Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) (18 page)

A few clicks later, Morgan’s groggy voice came across the crackling line. “Yes, what is it?”

“Katie Tyler. I want her taken out of the programme and sent to the Hub now. It’s mission critical.”

“But…”

“But what?”

A cold dread crept its way up my spine. I already knew what he was going to say. “She went through the final test yesterday, and I’m sorry to say that she failed. I tried to coach her through it, but there’s only so much that can be done when a child is not willing to–”

I didn’t have time for Morgan and his self-importance. “Where is she?”

“She’s been sent to the reintegration programme with the other cadets who failed. I’m sure once she’s been adequately adjusted, you’ll be able to see her.”

“Adequately adjusted?”

“Yes. You know, adjusted to become a useful member of society. How to work in shops, that sort of thing.”

“You have no idea, do you?” I hung up before he could start to protest.

“What the hell is going on, Tyler?” Zac said, walking down the steps.

“I need the keys to your car,” I said.

“No way. No one drives my baby but me.”

“Zac,” Aubrey said, fixing him with a fierce stare. “Give me the keys.”

It felt like forever to get to the address I’d pulled off the files about the reintegration programme. We had to stop at five roadblocks and go through the same boring rigmarole with snarky army officers. I was about to tell Aubrey to drive through the next one when we finally pulled up outside a modern, glass-fronted hospital. In my old reality, the programme had been run out of another hospital called Greyfield’s. But this place looked to be three times the size.

“What do you know about what goes on here?” I asked Aubrey as she killed the engine.

“Not much,” she said, resting her arm on the steering wheel and peering through the windscreen. “I’ve heard it called the Bin, you know, where the rejects end up.”

“And has anyone ever seen any of the rejects again?” I said.

Aubrey looked up, trying to access her memory. Then she looked at me. “I’ve never thought about it before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid that failed after they left.”

She leaned forward in her seat again and looked up at the house. “What do they do to them in there?”

I couldn’t tell her. She had to see for herself.

“Come on,” I said opening the car door. I had to find out if my sister was OK. If she wasn’t… I couldn’t even think about that.

We walked up to the front door and rang the bell. No sneaking around in the dark like when Cain and I had broken into Greyfield’s. Besides, this wasn’t the first time I’d been here. Or at least not the first time
he’d
been here. I knew the place as if from a recurring dream.

The door opened, revealing a stern-faced nurse. Her expression switched from annoyance to surprise as soon as she saw me.

“Commandant Tyler,” she said. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“Evening…” It took me the faintest of efforts to pluck her name out of
his
memory, “Marie, I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead.”

“Oh, not a problem, sir,” she said, stepping aside to let me in. “Anything for the S3. We’re so proud of your efforts, and to know we’d played our small part.”

I forced a smile, when I really wanted to scream abuse in her face. “And you will be justly rewarded for your work,” I said.

“Oh, we don’t do it for the glory, sir.” She rubbed her hands on her bleached white skirt, filled with faux humility.

I glared at her. “Oh, I’m quite sure of that.” I coughed. “Anyway, Marie, I’m here because of an issue with one of the latest cadets.”

“An issue?” Marie said.

“An administration error over at the academy. You know how it is, what with everything that’s been going on. One of the cadets can’t be scheduled for surgery.”

“Surgery?” Aubrey whispered behind me.

“But some of the cadets have already been processed,” Marie said. “We double-checked their results as procedure.”

“Has a cadet called Katie been processed?” I said, my voice a dry whisper.

Marie pulled out a small tablet and consulted her list. “We have a Katie…” She paused and looked up at me. “A Katie Tyler. Is she a relation?”

I smiled
his
most enigmatic smile. “I’d like to see her.”

“She is about to be prepped for surgery.”

I stiffened. “It has to be stopped or there will be consequences.” I made that word heavy and threatening.

“Scott, what’s going on?” Aubrey said, laying her hand on my arm.

“Take me to her,” I said, ignoring Aubrey. “Take me to her now.”

