Reborn

by Jennifer Rush

  “Listen to my voice,” the woman said. “What is your name?”

  “My name is blank,” I answered.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Nowhere.”

  38

  NICK

  “CHLOE SAID THE VENT WAS A HUNDRED yards from the back of the barn,” Trev whispered.

  We were crouched in the woods, the barn a dusky shadow in the distance. “Is it hidden?”

  “Didn’t sound like it.”

  “Once we get in, then what?” Anna asked. She was on my left and Trev was on my right. Sam and Cas were behind us. “We don’t know the layout, so anything you can give us will help.”

  “I’m not sure where the vent runs to.” I shifted, dropping onto one knee. “But the layout is a maze of office partition walls, and they’re tall enough that even I can’t see over the top. If Elizabeth isn’t in an exam room, then she’ll be in one of the holding cells along the back wall.”

  “And if she is in an exam room?” Sam asked over my shoulder.

  Then we might be screwed, I thought. No way would I tell him that, though. If there was any chance at failure, Sam would call off the rescue mission, and I needed him at my back.

  Trev dropped out the clip in his gun and filled the empty slots with new bullets. “We’ll find her, Nick. We’re not leaving without her.”

  I nodded at him in the half dark, happy he was here. Then disturbed that I was happy he was here.

  Sam came up alongside Trev. “Looks like they have at least six men patrolling the grounds.”

  There was a man at each back corner of the barn, two more in the field farther out, and one on each side of the barn. We also had to assume there were probably two more in the front.

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked. As much as I wanted to run in there and start shooting people, Sam was the better strategist.

  “We could probably get inside the vent by taking out the two agents at the rear, but we risk being discovered when the others patrolling the grounds realize they’re missing two men. It might be better to take them all out now.”

  “I agree,” Trev said. “It’ll take the guys inside longer to realize the outside patrols are gone than it’ll take the outside patrols to realize they’re missing someone.”

  “Nick and I should go in first and take out the men closest to the woods. Trev and Cas go in wide and take out the men at the back of the barn. When Nick and I have taken care of our targets, Nick will go right and I’ll go left for the last two.”

  “What about me?” Anna asked.

  “You watch our backs.”

  She scowled at her inferior placement in the attack plan, but didn’t argue.

  “Ready?” I asked. They all nodded.

  My gun in my hand, I crept through the trees with Sam on my left. We had about twenty feet of woods for coverage before the trees broke up and the field took over. When we reached the edge of the field, Sam raised his fist, pulling me to a stop. He held up two fingers and pointed to the north, where two more men had appeared.

  Shit.

  Sam waved me forward, though, so apparently we were still going through with the plan.

  We divided at the perimeter of the woods. I edged forward, dropping to my stomach in the tall grass when my target made a circle, scanning the area. When his back was to me again, I shot ahead silently, putting a bullet in him before he knew what hit him.

  Twenty feet to my left, Sam’s guy hit the ground as Trev and Cas blazed past us, knocking out their targets before any of them realized they were under attack.

  I went in for my second target—a short, solid guy who was patrolling the north side of the barn. My gun was up, ready to take the shot, when someone shouted from my right.

  “Carson! Behind you!”

  My guy—Carson—turned just in time to get a bullet in the chest. When his knees buckled beneath him, I yanked him toward me, using him as a shield as a round of bullets was sent my way. Several thudded into the wood siding of the barn. Two hit Carson. I dropped him and ran, ducking behind a rusted-out trailer as another wave of bullets whizzed overhead.

  I crawled to a better vantage point, where I could make out the agents’ legs from the underbelly of the trailer. They were at least thirty feet out, with nothing but open field between us. There was a handful of trees at their back, giving them coverage if they needed it. All I had was this damn trailer.

  Fighting broke out in front of the barn. I took the opening, hoping the guys to the north would be distracted, but as soon as I popped up over the edge of the trailer, several gunshots rang out and I had to drop to my stomach again.

