NowTrace looked at him, a jaunty half-smile on his face. “Hey, thanks, you hear? For everything.” Without waiting for a reply, he stepped closer and pressed his lips to Davin’s in a sweet, brief kiss. And then he ducked into the bushes and was gone.
Somewhere back the way he had come, Davin heard the unseen speeder skid to a halt. He pushed through the undergrowth where he had first hidden when he heard the splash of someone in the river. He had known it would be one of the escaped prisoners, but nothing he ever heard before or thought or dreamed of could have prepared him for what he had found.
Once he cleared the trees, he ran across the gravel service road that rimmed the fenced perimeter of the gestation facility to where his own speeder hovered. A second speeder sat beside it. The rider could’ve been Davin himself, they looked so similar. Over the sound of his engine, the other replicate called out, “Anything?”