The scream caught in her throat when impossibly strong hands pushed her to the ground.
Grace had only seen the process once. It had been a boy she’d once been friends with. He’d been saved at the last minute by a truck without a driver careening into the rogue monster. He couldn’t remember his name, had no memory of his life before high school. But he was alive. She didn’t know what happened to those who were captured by non-rogue hounds, and she’d never seen the process completed. She just knew the machines needed them, needed their humanity, and that the masters, with their shriveled bodies of metal, sometimes had eyes that were far too human.
Imogen screamed. Grace hadn’t heard a scream like that since the day that boy, her friend, had been caught by one of the rogue hounds. It tore a petrified sob from her throat. Against her will, her head turned forward and upward, and her eyes opened.
She watched the monster cradle Imogen’s head with a single claw, gentle as a mother holding a newborn child. The needle was already buried deep within her ear, blood trickling down her neck and staining her throat. Imogen’s eyes locked with Grace’s. Her mouth was twitching horribly, grotesquely, and Grace realized she was trying to smile. Then her gaze shifted; Imogen met the eyes of the rogue hound evenly.
Grace’s ears were filled with the whirring, clicking, grinding of the creature as its chest expanded and deflated in a cruel mockery of a human breath. The hound opened its mouth with a sickening clunk, and Grace could see the gears grinding inside. It brought its gaping maw inches from Imogen’s face. Then the beast inhaled.
Grace had no idea what made one human. She’d always assumed it was written somewhere in the wrinkles of the human brain. But in those moments, as time seemed to slow, something escaped her companion’s body. Her eyes refused to focus on the image. She couldn’t pinpoint the color, the shape, could only see it as a glimmer, a distortion in the air. The rogue hound swallowed it eagerly. Its gears clicked in pleasure. Satisfied, it let Imogen’s body drop.
Grace was racing through the trees before her companion’s body hit the ground. Her leg throbbed with every thundering step, the smoke was beginning to make her cuts burn, and hot tears were streaking her face. But she didn’t stop until she reached the river, scrambled halfway across the log and came to rest in the middle of the running water. She waited there, staring into the eyes of the hound and wondering what sentience was staring back at her behind its glowing, whirring eyes, until the monster placed one paw on the log. With a sharp crack, its body plummeted forward while Grace, too, was tossed into the water. She swam immediately for the bank, not daring to look back, and hauled herself out. The hound didn’t resurface.
She made her way back to Imogen’s body on hands and knees, unwilling to put any more weight on her injured ankle. The birds had returned to their song and darkness had settled comfortably over the valley by the time Grace found her. Her body was cold, her thin lips parted and chapped. Blood still dribbled from her ear. Grace draped herself over Imogen’s chest, head coming to rest over her heart. She felt it then, the faintest of pulses. It was still beating. Her heart was still beating.
Grace sobbed.
About Megan Sierra Smith
