The Hunted

by Steve Scheunemann

  4

  MAY 13, 2080

  TOKYO, ASIAN TERRITORY

  It had been two days since he saw her and still she haunted his thoughts. The only thing that seemed to help clear his head of the vision of her eyes and the smile she had given him was his plan for revenge. His hate remained as strong as ever.

  There was, in fact, a growing impatience in him to actively begin to exact his vengeance. He was in peak physical condition, as deadly as he was likely to get, and for three years had been living largely as a citizen. In another month, or two at the outside, he would have to leave Angus in order not to get him entangled in Matt’s scheme. Matt even considered leaving right then, but it was his birthday tomorrow and Angus had contacted him through the hotel desk and said he’d be back later that afternoon. Matt just didn’t have it in him to disappear without saying goodbye.

  He decided to go to the restaurant in the hotel and get some breakfast. The lobby was full of people on vacation or business trips, all of them blissfully unaware of the hunted criminal walking among them. Hunted not because of any act he’d committed but because he existed. Filled with these thoughts, Matt, as he often did, tried to imagine what it would have been like if he’d been born a citizen. Would he too, walk around oblivious to the world at large? The regular citizens seemed to notice nothing. They looked at things but never truly saw them. The life that had been forced upon Matt had caused him to see much more than most. He felt this was a benefit of his difficult life. He often wished he were not hunted, did not have a death sentence on his head, but could not bring himself to wish for the peace of a citizen, not if he’d have to go through life with blinders on. The thought that the only others who saw the world as he did were Hunters was a troubling one, but one he’d long ago become accustomed to.

  He was just being served his breakfast of melon wedges and blueberries when she walked in. Unable to swallow, Matt watched as she scanned the room in much the same manner which he himself had. Matt had been looking for potential danger, but thought this beautiful young girl must be looking for someone.

  Amazingly, when she saw him she smiled and approached his table. Watching her silky smooth motions as she came through the maze of tables between them, Matt’s danger sense finally kicked in. She was too beautiful, too smooth, nothing in his life had taught him to take things at face value. While he was unwilling to leave her presence before he must, neither would he let his guard down because of eyes he would gladly get lost in.

  “Hi, I saw you in the pool didn’t I?” she said in a voice tinged with a faint trace of the southern parts of the American territory. Wearing jeans, boots, and a t-shirt with a leather jacket Matt thought she was even more beautiful than when he’d last seen her.

  “Yeah, I was swimming laps while you were putting on a show on the board. You’re very good. My name’s Matt, care to have a seat?”

  “Thanks, I’m Abigail, Abbey to my friends.” She said sliding into the seat across from Matt.

  “You’re the only person in this whole hotel who’s even close to my age. So when I saw you come in here I just had to meet you. I mean, everyone else here is either way older or a little kid. I’m seventeen and you’re what, my age or maybe as old as nineteen right?”

  “I’ll be eighteen tomorrow” Matt replied and immediately regretted it. It went against all his instincts to offer any information about himself. He had to get his head straight and be more cautious. In all his travels he’d never been alone with a girl his own age before. At least not while posing as a citizen. Sure he’d known a few outcast girls but none of them had possessed Abbey’s raw sensuality or been as potentially dangerous.

  “Happy birthday, you’ll have to let me celebrate with you, please. I never get to spend any time with kids my own age. See I’m competing in the East Asian Games, I guess you figured out I’m a diver right? Anyway the coaches are pretty strict chaperones, the only reason I ever manage to slip away is cause I’m at least three years older than the others and past my prime in this sport so they don’t watch me as close. I’m so sick of spending all my free time with those little kids, especially that Rachel Morris. Okay, so she’s the favorite and okay so she does things on a diving board that should be impossible, but does she have to be so insufferably arrogant? So please, can I help celebrate your birthday?”

  Matt had allowed himself, despite his better judgment, to begin to like Abbey. She was so full of energy and something about her pulled at him in a way that was more than simple lust. Of that he felt plenty, but there was something mysterious about her. Matt was sure she was more than a second string competitive diver. Still cautious, Matt allowed himself to open up to her just a little, and keeping to his cover story told her as much about himself as he felt safe doing.

  “I’d love to celebrate my birthday in the company of the most beautiful woman on the planet. Do you ride? The hotel has a stable that is among the best on the island. Maybe we could ride out and bring a picnic lunch. I hear there is a spot overlooking the ocean that is fantastic.”

  “I’d love it. I just love horses. Are they for real honest to goodness horses or altered stock?”

  “Some of each from what I hear. They have a breeding program, so they keep some unaltered stock to maintain genetic purity in case they want to start a new strain from scratch. I hear they have some that are damn near as big as an elephant and can carry half a dozen people in a litter on their backs” Matt said.

  “Let’s ride the real thing, can’t we? I mean they’re not just for breeding right? We can ride them too? It just seems more, you know, real that way, like in the old western movies. I grew up in the state of Texas in the American Territory, and it used to be nothing but big ranches there. They still raise those altered cows there, you know the ones that are as big as the horse you were telling me about, but I don’t think there is a horse left. It’s all done in trucks or with ATV’s and floaters now. So can we?”

