The Pursuit (The Permutation Archives Book 2) Read online

  “Mom? Julius?” I didn’t know the others well enough to care as much about their well-being. Not saying I didn’t care at all. Just not nearly as much. “Caius?”

  The glass had shattered from all the windows, showering all of them in shards. I could make out all of them, a couple of them even moving. Famke and Julius, Julius right in front of me, were awake, and Caius and my mother were out cold. Liam, there was no hope for Liam now. He had been driving the Humvee when the missile made contact, and the impact had killed him. There was a long stream of blood dripping into a large, crimson puddle on the roof of the Humvee. And it looked like he had made them all buckle up. Julius was silent, blinking past the ringing I had no doubt that was coming from his shattered ears.

  “Oh my god,” I breathed in relief. “Julius, are you okay?”

  “Mila?” Julius groaned, his face locked in a pained expression as he struggled against the seatbelt that held him upside down.

  My eyes caught his and I saw the agony there. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, and he squinted at me like his vision was fuzzy and was having trouble focusing.

  “It’s me. Let’s get you guys out of here.” I reached into the Humvee and felt around for the seatbelt buckle, but couldn’t find any. “Shit! I can’t find the buckle.”

  “Get out of here, Mila. Save yourself. We need you to save our people. Get out of here!”

  He was trying to be noble, but I wouldn’t allow him to be. We had been best friends since childhood, and I wasn’t about to spend my life without him as selfish as that may be.

  “I’m not going anywhere without you. I will not leave you here to die. Now help me before they decide to get personal,” I chided as I continued to feel around his waist, still not finding the button to release the belt. “Goddammit, where is it?” Frustration bled into my voice along with frustration and panic.

  He sighed and replied, “I got it. Back up a little or I’ll fall right on top of you.”

  High pitched screaming started, and I realized it was from Famke, her gaze wide and focused behind me from the front passenger seat. I stood abruptly and turned in enough time for an arm to make its way to my throat and a strong body to push me into the side of the Humvee, the back of my head colliding with the running board at the doors. My vision swam as I became slightly disoriented from the blow.

  “Mila,” Julius cried from inside the Humvee.

  The others outside of the Humvees were otherwise occupied with the others that had come with the man now holding me against the cold and unforgiving metal that made up the vehicle. I even made out Ajax’s large frame on the ground past the man’s shoulder. I recognized him instantly as I watched bones shifting like plates underneath his skin, my blurry vision from the hit making it hard to stare into his eyes. Disgust rolled through my belly. Disgust and interest. He was a shapeshifter and, before him, I had never seen one until our attempted escape. Of course, I hadn’t seen a lot of things until the moments at the compound, and I was willing to bet I’d see much more. Even if I didn’t want to.

  A punch landed on my left temple, causing my ringing ears to ring even louder and my vision to go completely black for a second when the searing pain pounded through my skull. The man pulled his fist back again, and it was like it was happening in slow motion. His bones and knuckles shifted under his flesh, forming a flat and sharp ridge as his fist collided with my face again. I tasted blood this time. A plan was beginning to form in my fuzzy mind, but who knew if it would do me any good. I had to get at least some distance between this man and myself to be able to do anything. My power was perfect for long range. I wasn’t so sure about close range just yet, but I was certain I’d figure that out soon enough.

  Pooling as much saliva I could into the space below my tongue, I spat in his face, blood, and spittle landing just below his left eye and sliding down his face as the plates shifted just underneath his flesh. Anger and rage filled his eyes as he wiped it away with the back of a gloved hand, the black leather coming away slick and coated with the little bit of blood in my mouth.

  “You bitch,” he yelled as he punched me again, the taste of iron growing stronger on my tongue.

  He then grabbed the front of my shirt and tossed me away like a rag doll with so much force it was terrifying.

