imperfect (15 page)

“
Jaiden—” Kristi
wheezed.

Wham!

The same woman backhanded her across her
face. Kristi noted her eyes were an alarming shade of crimson.

“
Don’t touch my sister,”
Jaiden snapped. Creepy Guy wrenched Jaiden’s arms into a lock, but
he twisted away.

Meanwhile, Chelsa was kept busy dodging two
bandits wearing identical bandanas. Kristi slithered out of the
grapple of the crimson-eyed bandit. She only managed to take three
steps before another one tackled her to the ground though, ramming
her head against a jagged rock. Silver light flashed in her vision.
She snapped her eyelids open in time to see a hand reach down,
hauling her onto her feet.

“
Thanks,” Kristi said,
thinking it was Chelsa who had helped her.

An arm wrapped around her neck and arms,
immobilizing her. “You’re welcome,” purred a voice that was
definitely not Chelsa’s into her ear.

Kristi wheezed for air, like a fish out of
water.

“
Let her go, Mag,” Creepy
Guy’s coarse voice ordered.

Mag gave Kristi one last squeeze then
released her from the headlock. Kristi tenderly rubbed her bruised
windpipe, flinching at the soreness.

A few passing cars slowed down to see what
was happening, but no one came to help them; Kristi didn’t blame
them. Making an enemy out of bandits was not a good idea.

“
Put your hands in the air
and do not move,” Creepy Guy ordered.

They obeyed him without a protest. Being
surrounded by twenty bandits was intimidating.

Think, Kristi, think!
You’re a smart girl so figure out a way to get out of this
mess.
She scanned her surroundings for
anything that could be useful.

There were eight droid-horses standing
beneath an oak tree and no one was watching them. About three of
the bandits were engrossed with searching and sorting through their
backpacks. Only five bandits were keeping an eye on them.

A car screeched to a stop and a woman
stepped out.

“
You don’t see anything,
lady,” Creepy Guy yelled at her. “Mind your own business and we’ll
mind our own.”

She shaded her eyes and yelled something
back. The remaining five bandits keeping an eye on Jaiden, Chelsa
and Kristi diverted their interest to the woman and Creepy Guy’s
conversation being shouted back and forth.

“
Jaiden, Chelsa,” Kristi
whispered. “Make a run for the droid-horses. We won’t be able to
escape on foot, but we can on the horses.”

They both nodded to show they heard, then
simultaneously dashed for the droid-horses. The woman and Creepy
Guy were yelling so loud and causing such a commotion it took a few
seconds for the bandits to realize their captives were making an
escape.

“
Grab the other horses so
they can’t ride them to chase us,” Kristi said to Jaiden and Chelsa
before swinging into the saddle of the nearest droid-horse. By the
time she snatched the reins of the droid-horse beside her, the
bandits were already hot on their trail. Kristi spurred her mount
into a gallop.

Eyeing the bandits behind her, Kristi
noticed that Jaiden had already thrown off the bandit chasing him
and had two other horses in hand. Chelsa was struggling; she held
the reins of two horses in her left hand, but a bandit had somehow
managed to get astride one of them.

The bandit on the horse brandished a dagger
and cut the reins of the horse he was riding.

“
Ride to Oxfield,” Kristi
said. She wasn’t sure if Jaiden and Chelsa heard her, so she
repeated herself.

The lone bandit on the droid-horse was the
only bandit Kristi could see pursuing them. They had left the rest
behind in their mad gallop. The bandit seemed to realize this and
yanked on the broken reins of his horses. The droid screeched to a
stop, spraying mud all over her.

“
You better hope you never
see us again!” the bandit hollered. “I promise you’ll regret
it!”

“
And I hope I never see
your face again either,” Kristi dryly said to herself.

She drove her horse into a faster pace, even
though the poor droid was already running close to its top speed. A
sign passed by reading: Oxfield 3 miles.

Chelsa pulled her horse next to Kristi’s and
said, “Slow down. We’re attracting too much attention at this
break-neck speed and the circuits in the horses will burn out at
this rate.”

