Six men and two women, some of them very big, most of them bigger than me. I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized why they held their hands so oddly—gripped tightly in front of them, each balancing an object. They held weapons. Some held blades—a few short ones like those I had kept in my kitchen, and some longer, one huge and menacing. This knife had no purpose in a kitchen. Melanie supplied the name: a machete.
Others held long bars, some metal, some wooden. Clubs.
I recognized Uncle Jeb in their midst. Held loosely in his hands was an object I’d never seen in person, only in Melanie’s memories, like the big knife. It was a rifle.
I saw horror, but Melanie saw all this with wonder, her mind boggling at their numbers. Eight human survivors. She’d thought Jeb was alone or, in the best case scenario, with only two others. To see so many of her kind alive filled her with joy.
You’re an idiot, I told her. Look at them. See them.
I forced her to see it from my perspective: to see the threatening shapes inside the dirty jeans and light cotton shirts, brown with dust. They might have been human—as she thought of the word—once, but at this moment they were something else. They were barbarians, monsters. They hung over us, slavering for blood.
There was a death sentence in every pair of eyes.
Melanie saw all this and, though grudgingly, she had to admit that I was right. At this moment, her beloved humans were at their worst—like the newspaper stories we’d seen in the abandoned shack. We were looking at killers.
We should have been wiser; we should have died yesterday.
Why would Uncle Jeb keep us alive for this?
A shiver passed through me at the thought. I’d skimmed through the histories of human atrocities. I’d had no stomach for them. Perhaps I should have concentrated better. I knew there were reasons why humans let their enemies live, for a little while. Things they wanted from their minds or their bodies…
Of course it sprang into my head immediately—the one secret they would want from me. The one I could never, never tell them. No matter what they did to me. I would have to kill myself first.
I did not let Melanie see the secret I protected. I used her own defenses against her and threw up a wall in my head to hide behind while I thought of the information for the first time since implantation. There had been no reason to think of it before.
Melanie was hardly even curious on the other side of the wall; she made no effort to break through it. There were much more immediate concerns than the fact that she had not been the only one keeping information in reserve.
Did it matter that I protected my secret from her? I wasn’t as strong as Melanie; I had no doubt she could endure torture. How much pain could I stand before I gave them anything they wanted?
My stomach heaved. Suicide was a repugnant option—worse because it would be murder, too. Melanie would be part of either torture or death. I would wait for that until I had absolutely no other choice.
No, they can’t. Uncle Jeb would never let them hurt me.
Uncle Jeb doesn’t know you’re here, I reminded her.
Tell him!
I focused on the old man’s face. The thick white beard kept me from seeing the set of his mouth, but his eyes did not seem to burn like the others’. From the corner of my eye, I could see a few of the men shift their gaze from me to him. They were waiting for him to answer the question that had alerted me to their presence. Uncle Jeb stared at me, ignoring them.
I can’t tell him, Melanie. He won’t believe me. And if they think I’m lying to them, they’ll think I’m a Seeker. They must have experience enough to know that only a Seeker would come out here with a lie, a story designed for infiltration.
Melanie recognized the truth of my thought at once. The very word Seeker made her recoil with hatred, and she knew these strangers would have the same reaction.
It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m a soul—that’s enough for them.
The one with the machete—the biggest man there, black-haired with oddly fair skin and vivid blue eyes—made a sound of disgust and spit on the ground. He took a step forward, slowly raising the long blade.
Better fast than slow. Better that it was this brutal hand and not mine that killed us. Better that I didn’t die a creature of violence, accountable for Melanie’s blood as well as my own.
“Hold it, Kyle.” Jeb’s words were unhurried, almost casual, but the big man stopped. He grimaced and turned to face Melanie’s uncle.
“Why? You said you made sure. It’s one of them.”
I recognized the voice—he was the same one who’d asked Jeb why he’d given me water.
“Well, yes, she surely is. But it’s a little complicated.”