The Renegades (The Superiors)

by Lena Hillbrand

  Although he wore his sunshades all day, raindrops constantly swam through his vision. Still, he could see much better in the overcast conditions than he could have on a clear day, and staying another day in Princeton was impossible. He’d already taken a stupendous risk in staying as long as they had. Traveling during daylight hours offered the best chance to continue evading Enforcers, and the rain provided as much cover and comfort as he could hope for.

  He carried Cali until midday before stopping to rest. By then the rain had slackened, and although the darkened sky kept a daylight headache at bay, he had begun to weaken from daytime exhaustion. Adding to his discomfort, the baby had wailed most of the morning, until Draven thought he’d go mad.

  “Please quiet your child,” he said, situating himself on a rotting log.

  “He’s cold,” Cali said. She cradled the baby protectively and glared at Draven. “I know you’re doing all the walking, but it’s not that easy for us, either. I feel like my arms are about to fall off.”

  “Then why don’t you walk for a while.”

  “Fine, I will. I never asked you to carry me.”

  Draven returned Cali’s glare. After a moment, she dropped her eyes. “I have to eat something,” she said.

  “Right.” He took a packet of food from the bag he’d stolen and handed it to her.

  She took it, looked at it a moment and then turned to Draven. “What’s this?”

  “Food.”

  She made a face, but opened the packet and went about eating. Draven realized he hadn’t anything for her to drink. He removed a plastic bag from the pack and set it out, propping it open with sticks. After they had rested a bit, the bag had collected a mouthful of water.

  “We’ll be at a lake tonight,” he said. “We shouldn’t rest longer.”

  “Okay. Do you have food for the baby?”

  “He can eat as you do. I’ll carry the bags, and you can carry your water bag and collect rain.” Draven dug through the soggy bag from the store, found a pair of shoes and handed them to Cali. “I don’t know your size. They’re sapien shoes, not of quality.”

  Cali took the shoes and ran her thumbs over the surface as if she’d never seen shoes before. “Wow,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “They’ll do for a bit, and perhaps I can procure Superior clothing for you someplace we’re not hunted.”

  “How long will that be?” Cali asked, slipping her feet into the shoes.

  “I don’t know. Let us go on. That wailing is driving me mad, but if you can’t stop him, there’s no reason to wait here.”

  They rose and began walking. Draven switched the backpack to his back and carried the baby in his arms. The backpack rubbed his skin in all the places Cali hadn’t, and the splinters burned as if they were still on fire. He resisted the urge to hold the baby’s mouth shut, and tried to ignore its screaming and the pressure inside his head and the burning in his eyes and the pain in his back. He hadn’t eaten and he was losing strength, but he didn’t want to weaken Cali now that she walked. So they continued onwards, neither trying to speak over the baby’s crying and the rain. After another hour, the baby quieted and fell asleep. The rain had ceased, and Draven worried Cali would leave a trail. If he used the garlic now, however, it would wear off in three or four watery steps.

  So they were forced to go on without it, scrambling up steep slopes and holding onto trees to avoid sliding on the wet earth under their feet. By the time daylight began to wane, mud coated them both. Cali’s hands had become raw and scraped, and Draven worried more and more about the trail of scent she might leave. He wished he’d thought to procure gloves for her. If she bled on a rock, even a drop, it would signal the trackers like a flare. Fortunately, it signaled him first.

  “Stop,” he said, and Cali stopped, breathing hard, and straightened. “You cut your hand,” Draven said. “What did you touch last?”

  She pointed to a branch and he savored it, but her scent didn’t cling to it as it would if she’d bled on it. The blood hadn’t reached the branch, only the surface of her skin. Draven scented the area to make certain, and when he was satisfied that she’d left no blood behind, he took her hand and turned it over, palm up, and brought the wound to his mouth. His teeth throbbed for more, but he didn’t draw from her. He closed the wound, examined her other hand, and ran his tongue over her palms to help the scrapes heal more quickly.

  She made a strange sound, and when he looked at her, she smiled hugely.

  “What is it?” he asked, looking back at her curled fingers.

  “Nothing.” She pulled her hand away and scratched her palm with her fingernails. “That tickles.”

  “Let us go on then.”

  Her smile faded. “Yeah, okay.”

  He felt a twinge of annoyance at himself for caring, for his absurd desire to put the smile back on her face. But what matter? He needed to ensure their survival, not find ways to make her smile.

  “Just a bit further,” he said. His head weighed on his shoulders, swollen and cloudy inside, as if the pressure in his brain would burst his skull at the sutures. He stumbled forward a few steps before he regained his stride and picked up the pace. For a time it seemed as if they would never reach the lake before nightfall. At last they came to a slight incline, however, and beyond that, the lake lay silent under the gloomy sky. The water appeared white, reflecting the overhanging clouds.

  Cali ran down the bank to the water, dropped to her knees and scooped up handful after handful of water, sucking at her cupped hands. Draven stood watching, cursing himself for already failing to provide for his sapien. She did not seem to share his blame. When she stood, water dripped from her chin and cheeks and smiling mouth. “What now?” she asked.

  “Now we swim across.”

