Erased Read Online Free PDF Page A

else could ever understand. They’d wanted to create a perfect, cohesive unit that listened to their programmed commander without question.
    I’d been the programmed commander, and the boys had listened to me without fail, even when they didn’t want to, which was especially true for Nick.
    We’d been testing ourselves for weeks now, trying to document the exact moment the programming wore off. Nick had been the most eager. He just wanted to be done with it.
    Every Wednesday morning, we went out in the backyard and we tested two things: the boys’ ability to ignore my orders and their ability to stay put even when they thought I was in danger.
    Those were two of the main components of the Altered drug. The boys had felt an undeniable, inexplicable need to protect me—the drug’s built-in backup. The Branch wanted to be sure that the boys wouldn’t turn on me even if they found out what was going on.
    We knew from Sam’s more frequent flashbacks that he was most likely the least affected by the drug, so we tested him first. And when I’d given him an order, he’d just stared at me.
    Then I pointed a gun at my head.
    Cas reacted first. He swept my feet out from underneath me and grabbed my wrist, shoving the gun away. Nick was there a second later, catching me before I hit the ground.
    Sam hadn’t moved.
    Cas and Nick, those first few weeks, listened to every single order I gave them. Hop on one foot. Bawk like a chicken. Nick loved that one.
    By the third week, Cas no longer had to obey me.
    By the fourth week,
Sam
had pointed a gun at my head, and Nick had slammed him to the ground.
    The fifth week, Nick refused to do any more testing.
    So that was my excuse, I decided. The whole reason I wanted to know Nick was safe. Because we were somehow still connected through the Altered drug. There was no proof that our link to each other had worn off like with Cas and Sam.
    And if that wasn’t the reason, I had no idea what was.

    When Sam wasn’t training me for one thing or another, I usually did an hour or two’s worth of research on the flash drive Trev had given us when we’d escaped the Branch. He’d stolen the files as a way to say he was sorry, but it could never make up for betraying us, for picking the Branch over me when I’d needed him.
    At the head of the kitchen table, laptop open in front of me, I clicked through the main file labeled ANNA O’BRIEN . There were at least a half-dozen subfolders, some of which I’d yet to fully explore. Today I was on a mission, so I opened the O’BRIEN FAMILY folder and started skimming.
    I was determined to convince Sam that learning more about my family could be important for both of us. After all, our pasts were connected to Dani, and I thought it was worthwhile to know her story in order to move forward with our future.
    And, more than anything, I wanted to know my older sister, even if I learned about her indirectly. I’d take whatever I could get.
    Dani had been part of the Branch long before me. She, Nick, and Cas were to join Sam as the first candidates in the Branch’s geneticalteration program. Once the Branch was successful with the alterations, they’d turned the boys into assassins. They even had résumés with lists of successful kills, from a U.S. senator to a scientist to a foreign diplomat.
    Although I knew what Sam and the others were capable of, I still had a hard time connecting the Sam I knew now to the Sam who’d spent his days planning missions and following through with kill orders.
    It was even harder to imagine my older sister doing the same thing, though we’d been unable to find anything that said she’d ever been an assassin. But if she hadn’t, what role had she played in the Branch?
    I’d read her files over and over again and come away with nothing important. But that didn’t mean there weren’t clues present, something between the lines.
    I decided to start over.
    Dani O’Brien: Entered Branch March 12. Moved to Cam Marie