Page 65 of Retrograde

“Promise that if you kill me, you do it fast. I don’t care if you turn me into a tableau afterwards, but you won’t torture me.” I try not to let him hear the effect he has on me.

“I won’t kill you. Your death sentence got reduced to a life sentence.” Still the same smile. The same tone. He doesn’t even blink as he says it.

“When the hell did you decide that?”

All I get out of him is a shrug. A shrug!

“Were you ever going to tell me the ear wasn’t Corrado’s? I saw him before I left this morning. Imagine my surprise.”

Another shrug. “I thought you would have figured that one out when I took you to see the tableau. Didn’t you notice the taller patrolman was missing both his ears?”

“I didn’t connect it. How could I? He was missing a lot of pieces ...”

I now know all I wanted to know. I’m done talking. Impatience sizzles under the surface of my skin. I want to be reckless.

“Don’t do it, Riley,” Aron trills in his mocking sing-song voice, but I’m already twisting the key in the lock.

His grin widens, and his eyes burn as I slide the door aside. He’s straining against his chains, every sculpted muscle tense.

“There’s an unused path around the back. It leads to a collapsed part of the fence, over a makeshift stile and into the forest. There are some cameras, so we need to be fast.”

“Then here’s what we’ll do, Hotshot. We’ll sneak away from here. And then, you’re going to run. And I’m going to hunt. And you’d better get as far away from here as you can. Because when I catch you, I’m going to make you scream very fucking loud.”

“Then you’d better give me a head start, don’t you think?”

Not waiting for a reply, I toss the keys to him. And I bolt.

24

RILEY

Idon’t waste time with more than a quick peek, checking there’s no one in sight before running out. And still, I’m barely out of the stable door before I hear Aron’s chains clatter as they fall to the ground behind me.

Speeding up, I round the edge of the barn. I’m now safely out of sight of the main garrison area. But I don’t feel safe. My adrenaline levels soaring, I pump my arms and legs, the narrow dirt path disappearing beneath my feet in a blur of rising dust.

I only slow down when I reach the fence and the low wooden stile, and that’s when I hear the thud of approaching footsteps behind me.

I don’t look back. No time.

I clamber over the stile. The smell of pines and resin floods my nostrils, and I’m running between trees, jumping over roots protruding from the ground like veins, old branches and pine cones crunching underneath my trainers. I’m making too much noise to hear whether I’m being followed or how closely.

I rush through an overgrown area, branches whipping me as I squeeze between unyielding bushes. Some have thorns that tear at my skin. My arms get scratched, but I barely feel it.

I have no idea how long I keep running. My lungs are searing. I’m pressing my fist into an intense side stitch. I cross a cracked tarmac road, heading down a gentle, needle-covered slope towards a bubbling stream.

I stop to take a quick drink—not too much, since I’m not sure of the water’s radiation levels this close to the Rift. When I straighten, a voice echoes seemingly all around.

“Riiiiiiileeeeyyy .... I’m coming for yoooou.”

I choke down a squeal, my heart bursting out of my chest.

I’m turning around on the spot, paralysed, unsure which way it’s coming from, which way to go. Finally, I decide to jump over the stream and scramble up the opposing bank. But I barely look over the edge when I see him, less than two hundred yards away from me.

Fuck! He’s still shirtless, and fuck knows how he got it, but he has his skull mask on—a full-face one that only shows his eyes—dark and sunken in the artificial eyeholes. He’s massive, all flexed muscles and sinew, and absolutely terrifying.

I whip around, a part of me hoping he hasn’t seen me, but another, darker part of me wanting to be caught, overpowered, trapped in the heat between those strong, inked arms.

I make it to level ground on all fours, panting. My legs protest as I try to run again, my stamina nowhere near what it was before my captivity.