Chapter 209: Hunted.
A group of teenagers lounged outside the club, bass leaking through the thick walls behind them in dull, rhythmic pulses. Inside the walls, clubs ran under strict regulation. The noise had limits.
"Now that CGI’s shut down all the ability schools," one of the boys said, leaning lazily against the graffiti-scarred wall, "I think they’re getting ready to turn us all into Strays."
"Fuck you, Ryan." The only girl in the group raised a middle finger at him, her silver rings catching the neon glow from the club sign. "And fuck gift extraction."
"I don’t even think there’s anything outside these walls," another boy muttered. He kicked at a loose chunk of pavement, sending it skittering into the gutter. "I don’t think there’s another world out there at all."
The girl stopped listening. Her eyes drifted past him, into the darkness across the street. For a second she thought she saw something. A figure, pale and ghostly under the flickering streetlights, moving fast, crossing from one side to the other and slipping into a narrow corridor. Naked.
"What?" The heavyset boy beside her turned his head, brow furrowing as he followed her stare. "You good?"
She blinked hard, rubbing her thumb across her lower lip. "Yeah... maybe I’m just seeing shit."
Then the figure appeared again, closer this time. A young woman, maybe twenty, moving in a staggering run down the street toward them. Her head whipped back every few steps, wild eyes scanning for something behind her. Long, tangled hair whipped across her face as she ran.
The girl in the group stiffened, fingers tightening around her half-empty cup.
The naked runner veered sharply into the side corridor just across from them, bare feet slapping against the cold concrete. Her breath came in sharp, desperate pulls, visible in the cool night air.
She glanced back once, twice, then tripped on a piece of broken debris in the shadows and crashed down hard onto her palms and knees. Scraped skin met rough ground. She was back on her feet before the fall had even finished, pushing forward, not stopping.
Then she froze.
Her striking blue eyes locked onto something at the far end of the corridor. Something that hadn’t been there a moment ago, now blocking her path like a silent wall.
She spun around. The way she’d come was now blocked too.
She turned again, blue eyes darting wildly, her entire body radiating the specific stillness of something cornered. Muscles tense, chest heaving, caught between the instinct to fight and the urge to collapse.
Under the weak overhead lights, every shallow breath, every flicker of fear across her face, every goosebump on her exposed skin stood out in brutal clarity.
She took one small, instinctive step backward, bare toes curling against the concrete, then caught herself. Her gaze flicked upward, searching for any gap, any way out, while her breathing grew sharper—almost whimpering.
She went for the wall.
Her fingers found the narrow gaps between the bricks and she climbed. Feet pushing, hands pulling, she scaled the face of the five-floor building with the raw efficiency of something that had forgotten it was human and hadn’t yet remembered. Bare skin scraped against rough concrete, muscles flexing under the pale glow of distant streetlights.
Inside her third-floor apartment, a woman stood at the window with a steaming cup of tea clutched in both hands. She froze mid-sip as the naked girl passed right outside the glass, climbing steadily upward. Full breasts pressed briefly against the cold pane, leaving faint, smudged imprints. The woman’s eyes widened, breath catching in her throat. The cup tilted dangerously in her grip, forgotten, as she remained rooted there long after the girl had climbed higher, steam curling lazily past her stunned face.
The naked girl didn’t stop. She glanced down once, breath hitching. The female masked figure stood motionless at the base of the wall, head tilted upward, watching her ascent with eerie patience. She tore her gaze away, jaw clenched, and kept climbing, fingers digging harder into every crevice.
She cleared the top edge with a final, desperate heave and rolled onto the roof, chest heaving, lungs burning. For a moment she lay on her back, staring up at the night sky, the capital sprawling out around her in every direction—a glittering, indifferent sea of lights stretching to the horizon.
She breathed. Deep, shaky pulls of air.
"Abram," she whispered. Her first word in what felt like forever. The sound cracked on her tongue.
She sat up slowly, turning her hands over in front of her face. Dirt and fresh scrapes marked her palms. She flexed her fingers, watching the small movements with startling clarity. Her eyes—sharp, focused—were nothing like the clouded gaze she’d worn since the infected found her in the Safe City. She could see. She could think.
A small pool of stagnant water had collected in a dip in the concrete. She crawled toward it on hands and knees, then crouched low, staring at her fractured reflection. A face she recognized from somewhere deep and buried. Memories flickered back in jagged, painful shards. A life. She’d had one.
"Aahh." She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes as the city lights stabbed into her vision like shards of glass. A low, pained sound escaped her throat.
"Don’t run." The voice came from across the roof, calm and level. "I’m not going to hurt you."
She spun around so fast her tangled hair whipped across her face. A masked figure, male this time, stood at the far edge, silhouetted against the city glow, hands loose at his sides.
She was already moving before her mind caught up.
She ran. Eyes locked on the next building across the gap, four floors below her current height. She hit the edge at full speed, planted one foot on the lip, muscles coiling, and launched herself into the open air.
From the street far below, the female masked figure looked up and watched her clear the edge. Legs parted, arms outstretched, the young woman hung for a heartbeat against the night sky, bare skin illuminated by the neon haze of the city.
Then she stopped.
Not landed. Stopped. Suspended mid-air, four floors up, frozen between the two buildings as if gravity had simply forgotten to claim her.
An invisible force, steady and gentle, pulled her back. Not rough. Not violent. Just certain. It drew her slowly through the empty space and set her down on the concrete roof with the patient control of something that had already decided she wasn’t going anywhere.
Her knees hit the concrete hard.
She caught herself with one scraped hand, chest heaving.
For the first time since escaping...
she understood she wasn’t being chased.
She was being herded.
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