Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) Read online

  I didn’t have to.

  There was a strange bouncing, scraping sound overhead, something moving through the air ducts. We all looked up, following the progress of the sound till it settled over a grate in the ceiling.

  Williamson was the first to work it out. “Grenade!” he shouted, twisting his body away from the duct to cover a box, his first instinct to protect the mission.

  It was too late. The grenade exploded in a flash of blinding light and tore the ceiling to shreds. The shockwave hit and threw me off my feet, sending me crashing into a freezer, which shattered beneath me. I slid off the door and onto my feet, the explosion still ringing in my ears, and tried to assess the damage.

  Frankie, who had been standing directly under the grate, was gone, nothing more than a red stain where she had been. Unwin was missing half his face but was still alive, although I doubted he would stay that way for long. All that was left of Williamson was his torso still protecting the box of vials. What was unmistakably an arm lay on the workbench, still holding a single vial.

  As well as blood everywhere, there was seeping purple liquid. The virus was out. I had a matter of seconds. I closed my eyes, fighting off the unconsciousness that my body was willing on me, and focused. The world flipped.

  I was standing beside a tree, looking down on the facility. Unwin was standing next to me, his gas mask off and gun pointed at the silver dome. I remembered I’d given the order to pull back as soon as Aubrey had opened the door. The Shift had worked. Relief flowed through me. I wouldn’t allow us to mess up again.

  “It looks clear,” Unwin said. “Are you sure it’s a trap?”

  His young face was whole and undamaged once more. “Absolutely certain.”

  I checked the whole team were still here. Zac and Williamson were standing with their backs against trees, waiting patiently on my next order. Aubrey was adjusting the straps on her gas mask.

  I scanned the hillock for any sign of movement. There was a glint from behind a clump of stones about one hundred yards away. I thought through my options, trying to work out the best way to progress. We needed to get the vials, but I knew they were waiting for us.

  “Why don’t I…” Frankie said, stepping out from the cover of the trees.

  There was a loud crack, as if she’d stepped on a twig. She stopped, then slumped to the floor, a single red hole in her forehead.

  I considered leaving her like that. But instead, I focused again. And everything flipped.

  This time, I’d left the squad covering the bunker while Zac, Frankie and I went into the lab alone.

  Zac guarded the corridor while I helped Frankie with the freezers. I kept staring back up at the grate where the grenade had landed.

  “If you were to focus on what you are doing, Commandant, we could get this done quicker,” Frankie complained.

  I raised my eyebrow. This was the problem with working with civilians. They had no idea how lucky they were.

  I looked back to the grate. They were out there, waiting. The team covering the outside was all that was stopping them from making their move. A team, or a lone operator maybe? They’d strike as we exited. It’s what I’d do.

  “OK,” Frankie said. “That’s the last one.”

  I nodded. “We’re coming out,” I said into the mic. “I want covering fire focused on three o’clock from the entrance of the bunker.” The gunshot that killed Frankie had come from that direction.

  “Roger that,” Unwin said. They knew not to question my orders, even if they didn’t make sense.

  We walked down the corridor, Zac and I carrying the boxes filled with sloshing vials of X73.

  “On my count,” I said. “Three… Two …”

  On one, I threw open the door as the gunfire sounded. I pushed Frankie and then Zac forward, forcing them to run as fast as they could for the trees, and I followed, zigzagging left and right. If it was a sniper, I wasn’t going to be an easy target.

  We were close to making the cover of the trees when a branch in front of me splintered, showering me in bark and sap. I threw the box forward and followed by throwing myself over it. Zac threw himself next to me.

  The gunfire died down.

  “You were right, sir. There’s definitely someone out there,” Unwin said, helping me to my feet.

  “Only one?” Zac said, breathing heavily, brushing leaves off his uniform.

  “Maybe they thought that’s all that would be needed,” Aubrey said. “A single sniper to take us all out and then run off with the virus.”

  “Then why blow up the facility?” I said.

  “But they didn’t…” Frankie began. The others shared knowing looks, and she caught on. “You’ve Shifted?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can remember?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  I fixed her with a stare that suggested she might want to keep her mouth shut or I would do it for her.

  “What happened to us before?” Williamson asked.

  “You don’t want to know.” I handed my box of vials to Williamson as Unwin refused to touch it.

  There was a loud snap and I turned, my hand drawing my gun without even realising.

  It was Ladoux, finally joining us. She walked down the verge, hands out, palms up to show she was no threat. As she came closer, her expression went icy cold.

  “You have the vials?”

  “Thanks to the Com,” Unwin said.

  Ladoux turned to me, her face blank and strange. Then something caught her eye. A flash of purple amid the green. One of the vials must have fallen out of the box when we’d dived for cover. Ladoux and I went to pick it up at the same time. She got there first. She held it up to the light, as if looking at a precious stone. “When will men learn not to play at God?”

  Frankie took it off her. “Without ‘man playing at God’, we wouldn’t have penicillin or antibiotics. Not all science is evil.” She put the vial back in the box.

  Ladoux didn’t look convinced. In fact, she looked angry. I didn’t have time to work out why.

