The Hunt

by Megan Shepherd

  Someone—well, something—was sitting in one of the chairs. It wore a mask and a dirty red jumpsuit, and from the way it was hunched, it didn’t look human.

  Lucky rested his head back against the floor. A crumpled teddy bear with half the stuffing poking out sat inexplicably next to him. Was he . . . hallucinating? He didn’t have the strength to reach out to the bear; just that one small attempt to sit up had nearly made him vomit.

  “Get us out of here,” someone was saying. He blinked until he could see Mali standing over the alien in the chair. “This ship is Axion technology,” she said, drumming on the curved interior walls with her knuckles. “Stolen, I think.”

  Ship? Why would they hide out in a ship?

  “Kid snatchers,” Leon grumbled, rubbing his sore shoulder and pointing to some cages that had been soldered to the walls. “Bonebreak must have retrofitted the ship for runs to Earth.”

  Lucky closed his eyes again. So that creature in the chair was Bonebreak. Waves of blackness shivered over him. He winced through the pain until he saw Cora climb up through the hatch and close it behind her.

  Cora.

  The others.

  They were all safe. All together.

  Bonebreak grumbled from behind his mask, and Lucky opened one heavy eyelid. It sounded something like dogs or logs, but then a girl he didn’t know, tiny, short hair, nine or ten years old, jerked her fingers—she was missing two and her hands were shaking badly—and Bonebreak’s voice turned to garbles again. That must be Anya. But when had Cora freed her? How had . . . how had he even gotten here?

  Anya twitched her small fingers again, and Bonebreak jerkily removed his glove, then traced a few symbols into the control panel; other controls seemed to move on their own—either Bonebreak was moving them with his mind or Lucky was truly hallucinating now.

  Leon was pacing unsteadily, cradling his shoulder like it was hurt. “How’s she know how to work the controls?” he snapped, jerking his head toward Anya.

  “She does not know how,” Mali answered. “Bonebreak knows how. His mind is still alert. She merely commands him what to do, and he is using his own knowledge to do it.”

  “Can you get him to make the windshield visible, Anya?” Cora asked.

  Anya concentrated on Bonebreak. His fingers stiffly worked a few more controls, and the windshield flickered.

  Cora sank into the second pilot’s seat, eyes wide. “My god . . .”

  The others went running to the front to see. Lucky tried to stand, but just the thought of moving was painful.

  “Kindred,” Leon grunted, looking at the screen. “Those bastards have made it into the flight room. Dozens of them.”

  “They are well armed,” Rolf observed. A second later, as though to prove his point, the ship rocked violently. Nok let out a cry, then smacked Bonebreak in the shoulder.

  “Get us out of here already!”

  Bonebreak let out another tense grumble of disapproval. It was louder this time, almost a full curse, as though he was regaining control over his body.

  “Anya cannot sustain this level of mental control much longer,” Mali warned. “Her mind will give out eventually, as well as her hands. The Kindred drugs damaged them.”

  “She has to keep it up.” Cora spun around in the second pilot’s chair. “At least until we’re out of here.”

  The ship rocked again, as something hit it from the outside. Their voices began to fade into the background, like that mysterious dripping sound. Lucky’s ears had started ringing. He readjusted his hold on his ribs.

  Damn, but it stung.

  Suddenly the ship rumbled. Nok cried out and tried to grab ahold of something, but the walls were perfectly smooth. She and Rolf stumbled over to where the cages had been retrofitted in and clutched onto the bars.

  “That’s a good idea,” Cora said. “Everyone hold on to the bars.”

  Lucky reached out to halfheartedly grab at a cage, but his fingers didn’t reach. The ship rumbled again. The teddy bear slid slowly toward the left. He felt a sudden wave of dizziness, and his head hit the wall.

  “Ow.”

  “Lucky, you’re awake!” Cora sank to his side. Her soft hands touched his forehead. She reached gently toward his bloody jacket, which he refused to let her touch. How did she always manage to smell like flowers? “You have to hold on to something too,” Cora whispered. “We don’t know how fast this thing goes.”

