Rivals and Retribution Read Online Free PDF Page B

like you and I made any plans.” He shrugged and, giving me a sad smile, turned and left me on my own outside our rooms.
    Jessie
    Inside the shed where they’d stashed me the frost on the ground melted under my cheek, shoulder, hips, and side, just long enough for moisture to wick into my clothing and chill me. Sound was muffled by the snow I guessed was still falling outside. I couldn’t be near any houses or well-traveled buildings because, lying there, awake the entire time, I knew no one had been by since they’d dumped me.
    I ground my teeth into the gag and focused. I liked to think I’d come a long way since I first met Pietr, but lying bound and gagged, I wondered exactly how much I’d truly grown.
    A smarter girl wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped—again—in the first place. A smarter girl would have thought to leave some trail—it sounded a little Hansel and Gretel, sure, but didn’t survivors of abduction usually do something clever to help their heroes find them? Didn’t survivors drop a bracelet, a necklace, a cell phone, or tear out the brake lights from the car trunk they were transported in? Sure, I was unconscious for part of that, but survivors …
    I swallowed, realizing.
    Survivors .
    Maybe I wasn’t slated for survival.
    I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to close out the thought.
    Jessica Alice Gillmansen, body discovered in an old shed because she was TSTL.
    Survival of the fittest—maybe this was finally the proof; I wasn’t fit to survive.
    Behind my eyelids like a movie recorded with a shaky camera, images came into focus and my stomach roiled in rebellion.
    Derek. I was going to be sick.
    Even better. Jessica Gillmansen, body discovered in an old shed, where she’d choked on her own vomit. Not even her kidnappers had the satisfaction of offing her, because she was, simply, TSTL: too stupid to live .
    I fought the bile back down and sank into the vision, knowing the remnants of Derek, dead but not truly gone, were rising to the surface of my brain again.
    I floated behind the eyes of someone just a few feet tall, walking down a long hallway, fancy rugs underfoot, paintings thick with pigment hanging in long blurs of color on either wall. I passed a low-set window and strained to catch my reflection in its sparkling glass.
    Derek at age six, maybe?
    I—he—paused outside a door that was open a crack, pressing his face against the space between the door and its frame. Inside were two people: a quiet-looking woman with a soft body, narrow nose, and sharp eyes; and a tall man with golden hair and strong features.… There were aspects of Derek in both of them. They had to be his parents.
    Someone spoke in the room, but neither Derek’s mother’s nor his father’s mouth moved. Someone was with them.
    “It is survival of the fittest, and we are breeding the fittest humans ever. It makes sense there would be some casualties.”
    “Casualties,” the woman gasped, and I—he— we looked closer. Her makeup had run, tears streaking down her face. “You make it sound like we’re in some war. We just lost a baby.…”
    “It was a miscarriage. Unfortunate, that’s true. But you’re young and healthy and you still have Derek.”
    “Some consolation that is,” she whispered, lowering her head.
    “You will try to have another child. Your genetics are absolutely amazing.…”
    “You arrange all this—everything—” she retorted, “as if we were show dogs to be bred and sold.”
    “No. Nooo,” the mystery person said, a woman by the pitch of her voice, and suddenly she was in view. A slender brunette with her hair tucked up in a conservative style. My breath caught, recognizing her. Dr. Jones. “We are simply encouraging good matches.”
    “‘Encouraging good matches’? Is that what you call taking DNA samples and arranging marriages?”
    “No. I call that prudent science and evolution.”
    “Mary. Stop harping on the woman. She’s just doing her job.”
    “And is that what