Inhuman (7 page)

She stopped midstride. “Why’s Bangor muzzled?” she asked sharply. “Oh no, is he infected?”

“Shhh,” the two guards hissed in unison.

A head popped out of a far window. “Someone got bit?”

That was all it took. Within a minute the news had spread and guards rolled in from all directions to circle the men hauling Bangor, bombarding them with questions. Luckily none charged down the alley I was hunkered in.

As the glum little parade headed down a walking path, I slumped back against the building. I couldn’t follow them to the infirmary — not with a crowd of anxious guards on their heels. I’d have to hang back and —

“I told you to wait for me,” said an irritated voice.

I looked over to see Cruz, the dark-haired guard from the hill, striding toward me. I got to my feet. Could I outrun him? Not a chance. As tall as he was, there was nothing awkward about him: He’d bootcamped his body into fighting condition. Plus, there was the dart gun issue…. I decided to stay put and hope that he didn’t know every guard on Arsenal Island.

He closed the distance between us, stopping less than a foot away — closer than I was comfortable with for several reasons, starting with his size and ending with his not-messing-around-here expression. He held out my father’s messenger bag. “Yours?”

I might as well claim it. He already knew that I’d been on the riverbank. “Thanks.” I reached for it, but he didn’t let go of the strap.

“The pilot should have walked you in from the landing pad,” he said reprovingly. “Make sure to tell Captain Hyrax so that it doesn’t happen again.”

Not knowing what to say, I nodded stiffly.

“Relax,” he said, releasing my bag. “I’m not going to arrest you. What the captain calls R&R is his business, but you can’t go wandering around camp. Can you find your way to the officers’ quarters?”

“Uh …” I’d happily jump onboard whatever he had assumed was my reason for being here, if only I could figure out what it was.

“Fine, come on.” He gestured me forward, looking less than pleased. “I’ll take you to him.” When I didn’t budge, he frowned. “If someone sees you on base and reports it, Captain Hyrax will lose his post. That won’t break my heart, but you’ll be down a client.”

I gasped. “You think I’m a …” I fumbled past my shock and offense to find the word. “An escort.”

“My mistake,” he said dryly. “Since obviously you’re a …” He lifted a hand, at a loss.

“Guard,” I said, and then added, “I’m off duty.”

His brows rose. Clearly he’d need convincing, but I didn’t have time to answer questions. Every second I stood here was wasting time that my father might need on the back end. “Look, I was just —”

A screech cut through the night, a sound like nothing I’d ever heard. I spun, looking for the source. That screech — it had sounded almost human. Almost.

“Okay,” Cruz said. “One, no guard, male or female, has hair past their ears.”

Before I could gather my wits to come up with a reply, another tortured scream straightened out my nerve endings.

“And two, we’re way past reacting to that.”

How could anyone get past reacting to
that
?

His expression hardened. “Now, why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing here, Miss?”

Guardsman Cruz had shifted into stone-cold line guard mode — every inch of him, every synapse. Probably something the patrol hammered into the guards during training: how to seem simultaneously decent and reasonable yet capable of sudden violence. It was chilling. Even if my nerves weren’t stretched to snapping point, which they were, I wasn’t going to try spinning another lie. Not only did I not have the practice, I’d be worse under duress. And with his steely gaze pinned on me, Guardsman Cruz was laying on some serious duress.

“I can’t tell you,” I said, choking out the words.

A muscle ticked along his jaw as he studied me. “What’s your name,” he said finally. Grammatically, it was a question, but it sure didn’t sound like one.

“Lane.”

“Just Lane?”

“Delaney Park.” Not a lie, though I was hoping that he’d think Park was my last name.

“You crossed the quarantine line, Lane. Maybe you noticed it — that three-thousand-mile-long wall back there. Your being here is a capital offense and I am two seconds from arresting you, which is exactly how long you have to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Okay, all right. I’m looking for Ian McEvoy.”

Shock leapt into Cruz’s expression. Clearly he recognized the name. “I was hoping Dr. Solis could tell me where he is,” I finished.

“He can’t.” If Guardsman Cruz could have crammed his answer down my throat, he would have.

“How do you know?”

“Because I report to Dr. Solis.” Cruz ground out the words. “I spend every day in his lab, doing whatever he needs me to because he’s trying to cure Ferae. You know what he’s not doing? Associating with a known fetch.”

“That’s not what Director Spurling says.”

“Who?”

“The head of Biohazard Defense.” I tried not to sound smug. Smug would not go over well with this guy.

Cruz shot a look over his shoulder and then snagged my wrist and pulled me deeper into the shadows between the barracks. “They caught Mack, didn’t they?” His tone was low, hard, and not even a little sympathetic. “What did he tell them about Dr. Solis?”

“Nothing! Ow,” I said pointedly, raising my arm. He released my wrist and I took a moment to gather my adrenaline-soaked thoughts. Spurling would have a fit if she knew that I was confiding in a line guard, but I couldn’t see another way forward. “Director Spurling doesn’t
have
my dad, just evidence against him.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “Mack is your father?”

“Yes. And she already knew about his deal with your boss. Will you please take me to him now?”

“No,” he said in a tone that closed the discussion as definitively as the Titan wall had closed off the West. “Go back to Director Spurling,” he said, practically spitting her name, “and tell her that the doctor doesn’t know Ian McEvoy. Has never even heard of him.”

“She’s not going to buy that. Anyway, she’s not looking to arrest anyone. She has a job for my dad.”