  I gave the boxes to her and Williamson, as Unwin downright refused to touch it.

  “You three, head back to the helicopter. Frankie, you go with them.”

  I needed to get to whoever had been firing at us, work out what they knew and what other plans they had in store. I also wanted to work out why I was so sure I’d been to this place before.

  “I’m going to get the sniper.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I watched Frankie, Ladoux and the two men head back through the trees. Ladoux kept turning back. Was it the very existence of the virus that had unsettled her so much? I would talk with her later. I turned my attention to where the shots had come from.

  “Need backup?” Zac said.

  “Only if you haven’t got anything better to be doing,” I said.

  “Well, I had planned on finishing a heartbreaking poem about the horrors of war I’ve been working on,” he said, picking at a bit of bark. “But it can wait.” He gave his lazy salute.

  “I’ll come, too,” Aubrey said. “We can triangulate them.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Like Jurassic Park.”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “You know, the three dinosaurs? Clever girl? No?” I was getting nothing but confused expressions. “Forget it. Let’s go.”

  The three of us spread out. Aubrey was to loop around on the right, Zac on the left, while I was going to walk straight out. I had all the variations held in my mind in case I needed to Shift. It was a bit like memorising a hand of cards, trying to hold a sequence straight. A slip of concentration, one decision made without thinking it through, and I could be in serious trouble. The biggest fear was being shot in the head. In that case, there was nothing that could save you, not even the hypnic jerk – the Shifter’s reboot function. I was hoping it wasn’t going to come to that.

  On my mark, we split off. I moved fast, running from cover to
cover, but I was trying to make myself seen, to distract whoever was up there from Aubrey and Zac coming around from the sides.

  I stopped behind a tree to check my pistol was loaded, then ran again. I moved in short sprints, up the hill and towards the clump of rocks from where I’d seen the flash of light.

  There was definitely someone there. I saw a hand resting on a rock twenty yards away. I slowed, taking cover behind another tree. If I could shoot their hand, then I’d disarm them. I raised my pistol and took aim. As I was about to squeeze the trigger, they stood up.

  It was a teenager: a tall, skinny boy with shaved hair. He wore a mismatch of dark green clothes and, I could see, the symbol of the Red Hand printed on his shoulder. He held a sniper rifle in his hands. I froze. The barrel was pointed straight at my head. He lowered the gun a couple of inches.

  “Are we good to go?” he said, his hands twitching around the stock of the gun. I was surprised, given how fidgety he was, that he’d been able to shoot straight at all. “Are we good?” he said again when I hadn’t replied.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, stepping forward.

  The gun was pointing to the left of me, but all it would take was a second and it would be directed at my face again.

  “The virus, Tyler.” He knew who I was. And it seemed I was supposed to know him. “Are we still going ahead with the plan?” There was a mixture of fear and hope in his voice.

  “No,” I said. “The plan is cancelled. The vials have been secured.”

  “Thank God,” he said, dropping the gun to his side, his face relaxing in relief.

  I stared at him, more confused and more scared than I had been since I arrived.

  “Are you alone?” I said looking around.

  “Yes, just like you instructed.”

  “Like I instructed?” I said.

  Bile rose in my throat. How could that be possible? How could I have been involved in something like this?

  But wasn’t me. It was him. That’s why he knew what had been going on, why this place had felt so familiar. He’d been here before. He was working with the Red Hand. He was working against us.

  I tried to match this realisation with the Commandant Tyler everyone seemed to think I was. War hero. Leader. And all the time, he’d been on the side of our enemies.

  You don’t understand.

  What is there to understand? I thought, furious at the ghost of him. Furious at myself. You’re a traitor.

  It’s more complicated than that.

  I hit my head with my hand, trying to displace his spirit. It didn’t matter what his plans had been, I was in charge now. And there was no way I was letting him get away with this.

  “Tyler?”

  I realised the boy had been calling my name, louder and louder.

  “What?” I snapped.

  He jerked, flinching at my words. “What’s the next move, Tyler?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Am I to blow up the lab, still?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But Slate said I was to wait until everyone was inside and–”

  “Slate can go screw herself,” I said, my hand flexing around the grip of my gun. I still hadn’t holstered it.

  The kid bent over and began dismantling his rifle. “Whatever. I’m getting sick of these games. I joined the Red Hand because I believed God wanted me to do something. And all I’ve been doing is sitting on my arse.” I guessed he couldn’t remember throwing the grenade or shooting Frankie in the head. “I’m heading back.”

  A twig snapped to my left. In my shock, I’d forgotten about Zac and Aubrey. I couldn’t let this boy talk to them. I couldn’t have them know that I had been involved in this. The boy turned at the sound.

  The kick in my hand was harder than I had expected, shooting from the hip as I was. The boy had a second to look surprised and confused, then folded to the floor. Blood pooled out from the bullet hole in his temple.

  I’d reacted purely on instinct. I hadn’t even remembered that I was still holding the pistol. It was as if the gun had shot itself.

  I looked down at the smoking gun in my hand and then to the boy. I didn’t know which sickened me more, the sight of his empty eyes or the fact that I had killed him in cold blood.

