Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the table. “I guess they didn’t appreciate us tramping around their area yesterday.”
    The top of the table was a large touchscreen, like the tablets we’d used at ARES, only on a much bigger scale. It showed a map of London with the familiar loop of the Thames in the centre. Bright red squares were overlaid in what I assumed were strategic positions.
    Zac leaned over and dragged a square so it covered an area in the east of the city. “That means they hold everywhere south of the Marsh Wall now.” He drew a line with his finger from one edge of the loop in the river to the other.
    “And we,” a man said from behind me, “can’t allow that.”
    I knew that voice. I’d both feared and loved it. But hearing it now wasn’t possible. He was dead. I’d watched him die.
    I turned around to see a man whose face was a mass of scars, with one milky eye.
    “Cain?” I said, stunned to see my old fighting instructor alive and, apart from a few new scars, well. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been lying in a pool of his own blood, missing part of his brain.
    “Tyler,” Cain said, the only person not to address me as sir or Commandant. “I hear congratulations are in order after last night. Although we will need to have a word about you failing to follow orders. Again.”
    I scanned his face, hoping for some kind of answer, and my eyes lingered on the scar across his forehead. The scar combined with the golden S pinned to his collar reminded me with a cold dread that Cain was an adult Shifter. That he was carrying part of a kid’s brain. In this reality, did Cain know the truth behind Project Ganymede? Did anyone know? And was the man behind the project still alive?
    “Is Abbott here?” I said, a sudden hot anger rushing through me.
    There was a ripple of uncertainty in the group behind me, and I noticed a few of the intelligence officers tore themselves away from the screens to look my way.
    “Abbott?” Cain said, his mismatched eyes tightening.
    I knew I’d slipped up and considered Shifting to undo having asked the question. But I needed to know. I nodded.
    “Abbott died in the attack on Old Street,” Cain said. “I would have thought you would have remembered that, Tyler. Being as it was you who dragged his body out of the rubble.”
    So, Abbot was dead. And with him, I assumed, his attempt to restart the Ganymede programme. I was glad he was dead. Glad in a way that scared me a little.
    I tried to think of something to say to cover my mistake, some excuse I could make that would stop everyone staring at me. But I had nothing.
    Zac came to my rescue. “Commandant Tyler is going through a bit of an adjustment after yesterday.”
    Cain’s face softened. “Unsurprising, really. I hear it was a big Shift.”
    “Sixteen on the Lawrence scale, sir,” Cooper said.
    Cain raised a ragged eyebrow. “I didn’t know the scale went up that high. Well, you’ll find your feet soon enough, Tyler.” He slapped my shoulder with his massive hand.
    “Of course,” I said, coughing to hide my embarrassment.
    Find Aubrey, I said to myself. Find Aubrey and you can work a way out of here. Till then, I needed to play along. I turned back to the table. “What do we do?”
    “We wait,” Cain said. “We’ve got someone on the inside, and once we have their report, we’ll be able to see what we’re up against. Then we go in hard.” He dragged a large black circle to cover all the red squares on the screen. “In the meantime,” Cain said, “I suggest you go get yourself cleaned up. You look like shit. And can someone get the Commandant an S3 uniform? I know you’re attached to the old kit, Tyler, but ARES is over now. You’re in the army now, boy.”
    I looked down at what I wore and noticed the splatter of blood over the white ARES badge on my chest. It wasn’t my blood.
    “Do you know where I can find Au… ah, Captain Jones?”
    “The new transfer? She’s out on a mission,” Cain said.
    “Right. Can