  I tried to remain on my feet, but I fell to the ground, the thick brush making a soft place to fall into. He was strong, which I knew, but I hadn’t given him full credit for it. Strength wasn’t all he had going for him. He was sly in the way he moved, sleek and graceful like a jungle cat that I had only seen in a video one time years prior in one of the many science classes we were forced to take in school. But I remembered how they moved. Lethal poise coiled in sleek muscle and smooth fur. This was how he stalked toward me now. He was a predator, and I was his prey. Even his dark eyes stared at me in much the same way as I lie there on the ground, my muscles refusing to do what I was silently begging them to. The will to do what I had planned to do once out of his grasp gone in an instant. Now I was frozen in place, foiling my own strategy.

  Gunfire started again, the bullets missing the man in front of me entirely as those that had come with him struggled with my friends. Each new round of shots caused my left ear to ring even more with the force of their blast from the barrels in the distance. I couldn’t hear out of my right ear at all and I knew I wouldn’t ever again.

  The bones never stopped shifting beneath his flesh as if his body couldn’t decide which form to take. Take the form of the sleek killer underneath, or keep the shape of the cruel and traitorous man. My muscles refused to work, but my mind and mouth seemed to work just fine, spouting out just one question in defiance.

  “Why?” I asked, cringing as a couple of bullets struck the ground next to me.

  His face didn’t show any trace of the terror he should feel as if fear wasn’t something he felt any longer.

  “Why what?” he asked as he took another step toward me, his muscles rippling underneath his black t-shirt.

  His massive arms flexed as he clenched his fists preparing for another blow.

  I raised my arm, palm out toward him threatening to strike if he came any further. He stopped in his tracks, his gaze analyzing me to decide if I was truly as dangerous as they said or not.

  “Why did you betray us? What’s in it for you?”

  Those were two questions that burned in my mind when I thought about those who chose the side of King and his army of Harvested rats like us. Ones that they had somehow turned against their own. Were they promised something in exchange for their treachery? Or somewhere to belong?

  “Because I want what anyone wants. Freedom to live without fear,” his eyes swept over me again, studying me. “Was that the answer you were looking for?”

  “Yes,” I replied as I heard the familiar sound of another missile whistling in our direction, my heart rate spiking as I tracked its progress. “It just makes it easier to do this.”

  “To do what?” he asked as a look of confusion crossed over his face.

  The missile was closing in on us, so I needed to act fast. I used my anger and my fear to build the energy inside of me it would take for my plan to work, and he was none the wiser. Warmth spread through my body along with a growing tightness in my gut, my entire body clenching with anticipation.

  “This,” I answered once the missile was within reach of the force that drove my power.

  I wrapped my invisible fingers around the shell and turned it in his direction as it whizzed past my head, barely missing me in time to strike its target. My arms automatically rose to cover my face and head as I felt the heat as it struck him, but what I had been expecting to happen didn’t transpire. Not even close. The impact should have resulted in an explosion that would destroy him, leaving no trace of his existence and possibly even all of ours in the process. Everything went sile
nt as I took the sight in and peeked out from behind my arms, each person in the clearing frozen in place and watching everything unfold. From the looks of it, they had only sent a few soldiers like us to either kill us or take us in with some heavy artillery just in case their power wasn’t enough. I could tell them it possibly could be upon seeing this.

  I sat there in awe and took in the scene before me. The missile collided with his midsection, but didn’t go off as expected. There was an implosion, his body absorbing the heat, fire, and radioactive energies that were trapped inside of its metal canister. There was a bright light that dimmed to a harsh, angry glow. He grunted as his abdomen contorted around it, taking it into himself as the plates underneath his skin morphed and shifted. This would have been the perfect moment to run for it, but I remained frozen to my spot on the ground among the green. A sinister grin spread across his lips, and he took a step toward me as the light began to dissipate, his body absorbing it at a slow pace.

  Two gunshots erupted into the still air, and I saw the man’s comrades fall to the ground out of my peripheral vision. Ajax and Ryder had shot them both, Ajax rising to his feet with the distraction. One shot, one kill. Directly between the eyes. The soldier began to walk toward me again, quickening his steps as the light inside of him faded into nothingness and the plates ceased shifting, one at a time.

