Undaunted Read online

  He crouched beside me. “She turned the V into a heart,” he groaned. “Please let there be another Everson.”

  “I think what you’re doing is so great,” I read aloud, pitching my voice higher, since the writer had to be a kid. “I wish I could come to the Feral Zone and help you take care of the manimals …”

  Everson brought in a sharp breath. “Manimals? She used that word?”

  I lowered the letter before he noticed that my hand was trembling. “Yeah.”

  He snatched up a red envelope and tore it open while I scanned the rest of the girl’s letter. There was nothing in it to confirm my growing suspicion. I reached for another envelope and saw Everson’s eyes widen.

  “I really hope a kid didn’t write this one.” Face flushed, he tossed that letter aside.

  I opened a card with a picture of a puppy on the front. Within one line, I sat down hard. “Oh no …”

  “If it’s too graphic, don’t read it,” Everson said.

  “I did this,” I whispered. “This is all my fault.”

  “What do you mean your fault?” Everson demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  I scanned the mailroom, but the guard had yet to return. Lifting the puppy card, I read aloud: “Dear Everson, If it weren’t for that video, I wouldn’t know what’s happening on the other side of the wall or about you …”

  “Video? Your dial — the things you recorded when we were over there —”

  I continued to read. “What you did was so brave. I hope you get a medal someday for risking your life like that. I’ve watched the video at least a hundred times and —”

  “Lane,” he said, his tone sharp, “did you use my name?”

  “No! I don’t know how — well, I suppose they can guess you’re stationed on Arsenal. The last bridge is here. But I never used your name or —” My voice had grown steadily louder as my mind spun with the implications of what had happened.

  Everson gestured for me to be quiet. He rose and tipped his head to the door.

  I followed him outside, feeling more panicked by the second. No one could have matched Everson’s face in my video to a photo of him because there were none. Not online anyway. I’d checked. So many people still hated Ilsa Prejean for starting the plague that she lived in terror of someone hurting her only child as payback. She’d kept Everson’s image off the Web and threatened to arrest anyone who posted a candid shot of him. The fact he’d never set foot outside the fortress that was their home, an old Titan Imaginarium, had made it impossible for the paparazzi to snap a shot.

  We slipped between the enormous stone buildings as the wind picked up. “What were you thinking?” he demanded.

  I bristled at his tone despite my growing anxiety. “You let me keep my dial. You knew I’d been recording the whole time.”

  “Yeah, and I knew you’d turn it into a video. What I don’t get is what you’re doing here. On Arsenal.” Everson raked a hand through his hair. “Right where the biohaz agents can find you. Did you see all those mailbags? If that many people wrote me —”

  “Girls,” I corrected. “If that many girls wrote you.”

  He waved that off. “Those are just the ones who wrote — as in, the tip of the iceberg.”

  I felt cold, bloodless. “Your mother? Do you think she knows about the video?”

  “She has to,” he said grimly. “When do you see your dad again?”

  “He’s meeting me at the gate tomorrow.”

  “Good. He can take you back to Moline with him.”

  Where the biohaz agents couldn’t go. But leaving base meant I’d never find Mahari.

  Everson frowned at my hesitation. “Lane, you recorded illegal images — images that compromise national security. You know what the punishment is?”

  I nodded because I couldn’t get the word past the knot in my throat.

  “Execution,” he said for me.

  “I have to stay.”

  “No, you —”

  “No one in the zone knows where Rafe is or even if he’s okay,” I explained.

  “What does that have to do with you getting arrested?”

  “The lionesses said they know where he is.”

  Everson’s lips parted with surprise, though he recovered quickly enough and jammed his hands into his pockets. “They’re probably —”

  “Lying,” I said, cutting him off. “Maybe. But the hacks passing through Moline have no news about Rafe — no one has seen him. And since my dad has nothing to go on, all I can do is hope the lionesses know where he is. The problem is, they’ll only tell me if I bring them Mahari.”

  The crease between Everson’s brows deepened. “Got it.”

