“The one and only. You can stop hiding, I’m not going to shoot anybody,” she calls from wherever she found a place to hide. It’s brave of her to stray from the path—she’s liable to get covered in goop.
“Okay, but you realize that’s hard to believe since you shot at us twice in a pitch-dark tunnel?” Finley shouts back. “But let me go ahead and trust the word of a stranger with a big gun whose name is literally Hunter.”
“Please believe me, if I wanted any of you dead, I’d have scoped you when you got here. But I couldn’t be sure we weren’t being watched until you got away from the entrance.” Slowly, I stand, even though Lucy tries to tug me down. My rifle aimed up, I watch Hunter jump down from an upturned car. “Hey, kid.”
I motion for everyone to stay where they are and cautiously walk out into the open. “Hello.”
“Going on an adventure, huh?” Her tone, somewhere between sarcastic and deadly serious, keeps me on my guard. I don’t lower my rifle. “You’re far from whatever shithole town Mom sent you to. Some graveyard in the Southeast, yeah?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Me?” Hunter places a hand over her heart. “I am doing my job. The real question is what areyoudoing here?”
“We are on our way to the Piccolo mansion.”
“For what, a party?” Hunter tries to peek around me. “Who else is coming? Anyone good? Anyone famous?”
“No more famous than you,” Lucy says from behind me. She confidently walks up to Hunter with a pistol raised. “Put your gun down, Hunter.”
“Now this is no way to greet the woman who saved your life,” Hunter replies, but she complies and lowers her gun. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Hunter, why are you here?” I repeat myself again and I still don’t lower my weapon. Neither does Lucy. “How did you know about this tunnel?”
Hunter sighs, and I get the first glimpse of vulnerability in her face of supposed indifference. “I had a lot of reading time at HQ. Found your notes on recon. I put a few pieces together.”
“Sure.” Those files were kept very much hidden in my room. Hunter would’ve had to tear it apart to find those plans. Hopefully I’ll never have to return and see the disarray. “How did you know to come here?”
She knows what I’m asking. How dead are we? How much time do we have before Theia comes for us? At this, the façade falls. “Nobody knows I’m here. When you got deployed, I did my best to keep tabs on you. I, uh…” She glances away. “Had Javier figure out a way to track your watch, even if it was off. I’ve been here about two days, waiting. Well, not here-here, not in this horrible tunnel. I stayed above ground like a normal person. Been here long enough to not smell great, though.”
Mason approaches us from behind, walking right past Lucy and me to hug Hunter with his one big arm. She relaxes into his hug and pats his back. When he pulls away, he looks at me. “Put the gun down, T. You know for a fact she coulda shot us a mile out.”
Lucy and I exchange glances, and in tandem we lower our weapons. He’s right, of course, that those two shots were warning shots. Delilah moves through everyone and quickly embraces Hunter as tightly as she can. “How are you, my dear?”
“You know me. I’m always grand.” A strange emotion passes across Hunter’s face. It is almost like grief. I suppose if a small army of trained soldiers were homing in on my mother, I might look the same. I just met my mother, so I can’t be sure. “What is this?”
“You know as well as I do that things are not going as planned,” Delilah replies softly. “I know you’re unhappy with her too.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been happy with her, so,” Hunter scoffs under her breath, blinking to look away into the dark tunnel behind us. “If this is an assassination trip…”
“It is not. I want her to step down as peacefully as possible.”
“Peacefully, right. So, you’re going to show up on her doorstep with…who? Her disgraced lieutenant, the heiress she tried to execute, the boy she abandoned, some girl I barely know who looks about ready to eat me, a mouthy rebel, and—” Hunter stops. “Roxy?”
Roxana steps forward into the light of a lantern Cassie propped up near us. “Hello, Hunter.”
“No, shit, you’re still alive.” Hunter whistles, and it echoes down the tunnel. “Mom is gonna be so pissed. Good luck getting her to step down after this.”
“Roxana leads the rebel group giving the UR soldiers trouble in the Southeast. If Theia resigns, the rebels will surrender. I am hoping that might convince her.”
Hunter laughs almost straight in Delilah’s face. “Right, because Mom’s always been so reasonable. Look, I’m not here to stop you. I’m coming with.”
“You are?” I ask.
“Might as well, right? What’s one more person she hates knocking on her door?” The sarcasm falls flat as Hunter’s true feelings emerge in each syllable. This falling out that Mason described clearly hurt her deeply. Most of that is my fault. “She’sstill at the mansion, so we’re in luck there. Maybe if I’m…maybe if I’m there too, it’ll make some kind of difference.”
“I’m sure it will help us greatly,” Delilah replies, stroking Hunter’s cheek softly. “Let’s keep going. I think Mason is going to lose his lunch if we linger any longer.”
“Like you all aren’t smelling this smell,” Mason mumbles as we continue on down the tunnel.
