by L. B. Carter
That was the only thing she’d said that Ace hadn’t known. This deal had not been all one-sided then, though Henley wasn’t aware of the imbalance. “That’s flattering,” Ace said, confused at her dejected tone. He looked askance to catch her nod.
“It is. It’s also worrisome. It’s why I agreed to come with you.”
Ace’s next step faltered in their regular rhythm. He’d tripped through a pothole. He hadn’t noticed they’d fallen in sync until then, his strides becoming shorter to allow her to keep up and hers elongating. “I thought it was because of the terms of the contract,” he said, once he’d resumed their pace.
They turned a corner, and the tarred road came into view, perpendicular from their current path, with more dead stalks on the other side. Ace found himself a little disappointed they’d made it to the end. They’d have to go back, limiting the conversation.
“It was.”
“Then…?”
“Aha, now I’m the mystery.” Henley didn’t say anything for another moment, and the creak of the rusted mailbox, swinging slightly in a gentle gust of dense air drowned out the crickets and the rustle of the dead leaves they walked between. “Appropriate, isn’t it? The eerie setting for a mystery?” Henley stopped at the edge of the drive as though taking that next step onto real road would ruin the ambiance, as though it were a massive leap into something unknown.
Now that she mentioned it, the unknown of the dark spaces between all the towering plants pervaded Ace’s focus like bugs coming out of cracks in the walls. Had it been stupid to go wandering at night? Suddenly, it seemed smart to go back. “We should—”
“My sister plans to follow me to BTI. I can’t let her sign that contract.”
The statement tugged him from his worry. Ace should have guessed it was for the sake of others that she’d agreed to become the subject of a hunt, to leave a place where she was stimulated, successful, and could satisfy her curiosity until her brain reached saturation if such a condition were possible. Guilt rose. It was an emotion he’d been struggling with when it came to Henley every time she demanded why he brought her. It was not one he enjoyed. It made him feel uncertain as if she were controlling how he felt.
“That’s why I need to get to my family. Why I’m letting you drag me across the country without you telling me why you want that. Why I wanted to contact them at the post office.” She stared at the mailbox. “Thank you for stopping me back there. It would have been pointless with BTI sorting the mail. And I’m sorry I got physical.”
Ace started, misunderstanding for a moment before he recalled the punch. “It didn’t hurt.” That was false. Her fist was like a rock.
She turned her steady face to him. “That doesn’t matter,” she brushed it off as though she knew he was lying.
Well, that was a skill that his sister coveted, not him. He preferred to simply say nothing.
“A feminist—a decent human being even—expects to be treated as they treat others. Physical abuse against anyone is not okay.”
“Jen and the experiment seemed for it.” A brow rose in challenge.
“Sirena,” Henley corrected. Then she shrugged. “Maybe they want to be punched back. Jen seems to like a little fight. And Reed seems pretty willing.” She let out a little giggle.
Ace hadn’t heard it ever at BTI—not much to laugh about there. It sounded like fireflies he decided, no matter how irrational the comparison.
“Anyway, thank you. For whatever reason you decided to bring me with you. As long as we get there, I’ll stop fighting verbally, too. We have the same end goal.”
Ace winced. “Actually—” he started.
“What’s that?” Henley’s voice was panicked.
She was not going to like his next admission. For a moment, Ace hesitated again. It was going beyond their deal to tell her more.
He didn’t get the chance to deliberate further because Henley’s wide eyes were approaching fast as she sprinted at him, slamming into him despite her promise to no longer be physical.
Not expecting the tackle, Ace toppled backward, and they tumbled together, a mess of limbs and hair, down the slight decline beside the drive, rolling between the dry stalks that snapped and crackled and whipped at Ace’s skin.
When their momentum finally abated, Ace groaned and tried to sit up, but Henley lay atop him.
“Hen—?”
She slapped a hand over his mouth and, with his dizziness starting to fade, he focused on her eyes, which would have been hidden by how effectively the crops blocked out the moonlight if they weren’t only inches from his. But they weren’t staring back into his, instead looking off to the side, darting around.
He realized she was listening. Ace heard… nothing.
He tried to pry her hand off his lips, and she let him, shifting it to his chest to push herself slightly up from her sprawl. It pressed harshly into his skin, and he winced, distracted from the fact that he had just realized nothing was too precise—even the crickets had gone quiet. He glanced down, everything slightly blurry at that distance, more so further away, like a filter.
A slender finger poked free from a tear in her glove, exposing some kind of matte black rubber material where skin should be.
∆∆∆
Ace groped around him, trying to find his glasses, which had been knocked off in the fall.
“Shh,” Henley whispered, her head turning every which way, trying to track something Ace still couldn’t hear.
“Wha—?”
“Drones,” she hissed, looking down on him. He could barely make out her current expression, but it was enough to inform him that extreme distress and panic far exceeding her terror of Mrs. Juarez engulfed her.
Ace flipped to action mode.
“Go,” he growled, pulling her up with him and latching onto her hand—the hand that wasn’t a hand—and towing her behind him as he wound through the plants.
