Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) (9 page)

“Do we have a problem, Tyler?” Cain said.

I finally looked at him. “No. We’re good.”

He nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s always tough losing men. But their sacrifice won’t be forgotten. It was all for the greater good.”

“
Ad verum via
,” I mumbled.

“Exactly. And with the intel Hedges has, we might be able to crush the Red Hand once and for all.”

We both looked over at Hedges. He must have been strong and handsome once, but now he looked like a shell of a man, his face a bruised ruin, half-starved and broken. Could a man like this really be so important?

You take power where you can find it,
the buzzing voice in my head said.

Power. Duty. Choices. I felt as pinned as when Frankie had taken over me. Only now, I was the one stopping me. I needed help. And I’d just flipped out at the one person I believed could help me.

Aubrey stared at me, her gaze fixed and unreadable.

I walked over to her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have congratulated you. It’s only that…”

“You have no reason to explain yourself to me, Commandant,” she said, which wasn’t the same as saying I didn’t need to apologise.

“Still, I’m sorry.”

She nodded. But there was no softening in her expression. “Our guest is waiting. We should probably see what he has to say for himself.”

She spun around, her large boots squeaking on the tiled floor of the Hub, and headed for a tunnel.

I glanced around at the group who were doing a pretty terrible job of pretending they hadn’t been watching the whole exchange. My squad had been watching too, although judging by the expressions on their faces, they were as annoyed as I was. Only Zac smiled.

“Permission to fall out?” he said.

“Yes, of course. Fall out,” I said, waving them away with my hand.

When I looked back, Aubrey was disappearing through a doorway. “Hang on,” I called, struggling to catch up with her thanks to my throbbing leg.

She slowed her pace and waited for me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I still haven’t quite found my way around here.” I reached into my pocket and swallowed two pills straight from the bottle.

“Zac said you were having trouble.”

I found myself irritated by the idea that she and Zac had been talking about me, and jealousy added to the mix of emotions rushing through me. Maybe now wasn’t the time to be baring my soul to her. It could wait till later.

The tunnel sloped downwards, getting darker and damper the deeper we went. The walls became smoother, covered in a slick layer of water breaking through the cracks.

“How far down do you think we are?” I asked.

“Oh, about a hundred feet. It’s an old tunnel system that was used during the last war as a shelter. After the strike on Old Street, ARES moved in here and started building.”

We turned another corner. There was a row of rough wooden doors; they looked old, way older than the rest of the Hub. Black metal hinges had been hammered into place with nails as big as my thumbnail.

“What are these rooms?” I asked, peering through a small window covered by thick metal bars.

“Cells. They’re hundreds of years old. CP told me they used to keep those too evil for the Tower of London locked up down here. Chuck ’em in the cells and leave ’em to rot. No reprieve. No buying your way out.”

I ran my hand against the surface of the wood. “How many do you think died down here?”

“Who knows? Hundreds? Thousands, maybe?”

“And on this our country was built.”

She stopped to look at me with a quizzical, confused expression. “Don’t you believe in what we’re doing?”

“Of course I do,” I said, quickly. “We have to defend ourselves, right? Protect the country. I get that. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

I looked down at my feet. “I lost Cooper today. He was just a kid.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But Cooper wasn’t much younger than you.”

“Exactly! And I’m a kid.”

Aubrey let out a small snort of air and the corner of her mouth hitched in a grin.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” She carried on walking. “You’re not like I imagined.”

I’m
not like I imagined, I wanted to say. I wanted to blurt everything out. To tell her that we loved each other. That there was a better place for us all. But the words refused to come. So instead, I focused on not tripping over on the uneven ground.

“This is it.” She’d stopped in front of a large wooden door. A new chrome lock had been drilled into it, complete with a palm reader. Aubrey nodded at me.

“What?” I said, not knowing what I was supposed to do.

“Only senior officers have authorisation.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” I placed my hand on the reader, waited for verification.

“Commandant Tyler. All area access,” the familiar electronic voice chirped as the door opened.

