The Altered (27 page)

“There’s a
keypad on the door,” Chris said, gesturing over his shoulder. “I’ve
watched them type in the code four times now. I’m pretty sure I
know what it is.”

“How come the
cameras didn’t catch you?” Daniel asked, standing up straight when
Chris sneered at him. “You must’ve been close to see the
keypad?”

“What do you
know about altereds, seer?” he spat, taking a step toward
Daniel.

A chorus of
growls stopped him in his tracks, surprising both him and
Daniel.

Daniel had
expected Matt’s sidestepping to stand in front of him, but the
other four coming to his defence? Not so much. Maybe he should
have.

“Watch your
mouth.” Keira had her claws extended as she put her hand on Chris’s
chest and gave him a shove. “And answer his question, because I’m
having a hard time accepting that you just popped up here with the
solution to our problems.” She looked up and down the road as
though expecting armed guards to jump out at any second. “I don’t
trust you.”

“I don’t trust
you either.” Chris didn’t try to move her hand, but nor did he
attempt to come any closer. “I’m stealthy as fuck, okay—I managed
to creep up on you lot without you noticing, didn’t I? I also have
great eyesight. The guards don’t pay nearly as much attention to
their surroundings as they should. Look, I don’t give two shits
about him—” He glared at Daniel over Keira’s shoulder. “—or Jordan.
I just want to get my brother out of there.”

Now that was
something Daniel could believe. He still didn’t trust Chris, and
from the looks of things, no one else did either, but if they were
going to do this, then they’d have to trust that he knew the code
to get in. Otherwise they didn’t have a hope in hell of getting
Jordan out.

“We need a
decision,” Keira said, keeping her eyes solely focused on Chris.
“Trust him to get us inside… yes or no?” She went through everyone
in turn and got four somewhat reluctant yeses. What other choice
did they have?

“Okay,” Keira
said, taking her hand off Chris’s chest. “This is what we’re going
to do.”

Jordan thought
he heard someone calling his name. The sound barely registered
through the dull fuzziness in his head. For one blissful second, he
thought he was at home in bed, and it was Daniel’s voice… but the
cold, harsh reality of a concrete floor beneath his head shattered
that fantasy.

He felt a
chill along one side of his body where he lay on the floor. His
head ached, and when he tried to open his eyes, the lids were
almost too heavy to lift. Jordan managed to squint against the
harsh light and gingerly took a look around.

As soon as he
moved his head, a wave of dizziness washed over him and he had to
turn to the side and retch. Nothing but bile came up, and Jordan
spat it out before collapsing onto his back.

“It’s the
drugs making you sick,” the voice said again, somewhere over to
Jordan’s left. He didn’t have the energy or desire at this point to
turn and look. “It’ll pass in a few minutes. Depending on how much
they gave you.”

There was a
rustling sound on the floor near his head. “Here, there’s a bottle
of water about a foot left of your face. It’s warm and a few days
old, but it should help a bit.”

Jordan licked
his lips at the mention of a drink, suddenly realising how dry his
mouth felt. “Thanks,” he croaked and blindly reached to the
side.

The water
tasted a little stale, but it was wet, and Jordan drank it
greedily. Just as the man had said, little by little his head
cleared, and when Jordan tried to lean up again, his vision didn’t
swim quite so much. He rolled onto his side and cracked one eye
open.

It took a few
minutes to focus, and then he wished he’d kept his eyes shut.

They’d moved
him while he was unconscious. He was in a much larger room now and
still caged, but whereas his had been the only one before, now
three more stood on this side of the room and four on the other.
The far wall housed a row of desks and computers, and a series of
tables ran down the middle with all sorts of equipment on them.

He glanced up
at the ceiling and noted the cameras seated in the corners of the
room. His stomach lurched as he realised this must be where they
carried out their experiments.

“Hey,
Jordan.”

Jordan turned
over to face the cage next him and snarled as soon as it registered
who he was looking at. “You,” he hissed.

“Yep, me. Ian
Carter.” He shrugged. “Wondered how long it’d take you.”

