Adapt (I)

SCARLET

Something feather-light traces the perimeter of my face. I smile, lost in my unconsciousness.

The feather continues down my neck. I flinch softly as it tickles my skin. The feather disappears. I am a little disappointed that the feather ceased. After a moment the feather begins again at the part in my hair. A contented smile spreads across my face.

I hear a sigh. My shoulders tense as I realize that I am awake, and someone is sitting on the bed next to me.

I open my eyes, allowing my vision to come into focus.

Boe is sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning over me, his hand in mid-air. His expression is that of a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I rub my eyes. “How long have I been out?” I ask.

Boe’s shoulders relax and his hand drops. “About four hours.”

I sit up. “I have to stop passing out.”

Boe’s eyes search mine. “You definitely worried me.”

I pull up my tank top to look at my stab wound. It is just a thin pink scar now. “Well, I am mending. Won’t be too long before I am as good as new. And then you will be worried for a whole other reason.” I joke and pull my tank top back down.

Boe looks away.

“Boe.” I say. “What’s wrong?”

He swallows. “Scarlet, I didn’t understand what you were saying before, about how you cannot be around hunters. Two hunters in a room and you pass out? How on earth will you be able to survive going to Head Quarters.” He shakes his head.

A sort of shock I never expected to feel around Boe grips me. “Oh.” I say, realizing that I have achieved what I wanted to from the beginning. I have convinced Boe that I can’t go to HQ.

The victory is bitter sweet. This means that very soon, Boe will leave.

Boe takes my hand. “Scarlet, there is no way I am going to let you go to HQ. It will kill you.” He squeezes my hand and I realize that Boe mistook the sadness in my eyes for something else.

I nod. Fighting back the ridiculous tears welling in my eyes.

“You have to leave town.” He says.

I look up at him, suddenly not caring if he sees the tears. “What are you talking about?”

He shifts closer to me. “They will never stop pursuing you. You are so God-damn important to them. You cannot let them get you. Promise me.”

“What are you talking about?” I repeat. “I am nothing but a loose end. Eventually they will chalk me up to an anomaly and forget about me.”

Boe’s eyes are urgent. “No, Scarlet. They moved this mission – you - to a Level One. That means that they will stop at nothing to get you to HQ. Nothing.”

I am quiet for a moment as I process what he is saying. The tears that were brimming now begin to spill. “I can’t. Boe, I never had much of a family, but I have Trent and Caron. I have run so much in my life, but I will not run from them.” I say. Well actually, I blubber.

Boe’s hands come automatically to my cheek, wiping my eyes.

For a long moment, Boe’s and my eyes link. Instead of searching for meaning in them, I just looked at them. His eyes are like the deepest green of a forest - mysterious and hidden in plain sight. I could wander into that forest, never to be seen again.

Boe clears his throat and drops his hand. “I am going to make you some food. Do you feel like anything in particular?”

The loss of his hand on my cheek feels like a hole in my heart. I rub away the tears with the heel of my hand and clear my throat. “Um, pizza?” I ask.

He nods sharply and strides out of the room.

I stare at where he had sat, my heart squeezing. I touch my cheek where his palm had laid. How can I still feel like this, after everything that has happened?

With a sigh, I fling back the covers and wander over to my closet. Before I change into the jogging tights and loose-fitting t-shirt, I stretch - checking on the progress of my wound in my abdomen. There is a twinge of tightness, but no pain. Happy with that result, I close the door of my bedroom and get changed.

I leave my room and come out to see Boe leaning over the sink, rinsing the vegetables he plans to put on the pizza.

“Hey, do you think before we eat, we could go for a run? I feel like I need to get the blood pumping through my body again.” I say as I come over to stand beside him, looking around him to see what he is doing. How bold of me to come this close to Boe, so casually, I note to myself.

Okay, yes, I probably shouldn’t have suggested a run, what with all the collapsing and the stabbing... But something is bothering Boe. I know it has something to do with Alex being here. And I know that his irrational proposal of me leaving town was just a rash reaction to something. The question is, what?

I also know that the sunshine will help me, even if there is only thirty minutes of it left. I need to get outside, to move my muscles.

Boe puts down the bell pepper in the sink and dries his hands on the dish towel. “Okay.” He says, mildly. “Just a short run.”

So, we set out, Boe’s brow knitted together, still frustrated. I try to ignore him, and just focus on the blood rushing through my veins as we run. Phoenix pads beside me, tongue hanging from his mouth, happy to be out and about.

