Played: An Altered Saga Novella (2 page)

When I woke late the next morning, still naked beneath the sheets, mystery guy was gone. He’d left nothing behind to prove that he’d been there at all. Well, except for that near-constant shivery feeling in my gut and the silly smile that looked back at me in the mirror.

Sometimes a girl just needs to blow off some steam.

I took a shower and dressed. I felt more rested than I had in a long time. Surprisingly, I’d slept more than my usual four hours.

After a cup of black coffee, I walked over to the pizza place where I’d met mystery guy intending to thank him for last night, and to figure out his identity.

He’d made finding out his name a challenge, and I intended to win.

Inside the restaurant, the dining room wasn’t as packed as it had been last night. Of course, the lunch hour hadn’t struck yet. I found the harried waitress from last night filling shakers of Parmesan cheese.

“Hi,” I said.

“You can take any table you want, darling,” she said without looking at me.

“Thanks, but I’m actually here for a friend. He works here. Worked a shift last night? Tall, blond, eighteen or nineteen, maybe. Super-hot.”

She side-eyed me with a frown. “Kitchen staff or waitstaff?”

“Waitstaff.”

She shook her head. “There’s only me and two other girls on the waitstaff.” With a grumble she added, “We’re extremely short handed right now.”

“Okay, so maybe he’s kitchen staff but helped out waiting tables last night?”

“No one here by that description, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

She set the canister of cheese on the counter and turned on the bar stool to face me. “There is no one here by that description,” she said slowly.

Anger, and a growing sense of panic, ran through me. “Then why did you ask whether he was waitstaff or kitchen staff? You could have just said no from the beginning instead of wasting my fucking time.”

She scowled and went back to her work. “I need to quit this godforsaken place.”

I took two steps away from her, disoriented and unsure. What now? I found myself heading toward the back door, out into the late-morning sunshine.

A sliver of annoyance burrowed into my side. Mystery guy had played me, and I prided myself on being unplayable. And I couldn’t help but wonder, was he Branch affiliated?

I’d been counting on the element of surprise in my attack on Riley. If the guy was Branch, then they already knew I was here.

I started walking, hyperaware of my surroundings, but with no destination in mind. I just needed to clear my head, think through every conversation I’d had with the mystery guy and see if I could glean any clues.

I slipped around a small crowd of hipsters on the sidewalk, then dodged a mom pushing a stroller. Near a line of newspaper boxes, I wedged myself between the last one and a lamppost, to pause and get my bearings.

I needed to identify whether there was any sign of the Branch nearby. If you knew the signs, you could spot their presence easily enough.

They liked their black Suburbans, and usually several of them in a procession. But that was the easiest evidence to spot, and I didn’t think Riley would be stupid enough to follow such a pattern when he needed to keep a low profile.

I studied the faces of the passing pedestrians. Typical Branch agents either wore business suits or black tactical gear. The latter would be too conspicuous in a place like this, so that was definitely out.

Clover Hill was the site of some long-ago battle and there were hotels and B&Bs all over that claimed one historically significant attraction or another. A lot of the pedestrians had the marks of tourists—sun visors, baseball hats, khaki shorts, shopping bags from tourist traps. Most traveled in packs, or at least in twos and threes.

A guy across the street, baseball hat tugged down low, shopping bag hanging from his left hand, caught my attention. He was alone, for one, and there was a cell phone glued to his ear, held in place by a shrugged shoulder. Except he wasn’t speaking to whoever was on the other end, only listening, and he wasn’t using his free hand like someone usually would when using their shoulder to hold their phone in place, which gave me the impression he was trying to keep both hands free.

As a truck rumbled past, I crossed the street and fell in behind a group of rowdy tourists. Ten feet from cell-phone guy, I straightened my back, keeping my weight well distributed between both feet. That way I could move quickly if I had to.

But just as I was about to pounce on him, consequences be damned, someone grabbed my wrist, whirled me around, and shoved me into an alley. I brought my elbow up, intending to clock the attacker on the jaw, but my tall adversary caught it with his open palm, deftly swatting me away.

I jackknifed a knee to his groin, but he blocked that, too, one second before he slammed me into the brick wall of the alley. All my breath rushed out of me, emptying my lungs and I gulped to get it back.

It took me too long to reorient myself, giving him the opportunity to establish an inescapable hold on me. He leaned his weight in to me and pinned my wrists between us.

I could probably escape, but it’d take a lot of energy to fight his strength, and I wanted to preserve what I had until I absolutely needed it.

The guy shifted, chuckling.

It was mystery guy.

“You son of a bitch!” I said. “Who are you?”

“Calm down, Chloe.”

He knew my real name.
He knew my real name.

“What do you want?” I bit out, silently castigating myself for the sharp tone of my voice. Anything other than cool and even would give away an emotion I didn’t want him reading.

“I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of Harbor Drive.”

“You know, they have tourist maps for that.” I tested his hold on my arms and his grip tightened.

He chuckled. “When they told me you were fearless, I didn’t believe them.” He shifted as I wiggled beneath him, and pressed a bony hip into my stomach. “But wouldn’t you know, your heart rate isn’t even escalated.”

I realized his thumb was pressed against the underside of my wrist.

“Who are
‘they’
, exactly?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea. “And who are you?”

There were only a few people in the world who knew what I really was, who knew it was possible to be truly, biologically, psychologically, fearless. It was a side effect of the Angel Serum the Branch had given me. Fear had left me a long time ago, about the third time the Branch killed me just to see if I’d rise from the dead.

The absence of fear was a side effect the Branch hadn’t counted on, but it was one I embraced. Fear made people weak. It made them doubt their gut instincts, cower from those stronger than them, and avoid doing what needed to be done.