  Lucky pressed a hand harder against his ribs. The idea of crawling over to the cages seemed impossible. His legs were still attached—he could see that when he lifted his head, even with his blurry vision—but for some reason he couldn’t feel them.

  “Where are we going?” he muttered, voice sounding distant.

  Cora scooted over to cradle his head in her lap—when had he slumped to the floor?—and had one leg pressed against the captain’s chair to brace them steady. Her fingers brushed his hair back tenderly. Should he tell her that this was his dream? Sitting like this under the cherry tree, his head in her lap, back on his granddad’s farm?

  Ow.

  There was pain in his cheek. Someone was slapping him. “Stay with me,” Cora was saying.

  He coughed violently. If only this damn bullet wasn’t in his side. He couldn’t even remember which guest had hunted him—was it Roshian? Cassian? No, that wasn’t right, Cassian never hunted. Wait, they were still in the Hunt, right?

  “. . . going home,” Cora said.

  The words sank into him like a punch, and his heart began to thump with panic. Home. Home? He tried to sit up. No, no, there was something wrong about home. Some reason they weren’t supposed to go back, but he couldn’t quite remember.

  “Wait. I think . . .” He fumbled until he found Cora’s shoulder, and traced it up to her face. “I think we were . . .”

  “Shh.” Around them, the world rocked and bucked, but not here beneath the cherry tree. In the distance, Rolf lost his footing and smacked against the wall. His head connected with a crunch, and Nok shrieked.

  Anya’s face twisted harder in concentration. Bonebreak’s hands snapped back into position, moving faster. The world jolted as the ship lifted, and Lucky’s fingers fumbled against Cora’s face.

  “You’ll be okay,” she was saying. “Bonebreak says . . . emergency medical kit . . . once we’re away from the station . . .”

  The teddy bear slid back the other way and stopped by his face. He felt a sudden welling of panic. Wait. It wasn’t a teddy bear. It was that little fox that liked to chew on wooden statues he stole from the lodge, only someone had torn out all its stuffing, and there was so much blood that he felt he couldn’t bear such pain.

  Then he remembered why they couldn’t go home.

  “This is wrong. The animals—”

  “We’re flying!” someone yelled.

  Cora twisted around to look, and fear shot through him that she was going to pull away. He dug his fingers into her shoulder and forced words up his throat. “I tried to tell you. We shouldn’t leave, don’t you see? Earth doesn’t need us. They need us here. The animals. The kids. Where’s Pika? And Shoukry? We can’t just leave—”

  Cora was saying something he couldn’t make out. Something placating and reassuring about having no choice but to leave, about Cassian being arrested, about the Kindred finding out she had killed Roshian.

  She didn’t understand!

  “No!” he spit out. “No, there’s another way.” He reached a bloody hand into his pocket for Dane’s torn-out journal pages. “We’ll regret it if we leave them. You think we’ll go home and just forget everyone we left behind?”

  She stared at the blood-stained journal with wide eyes.

  Other voices crackled nearby.

  “. . . don’t see any exit or bay . . .”

  “How are we . . . ? Oh . . . shit.”

  The voice morphed into a scream. Lucky’s stomach shot to his throat as his head swam. They were falling. Plunging into nothing, rapidly. He’d been on a rolle
r coaster before—the free-falling kind. This was a hundred times worse. The teddy bear tumbled away. So did the journal. Cora was clutching him, or maybe he was clutching her. Falling, falling . . .

  And then they stopped abruptly.

  The screaming stopped, but the ringing in his ears didn’t. The ship didn’t seem to be falling anymore, though it vibrated in a rumbling sort of way, like a train over tracks.

  “Space!” someone yelled. “Look! We’re . . . stars!”

  A thunk sounded.

  And then—

  “Anya!”

  Lucky’s vision was blackening around the edges, and the angles all seemed wrong and he couldn’t tell who was talking. Was Anya walking on the wall? No . . . she had collapsed. She was unconscious on the floor.

  “Oh god, is she dead?” someone else shrieked.

  For a second, a horrifying second, Cora was gone. The cherry tree smell turned to smoke; the petals landing on his ribs singed him with little jolts of pain. He reached out a hand for the fox. Or for Cora. Or for one of the many faces that came to him, the animals and the kids all mixed together.

