I stopped walking. “What’s that supposed to mean? My morality was never gone.” When he didn’t respond, I plowed on. “You know, I’m starting to wonder if you were ever the guy I knew. Because I don’t see the morality on your face. I can’t see you at all. What happened to the Sam who was my friend?”
He got in close, lowered his voice. “We were never friends, Anna. I was a prisoner in your basement for five years. Before that, I suspect I was with the Branch for several more.” A vein in the middle of his forehead swelled. “I wanted out, so I did what I needed to do to win your trust. If you had been in my position, you would have done the same thing.”
His words stung. “No, I wouldn’t have. You could have asked me.” I spread my arms out. “All you had to do was ask for help.”
He started to say something and then clamped his mouth shut. The surprised look on his face told me that it had never crossed his mind to come to me. My chest felt hollow, like all the good things I’d experienced with Sam in the last few years had been carved out and mashed to pulp. My life in that lab was a lie.
Tears blurred my vision. I was an idiot to ever think he cared. An idiot to think there was anything special about me. Because there wasn’t. I was just another tool he’d used to break free of that lab.
“We should go,” he said, his jaw tight as he looked everywhere but at me.
I considered running back to the drugstore and begging for help. Dad needed me. Dad would want me around. To Sam, I was nothing more than a burden.
I could escape this, whatever it was. I would leave Sam for good.
“Anna?” He cocked his head to the side, narrowed his eyes. I wondered if he saw the indecision freezing me in place. He didn’t push, didn’t pull. He gave me the opportunity to escape right then and there.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
And what did that make me? Pathetic. Sad. Desperate. Dad had made me promise not to come back to the farmhouse. I really had nowhere else to go.
“Lead the way,” I said.
So he did.
8
SAM HAD SEVERAL CRITERIA A VEHICLE had to meet before he’d steal it. The vehicle had to be large enough for all of us, it had to have a big engine, and it had to be discreet. Cas was the one who picked the navy blue SUV.
I sat in the passenger seat, slumped down, wondering if anyone would notice us stealing this big vehicle, if someone would call the cops. But we made it to the highway without incident and Treger Creek faded in the rearview mirror.
There really was no going back now. The farther we pulled away from home, the tighter the knot in my chest grew. I ran my fingers down the cracked spine of my mother’s journal, glad I’d grabbed it.
“What is that?” Sam asked, gesturing at the book.
I tugged it closer. “It was my mother’s.”
“Sura,” Sam said, and I nodded. It was odd, hearing someone else speak her name. Dad hardly ever did.
Sam headed south, driving at an even sixty miles an hour. The surroundings flashed by in a blur of color. To keep my mind on something other than what was happening, I tried to think of the colored pencils I’d use if I were drawing the landscape. Burnt umber. Cadmium green. Scarlet for the leaves that were starting to change.
“So,” Cas said, “any idea where Arthur sent us?”
I felt the weight of Sam’s gaze. “Did that address sound familiar to you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anyone in Pennsylvania. And there was no mention of it in your files.”
“It’s probably a trap,” Nick said. “Arthur is part of the program. I don’t know why we’re trusting him.”
Irritation flooded me and I turned to face Nick. “My dad never wanted to hurt any of you.”
The dark scowl returned. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t a trap.”
“Would you rather stay here?” Sam looked up at the rearview mirror, making eye contact with Nick. “I can stop the vehicle so you can bail.”
“Yeah,” Cas added, “you can hitchhike your way across the country. Just flash your abs. I bet someone would stop.”
Nick snorted. “Shut the hell up.”
“Damn,” Cas said. “You’re cranky. We’re free! You should be doing the Hokey-frickin’-Pokey!”
“I would rather light myself on fire.”
“Awesome.” Cas rubbed his hands together. “Anyone have some marshmallows?”