A lot of the people I’d met in the last few years thought of me as a cold-hearted bitch. I liked to think it was because I was capable of doing and saying the things they couldn’t. But my fearlessness also affected other emotions. For instance, it was hard to feel guilt when you didn’t fear the consequences of your actions.

So yeah, maybe I was a cold-hearted bitch. But it wasn’t my fault. And the list of people who knew why was short.

The Coats and I did have the same goals—kill Riley and destroy the Branch.

But while I obviously supported the mission, I wasn’t into team sports.

The question was, which group did this guy belong to? I felt fairly certain I could eliminate group number two from the list. It didn’t seem like he and Nick would get along. Call it a hunch.

“Who are you with?” I asked. “Branch or Turncoats?”

“Do I look like Branch to you?”

“You move like them.”

“That’s because I’ve trained. But I have a proposition for you,” he went on, and leaned in closer. His breath spidered down my neck.

“I have a predisposition to rejecting propositions,” I said before he could continue.

“Join the Coats.”

So there was my answer. He was with the group behind door number three.

“Why? What do I get out of it? Besides dead.”

It was a trick question, and part of me wanted him to get the right answer. I wasn’t sure why.

“Come on,” he said, and canted his head. His mouth wasn’t smirking, but his eyes were. He’d given me the same look last night, like he knew a secret. If only I’d read between the lines then.

“You and I both know dying isn’t really your thing, Chloe.”

Vague answer, but answer enough. He knew I couldn’t be easily killed.

“Yeah, but it hurts like hell,” I said.

“We know how to reverse it.”

My breath stopped short, and I froze.

I’d died twenty-six times, in twenty-six different ways. And I always came back. I was beginning to wonder if I had the ability to survive a bomb, or a beheading. If the apocalypse came, I was in for a long, solitary life. Sometimes, when I let myself really think about it, about my immunity to death, my ability to quickly heal, I felt achingly, irritatingly, alone. I’d long ago learned to be self-reliant, but there was something about touching another human being, the nearness of skin, even if only sexually. It made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time—long before the Branch and the Angel Serum.

I would never admit it, but deep down, I was afraid of being alone. I’d been by myself for too long, and being invincible seemed to stretch the aloneness out for an eternity.

It left me empty inside. Not just fearless, but vacant of that thing that made someone human.

I’d never given much thought to being cured of the effects of the Angel Serum, because I didn’t think I could be. But if it were possible, would I feel whole again? Would I suddenly start caring?

Deep down inside, I worried that the fearlessness was an excuse: Maybe I was just a bitch. A product of my environment and my history and the absence of anything even remotely close to family.

Maybe the cure would do nothing other than make me vulnerable.

Of course, it was possible he was lying just to hook me.

“Say I believe you, then what?” I asked. “What would I have to do?”

He grinned and eased off, giving me some breathing room. I could knee him between the legs now and escape if I wanted to.

“Help us kill Riley.”

He released his grip and straightened. The sunlight caught his face, highlighting his cheekbones and perfect nose. I watched him lick his lips and wondered if he’d done it on purpose, trying to draw my attention to his mouth, reminding me of last night.

“Maybe I don’t want to be cured,” I countered. “And I can kill Riley on my own.”

“That’s not all I have to offer.”

“I’m listening.”

I couldn’t think of anything else he’d have that I’d want. I’d never been big on material possessions anyway. I wasn’t sentimental, and I needed to be able to grab my things and bolt as quickly as I could, at any given moment.

“You can find us at the warehouse on the corner of 7th and Hart,” he said, ignoring my question. “You might find what you’ve been searching a long time for,
Emily
.”

Emily was my real name, my first name, and I cringed whenever I heard it. I usually went by Chloe, my middle name.

I scowled at him and he laughed.

I hated that he knew I hated being called Emily. I hated that he knew more about me than I did about him, which was virtually nothing.

“If I come,” I said, as he turned away, “who do I say sent me?”

“Ask for the Rook.”

He rounded the corner onto the street. I jogged out of the alley and looked left, the way he’d turned, but he was already gone.

Despite the soft, clean sheets of my hotel room bed, I didn’t sleep well that night. I was too keyed up, too anxious about the mystery guy—or the Rook—and Riley, and the decision I had to make.

After waking for the third time in less than two hours, I realized it was pointless to try to sleep. I crawled from bed and made a cup of coffee on the one-cup maker on the desk. It was weak, but it’d do.

I flicked on a desk lamp and dug inside my bag for the journal I’d kept over the last few years. I’d been involved with the Branch long enough to know that memories aren’t always reliable, and not always permanent. They’d experimented with the art of erasing memories over six years ago, and had even developed a way to implant fake ones in the void. By now, they were probably certifiable pros at it.

Just in case they ever got to me, I liked to document what I thought was important at the end of each day.

I flipped toward the back of the journal, looking for a blank page, but the book opened on a picture I’d taped in. It was of Elizabeth and me, taken at Merv’s Bar & Grill, where we’d worked together as servers.

In it, she was smiling, genuinely happy. It was such a rarity to see her like that, I’d stolen the picture from the mirror behind the bar and added it to my journal before I left town. I might not be sentimental, but I could appreciate the beauty of a moment like that.

Elizabeth’s mother, Dr. Turrow, had been the lead doctor on the project dedicated to developing the Angel Serum. She’d used Elizabeth’s altered genetic makeup to create the serum.

The whole thing was beyond fucked up. If my own mother had done something like that to me, I would have killed her a long time ago.

I flipped to the beginning of the book, to the second page, where I’d glued in a picture of my family. My mother, my father, and my older brother, Lukas.

We were never perfect, but we were happy.

I’d gotten more of my father’s looks. His dark brown hair, his blue eyes pinched in a feline point. My brother had gotten more of our mother. Black hair, and gold-flecked brown eyes.