Betrayed
An Altered Saga Novella
Jennifer Rush
Little, Brown and Company
New York Boston
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For Trev, who believed he did not deserve forgiveness, but who fought for it, anyway
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas. A line from one of my favorite poems.
Never has it been more apt.
In the dark, it’s hard to know how many hours, days, weeks pass. Sometimes you wonder if you’re already dead, and if what comes after is nothing more than an infinite black. It’s why they put you in the dark to begin with. And the longer you stay in it, the further away from sane you feel. The further away from alive you feel.
It felt like I’d been in this holding cell for weeks.
I shifted, trying to stretch my body, ease out the soreness in my bones.
I’d spent the first few days—or what felt like days—in here, shackled to the ceiling, getting the shit kicked out of me. My old unit, the unit I’d turned on and delivered back to the Branch after they’d escaped, had disappeared from this building with dozens of stolen files in tow.
Of course, I’d been the one to steal those files, and I’d been the one to help them slip out a back door, but Riley, the Branch’s commander, didn’t know that, not really. Which was why I’d been subjected to such brutal questioning.
Riley wanted the truth, and he believed I’d helped Anna, Sam, Cas, and Nick escape. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was my unremitting resolve. I was sticking to this story—I didn’t help them escape. I didn’t steal those files. I wasn’t anywhere near the scene of the crime when it happened.
Stick to the truth, I whispered to myself in the dark, over and over again.
Didn’t matter that the truth was actually a lie. If I cemented it as the only truth in my head, then eventually Riley would believe me. And I needed him to believe me. Because the only way I could help Anna and Sam and the others now was by being who they thought I was. A Branch agent. An enemy. A traitor.
The best way to crumble the foundation of the corrupt is by cementing yourself as one of the bricks in the wall.
I heard the lock on my cell door scrape open, and every muscle in my body tensed.
They’d unshackled me a while ago, so I had full use of my hands if I needed to fight my way out of here, but it wasn’t the right time for that, and I didn’t much look forward to more beatings.
Still, I needed to prepare myself for it, just in case.
Light spilled into the cell and I squeezed my eyes shut against the burn. Too much light too quickly.
“It reeks in here,” Riley said.
The sound of his voice made my stomach sink. A visit from Riley was never a good sign.
He’d been second-in-command when I’d entered the Branch, the organization that had genetically altered me into a super soldier. But now that Connor, the Branch commander, was dead, Riley had installed himself as de facto leader. No one seemed to care that he wasn’t leader material. Guys like Riley were born followers, and always would be.
“Open your eyes,” he said, so I did. He came into view, his face blurred as my eyes began to water. Behind him stood two Branch agents. Also a bad sign.
The last time Riley visited with an entourage, I’d ended up with a swollen eye, a split lip, and a few broken ribs. The ribs were still healing, as a matter of fact.
Riley circled me, and when he disappeared from my line of sight, I cringed, bracing for a hit. It took everything within me not to turn with him, follow his movements.
Fear is a mind killer. I would not be afraid.
“So, Trev,” he said, “it’s time to sink or swim.”
I once read that the worst thing you can do in a situation of vulnerability is to show your weaknesses. Another thing I’d read: Be the person you need to be when you need to be it.
It was one of those supervague philosophy essays that talked about life and death and the human condition. Applied to my current situation, I decided I needed to be an asshole. If I was going to die, I might as well die pissing Riley off.
“If you wanted to get me in a bathing suit,” I said to him, “all you had to do was ask.”
Riley hated humor and sarcasm. He hated anything that even remotely resembled levity.
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” he said, his voice uncomfortably close to my ear. “We are at a pivotal point in your almost fruitless career. We need to know if you’re any use to us. Because if you’re not…”
“Then I sink?”
He ignored the question. “Tell me, Trev,” Riley said, “are you loyal to the Branch?”
“Yes. Christ, Riley, I turned on them, didn’t I?”
They were my old unit, Anna, Sam, Cas, and Nick. I’d been held right along with them in a basement lab beneath an old farmhouse for five years. We’d all been genetically altered, but I’d been planted inside the unit to observe their behavior and, more important, to discover their secrets. Which was hard when all four of them had had their memories scrambled by the very agency that wanted to know what they were hiding.
Sam had stolen valuable information from the Branch five years ago and hidden it. He’d staged a coup. When he broke free of the farmhouse lab, he followed clues he’d left for himself, and ran us straight back to the old case files he’d stolen. Inside were the sordid details on kill missions, alteration experiments, and behavioral modifications.
The whole time, I’d thought Sam was the bad guy. I’d thought the Branch was working in the name of science and evolution. Which was why I’d turned on Sam.
Now I knew better. Now I knew who the real enemy was.
The Branch failed to tell me they’d planned on killing Sam and altering Anna’s memory a second time so they could use her over and over again for their own end game.
