Anew: Book Two: Hunted Read Online Free

Children. Dirty,
ragged, and definitely not laughing.
    As I stand, frozen in place, they scamper out, run to a
nearby trash bin, and begin searching through it. They move quickly, pulling
out a half-empty bag of popcorn, a partially eaten hotdog, and, to their
apparent glee, a box that rattles with a few stray candies. One of them is a
boy of perhaps seven and the other a girl several years younger. They look
enough alike to be brother and sister, although it’s hard to be sure given the
layers of grime.
    While still searching the trash, they begin stuffing food
into their mouths, swallowing without hardly pausing to chew. They’re gulping
it down as though they know it can disappear at any moment.
    I’m wondering what I can do, how I can help them when they
suddenly become aware of my presence.
    At once, the boy steps in front of the little girl. Clearly
intent on protecting her, he glares at me and raises his small fists.
    I stare at the children. They are so thin! And so
frightened. Under the grime, their skin is pale, as though too rarely exposed
to the sun. Yet despite all that, they are defiant, not yet ground down by
their cruel circumstances. The thought that they see me as any kind of threat
is horrifying.
    I do the only thing I can think of and press a finger to my
lips in what I hope they will recognize as both a warning and a promise to keep
silent.
    For a long moment, the children gaze at me in wary
disbelief. Only when I remain unmoving, not calling for help or sounding an
alarm, do they finally act. Grasping the little girl’s arm, the little boy runs
for the safety of the tunnel they emerged from. As they disappear back into the
darkness, the metal grate clangs shut behind them. No sign remains of their
presence except the abandoned bounty from the trash bin.
    My legs are shaking. I have to lean against the side of the
bridge. Waves of shock and disgust surge through me. I’ve been in the city for
a month. I’ve seen enough to know what is going on. But nothing, not even the
beating that I witnessed, has hit me like this. Children! There are children
down there, which means there are probably also babies. I cannot bear to think
of that but I can’t turn away from it either.
    I know what it’s like to be trapped and helpless. To be
subjected to cruelty made all the worse for being coldly impersonal. To be
denied even the most basic humanity. But in my case at least I was assumed to
have some value, even if it was only to be gutted and harvested so that another
could live.
    Odd how things worked out. The woman I was supposed to save
is dead and I am here, Susannah’s version of the ultimate make-over, struggling
to adapt to this strange new world.
    The tinted glass of the chamber gives the liquid within it a
blue-green hue. I am floating in a sea as ancient in its composition as the
vastly larger one where life itself began. Long, undulating ribbons run from my
body to points around the walls of the chamber. Nourishment passes through
then, oxygen is provided, waste is removed, muscles are stimulated--painfully.
Time passes, endless, empty, tormenting time.
    Bile rises in the back of my throat at the memory and the
others like it that I’m not supposed to have yet cannot escape. I wrench my
inner gaze from the nightmare that still lives in me and stare at the remnants
of discarded food that the children abandoned. In this perfect world where
nothing matters more than appearance that evidence of their presence is likely
to attract attention. Rather than risk anyone discovering the grate and sealing
it--or worse tossing a grenade down it--I pick the trash up and put it back in
the bin before I move on.

Chapter Two

    Ian
     
    T here’s blood on my
hands. I thought I’d been more careful than that but hell, it’s not as though
it’s the first time. It wouldn’t have happened if the idiot head of the Human
Preservation Front hadn’t surfaced from his drug-enhanced stay in a sensory
deprivation tank,