Page 12 of Uncontrolled

“Saw Brandon before the squads showed,” he says. “Whoever got him…brutal.”

“Brutal,” I echo, my voice almost inaudible. I remember the sandwich I dropped when my headlamp caught on his gutted body, the crunch of the lettuce I trampled into gore still tacky along the boxcar floor. My throat tightens and I swallow the gorge rising there.

“You comin’ back?” LowLow asks.

It reminds me why I’m here, what I’m doing.

“I’m couch surfing with a friend for now,” I say. “Not sure when I’ll be at the camp. Might work this angle for a bit.”

It’s what Jamison used to call Allie, an angle to work for information, another resurrectionist to befriend. But when Jamison decided shanking me was the best way to force her hand, he screwed up. I bled out. Allie brought me back from the dead. Even then, she’d already been more than an angle.

Now, I use the term to play her off as unimportant. LowLow might not be so bad, but he’s got a mouth on him and the last thing I need is every gutter punk and street hustler in Fissure’s Whipp getting wind of where I’m crashing.

“This ‘friend,’” he says, throwing up air quotes. “She?”

I offer a noncommittal grunt.

“She aware you’re just hittin’ skins or she got feelings involved?” he asks and I stutter through a partial denial before I end up shrugging.

“I don’t know, LowLow, she’s…” I hesitate. Allie and I have kissed, and once or twice things have gone further. Each time she seems like she’s all in, there, with me, and then she gets this weird tension in her I can’t seem to figure out. I wonder if something bad happened to her she’s not ready to talk about yet. Or maybe she just doesn’t want me that way. “It’s complicated,” I say.

“She the jealous type? Type to have you followed and see what you’re up to?”

I cock my head. The way he’s pushing this has me on edge. I told Allie I’d be around later tonight. If her talk with Talia soured, she might have come to find me. “Blonde girl?” I ask. “Tiny?”

He laughs as if we’re having a casual conversation and starts us walking down the street. After half a block, he grabs the back of my neck and leans toward my ear. “Nope. Your girl got a brother?” he asks.

Allie never mentioned siblings. I don’t know why, but I think of Jamison. He’s dead, I remind myself. So unless it’s his ghost trailing you…

I shake my head as much to answer LowLow as to rattle away the thought of Jamison.

“Scrawny dude. Don’t think he’d raise fists against you with any hope of winning,” LowLow says. It could be a vote of confidence. Or he’s subtly convincing me not to kick the stranger’s ass. “He’s pretty obvious. Locked on your tail a couple blocks before your trip and fall and I wanted to see what he was getting up to.”

“Thanks, man,” I say, genuinely grateful. How long would it have been before I noticed I was being followed? And why is whoever they are trailing me? “He still there?”

LowLow bursts into a laugh and releases me, jogging ahead before he turns to walk backward. Those near black irises slide into the pedestrians behind me. “Sure is!” he says brightly. “You’ll see. Ready?”

It’s my only warning before he grabs my arm and yanks me forward. He uses the momentum to spin us both in a half circle. It ends with me wobbling and unsteady, stopped just long enough to risk a glance at the guy.

I commit his features to memory. Sunken cheeks, slight stubble, about twenty. He’s not wearing sunglasses, so even with the distance, I can tell his eyes are light. He can’t be more than a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet.

I could ditch the pack, toss it aside in a second and chase his ass down, use the lessons Jamison taught me to get what I want. Answers. Apologies. Fear.

LowLow steps into my path as my fingers slip to the backpack’s chest clip. “Easy, Ploy,” he says. “No need for that.”

“Move,” I tell him. My tone leaves no room for argument. To my surprise, he steps to the side. I stare into the crowd, searching for the blue shirt the guy was wearing. A frantic fluttering starts in my gut. I can’t find him.

I charge forward a few steps before I realize it’s useless. “Damn it.”

“Got him off your scent,” LowLow offers as if it’s some consolation. “At least for now.”

“Would have rather known why he was on it in the first place.”

I know, though. As I stand there watching the crowd, deep inside, I already know.

Jamison’s hunters have found me.

Allie

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