Reborn (Altered) (18 page)

“Move over,” Trev said. Since I was playing nice, I did. He
punched in a series of numbers, and the door hissed open, finishing with a
pop
.

I narrowed my eyes. “How’d you know the code?”

“All the labs have an override code. Most likely they were changed after I blew up several of the buildings, but I bet this one hadn’t been, since it looks like no one has been here in years.”

Stairs appeared beyond the door, leading down into total darkness.

When Trev didn’t make a move to go, I snorted and went down first, but not before pilfering the flashlight from his pussy hands.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, winding around on themselves, until finally we reached a steel door. It opened without complaint.

This lab was nothing like the farmhouse lab.

For one, we’d entered onto a metal stairwell that looked down on one wide-open space, like a factory, and two, it went on and on as far as our flashlight would reach.

Trev felt along the wall, grunted, and flipped an old power switch. Fluorescent lights flickered on by rows with a
whir
and
click
.

“Holy shit,” Trev said, his voice echoing.

Definitely a lot bigger than the farmhouse lab.

This place was easily the length of a football field, and the width of two. There were sectioned-off labs, some with nothing more than cubicle walls, others fully enclosed.

“I’ve been here before,” I said. Trev gave me a look, so I elaborated
because I was still feeling nice. “I had a flashback about this place. Someone had escaped, and I was hunting them down.”

“Par for the course when it comes to the Branch. They’re always holding people prisoner, and people are always trying to break free.”

Trev went first, and the
clang
of our steps filled the room, bouncing off the back walls and hitting us on the comeback. Once on the floor, we stopped, unable to see across the span of space with the partition walls towering over us. We were mice in a maze.

“You know your way around?” Trev asked me.

“Not really.”

“Well, whatever data remains will be on the system. We just need to find a computer.”

We checked out the nearest exam room first. This one was enclosed, but the two metal exam chairs faced a wall of windows that looked out over a bank of workstations. No computers. The room was completely empty. There wasn’t even a used bandage in the garbage.

We kept looking and checked out a few more exam rooms. Finally we found a computer in a cubicle somewhere midway through the maze. It booted up quickly, but we were immediately blocked with a password screen.

“Tell me you know an override code for this, too,” I said.

Trev sat in the desk chair and ran a hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, no. But… there are a few things I can try.”

I watched over his shoulder for a good fifteen minutes, and everything he tried got him nowhere.

“I’m going exploring,” I said, feeling restless and impatient. “Yell if you get something.”

He grunted as I left.

Every exam room I checked out was almost exactly the same as the last. Some rooms had one exam chair, others two. Never more than that.

I made a right turn down one aisle of cubicles, then a left, and found myself in the back of the lab where a row of rooms had been installed against the concrete wall. Each room had a window that looked in on it. In the third room on the left, I paused, and an image flickered in my head.

A girl. A gun. And me.

I stepped over the threshold, and a feeling of déjà vu gripped me by the head and shook me till my vision tunneled.

There’d been a girl here, crouched on the floor, wavy dark hair hiding her face.

I slammed my eyes shut and tried to remember more.

She was sobbing. “Please don’t kill me,” she said.

My finger was already on the trigger.

I had orders. And the order was to kill.

“Please, Gabriel! I’m not what they say I am.”

“What do they say you are?” I asked.

She shifted, and her hair parted an inch. One gray-blue eye looked up at me. “They say I’m a monster.”

And then she was moving, moving so fast I barely blinked before a cloud of white snapped at my face, leaving split flesh in its wake. Blood trickled down my cheek.

She’d snapped the bedsheet at me, turning it into a whip. She snapped it again, breaking the skin above my eye. Blood clotted my vision. And then she kicked me in the balls.

My head hit the tiled floor with a
whack,
and everything went dark.

I braced myself on the doorjamb, sucking in air. It’d been a long time since I’d had a flashback that strong. I could still feel the blood running down my face, and I brought a hand up to check.

Nothing.

“Nick!” Trev called.

“Yeah?”

“I got in.”

I tried to shake off the ghost of the flashback as I stumbled through the maze toward his voice. I kept checking over my shoulder, the hair at the back of my neck standing on end, like the girl from the past was stalking me in the present.

Who was she? She had Elizabeth’s dark hair, but all I’d gotten of her face was one eye, and that hadn’t been enough.

When I found Trev ten minutes later—after a few wrong turns—he gave me a look like I really did have whip cuts on my face.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. What’d you find?”

“Got into the system and dug up the lead scientist’s logs. She made audios.”

“She got a name?”

“Dr. Turrow.”

That name had been mentioned in my files. Trev cued up a recording marked
AUGUST 12
. A female voice with a cold, clinical edge sounded through the speakers.

“Patient 2124 is reacting better to the Angel Serum than I ever could have imagined. We continue to monitor her progress. So far, there appear to be no adverse side effects. We have a test scheduled for August 16. It is my sincerest hope that she survives.”

The recording cut out, and Trev selected the one labeled
AUGUST 16
.

“The test was a success! Patient 2124’s results were everything I’d hoped for. Zero activity phase lasted six minutes. We’ll perform another test in one week, and increase the time frame.”

