Reborn (Altered) (26 page)

“Let me go!”

Straps were tugged from beneath the bed, and my wrists were pinned down at my sides, my ankles secured at the end of the bed.

“Mom!” I screamed, until my voice broke.

Riley checked his phone briefly before looking over at me. “Don’t worry, Elizabeth. When you wake up, everything will be fine again.”

“What does that mean? What are you doing to me?” I tried the straps, yanking my arms up, hoping for some slack.

Riley murmured instructions to the technicians, ignoring me. The two large men exited the room once I was secure on the bed. I flailed again as adrenaline took over. I needed to get out of here. I needed to escape. Instinct told me that if I didn’t get out of here right now, then there’d be nothing left to fight for.

“Call me when it’s finished,” Riley said. “I’ll see you in the morning, Elizabeth.” He left.

The technicians placed several electrodes on my head, then attached the wires. When they switched on the machine, it started up with a whine and a rushing of noise.

“Relax,” the male technician said. “Everything will be fine.”

“What is it? The machine?”

The female technician, a short, blond woman with wide-set eyes, attached a final probe to the center of my forehead. “It’s a memory alteration system.”

36

NICK

SOMEONE HELD MY HEAD IN THEIR LAP. Something wet kept plinking against my face.

“We have to go,” a voice said from somewhere far away, like I was underwater. “We’ll come back for him. I promise.”

“I can’t leave him.” Anna. “We never should have let him go off on his own.”

“Anna,” Trev said. “We can’t sit here any longer. Either we save the girl or we go.”

Hair fell in my face as Anna bent over to kiss my forehead.

I gulped for air, and the expanding of my lungs, pressed against my ribs, felt like a balloon about to pop.

Anna shrieked.

“Holy shit,” Cas said. “He’s a zombie!”

Trev knelt beside me and pulled my eyes open. “Nick?”

I slapped his hand away and rolled over, my insides pinwheeling. On all fours, hands splayed in the dirt, I vomited until there was nothing left to get out.

When I was done, I collapsed on my stomach, the ground cold against my face. I didn’t know where I was, or how I’d gotten outside, but if I was no longer in the lab, then Elizabeth was in danger and I had to return to save her.

I rolled over again, onto my back. With a voice on the edge of fading out, raw, my throat too dry, I croaked, “They shot me. So many times I lost count.”

When I opened my eyes, treetops shook above me as the wind picked up speed. Anna, Cas, Sam, and Trev were all staring at me. Sam nodded at my chest. I looked down. There were multiple bullet holes in my shirt, and my shirt was caked with old blood and dirt.

I patted my chest. I should have been in pain. I should have been dead.

But when I ripped my shirt open, my chest was untouched. Not a single bullet hole in sight.

“What the hell?”

“Should we kill him?” Cas said. “Before he starts lurching around and eating our brains?”

“Cas!” Anna said.

“What? Too soon?”

“What happened?” I asked, and lurched to my feet. When I stumbled back on unsteady legs, Sam jerked forward and caught me. I used a tree to keep me upright and waved Sam back.

Now that I had a better view of where I was, and what surrounded us, I noticed two Branch agents either dead or knocked out ten feet away. And beside them was a half-dug hole. The perfect size for a body. Probably mine.

“Chloe,” Trev said. “She called us about an hour after she took you. Said she had done what she had to do, but that if everything went according to plan, you’d be safe. She gave us the location of an air vent about a hundred yards away from the barn, an unmarked entrance to the lab, but on our way, we stumbled on these guys”—Trev gestured at the agents—“and then we saw you.”

Anna covered her mouth with a hand and looked away.

“I’m not dead, Anna,” I said. “See.” I patted myself down. “Don’t start crying again.”

“I’m not,” she snapped as a tear streamed down her cheek. She gave us her back as she swiped at her face.

Sam frowned at me, but I ignored it.

“That still doesn’t explain why I’m alive.”

“She must have used the serum on you,” Trev said. “It’s the only explanation.”

