Altered

by Jennifer Rush

  In the lab, I’d allowed myself to fantasize about leaving my small town one day, but it usually ended abruptly, reality pulling me back—back to Sam. It wouldn’t be the same without him. Outside the farmhouse, I felt like something was missing. Like there were pieces of myself left within those basement walls, tied to Sam and the others.

  Now that I was out in the world, with a pencil in my hand, I wanted to immortalize what it felt like. I set out to draw some of the gorgeous Michigan scenery, but a few minutes in, I realized my hand had other ideas. The sketch began to take the shape of my mother. I had only one picture of her, and I’d had to steal it from my dad’s study, but I’d recycled the image in tons of drawings.

  In the photograph, she sat at the shore of a lake, a fleece blanket spread out beneath her. A deep purple scarf was wrapped around her neck, and her hair had been tied back in a bun.

  I’d analyzed that picture so many times I had it memorized, right down to the angle of the leaves hanging off the trees and the slant of the shadows. In one of my favorite sketches, I’d copied the photo exactly, but had drawn myself in beside her.

  I hadn’t thought to grab that sketch before we left. I wished I had.

  Now I drew her in the field behind the farmhouse, her dark hair caught in the wind, the grass parting around her. She was running away. Leaving me.

  Why did she leave me?

  “Anna?”

  I started at the sound of Sam’s voice. I hadn’t even heard him come in. Sometimes sketching turned off every other sense I had. It was like my hand drew of its own free will.

  “Hey.” I readjusted in the window seat, tucking my legs beneath me. “What’s up?”

  In the time I’d been drawing, the sun had set, painting the woods beyond the cabin in various shades of gray. The temperature had dropped, too, and my hands were stiff, my fingertips numb from the cold stealing through the glass.

  Sam sat at the other end of the window seat, facing the room, the heels of his hands on the edge of the bench. He didn’t say anything at first, and I thought I could deduce where he was headed.

  “I’m sorry about the Nick thing this morning,” I said. “I didn’t mean to yell at him—”

  “I didn’t come up here to talk about Nick.”

  I ran my thumb over the pencil’s eraser. “You didn’t? Then what?”

  “Do you know the names of the drugs your father gave us? Components of the treatments? Dosages?”

  I shook my head. “I was never allowed access to that part of the program. I only worked with the tests and logs. Why?”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “It’s nothing. Just something I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  He rose from the bench. I dropped my mother’s journal to hurry after him, cornering him in the doorway. “Tell me, Sam. Please.”

  Once I got a good look at him, I saw the dark shadows beneath his eyes, the faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. “You’re going through withdrawal, aren’t you?” I reached out to touch him, telling myself I wanted to see if he was feverish, but it was because I wanted to touch him, because I could.

  He tensed. I froze.

  Just because I could didn’t mean I should. I pulled back.

  “And the others?” I asked.

  “Headaches. Minor memory flashes. I suspect they’re not as bad as mine. Yet.”

  “Are their flashes important? About the Branch? Or what happened before the lab?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  I wanted to say, Then what are they about? But Nick’s earlier warning, that I had no right to the information, kept the question firmly lodged in place. It was none of my business, and if the others wanted me to know, they’d share when they were ready.

  I put my hands on my hips as I thought. “If your withdrawal symptoms are worse, it could mean any number of things. It could be that your treatments were different, or your dosages higher. Or that you’ve been receiving treatments longer than the others.”

  He nodded. “It would help if I knew what the treatments were for in the first place. I don’t think they were altering us for better performance—strength, or healing, or improving senses. We tested ourselves every day. Whatever extra skills we had, we had them from the start, and they never changed.”

  Something clattered in the kitchen. A second later Cas said, “I’m all right! Everything’s fine!”

  “You think the physical alterations were a onetime deal,” I said. “So they were treating you for something else?”

  He’d said as much our first night out of the lab: If you’re trying to make the ultimate weapon, you don’t lock it in a basement for five years.

