Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) (28 page)

Frankie held up a glass bottle containing clear liquid. She pushed a syringe into the rubber seal and drew the liquid into it. It made a tiny squeaking noise as she pulled it out, as if the rubber didn’t want to let go of the needle. She held it upright and squeezed a bubble of air out of the syringe, so precise that no liquid escaped. She rolled up my sleeve, revealing my arm with the S tattoo on it. I remembered the day I’d had that done now. Remembered the itching burning of the ink being scratched into my skin and how proud I felt. How proud I was to do my duty.

Frankie lowered the needle into the crook of my arm, an inch above my tattoo. As it pricked my skin, I smiled.

“I wish there was another way,” Frankie said, more to herself than to me, I thought.

“It’s OK,” I said, resting my hand over hers. “It was always going to come to this.”

What she didn’t know was that once I committed to the machine, I would have the power to push my will on anyone. It would amplify my thoughts and send them all across the world.

Everything
he
had done led to this. As soon as he’d learnt about the capabilities of the Igloo, he’d known there was only one way to stop the madness that had infected the world. He’d worked to earn Vine’s trust so the Minister would think him his loyal soldier, then pushed him enough so he would be willing to sacrifice his most powerful pawn to this machine. It had been a delicate game of actions and consequences. And he had played it masterfully. I’d almost ruined it all by turning up at the most crucial moment. I’d been fighting so hard against him, I couldn’t see what was really happening.

Now both of us had a job to do to put things right. Him in this reality. Me in mine. Neither of us were going to have the happy endings I had naively hoped for. Maybe there’s no such thing.

Goodbye, Scott.

“Goodbye.”

Frankie flinched at the word she thought was for her, then composed herself, blinking away the tears that threatened to cloud her vision. She pushed down on the syringe, the thick, clear liquid pumping under my skin, mixing with my blood. I lay on the pillow, which suddenly felt like the softest pillow in the entire world.

Frankie started to count down from twenty.

I knew what I had to do. But it was hard, giving up on everything I loved. Knowing I would never see my family again. Aubrey again. But it was the right thing.

“Thirteen.”

He taught me that; he had given me the strength to follow it through. Or maybe I had that strength within me all along?

“Nine.”

I was going to have to hold on to that certainty. To override the biology that would fight to keep me alive. This was mind over matter.

“Five.”

I let myself drift back to that night.

“One.”

To that very first night.

The electricity pylon looms over me like a monster against the night sky. They’re all chanting my name, but I can tell now that they’re doing it to mock me, rather than because they actually believe I’m going to go through with this. But they don’t really know me at all.

I jump, leaping up to grab onto the first strut. It feels cold under my fingers, the sharp edges of the metal digging into my flesh. It hurts, but it’s only pain. I pull myself up to the next rung.

Voices call up to me, bored by the game, wanting me to come down so they can get on with drinking. But I ignore them. This isn’t about them anymore. The only person I have anything to prove to is myself. I’m fourteen, fifteen rungs up. And I’ve never felt more confident in my life. Like I have finally found the place where I belong. I reach out for the next metal rod. My hand closes around it.

The snap of metal is like the sound of a coffin lid slamming shut.

Final and certain and inescapable.

It was always going to come to this.

I close my eyes, giving in to gravity and fate and whatever else has brought me here.

And let myself fall, a smile on my face.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I jolted awake. I was blind: a white fogginess obscuring my eyes. Panicked, I reached up and realised there was something stuck to my face. I peeled it off, blinking sleep-glued eyes. It was a page of paper covered in scribbled notes. Typed across the top was a question.

Nucleus X is B. Deduce the number of protons and the number of neutrons in nucleus Y.

Beneath it, after the series of dots marking out where the answer should be written, were more questions. About pair production, excited atoms, the ionisation energy of hydrogen.

It was a physics exam paper.