Riley came around to face me. He and I both knew which way the power flowed between us, but power is fickle, and it can be taken away. Riley wasn’t a big guy. Five ten at the most. I was closer to six foot. Shy by a few centimeters. I had more muscle, thanks to the Branch, and I was willing to bet that I was smarter, too. Strength of mind, and strength of body are perpetual.
I think, deep down, he knew how tenuous his position was. And if he didn’t, even better for me.
“Tomorrow, you’ll be briefed on a new mission,” Riley said. “Fail”—he got in close—“and I’ll terminate you myself.”
He blinked several times, his breath coming too fast. I could see the fast drumming of his pulse in his neck.
I’d always been good at reading emotions. Like anything else, they can be broken down into minute details, easily categorized. Riley was nervous, anxious even. Seeing a bit of fear on his face made me pause. Who was he afraid of? Was there someone above him who was threatening to tear his power away?
He flicked a finger, and the agents scurried out after him, shutting and locking the door behind them.
Two agents arrived the next morning to escort me from the holding cell to a briefing room. It felt good to stretch my legs, to walk more than a back-and-forth pacing of a ten-by-ten holding cell.
I counted the steps and the turns o
n our course. I counted the doors and noted the shallowness of the doorways—not deep enough for a hiding spot. I memorized the room numbers and the exact count of fluorescent lightbulbs buzzing in the ceiling fixtures. I marked the exact locations of three different fire extinguishers, because they could be used as weapons in a moment of desperation. While I was familiar with this Branch building, I didn’t know every square foot, and the holding cells were in a corner of the building I knew only by reading blueprints. I wanted to have the observable details cauterized into my brain, in case I needed them later.
When we reached the briefing room, I was feeling much better.
I had an escape route planned. I was no longer in the dark.
The two agents shoved me into the room and moved to leave. I called after them, “Can I get a shirt?”
I’d been left in the holding cell in only a pair of black jeans. No shirt, no shoes. It was a torture tactic, used to make a victim feel vulnerable, exposed. Plus, when you beat someone, it helps to have a clear view of your target’s weak points.
The agent standing in the doorway sneered and pulled the door shut behind him.
Okay, so no shirt.
I scanned the briefing room and found a wet bar in the left corner, behind me. Thank God. What little water I’d been given in the holding cell had been room temperature and tasted faintly of iron and rust.
I went over to the bar, opened the cabinet, and tore into the mini fridge. I downed half a bottle of ice-cold water before coming up for air.
I felt like I’d survived the apocalypse.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. A quote from Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese literary genius. I just hoped he was right.
I took stock of the rest of the room. The only exit was the door through which I’d entered. The conference table, made of composite wood, was roughly seven feet long, four feet wide. Eight chairs on castors.
I turned back to the wet bar. A decanter of scotch, four glass tumblers. In the fridge, there were four bottles of water and three cans of soda.
Not a lot here to use as a weapon, but the tumblers would work in a pinch.
When the door squeaked open, I moved toward the wet bar, putting the tumblers just a foot from reach.
I’d expected Riley. Instead, in walked a twenty-something woman dressed in a plain white T-shirt and tight black pants. Her dark hair was loose and hung around her shoulders. A long necklace, with a heavy black rock on the end, swung as she closed the door behind her.
“Hematite?” I said.
She turned to face me, brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
I pointed at the rock. “Hematite. Sometimes called the blood stone. Used for protection.”
I wondered if she knew that. I wondered if that’s why she wore it, and what she was protecting herself from.
“It’s just a necklace,” she said, but as she said it, her fingers went to the rock and fingered it like someone would a worry stone.
“Around here, everything is something,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes, maybe catching the things I didn’t say.
I turned to lean against the wet bar, putting the tumblers inches away. “Are you here to brief me on the mission?” It’d be just like Riley to send a pretty girl to kill me. Unsettling an opponent is the best way to catch them off guard.
“I am,” she said and sat at the end of the table, twisting the chair so she faced me as she crossed one leg over the other.
“How long have you been with the Branch?” I asked.
She nodded at the chair closest to her. “Have a seat.”
“Can you give me a shirt, at least?”
She opened a file she’d had tucked beneath her arm and scanned the pages inside. “I’d rather not.”
Was she flirting with me?
Her face was blank, stoic even.
I sat.
“Trev Lukas Harper,” she read from the file. “Born October 18 in Bristow, Virginia, the son of a D.C. prosecuting attorney and an emergency room nurse. Only child. Basketball star. On the way to a full basketball scholarship when his girlfriend was badly injured in a car accident.” She stopped reading and flicked her eyes to mine. “You were the one behind the wheel.”
A lump had formed in the base of my throat. My head pounded behind my eyes.
If Riley had wanted to unsettle me, he’d succeeded.
