Kamen stepped on the end of a twig until it stood up, then kicked it in half. “Do you think they’ve unleashed the hunters yet?”
I checked the watch D had bought me for my birthday. It had a compass and a flashlight and a face roughly the size of a human heart, and was strapped to my wrist with something resembling a tractor tread. “Well, it’s nine twenty-five, so yeah. The hunters have been pursuing us for fifteen minutes.”
“It’s nine twenty-five already?” He was acting super weird.
“Yeah, buddy.”
“And we’re gonna keep walking farther away from camp?”
“That was the plan.”
I’d come up with our strategy. First, we’d found a sheltered area in the woods—a thicket, I was pretty damn sure. I’d been waiting to see a real-live thicket since Bambi. Then we’d stopped and covered our faces in mud, camouflaging even the edges of our protective eyewear. Then we’d kept going, staying close to the edge of the woods, where it bordered the meadow. My theory was that most slaves would try to hide deep in the tree cover, which would force the hunters to follow them into the depths. So we might be able to stay under the radar by walking back and forth along the tree line until the hunt was over. We’d just have to be careful—hunters who captured slaves would head toward the meadow in order to find their way back to base camp, and they might stumble upon us.
Kamen used a stick to whack a stringy shrub aside. “How many minutes do you think it would take to walk to the other end of the perimeter?”
“I don’t know, buddy. We’re gonna stay in this area for a while. Hey, don’t bushwhack, okay? It calls attention.”
“Okay.” He threw the stick into a pile of leaves, which made an even louder noise.
“Kamen.”
“Sorry.”
“We have to be extra careful now that we know Cinnamon’s a hunter. We can’t get caught by anyone, but especially not her.” I hated Cinnamon. I mean really just wanted to Wile E. Coyote up some big ol’ anvil that would fall on her head as she passed through a gulch. She was so nasty to me. And all I’d ever done to her was make fun of her pony play shit every single time I saw her. Which I tried not to do anymore, because now Kamen was a pony too, plus everyone’s kinks were valid, but sometimes it just slipped out.
Ah, life.
“I know.” Kamen refused to look at me.
Something was up. And this was Kamen, so it probably wouldn’t take long for him to tell me what. But D said part of survival was treating everyone like a potential enemy. So I took a couple of steps away from Kamen and concentrated on treading lightly as a shadow.
The woods were peaceful and terrifying in equal measures, and the adrenaline of the hunt’s first few minutes was starting to wear off. I stepped deliberately on a damp patch of ground, leaving a full shoe print to taunt D. If he was even tracking me. Sometimes I got the sense that his stoic-woodsman persona was more self-aggrandizement than reality. Like those people who say they can play guitar, but really they can just play “Free Fallin’” and “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
“I’ve just gotta prove to D I can do this,” I told Kamen. “Shut him up about how not-stealthy and not-independent I am.”
Kamen glanced at me with a level of guilt I usually only saw if he’d watched the latest episode of Space Camp without me. “You know, if you think, like, I’m gonna ruin your stealth, I can go.”
“No! Dude, are you kidding? We need to stick together. I don’t want to be in this creepy forest alone.”
“Are you afraid of woods?”
“No. Yes.” I sighed. “A little. Do you think there are really wolves?”
“Nah, dude. Just squirrels and stuff. Hasn’t D ever brung you here before?”
“Once. A long time ago. He wanted us to hike.” I shuddered. “I’m actually surprised GK and Kel let him be a hunter. These are his woods. He knows them better than anyone else.” I paused at a birdcall. That was a . . . bluebird? Sparrow? Falcon? “That seems kinda unfair.”
“Like, if we got separated, you’d be okay, right?”
“Let’s not get separated, and then we won’t have to find out.”
“But—”
“Look, I need to defeat D on my own. But, also, never leave me.”
He glanced at me sharply, alarm on his face once more. It seemed to take effort for him to look away. “I’m surprised you didn’t be allies with Gould, man. He said he wanted to.”
I grimaced. “I didn’t want to be paired with Gould. If Gould gets caught, he’ll drop to his knees, give his captors the best head of their lives, and then knit them a neck-warming garment while they use him as a footstool. I don’t want to be on that team. I want to be on the team that wins.”
I’d gotten a smear of mud across the left side of my goggles, and I tried to scratch it off so I could take stock of my surroundings. There were thicker trees to our left, and a cluster of bushes slightly to our right. Somewhere in the trees ahead of us, I saw flashes of yellow caution tape.
“Holy shit.” Kamen stopped suddenly.
I stopped too. “What?”
“Look.”
I looked where he pointed. At first I thought he was crazy. Then I saw it: a bottle of Spicy Sam’s Wowza! Ghost Pepper Sauce. Just sitting there next to a stump.
He hurried over to it.
“Kamen!” I scrambled after him. “What are you doing? Stop.”
“What? It’s hot sauce.”
“It’s obviously a trap!”
He halted.
There was a string tied around the neck of the bottle, and the string disappeared into a clump of bushes a few feet away.
Kamen was practically trembling with need. “What if it’s legit hot sauce someone left in the woods?”
“It is definitely a trap. Back away slowly.”
“But who would—”
“Probably someone who wants to catch you! Probably Ryan.”
Kamen loved hot sauce more than anyone I knew. This did seem like a ploy aimed specifically at him. But who could have predicted he would come to this precise spot? Was someone following us?
I whipped my head around, checking behind us. Nobody. The woods to our left looked very dark and eerie. I homed in on the bushes to our right, where I thought I heard rustling.
Kamen shook his head. “No. This isn’t where we— I mean, I don’t think it was him.”
The bushes were definitely rustling.
Damn it.
“Someone’s coming! Get away from the hot sauce.”
But he wasn’t moving. He was Abu eyeing the giant ruby in the Cave of Wonders. And he was about to bring the whole fuckin’ woods crashing down around us.
“Kamen!” I whispered, louder.
More rustling.
Fuck.
If we continued straight ahead, we’d hit the perimeter. If we fled left, we’d enter the depths. And if we retreated, we’d be running through exposed terrain.
There was no time to decide.
“Run!” I shouted.
But he didn’t. He just stood there, an innocent lamb in the face of the axman, one arm still extended toward the hot sauce.
I had no choice. I left him there and bolted left, into the depths.