He lamented the loss of his eye-wear as shriveled and roughened leaves slapped into his face, the stalks being almost a foot taller than him. It provided excellent cover but slowed them down as they dodged and weaved, aiming in the general direction of the house. There was also no way to determine if their trajectory was correct.
Over the sound of their hastened breathing and the rustle and snap of vegetation underfoot, Ace was unsure if that was the appropriate goal or if the drones had passed them.
“Not that way,” Henley called from behind, suddenly lurching to the right and jerking him with the abrupt change in momentum.
He struggled behind her, tripping.
They emerged quite suddenly onto the dirt road. The momentary reprieve in crinkling noise allowed the faint hum of rotors to penetrate Ace’s determination.
“Too exposed,” he snapped, overtaking and slipping across into the field on the other side before he had time to locate the drones’ location, Henley falling to the back again.
“Which way?” he posed over his shoulder. Her hearing was clearly better than his, possibly from sitting in a room with hundreds of massive servers and processors humming and cooling fans whirring for too many years.
“Left!”
Ace about-faced and kept moving, squinting to avoid getting a plant to the eye, but the impairment to his vision was not helping. He whipped Henley around, letting go of her hand to push her from behind, with both of his palms pressed to the small of her back. “You’re smaller, you lead.”
She didn’t hesitate, picking up on his intentions as she used her now-freed hands to make a sort of prow, fingers together, arms straight, splitting their obstacles and leaving a wake behind her in which he could move unencumbered.
“They’re following,” she panted, her voice faint among their movements and being projected away from his ears.
“Move faster,” he suggested.
“How do we know—?”
“Not sure,” he admitted.
They were keeping a general straight line parallel to the dirt road they’d ditched, de
touring back the other way when they veered too far off course. That didn’t mean they weren’t going to unknowingly pass right by the house. Ace couldn’t remember all the twists and turns in the driveway, not while he was trying to determine what to do next when—or if—they did make it back to the others.
“Watch?”
“No good.” He couldn’t take the time to triangulate anything at the moment.
“We have to yell to the others,” Henley gasped out, moving faster, worry lacing her voice.
If she was worried, it meant BTI had equipped their drones with listening devices. Yelling would enable the drones to zero in on them. The machines were likely too high in altitude to hear their present discussion, but if they were to be heard by those in the house, they would truly have to raise their volume.
Ace debated for a moment and then directed, “Keep quiet and keep going.” He veered off.
“Bus? Where are you going?” she shouted after him loud enough to not heed his directions.
He sighed inwardly and kept going. If they split up, the drones would follow only one of them, leaving the other free to get back to their base.
Ace filled his lungs as he now intentionally darted in a serpentine pattern, constantly adjusting his short-term path, and tilted his head back to scream, “Jen!” elongating the vowel to give more emphasis and reach to his call. “Jennifer Tate!” He paused to catch his breath, still tumbling the fastest he could go, switching course again, before shouting once more. “Reed! Nor!” His voice broke he was projecting it so hard. He couldn’t recall the name of the science experiment so he skipped her. “Wake up! Trouble!” He repeated his string of alerts like an alarm, hoping it would rouse them and concurrently draw attention away from them if they did hear him and respond.
Finally, the engines were audible to him, which meant they had honed in and were catching up. Moving as wildly and unpredictably as possible, he closed his eyes as much to protect them from the stalks as to improve the randomness of his path as he pushed himself harder, picking up speed. He panted, running with strides as long as his legs could stretch, worry for Henley encouraging his waning muscle energy.
Suddenly the whine of a small engine appeared in front of him, and his eyes snapped open in time to catch an out-of-focus but nevertheless chilling sight of the reeds ahead bending away from each other with the gust of a descending drone, a blue light beaming down their length. Ace pulled up and picked up again ninety degrees to his left.
Another appeared ahead, its spinning blades creating enough wind to move the corn aside, generating a natural landing pad in which it could descend further.
Ace turned ninety degrees counter clockwise once more, now jogging back where he’d originated from. An engine flared directly overhead and kept with him as he roved around organically like he was lost in a corn maze or labyrinth, which wasn’t too far from the truth. It followed his every variation; it had locked on.
He stopped moving altogether, hoping it might overshoot.
No such luck. The drones were precise. Ace was starting to bet Henley had had a hand at working on them, as he started up his run again. He could picture her in her lab, tongue poking between her lips as she twiddled at some piece with a steady hand. Obviously that hand would be steady.
Away from the house was at least advantageous to those who’d gotten away even if he couldn’t lose the drones.
It suddenly occurred to him that she was wearing BTI tech. Was this how they’d been found so easily? Would they have to leave her, or worse, her hand, behind?
“Bus. Buster! Bus!” Henley’s last scream was so vehement her voice crackled in the middle, yet it sounded distant.
Ace moved away from it, hoping it would fade into nothingness again. The whole point was to distance himself.
“Buster.” Another voice called from a slightly different angle. Jen. They were awake. It sounded like Henley hadn’t found them yet though. Hopefully, she could hear Jen wherever she was.