  Another crash. Nick called out, “What the hell?”

  Sam stepped past me onto the landing. “I should go check on that.”

  “Will you let me know if you find anything else? Or if there are more symptoms?”

  “Sure,” he said as he hurried down the stairs.

  I curled up in the window seat again, wishing I’d dug for more information at home. If I’d looked into the treatments, I’d have something to give him now. I should have read every file I could get my hands on.

  Maybe we wouldn’t even be in this mess if I had.

  16

  THAT NIGHT, I WOKE TO A SCUFFLING noise. I hoisted myself up to a sitting position and caught sight of Sam on the other side of the room, rummaging inside one of the built-in cabinets. I had no idea what time it was, but judging by the darkness outside, it was still early.

  “What are you doing?”

  Sam tensed. I’d startled him. That wasn’t easy to do; Sam was always on alert.

  “I woke up and…” He trailed off, hands resting on the edge of one of the interior shelves. “I don’t know… something…”

  I padded over. “An old memory?”

  “Maybe.”

  The blankets and sheets from inside the cabinet were stacked on the floor, along with several pieces of women’s clothing. I lifted a top from the pile. The charcoal-gray material was silky between my fingers. A dainty ruffle adorned the collar. There were also a pair of jeans and a few fitted T-shirts in the pile. I hadn’t thought to look in here when I’d claimed this room as my own, figuring if there was anything worthwhile, the boys would have found it. But they hadn’t mentioned women’s clothing. Not that any of this stuff would fit, anyway. It would be way too small.

  “Whose are these?”

  Sam glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t it kind of weird? I mean…” I tried to think of all the reasons there might be trendy women’s clothing in Sam’s closet. The style didn’t fit who I thought my mother would be, so I didn’t even consider that possibility. These were for a younger girl. A girl my age.

  I set the top down, my chest tight with something akin to jealousy, even though I had no idea who to direct it toward.

  Sam ducked inside the cabinet and tugged on something in the back. A false panel popped out. He stood there, the wood panel clutched in his hands, both of us staring at it. He propped it against the wall and dug deeper.

  He pulled out a fireproof box, the same kind as the one he’d dug out of the cemetery, and headed for the stairs.

  Cas met us on the landing. “What’s going on?”

  “Sam found something,” I said.

  Nick was already off the couch when I hit the main floor. He followed me into the kitchen, making the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end. By the time Sam popped open the latch on the box, we had all gathered around the table.

  “What is it?” Cas shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Come on! The suspense is killing me!”

  Sam turned the box so we could see. Inside lay a collection of things, but the first item I noticed was the stack of money. Twenties and fifties, bunched in five-hundred-dollar bands. At least six thousand dollars’ worth.

  “Holy shit,” Cas said with a low whistle. “We can buy food. And underwear.”

  Sam dug through the b
ox. Passports. Driver’s licenses. All of them belonged to Sam, but they were from different states, under different names. At the very bottom of the box was an envelope. Sam pushed open the flap and pulled out a note, along with a picture.

  The note was a series of letters, none of which formed coherent words. Sam set it aside and took the old picture in his hands. The ink had faded over time. I leaned in closer.

  There were two people in the photo, standing in front of a grove of birch trees. The girl was around my age, her hair the color of chestnuts. It hung off her shoulders in thick waves. She clung to the boy next to her, her eyes trained on him and only him.

  The boy in the picture was Sam.

  “Whoa, Sammy,” Cas said, “awesome hairdo.” Cas passed the picture to Trev. We had moved to the living room, the only source of light the amber glow of the fire. Sam had his back to us as he stared out the front window.

  I curled into the crook of the couch, trying to forget about the girl in the picture and finding myself unable to think about anything else. Whoever she was, she’d spent time with Sam, in this cabin. Those clothes upstairs were probably hers. What else had she left behind? Did Sam have flashbacks about her?

