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“Mommy, that blue robot is back.” Adam stood at her shoulder, eating a protein bar as Miranda crouched at the entrance of the cave watching Fanian. “They fixed him like you said they would.”
They’d been hiding in the cave for the past two days, one day longer than she should’ve stayed, but after Esme hadn’t responded during last night’s roll call, Miranda had been too scared to move her family. They weren’t safe here, she’d seen plenty of hunters in passing, but they hadn’t seemed to notice the entrance to the cave.
She’d pressed her luck in staying. She knew that, but the other option was packing up her kids and trying to find another hiding spot as good as this one. The thought of being out there in the open, looking over shoulders, having hunters lurking behind every tree, gave her the hives.
Like seriously. Stress hives were splattered across her chest and arms. This wasn’t a good time to have itchy bumps on her body, with no treatment, and she couldn’t scratch them. Who knew what alien flora had attached itself to her jagged nails. The last thing she needed was to invite unknown bacteria into her body.
“Do you think it’ll go away like the others did?”
Miranda didn’t wince when Adam referred to Fanian as “it.” Since yesterday, she’d been correcting him when he’d first referred to the hunters who unknowingly passed them as “her” or “him.” She didn’t want Adam to associate the aliens as sentient lifeforms. She needed him to believe they were mindless robots, all part of their adventure. Most of all, she didn’t want him to know she was a killer.
Melinda hardened herself against that thought. She had to do what was needed to protect them, and she would continue to do it. Each time she reminded herself of that, the guilt that gnawed at her lessened, and she lost some of the unsettled feelings that came along with it.
“I’m not sure. This is the third time it’s been this way this morning.”
Adam wasn’t surprised Fanian was back and walking around—her lie helped with that, but she sure as heck was. Spilling Fanian’s brains all over the ground should’ve sent him to alien heaven or hell. But, nope, here he was in the flesh. Head put back together.
“Maybe it can smell us? No. Robots can’t smell.” Adam munched on his bar without a care in the world. “It can’t be following our tracks. We don’t have any, ’cause we were never over there.”
Adam was smart beyond his short years. When other kids were happy to play hours on video games or watching cartoons, he enjoyed nature programs and playing with his toy animals. He knew a hell of a lot more than she did about animals and tracking.
“Why don’t you call for more food?”
“We have so much. Why do we need more?”
“Just in case.” Just in case whoever was supplying the food decided to stop being generous with it.
Adam’s feet splashed as he trotted to where Lexi was propped against one of the walls on a dry ledge, happily drinking her bottle. Miranda cringed. They didn’t need Fanian to hear him.
Fanian didn’t turn her way, though. He continued studying the sparse trees that lined the lake.
Plop. Plop. Adam activated his and Lexi’s food pods. More food. But that wasn’t on her mind. She wondered how Fanian had found them—or close to finding them, and how the hell was he was still alive?
Fanian walked toward the tree line. Just when she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, Fanian stopped mid-stride and paused. Miranda held her breath. Seconds ticked by as he stared off into the distance. Slowly and soundlessly, she maneuvered to the opposite side of the cave entrance to see what he looked at. Nothing.
“Keep walking. Move along. Nothing to see here,” she muttered under her breath.
Fanian took another step toward the trees.
“There you go.”
He stopped again and angled his head in her direction.
She ducked away, pressing her back against the wall. Adam was sitting next to Lexi, toward the back far left of the cave. From where Fanian was, he wouldn’t be able to see them.
Maybe he didn’t see me either.
She peeked around the corner. Fanian was making his way toward the cave.
She’d spoken too soon.
Calling for another pod was definitely a possibility. While she didn’t have any left, Lexi and Adam still had theirs. But then what? He would come looking for them again and again until they were out of pods and couldn’t run away. Her stomach twisted and her heart raced. He hunted them.
Literally, the name of this game. The Hunt.
It was time for them to leave anyway, but first, she had to kill this guy. For real this time.
“Mishka,” Fanian called when he was close enough. “I’m not upset that you hurt me. I would’ve done the same if I were in your circumstance.”
That voice. It made her want to go to him and listen to him talk all day long.
She growled, shaking the false sense of calmness from her head. Not this time, motherfucker. “Shut up talking to me!”