Fucking Carter
brothers.

Jordan
should’ve known they’d be trouble. Seeing them at the bar that
night and then everything that happened after had been too much of
a coincidence. He willed his wolf to take over, but again his body
refused to cooperate. He shook his head, staring down at himself as
though betrayed.

“That’s the
drugs as well, by the way,” Carter said, pointing down at Jordan’s
hands. “I don’t know how, but they stop you shifting into your
wolf. They were talking about it when they brought you in earlier.”
He motioned at the bars of the cage. “Saps your strength too,
apparently, so no chance of you bending the bars either. They must
have given it to you earlier.”

“Yeah, I
remember.” The memories were hazy at best, but Jordan had a vague
recollection of being questioned, of someone injecting something
into him, and… he’d told them about the apartment—about Daniel,
Keira, and the others.
Shit!
“Did they say anything else?”
He sat up to get a better look at the room.

Not all the
cages were empty as he’d first thought, but the other two occupants
were either unconscious or dead—Jordan couldn’t tell from there,
and his senses were all over the place.

“If you mean
have they caught your friends and the seer, then no. The guards
were complaining about the place being empty when they got
there.”

Carter had
bared his teeth as he mentioned Daniel, and Jordan dropped his
fangs in response.

Any relief
he’d felt at hearing Daniel and the others were safe—for
now—disappeared as he stood and stepped closer to the bars, anger
taking its place. “They wouldn’t be in danger, and I wouldn’t be in
here if it wasn’t for you. You told them, didn’t you?”

Carter
hurriedly stepped back as far away as he could get. “It wasn’t my
fault. You don’t know what it’s like in here… what they do in
here.” He glanced down at his right leg, and Jordan followed his
gaze.

Jordan hadn’t
noticed before, but Carter had what looked to be a burn mark
running the length of his calf. His jeans were ripped to midthigh,
and dried blood caked both skin and denim. When Jordan concentrated
and breathed in, he could smell it too—the unmistakable stench of
burned flesh.

Carter waved
over his torso. “I have others too.” He sighed and gingerly lowered
himself to the concrete floor. “Look, I won’t pretend I didn’t want
the seer dead, because we’d both know it was a lie. Who wants
someone with that kind of power running around?”

Jordan didn’t
bother to answer, too busy trying not to react to Carter’s words.
He wanted as much information as he could get, and he doubted
Carter would be forthcoming if Jordan threatened to rip his tongue
out.

“Anyway,
believe it or not, the thought of this lot getting their hands on
your seer is worse. He’d probably bend over backwards to help them.
I fucking tried not to give them anything… but….” Carter shuddered,
and far too carefully for someone with accelerated healing, he drew
his knees up to his chest. “They have their ways.”

As much as
Jordan hated Carter for his casual threats to Daniel’s life, he
couldn’t help but get angry for what they had done to him. Even
partial shifters healed fast, and for the injuries to still be
affecting him, their captors must have inflicted them
repeatedly.

Jordan felt
sick.

He opened his
mouth to say something about it, but Carter shook his head and
pointed at the cameras, then at the ceiling above them. “They watch
and listen.”

“Why didn’t
you say something before?”

Carter
shrugged. “Because they already knew all that.”

Jordan grabbed
the bars and rested his forehead against them. “What can you tell
me, then? Who are those two over there?” He nodded over at the
other two occupied cells. “They don’t smell right.” The scent they
were giving off was neither human nor altered, but some weird,
not-quite-right mix of the two. Now that Jordan’s head had cleared,
he caught the faint heartbeats from the cells. The two people in
them were alive, but neither of them moved.

Carter glanced
over and grimaced. “They tried to turn them into altereds. They’ve
been working to recreate the pathogen, but trying to get it to work
on adults. I don’t think they’ve had much success.”

“But that’s
about to change, thanks to Mr Cole’s blood.” The voice boomed out
across the room, the speakers obviously hidden because Jordan
couldn’t see them anywhere and no one had come in. Carter visibly
cringed and shrank back near the wall. Jordan growled as the heavy
doors at the end of the room slowly swung open.