Marie huffed and puffed but did as I instructed. She led us up a wide, spiralling staircase and through a bleach-clean corridor, muttering about procedure the whole way.

“The volunteers are in there,” she said, stopping in front of a door.

Volunteers
. It made me sick. No one ever volunteered for this.

I looked through the hatched glass window to see four kids wearing hospital gowns, perching on the edges of hospital beds. A fifth girl stood, pacing like a caged animal in the zoo.

“Katie!” The relief was overwhelming. I tried to open the door but it was locked. “Open it,” I snapped at Marie.

“I’m afraid I need authorisation,” she said.

“I am Commandant Tyler, head officer at S3, and this is an S3 facility. What further authorisation do you need?”

“Let me check with–”

I grabbed her by the shoulders before she could reach for her radio and looked deep into her eyes.

“You will open the door. Now,” I said, slowly. Clearly.

Her eyes went blank. Whether I’d Forced my will on her or simply scared her into obeying, I didn’t know. Either way, she placed her palm against the reader on the door.

“Scott!” Katie said as I threw the door open and charged in.

I scooped her up in my arms. “It’s OK,” I said. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“What’s going on?” she said as I put her down. “They said something about surgery.”

The other kids had gathered around, looking up at me with terrified eyes. Looking for answers that I didn’t know if I could bear to give them.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “I’m getting you all out of here.”

“You can’t do that,” Marie said, placing herself in the doorway.

“I’m shutting the whole programme down.”

“I’m calling Mr Morgan.”

“You can call anyone you like,” I said, taking Katie’s hand and leading her towards the door. “We’re leaving. All of us.”

Marie made a show of blocking my way: her square jaw set, her arms folded across her chest. But I could tell by the twitch around her eyes that she was close to breaking. All it took was a look from me and she stepped aside.

“Scott,” Aubrey said. “You really need to tell us what the hell is going on.”

I’d brought her here for this. She needed to see.

“Show them,” I snapped at Marie. “Show them the children.”

“This is all quite…”

“Now!” I snapped.

Marie flinched before spinning on her heels and leading us further up the stairs.

I let Aubrey go first and followed, playing through my mind the amount of times
he’d
been here, from the first time Abbott brought him here and explained the importance of sacrifice, till the last time he’d come here after Abbott had died to ensure the programme was still running. He was the one who gave clearance on what went on in this place. He was the one responsible.

Marie pressed her palm against a second reader, and a set of double doors swung open.

There were row upon row of beds, hundreds of bodies, each hooked up to a bleeping machine. The bleeps marking their heartbeats were all fractionally out of sequence, creating a sound not unlike birdsong. Dead eyes stared ahead, livid scars ran across small foreheads.

“What is this place?” Aubrey said, her voice small and her eyes wide.

“He calls it the allotment,” I said. “A joke – they’re all vegetables, you see.”

“He?” Aubrey said.

“I mean me.”

“But why?” she said.

“This,” I said with a wave of my hand, “is the reintegration programme.”

“I don’t understand,” Aubrey said.

“They cut out the part of the brain that’s responsible for a Shifter’s power and put it in an adult’s brain. They lobotomise children.”

Some of the kids who had been with Katie were crying. Aubrey covered her mouth with her hand as if she was going to be sick. Katie’s skin had gone the colour of off milk. She walked into the room and laid her hand on the cheek of one of the children in the bed. The girl couldn’t have been much older than Katie, and judging by the dark stitches in her cut, she’d had the operation recently. I wondered which soldier had ended up with her power. Did I know them? Had I fought alongside them? Had they been one of my men?

Katie turned slowly to face me, a single tear cutting down her cheek. “They were going to do this to me,” she said.

I shook my head, trying to stop the idea I knew was forming in her mind.

“The man who took us here told me. He whispered in my ear, with his hot stinking breath, that they were going to cut me open.”

“Don’t, Katie. Don’t think about it.”

“But all these kids. Why didn’t you stop them?” she said.

Aubrey was looking at me. “You knew about this?” she said.

