The first pilot spoke into his headset. “TransPac hop complete. Lights out. Passengers still unconscious. Where are the guards?”
More guards? Men like the ones who came to our car? My arms pulled against the straps again, pure panic taking over. We couldn’t go into that building. I couldn’t let them take Finn into that building.
I crushed my thumb toward my pinky, and my hand slid out a little. I tugged harder. Pain shot from my fingers up my arm. The pilot in front of Finn took off his headphones and unstrapped himself. I closed my eyes and made my body go limp.
“I’ll go check on the delay,” the co-pilot said. He pushed open his door and hot air flooded the helicopter, blanketing my body. The co-pilot jumped out, ducking below the spinning blades, and jogged toward the building.
In the seat in front of me, the first pilot started whistling. He straightened a few more dials and then stretched his arms overhead.
My eyes flickered to the fire extinguisher hanging just behind his seat. If I could knock him out, rouse Finn, and make it down to the beach and around that fence, we might have a chance. We could hide. Find help. I pulled at my hand again. The harder I pulled, the more my joints screamed, but my fingers were already halfway out. I jerked again.
My hand came free.
Quietly, I unstrapped my other wrist, my waist, and then leaned forward to release my ankles. When I sat up, completely free of the straps, the pilot was staring in the rearview mirror. Our eyes made contact.
I jumped up and yanked the fire extinguisher from the wall.
The pilot fumbled with his headset. “We’ve got one awake here. We need backu—” The word cut off when the extinguisher hit the side of his face. His head fell to the side, limp.
My hands shook as I dropped the canister and stared at him.
Move. Move.
Squatting in front of Finn’s seat, I pressed his head up. “Finn! Wake up!” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Finn! Look at me!”
His eyes fluttered open, but his gaze didn’t focus on mine.
I released his wrist straps, but Finn’s head sagged forward again.
“Finn! Stay with me! We’re going to be okay. We’re going home. Do you hear me? I need you to get ready to run. We need to make it to the trees. Unstrap the belt at your waist. Finn, move!”
After his wrists were free, I shifted my focus to Finn’s ankle straps. He mumbled something I couldn’t understand. The clasp at his right ankle clicked open, then his left.
He still hadn’t made any move to help me free him. Just as my hands made it to his waist strap, the door next to Finn’s seat swung open. A man in gray fatigues shadowed the exit. The sun shining in around him made it impossible for me to see his face. He wrapped my torso and pulled me out of the helicopter.
“Finn!” I screamed, grabbing for my brother’s hand. I finally felt his fingers squeeze back, saw his face twist in confusion, heard him yell my name. The guard yanked my body away, and Finn’s fingers slipped from my grasp.
A scream erupted from somewhere deep inside me. No. I could not let this happen.
As Finn fumbled with the clasp at his waist, I swung my head back into the guard’s nose. For a moment, his hold loosened and I nearly broke free. But he caught hold of my t-shirt and encircled his arms around me again, dragging me toward the building.
My body thrashed. Was this what the wild animals back home felt like? I was that coyote we’d seen, injured, trapped in a barbed-wire fence, unable to get out, clawing, fighting like my life depended on it, because, deep down, I knew it did.
Beckett and I shot that coyote.
Two more guards jogged past me toward the helicopter, toward Finn.
I gave one final surge of fight, expending everything I had left, calling on every muscle. I might be wiry but I was no weakling. Farm work had kept my muscles awake and primed. My body knew how to fight back.
It was working. Was it working? I felt myself twisting from his hold, his arms not quite loose enough to break free from yet …
A sting erupted across my thigh. When I looked down, a needle protruded from my skin. At the end of the needle, a metal cylindrical tube swayed like a pendulum. My eyes jerked up in time to see a guard twenty feet away lowering a dart gun, a smirk on his face. The tip of his boot held open the door, revealing darkness beyond the building’s threshold.
I tried to reach down to pull out the needle, but the guard held my arms at my sides.
