Hunted (11 page)

CHAPTER 14

Dinner is quiet. Mom frowns as she drinks her coffee, listening to the news on low. She glances at our empty duffel bags and I know she’s thinking of running.

A piece of broccoli lodges in my throat. I swallow con-vulsively, forcing it down, then try to distract her with tid-bits from school.

“Shhh! This is important!” she says, and turns the volume up on her radio.

“What greater measures can we take to catch Paras before they act?” the radio host asks. “More severe penalties, increased rewards, or Government Paras in every community? Or should we grant ParaWatch members temporary arresting power? What do you think, callers?” The food starts to come back up my throat. I can’t sit there and listen, even though I know Mom thinks I should; she says we need to know what the enemy is up to. I dump my food in the trash, wash my plate and fork, and go to bed.

Nothing’s different in the morning. If anything, things are worse. ParaWatch members patrol the streets in twos and threes, heady with their new sense of power. Nothing’s 142

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been decided, but they’re already flexing their muscles.

Anti-Para posters and pamphlets litter the street, and people aren’t so talkative or so friendly as they usually are.

I walk quickly, keeping my gaze averted from other people’s, not wanting to draw attention.

TV crews mill around the school yard, where reporters are interviewing students with a predatory intensity.

Heavy dark clouds hang in the sky. I keep walking around the school until I get to the back entrance, but it’s locked.

I tug the door harder, rattling it so hard that my teeth jar. And then I notice the sign on the door: FRONT ENTRANCE

ONLY, AT THE PARATROOPER STATION.

A ball of fear sits hard and hot in my stomach.

Another student appears around the corner, making for the back door, her head down like there’s a weight attached to her eyes. I reach toward her with my mind. Not a Para, just shy, with old emotional wounds scarring her, making her not want to face the crowds. She stops abruptly when she sees me and then the sign.

“Isn’t that a fire hazard?” I say, thumbing at the locked door.

The girl looks around, as if I might be talking to someone else, then back at me. “It’s probably only locked from the outside,” she says, her voice hoarse, like she’s not used to using it. “Crowd control, I guess.”

“Yeah. That makes sense.” I send her waves of confidence and watch as she stands a bit taller.

“Guess we’re stuck with the front door,” she says and starts toward it.

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I follow her, my shoes dragging against the asphalt.

The mind-noise from the reporters and the crowd of students waiting to get in is so strong, it almost makes me sink to my knees. I steel myself and join the crowd.

They seem to be letting in only one student at a time.

At this rate, we’re all going to be late for our first class of the day.

I feel a surge of hope that maybe the ParaTrooper will slow things down so much, the teachers will protest and the trooper will be removed. But then two more students are let in, then two more in quick succession, and the crowd moves forward again.

Reporters surge around us, talking into cameras, ac-costing students. I keep my head down, trying to look un-approachable.

The front door opens, swallowing two more students.

The rest of us inch forward and I practice looking calm and bored.

Finally the door opens to admit me. It doesn’t look like the same school I left yesterday. I’m herded into what looks like an airport metal detector, with a waist-high bar keeping me from moving forward. A muscular ParaTrooper in a crisp black uniform with the familiar red stripe blocks my way. Some miserable, shivering students are already locked in a small, penned-in area of the hallway. Their fear shakes through my bones like bass drums. Two of them are Normals being abused; one is carrying weed, and one hates authority. But three are Paras. Their terror makes me nauseous.

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The ParaTrooper steps closer to me, hand on the gun in his holster, his body alert, even after so many students.

“Name!” he barks.

“Caitlyn Ellis.”

“Caitlyn, do you like Paras?”

“No, of course not,” I say, trying to look offended.

“Why not?”

I know the answer he wants, the answer he’s expecting.

I can hear it reverberate through my mind, even past the other students’ terror. It’s the standard government answer.

I swallow. “Paras are dangerous,” I say haltingly.

