Reborn (Altered)

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To Lacy “Loose Cannon,”

for helping me keep the faith

1

NICK

I NEVER TOOK TO FIGHTING LIKE THE others. I could do it well enough. Maybe I was even good at it. But I didn’t like it. Or maybe it was that I liked it too much.

Sam fought only when it meant something. Like escaping. Surviving. Protecting. Cas treated fighting like a dance—he always wanted to show off the best moves. Mostly because he’s a jackass.

When I fought, I had a hard time pulling back.

I slammed a shot of whiskey, the cheap shit, and felt the muscles in my stomach tense.
Pull from the core
, that’s what Sam always said. Or maybe it was something he used to say, back before we lost our memories to the Branch—the shadowy organization that had turned us into supersoldiers, and then tried to kill us when we didn’t obey like dogs.

I have a hard time telling the difference between an old memory and a recent one.

“Did you hear me?” the man next to me said.

“I did.” I felt the gloom of the bar settle over me. There’d always been something about dark, smoky bars. Something familiar.

“Well, what do you have to say, then?” the man said.

He was taller than me by a handful of inches. Bigger, too. Fatter, though, which meant he was slower. Speed always wins over brawn, if you ask me. Not that anyone ever does.

I turned to the man and wavered to give him the idea I was drunk, which I wasn’t. Or at least, not entirely. I peered at him from beneath heavy lids, and then looked over his shoulder at his girlfriend or wife or sister or maybe it was his mom. “Your mom is pretty. I’m sorry I hit on her.”

The woman frowned. The man scowled.

“That ain’t what I’m talking about. My friend says he saw you steal my wallet back near the john. Did you?”

Yes. “No.”

“Well, he said you did.”

If I’d really been trying, there wouldn’t have been witnesses to the lift. So I guess I’d been sloppy on purpose.

Maybe I did like fighting after all. There, I admitted it.

Anna’s voice came back to me, from this morning.
Be honest with yourself. And if you can’t, at least be honest with me.

“Give it to me.” The man took a step closer. My fingers itched to curl into fists.

Stop exploding so often
, Anna said.
You’ll be happier.

The problem with Anna was that she saw things in me that weren’t there. I was a lost cause.

“Hand it over and we’ll forget this ever happened,” the man went on. His girlfriend laid a hand on his shoulder and gave him a tug.

“Raymond, he’s just a kid. I don’t even know how he got in here.” She scowled at the bartender, as if this was somehow his fault.

I was actually somewhere north of twenty, so I was most likely legal. I just looked younger. Genetic alterations will do that to you. And since none of us—me, Sam, Anna, and Cas—had any real, legal papers, we’d secured fake IDs through some guy Sam had used in the past.

Two of the man’s friends stepped closer. The bartender set his towel down. “Come on, guys. You’re not doing this in here. Take it outside.”

Raymond set a hand on the bar and leaned in. His breath smelled like cigars and vodka. His eyes were bloodshot. He’d been here when I came in, so he’d probably been drinking longer than I had.

“Give me my goddamn wallet, son. Or you’ll regret it.”

I doubted that. Regret wasn’t something I was familiar with.

“For God’s sake, Raymond,” his girlfriend said.

The friend on his left opened the fold of his down-filled vest to
show off the handgun he had holstered to his belt. Like that was supposed to scare me. “Hand it over,” he said. “We all saw you take it.”

I blinked lazily. “I don’t have whatever you’re looking for.”

Raymond took in a deep breath, and his chest puffed out. The veins in his neck fattened like a blow snake. He was ready to swing. He was the kind of man who had a tell so obvious, it was practically written across his forehead. That’s no way to win a fight.

You keep your face straight. Your body loose. Your steps light. And if you do it right, they’ll never know it’s coming.

Raymond’s face turned from ruddy to crimson right before he reached over and grabbed my wrist. He pulled my arm toward him, as if he meant to twist it behind my back.

I had already slid off the stool three seconds earlier, ready for this five seconds before that.

I kicked with my right foot, catching his knee. He howled and let go of my wrist, so I threw a backhanded fist, catching him across the temple. His friend, the one carrying the pistol, came at me.