  This battle was over before I’d even entered the barn.

  I’d have to wait until they came for me.

  From my spot, I could see only their legs as they raced toward me. And then, suddenly, there was another set of legs—shorter, skinnier legs. Something cracked. A gun went off. A body hit the dirt with a wet, sloppy lurch. A man shouted, then choked. Then nothing.

  I chanced a look. Anna was the only one left standing.

  She jogged over to me, a smile stretched wide across her face. “You’re welcome.”

  “I had them,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” she countered.

  “Come on. Let’s see if the men in front are down.”

  When we rounded the front corner of the barn, Cas was stuffing an agent in the trunk of a car. Trev and Sam were there, pulling guns from the dead agents at their feet.

  “Let’s go find that vent,” Sam said. “Before someone realizes these guys are missing.”

  With the area secure, finding the vent was easy. It was a circular port in the middle of the field, recently cleaned of the topsoil and vegetation that had most likely hidden it from view. I wondered if Chloe had cleaned it off days ago, knowing we might need it.

  Once inside, I nearly choked on the cold, sterile air. It reminded me of the lab back at the farmhouse, and the cell I’d spent five years locked inside. The walls of the vent closed in around me, and my heart raced in my chest.

  I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  Trev had offered to take the lead, but now I was glad I’d shoved him aside, because it meant I was the first one out.

  The vent led us to a storage closet, big enough that we could all stand inside once we’d climbed down from the vent.

  The air was stuffier here, hot and pressing. With Sam at my left, a gun in his hand, I popped the door open a crack. We were at the back wall, the maze in front of us. Which meant the holding cells were to our left. There were no Branch agents in sight. If I had to guess, Riley had used up a lot of his manpower to guard the outside.

  I signaled to Sam which direction we should go, and he nodded in the half dark. The others filed in behind us. I was the first one out of the closet, the need to find Elizabeth fueling me. If she was in a holding cell, she was within my reach, and escape was not far behind.

  The first cell was empty. And the second. And the third. The last was open, the floor still painted red with my blood.

  I cursed beneath my breath.

  Elizabeth was somewhere in the maze, and if she was in the maze then she was in an exam room, and I didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

  I wanted the group to divide to cover more ground, but Sam vetoed that, so we all crept through the maze like an army of ants with guns in our hands.

  We crossed paths with only two agents, and both were on the floor in seconds, then tucked into offices, out of sight.

  The farther we got into the lab, the more I panicked, worried that Elizabeth wasn’t here, that this was some kind of decoy. I could sense Sam growing edgier behind me, but I couldn’t give up yet. Not until I’d searched every corner of this lab.

  And finally, somewhere in the middle of the maze, at a window that looked in on an exam room, I froze.

  Elizabeth was strapped down on a bed, her dark hair spread across a pillow. A pair of dark-tinted glasses covered her eyes
, and electrodes were plastered all over her head.

  My gut twisted on itself, and my free hand tightened into a fist at my side.

  We were too late.

  Too fucking late.

  39

  ELIZABETH

  THE GLASSES WENT DARK.

  Something thumped beneath me, and I had the distinct feeling that I was floating, the world carrying on below me, far, far away.

  Hands shook my shoulders, and I came crashing back to my body. Sounds floated in and out of my hearing like river currents, and the sounds formed into words that seemed suddenly foreign. So I just stared. Stared and stared at the face looming above me, wondering when it was I’d opened my eyes.

  The face belonged to a boy. Black hair curled around his ears and down his neck, and his eyes were two orbs of glowing blue staring back at me.

  “Elizabeth,” he said, and the word felt familiar in my head. I repeated it without a sound, forming the word with my lips, testing it out.

  “Elizabeth,” he said again, more urgently.

  My body trembled in his arms. He tightened his hold around me, and the heat from his touch spread through me, fiery and immediately recognizable.