  Envy took root in my chest and I couldn’t let it go. She knew Sam. The real Sam.

  Even in profile, I could tell the girl was pretty. Freckles peppered her cheeks. Next to Sam, she looked like a slender ballerina, like he could scoop her up in his arms without any effort.

  And Sam had been smiling in the picture. Sam hardly ever smiled.

  “So what’s it all mean?” Trev asked.

  Sam held up the note, scrutinizing it. “I think this is a cipher. It’ll take me some time to decode it. As for the picture… I don’t know.”

  Nick gave the photo only a passing glance before Trev handed it back to me. I examined it again. The girl wore slim-cut jeans and tall brown leather boots. A purple sweater slimmed her even more. Sam was in jeans and a gray button-down shirt, the flannel kind that workingmen wear. The “hairdo” wasn’t so much a do as it was a mess of dark spikes.

  An old tractor sat in the left corner of the photo, and farther back, a couple of black-and-white cows grazed in a field. Sam looked exactly the same as he did now, except for a few superficial physical characteristics, like the hair and the clean-shaven face. He hadn’t aged much since the picture was taken, which meant he must have entered the program not long after.

  There was something else that struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t place it. If I didn’t know Sam’s birch-tree tattoo so well, I’d say that it was echoed in the photo, but the placement of the trees on his back didn’t match the placement of the trees in the picture.

  “Mark this down as another clue to the ever growing mystery,” Nick muttered as he tossed a log onto the fire.

  “I think we’re getting closer,” Trev said.

  I thought so, too. But what if at the end of this hunt, we found the girl? Would Sam remember her once he came face-to-face with her? If he’d been in love, would he fall back in love?

  I waved the picture in the air. “Do you remember this girl at all?”

  Sam turned away from the window. “No.”

  The worry dissipated. Maybe the picture was simply a memento. Maybe they weren’t even together when Sam entered the Branch.

  Maybe.

  Or maybe she was out there somewhere, looking for him.

  17

  I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to unwind enough to lie down again, but I managed to sleep for a few more hours. When I got up, I slipped into the bathroom before heading downstairs. I sorely needed a shower, something other than the sponge baths I’d been taking. Maybe now that we had money, we could buy gas for the generator. I could even cook a real meal.

  One of the boys had set a candle on the vanity and I lit the wick, the flame pulsating. I checked my reflection in the dust-covered mirror and cringed. The skin beneath my hazel eyes was the color of wet charcoal, and what few freckles I had looked like muddy splotches on the bridge of my nose. In just a few days my complexion had gone from okay to crummy. I hadn’t brought any of my skin products, and I was already suffering because of it.

  I had searched the bathroom when we’d first arrived, but I looked again, thinking maybe I’d missed something. Plus, I was desperate now. In the first drawer, I found an old toothbrush. I wasn’t that desperate. In the second drawer, I grabbed the hairbrush and a stack of hair ties. I’d already used a few, but now… now I knew why they were here.

  Rifling through the stack, I found a tie on the bottom with a long hair wrapped around it, like it’d been knotted when the owner undid her ponytail.

  More evidence that a girl had lived here. I threw the tie in the trash can and grabbed a new one.

  I fixed my hair as best I could, trying not to think about her as I used the mystery hairbrush. Downstairs, I found Sam and Cas in the kitchen, sharing a box of Cheerios.

  The boys stopped chewing and looked at me.

  “What?” I said.

  Cas snickered. “Nothing. You just… look like hell.”

  Embarrassment spread through me.

  “We’ll go shopping today,” Sam said, handing Cas the box of cereal. “We’ll get some gas for the generator, and clothes that fit better. I want to buy a few cell phones, too.”

  “Awesome.” Cas lifted the cereal box and poured more Cheerios directly into his mouth. He spoke as he chewed. “I could use a new pair of shoes. Nikes. The neon ones. I saw them on TV all the time, and I want them.”

