Barren Crossroads

Hunted

Jace started awake, the cold air biting in his lungs, and his shoulder throbbing dully. His sleep had been anything but sound, full of disjointed images and thoughts, the sound of gunfire, and screaming. He sat up straight almost immediatley, rubbing his eyes and looking over to where Lilith sat leaning agains the tree next to him. She was still asleep, but her pale face was pinched in pain under her dark, tangled hair, and her arms where crossed tightly over her chest to hold in some warmth.

He looked around some more, and found Michael, sitting across the small camp on the other side of the smoldered out fire. He was laying in the dirt, his head pillowed on one arm. He wasn't sleeping, and his dark hazel eyes snapped open the second he heard the rustle of Jace's clothing. They stared at each other for à while. Jace felt like he should say something, but like almost every time before, he didn't know what. The words didn't come.

Every time he spoke to Michael since they'd left Jordan's lab without Kaelie and without Sarah, had felt like he'd said something wrong, only he didn't know what, and no one would tell him. He was tired of fighting with him, arguing with him, or trying to convince him of anything. So he didn't speak, and just watched him from across the coals of the meager fire.

"We should leave soon," Michael said in his sleep rough voice, and then he sat up and tried to comb his fingers through his hair. Jace nodded and Michael sighed. "Do you know where we're going? Or where we should go?"

Jace regarded him cooly for à few more moments before he answered in à flat voice. "I recorded and saved the footage I had. Last time I saw her, she was in à camp near the Missouri border. I don't know how she got that far, but that's where she was. We don't have time to follow her. We need to beat her to Jordan's lab."

"Why?" Michael asked.

"The cure Jordan told her about? Surprise, it'll kill her. And you. And every single Hunter it's given too," Jace said. He still kept his voice flat, but even saying the words made the same bubble of anxiety rise in his chest and make it hard to breathe.

"What?" Michael said. "Fatal?" He sounded like he didn't quite believe it.

"Jordan lied to her. Of course he did. He knew that his experiments failed again, he knew that he was never getting out of Ryan's cell, so he played one last little trick on us. I don't know that Kaelie even believes him, but who knows where her mind is after the torture, after everything? When I was watching her, she was stumbling, none of her path was organized. She has or had à severe infection, and she was really sick. But Jordan told her there was one last way for her to redeem herself, and she jumped at it. He knew that she wouldn't care if she died in the process as long as she could fix what she'd done. He knew she would do it. He wants us to watch her leave us, one more time." Now, Jace's voice sounded bitter, even cruel, and he hated it. He rubbed his hand over his face and over the back of his neck.

"We can't let her do that," Michael said swiftly. "We can't let her keep taking the fall for us, every time. We can't just- we need to save her. Really save her, for once."

"I know."

"So what? We find à path, try to cut her off and then what? Destroy the lab? Destroy the research? Try to find the rest of the Hunters out there and kill them instead? Even if we do all that, and we save her life, what then? Do we just go back to our camp and try to put the world back together?" Michael asked all of these questions rapid fire, and Jace knew they weren't really directed at him anymore. He shrugged, anyways.

"Do you think that she can walk?" Jace asked, glancing over at Lilith.

Michael turned pained eyes on her. "She'll definitely try. I'll carry her. I can keep it up all day, if I have to. We'll get to Kaelie, Jace. We will."