I started for Sam’s room. He tended to eat pretty well, so cookies were never his thing, but I slowed my pace just the same. He still sat at his desk, back hunched, reading his book. Technology in the Twenty-First Century. I’d ordered that one special for him.
There were a few books on the shelves above him, mostly reference manuals. Sam’s room was neat, tidy, and bare.
He looked up as I passed. “Hey,” he said.
I smiled. “Hey.”
And that was it.
Nick’s room was last. He and I had never gotten along. As a matter of fact, he once told me he couldn’t stand the sight of my face. As far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything to offend him, and if I had, Nick wasn’t the kind of person to hold back.
I slid a couple of cookies into the hatch. “Do you have any requests? I’ll probably go to the store later this week. A new Car & Driver? How are you on shampoo?” He liked this special stuff that was made from avocados and shea butter. I had to order it from a website that sold only organic goods, using my own money. Not that he cared.
When he didn’t answer, I muttered, “Maybe a stone to sharpen your horns?”
He called out as I headed back to my desk. “How about a fifth of vodka?”
Ignoring him, I dropped into the desk chair, munching on a cookie with a high chocolate content. Like my mother, I wouldn’t turn down extra sweets. At least that’s one thing I had in common with her. That, and our hazel eyes, according to Dad. With my free hand, I held the previous day’s physical chart in front of me and snuck glances at the boys. Cookies in hand, Nick kicked back in his bed, watching a TV show about wolves. Sam was still reading. Trev stood at the front of his room, chatting with Cas about the difference between regular chocolate and white chocolate, their conversation not at all hindered by the wall between them.
Dad wouldn’t tell me what the program tested for, despite my repeated questioning. When I’d first found the lab, it was all I could think about. What were four boys doing in our basement? Where were their parents? How long had they been down there? Dad knew exactly how much information to give to feed my curiosity and keep me quiet. I knew about the Branch, of course. But even though I knew who ran the program, I still didn’t know why.
Dad said I should trust him, that he knew what he was doing, and so did the Branch. It was for the greater good.
It was our job to observe, record data, and make necessary changes to the treatments. Dad may have been a little neglectful in the parenting department, but he was a good man, and if he trusted the Branch and our role in the program, then so did I.
I thought the Branch was most likely funded by the government. Dad was obsessed with wars and foreign conflicts, so it made sense. My latest theory was that the boys were being made into supersoldiers. The world could use more heroes.
As Nick finished his cookies, I prepared my tray for the blood draw. I double-checked each supply. Three vials. One new needle. Rubber strap. Band-Aids. Alcohol swabs. Everything was there.
I only had to go into Nick’s room every other Wednesday, but each time it left me rattled. I’d rather draw blood from a mountain lion. If Nick was being made into a hero, the program had taken a wrong turn with him.
I tried to shake the feeling off as I went to his room. “You ready?”
“Does it matter if I am or not?”
I was tempted to say something equally snotty in response, but I held back. I just wanted to get this over with.
Dad had three rules about the lab that were to be followed without question. Rule number one: Do not go into the boys’ rooms when they are awake. Rule number two: Turn on the sleeping gas only once the subject is safely lying down. Rule number three: Wait four minutes for the gas to kick in.
The boys knew the rules, too.
But Nick hated rules.
“Will you lie down, please?” I asked. He sneered at me. “Lie down, Nick.” The sneer turned into a snarl, but he finally did as I asked.
Behind me, Dad’s cell phone rang. “I need to take this. You’ll be okay if I head upstairs?”
I refused to tell Dad I was scared of Nick; I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t hack it in the lab. So I nodded and said, “Sure.”
Phone at his ear, Dad hurried out.
With Nick finally in place on his bed, I scooped up my supply tray. “Here it comes,” I warned, right before I hit the Cell #4 button on the control panel. The twin vents in Nick’s ceiling scraped open and white smoke hissed out.
He managed to say “This shit gives me a headache” before the gas hit him and his eyes slipped closed. The ever-present tension in his long, sinewy body eased away.
I looked at the stopwatch hanging from a lanyard around my neck. Four minutes was too long for most people to hold their breath. Dad said he was ninety percent sure the boys were stable at this point, and that they probably wouldn’t pose any sort of danger to me, but ten percent was too much of a risk for him.
When four minutes had passed, I hit the button to reverse the vents, and the gas was sucked back out. I punched in the entrance code to Nick’s room and half of the wall pushed forward and slid aside. The acrid scent of the gas still lingered as I placed my tray on the floor and took a seat next to Nick on the bed.
It was odd seeing him so relaxed. It almost made him look vulnerable. The dark scowl was gone, softening the sharp angles of his face. His black hair curled around his ears. If he hadn’t been so infuriating when he was awake, I might have even thought he was handsome.
It didn’t take me long to fill the required three vials once I’d located a good vein in the crook of his elbow. I was about to leave when something caught my eye below the hem of his shirt, where a sliver of bare skin was exposed.
I checked my stopwatch. One minute, thirty seconds remained before the effects of the gas would start to wear off. I set the tray back down and lifted the corner of his shirt.
