The Renegades (The Superiors) Read online

  THE RENEGADES

  By Lena Hillbrand

  THE RENEGADES

  Lena Hillbrand

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2013 Lena Hillbrand

  This book will soon be available in print at popular online retailers.

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  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Draven was running. He had been running for some time. Running from humans who had captured and lost him, running from the law that had once protected him. He no longer relied on the Law to provide for and protect him. He had crossed a member of Law Enforcement, and although he did not know if a case against him had been fabricated, or if a case could be made from his violations, he did not intend to find out.

  He darted between two buildings and came to a halt when he saw he could continue no further. Some sort of construction blocked the end of the alley. He could hear the men closing in, drawing nearer every moment. He sprinted straight for the metal scaffolding, not sure if he could clear it but having little alternative. If the men caught him, he would no longer have to wonder if a case against him existed.

  Relying on instinct, he did not consider his actions before he leapt. One moment he was running, and the next he was swinging from a metal bar high above the abandoned alleyway. He twisted his body to increase its natural momentum until he could have completed a full rotation with one more swing. Instead, he released the bar at the zenith of his body’s next arc and sailed through the air towards the roof.

  The scaffolding did not provide enough lift for him to gain the roof, however, and his feet struck the brick wall and propelled him backwards. As he fell, he rotated his body and reached out until his fingers closed around the iron bar once more. He glanced back towards the alley’s entrance, to the street below, where his pursuers now turned into the alleyway. They had not yet looked up and seen him. Moving hand over hand, he edged to the brick wall and began to climb, spider-like, towards the roof.

  Even after a year, his newfound abilities fascinated him. Knowing the extent of his physical powers was at once exhilarating and sobering. He’d lived a hundred years never knowing the limits of his physical capabilities. No one had told him he could scale a building like his hands came equipped with suctions. No one had told him he could leap a flight of stairs instead of climbing them, that he could swing from branch to branch like the fabled animal called a monkey, that he could fall three stories and land on his feet, unharmed. No one had told him, because they’d rather he not know.

  After scrambling onto the roof, he looked down to see the three men below peering about in confusion. They had not looked up to see him ascend the building. If, like he, they had belonged to the Third Order, they would not have known he possessed the capability to achieve such a feat, or that they possessed those same abilities and could have followed him. Even the lone Second among the three men, who likely knew he possessed such power, could not seem to understand where Draven had gone. Had the Second seen him, he perhaps still would not have tried to follow. Who would attempt to scale the face of a brick building with his bare hands?

  After watching the men’s puzzled expressions a moment longer, Draven turned and started across the roof. Now that he’d eaten—stolen his dinner, as usual, this time from the livestock of the Second still standing in the alleyway wondering how Draven had disappeared into thin air—he felt strong and alert, determined as ever. He leapt to the next rooftop, no longer bothering to pause and contemplate the jump or wonder if he could clear the distance between buildings. He usually could. When he couldn’t, he landed on his feet and continued onwards. Once he’d broken a leg, he thought, but that had healed in a few days, despite the pain.

  As he traversed the city, he turned his head, left, right, left-right, scanning. Always scenting for his lost homo-sapien, hoping to savor her scent among all the other scents of the city. Sometimes, discouraged, he imagined her owner had left the area after he’d wrested her from Draven. But Draven did not think it likely. And until he knew, until he’d scented every apartment and house in Princeton, he would continue searching.

  This night, like each of those over the past year, yielded no results. He finished his search with the familiar disappointment he experienced each night. Though he longed to continue searching all day, he could not. He would tire quickly and lose strength, and he could not see well enough to calculate distances in daylight. If he fell and injured himself and could not drag himself to safety, he risked not only severe sunburn, but also discovery.

  Long after the bells chimed, when the sky had brightened and other Superiors retired for the night, leaving the deserted streets lit only by the blue light of dawn, Draven turned back. The town lay quiet and, but for a few windows lit from within by the faint glow of electricity, appeared abandoned. Draven skimmed the roofs, avoiding energy collecting devices and rooftop greenery, and swung down to the street by the same scaffolding he’d ascended. After verifying that no one had observed him, he started for his sleeping spot, racing through the streets at his newly discovered speed. He’d never before realized the extent of his speed and endurance, even during the short time he had trained with the Enforcer who now called him an enemy and a traitor. Perhaps he’d never before possessed such speed and endurance.

  He arrived at the chain-link fence, scaled it in seconds, leapt the razor wire and dropped into the lot. He moved between dented cars and stacks of balding tires to the back of the lot. After ensuring he was alone, he lifted his door and crawled inside, pulled the door into place behind him and made himself comfortable in the body of the vehicle he had chosen for his new home. Though perhaps he was not officially a fugitive, he lived as one, because by failing to participate in society, he became a threat to the order that the Law so vehemently imposed.

  Chapter 2

  Cali sat at the end of her chain, leaning forward with legs splayed. She clapped her hands and smiled at the baby.

