The Shade Chronicles | Book 2 | Predator

by Bradley, T. K.

  Deb is waiting for an answer, and I have to give her something, so I say, “Ellis is… a mutation.” There. That’s vague enough, right? Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sydney’s fists clench by her sides.

  On the other side of me, Howell’s fingers twitch. “Maybe we could come to some sort of agreement,” he says slyly. A cold sweat prickles at my forehead. What is he playing at?

  “What kind of agreement?” Deb asks cautiously. She seems to be the sort of woman who is curious about everything, but mostly in what way things will benefit her directly.

  “Maybe Kenzo here continues his research—”

  “No!” I interrupt. “I’m done. Unless it’s working on the cure, I won’t…” I taper off under Howell’s glare.

  Howell’s voice gets low and dangerous. “Don’t make me remind you that you are still a member of the government military, and I am your superior. You will do as I tell you or suffer the consequences. Punishment will be swift and severe.”

  I don’t doubt him for a second, and I can feel myself shutting down.

  I can feel everyone in the room watching me, but I refuse to meet their gazes. I imagine Deb would find me exactly as broken as she likes her underlings to be, but a strong woman like Uki might look on me with pity, and that’s not something I feel the need to subject myself to. It’s like rubbing salt in the wound.

  When Howell deems me adequately docile, he says to Deb, “I want the mutation in Major Hill’s blood. You don’t need to know the details of it.”

  The scarred woman looks even harder as she crosses her thick arms over her chest, scrutinizing Howell. “Considering the military’s history and your obvious interest, should I assume it’s to be used as a weapon?”

  Howell doesn’t bother denying it, instead giving a shrug that practically screams agreement.

  “We have no use for weapons anymore,” Deb says simply, and I grudgingly think she has a point. “The only enemies we have are the sun and the Virals themselves; I don’t see the point in creating more of them, no matter what kind of benefits you think they have.”

  “What if that benefit is protection against the sun?” Howell says, practically gloating.

  This makes Deb stiffen, as do Uki and Sydney. If Howell’s goal was to get their attention, mission accomplished. “He can walk in the sun?”

  “I’m speaking theoretically, of course.”

  “Of course…” Deb’s sigh fills the tense silence, the only other sound the gentle hum of the refrigerator. “I will allow Dr. Kimura to continue his research—” She holds her hand up, one finger raised, cutting off Howell’s triumph. “Ah, ah, there is a stipulation. He may continue with one goal, and one goal only. He must be working toward isolating the solar resistance from his blood.”

  “But—” Howell begins, but she snarls at him.

  “Consider for a moment that the food source for Virals is limited… we cannot afford to allow more of those abominations to be created. The original goal of the virus was to protect us from the sun. There were some… unfortunate side effects, but we can all agree that the intention was sound.” Deb turns to me, her stare hard. “Do you agree? Work toward a cure for the current virus and work toward improving the mutation?”

  I don’t want to agree with her, but I find myself nodding. If we can get ourselves back to where we were supposed to be, we can work toward a possible future for us all. I chance a look over at Howell, but he seems less than thrilled. He’s used to being in charge, but this isn’t his lab. It doesn’t belong to the government or the military. He may have power over me, but that’s where his reign ends.

  Deb’s stare is hard and icy, and it’s obvious she won’t take me on my word. She will no doubt keep a close watch over us all. “Then what do you say we get started on those samples? I must admit, I’m curious to see what Major Hill’s blood shows.” She looks down at her watch and her lips pull tight across her teeth in a feral grin. “Should be any time now…” And suddenly, I find myself connecting the dots. Uki said we would have blood samples… and now Deb refers to one from Ellis…

  As if in answer, a muffled scream can be heard from somewhere in the distance. Deb’s grin widens, but Sydney goes stiff at her side. “No,” she gasps, turning her eyes to her mother. “The blood I gave them…”

  “Yes,” Deb says without looking at her; she keeps her eyes trained on me as she adds, “Thank you so much for delivering dinner to the Virals, Sydney. It was most helpful in sedating them so we could retrieve our samples without risk.”