  “I need to get back to the kids,” I said suddenly. It wasn’t even a ploy to get away from his penetrating look. I’d left the orphans alone for too long, which always meant at least one of them getting yelled at, if not manhandled.

  Everson reached for me. “Lane —”

  I waited for him to say more, but he dropped his hand without ever touching me. “Nothing.”

  With a nod, I pivoted and jogged toward the north end of the island.

  At the orphan tent, I stumbled to a stop. A jeep had pulled up right next to the wooden steps of the platform. This could not be good. Only the top brass got carted around the island. I approached the jeep warily. What had the orphans done this time, and would I be blamed? Probably, since I’d all but deserted my post.

  I stiffened my spine and approached the guard in the driver’s seat. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve got a visitor.”

  My skin prickled at this alarming news. No one was allowed to just drop by the base. Even my dad had to talk to me through the fence at Gateway Station during our every-other-evening meet-ups. “Who?”

  The guard raised a brow and gave me a “Really?” look.

  Right. Even if this guy knew that Hyrax had come by to break my legs, he wouldn’t give me a heads-up; he’d follow orders.

  He jerked his chin toward the tent. “Get up there.”

  And there was another not-so-lovely trait — the barked commands. Considering that I was already in hot water, I did not point out that I wasn’t a guard, cross my arms, and wait stubbornly for him to tack on a please. No, I hurried up the steps to the platform, ducked into the tent, and spotted my “visitor.”

  The orphans were sprawled across the floor, listening intently as a woman read aloud from a book of fairy tales. The book blocked my view of her face, but I knew she wasn’t line patrol — not in a snug black pantsuit and patent leather pumps.

  “So off Little Red Riding Hood went, taking the basket to her grandmother,” the woman read from her perch on my cot. Her crisp inflection and spiky gray hair turned my blood into slush.

  “It’s not a basket; it’s a letter,” Jia corrected.

  The book dipped as the woman shot the little girl a silencing look, confirming my fear. I hadn’t seen her in months, but Director Taryn Spurling wasn’t someone I’d ever forget.

  I hovered by the tent flap as sweat plastered my T-shirt to my skin. The director of Biohazard Defense was here. Now. And the only reason that made any sense was that she’d come to arrest me for posting the video. But then, would she really hang around, reading to the orphans until I showed up? Strange. Even stranger that she was being nice at all. In my few encounters with the pixie-sized witch, her personality had been as prickly as her hair.

  “As she strolled along the wooded path, a voice called out, ‘Hello, little girl.’ ” Spurling made her voice gruff, getting into the part, which just baffled me even more. “Little Red Riding Hood looked over, and there, sitting among the flowers, was a very large, very hairy …”

  “Tiger-man!” all the children shouted.

  “Ah, no.” Spurling lowered the book with a puzzled frown. “A wolf.”

  “No, a big, hairy tiger-man,” Jia said crossly.

  A smart fugitive would slip out of the tent now, before anyone spotted her, and
find somewhere to hide. But unless Director Spurling had other proof that I’d posted that video, she couldn’t arrest me simply because I was the most likely suspect. Not without explaining that she’d sent me across the quarantine line six months ago to find my dad.

  I folded my arms and stayed put. Maybe she had other evidence linking me to the video, but until I knew for sure, I was going to brazen this out.

  “With diamond studs in his ears and gold rings on his fat, hairy fingers,” Jia finished.

  “Clearly you’ve heard a different version of this story.” Spurling closed the book. “Tell it to me. Does the tiger-man trick Little Red?”

  “Yes,” Jia said, sitting up straighter. “And he finds out where her grandma’s house is in Chicago and he —”

  “Burns it down?” With her manicured fingers loosely entwined on top of the book, Spurling leaned toward the kids. To them, she simply seemed curious, but I detected the tinge of bitterness in her tone.