Lexi whimpered at her tone.
“Stop yelling,” Adam whispered. “You’re scaring Lexi.”
And by the sound of his voice, she scared him too. Miranda forced the corners of her mouth upward. “Just part of the adventure, honey. The robot Fanian found us again. I’m just trying to make it go away. Are you ready to go home?”
Adam’s eyebrows pinched together. “No. This is the best adventure ever.”
“Neither am I. Not until we win.”
Adam lifted his chin. “Okay, make him go away.”
“It, baby. Remember, that the robot is an it.”
“Mishka,” Fanian’s voice drew closer.
Miranda turned to find Fanian just outside the cave, wading in the waist-deep water. He looked the same as she’d seen him last time, not a wound or even a scar in sight.
His dark eyes held her gaze. “Don’t be alarmed. Calm down. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Yeah, right. You’re not going to hurt me like I didn’t hurt you.”
He narrowed his eyes on her. “But you did hurt me.”
Miranda rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. “Sarcasm.”
He smiled, and she caught her breath. If she thought his voice made her feel good, his smile was positively breathtaking. He was beautiful in a weird kind of way.
“Ah, I remember.”
“You got what you deserved. I don’t want to go to that Az’ud guy,” she seethed.
He lifted his shoulders. “It’s going to happen eventually. You might as well stop fighting it.”
Any woo-woo feelings she had for him were gone and replaced with rage. She’d never been one to advocate for guns, but she wished she had one now. One-shot. Right between the eyes. “I won’t let you take us.”
“You don’t have a choice. I’ll come up there so we can talk about it more.”
She had the feeling that she would’ve agreed if she wasn’t so mad. Anger overrode whatever calmness his voice pumped around her. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Miranda. Why are you trying so hard to resist me? Don’t you want to be friends?” He smirked, and she wanted to knock it off his face.
She’d never been a violent person before, but she really wanted to kill him. “No.”
He tilted his diamond-shaped head to the side. “What’s to stop me from coming up there anyway?”
“You could, but you would find this cave empty.”
“I’ve guessed you don’t have another pod. If you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He snapped long fingers together. “Is there another entrance? A way for you to escape?” He chuckled. “You could run, and I would chase you down. I like chasing my prey.”
His eyes gleamed when he spoke the last sentence. She could never outrun him. There was no avoiding this. She had to kill him. That thought was firmly in her head. No emotion was behind it. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”
He used his long, blue fingers to count off. “You used one pod to leave your group. Otherwise, there’s no way you would’ve gotten as far as you had. I tracked you to the far east end of the arena, but you were already gone when I got there. Your trail went cold. That was the second pod. The third pod was used after you attacked me.”
He wiggled three fingers.
This fucking guy. “It’s nice to see that you can count so high. But can you add?”
The smirk slid from his face. “Don’t tell me the kids have pods too.”
“Noooo, why would I ever tell you something like that and ruin your day?”
He eyed her cautiously. “Is that sarcasm again?”
“Bingo.” At his apparent confusion, she leaned a shoulder against the frame of the cave. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Our pods are synched. So if I tell Adam to push his transportation icon, we all drop into a pod, no matter how far apart we are, and we’ll meet up at the next destination. Whoever brought us here is an asshole, but at least they wanted us to stay together as a family.”
“That’s not possible,” he said in disbelief.
She showed him her pearly whites. “Oh, but it is.”
“Fryx!”
“What does that mean? My translator didn’t pick that word up.”
He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and let out a deep breath simultaneously. “It’s a vulgar word. It shouldn’t be used around children.”
“Oh, so you’re suddenly concerned about my children?”
“Only about the bonus they might fetch me.”
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She straightened from her relaxed pose and smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Do something to me, and my smart little boy who’s watching my back will initiate his pod, then we all go bye-bye.” She was obviously lying, but by the stunned look on his face, Fanian believed her.
“Come down.” He held up both his hands. “I won’t try to take you.”
“Why would I come down there?”
“To negotiate. You can’t run from me forever. You’ll eventually run out of pods. I have a buyer who is very interested in you. If you give me your demands for leaving willingly, I could get him to agree to them. He wants you. He might be reasonable.”
She humphed. He’d stated her worst fears, but leaving with him wasn’t an option. She had to win.
