Rogue (The Genesis Files Book 1)

by Bonnie Synclaire

  “But you thought I was my mother when I first went into the panic room. You listened to me then. Can’t you listen to Mom now?”

  “I only take Victoria’s orders in emergency situations,” Mavis explains. “I thought Victoria was experiencing an emergency. Otherwise, I was designed to help you and Joanna only.”

  I groan, snapping the curtain back in place. Joanna takes a closer look at my phone. “Wait…who’s that man standing with her?”

  I turn off my phone and toss it into my suitcase, and Jo and I dash into the foyer. But D is already there. He’s squinting through the peephole, both hands pressed against the front door, completely still.

  “Uh…what’s wrong?” I say, standing next to him. Jo lingers on the stairwell, one hand on the rail.

  “We can’t open the door.” D whispers, not moving.

  “Why? That’s our mom out there!”

  “You don’t understand!” he hisses. In my one whole day of personally knowing D, I can tell by his voice that he’s scared for his life right now. “You see that man in the fur coat?” He moves over so I can look through the peephole, and I oblige. It’s weird, seeing Mom just a few inches away from me after all of the turn of events, but she seems…different. A bad different. She wears a black leather jacket and black pants. The man standing behind her is tall, at least six feet. He has medium brown skin, a shiny bald head, and wears expensive-looking sunglasses even though it’s winter. A tiny white scar lines his bottom lip. He stands straight and tall in his black shirt, brown fur coat, white pants, and big suede shoes. A fat gold chain hangs from his neck. A cursive letter S dangles off the chain and rests on his stomach.

  “Is that…?” I start, but I think I already know who it is.

  “Edward Bowser III—the leader of the ex-agents and the underground Scorpion.”

  I don’t say anything else. I don’t have the will to. D was right, and I refused to listen to him. Mom is simply betraying my grandfather and his project, Joanna, me—everyone. She was never really missing, she was with the Scorpion ex-agents this whole time. But why ? Why is she doing this now ?

  “We have to hide,” D says. “If Bowser finds out that I’m still trying to get out of the underground Scorpion and that I’m helping you guys, he’ll definitely be out to get me.”

  “What about Skye?” I hear myself asking.

  “I texted her as soon as I saw Bowser’s truck pull into the driveway. I told her to stay at the motel and don’t go anywhere.”

  The doorbell rings again.

  “ Harper? Jo ?” It’s Mom’s voice. She sounds sweet and innocent—too sweet and innocent. Fake.

  “H-How long has Mom been here?” Jo asks.

  “Only a few minutes.” D replies. “But they know you two are here. Bowser doesn’t know where I go outside of Scorpion affairs.”

  “I know where we can hide,” I say. “Jo, go to the panic room and make sure our backpacks are still there. I’ll get our suitcases.” I command, and Joanna leaves. I sigh. This was not part of the plan.

  I grab our suitcases from my bedroom and take them down to the panic room, my stomach uneasy. D follows. I close and lock the door behind us, and the escape door is ajar. I urge Joanna and D to follow me down the multiple sets of stairs and to the jet. “Woah…” Joanna gapes at everything. As we walk, I finally see what’s on the long rows of steel shelves in the warehouse-like space. Boxes, dozens of them, all labeled. Handguns, canned goods, bottled water, distress signals, earpieces, hacking chips, bullets . Where did all this come from? Has this been here since Jo and I were born? Before then? What else is being kept from us?

  Mavis is right, the jet isn’t big (what did I expect?), but it looks cozy. Just standing next to it makes my head spin; this is crazy, this whole week has been crazy. I pull out the jet’s key from a tiny compartment inside my backpack and unlock the jet. All of the jet’s lights turn on, and the oval-shaped door slides open vertically. Mavis is correct again, this is just like a modern, fancy hotel room. “You know how to fly this thing, right?” I ask D, tossing him the key to the jet.

  “Of course. Part of my training was learning how to operate planes.” D confirms, already discovering the cockpit. The room we just entered has beige walls, small circle lights in the ceiling, beige carpet. There’s a fancy kitchenette in the corner, a black leather couch, and a flat screen TV bolted to the wall. The oval-shaped windows are tinted. There are two open doors to the left of the one we came in from leading to the bedroom and bathroom. I set the suitcases down on the ground with the backpacks. Jo sits down on the couch. She looks dazed. Then I realize she’s crying.