  “We have to run,” he whispered in my ear, and his voice hitched with an emotion I thought might be misery. “Can you?”

  I nodded, only because I knew it was what he wanted, and if I was sure of nothing else, I was sure of this: pleasing him pleased me.

  So I ran.

  He pulled me alongside him, his arm at my waist.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  There were others with us. A girl. Three other guys. They were young, and I wondered, fleetingly, how old I was.

  “Pulling her out like that was wrong,” another dark-haired guy said. He was shorter than the one who’d grabbed me first, less imposing. “I’m afraid of what the consequences will be.”

  “We can worry about that later,” my boy said. Not knowing his name, I’d started to think of him as mine. He seemed to know me, anyway. “Right now we just need to get her out of here.”

  Noises, not far off, pulled us to a stop. We huddled in an empty office and waited until it seemed safe.

  “What is my name?” I asked the blond guy on my right.

  “Elizabeth,” he said. He pointed at all the others, rattling off their names before his own, which he said was Cas.

  I had thought my name was Blank. But that sounded less familiar than Elizabeth, so I believed this Cas, and decided Blank was a terrible name anyway.

  “We are your friends,” Nick said. “Everyone else is an enemy. Remember that.”

  “I will.”

  We twisted and turned through walls that reached above my head, but did not reach the ceiling. They were all the same.

  Somewhere in the distance someone yelled, “Find them!”

  It was a woman’s voice. A voice that sounded familiar.

  Shh. It’s our little secret.

  “Don’t stop,” the boy said.

  My legs ached and my shoulders burned and my head wouldn’t stop pounding, but slowing down didn’t seem like an option. So I kept moving.

  When we rounded a corner, a man dressed in black charged toward us, and the girl in our group—Anna—brought up her gun. But she wasn’t quick enough. Someone else took out the man for us.

  A group of men and women emerged from the hallway. I remembered what Nick had said, that everyone else was an enemy, and immediately stiffened in his protective hold.

  Trev noticed and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “These people are here to help. They are not our enemies.”

  Our group of friends was growing too fast, and there were too many people to keep track of.

  The new arrivals were dressed in nondescript clothing—jeans, flannel shirts, boots—but they all carried weapons and had matching looks of determination and desire for revenge etched across their faces.

  “I’m glad you made it,” Trev said. “We can use the help.” He nodded at the tall man in front. “This is Dr. Sedwick, Elizabeth’s therapist.”

  Nick’s expression turned to one of surprise, so I tried to look surprised, too.

  “Elizabeth’s therapist is one of the Turncoats?” Anna said.

  “Aggie was, too,” Trev added. “Just so we’re clear.”

  “Talk about being well insulated.”

  The therapist stepped forward and examined me with a quick sweep of his brown eyes. He had kind eyes. “Thank God you’re okay.”

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  The line of his thick brow furrowed deeply. He glanced at Trev. “Tell me you got here in time. Tell me they haven’t wiped her.”

  Trev frowned. “We found her when she was halfway through the memory alteration.”

  The therapist cursed, and tried to hide the wobbling of his bottom lip by clamping his mouth closed. He pulled in a breath through his nose. “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. I will fix this. I swear it. They will pay for what they’ve done to you and Aggie.”

  Voices picked up some twenty feet away, followed by the quick pounding of feet.

  “We have to go,” Nick said.

  “We’ll cover you.” The therapist waved his group ahead. “Good luck.”

  Our groups separated. I glanced over my shoulder at the man as he retreated, something nagging at me as he disappeared behind a wall.

  We wound our way through several more hallways, but were ambushed before long. The dark-haired boy with the green eyes killed a man with his bare hands. I sucked in a breath.

  Anna shot another man, and he crumpled to the floor.

  Another man barreled out of a hallway. This one was bigger than any of the others, with a scowl on his face and several scars running along his jaw.