Sam ignored them and punched the address my dad had given him into the portable navigation system on the dashboard. A cool female voice told us where to go. It took us nearly three hours to reach the Pennsylvania border. While Cas and Trev discussed all the things they wanted to eat now that they were free, Sam focused on the road. Nick slept in the back.
I leaned closer to the passenger-side window. I’d never been to Pennsylvania before, but it looked exactly like I thought it would, the land undulating like the sea. I marked pencil strokes in my head to keep myself busy.
No one said it, but I think we all felt like we were being watched. Like Connor was waiting for us to screw up to make his next move. I just wanted to find the safe house Dad had told Sam about.
A freeway sign overhead read EXIT 28. We drove past it and continued southwest for another half hour before the navigation system steered us to an on-ramp. Sam exited, veering sharply to the right, the force of the turn pushing me in his direction. I swept a gaze over his arm, draped on the center compartment, the sleeve of his shirt rolled back to the elbow. Less than forty-eight hours earlier I’d been in the lab, studying him through the glass, studying his scar.
“What are the letters? The scars,” I clarified. The others went quiet in the back.
“Uh-uh,” Nick muttered. Apparently, he wasn’t sleeping after all.
“She read some of our files,” Sam said. “Something might stand out if she knew what the letters were.”
Cas tapped his fingers on the back of Sam’s seat. “Yeah. What’ll it hurt if she knows?”
“We’re forgetting that she spent the last five years on the other side of the wall,” Nick said. “You want my opinion? Tell her nothing and ditch her at the next town.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Sam warned.
“I’m sitting right here, you know.”
“No one’s ditching you,” Trev said. “He doesn’t make the decisions.”
Nick draped an arm over the back bench seat. “Oh? And you do?”
“Stop.” Sam’s voice cut through the argument and the boys went silent. “You’ve seen the R on my chest,” he said to me, keeping his attention on the road. “There are more. Another R, an O, and a D.”
“I have an L on my hip and a V on my knee,” Cas said.
“I have two Rs and two Es,” Trev said.
When I glanced at Nick, he sent a withering glare my way and I shifted back around.
“Don’t mind him,” Cas said. “He doesn’t know how to spell.”
Trev suppressed a snicker.
“Nick has an I and an E,” Sam said. He flicked on the blinker as he switched lanes and sped past a semitruck.
I ran over the scar letters in my head, counting them. Twelve total. Four boys. That was three letters per boy, if they’d divided them up evenly. But they hadn’t. Trev and Sam had four; Cas and Nick had two. I wished I had a pen to write the letters out. Though I suppose Sam must have already done that a thousand times.
“Could they be a code?”
He shook his head. “Not one I’m familiar with.”
We drove for a while longer before Cas’s complaints of hunger became too much to bear. Sam pulled off at the next freeway exit, following the signs that directed us to the closest gas station. He parked at a gas pump, with the brightly lit store in front of us. The clock in the vehicle’s dashboard said it was ten after seven. The sun had set a good hour before, leaving the sky a drained shade of blue.
Cas was the first one out of the vehicle. He bounded inside.
“Here,” Sam said, handing Trev two twenty-dollar bills. I didn’t want to know where he’d gotten the money. “Put some gas in the truck. Use the rest on food.”
Nick climbed out the back to fill the tank. Trev crammed the money in his pocket and said to me, “Need anything?”
“A bottle of water? Maybe some crackers or something.”
Trev glanced at Sam and Sam nodded.
I unsnapped the seat belt and arched my back, stretching my sore muscles. When I settled back in, the silence settled in next to me. The car’s engine ticked as it cooled. Sam didn’t move an inch. The uneasy quiet slithered along my skin, making me restless, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“When the boys ask for your permission,” I said, “does it have to do with the gene manipulation?”
“I think so.” The store lights illuminated his profile. This close to him, I could see a tiny bump in the bridge of his nose, like it’d been broken before.
“Are you the leader or something?” I asked, remembering the term alpha from his file.
“In a sense.”
