Read Online The Cure by Teyla Branton - Free Book Online Page B

infiltrate the Hunters. I told you that before.”
    “Yes, but isn’t that kind of dangerous? Aren’t they looking for you?”
    He barked a laugh that sounded bitter. “You’d think. But apparently, I’m not important enough to worry too much about. I guess they figure in forty or fifty years it won’t matter. I’ll be dead.”
    I dropped my gaze. His bitterness toward his family was more than I could fix with a few words. When I looked up again, he’d grabbed my fork, pulled my plate closer, and was shoveling food down his throat.
    Better him than me.
    “Sorry,” he mumbled after a few gulps. “It was a long flight.”
    “Be my guest. I wasn’t hungry anyway. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
    He swallowed. “The Hunters have started tracking known descendants of Renegade Unbounded.”
    Great. But at least it was verification that what happened today with Mari wasn’t an isolated incident. Two days ago I would have kissed him for the information, and even now it was useful, but maybe I didn’t have to let him know that. “Tell me something I haven’t already figured out the hard way. I suppose the Emporium is behind this new little development?”
    “Yes, though only by suggestion. The Hunters’ files on Unbounded lineage are guarded very closely by those at the top of the Hunter hierarchy, presumably to protect their members who may be descended from Unbounded. The Emporium operatives don’t have access—I’ve been trying to peek at them for years.”
    I relaxed slightly. That was good news for us. If the Emporium had gained access to those records, any descendant linked to us would soon be dead or prisoners to their breeding program.
    “Unfortunately for the Emporium,” Keene added, “the idea backfired. Apparently, the Hunters have records that involve them as well. Not surprising when you think about it. I mean, Hunters formed in the first place because they were upset at being abandoned by the Emporium when they failed to Change. It’s only natural they would have kept track of everyone they knew before their abandonment, as well as their own descendants. Regardless, there have been half a dozen attacks on Emporium descendants in the past few months, each occurring shortly after the victim’s Change.”
    I couldn’t find it in me to be unhappy about that. “I thought most mortal descendants of the Emporium were failed genetic experiments whose likelihood of having Unbounded offspring is virtually nil. So how did keeping track of the Emporium’s mortal descendants lead to finding their Unbounded?” The experiments were a double-edged sword, causing more Unbounded in the first generation, but eliminating the possibility of the active gene occurring in the failed lines.
    “The genetic experiments didn’t used to be so intensive, and in the old days not everyone participated. Even now there are still unplanned pregnancies. Several of my mortal siblings have Unbounded children and grandchildren.”
    Something in his voice made me look at him more closely. Was he hoping his children would be Unbounded? Or the opposite?
    “So there are Changes still happening in some of those initial family lines,” he continued, “just as many as you’d see without interference. The Emporium has lost at least four new Unbounded to the Hunters.”
    Again, I didn’t understand why he wanted me to care. On one level, I might mourn the loss of a life, but if it meant fewer mortals would be abused or one Renegade wasn’t sliced apart, I was all for it. What was bad for the Emporium was good for just about everyone else in the world. “Poor babies.”
    He looked at me sharply. “You’re different now.”
    So are you, I wanted to retort, but he’d always been dark and bitter, so it wasn’t really true. “A lot has happened in the past two months.”
    “Right,” he conceded.
    I watched him take a couple more bites. “We’ve had our own run-in with the Hunters under similar