Marie took in a breath. “It was a test,” she said. “And you passed. Sort of.”
“What kind of test? To see how far you could warp me? To see how well I followed orders?”
“No.” Marie crossed her arms over her chest and took a step closer. “To see if you disobeyed orders. To see if you chose sacrificing yourself to protect the innocent. For a second there, I thought you’d run. And when you shot Charlie, I seriously believed you’d meant to kill her.”
“Maybe I did,” I said.
Marie shook her head. “I found the bullet hole in the tree. You were testing the bullets. How did you know they were fakes?”
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t want to admit that my discovering the ruse was from simple observation. I knew the bullets were fakes because I was good at noticing fine details.
It was Charlie who ended the silence. “Do you want revenge or not? Because we can help you get it.”
The room grew still, and heavy. Did I want revenge? More than I could put into words.
“How can you help?”
“You remember Sura?” Marie asked.
I nodded. Sura was an ex-Branch operative. She’d helped Anna and the others and me when we’d first escaped from the farmhouse lab, and warned us when the Branch showed up, only to be killed in the fight that ensued.
She’d spoken of a group of people, contacts inside and outside of the Branch who worked to take them down. That’s how she knew the Branch had found us moments before they arrived.
Of course, I’d been the one to call the Branch in. I’d given them our exact location. The memory still left me ill.
I looked at Marie again, at the hematite stone dangling from her necklace.
The blood stone. Protection.
A dangerous game.
“You’re… part of the group? The one Sura talked about?” I asked.
Marie nodded. “We’re known as the Turncoats, and our mission? Take down the Branch, piece by piece.”
“And me?”
She smiled in the first rays of sunlight that shone through the windows. “You want your friends back? I can help you. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have to play your part, and you’re going to have to obey Riley’s orders for a time. But if you’re patient, if you wait for the right moment, we can take him down. We can take the whole thing to the ground.”
“You want to recruit me,” I said.
Both of them nodded.
Hours ago, I’d decided I was done with the Branch. I’d decided to run. But running wouldn’t solve anything. Not really. And how long would it last?
Worse than that, worse than dying, was dying knowing that Anna, Sam, Cas, and Nick still thought of me as the traitor I was.
I could change that. I could help them. I could rewrite the story.
This was the path to redemption. And really, what did I have to lose?
“Yes,” I said. “The answer is yes.”
“Good,” Marie said. “Your first mission? Get Charlie to her rendezvous point. She still has to die, after all. Riley needs to believe it.”
“And then?”
“And then return to the Branch and pretend you just killed an innocent girl, and pretend you feel no remorse for it.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
“All right. Let’s get moving then. I still have a death to fake.”
I quickly grabbed what few things I had in the apartment and left Marie to make a few phone calls. I walked with Charlie out of the apartment, out of the building, and into the morning light.
Her hair was disheveled, and there was dirt smudged on her face. Without thinking, I reached over to wipe it away.
She went still.
“I tried to tell you,” she said. “After you kissed me. I almost blew the whole mission. I’m sorry about that part.”
“Not for punching me?” My head was still throbbing.
She winced. “Sorry, but no, not the punching part. You shot me, after all.”
We started walking again, toward Sycamore Woods, where I’d left the SUV.
After a while, Charlie slowed and hung her head, her hair falling forward to hide her face. “Did you mean what you said?”
I ran a hand over my jaw. “What did I say?”
“That thing, about beauty and purity.”
I exhaled, my breath painting the golden air. “Yeah,” I answered. “ ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ ”
She turned to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed my cheek. Caught off guard, I had to stop myself from stumbling backward.
She pressed her lips to the curve of my ear and whispered, “Don’t ever change, Trev Harper.”
“Never,” I said, and I meant it.
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About the Author
Jennifer Rush began telling lies at the age of five and was immediately hooked. Fiction was far better than reality, and she spent most of her teens writing (about vampires, naturally). She currently lives in Michigan with her husband and two children and enjoys eating ice cream in her spare time. She is the author of the Altered Saga. Jennifer invites you to visit her online at jennrush.com.
Look for all the stories in the Altered Saga:
Altered
Forged: An Altered Series Prequel
Erased
Reborn
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Altered, the first book in the Altered Saga
1
FOR MOST OF THE LAST FOUR YEARS, I wasn’t allowed in the lab. But that didn’t stop me from sneaking down there. And while I no longer needed to wake at midnight in order to visit the boys, my internal clock was still fully tuned to the schedule.
I sat on the edge of my bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, bare feet rooted to the hardwood floor. Moonlight crept through the window, the shadows from the maple trees sliding this way and that.
Dad had asked for my help in the lab eight months earlier, so I could go downstairs anytime I wanted now. But seeing the boys with permission wasn’t the same—wasn’t as thrilling—as sneaking down there in the dark.
I’d long ago mapped the creaky floorboards in the hallway, and I skipped over them now, pushing through the living room and the kitchen, taking the stairs down to the basement two at a time.