  The day after my dad and I returned to the West, Spurling had hustled into his hospital room to find out if he’d gotten what she’d needed him to retrieve from the East: a photo of her daughter. He hadn’t, and neither had I. When I couldn’t find my dad on the other side of the wall, I’d made the trek to Chicago to do the fetch myself and failed. Chorda had burned Spurling’s abandoned home and everything in it to keep me from completing the job and returning home. Upon hearing this, all the color had drained from Spurling’s face, and without another word, she’d clipped from his hospital room with surprising poise considering her spike heels and clear devastation. In trying to thwart me, Chorda had forever destroyed her chance of recovering a picture of her little girl. I didn’t blame her for being bitter.

  “No,” Jia said as if Spurling’s guess bordered on insane. “The tiger-man eats the grandma. Then he puts on the grandma’s nightgown and gets into her bed.”

  “Silly me,” Spurling said dryly. “So, what happens next? Does Little Red show up and say, ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have’?”

  “ ‘What golden eyes you have,’ ” the orphans corrected in unison. They then played out the rest of the scene, hamming it up as they asked the singsong questions about night-vision eyes, hairy ears, and big, sharp canine teeth. “The better to eat you with!” they shrieked, which made Spurling flinch.

  “And then the tiger-man chased Li’l Red out of the house,” Jia said, taking over the narrative again. “Through the empty streets all the way to the zoo!”

  Spurling’s blue gaze sharpened with interest. “Is this where the hunter comes in to save her?”

  “No.” Jia’s tone was the verbal equivalent of an eye roll. “He’s locked up in the lion cage, and he’s hurt. He can’t help Li’l Red. No one can. She has to save herself because she knows that you can’t count on a hunter being around when you need him.”

  “Or your mom or dad,” Dusty added.

  “Or anyone,” Sage said softly.

  Jia growled to shush them, which worked as it always did. She had an insanely scary growl. Then she went on, “So Li’l Red takes her dad’s machete out of the messenger bag and sneaks up behind the tiger-man and —”

  “Chops off his head!” the other kids yelled with delight.

  “Did she cut him open and get her grandmother back?” Spurling asked.

  The orphans fell silent, including Jia. Their expressions ranged from disbelief to … pity.

  “The tiger-man ate her.” Tasha put a gentle hand on Spurling’s arm. “The grandma’s dead. She’s not coming back.”

  “Not ever.” Dusty hugged his knees and began to rock.

  “So, Li’l Red killed the tiger-man and never ever went near a feral again,” Jia said quickly. “The end.”

  “A useful lesson,” Spurling murmured.

  “It is,” I blurted, not caring that her gaze narrowed upon seeing me. “It’s something they’ll need to know later, when they’re sent back to the Feral Zone. A beast doesn’t turn into a prince no matter how much you love him.”

  Jia nodded gravely. “He just gets wilder …”

  “And wilder and wilder,” the children chanted while lifting their hands in unison, extending imaginary claws. Poised to strike. “Until he bites you!” Their hands clamped together like jaws snapping shut — just as I’d taught them.

  Spurling shot to her feet. “I think I’ve had my fill of stories today.” Her tone was deceptively pleasant as she dropped the book onto the cot and scooped up a metallic satchel, which coordinated perfectly with her silver-tipped nails.

  Jia hurried over to me and asked, “Did you give Ev the letter?”

  I kept my eyes on Spurling. “Yep.”

  “Did you tell him it was me who swiped it?” Jia demanded. When I nodded, she beamed.

  Spurling’s heels clicked across the uneven wood planks. “If you two are done catching up,” the edge in her voice could have drawn blood, “I’d like a word with you, Delaney.”

  I tilted my head. Reluctantly Jia settled onto a bottom bunk, where she not only glared at Director Spurling but also began growling, low, steady. Spurling stopped short at the tent flap, expression wary as she looked to me for an explanation.

  I shrugged. “Jia’s mom got infected with panther when she was two. She picked up a few habits.”

  “I see,” Spurling said lightly, as if she heard such things every day. Hah. I’d bet a bottle of bug spray that the orphans were the first people from the Feral Zone she’d ever seen in person.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

  “I came to see the base and heard you were still here. I wanted to see what you were up to. Must be something important.”