  “Are you OK?” Zac said, rushing out from the right.

  “Yes,” I said. “Everything is OK.” I holstered the gun and fiddled with my belt, trying to hide my shaking hands.

  Zac looked down at the boy. “I saw you talking; what did he say?”

  Footsteps approached. Aubrey looked panicked and scared as she raced towards me, then smiled when she saw that I was OK. I looked away. I couldn’t face her after what I had done.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “He left me no choice,” I said.

  Aubrey laid her hand on my arm as she came close. The simple kindness of the gesture made me feel even worse. Then she crouched down and went through the sniper’s pockets. I prayed there was nothing there tying me to him. “He’s clean,” she said, standing up.

  “Was he alone?” Zac said.

  “Yes.” I rolled the boy over with the tip of my boot so that he looked into the ground rather than accusingly at me. “It’s time we got back.”

  Zac picked up the sniper rifle and looked at it for a moment. The barrel was slightly loose. He finished the job the boy had started, stripping it down in a matter of seconds and throwing it into a bag that lay behind the rocks.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?” Aubrey said, looking at me.

  “Yes, and can you stop asking me?”

  “Then why are you crying?” Aubrey asked.

  I reached up to feel my cheek. It was damp.

  “The helicopter will be waiting,” I said, spinning on my heel and walking away from them and the dead boy.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “You’re back?” Hedges limped over to us as we entered the Hub.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Williamson said. “We’re good, you know.”

  “Damn good,” Unwin said. And the two men high-fived.

  “No, it’s just that… I’m happy to see you. You secured the vials?”

  “Yes, we have them,” Ladoux said, and there was still a cold edge of bitterness in her voice. Anger that the virus had ever been created, I assumed.

  “That’s good. Really good.” Hedges fixed Ladoux with a look. What the hell was going on between those two? It was more than something as simple as romance. But I was too tired to work it out.

  “Good job, Tyler,” Cain said, slapping me on the back. I was too tired for that, too. “Vials recovered. Zero casualties. Good job.”

  Zero casualties. Unless you counted the boy lying in a pool of mud on a hilltop, which apparently the army didn’t.

  “And just in time, too,” Cain continued. “We couldn’t have Emperor Tzen finding out about the existence of this stuff on his visit tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean?” Ladoux said.

  “Emperor Tzen’s a Shifter. This virus was designed to kill–”

  “I understand that,” Ladoux said, irritated. “What do you mean about a visit?”

  “The Emperor of China is coming here tomorrow,” Hedges said, a broad grin on his bruised face.

  “Does that mean…” Zac said, his eyes wide.

  “The treaty?” Aubrey said.

  “The end of the war?” Ladoux said, staring at Hedges who nodded slowly.

  “All in good time, all in good time.” Cain smiled, unable to hide his excitement. “For now, we need to ensure these vials are destroyed. I was thinking we could fire up the incinerator, Doctor Goodwin?”

  “That should do nicely,” Frankie said. She went to take the boxes off Zac and Williamson, who had been carrying them.

  “Here,” Hedges said, getting to them first. “Let me. It’s about the only use I can be at the moment.”

  Frankie nodded and Hedges followed her out of the room, carrying a white box u
nder each arm.

  “The rest of you, fall out,” Cain said.

  The squad saluted, and I was about to leave when I felt an arm on mine.

  “Can I have a word, Commandant?” Aubrey said, as we exited the command room.

  “Of course.”

  We waited for Zac and the others to head back up the tunnel towards the Hub. Unwin whispered something about having tracked down some booze somewhere and they were planning on celebrating the success of the mission.

  “What is it, Captain Jones?”

  Aubrey tilted her head, her eye fixed on me. “Well, you can start with who you are,” she said.

  “What do you mean? I’m Scott Tyler, I mean, Commandant Tyler.”

  “Nice try,” she said, ‘but the Commandant Tyler I’ve heard about doesn’t cry over the body of an enemy.”

  I swallowed, my Adam’s apple pushing against my throat mic. “I’m having a bit of trouble adjusting. It’s just the reality attack. I’ll be fine,” I said, ashamed of myself.

  “Still? You shouldn’t be on duty while you’re in this state.” Aubrey rested her hand on my arm again and turned me to face her.

  Her touch seemed to bring me back to myself. “I don’t know what to do, Aubrey.”

  She flinched a little at the use of her name. “Well, you should report to the doc and get signed off for a start.”

  “No,” I said, pulling my arm away. Frankie was the last person I was going to turn to.

  “But you’re putting lives at risk.”

  “Did I risk anyone today? Or did I, in fact, stop you all from dying, time and time again?” I slammed my hand into my fist emphasising my point.

  She blinked. “I guess I should be thanking you, then?”

  “Yes. Yes, you should,” I said, rage building. I fought to control it, to control him. He was getting stronger with every passing moment, while I was losing more of myself. If I didn’t do something soon, it would be too late. I would be stuck here.

  I looked at Aubrey and the treacherous thought crept in – the reason I hadn’t tried harder to Shift back to the old reality. I would be stuck here, but would that be such a bad thing?