The Change (Unbounded) (47 page)

I
PEERED AROUND THE TREE
at the couple who sat on the park bench, their faces set, their bodies taut and anxious. The woman, Mari Jorgenson, had no idea what she was—what she had become. She spoke earnestly, but the man only pretended to listen. His eyes roamed the trees that dotted the area, stopping briefly on a grouping of three evergreens crowded by thick bushes.

What was he searching for?

I pushed my awareness out as far as I could, but nothing unusual registered on my senses. This area of the park appeared deserted, which was natural since November had slammed down on Portland like an iceberg from the Bering Sea, bringing a brutal cold spell the city hadn’t seen in decades. Still, it was a nice change from the constant rain or the wet snowflakes that seemed to saturate every inch of every piece of clothing I wore. My hometown of Kansas City wasn’t exactly warm in the winter, but the cold and wet had never been as penetrating. A twinge of nostalgia pinged in my chest when I thought about Kansas because I could never, ever go back to what I’d been. I was fortunate to have escaped mostly in one piece; others hadn’t been so lucky.

Peering around the tree again, my eyes found Mari’s small form on the bench. Even at this distance, I could see the Change that had taken place gradually over the two months I’d been watching her. I’d already sensed that she was Unbounded, though in the beginning it was hard to tell, even for someone like me. Complete confirmation had come last week after we’d gone skiing in Utah, and she’d banged up her knee so badly the doctors had told her she wouldn’t regain full use of it.

A day later she was walking. With that single event, both her life expectancy and the likelihood of violent death increased by nearly twenty-four hundred percent.

I felt for my Sig tucked in its holster at the back of my jeans, easing it out so my long jacket couldn’t get in the way. It was racked, a bullet in the chamber. I’d double-checked before I followed them from work.

Crouching, I eased forward behind the bare bushes to the right of the tree, my muscles singing in relief at the movement. I’d trained vigorously for hours with the other Renegades before I went jogging in the park with Mari this morning, but I’d had all day for any strained muscles to heal. I felt as fresh as when I’d awakened.

My mind ran over what I would soon have to do. Mari and I had become friends, and I knew how betrayed she’d feel at the depth of my deceit. She’d figure it out quickly once it was all in the open. Her brain was already running at high speed because of the changes inside her. At the accounting firm where I worked with her under an assumed name, she’d already begun to accurately calculate entire columns of numbers without the aid of a machine. Her Unbounded father had been skilled at engineering, and her great-aunt Stella was a technopath, so this ability didn’t surprise any of us. It was only a matter of time until her co-workers noticed. There was no telling what else she might be able to do, and her very existence made her a potential danger. To us, to our enemies, to the entire world.

Mari jumped to her feet, hands on her hips, her breath forming white clouds in the air, more visible now that the sun had set and twilight was deepening. Night came early on these winter nights, though it wasn’t quite six o’clock, and some distance away, I could still hear the faint sounds of rush hour traffic on the main road. I couldn’t make out what Mari was saying, but I knew her well enough to guess that she was giving Trevor an ultimatum. She wanted to see a marriage counselor and for them to work toward having a child. I wondered if he noticed the new confidence in her movements, how the blemishes in her skin had disappeared, and how thick her long, silky hair had become. Her heart-shaped face showed only a hint of her Japanese heritage—less than an eighth—but since her Change, I thought she was looking more and more like the small-boned Stella, whose mother had been full-blooded Japanese.

Trevor also came to his feet but didn’t yell back at her, which made the fine hair on my body rise in alert. I’d been forced to get to know him somewhat over the past two months since we’d come for Mari, and this calm wasn’t like him. He was a loud, opinionated man who liked his dinner on the table by six-thirty and his wife submissive at all times. He never planned dates, remembered her birthday, or sent flowers on their anniversary. She’d admitted to me once in tears that he only touched her with affection when he wanted her in bed—which happened less and less these days.

Trevor was another reason we had to act sooner than later. Unbounded had a high rate of fertility and most birth control methods failed. If she slept with him now, we might end up with more complications than we bargained for. Better that Mari first understood the consequences.

Trevor eased away from Mari, his hands in his jacket pocket. He darted a nervous glance in the direction of the trees behind her. Something was very wrong. If I were closer, or if I touched him, I might be able to sense what he was hiding, but the only thing I felt from him now was a tight nervousness. I almost hoped he’d turn violent. If he did, it would save us oceans of headache in the long run, though I wasn’t about to let him have the satisfaction of hurting Mari.

A faint movement in the trees behind Mari caught my attention. Easing around the bushes, I paused at the edge of the sparse covering offered by an evergreen. To check out the movement physically, I’d have to expose myself by running across open space. Mari, Trevor, and whoever might be there would see me coming, and I couldn’t have that. Being careless could cost more lives than just my own. The Renegades depended on me.

A breeze hit my face, soothing my fears.
Only the wind.

The cell phone in my pocket vibrated, and I checked the caller ID before answering. It was Ava, the fearless leader of our little band of Renegades, and also my fourth great-grandmother. I wondered if she was calling about Cort, who was supposed to have taken over watching Mari as we left the accounting firm. Unfortunately, Mari had left work early when her husband showed up without warning. Cort
should
be following the signal from my GPS chip now, and catch up to me at any moment, but he’d been known to become distracted with whatever scientific experiment he was working on in his lab. It was kind of getting to be a problem. As one of the newest Unbounded in our group, I was at the bottom of the useful list and tattling wouldn’t earn any brownie points, but I’d endured the torture of the office all day and it was only fair that he and the others took their turns. Mari’s Change affected all of us.

“What’s up?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“We have a problem.” The tension in Ava’s voice dissolved my concerns about Cort. She didn’t stress over anything small.