Within eight seconds, my body went limp. I had just enough time to look back at Finn, to see them pulling him from the helicopter, to embrace the overwhelming fact that I’d let him down.
In another two seconds, I was completely gone.
4
JACK
I was in the middle of pull-ups when I heard the helicopter, still about five miles off.
What was this? Dad didn’t allow for unannounced visitors from Vasterias headquarters, and Caesar kept me in the loop about arrivals and departures. This arrival was something impromptu.
I finished forty more pull-ups before dropping from the metal ceiling joist and moving toward the second story window of the old medical wing. Holding the ends of a towel, I stretched my arms overhead, feeling the soreness in my shoulders. I twisted back and forth a few times and wiped the sweat off my neck.
The helicopter landed.
I squinted, forcing my eyesight to go beyond the sun reflecting off the tinted copter windows. I could see the two younger people in the back—a girl’s ponytail, the pale blue color of her t-shirt, a boy’s curly hair ….
I froze with the towel against my temple.
It couldn’t be them. Not so soon.
The co-pilot emerged and walked across the landing pad. The girl looked to be struggling with her seatbelt. She rose from her seat. She pulled down the fire extinguisher, and … hit the pilot across the head.
And then Jimmy was there, jogging across the pavement.
When Jimmy flung open the helicopter doors and pulled the girl out, my knees buckled. It really was her.
Hope Cunningham.
I recognized her—the set of her jaw, her narrow frame, her brown eyes. I’d seen a picture of her a few months back. The last time I’d seen her in real life, she’d been two years old. It was the day her mom left New York to hide from Vasterias. I was three and a half at the time, but I remembered everything about that day.
Hope kicked and screamed, reaching for the boy who I assumed must be her brother. This wasn’t in the plan.
I knew it was a possibility—she and her family getting brought here—just not so soon. Dad had only finished testing the last of the recruits last night. I had planned to make it to her family first. All the recruits were found sterile, so Caesar and I had mapped out our plan. We were leaving for Kansas the next night to warn her family about Vasterias and my father.
Too late for that now.
Jimmy dragged the girl toward the building. She wouldn’t give up. She screamed her brother’s name. Finn.
A dart hit her leg. Her body went limp.
Anger shot through me, and I spun from the window. I shoved a metal cot into the concrete wall, and it ricocheted off and clanged into a second cot.
This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
I wanted to sprint down to the lab and punch my father in the face. I wanted to take the girl and her brother back into the helicopter, back to Kansas where they came from, separate from this mess. My feet almost moved toward the door to do it.
Almost.
I never allowed myself the novelty of rash decisions. And yet, here I was, ready to blow my cover and undo everything. Ready to give myself away after nearly four years of building up my father’s trust. I balled my hands into fists and planted them on the window sill to keep me from doing things I’d regret. I fought against my anger, watching while the guards pulled the boy from the helicopter and shoved a dart into his thigh.
I kept my fists pressing into the ledge as Hope disappeared f
rom view and entered the building below. I could no longer see her, but somehow, I felt her. An invisible pull, an inexplicable draw toward the first floor where I knew she was.
Once Finn disappeared inside, I drew in a deep breath and pulled away from the window. The truth was, I was willing to do whatever it took in order to get to the code. I wanted it just as bad as my father. But not to replicate. Only to destroy it and end all of this.
I rubbed my hand up and down my face. This wasn’t good, but my dad wouldn’t kill her, he hadn’t gotten that desperate. Not yet, anyway. But then again, I hadn’t predicted my dad would order their kidnapping so soon.
Get it together, Adamson.
I needed a plan. I needed to analyze all possible scenarios, prepare for what to do next. This is what kept me sane—constant assessment, anticipating problems, taking action. My concern now lay in the fact that my dad never mentioned any of this to me. Did that mean he was starting to suspect something? Had he finally figured out my only intent was to destroy the code?
I needed to find out.