“What exactly did the alterations do? Do you even know?”
He looked away, toward the far edge of the parking lot, and a sigh escaped his lips. “It made me something more than human, but I can’t know how, exactly, until I know who I was before.”
“And you think the address my dad gave you is a start to finding your past?”
“Yes.”
Through the store windows, I watched Cas and Trev approach the counter and drop armfuls of junk in front of the register. Cas threw in some jerky for good measure before turning his attention to us, in the car. I could also feel Nick watching us from the gas pump. They could tell Sam was uncomfortable.
“You’re all connected,” I said, realizing it only then. “It’s like you know what the others are feeling without actually saying anything.”
It reminded me of when Sam and I first started playing chess. He’d fed me tips every now and then because I knew absolutely nothing. He was a genius when it came to strategy.
“It isn’t just about the game,” he’d said to me one night in the dead of December. That was long before I had permission to be down there, and every breath I took felt amplified in the lab, as if the sound of it would travel through the vents and wake my dad.
“The pieces are only a small part,” Sam went on. “You have to know your opponent, too. Study them when they’re calculating their next move. Sometimes you can tell where they’re going before even they know.”
I smirked. “That’s not true.”
He draped an arm over the back of his chair. “Then try me.”
“I always lose. It’s hard to prove you’re right when we have nothing to compare it to.”
A sliver of a laugh had escaped him. “All right. I suppose you have me there.”
I looked at him now, his eyes hooded in shadow. He’d always been good at reading me. Better than I was at reading him. But now I wondered if it had more to do with the alterations than with reading facial expressions. Or knowing me in a way that was important, a way that made us friends.
I wanted to ask if he could sense what I was feeling, especially now, but deep down I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment.
“What is it like? The connection. How does it work?”
He propped an elbow on the arm rest of the door. “It seems to be based on instinct, and it is hardest to ignore when one of us is uneasy or in trouble. I usually felt something when you drew blood from the others, like I needed to be there to protect them, whether I liked it or not. It’s hard focusing on what I want to do when I have to think about everyone else. Ultimately, the decisions I make have to be what’s best for the group.”
He got in close, lowered his voice. “We were never friends, Anna. I was a prisoner in your basement for five years. Before that, I suspect I was with the Branch for several more.” A vein in the middle of his forehead swelled. “I wanted out, so I did what I needed to do to win your trust. If you had been in my position, you would have done the same thing.”
His words stung. “No, I wouldn’t have. You could have asked me.” I spread my arms out. “All you had to do was ask for help.”
He started to say something and then clamped his mouth shut. The surprised look on his face told me that it had never crossed his mind to come to me. My chest felt hollow, like all the good things I’d experienced with Sam in the last few years had been carved out and mashed to pulp. My life in that lab was a lie.
Tears blurred my vision. I was an idiot to ever think he cared. An idiot to think there was anything special about me. Because there wasn’t. I was just another tool he’d used to break free of that lab.
“We should go,” he said, his jaw tight as he looked everywhere but at me.
I considered running back to the drugstore and begging for help. Dad needed me. Dad would want me around. To Sam, I was nothing more than a burden.
I could escape this, whatever it was. I would leave Sam for good.
“Anna?” He cocked his head to the side, narrowed his eyes. I wondered if he saw the indecision freezing me in place. He didn’t push, didn’t pull. He gave me the opportunity to escape right then and there.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
And what did that make me? Pathetic. Sad. Desperate. Dad had made me promise not to come back to the farmhouse. I really had nowhere else to go.
“Lead the way,” I said.
So he did.
8
SAM HAD SEVERAL CRITERIA A VEHICLE had to meet before he’d steal it. The vehicle had to be large enough for all of us, it had to have a big engine, and it had to be discreet. Cas was the one who picked the navy blue SUV.
I sat in the passenger seat, slumped down, wondering if anyone would notice us stealing this big vehicle, if someone would call the cops. But we made it to the highway without incident and Treger Creek faded in the rearview mirror.