  “Well, they won’t make you run faster or look cooler, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” I said, trying to regain some of my dignity, even if I was playing dirty.

  “Oooh.” Cas wrinkled his face in mock anguish. “So harsh.”

  I took a handful of cereal from the box as Sam breezed past me. I watched him leave.

  “Trev?” he called. “Gather the guns in a bag. We’re leaving soon.”

  “Why are we bagging the guns?” Nick said from the living room.

  “In case we can’t return.” Sam rounded back into the kitchen and grabbed his coat from the hook. “We should take everything we need with us to be safe, and I don’t want all of us running around carrying.”

  Ten minutes later we were on the road, my mother’s journal tucked next to my seat. We drove for about an hour, until we reached a bigger city. Sam parked in front of a chain restaurant known for its buffet. Of course, the buffet was Cas’s idea, but secretly I couldn’t wait. It’d been forever since I’d had a real meal, and deciding on only one thing seemed impossible.

  Inside, I could smell all sorts of fresh-cooked foods. Pizza. Fried chicken. Chocolate cake. I didn’t know where to start.

  None of us said a single word for the first ten minutes of the meal. We’d been subsisting on old food that came out of packages, and it was nice to finally have something hearty.

  When the boys went up for a second helping, I dodged the lunch buffet and headed for the dessert section, my eyes filling with the sight of so many chocolaty things. I grabbed a lava brownie and headed back to our booth.

  Sam had forgone the second plate. Instead of eating, he was holding the scrap of paper he’d found in the fireproof box, scrutinizing it.

  When he saw me he stood up, allowing me to slide in ahead of him. “Did you decipher the message yet?” I asked.

  He shoved his empty plate aside when the waitress came to clear the table. She was a tiny thing, with cinnamon-red hair tamed into a sleek ponytail. She eyed Sam with a look that was both apprising and hungry. I inched closer to him, pretending to look over the note, my brownie all but forgotten.

  Sam told the waitress thank you as she flitted away. I didn’t move, even though I should have, even though we were closer than was strictly necessary.

  When his knee bumped mine, a shiver of delight started in my spine and raced clear up to my skull. He smelled like woodsmoke and Ivory soap. I was close, but I wanted to be closer.
I wanted to press the line of my body against his.

  “Mashed potatoes!” Cas shouted as he slid into the booth. “Pot roast. Butter rolls. Heaven.”

  I scooted back over, catching a knowing look from Trev as he took his spot next to Cas.

  “Any idea what the message says yet?” Trev asked, cutting his chicken into neat, bite-size pieces.

  Sam downed the rest of his ice water. “I think it’s a Caesar cipher.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s a way of coding messages,” Trev said. “Julius Caesar used it when he needed to communicate with his generals. To break it, you shift the letters of the alphabet over three spaces, so A becomes D, B becomes E, and so on.”

  “Does that work on this message?”

  Sam shook his head.

  Cas, having already polished off half his meal, looked up for the briefest of moments. “Sammy wouldn’t use the obvious way to decode it.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Trev added.

  Nick finally rejoined us, carrying a plate full of veggies. “Why do we even have to figure it out? I’m fine with staying at the cabin.” Sam shot Nick a look, and Nick visibly stiffened. “What?” Nick said, leaning closer. “Digging this shit up is only going to make it worse. You know that, right?”

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  “Do you think this has anything to do with the letter scars?” I asked, trying to defuse the situation.

  “Already tried it,” Sam said, when he and Nick stopped glaring at each other.

  When we left the restaurant, we crossed the parking lot to the massive Cook Towne Mall. Our first stop was at R & J Cellular, where Sam bought two prepaid cell phones. Trev took one phone, Sam the other. We split up. Cas and Trev headed for a sporting-goods shop, while Nick disappeared into the bookstore café, muttering something about needing caffeine more than a pair of jeans.

  Sam and I went to one of the trendier clothing stores, tucked between the bookstore and an upscale candle shop.