Beyond the Horizon

9. Hunted

"Nezumi," Shion gasped, and even though he was sprinting right on Nezumi's heels, he sounded a million miles away. "What—what are we going to do?"

          "Keep up," Nezumi snapped back. He and Shion were sprinting down the sidewalk, and Nezumi didn't care if they looked suspicious about it. He knew how he and Shion must have looked. Two sixteen-year-olds, no adult in sight, clearly in distress. Hardly a penny between the two of them aside from the pocketful of leaves and stones Nezumi could convince most people were coins and dollar bills.

          Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Nezumi focused on the street ahead of him. There were a few people on the sidewalks, even in the early morning, but no other men and women in black suits. Nezumi didn't let that calm him. As bad as things were now—he'd underestimated how much of a lead he and Shion had on the Lab—they would be so much worse if they got cornered. Nezumi's only hope was that he and Shion had put enough distance between themselves and the town before someone called the police.

           Nezumi dared a glance over his shoulder. Down the street, nestled between two empty trash bins, was a dark red vehicle. It looked cramped in the back, and Nezumi's heart clenched at the sight of it.

          Nezumi recognized the taste of fear. He had been cornered by two of Horizon Lab's agents only once in his lifetime. After he twisted their unexpecting minds and turned them away with a desperate thought, Nezumi vowed it would be the only time. Years on the run had transformed him from a trembling child into a master manipulator. He had avoided run-ins with the Lab before, and he would avoid them again.

          All he needed to do was keep running.

          That was why he'd lived as long as he had. If he kept running, he could stay two steps ahead. The black uniforms and that stupid orange logo made their agents stick out like sore thumbs. Most of them were arrogant and easy to evade. The issue Nezumi had with them wasn't so much the quality of the agents, but the quantity. Nezumi had seen many different agents over the years. The Lab never seemed to run out of new recruits, and it was only a matter of time before they uncovered a particularly good one.

          But Nezumi had been a little boy when he first ran from them. Two agents had cornered him in his bedroom, attempting to coax him out from under the bed and into the transport van they'd failed to corral his parents into. Nezumi had curled in on himself, tears dripping down his cheeks, and thought "go away, go away, go away" until the two agents stepped back, their eyes vacant, and returned to their cars without a glance back.

          Nezumi had crept into the woods, in the dead of night, leaving his parents' and the old woman's corpses behind. There had been no time to stay and mourn them.

           On that day, Nezumi vowed to never again give someone the chance to corner him. He kept his guard up at all times, always looking over his shoulder and sneering at every person he passed with distrust.

          Behind him, Shion stumbled over a crack in the curb, and he almost crashed into an old woman and her tiny white dog who stepped out from one of the stores lining the walkways. The dog yelped and snapped at Shion's ankles.

          "Watch where you're going," the woman growled. She stormed down the curb with her nose stuck in the air. The dog mimicked its owner and marched along the pavement with its tiny snout pointed skywards.

           "S-sorry!" Shion called back after her.

           Shion's presence complicated the matter. Nezumi had someone else to look out for now. Just a minor complication, Nezumi had told himself while he stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited for Shion to pack his entire life into a backpack.