For some reason, though, seeing them looking so healthy strikes me with a sense of dread, rather than comfort. Maybe it’s the blood still drying on Ellis’s uniform.
I look back and forth between them, waiting for an answer to my question. Finally, it’s Trey who shakes his head. “There were some… disagreements,” he says far too simply. Disagreements… as if they’re a group of school kids fighting over a toy.
“And… all of them are… dead?”
“Dead or gone,” Trey says.
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else. His eyes dart over to Ellis, standing slightly apart from them.
“They’re scared of me,” Ellis says, his voice deep and foreboding.
“Do I want to ask why?” They’d always been uncomfortable around Ellis; it wouldn’t have taken much to tip them over the edge into outright fear.
He shrugs. “I gave them reason enough.”
“Great.” I don’t even mean that sarcastically. There was very little chance of me selling Uki on the entire group of Shredders, but maybe I can argue for the ones that are left. Besides, the world is better off without a few of those monsters. I just have to forget about the humans they used to be… the humans they could’ve been again if everything goes according to plan with developing a cure.
I hear a slight clatter as the guards raise their weapons. Uki steps slowly up beside me. “Care to introduce me to your friends?”
I can’t imagine she has much opportunity to meet new people way up here—and monsters, to boot—but she manages to stay remarkably calm, considering.
“Before you get too attached to them… or give me any kind of hope… just tell me. Can they come?”
Uki’s eyes trail across the ragtag group of bedraggled creatures. She no doubt sees how well-fed they are, just as I did. Will she see it as a positive—that they’re less likely to eat our faces while we sleep? Or does she see it as an added risk—what… or who did they eat?
Her eyes land back on Ellis and hold for a moment. “Nice to see you again,” she says, but there’s no real warmth to the greeting. Maybe it has something to do with the fresh blood staining his clothing. “I didn’t catch your name last time.”
“You mean when you pranced in and rescued my friends?” He clearly has some mixed thoughts on the rescue. They didn’t take us away by force, but it wasn’t like we were given a choice, either.
“He’s still alive, isn’t he? Seems like a successful rescue to me.” She shrugs as casually as she can, but there’s a stiff tension to her spine. She gives a long, controlled breath, blowing it out through her nostrils, and then she comes to a decision and oh-so slowly extends her hand. I imagine it’s like how you would reach out to pet a lion, half expecting to lose a hand.
Ellis looks down at the proffered hand, and then locks eyes with me instead of Uki, as if confirming that this is okay. What am I supposed to say? Please don’t kill this one, she might be the person who can save us all?
He must see something in my expression, because he meets her hand halfway and gives a brief shake. Both of them seem more than happy to let go quickly.
“You’re warm,” Uki says, sounding surprised.
“Obviously.” Ellis cocks his head, unsure of what else to say.
Uki elaborates, “But you’re not human.”
“Again… obviously.” His body may look eerily like ours, but there’s no mistaking those eyes as anything other than monster.
Uki bites her lip, considering, until she seems to come to some kind of decision. “You can come on one condition.”
“And that is?” he asks.
I know what it is even before she says it. “I get to run tests on your blood.”
Ellis again looks to me. I knew this was coming, and from the look he gives me, I would say he knew too. Uki’s a survivor, sure, but first and foremost she’s a scientist. She’s willing to put their entire compound at risk in order to satisfy her curiosity, maybe progress her research.
Uki follows Ellis’s gaze and turns to me. She seems to realize that I’m the one making the call, even if I’m not the highest-ranked officer here. That would be Howell, and he’s hanging back with the other humans. No, this isn’t about the military or the government… this is my decision.
I try to convey all my conflicted emotions to Ellis through a look, but no matter how hard I stare, or how tightly I pinch my lips, this is something I need to say out loud. “Ellis, I… I haven’t… been a good person.” He opens his mouth to argue, but I shake my head and hold a hand up between us. “No, it’s okay. You don’t need to lie to me to make me feel better. We’ve been telling lies for way too long. And it’s not entirely my fault, the experiments and the… deaths, but I was a part of it.” I can the scrape of Kelly’s gaze, and I nearly falter, but I need to do this. I need to confess. “I refuse to be a part of it any longer. Whether you are subjected to their experiments… that is your decision.”
I wish I could say that a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, that I unburdened my conscience and can now begin working toward forgiveness. But that’s not at all how it feels. I can sense the judging stares of the guards behind me. They don’t know me, but now they’re suddenly getting a solid snapshot of what kind of human being I am. The things I’ve done.
I feel like I’ve just failed their test.
I reluctantly turn to look Uki straight in the face. Her mouth is set in a straight line, but it’s not judgment I see in her eyes. It’s pity. It’s understanding.
Maybe she’s had to do things she’s not proud of too.
She takes a deep shuddering breath. “Well?” she finally says. “Do we have a deal?”
Ellis casts his eyes down to his feet, then up to me, and lastly over to Lori. “The deal is a cure,” he says, his voice rough. Lori’s breath snags in her throat. Ellis’s eyes are like two bottomless pits when he looks at Uki. “You can run your tests on me… but there needs to be a cure. And you have to provide for us—monster and human alike—until that cure is found. Or I’m out.”