Inside was a small damp room hewn out of the rock. Sitting chained to a chair was a muscle-bound young man. I scanned his tattoos: swastikas on each knuckle, a bulldog on his right arm, a crown on his left. His face was quadrisected by a red St George’s Cross. I noticed a ring on his little finger that had a gold lion on it, that he’d recently gone down a belt notch, and a hundred other tiny details about him, including the fact he’d cut his head shaving it. It was a weird experience, this heightened awareness. It must be all part of the training from this reality.

“This,” Aubrey said, “is George Burnley. Otherwise known as the Brute.”

The “Brute” was drooling, his eyes staring into space.

“You’ve cuffed him?”

“Of course.”

“He’s a Shifter, then?” I said, stepping forward. “Bit old, isn’t he?”

“He’s sixteen,” Aubrey said, “and responsible for the deaths of at least seven ARES officers, not to mention a series of vicious racial attacks.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about why we were fighting and what we lost. Because if it was to stop animals like this, then it was worth it.

Aubrey closed the door behind us. “He was recruited into the Red Hand from a neo-Nazi group called the English Defence League that sprang up at the beginning of the war. They believed the government brought the war on us by allowing foreigners in the country.” The disgust was clear in Aubrey’s voice. “We rounded up most of them in the early days. But George here proved useful to the Red Hand. He’s an explosives expert.”

“You take power where you can find it?”

“Something like that.”

He had a nasty gash across his cheek, which was oozing gently. “Was that your handiwork?” I said, pointing at the cut.

“He didn’t want to come quietly,” Aubrey said.

“They never do,” I said. “Right, uncuff him. We’re not going to get any sense out of him in this state.”

“But what if he Shifts?”

I smiled. “Fixer, remember?”

“Sure, I remember,” she said, pulling out a key from a pouch on her belt. “I wasn’t sure you did.”

She undid George’s cuffs and then stepped away hastily.

He blinked his eyes and smacked his lips together, as if waking up from a long sleep. He went from drowsy to rage in a matter of seconds, trying and failing to break free of the chains. He strained at his bindings, the muscles on his arms bulging.

“There’s no point,” I said. “The chain isn’t going anywhere and neither are you. Unless you cooperate.”

“I will never cooperate with you scum who are destroying this nation.”

“Then you will stay here and rot,” Aubrey said.

He let loose a torrent of such foul abuse directed at Aubrey that I reacted without thinking. I punched him in the throat, leaving him gasping for air.

“If you ever, ever,” I shouted, “speak to her like that again, I will tear your tongue out, do you understand me?”

“I’d like to see you try,” he croaked, holding onto his throat.

“Now, Captain Jones is going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer them civilly or,” I pulled the knife I’d used to cut Hedges’ bindings and ran the tip across the red lines on George’s face, “I will remove each of your tattoos. One by one.”

He went cross-eyed looking down at my blade.

When I pulled it away, I saw the change in him. Gone was the big-man act, leaving only a scared teenage boy, sitting abandoned in a cell.

“What do you want to know?”

“X73,” Aubrey said.

George’s bulldog face wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Don’t lie to us,” I shouted, spraying his face with spittle.

He blinked. “I’ve never heard of it. I’m telling the truth.” And the desperation in his eyes made me believe him.

“What about the attack they are planning?” Aubrey said, walking to stand behind him.

“I don’t know. They said something about a programme and a virus. I thought they might be planning on hacking S3’s computers. But they don’t let me in on the strategy stuff. I’m only there to blow things up, you know?”

Aubrey laid her hands on his shoulders and leant in close to his ear. “If you are lying to us, this will go badly for you.”

He tried to twist around in his chair to look at her. “I swear on my life. I ain’t lying.”

“Your life isn’t worth spit,” Aubrey said, quietly. “If you want to keep it, you need to give us something.”

“I… heard they had a spy in S3.”

This didn’t come as a surprise to me. They’d known about our raid on the tower after all. “Who?”

“I don’t know. I heard they’d turned a loyal member of the S3. But I swear that’s all I heard.”

“And what about Slate, your leader?” Aubrey said.