  I sit down beside my twin sister, but she looks away. My heart clenches. I don’t like seeing her like this. “Jo, it’s okay—”

  “This isn’t okay, Harper.” she cries, her voice wobbling. “I want to see Mom. I want her to be here, with us.”

  “Jo, listen,” I tell her, taking her hands. “I want to see Mom too, but something’s wrong. I told myself that she was just missing, that none of this was really happening, but if I kept thinking that instead of getting answers, who knows where we would be right now. We have to face the truth, okay? We have to get out of here, just until we can figure out what’s going on—”

  The escape door slams shut with a loud clash . I peer out the window to see Skye. She casually walks down to the jet, a black tote bag slung over one shoulder. I let her in the jet, dumbfounded.

  “What…? H-How did you…?” I stammer, but she only reveals a sly smile, her blue eyes sparkling. Skye sets her tote bag down with the rest of the luggage.

  “Don’t worry, I just drove D’s truck to the intersection of Verdure Avenue and Woods Lane, and parked it in the woods. I walked up a dirt path that led me to the back of this street and used my hacking chip to open the porch door. I figured you all were down here when I saw some guy in a fur coat and a woman in all black at your door.”

  I take out my cell phone again. The house is still on lockdown. I open the security camera that’s in the peephole and turn on the audio. Edward Bowser III and Mom are talking to one another.

  “ I can’t be out in the open like this .” Bowser says angrily. “ Apparently my fake cop plan wasn’t enough to get them. I’ll call some of my tech guys to get into the house’s system .” I watch him pull out his cell phone and type swiftly into it. “ They’ll be here in a few minutes. Let’s wait in the car .” And at that, he and Mom get back into the gray Chevy Suburban.

  My hands curl into fists, infuriated. Why is Mom listening to him ? Why is she doing this?

  D reappears from the cockpit, anxious. “We have to leave right now . Once Edward Bowser’s tech people get here, they can paralyze the jet’s system and even the entire house, and we’ll be trapped.”

  “So now how is this going to work?” I say. “The whole town is going to see us take off.”

  “No they won’t; your house is in the middle of nowhere.” D states. “I was taking a look at the cockpit and some of the jet’s parts, and thankfully this thing is designed to be as silent as a mouse. Your mother and Bowser will see us, yes, but once we take off, they won’t be able to stop us.”

  I take deep breaths to help clear my head so I can think clearly. “Alright.” This is happening, right now .

  Skye and I sit down on the couch next to Joanna, and the three of us observe the peephole’s security camera on my phone. There are three seatbelts in between the cushions, and we fasten them.

  7.

  Harper

  D closes the door to the cockpit. There’s a window in the door’s center, so I can see him fasten his seatbelt, press a few buttons, and put on a bulky headset. I can barely hear Mavis’s voice, too, assisting him.

  Suddenly, a massive bright light shines into the escape room and onto the jet, followed by a creaking sound—something’s opening. When my eyes finally adjust, I see it. A rusted steel ramp has unfolded right onto the land behind our house. The jet rolls forward.

>   It accelerates faster and faster up the ramp, and my stomach flip-flops when we reach the sky. Out the window, I watch Edward Bowser III spring out of his car. Mom quickly follows. The last thing I see is them staring up at the sky in shock.

  * * *

  “We can go to a different agency or to an FBI branch,” Skye is saying. Joanna had retreated to the bedroom as soon as D announced that we’re on a steady, straight-line route.

  “How many FBI projects like Genesis are in the U.S.?” I ask, messing with the TV remote.

  “Ones that the president doesn’t know about? Only a few.” Skye stands and retrieves her cell phone from her tote bag. The icons and font on the screen are slightly different. I realize she probably hacked into it somehow, so whoever’s searching for her can’t track her down. That would make sense. “Thanks to my four years’ worth of elite assassin training, I can help us lay low. I’m pretty sure D knows how to hide out, too, since he’s been an ex-agent for years now. The FBI branch that’s the most disguised is in...” But her voice trails off.

