Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) by Kim Curran

Author:Kim Curran [Kim Curran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Xist Publishing
Published: 2015-03-30T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I watched Frankie, Ladoux and the two men head back through the trees. Ladoux kept turning back. Was it the very existence of the virus that had unsettled her so much? I would talk with her later. I turned my attention to where the shots had come from.

“Need backup?” Zac said.

“Only if you haven’t got anything better to be doing,” I said.

“Well, I had planned on finishing a heartbreaking poem about the horrors of war I’ve been working on,” he said, picking at a bit of bark. “But it can wait.” He gave his lazy salute.

“I’ll come, too,” Aubrey said. “We can triangulate them.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Like Jurassic Park.”

She stared at me blankly.

“You know, the three dinosaurs? Clever girl? No?” I was getting nothing but confused expressions. “Forget it. Let’s go.”

The three of us spread out. Aubrey was to loop around on the right, Zac on the left, while I was going to walk straight out. I had all the variations held in my mind in case I needed to Shift. It was a bit like memorising a hand of cards, trying to hold a sequence straight. A slip of concentration, one decision made without thinking it through, and I could be in serious trouble. The biggest fear was being shot in the head. In that case, there was nothing that could save you, not even the hypnic jerk – the Shifter’s reboot function. I was hoping it wasn’t going to come to that.

On my mark, we split off. I moved fast, running from cover to cover, but I was trying to make myself seen, to distract whoever was up there from Aubrey and Zac coming around from the sides.

I stopped behind a tree to check my pistol was loaded, then ran again. I moved in short sprints, up the hill and towards the clump of rocks from where I’d seen the flash of light.

There was definitely someone there. I saw a hand resting on a rock twenty yards away. I slowed, taking cover behind another tree. If I could shoot their hand, then I’d disarm them. I raised my pistol and took aim. As I was about to squeeze the trigger, they stood up.

It was a teenager: a tall, skinny boy with shaved hair. He wore a mismatch of dark green clothes and, I could see, the symbol of the Red Hand printed on his shoulder. He held a sniper rifle in his hands. I froze. The barrel was pointed straight at my head. He lowered the gun a couple of inches.

“Are we good to go?” he said, his hands twitching around the stock of the gun. I was surprised, given how fidgety he was, that he’d been able to shoot straight at all. “Are we good?” he said again when I hadn’t replied.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, stepping forward.

The gun was pointing to the left of me, but all it would take was a second and it would be directed at my face again.

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