Read Unremarkable (Anything But) for Free Online

like it was lunchtime, but even that wouldn’t explain the utter stillness of the area. Why had he been sent to Lodi? And what was going on in the town? Something wasn’t right. Ryder drove up and down each street, business and residential. No one was outside.
    Grabbing the cell phone off the seat next to him, he dialed a number each recruit was assigned to memorize in case of emergencies. A male voice answered just as a kid darted in front of the car. Ryder dropped the phone, cursing, and hit the brakes. The kid, blond-haired and dirty, froze, his gray eyes colliding with Ryder’s green ones. He wasn’t as young as he had initially thought, probably only a year or two younger than himself, but he was thin to the point of gaunt, his eyes too big in his face.
    “ Hey! Wait!” Ryder shouted when the boy took off running.
    Fumbling with the seatbelt, he got it unhitched and fell out of the car, landing on his knees. Gravel found a place in his skin, but the sting was an afterthought, his attention on the boy. He sprinted after him, cutting through backyards and alleyways. The boy was surprisingly fast, especially for one looking the way he did. The distance closed between them behind a blue two-story house, Ryder tackling him to the hard earth, grass and dirt slamming into his face upon impact. The boy grunted as he hit the ground, then again when he landed on him. Ryder flipped him to his back and stared down at him.
    “Why…are you…running?” he gasped out, chest heaving and heart racing.
    “ Kill me. Just kill me and get it over with,” the boy demanded, resignation and bravery etched into his features.
    Frowning, Ryder loosened his grip on the boy’s arms. “Kill you?”
    “That’s why they sent you, right? To kill the turned ones not registered?”
    His mind tried to grasp what it was being told. He took a breath, and another. “You’re…there are UDs not being registered?” Leaning down, he focused on the boy’s pupils—gray, but no glow, and no silver hue to them. What is this? What the hell is going on? UDs were supposed to naturally have glowing eyes and a smoky aura, a thin line of gray surrounding their body, to them. Why didn’t this one?
    “ I’m not saying anymore. You’re just going to have to kill me.” Clenching his jaw, he glared up at him.
    Ryder dropped his hands from the boy and moved away. “I’m not going to kill you.”
    “Great. You’re taking me in. Even better.”
    Brows knit; he looked at the strange boy who was apparently an anomaly, even to UDs. That was what he should do—he should take the boy in, give him up to the organization.
    Instead he found himself saying, “I’m not bringing you in,” and he meant it.
    He barely had time to register the boy’s surprise when the back of his head was cracked in with a blunt object.

     
     
     
    He’d never been able to accept her death—not once during the past six months. It never felt right. Even when he tried to tell himself she had to be, that there was no alternative; it had never rung true with him.
    It was by pure chance that he’d even known she was alive. His information source had heard something suspicious and relayed it to him. He’d known the ‘adapting positively to injections’ UD had to be her. He couldn’t explain it, not even when Talley tried telling him it couldn’t be her, but in his gut he’d known it was. She wasn’t supposed to be a UD—she didn’t have the full gray eyes, for one thing—so why was she being referred to as such?
    His guts were churning with the wrongness of it—Honor, August, the rescue. It was almost like they’d wanted her to be taken, but why? And did she know about it? What exactly was Honor Rochester and where did her loyalties lie? He no longer knew. And yet, he couldn’t have left her there, not while knowing she was alive. If there was a chance she was the Honor he remembered, then there was no other option but to take her from that hell she’d been