  “Where?” I say.

  “…Cape May, New Jersey.”

  “Is something wrong with that place?”

  “No…no, not at all. It’s just…nevermind. I’ll tell D to fly there.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “We should be there in an hour or so. It’s 12:30 now.” Skye goes into the cockpit. Once I finally get the TV to work, I go over to the mini refrigerator and open it. It’s practically overflowing with fancy drinks, cereal bars, bottled water, fruits, canned and boxed goods. I grab two skinny bottles of sparkling water and a few cereal bars, and head into the bedroom. Jo could definitely use something to drink. But before I can open the door, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I set the food down on the couch and take it out.

  Mom : When did you find out about the jet? Where are you going with it?

  Mom : Please call me.

  My heart clenches. I yearn to answer her, to tell her everything that’s happened to me and Joanna in the past forty-eight hours, because she’s my mother , but I know I can’t. Not until I find out the truth. About her, our family—everyone and everything. And until then, I cannot trust her, nor talk to her, at all.

  I grab the food and my hand grips the doorknob, so hard my knuckle turns from brown to white, and I breathe out through my nostrils, forcing my muscles to relax, before I open the door. The room is small, the beige queen size bed takes up almost all of the space, with a wide black dresser drawer, two black nightstands, a closet door in the corner, and a window. Jo is laying down on the bed.

  “We won’t be flying for long,” I tell her. “We’re flying to an FBI branch in New Jersey.”

  But Joanna doesn’t respond. She’s snoring.

  I delete Mom’s texts, throw my phone into my backpack, and collapse beside my sister, the soothing hum of the jet instantly putting me to sleep.

  * * *

  When I awake, the humming of the jet is ten times louder.

  I sit up warily. I stretch and leave the bedroom to find Skye sitting on the couch, fiddling with her fingers anxiously. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I ask, sitting down next to her. “Are we getting ready to land?”

  “Yeah. D found a strip to land on. He’s lowering the jet in five minutes.” she replies quickly.

  “Great…Are you alright? Are you scared of flying or something?”

  “No.” she says, but she doesn’t continue.

  “Well, what is it, then?”

  Skye sighs. “ This is where I came from, an orphanage in Cape May, New Jersey. I was ‘recruited’ when I was thirteen. Whatever Genesis is doing with it, I want to find out. And I want to see if my birth parents are still alive and living there.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know...I can help you. Since you’re helping me and my sister, the least I can do is return the favor by helping you.”

  “Thank you, Harper, but I want to do this alone.”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want.”

  Suddenly, light turbulence sways us back and forth. Skye peers out the window. “I see the strip of asphalt. We’re here.” The jet gradually swoops downward, making my stomach flip-flop again, and I grip the side of the couch. Skye doesn’t seem bothered. We keep going down and down, until the jet roughly scrapes the ground and slows to a stop, and everything goes quiet. A few minutes later, D emerges from the cockpit.

  “Well,” he says. “we successfully made it to FBI Branch 109. The weather was clear, and we still have a full tank of fuel. All we have to do now is tell them our situation and ask to stay. But, once we explain Scorpion’s plan to destroy Genesis, they’ll surely allow us to hide out here.” D makes sure his hood is still secured over his head before walking over to the window and looking out of it. It looks like we landed in the middle of nowhere.

  “Get Joanna and all of your things.” D orders. “Skye, do you know how to get to the entrance of Branch 109? Do you have any Genesis ID?”

  “Yeah.” Skye stands and types something into her phone. “I can lead the way.”

  She grabs her black tote bag and follows D out of the jet, and I go into the bedroom to wake up Jo. “Jo...Jo, wake up. We’re here.”

  Joanna stirs and squints up at me. “Did we land?” she asks, tiredly standing from the bed.

  “Yeah. Come on, we have to go.” We grab our backpacks and put them on, leaving our suitcases in the jet, and we meet D and Skye a few feet away. I press a button on my key to lock the jet. Hopefully nothing will happen to it; it’s kind of out in the open.