  “Look out for Bonebreak!” someone screamed. “He’s getting control again!”

  There was a swirl of commotion, but it mostly stuck to the black edges of his vision. He saw a knife in Nok’s hand. Rolf and Leon hurling themselves toward Bonebreak, who was out of his chair now and had stopped moving in that robotic way.

  Mali leaning over Anya’s limp body, shaking her.

  Lucky tried to speak. Let him take us back, they need us there! We can fight!—but a ricochet of pain silenced him. No one was paying attention to him anyway. Another searing wave of pain hit his ribs. For the first time, Lucky peeled back the jacket and looked at his side. The safari uniform had split down a seam; there was dark, gooey blood. When he moved, more blood came. He picked at one of the shirt’s knots until it came loose, and pain shot through him, as something else seemed to tumble out of his side. Was that bone?

  “I . . . I think I’m dying.”

  His voice sounded surprised even to his own ears.

  Cora twisted to him, her beautiful blond hair whipping around like wheat on his granddad’s farm. The color of sunlight. The color of warmth.

  She looked down at his jacket and screamed.

  Then the black around the edges of his vision poured into the center, and there was only darkness.

  41

  Cora

  “NO!”

  Cora collapsed onto the floor next to Lucky. A second ago, Bonebreak’s regaining control of his body had been her worst nightmare; but that was nothing compared to the bloody mess spilling out of Lucky’s jacket.

  She slid her hands around his neck, scared to touch him too hard. “Lucky. Wake up!” His body felt so heavy. “You have to wake up!”

  Behind her, Nok gave a surprised cry. Cora glanced around just long enough to see the others trying to wrestle Bonebreak back under control near the front of the ship. Leon was as good as useless with his dislocated shoulder, and Nok and Rolf each weighed about as much as one of Bonebreak’s legs. They needed help, but Cora didn’t dare tear herself away from Lucky.

  “Mali!” Cora yelled. “You need to wake up Anya now.”

  But one look at Anya’s splayed body, blood caked in her nose, said she wasn’t waking soon. Cora’s mind spun. Anya . . . Bonebreak . . . Nothing seemed to matter as much as this boy bleeding out on the floor.

  “Lucky,” she choked. “Please, talk to me.”

  A few words garbled up his throat. His body spasmed and suddenly he was breathing again, though blood came up with his gasps for air.

  “The journal,” Lucky said in a weak voice. “I need it. Notes inside . . . could help . . .”

  The journal? She looked around blankly. That notebook he’d taken from his pocket . . .

  She shoved to her feet, searching for it in the chaos. There—under Bonebreak’s foot. Cora darted for it. She had to duck as Bonebreak got a hand free; she slammed her fist into his shin and snatched the journal from under his foot, then scrambled back to Lucky.

  “Here. I’ve got it. You’re going to be okay. Just tell me what to do.”

  The book felt too small in her hands; surely a few scribbled notes couldn’t save him. Her eyes widened at the mess of his midsection. The skin was torn; gone in some places. Half a rib jutted out, the end broken off.

  “The torn-out pages . . . ,” Lucky muttered. “It’s a manual override.”

  Manual override?

  How was an override going to save his life? She flipped anxiously to the last page and skimmed over handwriting that wasn’t his. There weren’t any descriptions of medical procedures for stopping bleeding, only a diagram of symbols like the ones the Kindred used to open locked cabinets.

  “You have to go back.” He coughed. “Dane wrote the notes. The manual override codes open a compartment in the medical room. There are weapons, in case the animals get out of control.”

  “Weapons?” she whispered.

  “I was only going to use them as a last resort. Put the animals out of their misery . . . if . . . things got bad.” He strained for breath. “I still had hope for the Gauntlet. But now . . .” He winced and shook his head. “There’s kill-dart guns. Powerful enough for an elephant. Powerful enough for a Kindred, I’m sure.”

  She sank to the floor, stunned.

  What did she care about weapons now, while he was dying? She had hoped the scrawled pages contained information to save him. She could barely even think about the station now, or what weapons would have meant.

