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

you get her to, um, report to me as soon as she returns?”
    “Report to you, sure thing, Tyler,” Cain said with a sly smile. “Now get out of my sight.”
    “I’ll drive you home, sir,” Zac said. He looked at me kindly and I realised, with a weird feeling of guilt and annoyance, that in this reality, he and I were friends.
    “OK,” I said, uncomfortably aware of the curious looks I was getting from the people in the room. They were all expecting something of me. “As soon as you get the report back on the Red Hand, I want to know.” This seemed to work. They returned to whatever they had been doing, and Zac and I slipped away.
    We walked back across the Hub and towards a set of silver doors. Behind the doors was a small metal room, which looked to be made of the same solid material. I followed Zac as he stepped inside and turned to face the way we’d come. The doors slid back into place, throwing us into near darkness. Before I could ask what was going on, the room jolted and I had the sense we were ascending. It was a lift. There were no counters ticking down floor numbers to let me know how far up we were going, but judging by the popping of my ears, it was a long way to the surface.
    “Feels like Shifting, doesn’t it?” Zac said
    The massive lift shuddered to a stop and the doors inched open again, revealing what looked like an aircraft hangar. I saw the Rhino in the far corner and next to it a row of sleek, black armoured cars and various other vehicles that looked decades ahead of anything I’d ever seen. All of them, including the Rhino, had a Union flag painted on them somewhere. Only now that I looked closer, I realised that instead of a red and white cross on a blue background, the flag was on a black background.
    “Look at the state of her!” an angry voice carried across the room.
    I looked to where the voice was coming from to see a man with a long, lanky ponytail slide out from underneath the Rhino. He stood up and I could see he wore a Led Zeppelin T-shirt underneath his black overalls and rubbed an oily rag in his hands.
    “Carl?” I said, walking towards him.
    It was my old head of IT. Only instead of computers, it seemed he was in charge of the machines here.
    “You were supposed to bring her in for an overhaul a week ago,” Carl said.
    “Don’t call it a her,” CP said. She was sitting on top of the tank’s tracks, swinging her legs back and forth. “It’s so creepy when you call it that. It’s a machine. Not a woman.”
    Carl opened and closed his mouth, then decided against complaining. “Well, you’re lucky she… it didn’t sustain more damage the way you pounded it.”
    “We were in a bit of a hurry. Isn’t that right, Com?” She smiled over at me, pulling off a swift salute: two fingers brushing against her temple.
    Carl spun around and fumbled a salute, slapping himself in the face with his rag.
    “How’s the leg?” CP said.
    I looked down. “Still attached, thanks, Cleo,” I said, her name from this reality coming too easily. It was good to see her. Of all the people here, she seemed to be the only one who hadn’t changed. “And thanks. For getting me back to base before I bled out.”
    “Not a bother,” she said, blushing under her fringe.
    Seeing her blush reminded me of how she used to act around my other old classmate. “Is Jake around?” I asked, a longing to see his crooked smile and mess up his hair welling up in me. Even though Jake was five years younger than me, I still considered him as one of my best friends.
    “Jake, sir?” CP said.
    “Jake Bailey? About your age. Sandy hair. Dark eyes.”
    She twisted her face to the side, thinking. “I remember a Jake from training, a year or so above me. But I haven’t seen him since he graduated. I think he failed his final tests, so he’ll be out on civvy street.”
    “Oh, right.” So Jake wasn’t part of ARES – or S3, as we were now called. I guessed that that was a good thing.
    “I can