“Seems fair enough.” Does it, though? We all take a single moment’s pause to let the deal sink in. None of us have any clue what we’re signing up for. We’ve been given no idea about what their lab is like, what their living conditions are. They look healthy enough, but so did our scavengers, being treated better than most of our compound’s residents. What kind of disparity will we find once we arrive at whatever hole in the ground they call home?
I try to disregard the nagging dread lingering at the edges of my mind. A cure. It’s possible, within reach, and all I have to do is stretch my hand out and grab it.
My voice cracks when I try to speak. “I won’t force anyone to come with us. If you want to part ways, no hard feelings.”
Our tiny group is all that’s left of our compound. We’ve been through hell together. And I hate to think of the shit we might still need to wade through to get to the other side. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, there might not even be another side. It might just be bottomless shit for as far as the eye can see.
“I’m in,” Lori says. She steps closer, and Uki tenses. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Lori’s declaration seems to be what everyone else was waiting for. It breaks the tension, and the others quickly agree.
“We’d better hotfoot it out of here then,” Uki says with a nod, backing away and keeping them all in her sight. “We don’t have enough shelter for everyone if we get caught out in the open, so our only option is to push to make the trip in one go.” She half turns away, and then stops. “Oh, and make sure you take anything you need. We won’t be coming back for a while.”
Or ever, I silently add, and I feel like a chasm is opening up beneath my feet.
“What the hell are we doing?” Judith whispers. It’s not angry, not sad… just resigned.
We’re in over our heads, and we all know it.
17
Lori
“Are you okay?” Kenzo asks.
If I could answer him, I would tell him that no, I am not fucking okay, but by the way I’m heaving my stomach contents out into the ocean, I don’t think he needs me to tell him that. So, instead of wasting my energy attempting to get words out, I just give another retch.
There’s nothing left. My stomach is nothing but the dregs of stomach acid. My throat is burning from the vomit… but the gross part of it is that it didn’t burn as much as I remember from my human life. I’ve been sick loads of times. Living in close quarters with a bunch of malnourished humans is a sure-fire way to spread disease, but this isn’t like when I got food poisoning from that rancid tinned beef.
Blood going in… blood going out.
I will no doubt have to deal with that later… replenishing my hunger…
The boat slams down—again—and my head nearly connects with the metal railing. How the hell can they consider this safe?! Uki and the other guards don’t even seem fazed by the constant bucking motion of the boat. I should find comfort in that, right? That they’re not worried about the boat capsizing and dumping us all into the watery depths?
I find a small amount of joy in the sounds of other people barfing. None of Uki’s crew, mind you, and strangely enough, not Ellis either, but most of the rest of us are experiencing a range of motion sickness, from mild queasiness to outright stomach explosions. Misery loves company, I guess. When I cast a glance over my shoulder, I see Howell with his head in a bucket. Good. He deserves to suffer.
Every time the boat slams down over the crest of a wave, the spray of warm saltwater coats my face. It’s a small relief to my feverish skin, and I relish even the taste of it on my lips.
Kenzo has a white-knuckle grip on the railing beside me, and I startle at the contact of his hand on my back, tentatively rubbing in a circle.
“My mom used to do this when I was sick,” he whispers. I can barely hear his voice over the whine of the engine and the roar of the ocean.
The contact feels different somehow. It’s not a hug, not a kiss… but intimate all the same. When I changed into this monster, I thought I’d given up all hope of physical contact. There are no Rippers I trust to touch me, and I don’t trust myself not to lose control around Kenzo. But here, with all of my bodily instincts distracted by the nausea, it’s like I can pay attention to the more human emotions.
Even as attuned as I am to the slightest motion, it takes me a moment to realize that the rocking and rolling of the little boat is slowly easing. “Do you feel that?” I ask, and Kenzo’s hand stills against my back. When he pulls it away, I feel the loss of his touch deep in my gut. I know that I can’t allow it again.
“What do you see?” he asks.
His eyes can’t make out the outline of the structure rising out of the gloom ahead of the boat. At first, it’s just a vague shape, a cut-out from the skyline, too far for me to make out clearly, but slowly it begins to gain detail as we close in. “It’s a castle,” I tell him, because that’s the closest comparison I can think of. But that isn’t quite right either. It looks to be made from stone blocks, with walls and parapets. The ocean itself works like a moat. But there are no towers.
“Not a castle,” Uki says. “A fort.”
I can feel the confusion written all over my face. What kind of fort would be way out here? I have a whole list of questions I want to ask, but as I open my mouth to voice them, another wave of bile tries to crawl up my throat.
The boat’s engine gears down, and as we move into more shallow water, the ocean’s swell finally eases. With the waves now at our back, the boat is pushed into calmer water; unfortunately, that means less of a slamming up and down, and more of a rocking motion, which is somehow almost worse.
I have a brief moment of panic with how quickly we’re now rushing toward shore. I have a flash before my eyes of the boat being slammed down onto the beach, breaking apart into splinters, and dashing us all against the rocks. I would probably be fine—‘cause, you know, the whole practically invincible thing—but Kenzo would die. He would take not only our hope for a cure with him, but also a piece of myself.