There really was no going back now. The farther we pulled away from home, the tighter the knot in my chest grew. I ran my fingers down the cracked spine of my mother’s journal, glad I’d grabbed it.
“What is that?” Sam asked, gesturing at the book.
I tugged it closer. “It was my mother’s.”
“Sura,” Sam said, and I nodded. It was odd, hearing someone else speak her name. Dad hardly ever did.
Sam headed south, driving at an even sixty miles an hour. The surroundings flashed by in a blur of color. To keep my mind on something other than what was happening, I tried to think of the colored pencils I’d use if I were drawing the landscape. Burnt umber. Cadmium green. Scarlet for the leaves that were starting to change.
“So,” Cas said, “any idea where Arthur sent us?”
I felt the weight of Sam’s gaze. “Did that address sound familiar to you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anyone in Pennsylvania. And there was no mention of it in your files.”
“It’s probably a trap,” Nick said. “Arthur is part of the program. I don’t know why we’re trusting him.”
Irritation flooded me and I turned to face Nick. “My dad never wanted to hurt any of you.”
The dark scowl returned. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t a trap.”
“Would you rather stay here?” Sam looked up at the rearview mirror, making eye contact with Nick. “I can stop the vehicle so you can bail.”
“Yeah,” Cas added, “you can hitchhike your way across the country. Just flash your abs. I bet someone would stop.”
Nick snorted. “Shut the hell up.”
“Damn,” Cas said. “You’re cranky. We’re free! You should be doing the Hokey-frickin’-Pokey!”
“I would rather light myself on fire.”
“Awesome.” Cas rubbed his hands together. “Anyone have some marshmallows?”
Sam ignored them and punched the address my dad had given him into the portable navigation system on the dashboard. A cool female voice told us where to go. It took us nearly three hours to reach the Pennsylvania border. While Cas and Trev discussed all the things they wanted to eat now that they were free, Sam focused on the road. Nick slept in the back.
I leaned closer to the passenger-side window. I’d never been to Pennsylvania before, but it looked exactly like I thought it would, the land undulating like the sea. I marked pencil strokes in my head to keep myself busy.
No one said it, but I think we all felt like we were being watched. Like Connor was waiting for us to screw up to make his next move. I just wanted to find the safe house Dad had told Sam about.
A freeway sign overhead read EXIT 28. We drove past it and continued southwest for another half hour before the navigation system steered us to an on-ramp. Sam exited, veering sharply to the right, the force of the turn pushing me in his direction. I swept a gaze over his arm, draped on the center compartment, the sleeve of his shirt rolled back to the elbow. Less than forty-eight hours earlier I’d been in the lab, studying him through the glass, studying his scar.
“What are the letters? The scars,” I clarified. The others went quiet in the back.
“Uh-uh,” Nick muttered. Apparently, he wasn’t sleeping after all.
“She read some of our files,” Sam said. “Something might stand out if she knew what the letters were.”
Cas tapped his fingers on the back of Sam’s seat. “Yeah. What’ll it hurt if she knows?”
“We’re forgetting that she spent the last five years on the other side of the wall,” Nick said. “You want my opinion? Tell her nothing and ditch her at the next town.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Sam warned.
“I’m sitting right here, you know.”
“No one’s ditching you,” Trev said. “He doesn’t make the decisions.”
Nick draped an arm over the back bench seat. “Oh? And you do?”
“Stop.” Sam’s voice cut through the argument and the boys went silent. “You’ve seen the R on my chest,” he said to me, keeping his attention on the road. “There are more. Another R, an O, and a D.”
“I have an L on my hip and a V on my knee,” Cas said.
“I have two Rs and two Es,” Trev said.
When I glanced at Nick, he sent a withering glare my way and I shifted back around.
“Don’t mind him,” Cas said. “He doesn’t know how to spell.”
Trev suppressed a snicker.