  He coughed louder.

  The journal fell out of her slack hand. It slid away as the ship lurched, but she didn’t lunge for it.

  He was going to die.

  She collapsed over on top of him, not worried about being too fragile now. Warm blood soaked into her dress.

  “Cora!” Leon bellowed. “We need you!”

  The others didn’t know about Lucky. From the corner of her eye, she saw Bonebreak by the control panel, twitching as if he still wasn’t used to his own body. He squeezed his fingers into a fist, again and again, until his fingers obeyed his head. Dread sweated down Cora’s face.

  She turned back to Lucky.

  His lips moved; blood came up, not words, and she pressed a finger to his mouth. “Shh. Don’t try to talk.”

  “Go back,” he choked. “You can’t leave the others behind. Use the weapons.”

  There was such utter conviction behind his voice. As though he’d crawled back to life—just for this second—because this one thing was so very important.

  “Shh . . . ,” she started, but unsure this time. “We can’t go back, Lucky. A few dart guns aren’t going to make a difference. They’ll arrest me just like they did Cassian. The Gauntlet and everything else . . . it’s over. Cassian was right. Not giving up is noble only as long as it doesn’t get us killed. At some point, we have to think logically.”

  “Logic?” Lucky said. “No. We’re not Kindred. We don’t give up when it’s something that matters. This is our place. This is our cause.” His fingers clenched onto her as though someone was trying to rip her away. “Go back, Cora.”

  She stared in stunned horror. Go back? She thought of that glimpse she’d had of Cassian, screaming in pain as they tortured him. Of Fian, who had turned on her. Even if there really were weapons they could use, how could she possibly go back to that chaos?

  She let out a sharp exhale. A tear landed on Lucky’s cheek.

  “I can’t,” she pleaded, though she didn’t know anymore who she was trying to convince. Lucky’s eyes were closed. His hand—fingers so weak, like an old man’s—slid down to cradle her hand. “We have to give up.”

  He took in a long breath, then breathed out.

  And he didn’t inhale again.

  “No!” she threw herself back on top of him. “No, you can’t leave me! I can’t handle this, Lucky. I can’t do it . . . I can’t go back there.” She sobb
ed into his bloody chest. It wasn’t true, the things he was saying. At some point, the battle was too great to be fought. Besides, she did have a purpose on Earth. Being with her family was as good a cause as any, wasn’t it?

  Another sob shook her. She thought of her dad watching the news on the downstairs television; her mother drinking wine on the porch. She could see it so clearly. There would be framed photographs of her on the walls, a shrine of cards and newspaper articles. They had lost their child; wasn’t that cause enough to go back to them?

  Wasn’t it?

  His body was still warm. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend he was just asleep, but the taste of blood reached her mouth and she gagged.

  A slow sound started to come from Bonebreak’s mask. It started as a high-pitched note; then it grew louder and louder: “. . . kill you childrens!”

  And then he was lunging for her—a shadow out of nowhere, fractured mask eyes and clawing fingers. She screamed and rolled out of his way. His hands were still sluggish, but he was moving rapidly, fury propelling him forward.

  “I will kill you!” he hissed. “All of you childrens! I will break your bones!”

  He lunged for her again. The inside of the ship was too tight; there was nowhere to go. Lucky’s body. So much blood.

  Bonebreak loomed over her. He held up his fist with glee.

  Mali lunged forward to help, but the ship pitched sharply with no one at the controls, and she fell back against the wall.

  A teddy bear tumbled across Cora’s line of vision. What the . . . ? She felt like she was in a dream; no, a nightmare. It was all wrong. Lucky . . . She couldn’t even look at him. And his words in her ears: This is our place. This is our cause.

  The teddy bear tumbled onto something silver. Cora’s heart thumped. The gun! Anya must have had it. She scrambled for it. Bonebreak was hissing behind her, tailing her like a shadow. At last, her fingers curled around the familiar shape. It was smaller than the ones she’d fired with her dad at the NRA rally, but it couldn’t be that complicated. Aim. Squeeze. Fire.