The Hunt by Megan Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

shouldn’t be in the tunnels.”
    â€œLike me,” Leon added.
    Bonebreak cocked his head. “Like you—if you are not careful.”
    Leon scrubbed his face, grumbling to himself about all the ways he was going to die on this station. “So you want me to risk my life to steal for you, eh? Crawl around booby traps like some spy shit?” He scratched his chin. “What’s in it for me?”
    Bonebreak cackled again. “Your life.” Bonebreak’s underlings, huddled around the edge of the room, cackled too.
    â€œYeah, well, I can do a hell of a lot more than crawl, see? I escaped the Kindred. I didn’t even know the traps were there, and still avoided them. I’m good. And I’m not risking my life for a few stale potato chips.”
    Bonebreak eyed him with contempt. “What do you want?”
    Leon paused. “I want you to radio those supply ships out there, the ones going to Earth. I want to know . . .” He pictured his sister, Ellie, and his nieces and nephews who used to play Godzilla with him, and his dad who he’d never visited in prison, not even once. “I want to know if my family is . . .” His throat seemed clogged all of a sudden.
    But then a wave of anger swept him up, and he turned away.No. It didn’t matter if Earth was still there. Did he really want to know if his sister and his nieces and nephews were dead? “I want a place on your crew. A proper bed, not a damn crate. I’m sure you can smuggle that out of somewhere. And I want half of what I steal for you.”
    Bonebreak stared at him from behind the mask. “A quarter.”
    â€œDeal.” Leon reached for the bottle of vodka, but Bonebreak held it back.
    â€œThere is one more thing. To be a part of our crew requires a sort of . . . initiation.” He held his hand open, and one of his underlings skittered forward and placed a curved, jagged-looking sewing needle there. Leon’s stomach shrank.
    Bonebreak slowly threaded the needle with the gummy black wire that held their masks to their faces. “We’ll start with a small piece of shielding on the upper arm, since you can breathe without the aid of a mask. The thread is coated in cobalt toxin; it keeps the skin from grafting to it. It’s only moderately poisonous. We’ve never actually used it on a human before, but you’re a big fellow—I think you’ll be fine.”
    Leon paced, eyeing that heinous needle. Bonebreak wanted him to be exactly what he had been on Earth: filth. A criminal. A bad guy. The Kindred had thought he had potential to be something more—damned if he knew why. Cora had thought so too.
    He looked out into the blackness of the shipping tunnel. Somewhere, it connected to them. Cora. Mali. Lucky. Nok and Rolf, wherever the Kindred were keeping them. Lucky would have put on his damned white knight suit of armor and gone to rescue them all.
    But Leon wasn’t like Lucky.
    Leon wasn’t a hero.
    And anytime he had ever tried to help someone, he’d only ended up hurting them more. He grabbed the bottle of vodka and drank until he could barely remember Cora’s name, or Mali’s pretty face, and let the Mosca set a molded piece of shielding against his shoulder.
    Bonebreak raised the needle.
    No—he wasn’t a hero. He was a smuggler. And, apparently, now an official member of Bonebreak’s crew.

7
    Cora
    CORA CLAMPED A HAND over the place on her arm where she’d been pinched, and spun to find herself looking at a girl dressed in safari clothes, with long black hair tied in unkempt braids, and a permanent scowl.
    â€œMali!”
    Dane tossed Cora a warning look from behind the bar. She dropped her voice, fighting the urge to throw her arms around her friend. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
    Mali wore the same safari uniform as the other kids, but with a driving cap over her braids, and thick leather