  I attempted to latch onto him with my power, to focus down to his most basic molecular level that I could. When I couldn’t penetrate his exterior, I began to panic, backing away from him along the ground like a crab until my back hit a tree trunk. A sharp point jabbed into my back, but I held back my cry of pain as his presence loomed over me. Bullets began to ricochet off of his skin, flying off in all directions. I turned to see Ryder firing as many rounds at the man as he could, Ajax and Noah reloading their own weapons. They had run their arms out of ammunition, scrambling to load them as quickly as possible. The bullets didn’t faze the soldier in front of me at all, and he kept coming, the menacing grin never once leaving his face. That was until a bullet collided with his continuously shifting features. A frown took the place of the sneer, replaced by fury.

  Within just a few long strides he was in front of me, reaching down toward me and grabbing a fistful of my shirt in his hand. He jerked me to my feet, my head rolling on my shoulders violently with the motion and the force of it. I gripped his wrist, feeling the hard muscle and plates shifting underneath the each movement. He reached back with a closed fist, and I raised one hand on instinct to protect myself from the blow.

  “Hey,” I heard Julius’s muffled voice sound from behind the soldier, my damaged ears barely registering the sound.

  He turned around, and Julius put out his arm, the acid he ejected eating at the flesh in his hand and shooting out to land on the soldier’s face and head. Screams ripped through the air as the acid ate away at what seemed to be protection from most of our abilities as well as man-made weapons. His hand let go of me, and I fell against the tree, that same portion that jutted out jabbing into my back painfully. I cried out in pain and watched as the soldier struggled, trying to rid himself of the flesh-eating acid.

  We all watched, stunned as the man took his hands away from his face, screaming out into the empty air as even the birds fell silent. The plates that had been shifting across his features, indeterminable in what shape they would take, had been eaten away by Julius’ acid rain, exposing the meat and bone underneath it. His cheekbones showed through like bleach white pearls, gleaming with blood and plasma as the acid continued to eat away at the muscle and flesh covering them. I heard my mother cry out to me, yelling my name to grab my attention as she crawled from within the wreckage of the Humvee followed by a bloodied Caius. When our eyes met, I knew I had to act fast because now it was up to me. Julius opened up the shifting man to my power, and I could take him down. And all I needed was a small opening, even if it were the size of a pinhead I could worm my way in and work through their system like a virus. That was what I had learned in the compound, but this was new. This was one of our own. This was the ultimate betrayal. It didn’t matter that he had become a traitor to his own kind to remain safe from King’s killing grasp. He was one of us, and we had so few numbers as it was as far as I knew. But this, killing him to save us, was my only option.

  I rose to my feet, stamping through the thick foliage as I let the power build inside of me and brought my hand out in front of me. The soldier fell to his knees as the others watched, laughter bubbling up in his throat despite the apparent agony he was enduring. Ryder moved around him to stand beside me, gun out even though I could tell that he was out of bullets, poised and ready to defend me when it came down to that.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked the chuckling man. “I’m sure you have something to say before we kill you.”

  The solid plates were beginning to move again, but slowly because of the damage caused. Ajax moved forward, his blond hair a mass stuck to his forehead with blood and sweat, raising his gun and hitting him in the back of the head with the butt of it. The soldier, whose name I still didn’t even care to know, fell forward, hands on the ground to keep him upright, but the laughter still racking his body as if no one struck him at all. His shoulders shook with it.

  “You better talk before we decide just to shoot you on principle,” he hissed through gritted teeth, kneeling down beside the man and attempting to look him in the eye.

  He didn’t turn to look at Ajax. His face turned up to look directly into mine. The smile on his face made my blood run cold within my veins, goosebumps breaking out over my skin.

  “That’ll be a neat trick since you’re out of bullets,” he instigated, but continued after one deep breath as he fought the laughter threatening to take him over once more.