  “I think so, we’ll sure try. I gotta go; I have to be in the seminar on some new software for tracking personnel globally according to occupation as well as genetic suitability for continuing their current occupation and suitability for cross breeding with others for desired traits. I don’t know much about the science but the program is supposed to make a bureaucrat’s job easier by a factor of ten, at least as it relates to personnel assignments. Fascinating stuff.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you later, like at the pool. They let me practice on my own, the privilege of being second best. This time you might even watch without blushing, besides, I like watching you swim. You swim very well, and with such …determination.” Smiling as she rose, she walked away, ponytail swishing playfully. She looked back over her shoulder, saying “Bye Matt”.

  The seminar was for real and Matt really was attending, as part of his never-ending quest to be able to fit in everywhere, all the while knowing he would never truly fit in anywhere. It was this that he returned to every time his thoughts about Abbey progressed too far into the future, for they could have no future together. He doubted she felt what he did, but feel it he did. He had learned to trust in his feelings as much as logic. Often he had been saved from being caught by a queer feeling he sometimes got, a sort of tingling sensation as the short hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

  When he was around Abbey, Matt felt as if the hair on his head must be sticking straight up, as chills ran up and down his spine. Although he felt no danger from her, something told him he should, and this left him confused and unable to think of much else.

  She appeared to be attracted to him almost as much as he was to her, but then she might be a flirt naturally, or he labored to remind himself, it could be more sinister than that.

  Matt replayed their conversation word for word from memory, studying every nuance in his mind. He was trying to decide if he had allowed his cover to slip. Aside from her having seen his athletic prowess in the pool, he had not made any mistakes. He would have to hope she believed he swam to keep his min
d and body strong for his work as a paper pusher. If she didn’t witness any more examples of his abilities he should be okay, unless his worst fears were realized, but that he simply refused to credit, and wondered if that was due to reason or his inexplicable feelings for her.

  The only moderately dangerous subject they had discussed was the unaltered horses, but it was she, not he, who had expressed a preference for them, he wondered what, if anything, that meant.

  Abbey was troubled. She knew that at seventeen she was young and relatively inexperienced but never had she felt as she did when she looked at Matt. The first time she noticed him was that day in the pool. He’d been watching her like everyone else. She was aware of her looks and how they affected people, but despite obviously being attracted Matt had been looking at her eyes and not her naked body. When their eyes had met she felt as if he had looked right into her soul and seen all of her. If so what did he think of the darkness he’d found there? There had been no judgment in his looks and he’d seemed pretty normal in his reactions to her at breakfast.

  There was more to him than what was apparent on the surface. She fervently hoped that it was somehow benign. Please let it not be what she feared it was. There was plenty of evidence. He moved way too well to be a paper pusher, even one who kept himself in great shape. As she’d watched him swim she noticed his economy of movement, with never a wasted motion. He swam more than very well as she’d told him he did. He was superb. He was not, however, a competitive swimmer.

  Even though he didn’t know it, she had watched until he’d finished and left the pool. She’d been hiding and he’d left the water so exhausted she might have stood in the open and not been seen. In or out of the water, he moved his lean and muscular body with a balance and center that was hard to hide. He hid it well, but Abbey could tell he had trained in the arts extensively. Please let it not be so, she thought, not him, he’s just too beautiful. Somewhere deep inside Abbey realized that nothing in her life thus far had given her hope to believe that he’d be other than what she feared. He could be but one of two things. A Hunter…or prey. If the former he would have been pretending to all the tender emotions Abbey thought she’d seen in his eyes, if the latter then she’d have to kill him. For all of her life Abbey had trained as a Hunter. She’d only this week been turned loose for her final exam. Find, on her own, an outcast and kill him.

  Angus could tell something was on Matt’s mind almost as soon as he’d returned to their room and found him working on killing techniques exclusively. Usually when Matt practiced, it was all aspects of the arts, from defense through progressively more lethal attacks. It was only when troubled, when losing his focus on revenge, that his practice became exclusively deadly. Ironically, Angus had come to see this as a good sign in Matt. Over the past three years he had seen this kind of practice only four times, and suspected a few more that he’d not witnessed. To Angus, these intense sessions of trying to refocus himself and nurture his hate, by their very necessity showed that Matt was progressing away from his hate and might soon be open to Angus’s message of hope.

  Watching Matt work he was again struck by just how lethal he was. Having been in the unique position to see a Hunter in action and live to tell about it, Angus believed that it just might be possible that Matt could hold his own against one of them. Angus’s own skills were far greater than they’d been that day on the train platform. He was easily ten times as deadly as he’d been back then. Today, were he in that situation, he’d be capable of defeating the ten who’d gone against Malone and died so that he might live. Against Malone, well, he’d die harder than he would have then, might even manage to hurt Malone, maybe even seriously. But beat him? Never.

  He’d started too late in the intense training of a Hunter, and only kept up in order to keep Matt sharp. Angus did not have the desire to hurt and to kill that gave Malone that edge. He hoped that he could temper that desire in Matt and make him stronger for his control over himself and his dark nature.

