Betrayed

by Jennifer Rush

  It was just past noon when I loaded the cooled cookies onto a plate. On my way down to the lab, I grabbed the new tube of tennis balls I’d bought for Cas. I swore that boy had ADD, though his unwavering attention when food was present indicated he had some focus skills.

  When I entered, my gaze went to Sam’s room first. He sat at his desk, the full bow of his mouth pressed tightly in a line of concentration. He didn’t even bother to look up from the book in front of him. Sometimes, the Sam I spent time with at night was completely different from the careful and serious Sam I saw when other people were present. Did I act differently depending on who was around? I doubted Sam would even care if I did.

  Dad was at his computer, typing away. He gave a half wave without taking his eyes off the screen. Cas, his blond hair sticking up in messy tufts, moved to the front of his room when I approached. He pressed his face against the glass and puffed out his cheeks like a blowfish. When he pulled back and smirked, his cheeks dimpled in that innocent-but-mischievous way that only five-year-olds can pull off. Well, five-year-olds and Cas.

  Despite their altered rate of aging, caused by the treatments, Cas looked the youngest. With his dimples and round cheeks, he had a classic baby face. And he knew exactly how to use it to his advantage.

  “Pumpkin?” He nodded at the cookies.

  “Of course.”

  “Anna Banana, I love you.”

  I laughed and unlocked the hatch—a small opening in the brick wall between his room and Trev’s—and slid in four cookies, along with the tennis balls. I hit the button so he could open the hatch on his side.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said, then inhaled an entire cookie.

  “You are the black hole of food.”

  “I need my protein.” He patted his hard stomach. The gesture made a solid thwack, thwack sound. Despite all the food he crammed down his throat, he never gained an ounce.

  “I don’t think two eggs in a batch of cookies counts as protein.”

  He flicked the lid off the tube of tennis balls, unfazed. “It totally counts.”

  “Did you finish that model car I brought you last week?” I looked past him to his desk, which I could hardly make out beneath the pile of half-finished projects and junk. I spied one lone wheel on top of a sports magazine. “Should I take that mess as a no?”

  He screwed up his face and made a pfffffttt sound. “I have plenty of time.”

  I went to Trev’s room next. He’d been doing yoga when I first came in, but now stood at the wall, waiting for me. My gaze met his eyes and I smiled. His were a unique shade of brown, like firelight, warm and liquid and inviting. When I drew him, I used colors I rarely used on anyone else. Which was maybe why I drew him the most. While I felt like I knew Trev the best, his heritage was the hardest to pinpoint. Through the sheen of yoga-induced sweat, his earthy olive complexion hinted at a background different from those of the others. I’d been unable to find anything concrete in his files, but I thought he might be Native American, and maybe Italian, too.

  “You want some?” I asked, showing him the plate.

  He slicked back his dark hair with a quick swipe of his hand. “You know I live for Wednesdays.”

  I gave him four cookies, and in return he slipped something into the hatch for me. When I reached inside I felt the soft spine of a paperback. Letters from the Earth, by Mark Twain. It was a library book I’d checked out the week before. My membership was used more for Trev’s reading habits than it was for mine. I bought him his own copies when I could, all of which were lined up on the shelves above his desk. Alphabetized, of course.

  Inside the front cover, I found a note.

  Did you come down last night? What did you say to Sam?

  I looked behind me to see if Dad had noticed. He hadn’t. I’d divulged a lot of secrets to Trev. If I had a best friend here, he was it. He was the only one who knew how I felt about Sam.

  I quickly grabbed a pen from my desk and scribbled a response.

  Yes. Why? Did he say something?

  I pressed the note to the glass and Trev read. He wrote down an answer and held it up for me.

  He’s been acting strange. He snapped at Nick early this morning, after Nick said something about you and cookies. And he’s been sleeping less and less lately. Something’s going on with him.

  My next note read,

  I don’t know. I’ll keep an eye on him.

  “I’m sure you will,” Trev said with a knowing smile.

  Smirking, I crumpled the paper and ignored the comment. “Any requests for the next book?”

  “Something on Abraham Lincoln?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I started for Sam’s room. He tended to eat pretty well, so cookies were never his thing, but I slowed my pace just the same. He still sat at his desk, back hunched, reading his book. Technology in the Twenty-First Century. I’d ordered that one special for him.

  There were a few books on the shelves above him, mostly reference manuals. Sam’s room was neat, tidy, and bare.

  He looked up as I passed. “Hey,” he said.

  I smiled. “Hey.”

  And that was it.

  Nick’s room was last. He and I had never gotten along. As a matter of fact, he once told me he couldn’t stand the sight of my face. As far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything to offend him, and if I had, Nick wasn’t the kind of person to hold back.