A scar discolored his skin, the wound old and white now. But the shape of it made me pause. It almost looked like an E. I thought of Sam’s scar, the R on his chest. How could I not have noticed Nick’s?
Because you weren’t ever looking at him.
“You’re running out of time,” Trev called from two cells over.
Nick’s eyes fluttered. His fingers flexed at his sides.
My heart lurched. I snatched up the tray and started for the door as Nick reached for me. His fingers grazed my forearm, but he was still sluggish from the gas and missed. I slammed the control button and the wall slid back into place as he rushed forward. His blue eyes met mine and the scowl returned. I tried to act unafraid, even though I was anything but. Nick had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, the color of the sky where night meets day. A blue that made him seem more mature, more dangerous, more everything.
“Next time,” he said, “just do your job and don’t fucking touch me unless you have to.”
“Nicholas, stop,” Sam barked. I locked eyes with Sam as he pressed his hands against the glass, like he meant to pound his way through if it came to that. “Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to choke out, still breathless. “I just…” I wanted to mention the scar, wanted to know if it was connected to Sam’s, but the strained look on Sam’s face said now was not the time.
“I’m sorry,” I said again before turning away and carrying my tray over to the counter so I could bury my head in my work.
Dad shuffled back into the lab a good hour after he’d disappeared to answer the phone.
“Nick’s sample is ready,” I said.
A half-chewed straw hung between Dad’s index and middle fingers. He’d quit smoking three years earlier, and the straws had taken the place of cigarettes.
“Did it go okay?” He popped the straw in his mouth and sat down in front of his computer.
“Fine,” I lied. I spun around in my desk chair so that I faced the boys. Cas was bouncing a tennis ball off the ceiling of his cell. Trev had disappeared into his bathroom.
Nick was still watching TV.
Sam, though… Sam just lay on his back, eyes closed.
“How was your phone call?” I asked Dad. “Was it Connor?”
“It was. And it was fine.”
Connor called from the Branch to check in a lot, but he only showed up every couple of months to look the boys over, and to ask Dad if he thought “the units” were ready. Dad said no every time. And when I asked him what the boys had to be ready for, he gave me his default answer: That’s classified.
Sam shifted to a sitting position, the muscle in his forearm dancing. Every day, at exactly two PM, he worked out. Watching him was like watching a tightly choreographed routine—every move counted.
I glanced at the digital clock hanging on the wall: 1:55 PM.
Sam tore off his white T-shirt and turned around, giving me a view of the tattoo on his back. Four birch trees covered the majority of his skin, the branches twining across his shoulders and partway down his arms.
Bending over, legs straight, he started a series of stretches before dropping into push-up position. I’d counted his push-ups once while pretending to read some charts. He did a hundred in a matter of minutes and never slowed. Dad said strength was a trait he and his team had manipulated, and Sam was proof that the genetic alterations had worked.
After the push-ups, Sam moved to sit-ups, the muscles in his stomach bunching on the rise. Two cells over, Cas was doing his own version of the workout, which was half karate moves collected from TV, half hip-hop dance.
At 2:51, Sam slowed to cooldown mode and ran through more stretches. When he finished, he grabbed a towel from his desk, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked over at me.
I blushed and turned away, pretending to find something extremely interesting in the control panel as he disappeared into his bathroom. He came out a second later and tapped on the glass.
I raised my eyes.
“Can I have some ice water?”
“And a beer for me, please!” Cas said, then added, “But water would be fine, too.”
If I had been alone, I would have gotten up, filled two glasses, and handed them over without question. But with Dad there, I deferred to him, because he was the boss, even if I was his daughter.
“That’s fine,” Dad muttered, squinting through the lenses of his glasses as he read over a file.
“A straw, too?” Sam called, gesturing toward the canister on the counter.
“Sure,” Dad said, barely glancing up.
I gave Cas his water first, then went to Sam’s room. He pulled his cup out of the hatch a second later. “Thanks.” He was still shirtless, and I couldn’t help but examine the scar on his chest. I thought of Nick.
Were there other scars? And if so, why? Did Trev or Cas have scars?
When I dragged my eyes up a second later, I found Sam still staring down at me with an intensity that warmed my skin. “Anything else?” I asked.
“No.”
“All right then,” I said. “I should get back to work. Lots of data to input. Files to… file.”
I wheeled around to find my dad looking at me strangely. Did he know how I felt? Could he tell? But he just picked up his straw and returned to his work. I inhaled, trying to shake off the uneasiness. Sam had the ability to reduce me to the thirteen-year-old girl I was when we first met.
I spent the next hour pretending to organize test charts.
3
WHEN I FIRST DISCOVERED THE BOYS in the lab, Nick immediately scared the crap out of me. Thirteen-year-old me had stared at his hands, tightened at his sides, tracing the swell of veins threading up and around his arms. It was like he’d known he hated me right from the start.
I might never have gone back down there if it hadn’t been for Sam.
The sight of him there, the inquisitive tilt of his head, as if he were reading me from the inside out, was enough to ensnare me even then. I’d never felt so interesting, so special, as I did at that moment.
“What’s your name?” he’d asked, ignoring Nick.
“Anna. Anna Mason.”
“Anna, I’m Sam.”