There were scatterings of more pages, along with physics textbooks, piled on top of other books about chemistry and advanced mathematics. I was at home. In my bedroom. It was 7.43am on the fourteenth of April, judging by my digital clock.

“But,” I said out loud, “I should be dead.”

I tried to stand up, and pain shot through my thigh and all the way up my spine. Was it the injury from the battle?

I sat back down. I was wearing a grey tracksuit and trainers, but there was something strange about my left leg. I pulled up the trouser. Sticking out of my trainer, where my calf should have been, was something that looked like a leg. It was the colour of skin and had the shape and form of a leg. I poked it. It was rubbery plastic. I continued to poke all the way up till I got to my thigh. That was all flesh. The simple pressure of my finger was enough to make me wince.

I leaned back in my chair, trying not to panic. Trying to make sense of what was going on.

First things first. I was alive. That was a surprise. When I undid my very first shift, made the night I fell from the electricity pylon, I assumed it would have resulted in my death. It did, however, seem that I now only had one leg. I patted the rest of my body. Tenderness in my lower back, stiffness in my shoulder, which, I saw as I pulled my T-shirt down, was covered in a neat crisscross of scars.

I probed my memory. I’d fallen from the pylon and shattered my pelvis, my femur, broken my scapula, my humeral head and a list of other bones I couldn’t remember. But I’d lived.

I remembered how I’d been stretchered out of the park, with Hugo, my supposed best friend, crying and blaming himself while a blonde girl with big boots and dark eyeshadow looked on. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. And I dumbly asked for her number as the paramedics pushed me into the ambulance, the drugs they’d given me for the pain making me brave and stupid.

I hadn’t seen her after that night.

I tried standing again, remembering how to find my balance on my artificial limb. It was awkward at first, and I needed to lean on the walls to help me along. But I made it down stairs.

“About time,” my mother said as I shuffled into the kitchen. “I was about to come and check on you. You have to leave in half an hour.”

I leaned against the doorway, watching my mum busy herself with the kettle and toaster.

“You look sick,” she said when she turned around, mug of steaming tea in her hand. “Are you sick?” She pushed the mug into my hand and pressed her palm against my head. “If you have another infection, I swear I will sue that hospital.”

I held her hand. “It’s fine, Mum. I’m fine.”

“Well, you had better be. You can’t miss any more school with your exams coming up.”

I spat out the mouthful of tea I’d taken. “Exams?”

“Oh, Scott. You’re not having another of your turns, are you?”

“No, I’m good,” I said.

“He’s just trying to get out of going to school,” a voice said behind me. Katie pushed me out of the way and sat at the table. It was all I could do to stop myself from hugging her and never letting her go.

“What?” she said. “Have I got something on my face?” She grabbed a spoon and turned it around to look at her reflection in the curved bowl.

“No. You’re perfect,” I said, fighting down the tears.

“You’re a freak, Scott.” She plunged the spoon into a bowl of cereal and shoved it into her mouth. “I can’t believe we have to go to the same school.”

I laughed. It seemed like everything was back to normal. As if the last year of my life had never happened. I’d never joined ARES, never met the people who were to become my friends. I didn’t even know if any of them were still alive.

“Where are you off to?” Mum said.

“I have to check on something,” I said, walking as quickly as I was able on my new leg up the stairs.

I sat at my desk, opened my laptop and rested my fingers on the keyboard. “Please remember,” I said.

I punched in the URL for the ARES intranet and took a deep breath when the login screen appeared. I typed in Carl’s password.

CARLSEXGOD

It hadn’t changed.

I paused before choosing who to search for first. It was like I couldn’t bring myself to search for her, not yet. I began with Jake Bailey.

There were a few tense moments while the system loaded, then his face appeared. That crooked grin was still there, but the sandy mop of hair was no more. Cropped into a neat buzz cut. He looked older than I remembered. I scanned his files. He’d quit ARES three months before, was going to school and living with his sister. I clicked through to check her file. She was under surveillance as a possible rogue and suspected member of the SLF – the Shifter Liberation Front – although no evidence had been found to prove it. But both of them were safe – that’s all that mattered.