  I slid a couple of cookies into the hatch. “Do you have any requests? I’ll probably go to the store later this week. A new Car & Driver? How are you on shampoo?” He liked this special stuff that was made from avocados and shea butter. I had to order it from a website that sold only organic goods, using my own money. Not that he cared.

  When he didn’t answer, I muttered, “Maybe a stone to sharpen your horns?”

  He called out as I headed back to my desk. “How about a fifth of vodka?”

  Ignoring him, I dropped into the desk chair, munching on a cookie with a high chocolate content. Like my mother, I wouldn’t turn down extra sweets. At least that’s one thing I had in common with her. That, and our hazel eyes, according to Dad. With my free hand, I held the previous day’s physical chart in front of me and snuck glances at the boys. Cookies in hand, Nick kicked back in his bed, watching a TV show about wolves. Sam was still reading. Trev stood at the front of his room, chatting with Cas about the difference between regular chocolate and white chocolate, their conversation not at all hindered by the wall between them.

  Dad wouldn’t tell me what the program tested for, despite my repeated questioning. When I’d first found the lab, it was all I could think about. What were four boys doing in our basement? Where were their parents? How long had they been down there? Dad knew exactly how much information to give to feed my curiosity and keep me quiet. I knew about the Branch, of course. But even though I knew who ran the program, I still didn’t know why.

  Dad said I should trust him, that he knew what he was doing, and so did the Branch. It was for the greater good.

  It was our job to observe, record data, and make necessary changes to the treatments. Dad may have been a little neglectful in the parenting department, but he was a good man, and if he trusted the Branch and our role in the program, then so did I.

  I thought the Branch was most likely funded by the government. Dad was obsessed with wars and foreign conflicts, so it made sense. My latest theory was that the boys were being made into supersoldiers. The world could use more heroes.

  As Nick finished his cookies, I prepared my tray for the blood draw. I double-checked each supply. Three vials. One new needle. Rubber strap. Band-Aids. Alcohol swabs. Everything was there.

  I only had to go into Nick’s room every other Wednesday, but each time it left me rattled. I’d rather draw blood from a mountain lion. If Nick was being made into a hero, the program had taken a wrong turn with him.

  I tried to shake the feeling off as I went to his room. “You ready?”

  “Does i
t matter if I am or not?”

  I was tempted to say something equally snotty in response, but I held back. I just wanted to get this over with.

  Dad had three rules about the lab that were to be followed without question. Rule number one: Do not go into the boys’ rooms when they are awake. Rule number two: Turn on the sleeping gas only once the subject is safely lying down. Rule number three: Wait four minutes for the gas to kick in.

  The boys knew the rules, too.

  But Nick hated rules.

  “Will you lie down, please?” I asked. He sneered at me. “Lie down, Nick.” The sneer turned into a snarl, but he finally did as I asked.

  Behind me, Dad’s cell phone rang. “I need to take this. You’ll be okay if I head upstairs?”

  I refused to tell Dad I was scared of Nick; I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t hack it in the lab. So I nodded and said, “Sure.”

  Phone at his ear, Dad hurried out.

  With Nick finally in place on his bed, I scooped up my supply tray. “Here it comes,” I warned, right before I hit the Cell #4 button on the control panel. The twin vents in Nick’s ceiling scraped open and white smoke hissed out.

  He managed to say “This shit gives me a headache” before the gas hit him and his eyes slipped closed. The ever-present tension in his long, sinewy body eased away.

  I looked at the stopwatch hanging from a lanyard around my neck. Four minutes was too long for most people to hold their breath. Dad said he was ninety percent sure the boys were stable at this point, and that they probably wouldn’t pose any sort of danger to me, but ten percent was too much of a risk for him.

  When four minutes had passed, I hit the button to reverse the vents, and the gas was sucked back out. I punched in the entrance code to Nick’s room and half of the wall pushed forward and slid aside. The acrid scent of the gas still lingered as I placed my tray on the floor and took a seat next to Nick on the bed.

  It was odd seeing him so relaxed. It almost made him look vulnerable. The dark scowl was gone, softening the sharp angles of his face. His black hair curled around his ears. If he hadn’t been so infuriating when he was awake, I might have even thought he was handsome.

  It didn’t take me long to fill the required three vials once I’d located a good vein in the crook of his elbow. I was about to leave when something caught my eye below the hem of his shirt, where a sliver of bare skin was exposed.

  I checked my stopwatch. One minute, thirty seconds remained before the effects of the gas would start to wear off. I set the tray back down and lifted the corner of his shirt.

  A scar discolored his skin, the wound old and white now. But the shape of it made me pause. It almost looked like an E. I thought of Sam’s scar, the R on his chest. How could I not have noticed Nick’s?

  Because you weren’t ever looking at him.