In the next room over, Nick growled. I could sense the others on my periphery. Trev paced in his cell. Cas leaned into the glass, the pads of his fingers turning white.
And then Nick slammed a fist into the wall and I flinched.
“Nicholas,” Sam said, his voice razor-edged.
I didn’t see how that would help any, but within seconds Nick retreated. He disappeared into the bathroom at the back of his room, slamming the door shut behind him.
The boys didn’t look much older than sixteen. I didn’t find out until later that their alterations slowed the rate at which they aged. They were closer to eighteen at the time, and over the course of the following years, they would age very little.
I wanted to know what they were doing down there, how long they’d been in those rooms. I wanted to know who they were, and if they were okay, because they weren’t acting okay. But those thoughts tangled in my head, and not one rational question made it past my lips.
“You should go, Anna,” Sam said. “Nick isn’t well.”
“Cookies make me feel better when I’m sick.”
It was such a stupid thing to say, but it was the only thing I managed to get out.
The cookies would give me an excuse, later, to return. Not even Nick could have kept me from Sam, the boy who looked at me as more than just a little girl. And he’d tried. Nick had been the one to tell Dad I’d broken into the lab that first time, the whole reason I’d been grounded after, the whole reason it took me a few months to sneak back in without getting caught.
Nick never told on me again, though, and part of me had wondered if Sam had been the one to keep him quiet. And if he had, did that mean Sam wanted me to visit?
Every morning—and almost every night—it was that hope that propelled me from my bed and pushed me down the stairs.
The next morning, while Dad took care of some phone calls upstairs, I started on my to-do list. Lots of filing. Some paper-shredding. Running Sam through his mental tests. I decided to do the latter first; everything else could wait.
“So what is it this week?” Sam asked as I grabbed his folder from my desk.
I looked over at him. I always fought for his attention, but when I got it, I found it hard to concentrate beneath his gaze.
I opened the folder. “Foreign language.”
Sam pulled his desk chair up to the front of his room, and I did the same. I set the folder on my lap and opened it to a fresh chart. Next to the Branch’s logo—two interlocking circles with a double helix inside—I wrote Sam’s name. Then: October 11, 11:26 AM.
This week’s packet was a series of flash cards with Italian phrases on one side, the English translations on the other. Since the boys suffered from amnesia, the Branch wanted to know what they were capable of, and what skills from their old lives they still possessed.
Apparently, Sam had been a languages genius before entering the program. When it came to skills, I was only good at sketching and solving sudoku puzzles.
I held up the first card and Sam’s eyes moved over the words. “I am searching for the train station.”
Correct.
I held up the next card.
“What time is it?”
We went over fifty cards total. I marked Sam’s responses on the log. He scored a hundred percent, as usual.
Casually, after sliding my materials into the folder, I said, “Do you remember anything about that scar? The one on your chest?”
He didn’t allow a second’s worth of hesitation before answering. “No. But then, I have a lot of scars.”
“None of them look as purposeful as the one on your chest.”
He went still. I’d caught him in a secret; I could see it on his face. The scars meant something. “Does Cas have a scar like that?”
“Anna.” My name came out a warning, but it served as fuel.
“What do they mean?
”
He turned away from me. His back was hunched, the blades of his shoulders rising beneath his shirt. I could see the sharp points of the tattooed tree branches peeking out from his sleeves.
Tell me, Sam.
I sensed the boys shifting, moving toward us.
“Not now,” Sam muttered.
“Excuse me?”
The others slunk away, and the edginess I’d felt slipped away with them.
“I think we’re done, Anna,” Sam said.
I put his folder away with a petty slam of the filing cabinet drawer, because he’d dismissed me and I didn’t want to leave.
At the lab door, I punched in the code with short jabs, making a promise to myself that I wouldn’t sneak into the lab later. That I would hold out for as long as I could, let him see how boring the lab could be without our chess games, without our nightly conversations about the outside world.
But it was more of a punishment for me than for him. And I knew I wouldn’t stick with it.
4
THAT NIGHT AT DINNER, I PICKED AT my bowl of chili, running the spoon through it in a figure-eight pattern. Dad sat across from me at the dining room table, his spoon clinking against the side of his bowl. Behind us, a football game played on TV. Every now and then, Dad looked up and checked the score. He never got overly excited about the games, though—not like guys on TV. A good play and they’d leap from their chairs, their arms held victoriously above their heads.
I couldn’t see Dad ever doing something like that—not for football, or for science, or even if he won the lottery. Dad was even-keeled, subdued about everything. I thought his lack of emotion stemmed from losing my mother.
Mom had liked sports. At least that’s what Dad said. So maybe he watched for her.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?” He dipped a cracker in the chili.
“Were the boys ever branded?”
He sniffed. “Of course not.”
“Have you noticed Nick’s and Sam’s scars? The ones that look like letters?”
“They have a lot of scars.” An announcer on the TV said something about the second down, but I missed what came next. Dad set the spoon in his bowl and looked up at me. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you…. Let’s hold back on the number of things we give Cas, all right? Why not bring him a book, like you do for the others? He never finishes any of his projects, and his room is a mess….”
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