Captivate (Manipulate, Book 2)

Chapter 3

She ran towards the exit, but then paused.

In less than ten minutes, the Merith’s security team would realize he was trapped and come to release him. Here was the exit, but she wanted to get one more thing before she left. Did she have time?

Claire sprinted away from the door and went down the next hall, to the huge third cage on the right. Using an old-fashioned key she’d pick-pocketed from the zookeeper, Claire unlocked it and made a cooing noise in the back of her throat.

“Come here, little guy, come here,” she said in English. She dashed over to the tiny enclosure where Kit usually slept during the day, and stood on her tiptoes to look inside, but the weskit wasn’t there.

“Where are you?” she called softly, trying not to sound frantic. She cooed again, shading her eyes from the simulated sunshine, and searching the vines to where they disappeared into the trees. She cooed once more, and it broke on a sob. She had to go.

Claire backed to the door. “Come on, little guy, come to me. I’ll leave the door open –”

A thick weight landed on her back, tiny clawed hands clinging to her tangled brown hair.

“Yes!” Claire said, and ran for the exit.

As she cycled the outer door, she could hear Faal laughing. Harsh, angry laughter that made her teeth ache with dread.

When the door opened, air hissed outward from the pressurized building and Claire dashed through. A wide corridor of stairs lay in front of her. The steps were about twice as high and twice as deep as human stairs would be, black and slick, like marble. She tried to take each step in a single stride, but every third stair or so she had to make an extra jump. Claire ran up them nonetheless, paying no attention to the burn in her thighs.

At the top of the stairs she passed through an arch and found herself under the open sky. She was in a wide atrium with a reflecting pool that mirrored the emerald color of the noonday sky. This must be the Merith’s private entrance to his zoo, where he brought his special guests. She’d never seen it before. Decorative trees surrounded the pool, like the palms from her hometown but with feathery yellow flowers.

Claire gasped for breath, the humid atmosphere filling her throat like wet cotton balls. She knew from the zoo arrangement that the Merith and humans could breathe the same atmosphere, but she hadn’t actually been in this atmosphere since she was brought to the zoo three years before.

The weskit coughed wetly behind her, and rubbed his furry face against her shoulder.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Claire said.

She ran through the atrium and out another wide arch. She came to an abrupt halt at the edge of a cliff. The ocean roared, at least eighty feet below.

She could see the waves crashing onto a crescent of black beach far below. The location made sense, now that she thought about it. A third of the zoo was for aquatic animals. She’d seen it and she knew where the saltwater tanks were, but she’d never oriented it to the outside world.

She turned from the ocean to run inland. No time to think about it now.

This was the crucial moment. She’d stolen a kind of transportation pass from Faal’s zookeeper, having finally pieced together that he didn’t live on the estate, but came to and fro each morning. That meant there was transportation within a short walk of the zoo, and that meant there was a possibility that she could escape. If it was public transportation (she spoke some of the Merith language now), and if it was automated, or whoever operated it didn’t know she was an escaped ‘animal’...and if she had time to get there before the Merith’s security team came after her...she could get away. That was a heck of a lot of ‘ifs,’ but it was the best chance she’d had in three years.