Kristi reduced her droid-horse’s pace to a
steady canter. At last, the road leading to Oxfield came into view.
She dismounted, thus giving her droid-horse the chance to recover a
bit. The warning light located on the shoulder of the droid-horse
blinked crazily, warning Kristi that the droid was overheating.

“
You guys okay?” she
asked.

“
Yeah,” Chelsa
said.

“
I managed to snag one of
our bags in the chaos.” Jaiden dropped a half empty backpack and
examined the remaining items. “Good news: we still have the
electro-slate. Bad news: most of our supplies and food are gone.
The ID cards are gone as well.”

Chelsa let out a sigh. “We should be fine as
long as we have an electro-slate. We can buy everything else we
need in town, including some fake IDs.”

Kristi surveyed the seven horses they stole.
Three were brown, one was gray, one was black and two were dun
colored. They all seemed to be in reasonably good shape, especially
after a hard run at a speed that could’ve blown their fuses.

“
Pick the horse you want.”
Kristi patted a droid-horse on its flank. “I call dibs on the gray
one.”

The gray horse was the droid she had ridden.
He had the same build as Flurry and responded well to commands when
Kristi rode him. She stroked his neck and scratched behind his
ears, missing Flurry even more now that she was surrounded by
droid-horses.

“
The small dun horse is
mine,” Chelsa said.

Jaiden surveyed the remaining mounts. “I’ll
take the brown thoroughbred with the white stockings.”

“
Ghost!” Chelsa yelped.
“Where is he?”

“
He’s probably just hiding
nearby,” Jaiden said. “I don’t think he was left behind. He’s a
smart leopard.”

“
But everything was so
chaotic Ghost might’ve missed us leaving on the droid-horses!”
Chelsa sounded hysterical. “I can’t lose Ghost—he’s all I have left
of Alex.”

“
Alex?” Jaiden asked. “Who
is he?”

Chelsa didn’t hear him, though, and
continued rattling on. “What if the bandits got Ghost? What if
Ghost thought we went to Launceston? What if a bear attacked
Ghost?”

“
Chelsa, get yourself
together,” Kristi said, placing a firm hand on the distraught
girl’s shoulder. “Ghost is fine. He’s a tough leopard. Don’t worry
about him.”

She picked up the reins of three
droid-horses from Chelsa’s slack hands and handed them to Jaiden,
then grabbed the rest of the horses and started walking to
Oxfield.

Chelsa straightened her back. “I don’t know
what came over me. Sorry guys, I didn’t mean to freak out.” When
neither Jaiden nor Kristi answered her, she said, “Really, I’m done
freaking out. Ghost knows how to survive in the wild and I know he
can locate us by following our scent.”

“
I have never seen you
lose your marbles the way you did today,” was all Kristi
said.

“
Who’s Alex?” Jaiden
repeated his
question later on that day.
They passed underneath the stone arch proclaiming they were now
officially in Oxfield.

“
He was a friend of mine,”
Chelsa said. “A very close friend.”

“
He
was
your friend?” Jaiden
asked.

Chelsa closed her eyes. “He died about a
month ago.” A single tear leaked out from the corner of her eye.
“Oh God, I’m losing it again for the second time in a day. This
must be some sort of emotional breakdown record for me.”

Jaiden brushed away Chelsa’s halfhearted
attempt at a joke. “It’s okay to cry once in a while. Let out your
feelings if you want; don’t hold it all inside you.”

Kristi attempted to lighten up the mood,
“What are you, Jaiden, a therapist?”

“
You don’t understand,”
Chelsa said. “I killed Alex.”

chapter
sixteen

[ Troop ]

“
What
would you like to buy?” The bakery girl shifted her
weight
from her right foot to her
left foot.

“
I would
like a loaf of carrot bread,” Troop said. He was pretty sure
“carrot bread” was this week’s password.
Or maybe it was chestnut muffins? Oh well, I’ll find out soon
enough.