I grabbed my empty shot glass and chucked it at him. It collided with his forehead with a resounding
crack
. His flesh split open, spewing blood down the bridge of his nose.

The third friend caught me off guard with a jab to my side, then a quick punch to the face. There wasn’t much power behind it, though, and ignoring the pain was easy. I hit him across the jaw. He staggered back and rocked the table behind him, spilling drinks all over the place.

Someone shouted to call the cops.

Raymond recovered and barreled toward me, catching me in the wide span of his arms. He slammed me into the wall with his weight, and all the air left my lungs.

He punched with meaty knuckles, cracking my nose. Blood ran down the back of my throat with a hot, coppery tang.

I slid down the wall fast, hitting the floor in a second. Raymond brought his booted foot up when I grabbed the leg of the nearest chair, hauling it over me, using the seat as a shield.

The chair smashed into pieces, leaving me with nothing but a leg still in my hands.

I rocked forward onto a knee and whacked Raymond in the shin with the leg, and cracked him in the knee on the comeback. I rose to my feet, hitting him once, then twice in the head.

Raymond hit the floor with a satisfying
thud
.

The pistol-carrying friend made a grab for his gun when I rounded on him, the chair leg hanging loosely by my side.

“Don’t,” I said.

The entire bar was silent save for Raymond groaning at my feet and the
click-scratch
of the old jukebox switching records behind me.

I could hear the pounding of my heart in my head, and finally I felt alive.

I pulled Raymond’s wallet from the inside pocket of my coat and tossed it toward him. It landed with a slap on his chest. His girlfriend just stared at me.

Everyone was staring at me. A toxic rush of power ran through my veins.

Sirens blared in the distance, so I hurried toward the back door, the chair leg still in my hand.

“This is the third time in a month you’ve come home looking like this.”

I ignored Anna and made my way up the stairs. She followed.

“Nick. Talk to me, damn it.”

I went into the bathroom and tried to shut the door, but she shot a foot into the doorway and pushed her way in. I groaned.

The upstairs bathroom wasn’t much bigger than the downstairs bathroom, and two people in it was one too many.

I leaned back into the vanity, propping the heels of my hands on the sink. “I ran into a doorknob,” I said. She smacked me in the side, and fresh pain chased the hit. I hunched over. “Fuck, Anna.”

“The doorknob hit you in the ribs, too?”

I turned around, giving her my back, and leaned over the sink. I suddenly felt like I might puke.

“What happened?” She shut the door, making room for herself at the side of the vanity. “Was it someone from the Branch?”

The panic in her voice made the truth race out. “No.”

She exhaled. “Thank God. I thought…” She trailed off and sighed.

Out of all of us, Anna was particularly edgy when it came to
matters of the Branch. Her uncle, Will O’Brien, had created the organization to research and produce bio-weaponry, and he’d roped his family into participating in his programs in exchange for the things they needed most. For Anna’s older sister, Dani, it was help for their pill-popping father.

And later, when Anna was near death after getting shot by that very same deadbeat dad, Dani made a deal with Will to save Anna’s life. In exchange, Dani had given us all up. Sam, Cas, and me. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole thing. Dani’s deception was the reason I’d been locked in a cell in a basement for five years, getting poked and prodded like an animal. It was also how Anna found herself mixed up with the Branch. But her life had been saved, and I thought that made my being a prisoner worth it, no matter how much it had sucked.

Five years later, when Anna’s memories started to return and she realized the truth, she killed Will in a showdown, thereby destroying the head of the Branch. His second-in-command—Riley—was still out there, though. None of us would really be free until Riley was dead. We’d picked up on some leads, hoping to hunt him down and take him out, but all of them were dead ends. Wherever Riley was, he was keeping a low profile, and that worried us. He’d had plenty of time to reach out to old contacts and pull the Branch back together, provided he found the right funding.

Anna gave me a shove. “Sit so I can take a look at your injuries.” All trace of her earlier panic was gone, leaving only exasperation and
a driving need to take care of something that was broken. Unfortunately, that something was me.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to.” Her jaw tensed. “Sit down.”

I closed the toilet seat and sat, feeling the ache of the fight settling into my joints. I needed painkillers. Maybe something stronger than OTC.