Ace’s hackles raised as the drone tracking him moved in, slipping in between the corn stalks right behind his shoulder blades. The engine was powerful enough that he could still hear his heaved breaths and crunching boots over its quiet motor. Henley was an excellent engineer. It would also explain why her hearing was so attuned to the sound if she had worked on these particular devices, which were coming back to almost literally bite them in the ass.
Ace arched, trying to avoid getting one of the spinning blades to the back. Was that the directive it had been programmed to do? Kill rather than discover and herd?
Ace was moving too fast for his tiring legs to keep up. He hadn’t exerted himself this much since before he’d moved to Boston. He tripped over whatever was on the ground and went flying, rolling ass over head, plowing down cornstalks.
He rolled onto his back, eyes widening as the drone settled over him, a soft blue light pointing directly into his retinas like a spaceship about to teleport him up for alien investigation.
He didn’t think BTI had that technology yet. He should have asked Henley what the specs were before he ditched her.
The whole scene had a dreamlike quality without his lenses. This was why he should have been wearing contacts like his sister scoffed at him constantly to do before he’d gotten several years’ peace from her at the university where they simply made him look more studious. Well, he used to argue back, he couldn’t be sure contacts’ internal workings hadn’t been tampered with and wouldn’t adhere to his eyeballs with flesh-eating amoebas working into his brain. Paranoid was her response.
Well, now look where he was. Henley’s own creation was chasing them down. Paranoia, his ass.
Even though it felt unreal, Buster closed his eyes, waiting. He was morbidly curious what else it could do with Henley’s help. Thus far, it was just hovering, pinning him with its spotlight. It was possible it would just stay there, keeping him in place until a human search party arrived. Maybe he’d be turned into BTI’s next experimental human test subject.
Go, he urged Henley and the rest of them silently. He had missed the pick-up. His contact might be dead if Reed were to be believed. He’d gotten Henley out. He was ready to be impressed one last time at her feat of engineering.
∆∆∆
The sudden rustle snapped Ace’s face to the left. He had told Henley to go. Stubborn girl, she never listened to his—
The woman who emerged from the corn wasn’t blond. Her hair was long and dark. And she brandished some rod above her head in both hands as though ready to bring it down on his stomach.
Ace instinctively curled up in a fetal position and rolled to his right, covering his head and brainstem with his hands to protect his most vulnerable spots.
There was a loud thwack, then another clunk, and the whir of the drone’s engine dropped in a dip-thong then attempted to get back up to speed.
Ace peeked through his fingers, uncurling slightly on the ground. The woman gave the drone one final whack, and its engine cut out as it plummeted to the ground right where Ace had been laying, digging itself slightly into the dry soil with the residual spin of its rotors.
He rolled further away, flattening more corn. Then he popped to his feet, squaring off with the woman, still unsure if she was a friend or foe. The item—a bat, he thought—lowered to her side as they both ogled the carnage: several broken-off stalks that Ace had destroyed himself, and a damaged drone in kicked up soil, half buried in the earth.
“Vamanos,” the woman snapped then turned and vanished between the remaining upright stalks she’d emerged from.
Ace gave one last look to the drone then hoofed it after her as the buzz of other drones picked up in the distance. Did they hunt fallen comrades like ants? He didn’t wait to find out if Henley had given them that feature. Only a few steps, and he’d caught up to the woman he was speculating was Little Lindy. “Thank you.”
“De nada.” It didn’t sound very meaningful. They had led BTI straight to her and her family.
/> “I’m sorry…” Ace’s voice was low to avoid picking up the remaining drones’ sensors, but it had to be said.
Lindy didn’t answer, making a turn and disappearing. Ace darted after her, emerging suddenly onto the gravel of the open area in front of the house, on the porch of which Henley, Jen, and Reed were standing, facing different directions, calling his alias in soft whispers, clearly having realized the danger of raised voices.
“Buster!” Henley’s voice was relieved when she saw him, and she trotted down the porch steps in a hurry.
It was nice to be welcomed. Ace felt some warmth that had nothing to do with the sweat pouring down his skin beneath his clothes. And simultaneously, he felt a loosening of his muscles at seeing her unharmed and in relative safety.
“Thank God,” she breathed, pulling up in front of him, her eyes flicking over his physique, presumably to affirm he was okay.
A small smirk slipped from his lips. It felt really nice.
“Dios did nada,” Lindy said, passing them as she made her way up onto the porch.
“Thank you,” Henley amended.
“And thanks to Henley who woke us up. Where are your glasses?” Jen questioned Ace, her nose scrunching up. “You look naked.”
“We need to go,” Ace told them. “There are at least two more still out there.”
“And who knows who or what’s coming after them.” Henley agreed.
Ace looked down at her. “What are they programmed to do?”
“Nothing good,” she said nervously, her eyes shifting away. She turned to the porch. “Let’s go.”
Ace let the lack of real response slide. Perhaps she was hoping to avoid worrying their companions, but once they were out of there, he would insist on questioning her for more details; they needed to know the capabilities of the weapons their enemy was using against them.
He looked up at the others who hadn’t moved. “Let’s go,” he echoed, his deep voice more forceful. Then he realized the hesitation. “Where’s Nor and—” Her name continued to escape him.
Jen huffed a laugh. “Speaking of naked…”