UnStrung

7 • Lev

Lev tries not to shudder at the prospect of Kele’s vision. Lev has dreamed of himself running too. And he’s dreamed of revenge. Not against anyone in particular, but everyone at once. The world at large. It’s a feeling as dark as the storm clouds on the horizon, and it won’t be easy to dispel.

“We’re in the rez, surrounded by walls and laws that protect us,” he tells Kele with more confidence than he feels. “There’s no one to run from here,” he adds, more to himself than to Kele.

Then, barely a moment after the words are out of his mouth, something cracks in the woods again—and this time he hears screaming. High-pitched shrieks of surprise. Maybe even terror.

Lev launches himself toward the clearing, with Kele on his heels. The kids are standing, staring at Pivane, who lies facedown in the dirt.

A tranq bullet whistles by Lev’s ear and embeds in a log inches away from Kele’s foot.

“Get down!” he yells, and pushes Kele to the ground, his arm shielding him. The other kids follow his lead, diving to the ground just as a storm of tranqs flies through the camp. Frantically Lev looks around for Wil, but doesn’t see him anywhere.

It’s all up to Lev.

He’s only a couple of years older, but the rez kids are looking to him for help. He shifts to protect mode, as he once did for CyFi.

While scanning the surrounding trees, frantic thoughts jostle for attention: They’ve found me. They’re taking me to harvest camp. I’ll be tithed after all. And although he’s scared, his anger overwhelms the fear. This is supposed to be a sanctuary. ChanceFolk are supposed to be protected. But are mahpees? Maybe someone on the rez turned him in before his petition to the Council could be signed.

Kele shifts impatiently under his arm. “Why don’t we shoot back?”

But Lev has no idea where Pivane’s tranq rifle is—and even if he had it, he has no idea where to shoot.

“Stay here,” he orders Kele and the others. “Don’t move till I tell you.” Then, like a soldier, Lev uses his toes and elbows to crawl low across the clearing. One of the kids has a tranq flag in his leg and is unconscious. Another got hit in the back. The rest are okay. Where the hell is Wil?

His ear pressed to the ground, Lev feels the tramp of feet, and into the clearing stride three men in dirty battle fatigues, mismatched as if they found their clothes in a thrift store. The three are barely men. They seem no older than nineteen or twenty. They are not ChanceFolk—they’re outsiders.

One of the kids—the youngest girl in the group—gets up to run.

“Pakwa, no!” Lev yells.

Too late. The lead pirate, with a quick flick of his wrist, fires his pistol, tranqing her in the back of the neck, and she goes down, unconscious.

“Well, well, well,” the leader says. He’s tough, missing an ear, and he handles his gun like he was born with it. Van Gogh, thinks Lev. Cut his ear off for the woman he loved. But Lev imagines that this guy’s ear was cut off by someone else. Probably in a fight. The second guy is squinty-eyed, like either he’s got bad eyesight or he’s so used to glaring at people that his eyes stayed that way. The third guy has big teeth and a straggly beard, that taken together, make him look like a goat. “What a lovely nest of SlotMongers we’ve found,” says Van Gogh.

Lev, his mouth dry, gets up to face the attackers, putting himself between them and the kids on the ground.

“This kid’s sienna!” says the goat, stating the obvious.

Van Gogh is amused. “One wonders what a nice sienna boy is doing running with SlotMongers.” The guy sounds like he was raised in high-class boarding schools, but he looks as ragged and hungry as the others.

“Exchange program,” Lev says. “I hope you know that violence against People of Chance on their own rez is punishable by death.” Lev doesn’t know if this is true, but if it’s not, it should be. “Leave now and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“Shut it!” says Squints, taking aim at Lev with his tranq pistol.

“These ’Mongers are all underage,” says the goat.

“Which means their parts are worth even more on the black market.” Van Gogh reaches down and tousles Kele’s hair. “Isn’t that right, lambchop?”

Kele pulls away and smacks his hand. Squints raises his gun to tranq him, but Van Gogh doesn’t let him.

“We’ve wasted enough ammo. Save it until we need it.”

Lev tries to swallow his fear. If there was any doubt as to what these lowlifes were, it’s gone. They are hunters of human flesh. Parts pirates.

“Take me,” Lev says, hardly believing he’s saying it. “I’m the one you want. I’m a tithe, which means I’m worth more on the black market than other AWOLs.”

Van Gogh grins. “But not nearly as much as the right little SlotMonger.”

Suddenly there’s the pfft of a tranq shot, and Squints’s eyes go uncharacteristically wide before he falls to the ground, with the flag of a tranq in his back. A tranq fired by a custom-made zebrawood rifle.