  “How dare you?” she snaps and spins back toward the door as though she’s about to storm away, but Deb grabs her wrist. Sydney gives a tug on her arm, trying to free herself. “I didn’t agree to do that!”

  “You did what I told you to do. There’s no point is rushing to their rescue. It’s too late. If you interrupt, it’ll just prolong their pain.”

  There are angry tears in Sydney’s eyes, her pale skin splotching with rage. “You’re really one to talk about earning trust,” she snaps.

  “A leader does what one must. I think General Howell would agree. Wouldn’t you?” she asks him.

  Howell gives her a smile, more fitting of fangs. “No hard feelings. I would’ve drugged them myself if I’d known you had a supply of sedatives.”

  My breath shudders past my lips. I look back and forth between these two cruel leaders, and when I share a glance with Sydney, a deeper understanding passes between us. We are both working alongside monsters, and I’m not talking about the ones currently locked in the basement. My hands may be tied right now, but there will come a time when the tables turn.

  He does not own me.

  20

  Lori

  “Lori? Are you there?” Ellis’s whisper cuts through the haze, and I have to swim through the brain fog to surface, taking a deep gasping breath as though I’d been drowning.

  “Where else would I be?” I choke out. My throat is raw from screaming, and my voice is little more than a croak.

  Ellis gives a low throaty chuckle. “Knowing you? You could’ve torn your way out of there while I was still unconscious.” Regardless of his words, he knows I wouldn’t abandon him here. Besides, he could probably hear my heart beating.

  I take stock of myself and my surroundings. I wiggle my toes, my fingers, rock my head a little side to side. The soil beneath me is no longer waterlogged, and it makes me wonder if the tide has pulled out. How many minutes, hours, days have I lost this time?

  I slide my tongue over my lips, their texture like a shedding snake’s, dry and peeling. Oh god, do I molt my skin? Ick. But the more I come to my senses, the more aware I am of what else is going on in my body—mainly that I’m starving. Perhaps literally. There’s a yawning pit opening up inside myself, and now that I’ve noticed it, it’s all I can see.

  “Ellis?” I call, reaching out for help against the rising panic, but it’s my mom who answers me.

  “You’re okay, hun. We’ll all be okay.” It sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of this fact as much as soothe me.

  The problem is… we may be okay physically, not really the worse for wear after they took their blood samples, but the hungrier we get, the more at risk the humans are. I can already feel a hollow scratching at my insides, like the monster I keep caged is threatening to claw its way out of me, and to hell with anyone who gets in its way. If I get too hungry…

  I won’t be in control of my actions.

  I think back to when I first became a Ripper. I tore through half a dozen people like they were paper dolls. I’ve done my best to avoid thinking about what happened that day, but it’s all coming into focus. I close my eyes against the blood rage painting my memories. The deeper I descend into my hunger, the closer to the surface the memories come.

  “Mom?” My voice echoes around my cell, too loud in the dark.

  “Yes…” she whispers on a sob, and I feel like she can see what I see, like they all can, Kelly, Trey, Ellis… they can all
feel it.

  “I killed them. I killed—” I can’t say his name. I can’t admit what I did. My own brother—he trusted me, and I killed him. And if I walk down this road, there’s no coming back from it.

  “You weren’t responsible for that,” Mom begins, but Kelly cuts her off.

  “Bullshit,” she snaps from her cell at the far end, but her voice is loud enough that I have no trouble hearing her. “Of course she’s fucking responsible. Just like I’m responsible for every life I took and for every life I’m about to take.”

  Kelly’s voice quivers, and I know she’s just barely hanging on by a thread. I can feel the tension coming from her like a wire pulled tight, vibrating with potential. It’s like a note hanging in the air. Whatever they drugged us with, it’s like our bodies have expended all our energy trying to bring us back from the depths, and that means we’re all running on empty.