“
Hold on a second.” The
girl left her position and hollered into the kitchen, “Mr. Vikens,
someone needs you.”

So he
had
remembered the correct password.
Mr. Vikens, the tutor provided by the Company, emerged from the
kitchen wearing a flour-dusted apron.

“
Thank you, Layla. I’ll
take it from here,” Mr. Vikens said to the girl. “Troop, meet me in
the cellar. I’ll be down there in a few minutes.”

He nodded and headed
downstairs. The bakery cellar was located directly beneath the
kitchen. The carpeted stairs muffled Troop’s already quiet
footsteps to a dead silence; the overhanging lights cast a
welcoming glow when he flicked them on.

Troop dropped his bag on
the couch and surveyed the cellar; for an unknown reason, something
felt off about the room. The tall, magnolia bookshelves were still
in the same position, books neatly organized on them by
alphabetical order. The smart-glass desk with two wheelie chairs
were still as they were from last time. Yet Troop couldn’t shake
off the feeling that something was out of place…

Scanning the room once
more, he finally spotted the culprit. Someone had left open a
hardcover book on a black wheelie chair. Troop flipped the book
over, reading the text on the opened page.

“
No one ever told her it
was impossible.

So she did it.”

“
The 1000 Quotes.
That’s a good
book,” said Mr. Vikens in his deep voice.

“
Sorry.” Troop fumbled,
dropping the book onto the desk. “I didn’t mean to pry. Were you
reading it?”

“
No. Layla must have been,
though.”

“
She knows about your
cache of books?”

“
Don’t worry, she’s
trustworthy. She works part time for the Company,” said Mr.
Vikens.

“
I see.”

“
Your mom landed her the
job with the Company.” Vikens clapped his hands together. “Alright,
ready to begin today’s lesson?”

“
Yeah.” Troop seated
himself and waited for Vikens to introduce today’s
topic.

“
Good. We’ll be covering
the Civil War II. First, tell me what you already know of it then
we’ll move on from there.”

“
Well, it was a war fought
between the East and the West Region. The East wanted to make it a
requirement for all citizens to be Perfected. However, the West
felt that undergoing the procedure should be left up to free will.”
He picked at his brain, but that was all he could come up
with.

Vikens grunted. “It’s a start. Not a
phenomenal one, but a start nevertheless.”

Troop bit the inside of his cheeks. It was
next-to-impossible to impress Vikens.

Vikens handed him a list
titled “50 Civil War II Facts and Key points” then said, “I’ll give
you three minutes to memorize this, starting…now.”

Troop skimmed the list, starting from the
top:

1. Started in 2075
   

2. Ended in 2078
   

3. Porter Salders led the East
   Army
   

4. Joseph Smilton led the West Army
   

His eyes sped over the
words, devouring them like an inferno devouring a haystack. He soon
reached the bottom of the list:

47) The Battle of Fox
Crossing was the turning point of the Civil War II

48) Joseph Smilton was kidnapped by the East
Region on July 5, 2078

49) However, the West Region Army was
winning the majority of the battles

50) A compromise was
formed between the two sides: Smilton would be released unharmed
but the Government would make a law requiring all planned infants
to be Perfected

“
Time’s up.” Vikens
plucked the list out of Troop’s hand. “Start reciting.”

“
Do they need to be in
order?”

“
Ideally, yes, but it’s
okay if they’re not.”

Troop closed his eyes and started listing
the facts out loud; he always found it easier to recite with his
eyes closed. After listing forty-eight facts, his mind drew a
blank. “Uh…”

Vikens tapped his pen to a staccato beat on
the glass desk.

“
That’s all I can
remember,” Troop said.

A look of disappointment
crossed Mr. Vikens face. “That’s not good enough.”

“
Forty-eight out of fifty
isn’t terrible,” Troop said before he could stop
himself.

“
No, it’s not,” Vikens
agreed. “But it’s still not good enough. You need to be a perfect
Perfect—unless you want what happened at your last school to happen
again.”