The stairs ended in a small annex, where a keypad had been installed in the wall, the buttons glowing in the dark. For someone who worked for a clandestine company, Dad had never been cautious with his codes. Four years ago, when I first broke into the lab, it took me only a week to figure out the right combination. It hadn’t been changed since.
I punched in the required six digits, the buttons beeping in response. The door hissed as it slid open, and I was greeted by the stale scent of filtered air. My breath quickened. Every nerve in my body buzzed with anticipation.
I went down the short hallway and the lab opened before me. The space felt small and cozy, but the lab was actually much bigger than the footprint of the house. Dad told me the lab had been built first, and then the farmhouse was built on top of it. The Branch had gone to great lengths to make the program, and the boys, disappear in the middle of New York’s farmland.
To the right sat Dad’s desk, and next to it, mine. To the left was the refrigerator, followed by a tower of filing cabinets, and a hutch stuffed with supplies. Directly across from the mouth of the hallway were the boys’ rooms: four of them lined up in a row, each separated by a brick wall and exposed by a sheet of thick Plexiglas in the front.
Trev’s, Cas’s, and Nick’s rooms were dark, but a faint light spilled from Sam’s, the second room from the right. He rose from his desk chair as soon as he saw me. My eyes traced the etched lines of his bare stomach, the arch of his hips. He wore the
gray cotton pajama pants all the boys had, but that was it.
“Hey,” he said, his voice reduced to the sound the tiny vent holes allowed through the glass.
Heat crept from my neck to my cheeks and I tried to look calm—normal—as I approached. The whole time I’d known the boys, they had suffered from amnesia, an unplanned side effect of the alterations. Despite that, I felt like the others had shown me parts of who they were, deep down. All of them but Sam. Sam gave only what he thought was necessary. The things that truly defined him were still a secret.
“Hi,” I whispered. I didn’t want to wake the others if they were asleep, so I kept my steps light. I was suddenly more aware of the sharp edges of my elbows, the knobs that were my knees, the loud thumping of my feet. Sam had been genetically altered, made into something more than human, and it showed in every efficient curve of muscle in his body. It was hard to compete with that.
Even his scars were perfect. A small one marred the left side of his chest, the skin puckered white, the jagged lines of the scar branching off in a shape that seemed more deliberate than accidental. I’d always thought it looked like an R.
“It’s after midnight,” he said. “Something tells me you didn’t come down here to watch infomercials with me.”
My laugh sounded nervous even to me. “No. I don’t really need a Chop-O-Matic.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” He shifted, pressing his arm against the glass above his head so he could hunch closer. Closer to me. “What are you doing down here?”
I tried out a dozen possible answers in my mind. I wanted to say something clever, something witty, something interesting. If it had been Trev, I would have had to say only, “Entertain me?” and he would have shared a handful of memorized quotes from his favorite historical figures. Or, if it had been Cas, I’d have split a set of markers and we’d have drawn ridiculous pictures on the glass. And Nick… well, he rarely acknowledged my existence, so I would never have come down here for him in the first place.
But this was Sam, so I just shrugged and suggested the same thing I always suggested: “I couldn’t sleep, and I wondered if you wanted to play a game of chess.”
I clasped my hands awkwardly in front of me as I waited for him to answer.
“Get the board,” he finally said, and I smiled as I turned away.
I grabbed what we needed and pulled my desk chair over. He did the same on his side. I set up the small folding table and the board, putting the black pieces on Sam’s side, the white on mine.
“Ready?” I asked and he nodded. I moved my knight to F3.
He examined the board, elbows on his knees. “Rook. D-five.” I moved his piece to the correct square. We ran through a few more plays, focused only on the game, until Sam asked, “What was the weather like today?”
“Cold. Biting.” I moved my next piece. When he didn’t immediately counter, I looked up and met his eyes.
An unremarkable green, like river water, his eyes were nothing to look at, but they were something else to be watched with. Sam’s gaze, at quiet moments like this, made my insides shudder.
“What?” I said.
“The sky—what color would you use to draw it?”
“Azure. The kind of blue you can almost taste.”
For some reason, everything I said and did around Sam felt weightier. As if merely his presence could shake my soul, make me feel. He savored every detail I gave him, as if I was his last link to the outside word. I guess in some ways I was.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder what the sun used to feel like.”
“You’ll feel it again. Someday.”
“Maybe.”
I wanted to say, You will, I promise you will, even if I have to break you out myself. I tried to imagine what it would be like to punch in the codes and let them all go. I could do it. Maybe even get away with it. There were no cameras down here, no recording devices.
“Anna?” Sam said.
I blinked, stared at the chessboard in front of me. Had he told me his next play? “Sorry, I was—”
“Somewhere else.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s late. Let’s finish tomorrow?”
I started to protest, but a yawn snuck up on me before I could hide it. “All right. It will give me more time to work on my strategy.”
He made a sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “You do that.”