Next, I searched for Zac.

Isaac Black – suspected leader of the SLF. Now believed to be living in America.

Probably a millionaire already, I thought, smiling.

I closed his file and searched for CP. As I waited for the results to show, I mentally unpicked the events of the last year and a half. Her file loaded and my heart contracted when I read the words.

Cleopatra Finn. Volunteer – Project Ganymede.

“No!” I screamed, picking my laptop up in my hands and shaking it, as if I could somehow wipe away those words.

Did that mean the project was still up and running? I did a search, and the agony over CP softened slightly when I saw that the programme had been shut down a year ago. Sergeant Cain had, the report said, uncovered what had been going on, and Abbott had been arrested and was now in prison for life.

Another click and I pulled up Cain’s file.

Sergeant Charles Cain: Deceased. Killed on Duty.

Like before, he’d given his life to stop Abbott. Only this time, he’d been too late to save CP.

Cain and CP gone. Jake, Zac and Rosalie safe.

I couldn’t put it off any more.

My hands shook as I typed the eleven letters. I closed my eyes. “Please,” I said. “Please. Please. Please.”

When I opened them again, I was looking at Aubrey’s face. It was the picture from her ARES ID, where she was scowling at the camera. I reached out and touched it, small rainbows of colour pooling out from where my fingers touched the screen.

Aubrey Jones, Spotter, 4th Class. Retired.

Commendation for her work leading to the uncovering of Project Ganymede. Suspected ties to the SLF. Observation recommended.

Aubrey was alive. She was out of ARES. And it seemed like she had been responsible for leading Cain to Greyfield’s. I tried to work out how she could have known about the project. Then I remembered. The night I’d gone to speak to her and Zac in the church, the night that ARES had followed me and arrested them all, she and Zac had been looking over plans of the hospital. They hadn’t needed me. Aubrey hadn’t needed me.

But that didn’t mean that I didn’t still need her.

I read through the rest of her file, to see if her address was still the same. It was, but it also gave a place of work.

I closed the laptop and stared at my wall. It was covered with pictures I didn’t recognise, including a photo of me looking uncomfortable next to Hugo and some girl. The girl, who was pretty enough, had her arm wrapped around mine and was gazing up at me with a worrying expression on her face.

Oh, God, I thought. Don’t let it be what it looks like.

There was only one way to find out. I rifled around on the papers on my desk and found my mobile phone. It was weird, looking at it. A model I didn’t recognise and so slim compared to the satellite phones I’d been using. It took me a few seconds to work out the unfamiliar operating system. I found Hugo’s number and hit dial.

He answered after a few rings.

“Scotty!” he said, in his usual posh drawl.

“Hugo, you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice.”

“Oh, funny, funny. Missing me after a few hours?”

I tried to laugh, but the truth was, hearing his voice was enough to make me want to sob.

“Are you OK, Scott?” Hugo said, genuine concern in his voice. “You’re not still upset over Emily? I thought you were relieved when she ended it.”

The girl in the picture. Emily. Yes, it fit. I hunted out the memory. We’d dated for a month, and she’d ended it last week. I could remember the relief. I’d not had the guts to do it myself.

“No,” I said, coughing to clear my throat. “It’s not that. It’s just…” How could I even begin to explain to Hugo? It’s just I’ve spent the last week watching people die, watching the whole country burn, and now I was back in a place where everything was safe and there was no war and I was aching to get back to that other reality because the girl I loved was there? There was no point in even trying.

“It’s just this physics homework is killing me,” I finished, finally.

“Well, that will serve you right for taking sciences, Scotty. You should have done humanities like me. Plenty more girls do humanity.”

I laughed. “Promise me something, Hugo?”

“What’s that?”