We listened to three more recordings, and in every one, Patient 2124 continued to outperform Dr. Turrow’s expectations. Her last zero activity phase—whatever that was—lasted thirty-two minutes. The doctor nearly squealed with excitement.

On the sixth audio, though, the doctor’s voice cracked and wavered. Trev and I looked at each other. Something had changed.

“Patient 2124 has grown uncontrollable. Defensive. Stubborn.
Rebellious. I worry that there is a shelf life to the Angel Serum. I can see her degeneration with every test, as if her body is healing, but her mind is not.”

On the last clip, Dr. Turrow had a hard time speaking without sobbing. “Patient 2124, during today’s test, stole Agent Riker’s gun and shot herself in the head.”

Static filled the rest of the recording. That was the last one.

“Fucking hell,” I said. If Patient 2124 was dead, then it ruled out the possibility of Elizabeth being her. But why hadn’t Elizabeth been mentioned in the logs? Based on my files, I’d come here in October. Which meant she would have been in the lab in August.

“We have to find out what this Angel Serum is,” Trev said.

“No shit.”

And, more important, I had to find out who that girl from the flashback was, and whether or not she was Elizabeth.

Anna and Sam had us on speakerphone, and Trev did the same on our end. We’d already filled them in on what we’d found in the lab, and Anna had some new information from my files.

“Target E,” Anna said, “was to be killed by decapitation, the body incinerated thereafter.”

I dropped onto the bed in Trev’s hotel room and lay back. Trev was on the couch near the phone. I still had a raging headache from the flashback. The more vivid they were, the worse the aftereffects.

“Why go to such lengths?” Trev said. “The Branch is brutal, but decapitating someone just seems like one too many extra steps for them.”

“You decapitate vampires,” I said, my eyes covered with a hand. The light was too damn bright.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Trev said.

“Think about it.” I sat up. “Why do you decapitate someone? And then burn them?”

“To make sure they’re dead,” Sam said.

I nodded at Trev. “What was it the doctor kept saying in the logs? ‘Zero activity phase.’”

Trev’s face went as white as the sheets beneath me. “Shit,” he muttered, and started to pace the room.

“Fill us in,” Anna said.

“I think they were killing Patient 2124 repeatedly,” I said. “‘Zero activity phase’ was code for ‘dead’—and then they were bringing her back to life. Over and over again. And keeping her dead longer each time. How long was the last test?” I asked Trev.

“She was dead thirty-two minutes.”

“That’s impossible,” Sam said. “The brain would lose function after that long.”

Trev stopped pacing. “Unless the Angel Serum was essentially putting them on ice, and then healing and reanimating them.”

“This is how the zombie apocalypse starts,” Cas said. “You don’t screw with death.”

“Cas,” Trev said, “I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, well, you can suck an egg,” Cas said.

Trev smiled anyway. The guy really did want to be part of the group again. I could see it on his pathetic little face.

“So,” I started, “how does Elizabeth fit into all this?”

I’d finally broken down and told Trev about her. I’d wanted to keep her a secret just in case he was still part of the Branch. They’d wanted her dead once; they’d want her dead again. But I was pretty sure he was on our side now. Call it gut instinct.

“She was obviously one of the test subjects,” Anna said. “And when they shut down the program, they called you in to terminate her.”

I winced, hearing
terminate
associated with Elizabeth. Trev caught it and frowned at me.

I flipped him off and he frowned harder.

“That still doesn’t explain why the Branch let her live. Once I brought her to the ER, her rescue was all over the news. They would have known she was still alive.”

“True,” Anna said. “Unless they didn’t think she posed much of a threat after all.”

“Or the lab was shut down,” Sam said, “and all Branch employees left the area because—”

“They would have been worried about the media attention,” Trev cut in. “And killing Elizabeth at that point, after she’d been rescued, would have drawn too much heat.”

“No,” I said, “there’s got to be more to it than that. I just don’t know what yet.”

And that also didn’t explain who the dark-haired girl was from the flashback I’d had in the lab. Was she Elizabeth? Was she another test subject?

“Any other targets mentioned in the files?” I asked Anna.

“No. Just the one. But we’ll keep digging. If there’s more here, we’ll find it.”

“Thanks, Anna,” Trev said. I noticed he didn’t thank Sam or Cas.

“We’ll check in later,” I said.

“Sounds good.”

“Love you, Nicky,” Cas said. “Hate you, Trev.”

Trev laughed as he called out good-bye.

“Take me home?” I asked Trev, once we’d hung up the phone.

“Only if you ask nicely.”

“Take me home, asshole.”

He sighed. “Good enough.”

26

ELIZABETH

I GOT UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, even though Nick had said he’d prefer breakfast later. I hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, so I figured I’d get a jump on the day.

After I showered, I spent a ridiculous amount of time picking out an outfit—a summer dress with tiny birds on it—and doing my hair and makeup. Nick probably wouldn’t notice or care, but for some reason I wanted to put in a little extra effort. Maybe not so much for him, but for me. It’d been a long time since I’d felt good about myself, but when I was with Nick, I felt strong, different, better.