Altered (Altered, 1) - Hardcover

Rush, Jennifer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316197084 ISBN 13: 9780316197083

Verlag: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

They were made to forget. But they'll never forgive.

Everything about Anna's life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch, at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There's Nick, solemn and brooding; Cas, light-hearted and playful; Trev, smart and caring; and Sam . . . who's stolen Anna's heart.

When the Branch decides it's time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape. Anna's father pushes her to go with them, making Sam promise to keep her away from the Branch, at all costs.

On the run, with her father's warning in her head, Anna begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about herself. She soon discovers that she and Sam are connected in more ways than either of them expected. And if they're both going to survive, they must piece together the clues of their past before the Branch catches up to them and steals it all away.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jennifer Rush is the author of Devils & Thieves and the Altered Saga. She currently lives in Michigan with her family, where the winters make her grumpy and the summers make her forget the winters. When not writing, she can be found curled up with a good book or out wandering, either by foot or by car. She dreams of seeing the world someday (as long as it's not winter).

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Altered

By Jennifer Rush

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Rush
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780316197083

1

FOR MOST OF THE LAST FOUR YEARS, I wasn’t allowed in the lab. But that didn’t stop me from sneaking down there. And while I no longer needed to wake at midnight in order to visit the boys, my internal clock was still fully tuned to the schedule.

I sat on the edge of my bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, bare feet rooted to the hardwood floor. Moonlight crept through the window, the shadows from the maple trees sliding this way and that.

Dad had asked for my help in the lab eight months earlier, so I could go downstairs anytime I wanted now. But seeing the boys with permission wasn’t the same—wasn’t as thrilling—as sneaking down there in the dark.

I’d long ago mapped the creaky floorboards in the hallway, and I skipped over them now, pushing through the living room and the kitchen, taking the stairs down to the basement two at a time.

The stairs ended in a small annex, where a keypad had been installed in the wall, the buttons glowing in the dark. For someone who worked for a clandestine company, Dad had never been cautious with his codes. Four years ago, when I first broke into the lab, it took me only a week to figure out the right combination. It hadn’t been changed since.

I punched in the required six digits, the buttons beeping in response. The door hissed as it slid open, and I was greeted by the stale scent of filtered air. My breath quickened. Every nerve in my body buzzed with anticipation.

I went down the short hallway and the lab opened before me. The space felt small and cozy, but the lab was actually much bigger than the footprint of the house. Dad told me the lab had been built first, and then the farmhouse was built on top of it. The Branch had gone to great lengths to make the program, and the boys, disappear in the middle of New York’s farmland.

To the right sat Dad’s desk, and next to it, mine. To the left was the refrigerator, followed by a tower of filing cabinets, and a hutch stuffed with supplies. Directly across from the mouth of the hallway were the boys’ rooms: four of them lined up in a row, each separated by a brick wall and exposed by a sheet of thick Plexiglas in the front.

Trev’s, Cas’s, and Nick’s rooms were dark, but a faint light spilled from Sam’s, the second room from the right. He rose from his desk chair as soon as he saw me. My eyes traced the etched lines of his bare stomach, the arch of his hips. He wore the gray cotton pajama pants all the boys had, but that was it.

“Hey,” he said, his voice reduced to the sound the tiny vent holes allowed through the glass.

Heat crept from my neck to my cheeks and I tried to look calm—normal—as I approached. The whole time I’d known the boys, they had suffered from amnesia, an unplanned side effect of the alterations. Despite that, I felt like the others had shown me parts of who they were, deep down. All of them but Sam. Sam gave only what he thought was necessary. The things that truly defined him were still a secret.

“Hi,” I whispered. I didn’t want to wake the others if they were asleep, so I kept my steps light. I was suddenly more aware of the sharp edges of my elbows, the knobs that were my knees, the loud thumping of my feet. Sam had been genetically altered, made into something more than human, and it showed in every efficient curve of muscle in his body. It was hard to compete with that.

Even his scars were perfect. A small one marred the left side of his chest, the skin puckered white, the jagged lines of the scar branching off in a shape that seemed more deliberate than accidental. I’d always thought it looked like an R.

“It’s after midnight,” he said. “Something tells me you didn’t come down here to watch infomercials with me.”

My laugh sounded nervous even to me. “No. I don’t really need a Chop-O-Matic.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.” He shifted, pressing his arm against the glass above his head so he could hunch closer. Closer to me. “What are you doing down here?”

I tried out a dozen possible answers in my mind. I wanted to say something clever, something witty, something interesting. If it had been Trev, I would have had to say only, “Entertain me?” and he would have shared a handful of memorized quotes from his favorite historical figures. Or, if it had been Cas, I’d have split a set of markers and we’d have drawn ridiculous pictures on the glass. And Nick… well, he rarely acknowledged my existence, so I would never have come down here for him in the first place.

But this was Sam, so I just shrugged and suggested the same thing I always suggested: “I couldn’t sleep, and I wondered if you wanted to play a game of chess.”

I clasped my hands awkwardly in front of me as I waited for him to answer.

“Get the board,” he finally said, and I smiled as I turned away.

I grabbed what we needed and pulled my desk chair over. He did the same on his side. I set up the small folding table and the board, putting the black pieces on Sam’s side, the white on mine.

“Ready?” I asked and he nodded. I moved my knight to F3.

He examined the board, elbows on his knees. “Rook. D-five.” I moved his piece to the correct square. We ran through a few more plays, focused only on the game, until Sam asked, “What was the weather like today?”

“Cold. Biting.” I moved my next piece. When he didn’t immediately counter, I looked up and met his eyes.

An unremarkable green, like river water, his eyes were nothing to look at, but they were something else to be watched with. Sam’s gaze, at quiet moments like this, made my insides shudder.

“What?” I said.

“The sky—what color would you use to draw it?”

“Azure. The kind of blue you can almost taste.”

For some reason, everything I said and did around Sam felt weightier. As if merely his presence could shake my soul, make me feel. He savored every detail I gave him, as if I was his last link to the outside word. I guess in some ways I was.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder what the sun used to feel like.”

“You’ll feel it again. Someday.”

“Maybe.”

I wanted to say, You will, I promise you will, even if I have to break you out myself. I tried to imagine what it would be like to punch in the codes and let them all go. I could do it. Maybe even get away with it. There were no cameras down here, no recording devices.

“Anna?” Sam said.

I blinked, stared at the chessboard in front of me. Had he told me his next play? “Sorry, I was—”

“Somewhere else.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s late. Let’s finish tomorrow?”

I started to protest, but a yawn snuck up on me before I could hide it. “All right. It will give me more time to work on my strategy.”

He made a sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “You do...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0316197084
• ISBN 13: 9780316197083
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Terminal Video; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; Italien