Chloe was the one who’d broken out of the lab six years ago, and she must have known where the serum was kept. It wasn’t too crazy to think she’d swiped some of it for herself.

She’d also had enough time on the way to the barn to stop the car and retrieve my gun. She’d had enough time to shoot me up with the serum, too.

By giving me the drug, she’d saved my ass, but still came through on her end of the bargain she’d made with Riley.

“We have to get back into the lab.” I shoved away from the tree and was relieved I didn’t fall flat on my face.

“Slow down,” Sam said. “We don’t know what sort of effect this serum will have on you. And furthermore, we don’t know what we’re running into. With you inside, it was different. Now that you’re out, and you’re safe—”

“What, you’re just going to leave Elizabeth in there?”

Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s not what I’m saying. What I
am
saying is we have some time to think about this. There’s a reason they wanted Elizabeth. They won’t kill her.”

“Yeah, I know that.” I started pacing, leaves from last fall crunching beneath my boots. “That doesn’t mean she’s safe.”

When I first heard Elizabeth’s mother speak, I’d thought her voice sounded familiar. And now that I knew she was working with Riley, it all made sense.

“The audio files,” I said to Trev. “The doctor? Dr. Turrow?”

“Yeah? What about her?”

“She’s Elizabeth’s mother.”

“Son of a bitch,” Trev muttered.

Anna sighed and scrubbed at her face. She of all people understood
the complications of mixing family with the Branch. Her uncle was the guy who’d created the organization after all.

“They might not kill Elizabeth if she has family on the inside,” I said, “but if we know anything about the Branch, it’s this: if they can’t kill you—”

“Then they’ll alter your memories,” Anna said.

I nodded. “We all know what it’s like to have our memories gone, and then to suffer the pain of them when they return. I can’t let them do that to her.”

I grabbed a gun from one of the fallen agents and stuffed it beneath my shirt. “I’m going—with or without you guys.”

I started off through the woods and was relieved when they all followed.

37

ELIZABETH

DARKENED GLASSES WERE PUT OVER MY eyes. The female tech flipped a switch on the frame, and several green lines flickered on the lenses.

“This won’t hurt,” she said. “In fact, you won’t feel a thing. It’ll be over before you know it.”

They’d inserted a rubber guard into my mouth so I could no longer talk. There was no point in trying anyway. My mother was gone. And there was no one here who would save me.

Nick had told me he suffered from partial amnesia. I could still recall the pain of the emptiness in his eyes. How not knowing, while freeing in some ways, was also damaging. And I would be just like him when I awoke.

My eyes clouded with tears.

“Ready?” the male tech said.

“Ready,” the woman confirmed.

“Here we go.” He pushed a button. The machine clicked. The glasses lit up, images flashing in quick succession. A house. An ant. A woman. A tree. A dying tree. A tree falling down. A woman again.

“Listen to my voice,” she said, but the words didn’t match the movement of her lips.

A needle pricked the back of my neck. I flinched and bit down hard on the mouth guard. My toes curled in my shoes. Whatever came out of the needle was warm at first, then turned biting hot, like melted wax running down my neck.

I flailed. Trying to wipe the burning away.

Ants. Ants again. Ants on my arms.

I arched my back.

The ants tore the flesh away from my bones, piece by piece.

The burning in my neck faded, and my body relaxed until I felt like I was floating.

The mouth guard was pulled from my mouth, and my teeth clicked together.

“Listen to my voice,” the woman said again. “Your name is Elizabeth. Your name is Bethany. Your name is Tiffany. Your name is blank. You live in Trademarr. You live in Illinois. You live nowhere.

“What is your name?”

“Eliz…” I murmured.

“What is your name?” she said again. “Your name is…” Static filled my ears. Then a sharp rapping. A clap.
Clap. Clap. Beep
.

My mind grew fuzzy, as if my thoughts were clouds burned off by the sun.

“You live nowhere,” she continued.

An image of a forest flashed in front of my eyes, and then the same forest shed its leaves and the branches fell to the ground and a great inferno filled my vision with a blaze of blinding orange light.

When the light faded, the forest was gone.

“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.”