  “You’re running out of time,” Trev called from two cells over.

  Nick’s eyes fluttered. His fingers flexed at his sides.

  My heart lurched. I snatched up the tray and started for the door as Nick reached for me. His fingers grazed my forearm, but he was still sluggish from the gas and missed. I slammed the control button and the wall slid back into place as he rushed forward. His blue eyes met mine and the scowl returned. I tried to act unafraid, even though I was anything but. Nick had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, the color of the sky where night meets day. A blue that made him seem more mature, more dangerous, more everything.

  “Next time,” he said, “just do your job and don’t fucking touch me unless you have to.”

  “Nicholas, stop,” Sam barked. I locked eyes with Sam as he pressed his hands against the glass, like he meant to pound his way through if it came to that. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to choke out, still breathless. “I just…” I wanted to mention the scar, wanted to know if it was connected to Sam’s, but the strained look on Sam’s face said now was not the time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again before turning away and carrying my tray over to the counter so I could bury my head in my work.

  Dad shuffled back into the lab a good hour after he’d disappeared to answer the phone.

  “Nick’s sample is ready,” I said.

  A half-chewed straw hung between Dad’s index and middle fingers. He’d quit smoking three years earlier, and the straws had taken the place of cigarettes.

  “Did it go okay?” He popped the straw in his mouth and sat down in front of his computer.

  “Fine,” I lied. I spun around in my desk chair so that I faced the boys. Cas was bouncing a tennis ball off the ceiling of his cell. Trev had disappeared into his bathroom. Nick was still watching TV.

  Sam, though… Sam just lay on his back, eyes closed.

  “How was your phone call?” I asked Dad. “Was it Connor?”

  “It was. And it was fine.”

  Connor called from the Branch to check in a lot, but he only showed up every couple of months to look the boys over, and to ask Dad if he thought “the units” were ready. Dad said no every time. And when I asked him what the boys had to be ready for, he gave me his default answer: That’s classified.

  Sam shifted to a sitting position, the muscle in his forearm dancing. Every day, at exactly two PM, he worked out. Watching him was like watching a tightly choreographed routine—every move counted.

  I glanced at the digital clock hanging on the wall: 1:55 PM.

  Sam tore off his white T-shirt and turned around, giving me a view of the tattoo on his back. Four birch trees covered the majority of his skin, the branches twining across his shoulders and partway down his arms.

  Bending over, legs straight, he started a series of stretches before dropping into push-up position. I’d counted his push-ups once while pretending to read some charts. He did a hundred in a matter of minutes and never slowed. Dad said strength was a trait he and his team had manipulated, and Sam was proof that the genetic alterations had worked.

  After the push-ups, Sam moved to sit-ups, the muscles in his stomach bunching on the rise. Two cells over, Cas was doing his own version of the workout, which was half karate moves collected from TV, half hip-hop dance.

  At 2:51, Sam slowed to cooldown mode and ran through more stretches. When he finished, he grabbed a towel from his desk, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked over at me.

  I blushed and turned away, pretending to find something extremely interesting in the control panel as he disappeared into his bathroom. He came out a second later and tapped on the glass.

  I raised my eyes.

  “Can I have some ice water?”

  “And a beer for me, please!” Cas said, then added, “But water would be fine, too.”

  If I had been alone, I would have gotten up, filled two glasses, and handed them over without question. But with Dad there, I deferred to him, because he was the boss, even if I was his daughter.

  “That’s fine,” Dad muttered, squinting through the lenses of his glasses as he read over a file.

  “A straw, too?” Sam called, gesturing toward the canister on the counter.

  “Sure,” Dad said, barely glancing up.

  I gave Cas his water first, then went to Sam’s room. He pulled his cup out of the hatch a second later. “Thanks.” He was still shirtless, and I couldn’t help but examine the scar on his chest. I thought of Nick.

  Were there other scars? And if so, why? Did Trev or Cas have scars?

  When I dragged my eyes up a second later, I found Sam still staring down at me with an intensity that warmed my skin. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “All right then,” I said. “I should get back to work. Lots of data to input. Files to… file.”

  I wheeled around to find my dad looking at me strangely. Did he know how I felt? Could he tell? But he just picked up his straw and returned to his work. I inhaled, trying to shake off the uneasiness. Sam had the ability to reduce me to the thirteen-year-old girl I was when we
first met.

  I spent the next hour pretending to organize test charts.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Also by Jennifer Rush

  A Sneak Peek of Altered

  Copyright

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Rush

  Photo of guy © Shutterstock / Ollyy

  Photo of clouds © Howard Huang

  Cover © 2014 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  lb-teens.com

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  First ebook edition: August 2014

  ISBN 978-0-316-25894-4

  E3

  For more about this book and author, visit Bookish.com.