  “Come on,” she said, clapping lightly as she coaxed him to move. “Come ‘ere, baby, you can do it. Come on.”

  The baby stomped his chubby foot and squealed, then fell forward on his hands and knees and crawled to her.

  “Walk,” she said, lifting him onto his feet and scooting back. “You can’t sit on my lap until you walk.”

  Leo waved his fists and let out an angry wail of protest.

  “Girl, you torturing our baby again?” Shelly asked, twitching in from the balcony. Cali hefted the baby onto her lap and rolled onto her back to put it on her stomach.

  “He’s fine,” she said. “I was just trying to get him to get up and walk. Shouldn’t he be doing that by now?”

  “He’ll walk when he’s good and ready, won’t you, Leo?” Shelly said, coming over to pat the baby’s back.

  “You know, I never would have pegged you for a good father,” Cali said.

  “Girl, stop your words. I’m as motherly as you are.”

  Cali laughed. “That you are.”

  Shelly lifted the baby and made kissy faces at him. “Did Mommy hurt you? She’s a bad mommy, yes she is.” The baby reached out and grabbed Shelly’s protruding lip. Shelly pulled away, pretending to spit in disgust. All this left the baby unmo
ved, but Cali giggled enough for them both. She found it hard not to feel good with a baby around, even though she had plenty of reasons for unhappiness. Every day she had to remind herself that the baby didn’t belong to them, that soon enough Master would sell it.

  “You better stop getting so attached,” she warned Shelly, who was bouncing the baby on his hip while he uncovered the fall garden from the tarps.

  “Ba-ba-ba,” Leo said.

  “That’s right,” Shelly said. “And I’m not attached.” He gathered the tarp at the edge of the garden and secured it with an elastic cord. “Besides, so what if I am?” he continued. “At least the baby gets some love. I can deal with a broken heart, you know. I done it before.”

  “Yeah, okay, princess,” Cali said, borrowing a word she’d learned from her hero when he’d helped her escape last year. Unfortunately, that hadn’t worked out too well for her, and now she had to wear an ankle cuff that chained her to a metal loop in the wall next to the bed. Also, she was pretty sure her hero had met a bloody end when she’d been recaptured, but that didn’t stop her from thinking of him as her hero and referring to him constantly—a habit that annoyed Shelly to no end.

  “Hey, just cause some people got a Superior heart and can’t love, don’t mean we all have to be so cruel.” Shelly leaned in the door to deliver this news.

  “I’m not cruel,” Cali said. “And I don’t have a Superior heart. I don’t even believe Superiors have hearts.” She stretched out on the floor so she could reach the door. Propping her chin in her hands, she watched Shelly working outside. She could only look now. She could no longer help in the garden. At least she could reach the door to talk to Shelly while he worked, though she had to lie down to do that. “For your information,” she said, “maybe I loved Herman. Now give me that baby, before you drop him. If you get to do the garden, you can’t hog the baby, too.”

  “He has a name, you know,” Shelly said, squatting to deposit the boy with Cali. “And you can’t love someone you met for one day. You only love the idea of Herman, which is the idea of freedom. Both of which are dead, so stop thinking about it before you get us in trouble again.”

  Cali wiggled her fingers in the baby’s face until he grabbed one. She played with him until Shelly went back to poking around in the soil and looking at the vegetables. Though the thought of escape was never far from her mind, she didn’t like to think of what her failed attempt had cost her. She’d lost all freedom when Master had recaptured her. When they’d gotten home that morning, he’d thrown her into her apartment so hard she’d hit the wall and lost consciousness. Just as she woke, he’d come into their rooms, strapped an ankle cuff on her and chained her to the wall, then thrown her on the bed, sat on her and seared the back of her hand with a branding iron while she shrieked and thrashed futilely.

  Worse still, after he’d beaten her nearly unconscious again, he’d made her watch as he beat Shelly and the baby, telling her that her actions caused their suffering and that if she ever disobeyed him again, she’d sentence her companions to punishment equal her own. Shelly had lost two teeth that day and limped for months, and she suspected Leo would never function as a normal baby would.

  Though she grieved what she’d caused her companions, she’d had a taste of freedom, the hope of it, and she couldn’t get it out of her mind ever since.

  Chapter 3

  Byron woke with a headache. He’d had a bit too much wine that morning. He rid his body of it in the washroom, then cleaned up. He wasn’t having the best year. Nothing had gone right on his case in over a year, and it looked like he’d be stuck in Princeton another winter if things didn’t clear up in the next few months. The way things had gone lately, he didn’t see that happening.

  Byron had begun to hate Princeton. He hated snow and he hated winter and he hated the mountains. Most of all, he hated sapiens and his dependence on them. He hated people who treated them kindly and gave them freedoms they were too brainless to handle, people like Meyer Kidd.

  If he’d been able to dream, he would’ve had nightmares about the souldamned kid every day, and Kidd was enough of a nightmare when Byron was awake. No matter how he tried, Byron could not connect Kidd to the escaped humans or the missing Superiors in his case. Worse, he knew the connection existed, and not being able to find it infuriated him. He talked to Meyer every few weeks, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that every time he hung up, Meyer was having a good laugh at him.