  “Don’t you dare,” Trey seethes. He’s under the same strain, but he’s gritting his teeth to keep from lashing out. “If one of us breaks, we’ll all follow suit. We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”

  As cheesy as the cliché sounds, he’s not wrong. There’s a link between us that not even the walls can block. I can feel their emotions as surely as though they were here in the room with me, their hands dancing against my skin. Except their touch isn’t a nice gentle brush of fingers but an outright grip around my neck, choking the life out of me. Yes, that is exactly right. I’m choking.

  Or rather, I’m not breathing, effectively choking myself. I take a deep gasping breath. “I can’t—”

  “You can!” Trey barks. “You listen to me, and you listen good. You’re hungry, sure, but I promise that your body can last a long time without food. The good Dr. Kimura experimented with this, didn’t he, Hill?”

  Ellis is too quiet through all of this. His silence is just as palpable as the others’ outbursts. “Ellis?” I whisper beneath Trey’s ranting, Mom’s sobbing, and Kelly’s gnashing teeth.

  He huffs out something almost like a laugh, but it’s not because any of this is funny. Unless you like dark humor, I guess. Is this karma coming back to bite us on the ass? Payback for killing my own brother?

  Breathe in, breathe out…

  I lean forward and press my forehead into the dirt floor. Just as surely as I can feel the hard ground beneath me, I can sense the presence of the sun rising higher overhead. The walls radiate heat, even underground as we are, and I find myself missing the cool mud. Outside, the waves are pounding at the island’s shores, slowly but surely eroding them away. Will I still be here, locked in this cell, when the ocean finally comes to claim my body?

  I send all of my focus onto the sound of the waves, the beating of my heart, the breath in my lungs. Anything but the never-ending thirst.

  Ellis gasps, just a tiny puff of air. And then I hear it. Footsteps. Accompanying them are the squeaking of wheels, and the scent… of blood.

  I clamp a hand down on the hunger. They’re coming to feed us. We’ll be fine. Certainly no need to tear this door from its hinges and sate myself on blood straight from the source.

  I recognize the scent of the woman who steps into the dungeon. She reeks of delicate femininity… and also regret. She bypasses the first two cells and stops in front of Ellis’s door. She opens the small hatch and whispers through the door. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know the blood was drugged.”

  Ellis doesn’t say anything in reply, but the mere fact that I can’t hear him tearing into the woman’s flesh is a good sign. He’s holding it together.

  “I… I brought food. If you think you can trust me again?” She sniffles as though crying. “My mom didn’t mean anything by it. She’s just not good at trusting people…”

  “You mean, she doesn’t trust monsters,” Ellis says carefully.

  “Well, yes, but she doesn’t trust General Howell or Dr. Kimura either, if that’s any consolation.” I hear the slide of her arm across her runny nose. “Do you… believe me?”

  There’s a long pause as Ellis is no doubt using those piercing black eyes to analyse her breath, her heartrate. He finally answers with a simple, “Yes.”

  Sydney blows out a breath that smells of relief, and my keen senses can even pick up traces of her last meal—potatoes, spinach, and fish. Is it weird that I’m jealous, even though I can’t eat any of those foods anymore?

  “Honestly, I don’t even know why it matters,” she begins to babble, likely to fill in the silence left by Ellis. “It’s not like we’re friends… right? So, why am I so worried about what you think of me?” The smell of raw meat and blood gets stronger; she must have uncovered whatever tray she has. “Here. Take it.”

  My mouth is watering, and I mentally urge Ellis to hurry up and take the damn meat, so she’ll move on to feeding the rest of us. As it is, we’re all toeing a fine line here.

  “Feed the others first,” Ellis says in a low voice, teetering on the edge of steady. “Best to get the closest cell first.”

  “I don’t like to call them cells,” she says slowly, but I can hear her comply with his directives, moving back down to Kelly’s cell. She slides open the hatch and lets out a squeak. I have no doubt that Kelly is right there, face pressed up to the door, waiting for her meal with the barest of restraint.

