and chilled him.
He had felt the cold before and far worse than this.
Limping, bleeding and bruised, he moved away from the only home he had ever known. Yes, he was afraid. He could admit that.
But he would survive. He had been designed to survive.
He made a vow to himself. He would do whatever he had to do to make sure he stayed free from the hell that was his home. Even if he had to kill the entire world to stay free.
Time would prove him a boy of his word.
Chapter One
Four years ago
Subject Seven
His life had changed a lot in the year since he escaped. He’d learned to speak properly, learned to read-words were still powerful, more so now than ever before and he loved learning their meanings. He’d found his way in the world, a small boy, yes, but also powerful and capable. There were people who paid him for his services because no one else his size and age could do the things he could do. He had money. He had respect. He was in charge of his own world. Sometimes, at least.
Seven looked around the city and sniffed the air. He preferred cities to small towns. People in small towns liked to ask questions about why an eleven-year-old boy was on his own in the big bad world. And sometimes when they asked questions, Seven had to kill them. Murder didn’t really bother him, but it was inconvenient.
He could hear the Other, screaming, fighting to get free. The thought filled him with anger. He was back in Philadelphia again, not because he wanted to be, but because the Other had snuck out while he wasn’t looking. He had lost his vigilance. He had let himself forget. Big mistake.
It had taken him a while, but now he was back in control of the situation. He liked Philadelphia well enough. It stank of pollution, but it was alive and the people were always interesting.
Also, there were the cheesesteaks. A boy had to eat, right? And Seven liked to eat. He loved to eat. He had a passion for food that unsettled people. He knew that other kids his age did not eat as much, but the ones he met also were not as strong or as fast. They didn’t heal as quickly and they didn’t have the Other to contend with. All that he did required calories and meat and salt. And coffee. He liked coffee. And Red Bull. And other energy drinks. The list of foods he liked was very long. Years without had made him greedy. If he’d led a more stationary life, he’d have probably been fat by now, but he walked almost everywhere he went. Not only did he not have any ID, but he also had trouble seeing over the steering wheel of most cars. At eleven years of age, he was hardly grown up. His life in public was a constant series of camouflaged maneuvers. He couldn’t afford to be questioned about why he wasn’t in school or where his parents were because- Killed Daddy! Broke Mommy! -he didn’t have any. He couldn’t tell people where he lived because that changed every night.
He’d spent months living on the streets, making connections and finding ways to circumvent the police and the people who always wanted to take him home. He’d run from the complex, from the city where the complex lay hidden, fleeing as fast and as far as he could from the Other’s home and everything that reminded him of it.
What Seven could not carry he did not keep for long.
He started for the closest place that sold cheesesteaks and felt his stomach grumble. The people on the street around him were too numerous to count and that was good. It helped him stay anonymous. Seven needed meat. Some sugar and caffeine wouldn’t hurt either. The Other came around most often when he was tired. When he was weak. He couldn’t afford to be weak, but he also couldn’t go without sleep.
How many times had the Other tried to call his mother? He couldn’t even begin to guess.
Just thinking about the Other was enough to make his blood boil. The Other had to be stopped.
Seven’s eyes drooped as he felt the Other struggling to be free. “Get down. Get back down, you bastard…” He growled the words, closing his eyes and fighting harder than before. “You hear me? I’m done with this, and I’m done with you.”
No answer. He didn’t really expect one, so that was just as well.
The world was growing darker, a sure sign that the Other was starting to win the fight.
Seven’s eyes were closed when he stepped off the curb. Unprepared for the sudden drop, he staggered forward and fell to his knees. He opened his eyes just as the car horn honked.
He was looking directly at the bumper of a car, right about to slam into him.
But he never felt the impact. The Other had come to take him away.
Chapter Two
Present day
Hunter Harrison
Eyes closed, the air was brisk, cool and just at the edge of pleasant. Two degrees lower and everything would have sucked, but for the moment he kept his eyes closed. It was nice to just drift instead of waking all the way up.
His body felt numb. The air smelled like air freshener and cheap soap and a hint of cologne. He knew the stuff but couldn’t think of the name.
Outside, not too far away, he heard the sound of cars rumbling down an expressway. It was too many cars to be any smaller road.
That was the thing that startled him out of his reverie. The noise was wrong. The road outside his bedroom was a two- lane job in a small neighborhood. There was too much noise for him to ignore.
He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling above his bed. The stucco he was expecting was missing, replaced by water-stained acoustic tiles. He sat up and blinked, not quite panicked but feeling an edge of cold fear gnawing at his stomach.
“Where am I?” His voice was wrong, deeper than it should have been. He rolled out of bed on legs that felt uncertain under him and stared around the room. Not a bit of it looked familiar. The walls were the wrong color, his posters were gone and the bed was a king-sized monster, not the one he was used to. The carpet was a tacky orange and green affair that looked like it belonged in a bad movie from the seventies.
Cheap hotel. He’d never actually been in one, but he knew the scheme from a dozen different movies. There was a mirror, one window, a desk, a couple of ugly but functional lamps and a phone that had a little red light on it. Crammed into the corner was a recliner that looked to be made of green leather.
None of it made sense. Not a bit of it.
The pj’s he normally went to bed in were missing. Instead he was wearing boxer shorts, which made even less sense because he’d always worn jockeys and he wasn’t exactly into wearing other people’s underwear.
“Just… just calm down. Work it out. Nothing we can’t work out going on here, right?” The words weren’t his, they were his dad’s. That was what the man always said when things were spinning out of control, and right at the moment, he couldn’t imagine how things could get more out of control than they already were.
His eyes were trying to look everywhere at once, and he let them finally settle on the mirror across from the bed. He looked at his reflection and stopped dead in his tracks.
Because the last thing he’d expected, the one thing he had never believed was possible was simply this: he didn’t recognize the face looking back at him.
“What the hell?” He stepped back, his head shaking, his knees weak and watery.
He fell back against the bed and lost his balance as the room grew cold and gray.