The trooper studies me with narrowed eyes, his nostrils flaring like he’s trying to sniff out my talents—like he can. Only another Para could do that. But if he’s been around Paras enough . . . if the training was good enough

. . . he might be able to tell. Sweat breaks out above my lip.

“Are you a Para?” he asks.

“No, I am not,” I say stiffly, my pulse beating in my throat.

The trooper moves in closer to study me, so close I can see the dark hairs sticking out of his nostrils, can smell the stink of his sweat.

. . . Most of these losers are nervous, like they’ve got
something to hide. The guilty ones I can smell a mile away.

This one, though—I’m not sure about this one. There’s
something about her that seems off, like she’s laughing at
me . . .

I focus on the trooper the way Daniel taught me.
“I
should let her go.”
I send firmly, but not too hard.

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Cheryl Rainfield

The ParaTrooper rubs his forehead, frowning. He slowly opens the gate. “You can go,” he says.

I step through and into the school, my legs shaky. What I did isn’t unethical if it keeps me safe, right? I don’t know, and right now I don’t care; I just want to get as far away from the trooper as I can.

But I can’t leave all the other Paras here. The ones he’s singled out.

I look back. The trooper has opened the doors again and admitted two more students.

The students waiting to be transported fidget and shiver in the pen. I stare at the trooper, focusing on only him. I send
“None of these students are Paras. I got
overzealous. I should let them go. I don’t want any trouble
from higher up.”

The trooper frowns and pauses in his questions of the student before him.

I pull up all my energy inside me, along with the feeling of how right it is, how much I
need
to free the others.

“I should let the students go. I don’t want any trouble,”
I send over and over, imagining the thought drilling into the trooper’s skull. I feel him resisting; it goes against all his training.

Then another energy joins mine, pushing with me.

“Aw, what the hell,” the trooper mutters, and presses a button. The small corral opens and the students look up, their faces pale, their bodies tense and still. “You can go,” the trooper barks. “Go on, get out of here.” The students race out of the corral and disappear into the school, the trooper watching them with a confused look 146

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on his face. He turns back to the student he was questioning and waves her through, too.

I feel drained of energy, like I need to sink to the floor and sleep. I stagger a few steps forward, not sure where to go.

Then someone grips my arm.
“Caitlyn. This way.”
It’s Daniel. I stumble with him down the hall.

“You did a brave thing back there. Brave—but foolish.

What would you have done if I hadn’t been here to help?

These ParaTroopers—they’ve had training to resist us.”
I shake my head wearily.
“That was you?”
I can feel it now, the familiar echo.
“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It was stupid! What if he’d realized
what you were doing? He would have taken you, too.”
I want to snap at him that he’s the one who taught me the technique. And what did he expect me to do—leave the others there?

We enter the basement room. “Caitlyn just saved some of us,” Daniel says.

“Well done!” Ilene says, stepping out of the gloom.

“It’s a good idea, though, to use stealth. We don’t want them getting wind of us too early.”

Her, too? “So I should have, what? Left them to be taken?”

“It would have been safer,” Zack says, coming to stand beside Ilene.

“Maybe for you, but not for those Paras.” Ilene frowns at Zack. “Of course you couldn’t leave them there. But now that ParaTrooper will report what hap-147

Cheryl Rainfield

pened to his superiors, which means increased danger for all of us here, not just the three the trooper found.” She knew. They
all
knew that the trooper had caught some Paras and they were just going to let them be taken.

But I can almost understand the logic, from afar, of saving many instead of only a few. But it seems cold and calculating, and more about saving their own skins.

“Caitlyn—becoming a Government Para is horrible,” Daniel says. “But you survive it and you keep going. If a few of us have to endure that to save us all, isn’t it worth it?” I don’t know. “How does it save the rest of us?”

“We’re looking at the big picture. When we take the government down, Paras aren’t going to be people they can dump on anymore. We’ll have equality.” His fervor reverberates through my mind, and beneath it, rage. I reach for it but it’s gone. I look at Daniel uncertainly.

