novelraw Chapter 459: Somebody Is Watching
Chapter 459: Somebody Is Watching
The road rolled under the truck in a steady rhythm that would have put anyone else to sleep, and Sera was beginning to be lulled into the sense of security that only being in the truck with her horde could bring her.
Absently, she watched the world smear past the windshield, all burnt grass and broken fences and the occasional stretch of blackened ground where it looked like something had either exploded or was set on fire.
The lab sat behind them somewhere in the distance. She could no longer feel the echo of it, which meant that whatever was left that had set off her creature had finally stopped screaming.
In fact, her creature lay quiet under her skin, not asleep, never that, but resting after their little heart to heart. It was content in a way that it rarely reached. It was like the belly-deep satisfaction that came from tearing apart something that had no right to exist.
CDC’s parasite toys were gone, the hosts were dead, and the strain that had tried to curl around human bones and pretend it was in charge had been ripped out and ended.
They should have felt lighter.
Instead, there was that same small weight under her ribs. It had settled there sometime between the lab’s collapse and the truck picking up speed.
If she was still completely human, she would have thought that it was fear. But that wasn’t possible anymore fear. Her creature didn’t do fear, and Sera barely remembered what it felt like, but something that turned in quiet circles and would not lie flat.
She tightened her grip around Oogie Boogie and let the soft fabric dig into her fingers. The plush had survived another round of blood and ruin without a new stain. She was weirdly proud of it.
Zubair drove with the same steady control he had always had.
His hands rested loose on the wheel, but she knew exactly how fast he could react if something stepped into their path. Lachlan slouched in the back seat, one boot on the floor and the other wedged against the door, humming something tuneless under his breath as he watched the fields.
Alexei sat beside him, in the middle for a change, his gaze fixed on the mirrors more than the horizon. Aerenyx’s presence filled the remaining space, and for some reason, it was his presence that Sera seemed to physically react to the most.
Shaking her head, she went back to watching the outside world.
The truck’s engine filled the silence, a low growl that never slipped into strain. The road stretched ahead, mostly straight, occasionally dipping where the land sagged. Luci lay down in the truck bed with his muzzle tipped into the slipstream, pulling scents from the air and discarding most of them as unimportant.
She let out a soft sigh as everything just felt... right.
And that was the moment her creature shifted inside of her chest. The lab is behind us. The parasite there is dead. The humans who fed it are dead. That was good work.
Sera let her head rest back against the seat. ’You sound almost proud of me for once,’ she answered, not bothering to move her lips.
I am always proud of you, the creature corrected. They built a bad thing and thought it would teach them control. You broke their toy. You reminded the dead who they belong to.
’And yet you keep pacing,’ she replied. ’Something still bothering you?’
It hesitated, and that was rare enough that she focused on it fully. You are thinking too far ahead, it said at last. You are thinking about Adam and the Sanctuary that is not a sanctuary and what happens when you finally reach him. It keeps throwing your thoughts forward. It makes you miss what is under your feet.
’I didn’t miss the lab,’ Sera pointed out. ’We handled that just fine.’
We did, the creature agreed. But you are already at the wall in your mind. You are already past Region T. You are already at his throat. There is still a lot of road between here and there, and this region is not finished with us yet.
Sera opened her eyes again and watched the heat rippling off the asphalt. ’You’re the one who wanted more fun,’ she grunted, hugging the Oogie Boogie even closer to her chest. ’You demanded real prey. Those hosts had teeth. So did the CDC staff.’
They had teeth, the creature agreed, but they were borrowed teeth. Toys and lab coats. We ate them because they were in the way. I want something that thinks it is a hunter. Something that steps into the dark on purpose and believes it can drag us out. That is better to break.
She considered that in silence. The demon seed they had talked about earlier, the third thing that had tried to grow inside her, had left a trace of power that still hummed faintly in her veins.
Combined with the creature’s current mood, she suspected whatever came next was going to be bloody.
Her gaze slid to the side, catching the faint tension in Zubair’s shoulders. He wasn’t afraid. None of them were. They simply knew the pattern by now. Any time things felt briefly settled, something tried to tear that down.
"Want me to put some music on?" Lachlan asked suddenly, breaking the silence. "Feels a little quiet in here for a group that just turned a CDC experiment into paste."
Sera shook her head. "No. I like the sound of nothing but the engine."
Lachlan chuckled under his breath. "The engine likes you too."
Alexei flicked a glance at him, and that was enough to shut him up again.
They might have driven for another twenty minutes before the first hint of wrongness brushed across her senses.
It wasn’t a sound so much as a pressure change. The air felt thicker for a second, not with heat, but with something that made the fine hairs along her forearms stand up. Her creature paused mid-step inside her chest and turned its head toward the sky, metaphorically speaking.
Hear that? it asked, and Sera could feel it’s disdain. Something above us is pretending it is bigger than it is.
Sera raised her eyes to the strip of sky visible through the top of the windshield. At first, all she saw was blue and the glare of distant sun. Then a small, hard speck glinted against it. The dot moved in a clean pattern that had nothing to do with wind or birds.
"Drone," Alexei said calmly from the back. "High altitude. It’s not scavenger equipment. Power draw is too clean."
Another glint joined the first, then a third. They spaced themselves into a rough triangle over the highway, matching the speed of the truck.
"It’s not random," Zubair said. "Somebody is watching us."