I recognised the name from the argument between the two guards at the tower.

“I’ve never met Slate. No one has, as far as I can tell. But there are rumours that Slate’s a Shifter, too.”

Did that mean there were more adult Shifters out there? Maybe one of the men from Project Ganymede? I remembered the men Aubrey and I had rounded up. None of them had struck me as the type to lead an army.

“If you give us the identity of Slate, I’ll see what I can do about giving you a cell with a view.”

“I’ve never met her.”

“Her?” Aubrey said.

“Yes. That’s all I know. That Slate is a woman.”

A woman and a Shifter? Could it be Frankie? Could she be tricking everyone yet again? It sounded exactly like her.

“That’s all I know. I promise ya. Can I go home now?” George looked pathetically at me, a single tear running down the tattoo on his face.

“I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for that,” Aubrey said, slapping the cuffs back on him. After a moment, he slumped again in his chair.

I followed her out of the room. “What do we do with him now?”

“He’ll be processed. Probably executed.”

I didn’t care he was a teenager. He was a killer. The justice of his punishment gave me a sense of calm. “Good,” I said.

Are you so very different?
that niggling, gnawing voice said again. I pushed it away.

“I have an idea of who Slate might be.”

Aubrey stopped and turned to me. “Who?”

“Frankie Anderson.” She looked confused. “You probably know her as Francesca Goodwin.”

“The doctor?” Aubrey said, her eyes wide. “What makes you think that?”

“Let’s say I’ve had dealings with her in the past.”

“But George said Slate was a Shifter. The doctor went through entropy years ago.”

The lack of scar made me believe Frankie hadn’t been a part of Project Ganymede. But there were other ways to hold on to your power. I knew thanks to Benjo Green. And who better than a doctor to work that out? “I think she might have found a way around it.”

“OK. But if the Red Hand have infiltrated the division, how do we know who we can trust?”

She was right. Someone had told the Red Hand we were coming earlier, I was sure of it. “I don’t know. But we have to tell someone. Sergeant Cain?”

“No,” Aubrey said. “We need to take it higher than him. We need to take it to the Minister of Defence.”

CHAPTER TEN

We stood in front of an enormous metal door covered in bolts and dials. Aubrey hesitated next to me, as if waiting for me to do something. Then, with the tiniest of shakes of her head, stepped forward and pushed a button.

Machinery whirred in response.

“Identify,” a computerised voice snapped.

“Captain Jones and Commandant Tyler,” Aubrey said, with only the slightest of pauses. The door hissed and slid open.

The room inside looked exactly like I’d imagined the interior of Number Ten Downing Street to look. Dark wood panels, a large oak desk with green banker’s lamps. It looked like the Minister of Defence had made himself a home from home.

Two guards stood to attention, guns held to their chests. They didn’t even acknowledge our presence as we stepped into the room.

A slim, dark-haired man stood with his back to the door, bending down over something on the table. Somehow, I knew this was his way of proving he was unafraid. A paranoid man would always sit facing the door. A man with nothing to fear wouldn’t even look up when another person entered the room. Which made me wonder: what were all the bolts on the door and armed guards for?

This man was trying to manipulate appearances and hide the truth. Just like me.

He slowly straightened and turned around. I recognised Benjamin Vine, the Prime Minister from an old, old reality. In that reality, Vine’s daughter had been killed by Ella – one of Frankie’s puppets. Pushed off a cliff on a school holiday as Frankie put her pieces in place. That loss had driven him into politics and all the way to the top job. What had made him become a minister this time? Had his daughter died in the war?

He had always looked as if the responsibility of power weighed heavily on him. And now, it looked to be crushing him. His hair was greying at the temples, his skin pale and pasty, there were purple circles under his eyes. The eyes themselves, though, were sharp and bright. His suit had seen better days. Without even thinking, I scanned it and noticed the smudge of ink on his cuff, the faint patches of dust on his knees. Had he been praying?

The level of awareness I was experiencing ever since the battle was scaring me. It was as if my eyes didn’t belong to me anymore. More of the version of me from this reality overriding my conscious thoughts.