“Caitlyn—you know things are getting worse. Having those crimes blamed on Teen Para is making everyone jumpier. The Normals who were on the fence are ready to come after us now.”

I get a fragmented thought who Daniel knows something about my blog getting the blame for the robbery.

Maybe he even knows who’s behind the setup. I reach for it but the flash is gone like it never existed. And did it, really? I rub my jaw, unsure.

“Things are only going to get worse. We need to stop this craziness by forcing change. They’re not going to start treating us as equals just because we make some noise,” Daniel says.

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“I’m already on your side,” I say.

“One hundred percent?”

“One hundred percent.”

Daniel looks at Ilene significantly and she shakes her head.

Something is passing between them, but I can’t quite pick up on it. I strain and catch their mind-voices whispering—and then I’m thrown out like a bird hitting glass.

Daniel turns to me. “You’ve got to keep practicing, then. You’ve got to get better at this so you’re ready when the change comes. We need every Para we can get on our side—especially powerful ones like you.”

“I’ll be ready.” I glance at my watch. “Class has already started. I don’t think today’s a good day to be late.”

“It’s the perfect opportunity for you to practice some more,” Daniel says. “Come on, I’ll walk you back.”

“Practice every moment you can,” Ilene says. “We’re going to need you.”

Her words, heavy with responsibility, weigh on me.

Daniel and I walk back in silence.

“Daniel . . .” I hesitate.

Daniel stops and looks at me. “What is it?”

“Earlier—I got this sense that you knew who blamed
my blog.”

Thoughts rip through Daniel.
. . . need to end the persecution, to show everyone just how far Normals are willing to go to keep their power, need to convince Paras on
the fence to join our side. Caitlyn’s blog is the perfect cat-alyst . . .

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Cheryl Rainfield

I stare at Daniel. “You set me up? You made people think I did those crimes? Why?”

I can’t believe it. I feel like I’ve been punched in the solar plexus, all my air gone in a rush. I almost fall to my knees with the betrayal.

“Caitlyn.”
Daniel grips my arm, his fingers pinching my skin.
“Don’t you see I had to? To get you on our side?

To show everyone how bad the government really is? I had
to snap people out of their complacency. It’s only when
things get really bad that people finally act.”
I can almost follow his convoluted thinking, but it doesn’t make the betrayal any smaller.

“Caitlyn—millions of us will be imprisoned or killed,
and nobody will do anything unless we make them. We have
to wake people up. Especially other Paras.”
I pull away, my eyes stinging.

“But you made it worse!”
And you messed up everything I’ve worked for.

“No—I made people see how bad it is.”
Did he really come here for my help? Or just to destroy my blog?

“Caitlyn, I’m sorry I used your blog. But sometimes
you have to make sacrifices for the greater good.”
I feel how fiercely he believes that, and how sorry he is that he’s hurt me. But that doesn’t change what he did. A heaviness settles in my chest.
“I have to get to class.”

“Caitlyn—”

“No. I can’t right now.”

Daniel nods miserably.
“I’m here if you want to talk.”
Getting into class is easy—too easy. I use my mind to 150

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convince the teacher that I was already there, but had left to use the bathroom. It makes me feel powerful and invincible, like I can do anything, and I don’t like that in me.

I can’t believe Daniel betrayed me like that. I don’t know how I’ll be able to trust him so easily again. I know that being a Government Para has changed him. How could it not? But I’m afraid he’s lost his moral compass, along with his innocence. Even if he’s trying to do what’s right.

I flash to that whispered, hidden exchange between him and Ilene. I don’t know how they managed to shut me out so completely, so that I almost wasn’t aware of their conversation. It was more by intuition than anything else that I caught on.

I shift uneasily. Daniel can do things I didn’t even know were possible. And now I have to wonder why. What are he and Ilene up to?