His eyes widened. “A fetch?”

“Yes. If he brings her back what she wants, she’ll destroy his file.”

Cruz scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Hopefully, he was reassessing the situation. He turned that considering gaze on to me. “And this director sent you here — to Arsenal Island — to tell Mack about this deal?”

When I nodded, he frowned. “How old are you? Sixteen?”

“Seventeen.” Close enough. My birthday was coming up — in three months, anyway.

“What your dad does, fetching, it’s a felony. But that doesn’t give an official the right to send a kid over here where you could get infected or killed or worse.”

I bristled. “There’s something worse than being killed?”

“How about being eaten alive?” he asked casually.

All right, yes, that was worse, but
kid
was simmering in my gut. “You know, having my dad’s file erased would be good for Dr. Solis too. ’Cause if they put my dad on trial, it’ll come out that —”

“I can fill in the rest. Thanks.” Despite his cool tone, Guardsman Cruz didn’t look mad. He tipped his head up to the sky and let out a slow breath.

Wait — was he really considering not following orders?

“What’s your name?” I asked quickly. “Your first name.” I didn’t want to talk to a killer robot anymore. I wanted him to be a person.

His expression relaxed a fraction. “Everson.”

“Where’s that?”

“It
was
a town in Pennsylvania where my mother grew up.”

He had a mother? Wow. Guardsman Cruz was becoming more human by the second.

“Stay here,” he said, nudging me aside. “As in
really
stay this time.”

I blocked his path. “Where are you going?”

“To get you some clothes. No guard would be caught in that getup on Arsenal.” He nodded at my vest. “Not even if she’s off duty.”

“It isn’t mine. My friend —”

“Do something about your hair.” He pushed past me, clearly not interested in why I was dressed like the step-daughter of a stripper.

I slumped against the barracks wall. Everson, Pennsylvania. It sounded like a nice town, but was the boy nice?

Please. He was a line guard. Nice didn’t apply.

The killer robot returned with a pile of clothes, combat boots, and a gray cap. I tensed, waiting for more guards to appear. When no one marched around the corner, I relaxed a little. He hadn’t reported me. For now.

Everson held out the bundle. “I got them from the women’s barracks, so feel guilty. Some guard is going to —”

“From a clean pile?”

“Does it matter?”

It did to me. But based on the press of Everson’s lips, I dropped the issue. “Where can I change?”

“Here.”

“Uh, no. I — can’t.”

“And I’m not taking you anywhere dressed like that. So either change or cross back over the bridge.”

Another nonchoice. His eyebrows — straight and dark over his eyes — gave him a stern look, which made me reluctant to push my luck. I’d just have to change fast. “Are you going to turn around?”

He shifted his gaze to the basketball court — like that would be enough to put me at ease. What did he think I’d do? Clobber him when his back was to me?

Gritting my teeth, I kicked off my ankle boots and got the snaps on the vest undone, but that was as far as I could make myself go. As humiliating as the vest was, I didn’t want to change into someone else’s dirty laundry in front of a line guard while standing outside in an alley where anyone might waltz by.

“What’s taking so long?” Everson asked.

He looked over. Good thing I hadn’t flung off the vest. “Can you
please
turn around? I promise not to make a run for it.”

“So you say.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t want you doing something stupid.”

Nice. “Well, how about trusting that I’m smart enough to realize that you know your way around here and I don’t. So, if I were to run, I’m guessing you would catch me.”

“Good guess,” he agreed.

“And considering you’re as big as a cow, I’d probably end up dirty and hurt. Two things I hate. So, believe me, I’m not going to run.”

He eyed me like a pop quiz that he hadn’t studied for, but then gave me his back — ramrod straight, of course. I felt a little better. I still had to get undressed outdoors, but it was reassuring to know that logic worked over here.

“Cow?” he asked, sounding put out.

“Bull. Whatever. Big.” I gave the shirt a sniff. It wasn’t too bad, so I pulled the stretchy neoprene over my head. Between the shirt’s high neck and the three-quarter sleeves, it would keep me a lot warmer than Anna’s vest had.

“Ready,” I said, once I’d gotten everything on, including the boots. I transferred the bottle of hand sanitizer and guard badge from my jeans to a side pocket on the camo pants.

Everson tugged my cap low over my eyes. “You’re lucky I’m the one who found you. Any other guard would have hauled you off to Captain Hyrax.”

I tensed. “Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. Come on, let’s go.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant and I didn’t care. Just so long as he didn’t turn me in. “One minute.” I tried to roll up Anna’s vest but the vinyl was too stiff. It didn’t fold well either and was not fitting easily into the messenger bag.

“You’re not planning on following in your father’s footsteps, are you?”

I wasn’t, but that didn’t mean I wanted some line guard pointing out my shortcomings as an amateur fetch. I shot him a dirty look.

“Just asking,” he said.

Was that amusement in his voice? He tugged the vest out of my hands and snatched up my white boots. “Hey,” I hissed as he stalked off. “I have to give those back.”

Stepping from between the barracks, he tossed the things into the first trash can he passed. I frowned but didn’t try to fish them back out. As grateful as I was for his help, Guardsman Cruz was starting to rub me the wrong way. Were all line guards so bossy? I tucked my ponytail under the cap and joined him.

“You’ll pass.”

Darn right, I’d pass. I could do the whole ramrod posture, perfectly-made-bed robot thing. Okay, maybe not the marching and the push-ups …