  “Give me the damn food,” Kelly growls—like, legit growls. Her voice is barely recognizable anymore, more beast than human.

  “Here! Take it!” Sydney squeals, and I hear the slap of wet meat exchanging hands. The slurping and moist tearing makes my stomach clench, and I hate to admit that it’s primarily hunger, not disgust. God, I hate myself so much right now.

  I hold on to that hatred with both hands, because it’s my humanity making itself known. It would be so easy—too easy—to let it all go. To throw in the towel and embrace my lower instincts… but if I do that, there would be no coming back from it. There would be no chance of saving me.

  Trey gets fed next, and the sounds of his eating are on par with Kelly’s. My mom at least says, “Thank you,” in a soft voice, before tearing into her meal.

  And then it’s my turn. My teeth ache in my gums, as though they’re preparing for the meager feast. Sydney opens the hatch in my door and meets my eyes for just a moment. I appreciate the gesture more than she’ll ever know. Not only does she see me as a person—on some level, anyway—but right now I will embrace my grotesque reflection staring back at me, a reminder of everything I hate about myself, everything I need to avoid becoming.

  It takes all of my restraint to raise up to my feet with any kind of decorum. I think back to my parents teaching me table manners as a child. Don’t slurp your milk, use your knife and fork, say please and thank you.

  Sydney seems to trust that I won’t rush at the door and reach through the bars, so she approaches and holds out a bowl of raw meat and a tin cup of blood. “I’m sorry,” she says, and I feel like she’s directing it to all of us. “You deserve better.”

  She looks down now, ashamed, but I get the sense that this is all out of her hands. She’s just doing what she’s been told.

  That’s something I can relate to.

  The similarities between this young girl and myself—her so fresh-faced and pure, myself a disfigured monster—it helps bring me back to a semblance of reality. I will never again be her, never be able to turn back the clocks and somehow make different choices to come out on top, but at least I can do everything I can to ensure she never travels this path.

  I close up my throat and pinch my lips shut. I hold my breath. And I step forward to accept the food from her. She looks into my eyes again, and this time I see a kind of gratitude. I think about the other women in my dorm, the women who could’ve been my friends under different circumstances… and I find my lips pulling up into what could almost be described as a smile. Sydney and I would’ve been friends, I just know it.

  As painful and fake as my smile feels, it’s enough to send Sydney into a full-blown grin. I take a fu
ll step back from her before allowing myself to breathe once again. I don’t trust myself not to hurt her, not with the state I’m in.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I know I haven’t done anything to earn your trust, but I’m willing to work on it. I’ll talk to the others, see if I can’t get them to agree to some rule-bending.”

  “No,” I choke out. “I think this is for the best… for all of us.” My eyes dart down to the food of their own volition. My mouth floods with saliva, the ache so tight that it hurts, and I must wince from the pain because she gives a sharp nod.

  “I’ll leave you to your lunch then.” She closes the hatch slowly, almost reluctantly. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of her.

  As soon as the hatch is closed, I dive into my meal face first. I guzzle the blood down first, knowing it’ll take the edge off the hunger faster than anything. The copper tang on my tongue is delicious—I can tell straight away that it’s from some kind of herbivore this time; I can almost taste the grass it ate, and I vaguely wonder what kind of animals they have here as a supply for the blood. I’ll have more time to think about it later. I’ll just add that to the ever-growing list of questions.

  “Are you ready now?” Sydney asks Ellis.

  “Yes. Thank you,” he says softly. His voice is smooth, without the hard edge I’ve heard him use with the other soldiers. It’s almost as if he’s being extra careful with Sydney, extra kind.

  I listen to them, not speaking, just being in each other’s presence for a moment. I don’t know how Ellis is able to restrain himself from digging into his meal just then and there, how he’s able to leash his hunger. Maybe it has to do with his variant; it’s not the first time I’ve wondered about his herculean restraint. I wish there were a way he could share his variant with me. I would much rather be infected with his strain than mine.