  She gaped at him.

  “It will throw the trackers off our trail,” he said. “We’ll rest a bit on the other side. I’m a bit weak.” While exploring during one of his lake visits, he had found a small cave on the opposite side. Although he’d never used it, he had marked it in his mind as a place he might one day have need for. If the rain hadn’t submerged the floor of the shelter, he thought it would make a sufficient resting spot for an evening or two.

  “You should eat,” Cali said.

  “Eat what?”

  Cali dropped her eyes and shrugged. Her hair, still wet from the day’s rain, stuck to her skull and face and neck. Chill bumps covered her skin in the places where her wet clothing did not.

  “We only have to cross,” Draven said. “I’ll take you first, and then the baby, and then our things.”

  “You can’t leave him alone over here with just our stuff.”

  “I can take him first if you like, but I’ll have to leave him on that side with nothing.”

  “But it’s so cold,” Cali said, hunching her shoulders. Her teeth chattered as she spoke.

  “Yes. I’m sorry I’ve not kept you warmer. When we’ve crossed, we’ll stop walking and I’ll warm you.”

  Cali stood hugging herself and shivering. But she didn’t speak again.

  “Do you trust me?” Draven asked.

  “What?”

  “Do you trust me to do what I’ve said I’d do?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I don’t have much choice.”

  “No. You don’t,” Draven said. After a pause he asked, “Are you sorry you came with me?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Though fair, her answer did not please him. He’d imagined that once he’d taken her, and everything would be good and right, and both of them happy. As if to emphasize his failure, the baby resumed its wailing.

  Draven glanced at the sky. The rain looked to resume soon. The trackers would be setting out after him and Cali. He could only hope their footprints and scent had been washed away near Princeton and that finding their trail would prove difficult. Now he needed to remove Cali’s locator chip before the trackers reached the area.

  Draven located a bag of milk
powder for Cali, and she mixed it into the bag of rainwater. She sealed the top of the bag except a tiny spot at the corner. She put this corner in the baby’s mouth, and he grabbed with both hands and shoved it to his face, biting and sucking at the bag until he’d emptied it. Then he began whining for more.

  “We can feed him more later,” Draven said, taking some wet things from his backpack. He wrapped the baby in the wet blanket and put it inside the backpack, leaving its head out.

  “That’s awful,” Cali said. “We can’t leave him like that. He’ll think we’re leaving him to die.”

  “I don’t imagine he knows much about death, or much about leaving,” Draven said. “I’ll hang this bag from a branch so he’ll be safe from animals. He ought to stop crying, though.”

  “Can’t you bring us both?”

  “How well do you swim?”

  “Fine, I’ll go first. Just hurry.” Then she added, as if in afterthought, “Please.”

  He left everything hanging from a branch and took Cali onto his back again. “Hold on,” he said, and started into the water. The icy cold of it burned his skin, but he knew it hurt her more. After a few minutes, the sound of her teeth chattering in his ear drowned the baby’s cries on shore. She gasped so often he didn’t know if she could draw a breath at all, but she held tightly to his neck.

  The water dragged at Draven’s clothing, and combined with his exhaustion and pain, and Cali’s weight, it nearly proved too much. He longed to stop swimming and sink to the bottom of the lake, to give in to the instinctual urge to stop moving during daylight hours. The water’s surface reflected the darkening sky, but beneath the surface, inky blackness beckoned. It drained his aching limbs of energy, and he longed to grow numb, as Cali could, instead of growing slow and clumsy with cold.

  Finally they reached the spot he’d found on previous visits to the lake. From where he’d begun swimming, the hiding spot lay about halfway around the edge of the lake instead of directly across. He could have walked, but swimming gave them a more direct route and would leave no trail for the trackers to follow. He struggled from the water onto the smooth stone that made up the mouth of the cave. Cali began to slip from his shoulders, and he had to boost her onto his back a few times. Each time, the splinters in his skin bored into him like shafts of ice. He pulled himself over the slippery edge of rock and into the small opening in the face of the bluff, depositing Cali before he stood. She slumped to the floor, soaked and shivering, so bedraggled he had to smile.

  “I’ll warm you as soon as possible. You’ll learn to trust me, Cali.”

  “Okay,” she said through bluish lips.

  “Now I’m going back for your baby, before he leads the whole of Princeton to us with that dreadful screaming,” Draven said. Without waiting for a response, he dropped out of the cave, into the icy water, and started back across the lake.

  Chapter 23

  Cali sat on the floor shivering. She thought she’d never stop. At least the pain had mostly gone when she’d grown numb. She’d thought her hands would get too numb to hold on, but maybe they’d frozen around the Superior’s neck, because they hadn’t slipped until Draven started hauling her up to the cave.

  She wondered how long he’d been around here, to have found this spot. It seemed like a good hiding spot, only accessible through the water. Of course, that also made escape awfully difficult. She didn’t plan to escape right away, though. It had been hard enough to get away with a Superior. How she’d ever thought she could escape on her own…

  She heard Leo’s cries, and lord and master, did he sound mad now. He probably didn’t like that cold water much. Poor baby. Maybe Draven was right. She should have left him with Shelly. But she couldn’t stand the thought of Master hurting an innocent baby because of her. Besides a bruised ankle, he seemed to have escaped Master’s wrath. Cali could only hope Shelly had gotten off as lightly.

