Chapter 11
By the time the sun sets, my shoulders ache, my neck is cramping, and my head throbs in time with my pulse. I desperately need to move my arms.
“Hey, Bowen,” I say, shrugging my shoulders and rolling my neck.
He looks at me and shivers, though the evening is hot. “You seem so normal,” he says. “How old did you say you are again?”
My brain swirls, trying to remember when I aged, when I grew into a body that is definitely older than … “Thir … teen?”
“You’ve got a high voice for a thirteen-year-old boy.”
I cringe. Mental note to self: try to sound like a boy. I clear my throat. “I have to … take a dump.” Bowen’s eyebrows rise and I look away. “The rat. It didn’t agree with me,” I say in a deep voice—a lie. My stomach is sluggishly thrilled with the meat inside it. But I’ve been holding it all day. Pee. Because, well, like I said, I can’t pee standing up.
“Dude.” Bowen sighs, shaking his head like he’s got the worst life in the world. I brace myself for a sound kick, but he doesn’t kick me this time. “Can I get an armed guard over here? The Level Ten’s got to take another dump,” he yells. The whole camp turns and stares at me, and a slow burn creeps up my neck, all the way to my hairline. I hang my head so my hair hides my entire face.
Five brown-uniformed, gun-wielding men come forward, and Bowen pushes the remote. My legs unfuse. I wobble, lose my balance, and fall on my face beside the warm fire ring, my cuffed hands pinned painfully beneath me. Men start laughing and guns dig into my back, jabbing at my ribs hard enough to make me gasp.
“Stupid Fec,” Bowen mutters, and wraps his hand in my shirt. He pulls up. The fabric strains in his hand, and I rise off the ground, hovering just above the dirt as I try to maneuver my feet below my body. My shirt pulls against my armpits, and a loud rip grates against my senses. I fall back to the ground—face-plant, really—and dirt goes into my mouth, digs into my cheek, my naked stomach, and my bare shoulders.
Oh, crap.
The fabric binding my breasts is the only thing that hides the truth about me.
A hand grabs my elbow. “Someone get his other elbow,” Bowen grumbles.
“You serious, man? You want one of us to touch it?” someone whines.
“Just hurry up,” Bowen snaps.
A warm hand clutches my other elbow, and I’m heaved to my feet. I hang my head low and hunch my shoulders forward, too scared to spit the dirt out of my mouth. Too scared to even breathe—I’m practically naked, standing in a camp filled exclusively with armed men. And then I understand Arrin’s insistence on my looking like a boy. I hunch forward even more and press my arms against my chest until my shoulders want to pop. I might be able to hide my breasts, but I can’t hide the way my hollow stomach curves outward to meet my wide hips.
“You got a broken rib?” Bowen asks, jabbing my back hard with his finger as if he hopes I do. I can’t form words—am still gasping for breath—so I shake my head.
My escort and I walk to the bathroom in silence, with only the evening darkness keeping my secret. I step into the dim bathroom, and the light automatically flickers on. The armed guard wait outside, but Bowen stands in the doorway and glares at me. I hunch even more, straining my shoulders forward, forcing my chest concave, mentally cursing my body for growing breasts and hips.
“Well?” he says, crossing his arms.
I peer at him through my hair, too scared to move.
“What’ya waiting for? Hurry up.” Without uncrossing his arms, he pushes the remote and my arms unfuse.
I am at the stall in two steps, slamming the door behind me and sliding the lock into place. And then I look down. The binding is still securely in place over my breasts, but without my oversize T-shirt, it is obvious. I am a girl. Nearly a woman. I stare down at my body and marvel at the slide of waist leading to hips, the small bulge of breasts that makes my skin crease just above the bindings. Because the body I’m looking at? It is not the body I remember belonging to my head and brain.
Where have I been that my body has grown up so fast?
“Kid. You almost done?” Bowen hollers. Men snicker. I drop my pants and sit on the toilet. When I’m done, I pull the pants back up and squeeze the waistband over my hips, barely able to button it. And that’s when the siren blares.