*
I belted my holsters back on—one real gun, one tranquilizer dart—and strapped the walkie-talkie onto the back. I pushed out the door of the old medical wing, jogged down the steps, past the cages, and into the lobby. My earbud lay hidden on the shelf with the cleaning supplies.
I shoved it in my ear. “C?”
“Here.” The tone of Caesar’s voice remained unfazed, like always. I knew my anger was about to get thrown directly at him, but what else was new? I got ticked, Caesar didn’t care. This was just how we operated. It was the reason why Caesar was my best and only friend.
“How’d we miss this?” I said as I jogged down the wide concrete halls toward the rooms at the building’s north entrance, toward where I knew the girl would be. Where I could feel that she was, as crazy as that sounded. Late afternoon sunlight flowed through high rectangular windows, the heat of the sun’s rays reaching my face.
“Dude, they made no announcement about this arrival.” I heard Caesar set down his coffee mug on the surveillance room table at the other end of the line. “Dude. Don’t go down there right now. You look like you’ll punch your dad in the face, and that would really blow our cover.”
I smirked at the next hallway surveillance camera I passed, knowing C watched me on the screens. My friend knew me too well.
And he was right. I couldn’t lose my cool. Not unless I wanted to reveal too much. I had to keep pretending I didn’t care, that the code didn’t matter to me—that people’s lives didn’t matter to me. I’d been doing this charade for four years—I couldn’t quit now. My dad and the Vasterias Corporation still needed to believe I agreed with getting the code and selling it off to the highest bidder.
I slowed to a walk as I neared the north wing, talking more to myself than Caesar.
“Why didn’t he tell me about this?” I said.
Caesar took a sip of his coffee. “Dude, chill. We don’t even know who these people are yet.”
Right. Caesar had never seen the girl or her brother before.
“It’s Cunningham’s kids,” I replied, waiting for the puzzle pieces to click together in C’s head.
Caesar cursed. “Well, your dad didn’t waste any time, did he?
I rounded the final corner to the north wing of the building. “No, he didn’t,” I said. “Do you see him?”
“Third hallway. Looks like he’s getting ready to go into the girl’s room. Twelfth door on the right. They strapped her down to a gurney. She woke up insanely fast after the first tranquilizer, so they gave her another. I’m impressed with her attitude. Feisty.”
“And the boy?”
“Just down the hall from her.”
I rounded the corner, and there was my father, lab coat on, standing at the door of Hope’s room, typing something on his tablet.
I swallowed, trying to release the angry tension in my throat. Time to pretend I never saw the helicopter, or that she was inside. I should have been cleaning cages, not doing pull-ups in the old medical wing. And I shouldn’t even care that the girl and her brother were here.
“Heard a helicopter land,” I said as I strode up to my father. I’d leave it at that, wait and see how Dad responded and go from there. This comment wouldn’t raise suspicion. I shouldn’t have seen the copter landing, but Dad would know I heard it, no matter where I was in the building.
Dad tapped his tablet with a stylus, answering without looking up. “We brought in the Cunningham kids.”
No one in the world was important enough for Dad to acknowledge—especially me—unless the individual offered something for Dad’s personal gain.
I know it’s the Cunningham kids. Why didn’t you tell me? I wanted to ask it, but I couldn’t. Too obvious. Too risky.
“No time to waste,” I said, my voice expertly masking all signs of anger—a skill I’d mastered a long time ago.
I glanced through the small glass window in the door. I saw the girl, still wearing the pale blue t-shirt and jean shorts, unconscious on the gurney. Her dark brown hair splayed across the pillow, arms and legs strapped to the bed. Again, I felt the indescribable pull toward her, like I needed to go into that room.
Shake it off. You can’t get smitten for some girl. Not when you’re so close to the end. It annoyed me to even have to remind myself of it.
I lingered, debating whether to press the subject further. I couldn’t say much more without drawing suspicion. “What’s the plan?” I finally said.
