Page 20 of Uncontrolled

I consider the snapshots again. This guy knows me on sight. Maybe I can get his name or an address. Maybe I can get a clear number of how many hunters there really are and give Talia the information she wants, change the gray areas in her knowledge to a solid black or white. When I get what she needs, I’ll let Talia save the day.

It’s something to consider. I can venture downtown and see what happens. I can at least try. If I can’t find the guy, I’ll know I did what I could to help. I head for the door. “Hang in there, okay?”

“Hey, Ploy?” she says.

Hand on the knob, I pause.

For a long moment, she watches me, her expression unreadable. “Leave her,” she says. “Before we all end up hurt.”

A dangerous smile slashes across my mouth. “No one’s hurting Allie.”

I wait for her to lob another insult in my direction, respond, anything. Finally, she nods. “Then watch out for our girl,” Talia says.

With that, I twist the knob and step into the sunshine.

Allie

The bus rattles, bouncing over the potholes of the back roads. I’m tucked against Christopher, the arm he has around me warm enough that my skin’s gone sticky under his touch, but I’m not willing to shake free of him.

I stare out the window, lost in thought. The view slides from suburbs to farms to suburbs as we make our hesitating return trip to Fissure’s Whipp.

Christopher’s fingers curl around a lock of hair that’s slipped loose from my bun and he tucks it behind my ear.

I’m exhausted. From the resurrections I want no part of, to the hunters after us, everywhere I turn and no matter what I do, I’m surrounded by death. I hoped I could talk to Talia today, get rational backup with how I can protect Christopher, and found her half delirious from lack of sleep with a photographic hit list based on nothing more than social media follows.

Still, it’s a mistake to wait until someone gets hurt before I act.

Like it or not, the cluster of resurrectionists in Fissure’s Whipp needs protecting. How did Sarah keep tabs on the hunters? Did she have a spy in their midst? How would she have handled this? These are things I should know, I think bitterly.

At fifteen, before my parents died, I’d been resurrecting, training, learning. Once I moved in with Sarah, everything stopped except the most straightforward of resurrections, and only when she had no other choice but me. Between fifteen and eighteen, as the heir apparent to the Fissure’s Whipp cluster, I should have been groomed for the role I’d fill later in life. Why hadn’t she done that? Surely my teenage angst wasn’t sufficient to convince Sarah to keep me in the dark.

The tip of Christopher’s finger slides across my hairline, past my temple, the motion soothing. My blinks grow longer. I almost drift off to sleep, lost in the floating weightlessness between dreaming and awake when we hit another pothole.

My teeth clack as the bus bounces. I jerk upright. Christopher grabs for me, steadying me as the shocks creak and groan. I’m clamped onto his thigh. Adrenaline surges through my muscles in the split second it takes to orient myself before the bus settles.

“Nice nap?” Christopher asks.

Outside, I’m surprised to see familiar ground. Two stops from now we’ll need to hop off. “Guess so.”

The bus slows. A handful of people meander toward the exits. The doors close with a mechanical wheeze. We rumble past the stream that runs through the center of downtown, cutting its rut through the city.

Rubbing the heel of my palm against my eye, I stand and grab a looped support hanging from above. Christopher follows, catching himself on the worn fabric of the seat in front of us as the driver hits the brakes. My hip slams painfully into the corner of someone’s briefcase. I groan and drop a hand to the spot. The owner of the briefcase doesn’t apologize.

Jerk, I think. But it’s not his fault. A random movement of the bus. Maybe he isn’t aware he hurt me.

Too much hurt for a minor bruise, my brain insists. I stare at the briefcase as the pain in my hip sharpens. And suddenly my over-exhausted brain is spinning. I’ve seen movies where villains use the tips of umbrellas to inject things. Poisons.

Tracking devices? I wonder. Is that how the hunters know about us?

“Allie?” Christopher nudges me. The guy in front of me is gone.

The bus doors start to shut.

“Wait!” I call to the driver. “Sorry! We’re getting off, too!”

There’s grumbling from the surrounding seats, even though no one’s particularly inconvenienced.

The doors reverse, open again, and a whirlwind of exhaust fumes and heat swirls onto the bus. My hip throbs as I rush forward and take the stairs, landing hard off the slightly longer step to the cobblestoned street. Some days I’m all for the kitschy Fissure’s Whipp aesthetic. Today is not one of them.

---