  This boy, this child, had gotten the better of him, and Byron couldn’t stop thinking about it. Milton had warned Byron that if he didn’t stop obsessing over the connection, he’d have to take him off the case. Byron had never been taken off a case. He knew he was right. But he couldn’t prove anything.

  On top of that, he’d thought the case was nearly solved when he’d trapped some runaway saps in an old building, only to have them turn on him and his partners with weapons no sap should know about. He was lucky he had escaped with his life. Well, not lucky so much as shrewd. He’d lived through a hundred years of war, and a hundred more after that, and he’d be damned if he was going to meet his end at the hands of a bunch of dumb animals with crude wooden stakes.

  He knew that, by law, he could not slaughter even the most dangerous sapiens. But if he’d tried to preserve them for the blood bank, as his partners had, he’d have wound up as dead as they were. Saps who tried to kill Superiors didn’t deserve to live anyway, not even in blood banks.

  The discovery of vigilante saps wasn’t even the worst part of that situation. He’d discovered the worst the next night when a team of Enforcers had returned to identify the bodies and clean up. They’d found things a bit different from how he’d left them.

  For one, the mutant incubus that Byron had incapacitated had escaped. Just thinking about the creature gave him the creeps. Not only had the incubus gotten away, somehow Draven had managed to escape, too, though Byron had made sure that dumb prick had been incapacitated before he left. Otherwise, the brainless backar chodu would have tried to fight him for his sapien. He should have known better than to befriend a Third. No matter how promising Third Order Superiors appeared, they always disappointed in the end.

  Now here were all these wise, experienced, intelligent Seconds, stuck governing a bunch of lower-class Third Order killing machines, trying to keep them civilized and orderly. The Second Order had done a good job of it. If anything could be said for killing machines, they were good at following orders. In fact, the Third Order caused only a rash of petty crime on occasion. Seconds were responsible for the serious crimes, the ones only Enforcers and government officials knew about.

  Like this damn Meyer Kidd. This was what happened when someone made a harebrained decision and brought a ten-year-old through the evolution process. They should have drained him like a glass of fresh sap and left his carcass for the rats, as they had the rest of the humans during the Great Evolution.

  No good could come from letting a ten-year-old conduct his own affairs. He should have been asking Mommy and Daddy for a chocolate milk at his age. Or a chocolate sap, if evolution couldn’t be avoided. He damn sure shouldn’t run his own business, making out like a bandit while he was at it. The kid should have failed in the first month.

  Byron sighed, coming back to the present. His obsession wore on him, had begun to make him ignore other options in the case. But the option of vigilante humans was too ludicrous to consider. Superiors had to be behind it somewhere.

  When he found those Superiors responsible, he would have his revenge. He’d taken a stake in the side that night, and he’d only gotten his own sapien in return. He hadn’t even known she’d joined the runaways until he saw her. What a shock that had been. She’d survived the massacre, thanks to that little jhant chaatu Draven, who thought saving her meant she belonged to him. What a joke. Byron had purchased her, therefore she was his. End of discussion.

  Chapter 4

  Draven spent his nights searching for Cali—and for food. Though he stole h
is meals each night, he had no way of knowing how many times his thefts had been reported. Livestock owners seldom inspected their saps, and they likely would not notice an extra set of teeth marks before it faded in a day or so. Some saps would report Draven’s visit to their masters, but their word alone could not incriminate him. Even if a Superior spotted him, no one knew his identity. As long as he avoided capture, no new charges would be laid against him.

  Often he thought of the man he had killed, and the sap he’d killed the next summer. He thought also of Sally and of his time in captivity. She had freed him, against everything her family and her community believed in, and for that, he owed her his life. He hoped her traitorous act had not cost her too dearly. But he’d never dared return to her village to find out.

  Among the possessions her people had taken from him were his money, his papers, and the supplies he’d purchased for Cali when he had begun his journey. He smiled to himself at the thought of how simple it had seemed then. He’d thought he would follow Byron, explain the situation, and pay handsomely for the sapien, letting Byron profit from the sale. Then he would return home with his prized possession. What a fool he had been. Nearly two years later, he had nothing—no sapien, no job, no apartment, not even an identity.

  At least Sally had managed to sneak one of his backpacks out of her house. In this, she had placed most of his clothing, a few extra items that must have belonged to her family, a hunting knife, a pocketknife, a packet of garlic, a jar of cloves, a jar of lemon peel, his maps, a small survival kit, a few lighters, and a letter. He knew the letter was the riskiest of her contributions to his escape, and he read it often when alone.

  Now he threaded his way down the side of a building, ducking between the cages that served as gardens for the sapiens inside. He had seen Cali’s garden at her first home in the Confinement, and he hoped Byron had provided a larger one than the small balcony gardens on the apartment buildings. Cali had loved gardening.