He looked up then, as if taking in my presence for the first time. “Sorry?” He blinked, clearly annoyed at being spoken to. This was typical. I was nothing more than a pain in the ass to my father, a painful reminder of what was possible with the code. My genes so close, yet inaccessible.
Like I cared. Like it was my fault my dad hated me.
When my father and Hope’s father modified me as an embryo, they blanketed my cells so the code could not be extracted. The idea was to keep people—like the Vasterias Corp—from stealing me for the science. The plan backfired when her dad disappeared with the code and my father needed the code inside me. Turns out, they’d done their job all too well.
My dad stared blankly at me, so I repeated my question, slower, with just enough edge in my voice to mock him, but not enough for him to do anything about. “What’s the plan now?”
He pulled open the door to Hope’s room. “We wait and see if Cunningham responds to our threats.” He paused in the doorway. “Stay here. After the girl wakes up, you’ll take her to see the recruits.”
I nodded once, steeling myself on the inside as I leaned against the wall to wait. He disappeared inside Hope’s room. Why would he want her seeing the recruits? I could only think of one use for it—intimidation.
I gritted my teeth. My arms clenched involuntarily.
I hated this game: pretending to be submissive, pretending to agree with everything my dad said and did. I couldn’t take it much longer. Until about ten minutes ago when that helicopter landed, I thought I didn’t have to take it much longer.
I took a breath to clear my head. This could actually all turn into a good thing. If my father only intended to scare Cunningham with empty threats.
I hated myself for the thought—I knew how it sounded—and I wasn’t pleased with how vulnerable Hope and Finn were by being on the island. But the Corporation had power. If they got her dad to give up the code, I could get it, and that’s all I needed. I’d destroy it, and Vasterias and my father would finally give up. Hope and her brother could go back home, and everything would be over.
“Stop thinking it, you insensitive bastard,” C said into the earbud. “They can’t stay here. You know that.”
I crossed my arms and snorted, leaning my head back against the wall. “Wow,” I murmured into the earbud, “no faith in me?”
“I know you were thinking it. I could see it on your face,” C replied.
I sighed. “Yes, better to take them wi
th us in a few days. Get them out of here.”
“You tell me, boss. I’ll follow. For now, I’m out.” C’s voice sounded like he stretched his arms. I heard his chair wheels roll over the tile. “My shift is almost up. Starts up again after dinner.”
Yes. That would be the plan. Get the girl and her brother out of here. Keep them safe until I got the code. Destroy it. Take them home.
Then finish the job by killing myself.
It’s all I had ever allowed myself to want out of life: Freedom from the guilt of being who I was.
My final peace would come when I pulled the trigger, knowing that I’d done the right thing by ending it all.
5
SAGE
My brain worked to pull itself from the fog.
A dull fluorescent light droned from the ceiling above, keeping all things in my periphery in temporary darkness. I lifted my head and saw that Velcro secured my hands and legs to a bed. The room felt sterile and chilled, and goosebumps prickled my skin. My t-shirt and jean shorts were still intact. I dropped my head back to the mattress in relief—at least no one had stripped me while I was unconscious. When my head hit the sheet, the scent of rubbing alcohol wafted up around me.
Finn. Where was Finn? What had they done to him? I had to find him and get out of here. I started pulled at my wrist straps, testing if I could work my hands out of them like I had before.
“Hello,” a man’s voice spoke. I jerked my head to the side, my heart pounding. I squinted against the light and finally met a pair of eyes a few feet away. “I’m Dr. Adamson,” the man said.
He dripped of composure: the starch of his lab coat, the shine of his dark hair, the calm set of his face. The scent of lemon radiated from his direction.
“I apologize for the straps, but you kept thrashing,” he said, placing a stylus pen behind his ear. He slid his tablet into his lab coat and tucked his hands into the coat pockets. “You woke up quite early for the sedatives. Surprising, given your size. You can’t be over what—115 pounds? You shouldn’t even be awake right now.”
The Mod Code Page 3