50. You’re Already Doing It
FIFTY
YOU’RE ALREADY DOING IT
Jack
W e could feel her.
We could still feel her. Like a ghost of the Join was still there.
He was hurting her. Her back … oh fuck, her ribs! There was a flash of pain, and we clutched our side, but then it was gone. Because we weren’t Joined anymore, so her wounds were not our wounds.
We bit the inside of our mouth until blood flooded against our tongue.
Skin Thief. We’d never felt like that name described us. Until now.
Head in the game, Jack. Remember what you’re here to do.
Should we out ourselves to Greta? Were she and Grace in some sort of covert resistance together? Or had Grace acted alone when she helped us escape? But Grace had said ‘we’ to us. She must have meant Greta. They were definitely twins. Which meant Greta was some sort of … Stranger, too.
We cleared our throat, heart hammering.
“We’re being watched,” she muttered, her mouth barely moving. “They don’t have mics in the elevators, but they have lip readers, so don’t say anything you might regret.”
“What the fuck?” we mumbled through our lips, all pretense that we were this bitchy little Agent McAllister disappearing in our shock. “Do you … do you know who I am?”
A barely perceptible nod.
Fuck.
“How?”
Her eyes flicked up to ours, and for a second, they flashed silver.
Shifter , the monster confirmed.
“You have the scent on you,” she murmured. “We have to act fast. Mercer doesn’t know … yet. But she wants me to take your blood to check how her … experiment with Jamie went. And then she will find out. You’ll need to do something about her before that happens.”
Holy shit.
“What experiment?” we asked because we couldn’t even fucking think about the other part of that or what that meant.
We wanted to kill Mercer. But having so little time to work out how to do that … shit.
We act however and whenever we have the chance , the monster snarled, and there was that thrum of bloodlust pulsing through our veins.
“They gave him a Stranger blood transfusion …”
A fucking what?
Everyone in this place needs to fucking die , the monster swore.
“What does that mean?” we demanded.
Greta’s eyes met ours like she was trying to convey something. But whatever it was, the moment to decipher it was lost when the elevator dinged, and the doors slid open, revealing Mercer, her eyes hungry, her smile greedy.
She was flanked by two of the biggest fucking agents we’d ever seen.
They’re roided up on Stranger blood , the monster warned. We tensed, needing to keep the fa?ade that we were just little Jamie McAllister.
“Restrain him,” she commanded, and the men surged forward, shoving Greta out of the way. Her head hit the elevator panel on the way down. Buttons lit up, and the doors started to slide closed.
The two men barged in, single-minded, reaching for us with huge fucking hands. We were a fucking midget in this body compared to them.
Shift! the monster boomed.
But our brain was too frazzled, with the huge dude’s hands wrapped around Jamie’s scrawny little neck.
Our body started to change. To grow.
But the monster was roughly shoved back into the depths of our mind …
“It’s him!” one of the giant fuckers hollered. Too late, I realized that in the confusion, I’d shifted back into my human form.
Fuck.
At least I was as big as these assholes now. I slammed my fist into the nose of the closest one. Blood sprayed, and he staggered backward, clutching his face.
My vision went red.
Kill. Kill them both. Kill everyone! the monster thundered.
I moved so fast my body was a blur, ramming myself into the other man, slamming him against the elevator wall. The elevator shuddered dangerously. Air gushed out of the bastard, but I didn’t give him a second to recover. I locked one arm around his head, the other around his shoulders, and twisted.
The pop of his neck breaking made the monster roar with delight as I threw the fucker’s lifeless body to the floor.
Tear him to pieces! the monster ordered. Paint the walls red!
A roar ripped out of my chest.
“Jack!” Greta cried.
An arm snaked around my torso from behind, and a sharp sting hit me in the side of the neck.
Fuck. Why did I forget how much they loved their syringes full of fucking drugs.
“The nursery,” I managed to slur as I crashed to my knees, my blurring vision finding Greta. “Nursery …”
If anyone was going to be saved from this fucking hell, it should be those kids.
The edges of my vision went black, and I fell face-first to the floor of the elevator.
I woke with a start to the acrid stench of ammonia. I couldn’t see. I tried to stand, but cold metal bit into my neck, my wrists. My ankles.
“I know Baxter was hoping that whatever he had planned for Seven here in E Block would be enough to have you running to her aid. How delightful that you saved us the time and energy in summoning you here.”
I blinked, the vague outline of Mercer slowly morphing into a shape in front of me.
“What’s happening at the nursery, Jack?” she asked, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. I coughed. My throat felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to it.
“None of your fucking business, you sadistic bitch,” I rasped. Fuck. I needed water. Whatever drug they’d shot me with was giving me wicked cotton mouth.
Mercer tittered, tugging a tourniquet tight around my bicep and slapping at the inside of my elbow. “Everything that goes on around here is my business. You should have figured that out by now. In any case, whatever you were planning for our juvenile hybrids, it’s not happening. The nursery is under double guard now, all the cells are in lockdown.”
I hissed as she pierced a vein, and blood started flowing through a long, flexible tube and into a bag hooked to a metal post attached to the chair I was strapped to.
“What did you and Seven do on your little vacation from reality?” Mercer questioned, leaning back and stripping off her gloves. “Whatever it was, it didn’t yield the same results as Twelve and Nineteen when they mated.”
Visions of all the things Seven and I had done flitted through my head. I gritted my teeth.
Break these bonds, kill the bitch! the monster seethed. Bathe in her blood, decorate her precious lab with her own innards.
But I couldn’t. There was still enough of whatever cocktail of drugs they’d given me in my system that I couldn’t shift to save my life. I couldn’t find the strength to snap the metal. And the bag of blood kept filling until I was lightheaded.
“It’s almost like those cells in your blood, the ones that were clamoring for one another, have been coated in some … substance, that is keeping them apart.” Mercer’s brow furrowed. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s almost a shame that you and Seven are probably going to die tonight. I’d have liked to investigate further.”
Suddenly her face lit up like she’d just had the best fucking idea of her life. “Well, there’s always the postmortem!” she babbled, grinning maniacally. “I’ll just have to ensure that Baxter keeps our little experiments from tearing you up too badly.”
“You’re fucking sick in the head,” I ground out before another cough ripped at my throat, and stars burst behind my eyes.
“You know what’s sick?” Mercer asked, and there was a note of utter hatred under her conversational tone. “That beings like you exist in the first place. That you have immortality, and super strength, and powers beyond the realms of what should be possible!”
She leaned closer, her eyes glowing. “It’s sick that humankind will never truly have a chance against you … unless we even the playing field somewhat. And that’s where I come in.”
She took a step back, pressing a buzzer. “He’s ready for you now,” she muttered into the intercom before turning back to me with a sickly smile.
“It’s just science, Jack. And sometimes sacrifice is required for us to achieve the results we need.”
A door to my right slid open.
“You didn’t finish your little tasks for me, Jack,” Baxter gibed, strolling inside the room. My stomach dropped. If Baxter was here … where the fuck was Seven?
“Where is …” I began, then snapped my mouth shut. But Baxter knew how that question finished, and he chuckled.
“She’ll be along soon enough. In the meantime, you’ve got one last job to do for me.
“I’m not doing fucking shit for you, you asshole!” I grated.
Baxter’s laugh echoed as he took a seat on the other side of my blood bag. Mercer pierced him with a needle, too, but instead of siphoning his blood away, the blood from my bag snaked down a tube and into his arm.
“Oh, Jack. You’re already doing it.”