Tiredness rippled through my particles, gently at first but gradually increasing in intensity, until it felt as if every part of me was afire. I might have rested and healed on the barge, but it had still been a very long day, and the protein bars I’d eaten weren’t really enough to fuel me for long. Not after everything I’d been through. I glanced over my shoulder to check the distance I’d put between the cliff and us, and decided to drop to the ground and resume normal form. I could always shadow again if necessary, but right now, it was better to conserve some strength. I might not be able to move as swiftly in flesh form as I could when shadowed, but I did have tiger shifter blood in me and could run a whole lot faster than most humans. And at least it didn’t tax my strength quite as much as maintaining particle form.
I dribbled some water into Raela’s mouth to keep her hydrated, drank a little myself, then stoppered the bottle and moved on. Though the forest was dark, it was far from silent. There were night creatures in this place, rustling through the scrub and scrambling up trees as I ran past. That at least meant I didn’t have to worry about a vampire attack. We appeared to be a long way out from any sort of human habitation, and those night creatures would have been the vampires’ only means of sustenance had there been an infestation here. All the forests close to Central had been stripped of life for decades; in fact, I hadn’t even seen any birds for a least twenty years, if not more.
The night rolled on and the moon rose ever higher in the starlit sky—something I could feel more than see, thanks to the thickness of the overhanging canopy.
My muscles—unused to running so fast for so long—were beginning to ache, but I didn’t slow down and I certainly didn’t rest. A niggling sense of danger was beginning to creep across my psychic senses and the need to be out of this forest was growing.
The ground started to slope upwards as we neared the foothills of the other mountain range, and my pace slowed. It didn’t ease the muscle burn. Nothing short of a good massage and rest would.
Then, from behind, I finally heard what my senses had been picking up on for the last hour or so.
The whine of engines.
They were coming at me, and fast.
But how in Rhea had they known where we were? Aside from the fact this valley was vast and there had to be more than one path through these trees, I’d traveled in particle form for at least the first hour and had left no trail for even the most experienced hunter to follow.
And yet they were behind me.
I could understand them locating the barge, as it was easy enough to trace a vehicle’s location via its GPS signal. Of course, Dream was not only one of the evil trio, but a witch of some power. I didn’t know a whole lot about witchcraft and the use of earth magic, but I did know that anyone who stepped on the earth could be traced by it. The minute I’d regained normal form, she could have pinned me.
But that thought was quickly chased away by another. I briefly closed my eyes and cursed my own stupidity. They didn’t need a witch. Not when I still had Banks’s RFID chip stuck over my own.
I slid to a stop, sending a spray of small stones and dirt scattering through the darkness, and pushed up my sleeve. The false skin covering the RFID chip was visible thanks to the grime now lining its edge. I slid a nail under one side and peeled the entire thing away from my arm. The RFID chip clung to the fake skin like a limpet, and gleamed brightly in the darkness, as if mocking me. I dropped it onto the ground and stomped on it, and then glanced down at Raela. While I’d blown up the labs, it was still possible they were aware that one of their test subjects was missing, especially if she’d been chipped. Most déchet had been implanted with a tracker or a control device—in some instances, both had been used. Their handlers had not only needed to know where they were at all times, but had also
required a means of control if their charges flipped out or started attacking the wrong targets. Not that the chips had always worked—one of the reasons we lures had been installed into the nurseries as guards when not in service was because a déchet soldier had gone berserk and killed a number of déchet children before he could be stopped.
But could I afford to waste the time checking her?
Could I afford not to?
I glanced over my shoulder, trying to guess how much time we had left before they found us. The hum of the pursuit vehicles was definitely closer than it had been only minutes ago, but there was little point in running if Raela did have a tracker in her.
Besides, if she also had a control chip in her, they might well decide to take her out rather than risk her falling into the “wrong” hands.
I moved across to a fallen tree and carefully unwrapped her. She giggled lightly and waved her hands at the sudden freedom, making me smile even as I caught one of her arms and gently checked for implants.
It wasn’t until I reached her feet that I found the chip—it had been embedded into the heel of her right foot.
And that meant I'd have to cut it out. There was no other choice—not if we wanted to escape. I took a deep breath to gather my courage and then lightly placed a hand on her chest. I'm about to hurt you, little one, and I'm sorry. But bad men are chasing us, and there is a device in your foot that is leading them to us. It needs to come out.
She should have been too young to understand either the words or their import, and yet her happy expression melted into one of solemnity, and the old soul I’d glimpsed before once again shone from her eyes.
She placed her hand over mine and the size difference oddly reminded me a grain of sand against a rock. And yet that grain was offering me both strength and courage.
She couldn’t—wouldn’t—go back to any sort of military or governmental organization or lab. I might not have been able to save either her companions or even my own little ones, but I would do everything in my power to give her the one thing they'd never had: the chance of a real life.
I pulled my hand from under hers then swung the backpack around and pulled out both the small medikit and the knife. If I’d had anything smaller, I would have used it, but I didn’t. The blade’s tip was fine, but even so, against Raela's tiny foot, it looked like a carving knife.
There was no deadening spray in the kit, only a sealing antiseptic, so I simply located the chip in her heel and pressed the knife's point against her skin. Then, with another of those breaths that didn't do a lot to calm the turmoil inside, I pushed it deep.
She screamed. I closed my heart to the sound and sliced sideways until the edge of the chip was revealed. Then, using the tweezers from the kit, I carefully grabbed it. In the past, heel-inserted control chips had often been connected to small vials of quick-acting poison. They could be detonated from a distance, and killed the host quickly but not exactly painlessly. We lures had been designed to be immune to all sorts of poison, so they'd used a different system on us—a miniaturized but extremely powerful incendiary device buried under our ribcage. It was no longer in my body, of course, but I hadn't destroyed it, as tempting as it had been at the time. In those early years after the war, when I'd been so uncertain as to what was happening in the world above our bunker and whether another attack would come, I'd thought it prudent to keep hold of every weapon I could.
As I drew Raela's chip free, I saw the wires and swore. They were the same sort of wires that had been in me and meant this little girl was basically a flesh and blood bomb.
“I'm sorry, Raela,” I said, my voice barely audible over the sound of her sobbing, “but I've got to get the rest of it out.”
I dug the knife deeper, and again she screamed. The blade tip hit something solid, but the welling blood meant I couldn't tell if it was bone or whatever device had been placed in her.