  When he was done Matt slowly relaxed and smiled at his teacher and friend.

  “Care to spar a little?”

  “Not when you’re in such a decidedly deadly temper, Boyo. You might ferget ta take it easy on me”

  “Sorry, I’m just feeling a little distracted lately. I feel my focus slipping. Like if I don’t start something soon I’ll begin to believe I can live like a citizen forever. I guess it’s all this soft living.” Matt hesitated, then plunged on, not pausing for breath or meeting Angus’s eyes, “I need to get on with my plans. I need to make those bastards pay for what they’ve done. I know you don’t agree but it’s something I’ve got to do soon or I never will. Don’t you see Angus; they’ve taken everything from me. Someday they’ll even take my life, but not today, not any day soon. No, first I’ll make them pay; I’ll make them bleed. I’ll give them a real reason to wish I’d never been born.”

  “And when you’ve begun to take your revenge, and they take it out on the outcasts that they catch? What then, Boyo? Do you see yourself as some Robin Hood who’ll be protected by the masses from the sheriff? They’ll not thank you. They’ll not revere you, no laddie they’ll revile you and turn you in as soon as possible, and in the end what will you have accomplished? A few dead Hunters at best. At worst you’ll die at the hands of the first one you come across. And how are you to know the one you kill is even a Hunter, eh? Do they go about advertizin’ who an’ what they are? Can you live with a mistake? Wi’ killin o’ an innocent?”

  “I don’t know Angus, but I will have my revenge. It’s all they have left me. It’s all I have” Matt flatly stated as he left their room, his palpable anger washing over Angus in waves.

  “No, Boyo, it’s not all you have. You have me,” but Matt didn’t hear as the door closed and Angus was left to contemplate whether his impassioned speech had been a mistake. In the end he decided that it had not been and that when Matt was again calm his gentle nature would recognize the truth in Angus’s words. In the meantime, he had work to do in order to prepare Matt’s present for tomorrow.

  5

  MAY 14, 2080

  TOKYO, ASIAN TERRITORY

  Malone was close. He would have Angus soon. He could feel it. He could almost taste it. As he moved through Tokyo airport he marveled at the sea of short dark hair before him. One world government and tight birth control had done wonders for overpopulation, but here in Asia there were still a huge number of people. Ninety percent were Asian in appearance, even if they were in fact products of Cornwall labs in Scotland just like damn near everyone else on the planet. In this instance it made things easier for him. Locating one medium-tall, red-headed westerner among the midgets ought to be a relatively simple task. There were hotels frequented by westerners, and this would make his job both easier, and at the same time, harder.

  Easier, because it limited the number of places to look. Were Angus to stay in one of the other establishments he would stick out and thus come to the attention of the local Hunters.

  Harder, because the places he sought were scattered throughout the pacific rim, and because there Angus would be more inconspicuous.

  It didn’t matter; it was time he brought this to a close. He’d spent too many years in disgrace. He was too good at his job to fail. He had to give Angus credit, however. The former soldier was the best that Malone, or anyone, had ever hunted. Over the years they had assigned six others to bring in Angus, all of them had met with utter failure and been reassigned, their careers forever sidetracked. Oh, they were still Hunters. They now spent their days clearing the sewers of genetic trash with three arms or escaped clones with missing body parts. Janitors is what they were, taking out the garbage.

  The only reason Malone had avoided their fate was his uncanny ability to turn up Angus when no other could. Thus far he’d always been a day or two behind, but that was about to change.

  Upon arrival in Tokyo he’d contacted the sector chief for the BGP and instituted full checks on all persons traveling to
or from the island by any means. This meant boat and underground passengers were subject to the same screening as those traveling by air. In addition, all computers were keyed to notify BGP field agents who would then detain any and all soldiers or Hunters for more thorough checks. Tissue samples were being taken from any suspected outcasts or deserters, who were being held until their identity was established beyond any doubt.

  Malone doubted that Angus would be caught by these measures but they were only designed to hamper his movements long enough for Malone to catch him. It had the added benefit of bringing in a dozen outcasts already. While he was sure that the number of outcasts was shrinking due to Hunters doing their job, he was equally sure that the best of the outcasts were still out there, and getting better at avoiding capture all the time. His new measures had brought in some primo names. One was even on the BGP’s ten most wanted list as Angus was, but he was not, in Malone’s opinion, in Angus’s class.

  No, Angus was the best the other side had to offer. Too bad for them Malone was better.

  6

  MAY 14, 2080

  TOKYO, ASIAN TERRITORY

  Abbey rose an hour before dawn and practiced her killing techniques. There was no conscious effort involved, no thought at all as she moved through the forms. She simply was. As her 5’11” body and 135 lbs of lean, lithe muscle glowed with a light sheen of sweat, her mind was free for other pursuits. Trying to sort out the maelstrom of emotions that Matt brought forth in her, she reflected on her training.

  Her earliest memories were the worst. The first thing she could remember was holding a dead puppy. His name had been Bear, and he was a bullmastiff pup. She could not remember more about him, except that when she tried to she felt a great sadness. Abbey knew that if she had not killed that pup she would be dead herself now.