“Nick has an I and an E,” Sam said. He flicked on the blinker as he switched lanes and sped past a semitruck.
I ran over the scar letters in my head, counting them. Twelve total. Four boys. That was three letters per boy, if they’d divided them up evenly. But they hadn’t. Trev and Sam had four; Cas and Nick had two. I wished I had a pen to write the letters out. Though I suppose Sam must have already done that a thousand times.
“Could they be a code?”
He shook his head. “Not one I’m familiar with.”
We drove for a while longer before Cas’s complaints of hunger became too much to bear. Sam pulled off at the next freeway exit, following the signs that directed us to the closest gas station. He parked at a gas pump, with the brightly lit store in front of us. The clock in the vehicle’s dashboard said it was ten after seven. The sun had set a good hour before, leaving the sky a drained shade of blue.
Cas was the first one out of the vehicle. He bounded inside.
“Here,” Sam said, handing Trev two twenty-dollar bills. I didn’t want to know where he’d gotten the money. “Put some gas in the truck. Use the rest on food.”
Nick climbed out the back to fill the tank. Trev crammed the money in his pocket and said to me, “Need anything?”
“A bottle of water? Maybe some crackers or something.”
Trev glanced at Sam and Sam nodded.
I unsnapped the seat belt and arched my back, stretching my sore muscles. When I settled back in, the silence settled in next to me. The car’s engine ticked as it cooled. Sam didn’t move an inch. The uneasy quiet slithered along my skin, making me restless, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“When the boys ask for your permission,” I said, “does it have to do with the gene manipulation?”
“I think so.” The store lights illuminated his profile. This close to him, I could see a tiny bump in the bridge of his nose, like it’d been broken before.
“Are you the leader or something?” I asked, remembering the term alpha from his file.
“In a sense.”
“What exactly did the alterations do? Do you even know?”
He looked away, toward the far edge of the parking lot, and a sigh escaped his lips. “It made me something more than human, but I can’t know how, exactly, until I know who I was before.”
“And you think the address my dad gave you is a start to finding your past?”
“Yes.”
Through the store windows, I watched Cas and Trev approach the counter and drop armfuls of junk in front of the register. Cas threw in some jerky for good measure before turning his attention to us, in the car. I could also feel Nick watching us from the gas pump. They could tell Sam was uncomfortable.
“You’re all connected,” I said, realizing it only then. “It’s like you know what the others are feeling without actually saying anything.”
It reminded me of when Sam and I first started playing chess. He’d fed me tips every now and then because I knew absolutely nothing. He was a genius when it came to strategy.
“It isn’t just about the game,” he’d said to me one night in the dead of December. That was long before I had permission to be down there, and every breath I took felt amplified in the lab, as if the sound of it would travel through the vents and wake my dad.
“The pieces are only a small part,” Sam went on. “You have to know your opponent, too. Study them when they’re calculating their next move. Sometimes you can tell where they’re going before even they know.”
I smirked. “That’s not true.”
He draped an arm over the back of his chair. “Then try me.”
“I always lose. It’s hard to prove you’re right when we have nothing to compare it to.”
A sliver of a laugh had escaped him. “All right. I suppose you have me there.”
I looked at him now, his eyes hooded in shadow. He’d always been good at reading me. Better than I was at reading him. But now I wondered if it had more to do with the alterations than with reading facial expressions. Or knowing me in a way that was important, a way that made us friends.
I wanted to ask if he could sense what I was feeling, especially now, but deep down I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment.
“What is it like? The connection. How does it work?”
He propped an elbow on the arm rest of the door. “It seems to be based on instinct, and it is hardest to ignore when one of us is uneasy or in trouble. I usually felt something when you drew blood from the others, like I needed to be there to protect them, whether I liked it or not. It’s hard focusing on what I want to do when I have to think about everyone else. Ultimately, the decisions I make have to be what’s best for the group.”
