“You were testing me?” I scoffed. “The fully trained assassin?”
“You said it yourself. Chimera warfare is different than human warfare. You’re like a single bullet, elegant and deadly. Humans are like ten thousand NASCAR fans, each one with his own tank. If our lives are at stake, we are bringing all we have, all we can borrow, and all we can steal. Raynor is definitely not coming alone. Whoever he brings won’t know a damn thing about chimeras. That’s Raynor’s secret. But they’ll be shooters and the kind that don’t mind mowing down a kid or two to get the rest to cooperate. Not to mention Tasers, the rubber bullets like Raynor used on you.” He tapped a finger on my head. “Not as hard as it seems. Who knew? Raynor goddamn knew, Misha. So if something happens to me or Saul, remember that. Raynor is more than a distraction to be used. He’s a genuine threat.”
He was. He was human, but I couldn’t dismiss that he’d caught me and had me chained in his car. ’“I’ll remember, but nothing is going to happen to you.”
“Hello? I’m along for the ride too. How about nothing is going to happen to me?” Saul complained.
Stefan ignored him to say, “And Saul and I might not have USDA-grade assassin stamped on our asses, but between the two of us we’ve killed a shitload more people than you care to know about. So don’t be so quick to jump between me and a bullet this time. If you can keep Wendy from doing her creepy thing, I can take care of myself. Okay?” He waited until I confirmed it.
“All right.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll all get out of this in one piece,” he finished. Then he gave me a hell-on-wheels grin and quoted my favorite word: “Theoretically.”
I tried to grin back, but I didn’t feel it. I planned on this working, but I thought that Butch and Sundance had planned on eventually leaving Bolivia in one piece too. I wished now I hadn’t given us their names while we’d lived in Cascade.
As omens went, it wasn’t a good one.
Chapter 14
It shouldn’t have felt like coming home with Peter and the others waiting to punish me, and if “punish” wasn’t to kill slowly and painfully, then my imagination wasn’t all that I knew it was. It did though—it felt like coming home. We’d been gone only a few days, but I’d missed it. It didn’t stretch my mind, make me learn faster, soak up more knowledge, instinctively fit in better as the adrenaline rush of being on the run did, but it was a nice place all the same. It felt the same as when I watched one of my favorite movies for the fifth or tenth time. I knew every line of dialogue, every explosion, every wave that crashed against a sinking ship, every gunshot, but it was as good as the very first time I watched it . . . better almost. It was warm, familiar, and safe. I’d not had a moment of that in the Institute. I learned the value of it when I’d escaped.
The Bridge to the Heavens was blocked off on Cascade’s end by the sheriff’s car. Sheriff Simmons was dead on the road beside it, and I saw Jess Quillino, his deputy, her legs showing beyond the bumper from the other side of the car. Other than that, there were no other people around—none alive. The bridge over the dam didn’t go anywhere too important, definitely not to an infinity of heavens. If you crossed it and drove about forty miles on a single-lane road, you’d get to a town small enough that it made Cascade seem like New York City. Hardly anyone made the trip from this direction and if they were coming from the other direction, that end of the bridge was blocked by the Institute bus, long GPS disabled; I was certain.
I passed out the tranq guns, tightened my lips, and went with one hope—that I didn’t get us all killed. “Stoipah, Saul, just remember one thing. They’re not kids. They never were. If something goes wrong, they’ll kill you and they’ll laugh while they do it. If it goes bad, use your guns, not the tranq ones. And be sure to shoot them in the head. So—” I inhaled, exhaled hard, and opened the car door. “Let’s go.”