I moved the table to the far corner and took a step toward the hallway. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
The light shining from his bathroom caught his dark, close-cropped hair, turning it silver for a second before he drew back. “Good night, Anna.”
“G’night.” I waved as the lab door slid shut behind me and that empty feeling settled back in.
I didn’t belong in the boys’ world. Not that I belonged in the real world, either. I was too afraid that if I let someone in, they’d figure out my secrets about the lab and the boys. I didn’t want to be the reason the Branch moved the program. Mostly, I didn’t want to risk losing Sam. Because even though our relationship was based solely on testing and the lab and my sketches and midnight chess games, I couldn’t picture my life without him.
2
EVERY WEDNESDAY MORNING, MY DAD made a pitcher of lemonade—fresh-squeezed, lots of sugar—and I made cookies. It was our tradition, and we had always been short on traditions.
The ice clinked against the glass as Dad handed it to me. “Thanks,” I said, taking a sip. “Perfect.”
He slid the pitcher into the refrigerator. “Good. Good.”
I shifted at the kitchen table, looking out the window to the forest beyond the backyard, struggling to think of something else to say. Something to keep Dad here just a minute longer. Dad and I weren’t good with small talk. Lately, the only thing that seemed to connect us was the lab.
“Did you see the paper this morning?” I asked, even though I knew he had. “Mr. Hirsch bought the drugstore.”
“Yeah, I saw that.” Dad set the measuring cup in the sink before running a hand over the back of his head, smoothing his quickly graying hair. He did that a lot when he was worried.
I sat forward. “What is it?”
The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he put his hands on the edge of the farmhouse sink. I thought he might reveal whatever it was that was bothering him, but he just shook his head and said, “Nothing. I have a lot of stuff to get through today, so I think I’ll go downstairs. You’ll come down later? Nick’s blood sample should be drawn.”
Dad wasn’t the type to talk about how bad his day was, so even though I wanted to push him, I didn’t. “Sure. I’ll be down in a little bit.”
“All right.” He nodded before disappearing from the kitchen, his footsteps audible on the basement stairs. And just like that, my time was up. Dad was endlessly consumed by his work, and I’d accepted that a long time ago. I’d never get used to it, though.
I grabbed my mother’s journal from the counter, where I’d left it earlier that morning. In it she had written her most beloved recipes, along with her thoughts and anything she found inspiring. There was a special section in the back devoted to cookie recipes. It was the only possession of hers I owned, and I treasured it more than anything else.
A few months earlier I’d started adding my own notes and sketches to the blank pages in the back. I’d always been afraid of ruining the book, as if my additions would somehow dilute what was already there. But I had aspirations and ideas, too, and I didn’t think there was any other place I’d rather record them.
I ran my fingers over the old food stains on the pages, reading and rereading her tiny cursive handwriting.
I decided on Cas’s favorite cookie, pumpkin chocolate chip, since he had aced the previous day’s mental evaluation—and because they were my favorite, too.
After gathering the ingredients, I got to work. I pretty much knew the recipe by heart, but I still followed Mom’s instructions, and the notes she�
��d made in the margins.
Do not use imitation vanilla.
Stock up on pumpkin puree close to holidays—
stores tend not to stock it in spring and summer.
It can’t hurt to add extra chocolate—ever.
Dad said Mom ate chocolate like some people eat bread.
She died when I was one, so I didn’t really know her. Dad didn’t talk about her a lot, either, but every now and then a story would shake free from his memory and I would listen intently, not making a sound, worried that any noise on my part would break the spell.
I poured the bag of chocolate chips into the mixing bowl, the little bits plopping into the layer of rolled oats. Outside, the bleak sky hid the sun, and the wind had picked up since I’d crawled out of bed. Winter was on its way. If this wasn’t a day for cookies, I didn’t know what was.
Once the dough was mixed, I filled two cookie sheets and slid them into the oven, setting the timer so they’d finish somewhere between baked and doughy. Cas liked them that way.
With the timer ticking in the background, I sat at the table, my science book open in front of me. I had reached the end of the chapter on fault lines and was supposed to write an essay about it. I’d been homeschooled my whole life, and my dad was my teacher. Recently, though, he’d left me on my own. He probably wouldn’t even have noticed if I’d skipped the assignment, but I couldn’t stand the thought of giving up so easily.
By the time the cookies were done, I’d made zero progress and my back was stiff. I’d pulled a muscle during Saturday night’s combat lesson—Dad’s idea of an extracurricular activity—and I was still paying for it.
Leaving the cookies to cool, I headed upstairs to my room. At my dresser, I pushed aside a pile of old sketches and travel magazines, spying my bottle of ibuprofen tucked behind them.
After swallowing two pills down with a gulp of water, I tossed my hair up in a messy ponytail, leaving a few wispy blond strands hanging in my face. I peered at myself in the mirror and curled my upper lip. Making things beautiful on paper with a pencil in my hand was easy for me. Making things beautiful in real life wasn’t.
Betrayed Page 4