Without warning, electricity hums in my wrist cuffs, and my forearms fuse together. The stall door crashes open, slamming into my face and cutting my mouth, and Bowen is there, dragging me out of the stall by my arm. He curses under his breath, yanking me out of the bathroom, through the dark night, and we merge into groups of running men holding their guns on their shoulders.
The night turns to day as lights built into the wall flood the ground. And then I see the reason for the commotion.
A guy has entered the camp—young, black haired, shirtless, with straining muscles and bulging veins beneath skin the color of coffee. He’s growling and throwing men around like they’re paper dolls dressed in brown paper uniforms.
“No guns! Taser the beast! Taser to stun!” Bowen roars beside me, pulling me faster. Toward the uproar. Toward the beast. “Tasers! Now!” he shrieks.
Several men release their guns and grab palm-size black devices from their belts, aiming toward the beast. With a zip of electricity I can feel in my cuffs, the Tasers go off, zapping the men surrounding the beast with a quick flash of blue as tiny metal prongs embed into their skin. They crumple to the ground, eyes rolled back in their heads, mouths slack, bodies convulsing. With them down, there is a clear path to the beast. My cuffs tingle with electricity again, and blue sparks light the air, but when they hit the beast, he growls, yanks the small metal Taser plates off his skin, and keeps attacking.
Surely Bowen can see how insane this person is, I tell myself. Yet Bowen still drags me toward it. And all I can think is, Is he crazy?
I dig my feet into the ground, dragging against his hold. He pulls harder. I dig my feet deeper. His eyes meet mine, full of fury, and he smacks me upside the head, knuckles slamming into my temple.
The world swims before my eyes, a blur of brown coats and guns, and my knees buckle. Bowen’s arm snakes around my waist, and he drags me the last few steps toward the beast. In one swift move, he throws me down to the ground. And then he sits on me, his legs on either side of my hips.
His eyes flicker to my bound chest and he freezes, as if everything in the world but the two of us has disappeared. Time stops, my eyes grow wide, and his green eyes take in every detail of my body before meeting mine again. When our eyes lock, his brow furrows, his eyes narrow in confusion, and he blinks. But then the cuffs on my arms fall from my skin. Bowen picks them up and stands, taking a slow step away from me.
I roll onto my side, toward the beast, and whimper at what I see. A circle of militia, at least twenty thick, surround the beast and two other people. The militia have their Tasers and automatic weapons trained on the beast, following its every move. The beast’s muscles twitch and spasm from the electrical residue of the Tasers, but it doesn’t seem to care.
Bowen, his hands raised, speaks soothing words to the beast as he slowly walks toward it. But the beast isn’t paying attention to him. It is looking at the third person trapped inside the armed circle of militia.
Me.
Its dark eyes, the irises overwhelmed with pupil, devour me. And there is nothing human about the way it stares. I am looking into the eyes of a wild animal. A very deadly, brawny wild animal. Bowen looks between the beast and me as if debating something. His jaw pulses, his body goes taut, and then, as if it pains him, he steps between the beast and me.
“You move, you die,” he says to the beast, his voice no longer calm and soothing.
The beast growls and fakes a lunge forward, but Bowen doesn’t budge. A deep, gravelly hum interrupts the silent night, growing slowly louder, like a jet tearing across the sky. And then the sound grates against the night, vibrating in my ears. It is coming from the beast’s mouth. It leaps forward and swats Bowen aside, flinging him through the air. And then it is just the beast and me. It stares at me, lips pulled back from its stained teeth, drool coating its skin, eyes starved, as if it is about to devour a feast. Me.
But as Bowen flies through the air his voice rings out clarion clear:
“Taser to kill!”
Never taking its animal eyes from me, the beast leaps. Streams of blue lightning flash above my head, disappearing into the creature’s dark skin. Its feral eyes stop staring as they roll back in its head, gleaming bloodshot white, and its body convulses as it soars through the air.
It lands on me, crushing me into the ground, and electrical current enters my body, boils my blood, and jolts my heart.
The beast spasms atop me and my eyes roll back into my head.