The Travels of Scout Shannon: Books 4-6

Chapter 13

13

Scout sat up, heart racing. But this wasn’t the thready, ineffectual fast beat from before. No, this time it was a strong, hard beat pounding alertness to every bit of her body. She could see the world around her in sharp detail, hear every skitter of a snowflake hitting the rock face around her, process sensory detail from every distinct nerve ending over her entire body.

Or at least it felt that way. It was all too much. She wanted to scream, but a hand was already pressed tight across her mouth to hold the sound in.

“Easy,” Daisy said. “Give it a minute. The first jolt is the worst.”

Scout took a few deep breaths through her nose, and as she willfully forced the tension out of her body, Daisy dropped her hand. Scout took a few more breaths before asking, “First jolt of what?”

“Stim,” Daisy said, putting a little injector back into her coat pocket. “You needed it.”

“Something’s wrong,” Scout said. Her crystal-clear vision was starting to swim again, and she rubbed at her goggles.

“I guessed that,” Daisy said. “Hold still; I need to check something.”

Scout flinched back, but the device in Daisy’s gloved hand wasn’t another injector or needle, just a small scanner. She passed it over Scout’s arms and chest and peered closely at the screen.

“Am I dying?” Scout asked, only half joking. The stim was still trying to make her heart pound, but the beats were getting weaker again, the urge to lay down and let sleep take her returning.

“Your nanite has been compromised,” Daisy said, slipping the pack off her back and turning it around to search one of the side pockets. “The one that’s supposed to help you deal with the low oxygen.”

“How?” Scout asked.

“Either it was defective when it was injected into you, or someone gave you a counteragent after the fact,” Daisy said, finding what she was searching for: a metal box. She flipped open the lid, and Scout saw another injector nestled within, smaller than the one the doctor had injected her with, but of a similar design. Daisy looked at a few of the vials nestled in the foam that filled the lid, then selected one and slipped it into the bottom of the injector handle.

“I’m not getting enough oxygen?” Scout said.

“Correct,” Daisy said, pushing back Scout’s sleeve and pressing the injector to the inside of her wrist.

The little injector hurt more than the big one had. And the world around Scout was still swimming away.

“Here,” Daisy said, and Scout realized she had dozed off again. She opened her eyes and let Daisy help her put a small mask over her nose and mouth. “Just breathe normally. By the time this tank is out, your nanite should be up to full strength.”

“But what if I still have the counteragent in my system?” Scout asked, her voice muffled by the mask. Daisy used heavy-duty tape to attach the little oxygen tank to the side of Scout’s pack.

“I’ll check you in a few hours,” Daisy said, putting the injector away and standing up to get her pack back on. “If you’re right, I can just keep injecting you with nanites until we get to the city.”

Scout looked around, her brain still fuzzy. Something was missing.

“The dogs!” she said when she finally worked out what it was.

“The dogs are fine,” Daisy assured her. “I tied them up there so they wouldn’t get in the way.”

Scout looked up to the top of the flat slope of the rock face and saw Shadow pressed close to Gert’s side, shivering like mad. They both started bounding up and down when she looked their way.

“Have their nanites been compromised as well?” Scout asked.

“I don’t think so. They don’t show any signs, and they likely would have succumbed before you did, especially the little fellow. But I can check them when we get up there.”

She held out a hand, and Scout took it to let her pull her to her feet. Scout got up and then dropped Daisy’s hand but was immediately overwhelmed by another wave of dizziness. She dropped her head, pressing her mittened hands to her temples as she willed the weakness to pass.

She heard three soft sounds, something—or things—landing softly in the mounds of snow nearby. Then Daisy was yelling a fearsome war cry.

Scout lifted her head from her hands and saw Daisy rushing over the slippery, steep slope of the rock face to meet their three attackers. She kept her body weight low and moved with inhuman speed, striking the first on the side of the knee with a quick kick, then catching the fist of the next one as they tried to take a jab at her and using the assassin’s own momentum to throw it into the third, who had just been raising a dart gun to fire.

“Here!” Daisy shouted, and she threw something. Scout followed the glittering object’s arc through the sky. Her vision was still strange, like she was watching a video that kept starting and stopping in a jerky manner rather than playing in a smooth progression. But she forced herself to focus, to follow the path and catch what Daisy had thrown to her.

A gun. But not a dart gun. This was a proper weapon, the kind the marshals carried.