“I see you’ve
met Mr Carter.”

“That’s Dr
Kyle Chambers,” Carter hissed under his breath.

Jordan
recognised him from earlier.
Suit
.

“He’s in
charge.”

Dr Chambers
walked toward them, flanked by two armed guards with two men in
white lab coats trailing behind. One of them carried a box, and
Jordan knew whatever they had in there wasn’t going to be
pleasant.

“How long do
you think you can get away with this?” Jordan took a small step
back away from the bars but kept his eyes on the small party
walking toward him. “Sooner or later the disappearances will be
harder to ignore, even for humans. You’ll get shut down
eventually.”

Dr Chambers
laughed out loud, cold and mocking. The sound made Jordan
shiver.

“Are you
working for the government? Are they behind all this?”

“The
government washed their hands of this years ago. Too afraid of the
backlash if it was discovered.” Chambers paused and let the guards
come forward in front of Jordan’s cage. “But like I told them then,
no one gives a fuck if a few altereds disappear. Not anymore.”

Jordan bared
his fangs and flicked his claws out. His body twitched as the anger
rolling through him urged him to shift—but teeth and claws were all
he could manage. “They cared enough to get this whole thing shut
down once before.”

Dr Chambers
scowled. “Back then the idiots in charge were stupid enough to make
it public knowledge. The test subjects were barely adults, still
children in the eyes of most of the general public. Of course
people were going to complain.” He half turned and motioned for the
box from one of the technicians behind him.

Jordan took
the opportunity to look him over. Chambers appeared to be in his
late fifties, with short grey hair, receding at the temples. His
neck, lined with age, was exposed as he looked back over his
shoulder, and Jordan fantasised about shifting and sinking his
teeth deep into the vulnerable flesh.

“Now,”
Chambers said, brandishing some sort of stick. “We’re much more
selective in who we take.” He flicked a switch on the bottom of the
stick and it crackled with electricity.

Jordan took an
instinctive step back.

“Come now, Mr
Cole. It won’t kill you.” Chambers smiled again, all teeth. “It
might hurt a bit, though.”

*****

“It’s probably
a trap, you know.” Daniel pressed himself against the inside of the
alcove as Chris Carter entered the code into the keypad.

“I know.”
Charlie muttered under his breath, wedged in close next to him.

“It’s all been
too bloody easy.”

“
I
know
.” Charlie nodded at where Keira leaned over Chris’s
shoulder, watching him like a hawk. “And so does she.”

Everyone could
hear them. They were in such close proximity it didn’t matter if
they were altereds or not. No one so much as batted an eye, though.
Great
. At least they were on the same page.

“Hurry up,”
Keira hissed, nudging Chris in the side. I thought you said you
knew the code.”

“I do. Just
back off a bit. You’re making me nervous.”

Daniel scanned
the area around them, trying to sink farther into the wall and
hoping like fuck no guards came out. His group might be out of
range of the cameras, but anyone walking past would spot them
straightaway.

The fact that
no one did come out, even when Chris finally entered the correct
code and the door opened, fuelled Daniel’s theory that this was a
trap. With Jordan as bait. He swallowed his growing unease and
followed Matt inside.

The door led
straight into a long corridor with cameras at the end.

“Bollocks.”
Daniel chorused with both Ash and Charlie.

“We knew it
was risky,” Keira hissed as she started to run down the corridor.
“Just stick to the plan.”

The plan was
sketchy at best. Get in, split up, find Jordan, and get out.

Easy
.

Except now
their entrance had been caught on camera—assuming the cameras were
working—and they no longer had the element of surprise. They came
to a skidding halt at the end, the corridor opening up to lead left
and right.

Daniel felt a
pang in his chest as Charlie grabbed Keira close and kissed
her.

“Be careful,”
Charlie whispered, and Keira smiled up at him.

It was the
softest expression Daniel had seen her make, and he felt as though
he was intruding on their moment.

But then she
pulled back with a grim smile and gripped Charlie’s arm. “You too.
Keep in touch.” She tapped his temple once, and he nodded.