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

my head. I had memories of this Frankie taking care of me – stitching up wounds, patching up my team – swirling in with the memories I had of Frankie sneering at me. Telling her children to beat me up. Forcing me to run till my feet bled.
    “Then why haven’t you?” she continued. “You got shot in the leg? Why didn’t you Shift then? Go on, do it now. Collapse this reality and save us all a lot of pain.”
    “I… I…” I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t explain that the only reason I hadn’t undone everything and stopped this war from ever starting was because I didn’t want to lose my girlfriend.
    “Mmm,” Frankie said, drumming her fingers on her folded arm. I wanted to hit her. “This is quite fascinating. I’ve never seen a patient with such a firm hold on an old reality. Are you experiencing any other side effects? Headaches? Hearing voices?” My shocked silence was answer enough. “I see.” She placed her glasses back on her nose and pulled a pad and pen out of her pocket “I’m going to write you a script for some antipsychotics. If they don’t work, we’ll have to try simulator therapy.”
    I froze. The last time I’d been hooked up to a simulator had been one of the worst experiences of my life. The images I’d seen had driven me to the point where I’d begged to end my life. I still remembered Benjo Green leaning over me, his obese face contorted in a hungry grin, his blade inching ever closer to my eye. And Mr Abbott, my old teacher, coldly watching, waiting for me to die. But that was nothing compared to the things I’d done myself while hooked up to the machines. The ways I’d hurt the people I loved. My sister Katie and my family. I’d done unthinkable, inhuman things. It was the darkness I’d glimpsed in my own soul that haunted me most. I shivered at the memory. Where were Katie and my family now? Out there in the ruined city? Or even worse?
    Frankie tore a page off the pad and handed it to me. I grabbed it resentfully. I couldn’t read the name of the drug she’d written, but I could see the instruction to take it three times a day. There was no way I was taking her drugs. Or being subject to a simulator again. All I wanted to do was get the hell away from her, find Aubrey and work a way out of here.
    “Can I go now?”
    “You’re lucky. The bullet passed straight through your leg. It could have been much worse. Perhaps it was much worse?” She raised her eyebrows as if expecting me to answer. “If you Shifted to save your life, it would explain the force of your Shift. I understand it registered a sixteen? The hypnic jerk is a powerful defence mechanism.”
    That made sense. The hypnic jerk – the reflex reaction that in normal people sends a signal to make their limbs twitch, but in Shifters sends a signal to the brain to Shift – had saved my life before. It was a Shifter’s ultimate defence mechanism.
    “Can I go now?” I repeated. Even looking at her was making me dizzy with confusion.
    “Take these for the pain.” She threw me a small orange tube. White pills rattled around inside. “And remember: you are here. You are now.”
    I recognised the phrase from training. It was what we were supposed to tell ourselves if we were having a reality attack. But I didn’t want to be here or now.
    Frankie turned, reaching up to adjust the drip next to one of the kid’s beds. “Patching up children and sending them back out to fight,” she said with another sigh, “exactly what I trained for.”
    I took this as a yes. I yanked on a pile of clothes I guessed must have been left for me along with my boots, and limped for the door before she had a chance to say anything else.
    “Goodbye, sir,” a girl said, as I reached for the doorknob.
    I stopped. I knew which kid it was. The one without her arm. I couldn’t face her. I threw the door open and left without a word.
     

CHAPTER THREE
    I walked out into a tunnel illuminated with a sickly green light. It looked and