Twilight washes the sky in navy blue, and I realize that we have run across town, then the entire Green Haven coastline. We get to the four-wheel drive beach entrance.

I slow, hugging my stomach just a little. Sweat is running down my brow. “Okay, I think I have run enough.”

Boe stops just up ahead and rounds back. “Right, your injury. Sorry, I should have thought.”

I shrug. “Ten kilometres is okay. It’s the eleventh that will really hurt.”

He stops in front of me. “Alright, let me have a look at your wound.”

“No, it’s fine-”

He ignores me. I look over at Phoenix for some back up, but he is too busy marking his territory on a blade of dune grass. Boe pulls up the edge of my shirt just enough to see the shinny pink scar. “We shouldn’t have even run.”

“It’s fine.” I repeat, pulling down my shirt. “Boe, we need to talk.”

He rolls his eyes. “I have heard that line before.” The smile playing at the corners of his mouth tells me that his head is clearer than before. The run had done its job.

“What were you trying to tell me before?”

I see him swallow. I watch him as he thinks of what to say. I can see that a thousand different words playing at the tip of his tongue, but he just can’t choose one.

“Okay,” I say. “How about you decide whether you are going to tell me the truth or lie to me.”

His dark green eyes soften. “I am going to tell you the truth. I just don’t know where to begin.”

Relief flushes through me.

“Okay, well start where you started.”

Clogs turn in his head. “You are very important to HQ. They want you very badly.”

I nod. “Yeah, you have said as much.”

He clenches his jaw. “Your father and his family were very important at HQ.”

I wait.

Then words spill from Boe’s mouth in an avalanche.

“Scarlet, your parents were unique. I didn’t even think it was possible but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I mean everything about you is out of the usual, and Logan kept dropping hints along the way, but I never put two and two together. But it’s the only thing that explains your intolerance of hunters, your enhanced strength and skill, even the sympathy you feel when you kill them. It only makes sense that your similarities with Therians is because you’re one of them-”

I step back, disbelief saturating my tone. “I am not one of them.”

He freezes. The only sound that can be heard is the crash of the swell.

“No,” he finally says. “You’re not.”

I don’t even blink. “You just said that I am.”

He takes a shaky breath and steps toward me. “Your mother was a Therian.”

I stare at him, refusing to hear what he just said.

“Scarlet, it’s the only thing that explains everything. Why you can’t stand other hunters, why you don’t just view Therians as prey. It explains why a wound that should have taken a hunter a week to heal has taken you less than twenty-four hours. It even explains why Logan is so dead set on getting to you...” he trails off.

“What? What? Why does Logan want me?”

He licks his lips. “Scarlet, my mission has been upgraded to top priority, which means that the hunters will stop at nothing to get you back to HQ. Willingly or unwillingly.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t just kidnap me.”

He closes the space between us and places his hands of my shoulders, bending to stare into my eyes. “Scarlet, you’re half Therian, half Hunter.”

“Stop.” My eyes water and my chest starts to heave.

He tightens his grip on my shoulders. “They don’t know what you can do. They don’t know how to combat you. They wouldn’t even know how to kill you.”

“I am not one of them!” I shove away from Boe. He lands in the sand dune but gets up quickly.

“I know you’re not. You’re not either one of them. You’re not a hunter; you’re not a Therian. You are Scarlet, and I won’t let either side hurt you.” He makes his way back to me without hesitation

My hands tremble. ”I am a hunter! I am a good HUNTER!”

“Then tell me what you’re feeling right now! Tell me that you don’t want to kill me! Not because I just took a hammer to your beliefs! Not because I am an asshole! Tell me that you don’t want to kill me just because you can feel that I am a hunter.”

My breaths come shallow and frequent. My lips tremble. I desperately try to search my mind, trying to find the answer to Boe’s question. But I keep drawing a blank card. There isn’t an answer because something much more poignant is taking place in my mind.

Memory after memory is flashing before my eyes, lining up in an equation of additions and subtractions, rounding up and down and multiplying by X. Every kill I have ever made, every hunter I have ever come into contact with. Every delusional sentence the Therians said in their dying breath. They knit to create a tapestry that equals one conclusion, no matter how it was stitched together.

And then one image takes over all thoughts. It is hung up in my mind like wallpaper. My own face staring at me. My lips set in a twisted smile, my hair brushing my face.

My eyes piercing my own, intent swimming in them.Through the glowing luminescent irises that only a Therian can have, she tells me what I dread.

I am a Therian.