Scout looked back up and saw Daisy trading blows with first one and then another of the assassins. She was good; she was pushing them back hard enough that they couldn’t overwhelm her, but Scout didn’t see how she could change her position from purely defensive to offensive.

She was going to get tired, and then they would have her.

Worse, the third had gotten back to their feet and was raising the dart gun once more.

“Scout!” Daisy shouted, but both of her foes rushing her at once drowned out the rest of her words.

Scout looked at the gun in her hands. She hated the things. What if it wasn’t even linked to her as Gertrude Bauer’s had been? But surely Daisy wouldn’t have tossed her a weapon she couldn’t fire.

The third assassin lowered the dart gun, unable to get a clear shot, and ran forward to join the fistfight. Scout raised the gun and tried to aim.

Her brain still felt fuzzy, and her hand was shaking. She brought up her other hand to brace it, but the barrel was still dancing around.

What if she hit Daisy? She and the dogs would really be lost then. And yet, Daisy had been at a standstill fighting just two assassins. She was never going to be able to take three.

“Scout!” Daisy shouted again, half a grunt as she put everything into a powerful kick that sent one of the assassins sprawling.

They wouldn’t be down for long.

Scout made her way across the rock face as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very fast. Walking across the slope was harder than climbing up a fissure, and her boots kept slipping on the slick, wet rock.

She reached the assassin just as they were getting back up, weight on the balls of their feet as they prepared to spring back into the fray. Scout swung the gun down with both hands as hard as she could, bringing the thick handle down on the back of the assassin’s head. Their body crumpled at her feet.

Daisy was still caught between the other two, ducking and dodging so feverishly she didn’t have an opening to land a blow of her own.

“Scout!” she cried again. Clearly, her patience was at an end. Scout tried aiming the gun again, but her hands were wobbling even worse than before.

If she shot Daisy . . .

Scout’s vision blurred from tears of tired frustration, but with the glasses and goggles both on there was no way to brush them aside. Instead, she blinked, hard, then reached into her pocket and found a stone. She didn’t even bother with the slingshot, just flung it at the assassin who was a little further away from Daisy than the other.

It hit the assassin’s temple with a soft thud, and they fell to their knees, hands pressed to their head. Daisy wasted no time; as soon as their head was low enough, she kicked them hard. She wasn’t even facing them—she was turned to take on the other one advancing on her—but her mule kick caught the assassin in the jaw, and their head snapped back.

They seemed to hang there, bent back, for a long, long moment. Then they fell to the snow.

With only one left to fight, Daisy made quick work of it. The last assassin was raining blows down at her at a pace too quick for Scout’s eyes to even follow, but Daisy dodged them all easily, redirecting the momentum with a series of blocks.

Then, when she was close enough, she made a quick jab of her own. The assassin staggered back, their nose gushing what looked like far too much blood. Then Daisy hit them again, and they were down.

Daisy stood, fists still clenched, for several long minutes until her breath finally slowed back to normal. Then she went from body to body, gathering up their mittens and stuffing them into her own pockets.

Then she looked up at Scout, and Scout felt her cheeks flushing red with shame. Daisy didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. Scout knew she had let her down.

Scout held out the gun as if her mittened palms were a platter. Daisy snatched it up and stuffed it back into its holster, then adjusted the scarf that had fallen loose from around her face.

She looked up and frowned, and Scout looked up too. It was impossible to say where these three had dropped down from. There was nothing directly above them. Did they have some sort of silent flying vehicle?

But Daisy didn’t seem to be worried about it. She climbed back up the rock face to where she had left the dogs and untied them but held the leashes until Scout reached the top.

Then the dogs were all over her, trying to lick at her face despite the goggles and layers of wrapped scarf. Scout let them expend their energy and then looked up at Daisy, who had the scanner in her hand.

“They’re fine,” she said, and Scout could tell by the clipped sound of the words that she was still angry. “Let’s go.”

Scout nodded and got to her feet. Her head was clearer, although the plastic mask over her face was far from comfortable. Her breath was filling it with vapor, making a humid pocket of air that was far from pleasant to breathe through.

But she wasn’t going to take it off until Daisy told her to. She was going to have to try harder to keep up with Daisy. It wouldn’t be easy, not with all the augments Daisy’s body had that Scout lacked.

But she had to do whatever she could to keep Daisy from asking any questions that would lead to grilling Scout about her aversion to guns.

Because that would just lead back to Clementine.