All of those details, I hadn’t known. Not really. Just like Sam and the others, my memories had been erased, but unlike them, the Branch had filled the voids with real details from my past, along with false memories that served their purposes. I was left with patches of a past that I wasn’t absolutely sure of.
I’d known there was a girl I loved that I’d tried to save. She was the whole reason I’d signed up for the Branch program in the first place. They’d let me keep that memory because it was a heady motivator. She was the only thing I thought about while I was locked up in that farmhouse lab.
But what the Branch had failed to tell me about the genetic alterations was that along with the heightened strength, the intelligence, the better instincts, I also aged at a slower rate. Which meant the girl I’d loved was on her way to full-fledged adulthood, and I was in an eighteen-year-old body.
She would never be mine again.
“Tell me, Trev.” The Branch girl leaned forward, propping an elbow on the table. “What would you be willing to do, to show your loyalty to the Branch?”
“Haven’t I done enough already?”
The girl sat back, tossed my file aside, and folded her hands together over her stomach. “You turned your unit in. Bravo. But they were gone again, hours later. If we’re keeping score here, you’re losing.”
Her gaze poked at me, looking for an opening, a weakness. I tried to keep my expression unreadable, worried that if she looked too closely, she’d see which side I was really on.
At moments like this, I was tempted to fight my way out, run to Anna and Sam and the others, and ask for their forgiveness. But I had no peace offering, nothing big enough to win them back.
And I didn’t have a network outside of the Branch to help me survive on my own. They’d find me eventually, and then I’d be dead.
If I wanted my friends back, then I needed to give them something they could use, and I wouldn’t have anything until I proved my loyalty to the Branch.
I turned to the girl, whose name I didn’t yet know, and pulled up the emotions I knew she needed to see. Desperation. Eagerness. A shade of panic. I wore them like a mask.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” I said, “and I’ll do it.”
She smiled. “That’s more like it.”
I left the Branch building late on a Thursday and drove straight through to Sarasota, Wisconsin. The details I’d been given on the mission were vague. My handler was Marie, the girl with the hematite necklace. She had promised to update me as soon as I reached the apartment they’d rented for the mission.
I drove into the city just after midnight. The SUV’s GPS took me to a renovated warehouse downtown and I parked the vehicle in a garage beneath.
Since I’d spent the last five years locked in a science lab, I didn’t have much to call my own. I had only a duffel bag with me now, with some extra clothes, two burner cell phones, and a few weapons. Marie had sent with me some surveillance equipment, some bugs and receivers, high-powered binoculars, and a few trackers.
There was an elevator in the garage, but I took the stairs, needing to feel my heart pumping hard, if only for a few minutes. I’d made it a point to keep in shape in the farmhouse lab, lifting weights and doing yoga, but there was nothing quite like running out in the open. Freedom does something good for the human spirit.
Apartment 3B was on the third floor, in the southeast corner of the building. It was a studio loft, with big, leaded glass windows that overlooked Lower Red Lake and the city marina. Dock lights glowed on the water.
I dropped my
bag on the floor and collapsed on the couch. I hadn’t turned the lights on yet, somehow feeling more at ease in the dark, which was ironic really, considering I’d dreamed of escaping a dark cell only a week ago.
I pulled out one of the cells Marie had given me and sent her a text saying I’d arrived.
Within seconds, I had a reply.
Sit tight, the message said. Mission details at first light.
So I crawled into the king-size bed in the far corner of the studio and tried to get some rest.
I didn’t sleep at all.
“I’m e-mailing you the case file,” Marie said. “Read it over and get back to me if you have any questions.”
I already had the laptop they’d given me open on the coffee table. The e-mail popped up right away.
“So what exactly am I supposed to be doing?” I asked as the file downloaded.
“Read the case file,” she said again, more slowly. “And then you’ll know.”
The line went dead.
I cursed beneath my breath and tossed the phone aside, scrubbing at my eyes. What I needed right now was a strong cup of coffee, to wash away the sluggishness clouding my head.
While the file downloaded, I went to the kitchen and scoped out the cupboards. The apartment was fully furnished, and the closets and cabinets were stocked with the necessities. The kitchen was no different. I found a canister of coffee in the pantry, and quickly started a pot, pouring myself a cup of straight black less than a minute later.
I settled in on the couch and opened the file. There wasn’t a photo attached, so all I had to go on was basic intel. The target was named Charlie Worthington. He was nineteen years old, a valedictorian from Sarasota High School. He worked at a tea shop less than a mile from the apartment. The file described him as five five, 140 pounds, with platinum-blond hair. He liked obscure rock bands, biking on Saturday mornings, and pizza. He drove a gold Chevy Malibu and lived with his mom in a town house.
I flipped to the back of the file, to find out what my objective was. I could read the intel later. Right now I wanted to know what the hell I was doing here.
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