“What is it?”

“You need to get back here as fast as you can. I’ll explain later.”

I glanced again at the bushes behind Mari. No more movement. Had it really been the wind? Regardless, I couldn’t leave Mari alone with Trevor. “Is Cort on his way?” Okay, so I
would
rat on him. A guy who’d lived almost five hundred years should know better.

“He’s on a plane to Mexico—as of nine o’clock this morning. Dimitri went with him. I would have notified you sooner, but we’ve been a bit busy.”

I gritted my teeth. We had only two main interests in Mexico, and problems with either would mean more deaths. Worse, her tone told me Mexico was only the beginning of what had gone wrong.

“I want you to bring in Mari,” Ava continued. “We need you here. We should have brought her in last week when we were sure.” There was no censure in her voice, though I’d sided with Stella in waiting. I knew how hard it was to have my life change from one minute to the next.

I was tempted to ask for backup, but I could imagine the fun my brothers and the rest of the Renegades would have if the movement in the trees turned out to be nothing more than the wind or a stray dog. I needed to be sure. I hesitated several heartbeats before saying with a slightly forced confidence, “I’ll be there within the hour. Sooner if I can.”

“Good.” The line went dead.

How soon I’d actually make it depended on what I decided to do with Trevor and how good a fighter he turned out to be. Though I trained hard every day, my Unbounded ability had nothing to do with combat. I’d been weeks ahead of my brother Jace, and he’d surpassed me during his first lesson, his quickness immediately identifying his area of skill. Even so, they claimed I was progressing faster than most new Unbounded, and every now and then I felt I could almost see what my opponent would do next the way Jace could.

And Ritter Langton.

My stomach clenched. With the events in Mexico, would Ava call Ritter back from wherever he’d been the past two months? My pride hadn’t let me ask, but she probably had some way to contact him.

I shoved away the unneeded distraction, though the tightness in my belly remained. Trevor was the main problem here. If it came to it, I could deal with him, but I didn’t think knocking out her husband would go far toward lulling Mari’s suspicions so I could more easily kidnap her.

First I needed to be sure about those trees. Pushing out my thoughts, I began searching, straining. A dull throbbing began at the base of my skull, my mind not at all appreciating the effort. Yet there in the trees where I’d seen the movement earlier, I now felt two faint life forces. They didn’t glow as brightly as the average mortal, though they weren’t as dark as someone who was experienced at blocking sensing Unbounded. So something in between, which could mean a lot of different things. From this distance, I couldn’t pick up any thoughts or emotions. I fumbled in my pocket and came up with a tiny pair of binoculars that Stella had assured me were vital to my assignment. In the past two months, I’d used them exactly twenty-three times on mornings when Mari couldn’t jog with me, when she’d run errands at lunch, or eaten out with Trevor. I was lucky not to have been arrested as a stalker.

I studied the trees, regretting the fading light. Someone was definitely crouching behind one of the evergreens, but I could see little more than a patch of green jacket.
Wait.
Between the branches of the bush next to the evergreen, where a few tenacious leaves clung to an otherwise bare limb, I spied what might be the black barrel of a rifle. I shifted to another position that was slightly more exposed and looked again. Another figure hunched farther to the left, the insignia of a hunter with a rifle standing out on his dark jacket. A jolt of emotion arrowed through me.

Hunters.

There are few things Unbounded fear, and Hunters are one of them. For over fifty years the society of Hunters has dedicated their lives to eradicating both the Renegades and our enemy, the Emporium, never differentiating between the two Unbounded groups. That many of the Hunters’ older members began life as failed Emporium genetic experiments and were later abandoned, only makes their hatred that much stronger. Despite the fact that Renegades protect mortals from the Emporium, Hunters view all Unbounded as false gods they need to depose and punish. Eradicate like vermin. Kill.

My first thought was that the Hunters had somehow tracked me, though I was new enough not to be in their database. The tightness in my stomach now extended to the tips of my fingers. Both my previous run-ins with Hunters had nearly ended in a date with a sharp blade.

My left hand slid to the cell phone in my coat pocket, pressing and holding the single button on the side. After the Emporium attack two months ago on our Renegade allies in New York, where nine Unbounded and a dozen mortals were murdered in a macabre slaughter, and several more had been taken captive, we’d begun carrying these altered phones.

With Cort and Dimitri in Mexico, Ritter gone, and Ava up to her ears in whatever she wouldn’t explain over the phone, who would they send to answer my call? Stella wouldn’t come, not in her condition, and my brothers lacked training. Chris wasn’t even Unbounded. No, it would be someone from our mortal security detail, most of whom had served with the government in black ops. They were well trained and deadly. More than a match for any Hunters. Still, I’d try to mop up the Hunters before they got here—if only to prove to myself that I could.

I glanced at Mari, needing to adjust my position again to get a clear view. Trevor had moved several feet away from her, and now he dipped his head as he glanced at the trees where the Hunters crouched.

A signal.

I didn’t know how he’d been contacted by them, but somehow he was involved—and he was giving them Mari. What was his price? Bright anger flooded me, and it was all I could do not to go running into the open and smash my fist into his face. Instead, I pushed partway through the bushes, forcing myself to wait.

Mari was still talking, her voice louder now. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but her tone was pleading. I hurt for her, for what she was about to lose. It wasn’t fair. Trevor had done a good job of isolating her in the three years since her mother’s death, and lately she had no one to confide in except him—and me. I was about to betray her now. How long would it be before she’d trust anyone again? Ava had told me when I Changed that I’d been given a priceless gift or a great curse, and this was yet one more example. The necessity of sneaking around, of lying to people who would be your friends.