nico says. “And people get hurt. They die—or they get converted and…and it’s all so risky. I don’t want you going anymore.”

  I stare at him, he’s trying to tell me what to do? I shake my head. “Being Untamed is risky. Being alive in this world is risky,” I say. “It’s all so dangerous.”

  I lean back on his bed, stare up at the ceiling. I can see a sliver of the sky through the hut’s roof. It’s still blue.

  A moment later, Nico lies back too. Then he turns onto his side.

  “Have you thought about it any more?” His eyes are keen.

  “Thought about what?”

>   “Us.” He reaches toward me, and his fingers caress the side of my face. “I want to marry you, Keelie. And I think we should do it sooner rather than—”

  I bolt upright. “My sister is dead, and you want to talk about marriage?”

  “It’s because of Mila, and how short and unpredictable life is—we could say something for your sister in our ceremony and honor her and—”

  I stare at him. My mouth drops open. “Fuck you!”

  I walk out.

  Outside, Five finds me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “You come to gloat?” I mutter. “Because you knew me seeing Red would endanger one of us?” And it shouldn’t have—I know that. But he got caught, got Enhanced. And they got Mila instead of me.

  It should’ve been me.

  “No,” Five says, pulling me into a hug.

  “He was Untamed,” I say. “He was. He got caught, converted.” And look what that led to. Tears blind me. “I hate the Enhanced,” I say.

  Five stiffens.

  “What?” I pull away from her. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  “But?” I prompt.

  “You’re putting too much emotion into this…into….”

  “What?” I stare at her. My sister’s dead, and she expects me not to be emotional?

  “There’s so much hatred wrapped up in this whole situation,” she says simply. “In you, in your feelings for Red now he’s…one of them, in your guilt, your actions, and it’s a mess. Keelie, you hate the Enhanced for their artificiality and addiction—but you’re addicted to everything they hate: the fight, the violence, the rush, the guilt. The negative stuff. Can’t you see what you’re doing?”

  “Is this really the time for you to psychoanalyze me?” I stare at her.

  “Just listen—you’re feeling this so much stronger, all the guilt and grief, because you’re pushing yourself to feel more of the stuff they hate, to be more Untamed, so you’re less Enhanced.”

  “Less Enhanced?” I stare at her. “I’m not Enhanced at all.”

  “That’s not what I was saying,” Five says. “I was saying that it’s unhealthy. A vicious cycle. You’re going to push yourself to breaking point because you’re determined to feel the bad stuff so strongly—just to make a point to yourself that you’re not one of them. It’s torture, Keelie. And you’re going to break yourself.”