“Not me,” I said, desperately. “
Him.
”

“I don’t know why you’re trying to deny this,” Marie said. “You’ve been coming here for years, Commandant Tyler.” She gave me a smile so bitter and dark, it made me shudder.

Aubrey shook her head and turned away from me.

I tried to think of something to say, something that would make her forgive me. But there was nothing to say.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” a boy said, looking out through the window.

“What about them?” Aubrey asked, pointing at the children in the beds.

“I don’t think we can be of much help to them, do you?” he said. “But if we don’t go, like now, we might be joining them.”

Aubrey reached out for Katie’s hand. My sister walked past me, her chin held high, refusing to look at me. I laid my hand on her arm and she yanked it away.

She was right. I was despicable. I had done this. Me.

What choices had I made that had turned me into this monster? What had I seen and done that could have possibly led to this? I didn’t know whether to pity him or hate him.

We’re not so different
, he said.

“Go away,” I shouted, hitting at my head.

I’m not going anywhere. I belong here. It’s you who has to leave.

“Not without a fight,” I said, digging my nails into my palms, the pain reminding myself that I was in control.

The children around me stared blankly ahead, mouths open, machines making their chests go up and down like waves. I spotted a mop of sandy hair resting on a pillow.

I had known, even though I hadn’t been willing to face it, I’d known what really happened to Jake all along.

I forced myself to look at him now. I brushed aside his fringe, remembering how he used to hate it when I ruffled his hair. His scar was smaller than a lot of the other kids and looked older, as if it had had a while to heal. Had I brought him here? Had he trusted me, believed me, when I fed him lies about valuable contribution to the war effort? His mouth drooped to the side, almost looking like the crooked smile I knew so well.

Any strength I had left flowed out of me as I collapsed to my knees.

They found me like that ten minutes later. Sobbing into Jake’s chest. Begging him to forgive me.

When I felt the hand on my shoulder, I reacted, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting so hard, his bones crunched and cracked. While he yelled in pain, a second solider crept forward, uncertain. He wore the S3 uniform. I wondered if he, too, hid a scar under that red beret. It was clear the man knew my reputation. There wasn’t a single member of the S3 who didn’t. He was right to be wary. But it wasn’t going to help him.

I pulled myself to standing and took him out with two swift blows to his chest and throat. The remaining soldiers made the wrong decision in trying to attack me all at once.

My scream of rage was louder than theirs of pain. I kicked, punched, twisted and jabbed till six men lay in a groaning pile.

Then I turned back to Jake and combed his messy hair into place with my bruised and swollen fingers.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I reached up and switched his machine off.

One less bleep in the symphony of dying.

“You can’t,” Marie shouted, stepping over the groaning men. Her instinct to protect her patients was overcoming her fear of me. “He’ll die.”

“He’s already dead,” I said, pulling her hand away.

I watched as Jake’s chest breathed in, shuddered, and then stopped. His limbs thrashed, fighting for life. This was the point where his brain would be searching for ways out. Where his power to Shift would find a decision to undo. Or it would have if someone hadn’t stolen it.

He went still. It was over.

I moved through the rest of the beds, flicking off switches, pulling out tubes, pushing machines to the floor. One by one, the bleeping machines stopped till the only sound was my broken sobbing.

I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands, allowing the agony of emotion to overtake me. Letting the pain I felt push
him
further and further away. Each tear marked the difference between us two. Him, who felt nothing. Me, who felt it all.

I slumped next to the bed of a small girl, whose hand had fallen over the edge of her bed. I reached up and held it against my cheek. It was still warm.

I didn’t see a soldier get to his feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Waking from being knocked into unconsciousness is not the same as waking from sleep. There’s no cosy transition as your dreams blend with your present reality. No disappointment at being dragged awake when all you want to do is fall back to sleep. One second you’re standing fighting with a bunch of men, the next you’re sitting in a cold metal chair. With, in my case, your hands shackled and a soft buzz of electricity passing through your body.