“You’ll have a nice place to live and safety for your children and honestly anything else you want. I can have a contract made up.”
“I don’t have to go down there to talk about this. I can hear you fine from right here.”
He picked at his nails. “Fine by me. I just thought you wouldn’t want your very smart child to hear any of this. Let’s start the negotiations for the children. Az’ud would want his own. Yours are extra. If I were you, I would add in the contract how he is to treat them, their schooling, and add that he’s forbidden to re-sell them. You should make him believe that the children are a bonus. Otherwise, you will lose them and never have access to them again.”
He’d stated her worst fears. She had to win, leaving with him wasn’t an option. “Wait. Stop.”
She glanced at Adam over her shoulder. He held Lexi protectively to him and watched her with wide eyes. Miranda didn’t want her son to hear any talk about being sold. Fanian was right on that point. If they were going to make it home, they had to get rid of this guy once and for all.
She chose to believe Xrez over Fanian. If she survived this, they could go home. Xrez seemed to be helping them. Fanian clearly was not.
“Give me one second.” She ran to Adam and Lexi. “You and Lexi stay here. If, for some reason, I don’t come back right away, call Ben after the evening alarm sounds, okay?”
Adam tilted his head to the side. “Why wouldn’t you come back?”
“I will.” After she killed Fanian. “I have to convince this robot to leave, and if it doesn’t, I may have to lead it away from you both.”
She rummaged through the diaper bag, looking for the dental floss. Got it. She’d seen something on one of those prison movies that had given her an idea. She just hoped it worked.
She hugged and kissed them both, refusing to believe this might be the last time she saw either of them. She removed worrisome thoughts from her head and went back to the lip of the cave, where she crouched and dropped into the water below.
She waded on shaking knees to where Fanian stood grinning smugly. Heart hammered in her chest the entire time. If this plan didn’t work, she’d put her kids in danger unnecessarily.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She repeated to herself as she made her way toward him. I should’ve just called for a pod and ran away.
Too late now. She stopped in front of him. “Let’s negotiate.”
Fanian considered her closely. “Why would I do that?”
She frowned. “Y-you said...”
Before she could blink, he had a hard grip on her wrist, covering her comlink. “You really didn’t think that I believed that story about all your pods being synced, did you? Call for your children to come down here. Now.”
She brought up her other hand. The one she’d hoped he would ignore. She’d been waving her comlink at him as she walked, hoping to distract him. It had worked. Pressing the taser against his skin, she squeezed her hand around the handle. The taser buzzed, sending shock waves through him.
She pushed the prongs deeper onto his exposed skin and stared into his black eyes. “No, I didn’t.”
Every muscle and tendon on his face bulged under his tight skin. “Daughter of a geelick whore,” he said through clenched teeth. “Not again.”
She kneed him where she hoped his penis was, and he fell to his knees with an oomph. She kept the taser pressed against him until he passed out and fell face-first into the water. A satisfied chuckle erupted from her throat. Now she had to make sure he was really dead.
She took the dental floss from her pocket and pulled off enough to fit around his neck and to wrap around her hands. Then she sawed. It was a good thing he was face down. She didn’t exactly want to see his face as she was separating it from his neck. Even after the blue water turned green, she kept going. As barbaric as this was, it was a necessary evil.
It wasn’t a simple task, nor was it fast. By the time she was half-way through, her arms were like jelly.
“Mommy,” Adam called. “Lexi made a poo, and it’s stinky.”
She glanced over her shoulder to see him standing at the entrance of the cave. “I’ll be there in a minute, baby.”
“But it’s so stinky. I’m going to throw-up.”
She glanced down at Fanian. He was really dead this time. There was no coming back from this. His head hung from his neck. She dropped him in the water, where he floated, arms out.
Yup. Dead.
She trotted back to the cave, stopping to clean the blood from her hands. Her jeans were stained with it. There was no way around that. When she was sure she wouldn’t scare her kids, she climbed the rocks and entered the cave.
Adam handed her Lexi and stuck out his tongue, grimacing. “Ugh. Gross.”
“Now, who needs a stinky diaper changed?” she asked Lexi.
The ground opened, and they screamed as they dropped into the waiting pod she hadn’t called.