  Anna ran, dropped to her knees, and slid across the floor, whacking the man in the kneecap with the butt of her gun. He howled. Cas punched him in the face, then shot him in the foot.

  Another down.

  The walls that all looked the same, that had trapped us in their maze, disappeared. We turned to the left and went through an open door. Once inside, I realized it was a storage room, with mops and brooms and stuffed filing cabinets. The room—not the contents—felt vaguely familiar, like it was a place I’d dreamed about.

  “I’ll go first,” Sam said. Sam, the one with the green eyes and the impenetrable expression. “I’ll pull the girls up.”

  He jumped on top of a filing cabinet and pulled himself inside a hole in the ceiling. He shimmied around until he was able to poke his head back through.

  “Elizabeth next,” Nick said, and he ushered me to the filing cabinet.

  A shadow crossed the doorway. Anna shouted.

  A gun went off.

  The boy in the ceiling cursed beneath his breath, lost his hold, and fell through the opening, crashing into me and taking me down with him.

  More bodies filled the room. More enemies dressed in black. Fighting broke out.

  “No shooting,” a woman called. “Do not hurt Elizabeth!”

  Sam grunted and rolled off me, leaving behind a stain of something red on my chest.

  A gun fell to the floor, skidded across the concrete, and stopped only inches away from me.

  I reached for it, pulled it into my hand, and rose to my feet.

  Everyone else is an enemy.

  I put my finger where a finger should go and squeezed.

  40

  NICK

  AGENTS LAY AT MY FEET, A TANGLE OF arms and legs, blood running in rivers on the stained concrete.

  A gun went off behind me. I could almost feel the air part as the bullet left the chamber, sailing past me, hitting Dr. Turrow in the chest.

  Another bullet. Then another.

  “Everyone else is an enemy,” Elizabeth whispered, and then she began to shake.

  Dr. Turrow’s knees buckled. She stared at her daughter, her eyes wide and bloodshot.

  “Elizabeth.” Her voice cracked as blood turned her white lab coat bl
ack. Tears ran down her face. She collapsed against the door frame, and frowned. “I am not your enemy.”

  One final shot took the doctor out, and she fell over, just another body on the concrete floor.

  “Go! Go,” Trev said as he cleared the door of bodies and slammed it shut, propping it closed with a shop broom.

  “I’ll go first,” I said, since Sam had been shot in the arm and could barely keep himself upright.

  I leapt onto the filing cabinet and into the air vent, and then twisted around to hang back down into the closet. I took Elizabeth first. Trev told her which way to go, and she started crawling on her hands and knees in the direction of our freedom.

  Anna came up next. “I’ll help her along,” she said to me. “Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks.”

  With Trev’s and Cas’s help, we managed to get Sam inside.

  Cas came up next. Trev came up last. I closed the vent behind me.

  The sound of our shuffling echoed through the vent, but the farther we got, the more the vent smelled of fresh air and pine trees. When the access panel was opened at ground level, colder air rushed in, and my fingers went numb.

  When I climbed out, dirt jamming beneath my fingernails, I sucked in a breath. Trev offered me a hand for a boost up. There was some weird symbolic shit going on there, some bridges mended and all that.

  I took his hand and set my feet on solid ground.

  The sky had darkened in the hours we’d been inside the lab. There was no moon, only the silver of stars, and the swaying of the treetops.

  Cas shut the vent behind us. “Which way is out?”

  Trev pointed to the left. “To the east.”

  Elizabeth wrapped her arms around herself, and looked lost. I’d had to keep myself together inside the lab, but now, out in the open, freedom so close, everything that had happened came rushing in.

  We hadn’t reached her in time, and they’d wiped her memories. Or at least, partially. She’d shot her own mother. She hadn’t even recognized her. That would be a memory so volatile that when it returned it would ruin her.

  “Hey,” I said. “You okay?”

  She frowned and ran her teeth over her bottom lip. “I don’t know. I’m so… confused.”