  “The entrance is forty feet northwest. This way…” SKYE says, using her phone as a GPS and holding it up to the sky. We walk deeper into vast grasslands, the yellow grass and weeds getting taller until they reach our stomachs. The air is chilly. Soon, Skye stops. I look behind us to see that the jet is nowhere in sight.

  “Zero feet. We’re here.” she states, her voice merely a whisper. But, where’s here ?

  Then I see it. A metal rectangle-shaped bunker sticks out of the ground like a sore thumb. Skye walks up to its chipping red door and knocks on it in a sequence—a code. The door has a rectangular view slit reminds me of what underground clubs have in movies, and it slides open in a split second, deep brown eyes staring back at us. The person on the other side doesn’t say a word.

  “FBI Branch 109?” Skye says, though she sounds uncertain, unconfident.

  The menacing eyes flicker. “Who are you? How did you get here?” the voice hisses.

  “We’re from the Genesis project,” Skye adds, motioning to D, Joanna, and me. “I’m from their Elite Training Program, too.”

  “Let me see your Genesis ID.”

  Skye digs through her tote bag and retrieves a laminated card. She shows it to the guard.

  “Hm. Alright. You can come in.” And at that, the eyes are gone, the view slit snapping shut. The door opens.

  Skye leads us inside. We walk down steep, dirty stairs, then down a long white hallway with bright lights in the ceiling and a white marble floor so clean we can see our hazed reflections in it. The hall is narrow; we can barely walk side by side. The person guarding the door is a skinny man with pale skin, a scruffy red beard, and large, jumpy eyes. He wears khaki pants and a black T-shirt with the FBI logo in the top corner. A walkie-talkie is clipped to his pants, an earpiece on his right ear. A gun sits deep in his back pocket, phone in the other.

  Soon we reach a huge door that looks like it would be used for a vault or safe. It’s made of thick steel, and has a silver wheel in the middle, with a glowing green screen on the side. The guard pushes past us and quickly types in the passcode. We hear two loud clicks, and the wheel spins into a blur until the door is about halfway open. “Your break isn’t till two, Oscar,” a voice on the other side calls, but the guard—Oscar—enters anyway. The rest of us follow, and we bump into a tall man. He’s pale with dark brown hair, in a beige uniform with all kinds of badges and accolades on his chest. On his silver nameplate reads CHIEF JOHN
MACRYAN .

  “Oscar!” Chief John MacRyan exclaims. “Are you out of your mind? Who are these people?”

  “One of them has a Genesis ID card. The Genesis Project is one of our partners, right?”

  Mr. MacRyan looks at me and Joanna for a long time. “Aren’t you Chief Ronaldo Cambridge’s granddaughters?” he asks. We nod. “But...how did you two get here…?”

  “Have you noticed any changes in Genesis’s day-to-day activities?” D speaks up. “Are they still in full contact with your branch?”

  “No…?” Mr. MacRyan replies, squinting at D. “Who are you?”

  D takes off his hood without hesitation. “It’s me, Chief MacRyan.”

  * * *

  “ Demetrius !” Mr. MacRyan exclaims happily. That’s your name? I think, but then I realize I’ve said it out loud.

  “ That’s your name?” I say to D. “ Demetrius ?”

  “Demetrius Xi, son of one of the greatest assassins who ever lived, Don Lee Xi.” Chief MacRyan explains. He pulls D—Demetrius, I guess—into a hug, smiling wide. D’s scrunched up face says he’s not very fond of hugs. “It’s such an honor to see you again, son. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story,” D says, trying unsuccessfully to get out of Mr. MacRyan’s hug. “But now, we need your help. Something bad is going to happen to the Genesis Project.”

  “What do you mean, something bad?” Chief John MacRyan takes a step back, letting D out of his hug. His face grows serious. “Everyone to my office. Oscar, you’re still on duty till two.”

  * * *

  When you first enter FBI Branch 109, the main level is nothing but boring gray office cubicles and a cafeteria. But when you step inside the elevator that’s tucked at the very end of the dark hallway, that all changes. The elevator is shiny and white and can hold at least thirty people. There are five underground levels that you can go to with a push of a gold button: