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

arrogance. “Mum? Katie?” I called out.
    “Scott,” Zac said, “you live alone.”
    I turned around to face him. “What? Then where are they?”
    All humour had left his expression. “Your parents were moved north when the attacks started.”
    “And Katie?” I said, fear tightening my chest.
    “Well, I guess she’s in training.”
    “Training? You don’t mean… Katie is a Shifter?” I said, grabbing my head in my hands, not wanting to believe it.
    There had been a moment a few days ago when I thought that maybe Katie might be a Shifter, too. But I’d hoped, prayed, it had been my imagination. All I wanted for my little sister was a normal, stable life, where the biggest things she had to worry about were her exam results and whether some boy liked her. Not this. I thought about what my life had become since the day I’d met Aubrey. How crazy it all was. How close to crazy I’d become because of it. This life was the last thing I wanted for Katie.
    “Probably,” Zac said. “Every relative of a Shifter is tested, you know, to see. But don’t worry, Scotty. The Shifter academy is probably one of the safest places in the country after the Hub. She’ll be fine. Besides, you went into training a sorry shell of a kid, and” – he slapped me on the shoulder – “look at you now.”
    I must have looked pretty pathetic, as he started to laugh.
    “Thanks,” I said. “I guess.”
    I walked farther into the room and looked around. Could this flat really be mine? It was too clean for a start, not a thing out of place. And too big for one person alone. It had an open-plan living room and kitchen that was bigger that our whole ground floor at home. I’d dreamed of having a place of my own. Somewhere that Mum and Dad couldn’t bother me. Now that I did have it, all I wanted was for Katie to come jumping out from the built-in cupboard, shouting, “Surprise!”
    “Can I go and see her?” I asked.
    “Your sister? Sure, I guess. I mean, you’re the Commandant. You can do pretty much whatever you want.”
    Me, the Commandant. In charge of all the Shifters. I couldn’t quite get over that. I put the letters the receptionist had given me down on a glass coffee table and picked up a notebook. I opened it to read a page filled with my scratchy handwriting, but I didn’t really understand any of it. There was a list of names. A request to form a new squadron dated a week ago.
    I turned the page around to face Zac. “What’s this about?”
    “Thirteen squadron? That’s your new S3 unit. Handpicked from the best of the S3, including myself, naturally.”
    I ignored Zac’s bragging. “Tell me about the S3.”
    “The Special Shifting Service. It’s kind of like the SAS but, you know, with Shifters. We’re divided into thirty squadrons of ten. Shifters, soldiers, all working together for the greater good. S3 is the only mixed unit of its kind in the country. It’s kinda an experiment to see if it can work.”
    “And can it?”
    “It’s only been operational for a few months, so I guess we’ll see. The Minister for Defence seems to think so. He moved his operations to the Hub last week.”
    I put the pad down and looked for anything that struck me as familiar in the room. There was nothing. Not a picture. Not an ornament that was part of my old life. This other me was a complete mystery.
    “I still can’t get over this,” Zac said. “You seriously can’t remember a thing?”
    “Nope.”
    “Well, I guess it’s been a tough few days. Hell, it’s been a tough few years. It will come back to you.”
    “What if it doesn’t? What if I can’t ever remember?”
    “Then you fake it till you make it, Scott. You’re still you, still the same powers, no matter what you can or can’t remember.”
    I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t know who this Scott Tyler was. I wandered over to the bookshelves. They were filled with what looked like military strategy books. The Art of War by Sun Tzu. On War by Carl von