  Ajax’s eyes met mine with incredulity that this man knew that information, but the look in his eyes confirmed what the man had stated and then those amber eyes averted to my mother.

  “I find it funny that you think what you do will matter. Because, in the end,” he paused, dark eyes meeting my intensely green ones, “we will all bow down to King, no matter how much power or purpose we think we have.”

  “So you just decided to cut out the middle man and join him before they came to you?” Julius asked.

  There was no hesitation in his eyes as he stared at the man’s back, a murderous rage causing his muscles to ripple underneath his clothes.

  “I did. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore, and I’m not. I made the right choice.”

  The plates began to pick up speed underneath his flesh, attempting to begin to fill in the hole the acid had created in the center of his face.

  My eyes narrowed, and I took another step toward him, my trigger finger eager to force the power into him, killing him. “You’re stalling. You see him shifting underneath his skin?” I asked as I looked around at the others. I hadn’t noticed, but now Famke was on the ground next to Doctor Aserov, who had a reassuring hand on her shoulder, eyes weary. “He’s healing and then he’ll kill all of us. We have to end him now, or we’ll never make it beyond this point.”

  Everyone knew I was right. I could see it on their faces as I stared at each one in turn. Noah’s remained frozen in indifference. He didn’t care whether the man lived or died. Famke’s intense look of rage would have probably killed the man on sight if he looked at her. Ajax, my mother, and Caius wore the exact same expression. Julius didn’t even look at me and wouldn’t even tear his eyes away from the back of the soldier down before me. That in itself said enough. The good doctor showed concern, probably about the new turn I had taken in the care if King, but that didn’t matter to me now and could be dealt with later. And Ryder’s gorgeous green eyes shifted between myself, my mother, and the soldier, but I couldn’t read his expression. It was like all that time under King’s regime had helped him become as cold and uncaring as possible when he needed to be. A manipu
lator at best. Maybe my mother was right. And Liam’s vote no longer counted, I realized as Noah had turned to remove his body from the Humvee he had died in.

  “Killing me won’t do anything to stop the others that King will send after you. You know that,” the soldier spat in my direction.

  I turned back to him, letting the anger and rage fill me until it threatened to spill over and out through my outstretched hand. I still had no control over my ability when I was enraged beyond all hope of pulling me back before I did something I may regret, but this wasn’t one of those things. This sniveling coward had chosen the easy way out, deciding that it was easier to kill those like us instead of standing to fight against our control and possible eradication in the future once our purpose had been served.

  “Yeah, but it’ll keep me out of his grasp just long enough for me to find a way to end this finally. Plus, all he wants is my power, right? I’m just the inconvenient girl that stands in the way of what he really wants.” Without wavering, I warned, “You guys may want to back up. Or hide behind something. This won’t be pretty.”

  I let the power build until I was riding it like a tidal wave, it threatening to take me over with no remorse. And it wouldn’t stop until the man in front of me was dead and gone. Then I remembered the bullets and remaining missile, knowing there was at least one other person out there worth my rage.

  “And how about we bring out your friend?” I asked as every single one of my companions hid behind both the downed Humvee and the righted one.

  His eyes widened as I reached out with my invisible hands, grasping onto the body of yet another strong man that I would break with my will and inner strength. The same strength that King was after for his own sinister purposes if not for himself entirely. I brought the man toward us, closing the at least thirty-yard distance between him and us. The new soldier’s eyes were wide with fear, the brown twinkling with terrified tears; arms close at his sides as if held by a rope. His strong jaw was set in consternation despite his visible fear. The man was dressed in all black, meant to blend in with our own, no doubt. To earn our trust. But I was confident the others would’ve known something was wrong, knowing that they didn’t belong, but why would they risk being caught? I had them both within my invincible grasp with no hope of escape with how angry I was, the power flowing through me like an unstoppable force set free from its cage. A cage King had opened with no way to close now that I knew what I was capable of.