  “It is important.”

  She followed my look to the orphans, who were watching us with keen eyes. To my surprise, Spurling’s expression softened. “Yes, it is,” she agreed, and then jammed her hands in her suit jacket pockets and seemed to shake off what must have been a foreign feeling for her tiny, spiky self: empathy. “Well, Delaney, if you’re done wasting my time, let’s get a move on.” She thrust aside the tent flap and waited for me to precede her. When I didn’t budge, she smirked. “Why so nervous?”

  A few more kids joined in with Jia’s rumbling threat. “I’ll be right back,” I told them.

  “No, you won’t,” Spurling corrected. “We’re taking a ride.”

  I stared stupidly at Director Spurling as every pulse point in my body began to thrum. Was she banishing me to the zone without a trial? “Into the zone?”

  “Please. Do I look suicidal?” Clearly tired of holding the tent flap open for me, she ducked out first. “You’re taking me to the landing pad.” She clattered down the platform steps.

  “But —” I hurried after her. “You have a guard to take you.”

  “Had.” Spurling paused by the jeep to glare at the ogre-sized guard behind the wheel, then her gaze cut to me. “Can you drive this?”

  I nodded, though I was still feeling iffy about going anywhere with her.

  She directed a silver-tipped nail at the guard. “Out.”

  He straightened in his seat. “Ma’am, I’ve been assigned to —”

  “Did I sound like I was asking?”

  I struggled to keep my smirk in check as the seething goon faced off with the sharp-tongued witch. And then the guard ruined everything by not giving me material for a new bedtime story. He just climbed out of the jeep and tapped his shoulder mic. No face-off. No epic battle. Just guardspeak.

  “Inform Captain Hyrax that there’s been a change of plan,” he said into the mic while glaring at Spurling.

  She turned her manicured jab on me. “Hop in. I’d like to get back to civilization before it collapses.”

  That she was less of a jerk to me than the guard was a point in her favor. I slid behind the wheel, and she dropped into the passenger seat. As I pulled onto the paved road that ran down the center of the island, she lifted a palm-sized disc from under her shirt.

  A
dial!

  I missed mine so much, my chest felt odd without the familiar weight resting there. Not that most of its functions would work over here anyway. The line patrol jammed the signals. Spurling checked the time on her dial and then tucked it out of sight.

  “Have you noticed more guards on base lately?” she asked, sounding oh-so-casual as we passed the squat barracks where the guards lived.

  “New recruits have been showing up every couple of days.”

  She dug sunglasses out of her satchel and slid them on. “How many new recruits?”

  I shrugged. “A lot. There are new scientists too.”

  As if she was lounging on a rooftop, cold drink in hand, she leaned back in her seat and lifted her face to the sun. “You can thank a certain five-minute video for that.”

  And there it was — the bomb she’d been waiting to drop. The reason she was here. Every part of me flinched. A nearsighted mole couldn’t have missed my reaction. And Spurling? She’d tilted her glasses my way and waited for it.

  I played dumb anyway. “What are you talking about?”

  She snorted, and I didn’t blame her. My acting skills sucked.

  “A video was posted on a social media site two weeks ago,” she said, her tone droll as she indulged my pretend innocence. “It went viral overnight. The speed, the damage — it was like the plague all over again … without the drooling and biting and death.”

  I struggled to keep from nicking the corner of a barracks as I turned the wheel. All I wanted to do was slam on the brakes and beg her to tell me everything.

  “Some people think the video is a hoax,” she went on casually. “Others — the conspiracy nuts — they’ve taken it apart frame by frame looking for clues. It’s amazing how they can blow up a fuzzy long shot — a flash frame even — and clean it up enough to make out a name on a guard’s dog tag.” She sent me a sidelong look. “The first name, anyway.”

  A sick feeling bloomed in my stomach. Well, I now knew how the fangirls got Everson’s name. After that, figuring out where he was stationed was easy. Just one base guarded the last bridge into the Feral Zone.