"You will not move. You will not breathe. And most especially, you will please to not try anything stupid and heroic. You boy, yes the mutant, step into the very middle of the clearing. I can't have you doing anything like a rescue attempt. Miss Burnhart and Mr. Cale will step back into the doorway and accompany the nice armed gentlemen up the stairs and into the accommodation which I have kindly provided for them."
Rain pelts my slick bare arms, plastering my overlong hair to the nape of my neck, and running in rivulets down my forehead.
I stare at the old man with growing antipathy, knowing that I need to act before Elizabeth and the moron are dragged back up to their cells. Rescuing them twice is not in the books. Thankfully I didn't come here totally unprepared. The handy dandy tracking device that we'd borrowed from Lela wasn't the only trick I had up my sleeve, we'd also liberated from her personal stash a cute little ping pong ball size glob of glass. In a movement so fast that no one but a fellow transgenic would see I palm the little globe and then fling it with my not inconsiderable strength into the center of the ring of bad guys.
Lightening strikes one of the frothing palms outside cracking a branch and sending it crashing to the sands of the shoal.
Have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz? The Wicked Witch of the West disappears in puffs of green smoke. Appropriately enough, the globe I stole from Lela does the same trick. Time stands still for a few moments as the globe explodes and the smoke spreads out. My transgenic sight is no help in the thick bank of colored fog but my hearing is capable of coordinating all of the sounds around me into a mental map of the compound. Even kicking in immediately, my ears have no chance to pick up the first shot as I dash towards the door. The fickle lady luck is with me for once and the shot lands just short of hitting my foot. A spray of bullets lies between me and Elizabeth and Logan. There's only one thing to do at this moment and the animal instinct of it bothers me. Leaping straight up in the air I land in a crouch on a tree branch over my head and swing like Tarzan into the forest.
I shudder involuntarily and duck back inside the rough hewed hut. Brutal winds threaten to tear the flimsy roof off the small shack which has been my pitiful shelter for most of the night.
It all makes a terrible kind of sense. The blond girl standing off to one side of the old man had looked familiar, she had in fact looked like a ghost. Biggs, Adain, and Naia, 487 and 466. The five members of the team that I brought with me to Cano Pelour the first time I'd come here. I am sure with the certainty of a perfect memory that the blond girl is 487, but oddest of all she looks exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her. Okay the second to last time I saw her maybe, before the death and mutilation.
The selfish half of my brain, the one which I'd allowed to govern me in those first few months after I'd been freed from Manticore, wished desperately that she was here with me right now. I crave the comfort of her touch, it's been a long while since I have gone without it.
It all makes sense. The symbol carved ritualistically on all of the victim's chests had looked so familiar and now I could smack myself for not thinking of it sooner. It is a DNA double helix overlaid on the oroboros, the snake eating its own tail as a sign of eternal life. The gang has been kidnapping not only the influential and wealthy, but also some ten years ago a group of precious genetically engineered children. Elizabeth had mentioned to me seeing several people with lesions and birth defects, illnesses like the ones that affected lots of Manticore's finest in our earlier years before the gaps in our DNA were fixed.
On the other hand, the rational portion of my brain is happy that she's as far away as she can get from this godforsaken hell hole. My enhanced vision catches a dimmer flash of light outside. It can't be lightening again, it's too low to the ground and not nearly bright enough.
Kidnapping Elizabeth has always seemed like a pointless move to me. There are plenty of rich brats out there whose parents don't actually care for them, no need to capture the one who was sure to have a cavalcade of revved up super fighters sent out to look for her. No need to take her unless she wasn't the real target, no need to take her unless the real target is the said super fighters coming to her rescue. Pardidos needs our DNA to perfect his own cloning process. Every maneuver from the death of 487 and 466 to Elizabeth Burnhart's kidnapping has been strategically planned to steal Manticore's technology.
A second flash cuts through the driving rain, the long focused beam of a high-powered flashlight.
Oh shit, now I'm not only running from Pardido's men, but a bunch of wannabe Manticore soldiers with every genetic advantage which might possibly save my skin. And now it's starting to rain.
It's over. They've found me, and I know that despite the hurricane raging outside, I can't hide indefinitely. Breathing deeply I plunge into the driving rains outside.