A few moments later, the roar of an engine came over the line, interspersed with a lot of expletives.
“I’m a little busy trying to read a map and drive at the same time, guys,” Jaxson said. “It’s not really the best time to chat.”
“Then just listen,” Trevor told him. “Tanner, do you think you can catch up with Sage before she reaches the perimeter fence?”
“Not a chance,” Tanner said. “Sage is really frigging fast. Probably as fast as I am, which is kind of painful to admit. She’s making a beeline for the northeast boundary and will probably come out somewhere around Independent Hill. She’s barely five minutes from the fence.”
Trevor swore and floored the gas. “Alina and I will try to get in front of her and keep her from getting too far into town. Hopefully we can keep anyone from seeing her.”
“Approach her slowly so you don’t freak her out,” Tanner warned. “She’s just scared.”
“It’s not her I’m worried about. It’s the civilians she runs into. I don’t want someone calling the cops,” Trevor said. “You have any idea where she’s ultimately going or what she’s trying to do?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say she’s trying to find Derek,” Tanner replied.
Trevor muttered a curse. “I’ll call you guys when we reach the outskirts of Independence Hill.”
He nodded, and Alina hung up.
“I already know Jaxson,” she said. “Who are Zarina and Tanner?”
“Good friends who are willing to risk their lives to help someone.”
She was hoping he’d say a little bit more than that, but okay. “If you’re all friends, why is Sage running from them? More importantly, what’s the big deal if someone sees her?”
Trevor passed several cars on the four-lane road before answering. “Did Dick tell you about hybrids?”
Alina shook her head. “Not really. He mentioned them, but from the way he said it, I assumed it was another word for shifter. He also used the acronym EVA once, but he never said what it meant.”
Trevor grunted. “Figures. Dick likes to paint all of us with the same brush. EVA means extremely valuable asset. It’s the bureaucratic term the DCO came up with to describe shifters. As you can imagine, it’s not a term we think much of.”
She could understand that. “Okay. So what’s a hybrid, then?”
“Hybrids are man-made shifters. It’s an attempt by some evil people to create shifters in a laboratory by giving normal, everyday people a chemical cocktail to twist their DNA around and force their bodies to exhibit the same traits shifters possess. It’s a violent, dangerous, and incredibly painful process that can have a ton of unintended side effects, especially when it comes to a person’s self-control.”
Alina already knew she wasn’t going to like where this was going. It sounded like something out of a horror movie.
“Sage was kidnapped from her home in Canada and given who knows how many different hybrid drugs,” Trevor continued. “On top of that, she was shuffled all over the world from one clandestine lab to the next, where she was experimented on. Sage isn’t the first person to fall victim to those psychopaths, but she’s by far the most unstable one we’ve been able to rescue. She’s hanging on to her sanity by a thread. We hate doing it, but we have to keep her locked up in a small apartment-slash-cell on the complex.”
“The most unstable one you’ve been able to rescue?” Alina repeated, getting a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Do you mean there have been others that you couldn’t rescue?”
Trevor nodded. “Unfortunately, there have been a lot. Many never survive the hybrid serum to begin with. Most of those who do live become so violent and insane we’ve had no choice but to kill them.”
Alina shook her head. “Who would try to play God like that?”
Trevor didn’t say anything, the same impenetrable wall shutting her out.
“Answer me,” she said. “Who did this?”
He gave her a quick glance before focusing again on the road they were speeding down.
“It was Thorn,” he growled. “That asshole has been trying to build a hybrid army for years, and Sage is just one of the many casualties that have occurred along the way.”
Chapter 10
Jaxson and Tanner were waiting for them outside a tiny Catholic church located on the outskirts of Independent Hill.
