Inhuman Read Free Page A

the biohaz agents propelled me through the glass door and onto the sidewalk. So many glowering faces. My stomach coiled in on itself. As soon as I was within five feet of them, the gawkers skittered back. Then they lifted their dials and my humiliation was complete. My vision blurred as I ducked my head.
    A jumpsuit opened the back door of the van and thrust me forward. My knees locked. I couldn’t climb inside the van. I didn’t know these men.
    “Move it,” the jumpsuit growled.
    I gritted my teeth and did as I was told. Clearly stranger-danger rules didn’t apply to government agents.
    Much of the van was crammed with high-tech equipment, all clicking and humming. I squeezed onto a metal bench. The agent clambered in, pulled the door closed, and settled on the bench across from me. Through the Plexiglas partition, I saw the other jumpsuit drop into the driver’s seat.
    “Give me your dial,” the man ordered through his mask.
    I wanted to use it to call our live-in housekeeper, Howard, and let him know what was happening, but I slipped the chain from around my neck and handed over my dial. The careless way the jumpsuit clicked through my screens made my face burn. Or maybe I was coming down with a fever….
    The first symptom of Ferae was a high fever — really high, as in usually lethal. I clenched my hand to keep from pressing my palm across my forehead to check my temperature. I didn’t want the jumpsuit to think I was worried about my health. Because I wasn’t. I did not have Ferae. I couldn’t.
    Dogs barked on my dial as the jumpsuit watched one of my shelter clips. “You’re a real budding filmmaker, huh, Delaney?” he said after a moment.
    Yes, ever since I learned that the fastest way to get people to care about neglected animals was to show them the animals. But what did that matter to this guy? “It’s Lane.”
    He glanced up. “What?”
    “I go by Lane.” Only my dad called me by my full name, Delaney Park. It was where he met my mother — in Delaney Park, Indiana. People his age, they owned sentimental, which was why so many of them had named their kids after beloved places — places they knew they would never see again.
    The jumpsuit set my dial aside. “Okay, Lane . What do you say we get down to business?” He dragged a metal box from under the bench and opened it on the floor between us. “Put out your arm.”
    I braced myself against the vehicle’s sway. “Why?”
    “So we can test your blood back at the lab. Don’t you want to know if you’ve been infected?”
    “How could I have gotten infected?”
    “Spec sheet didn’t say.” He tossed a folded paper into my lap. It was a list of attributes and addresses — a summation of me. The addresses belonged to my friends, the animal shelter where I volunteered, two of my favorite coffee shops, and there were several more that I didn’t recognize, which was just as well because I was already thoroughly creeped out. The description of me was the final insult: brown eyes, brown hair, average build. Why not just say average everything? Instead of smashing the paper into a ball and throwing it at him like I wanted, I handed it back without a word.
    “Put out your arm,” he repeated.
    When I hesitated, he snagged me by the wrist and pulled my arm straight. He took a hypodermic needle from the box on the floor, and suddenly I was seized with the urge to bite his hand and free myself.
    But I didn’t.
    I smothered the impulse; I’d never do something so disgusting. So feral. I relaxed my arm and looked away as he inserted the needle.

    I figured that I should probably be thankful I wasn’t marched into the quarantine center through the front door. Instead, when I was nudged out of the back of the van, I landed in what looked like an empty warehouse except for the stacked cots along the walls. I breathed against the pinch of Anna’s vest and tightened my ponytail.
    A new jumpsuit awaited us, her face mask firmly in place. A