Marked

Chapter Twenty

In the darkness, the faces of the children she'd been trying to save disappeared like mist. 

Replaced by them was the nagging sensation that she had forgotten something. 

Something vital. 

Opening her eyes, they immediately went to the canopy of trees above her head which filtered in light, making particles of dust float in sunlight. 

Something about it wasn't quite right, though...the colors were slightly off and the air didn't smell like she remembered. 

"Thermal readers aren't picking up anything but there's gotta be something nearby, I can feel it."

Two poachers materialized, walking beside her. 

One was a man and the other a woman with a shaved head. 

A quick glance at her arms revealed that they were covered with grey fabric. Inspecting the rest of her body, as if it were something foreign, she found herself dressed in poacher gear, all the way down to the city issued firearm clasped in her right hand. 

"Look over there," The girl pointed ahead where the ground was ruffled and trampled through with footprints.

"Two people, recent." The male poacher said, crouching down low to dip his finger into the mud.

"We're getting close now. how exciting! Our first capture!" The girl said to Rachel.

Rachel opened her mouth but she couldn't think of anything to say. 

Why weren't they killing her? 

Surely they could tell she was unmarked?

She touched her fingertips to her forehead, feeling the smoothness of it but sure that there was a bar code tattooed there. 

Drawing a hand over her face, a million thoughts rushed through her head but she couldn't grasp a single one.

"Look over there!" 

She did look, to the place where two figures were emerging from the thin stream that cut through the forest like a crooked knife.

"Let's go get em!"

The poachers broke into a run and Rachel chased after them, somehow convinced that this was what she had to do. 

But why...

As the group of poachers quickly gained on the two figures, the closer Rachel came to them the more easily she could distinguish them as two girls, both thin and tall. 

One of them clutched onto the other, obviously injured. 

"Go, leave me! Save yourself!" The injured girl shouted.

"No, Mira! I won't leave you."

The name sent a shock through Rachel's spine. 

Now that she took in their features—the long, wavy hair, the thin, athletic bodies and the high pitched voices, she knew it to be true. 

They were Mira and Mila, from the compound. 

"Get over here, you beggars!" The poacher man shouted.

"What are you waiting for? You've got the gun, shoot em!" The bald girl shoved Rachel in the arm. "Stop wasting time, stupid!"

"Only the injured one, she'll be useless. We'll need the good one."

Mira collapsed to the ground and Mila struggled to pull her up. 

When that didn't work, she splayed herself over her sister's body and faced the poachers with a fierce, protective look on her face.