  When he arrived at the cave, Draven didn’t come all the way in, just deposited the backpack with the baby’s head still sticking out the top before dropping back into the water. Cali took Leo out of the bag and found that somehow, he’d warmed the wet blanket around his little body. She held him close, and they shivered together. After a few minutes, Leo stopped crying and stared glassy-eyed at nothing, strangely silent.

  Draven reappeared, threw the rest of the wet stuff into the cave, and left again. Cali looked around. Darkness had fallen but she could still see a little. The cave had dusty white powder on the floor, and a few spider webs, and leaves that had blown in. Drops of water lined the roof of the cave near the mouth, but its floor looked relatively dry. The cave was only about twice the length of her body if she lay down, and that deep for maybe the length of her body once. The ends of the cave grew shallower and then opened out into the face of a low bluff of gray stone that bordered the lake.

  A log clattered onto the floor, startling Cali. She checked Leo to see if she’d scared him, but he remained blue-lipped and silent. Draven pulled himself into the cave and just lay on his stomach for a minute, not moving. Cali hadn’t known it was possible for a Superior to get tired. She tried to calculate when he’d last slept a whole day, but she couldn’t seem to make her brain work right. She wanted to say something nice, but she kept thinking this was only the first day and he didn’t seem like he’d last much longer. He didn’t have a plan or a house or anything. If she was going to die anyway, she might as well make a run for it. At least then she’d die free.

  But after a few minutes, Draven pushed himself up and started a pile from the sticks he’d heaved in on top of the log, breaking branches to make a small stack in the center of the cave. He lit a few flames before the branches caught and started smoking. The fire went out three times before he got it going good enough to start burning and putting off heat instead of just smoke.

  Draven knelt in front of Cali and put his hands on her shoulders. “You will be alright,” he said, and his eyes locked on hers, so intense she had to look away. He stood and went to the mouth of the cave again.

  “Where are you going?” Cali asked.

  “To get more wood,” he said. “The fire won’t last long. I’d rather not have it at all, since it will be visible across the lake. But it cannot be helped.” He dove out of the cave into the water. She didn’t hear a splash when he hit the water, but she’d seen him jump off the side of a building onto concrete, so she didn’t worry too much now. She moved as close to the fire as she could get without sitting in it, and cradled Leo in front of it until his clothes got too hot. When they started burning her hands a little, she took off the little one-piece suit he wore. She held him in front of the fire, turning him every few minutes to warm his cold skin until his lips and face regained some of their color.

  Draven came back with more branches, holding them over his head before pushing them into the cave and descending the short distance to the water again. He came and went three times, and every time, it seemed he stayed gone longer than the last time. By the time he came all the way in again, she had begun to drowse against the wall. He stood next to the fire and undressed. Cali turned her face away. After hanging his clothes on little sticks poked into crevices in the walls of the cave, Draven turned to her.

  “You should remove your clothing. It draws heat from your body, and we must dry your things.” He turned and stretched the blanket along one wall and began to secure it.

  After some hesitation, Cali began to undress. Leo had fallen asleep near the fire, his bare, unmarked backside catching the flickering firelight and warmth. If she looked at him instead of Draven, she didn’t feel so exposed or scared. The last naked man she’d seen, besides Shelly, was a breeder who’d tried to impregnate her. She might have been able to fight one off with Shelly’s help, but the next time she hadn’t been so lucky. And she’d never be able to stop a Superior if he wanted her that way. She had a sudden recollection of Draven asking her for that kind of service at the restaurant where she’d worked when he first started coming around
. Watching Draven’s every move, she crossed her arms over her chest and sat down in her underwear as close to the fire as possible.

  After he spread all the things from his backpack on the floor of the cave, he swung around to face Cali. His eyes seemed to glow orange with reflected flame as he crouched on the other side of the fire. Cali shrank back involuntarily, tightening her arms around her chest.

  “What frightens you?” Draven asked.

  “I’m not scared.”

  “I savor it.”

  Cali considered this new information. He could smell her fear? Well, wasn’t that just great. Obviously she couldn’t hide much from him if he could smell her feelings. Maybe he could read her mind, too.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do.” His eyes shone with that scary intensity again.

  “Okay, I do. I—you’re naked.”

  “And this bothers you?”

  “I guess, kind of.”

  “How odd,” he said. “Why is this?”

  “I don’t know,” Cali said, looking away and hugging herself closer.

  Draven pulled on a pair of wet shorts and put another piece of wood on the fire. It smoldered and hissed and steamed. “So you are not afraid of sex, you’re afraid of men?” he asked, shifting the logs around in the fire.

  Cali glanced up quickly. “No I’m not. Just…”

  “Naked men?” he asked, smiling a little.

  “Yeah, that.”

  He laughed now, but quietly. “You’re funny.”

  “How am I funny?” Cali asked, laughing a little, too.

  “You do not like men, and your mate did not like women. Perhaps it’s a better match than I imagined.”