My mouth gapes at the realization, but then the boat knocks hard against a dock with a jarring jolt and a squeal, and I’m brought around to my senses. Kenzo’s a friend. Nothing more. The end. Now somebody please get me the hell off this damn boat!
In my blind panic, I leap to the dock before they even have the craft properly secured. My bad, since the boat is still being pushed around and my legs aren’t exactly the most stable after that whole experience. I have just enough time to think of my dad’s stories from my childhood, words like “landlubber” and “sea legs” drifting past me, and then—shit. My knees buckle, my body sways, and I find myself tipping face first off the dock and toward the water.
I close my eyes and brace for impact, but I feel something snatch at my shirt. It hooks tight around my neck, which is obviously uncomfortable, but I’ll take it if it means not plunging into the water. I’m fairly certain I still remember how to swim… maybe… probably…
“I’ve got you,” Ellis says, wrapping a hand around my waist and uprighting me on the dock. I look down at his entirely stable balance with serious envy. “Is there anything you can’t do?” I mutter, and he chuckles lightly.
“I can’t eat vegetables,” he suggests, and my lips pull up involuntarily.
“And that’s a bad thing?” We both laugh, but the joke’s on me. I would kill to be able to eat something green.
We stand back and watch as the boat gets tethered to the dock and then a wide plank is slid across to bridge the gap. Yeah, that would’ve made it easier to walk over here.
I’m a little impressed with everything they’ve done to manage the rough water. They’ve built a rough stone wall in the water, creating a small harbor, and the waves crash against it, redirecting most of their force before they reach the dock. The dock itself seems a marvel, since it’s been battered by the sun and ocean’s waves for decades. It’s obviously been patched up regularly, newer boards and bolts interspersed between the faded and rusted majority. Between the boat and the rough-hewn dock are a row of lashed tires, and there’s a squeak of rubber each time the boat rubs against it. It’s not fancy, but it works.
Uki steps across the plank like a mountain goat, light-footed and graceful. “Welcome to your new home,” she says, grinning widely. Her teeth are startlingly white against her amber skin, and I have to admit I’m a little unarmed by her relaxed gait as she leads the way toward the fort.
The rest of the crew disembarks the boat, some with more wobbly legs than others. Bob looks queasy, but he also seems entirely excited. It’s a strange combination of expressions on his face. Kenzo’s looking a little green around the gills, and he swipes an arm across his face to smear the beads of sweat.
“You okay?” I ask, and he nods.
“Yeah. Sure.” He looks over his shoulder, back in the direction we came from. His eyes can’t see the distant mainland, but he knows it’s there, and I would put good money on the fact that he’s wondering about making a return trip. Will we be going back? His guess is as good as mine, but I have a feeling deep in my chest that I’m not finished over there just yet.
“After you,” Ellis says, holding his hand out to guide me toward the fort ahead of him. I think it’s more so he can watch my back than for chivalry, but whatever the reason, I’m grateful. Not having to worry about who’s behind me means that I can put my full attention on what’s ahead.
Now that I’m able to properly examine what I had at first mistaken for a castle, I can see the differences. Parts of the structure are no doubt hundreds of years old, the rock rough and pitted from weather and salt spray, but there have been many modern additions… like this giant solid metal door ahead of us. I’m not sure if it makes me feel safe, or more like a prisoner.
“You said this place was a fort, but are you sure it wasn’t a prison?” Remote island prisons
were a thing once, right? The surrounding ocean acted as an extra level of security to keep the prisoners from trying to escape.
Uki’s eyes glint in the moonlight when she looks over her shoulder at me, awarding me with a chuckle. “I know it doesn’t look terribly inviting, but to be fair, we don’t really want people to come knocking on our door. It’s not like we get many visitors. But the walls, the door, it’s all about security, nothing more.” She drops back a bit and falls into step beside me.
“Mmhmm,” I mutter. “Security. Are those canons?”
Now her chuckle becomes an all-out laugh. “You do have great eyesight,” she grudgingly admits, shaking her head. “Yes, there are canons along the top of the wall, but they aren’t functional. They came with the place. Once upon a time, this was a museum of sorts. When everything fell apart, we found that it suited our needs with minimal alteration.”
“Well, they do add some ambiance.”
“That they do.”
“What needs did you have, exactly?” I’m fishing for information, and she knows it. Her thin lips pull up at the corners, but it’s a tight smile, not friendly.
She gives a slow sigh, likely debating how much she can say without spilling all their trade secrets. “This place wasn’t always an island, you know?” she finally says. “It was a peninsula, but as the climate changed, the ocean became a beast all its own. The waves are so violent that they’re eating away at the land, eroding the entire coastline. We likely won’t be able to stay here for much longer, before even our walls are brought down.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. She hasn’t answered my question, but I feel like she’s giving me a glimpse. “So… the ocean keeps you safe. Much like Alcatraz where the water kept people in, the ocean here keeps unwanted visitors out.”
“Yes,” she says, looking impressed. “You remember Alcatraz.”
The Shade Chronicles | Book 2 | Predator Page 17