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  A DEVIANTS NOVEL

  JEFF SAMPSON

  Balzer + Bray

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Internal Document #1

  1 What Are You?

  2 You Are Such a Nerd

  3 Dal-Ton

  Internal Document #2

  4 Lonely and Getting All Hyperbolic

  5 Yeah, He’s Super Friendly

  6 We Want to Know about Biozenith

  7 I’m Riding Shotgun

  8 You Recover from the Big Night?

  9 Okay, You’re Not Stalking Me, Are You?

  10 Busting into the Enemy Fortress

  Internal Document #3

  11 Alpha

  12 Why Can’t You Just Tell Me?

  13 Just Leave Me Alone

  14 You’re So Brazen These Days

  15 Do Not Enter

  Internal Document #4

  16 Just a Slight Disagreement Between Girls

  17 Breaking and Entering Is a Crime

  18 They Can’t Help It if They’re Murderous Robots

  19 You’ve Done Enough

  20 You Are Not a Killer

  Internal Document #5

  21 I Know What You Are

  22 Bite Me

  23 What Did You Do?

  24 Project Lead

  Internal Document #6

  About the Author

  Other Works

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Internal Document #1

  The Vesper Company

  “Envisioning the brightest stars, to lead our way.”

  - Internal Document, Do Not Reproduce -

  Details of Video Footage Recorded Oct. 31, 2010,

  Part 1

  *Note: This video transcription follows the end of the “Partial Transcript of the Interrogation of Branch B’s Vesper 1.” Refer to the initial transcript for details prior to the following.

  20:22:03 PST—Interrogation Room C7

  Two subjects in room identified as:

  —Franklin Savage, Vesper Company employee White male, 42 years old

  —Emily Webb, Branch B’s Vesper 1 (designated “Deviant”)

  White female, 16 years old

  Vesper 1(B) sits at a desk opposite Savage. She leaps to her feet, breaking the chains that bind her wrists. Savage flinches, cowering behind his hands as the girl stares him down.

  Behind Savage, the steel-reinforced door buckles inward and then flies across the room to slam against the opposite wall. A third subject enters the room, identified by intel as:

  —Amy Delgado, Branch A’s Vesper 2.1 (designated “Deviant”)

  Hispanic female, 16 years old

  VESPER 2.1(A): Going somewhere?

  The two Deviants discuss what to do with Savage and choose to let him scurry out of the room like a coward. Limon, please refrain from inserting your personal opinions into these transcripts.—MH

  After more discussion, Vesper 1(B) chooses to leave behind the tape recording of her conversation with Savage and the document she wrote detailing the events spanning Sept. 7, 2010, through Sept. 13, 2010, in Skopamish, WA. The two Deviants exit the room.

  20:33:17 PST—Hallway 3, Sector C

  Several guards lie unconscious behind and ahead of the two Deviants, the product of Vesper 2.1(A)’s trek to break Vesper 1(B) out of the interrogation room. One wonders if perhaps our guard staff was not adequately trained to handle adversaries with telekinesis, as was brought up in a meeting on the evening of October 25, 2010. It has been noted several times, Limon, no need to continue to do so.—MH

  Stepping over the fallen guards, Vesper 1(B) reaches the door of office C12, twists its doorknob, and breaks the lock, allowing the Deviants to enter.

  20:37:09 PST—Office C12, Temporary Office of Franklin Savage

  Vesper 1(B) and Vesper 2.1(A) cross to Savage’s desk. Vesper 1(B) rifles through loose papers until she has prepared a neat stack. The papers have since been identified as the second part of her account of the events prior to the Incident. Vesper 2.1(A) questions her motives for leaving the papers intact. Vesper 1(B) looks into the camera, speaking directly to it.

  VESPER 1(B): Same reason I haven’t been smashing cameras. They want to know what we can do? Then I say we let them watch us, and we let them read all about it.

  VESPER 2.1(A): I continue to like your style, girl.

  VESPER 1(B): Thanks. It’s all here. Let’s move.

  Part 1 of Relevant Video Footage Concluded

  1

  WHAT ARE YOU?

  I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and studied the bags under my eyes, which were half-hidden behind my crooked glasses. Looked at how limp and mousy my hair was, definitely not shampoo-commercial ready. I held a pair of sleeping pills, halfheartedly telling myself to pop ’em back. Go all sleazy starlet and abuse those prescription drugs like there’s no tomorrow.

  Don’t do it, a voice whispered in the back of my head. An angry voice. One that kept popping into my thoughts more and more over the past few evenings. Let me out. You know you want to.

  I ignored her.

  It had been two nights since I’d helped kill a man after transforming into a genetically engineered werewolf. Two nights since I’d let loose my wild sides to find the man who’d murdered Emily Cooke and tried to kill Dalton McKinney. Knowing the consequences of letting myself go like that… I couldn’t do it again.

  So, I was trying out a new nighttime routine.

  First, an early dinner with Dad, my stepmom, Katherine, and my stepsister, Dawn.

  Then, hastily banging through my homework during the hour I had left to do it, all the while staring forlornly at my book and DVD cases, remembering the good old days when I’d had entire evenings to indulge in a little escapism.

  Finally, giving up on the homework halfway through because eight o’clock was rapidly approaching. Which meant sneaking into the bathroom and pouring a couple of my stepmother’s prescription-strength sleeping pills into my palm, downing them, and passing out to avoid changing into Nighttime Emily, the wild, superpowered version of me. Herself a midway state between normal me and full-on wolf-girl.

  This new routine was most definitely the product of some utterly strange circumstances.

  It was Tuesday night. Exactly one week since the day that regular, geeky Emily Webb—me—first turned into wild-child Nighttime Emily, the same night Emily Cooke had been murdered by a man named Dr. Gunther Elliott. I hadn’t known it at the time, but Emily Cooke was also a werewolf like me. She’d lost her life because of it.

  I clenched my eyes closed and took in a deep breath. Blinking them open, I snatched up a plastic cup from the counter, filled it with tap water, then hastily retreated to my bedroom. I set the cup on my bedside table, then lay back against my pillow.

  Drugging ourselves was what Spencer and I had agreed to do, at least until we figured out what the whole changing-into-mythical-beasts thing was all about. Drug away the changes, so we don’t get into trouble. Do research during the day, when we’re more ourselves.

  But your daytime selves can’t solve problems like I can. The voice again. Nighttime me, or at least what I imagined nighttime me would say. Besides, there’s no reason to hide in your stuffy room, girl. The bad guy is gone. We killed him. Let me out.

  A shiver ran through me. “Wrong thing to say,” I whispered to myself.

  The images of Sunday night came back to me in a rush, like they always did, just when I thought I was free of them for a few moments.

  A man in a fedora. A gun.

  Me and Spencer, both wolf-human hybrids, stalking the man.

  A knife lashing out, cutting m
e, cutting the wolf-boy. And we leap to rip the man apart, our vision red, our goal to kill.

  I could still taste his rotting flesh no matter how much I brushed my teeth. Scope wasn’t exactly clearing up this plaque. The stench of his unwashed body, of his fear, sometimes seemed to overwhelm my nostrils. And his eyes … his empty, blank eyes…

  I guess this is what they call post-traumatic stress. Fun, huh? I now totally relate to the lone survivors of horror movies when they pop up in sequels. Laurie Strode in Halloween H20? I feel you, girl. You too, Sidney Prescott. Not so much the girl from Friday the 13th. She basically got a raw deal.

  The only time I didn’t think about what I’d done as a wolf-girl was when I was around Spencer and his wonderful, calming scent, or when I was rushing through the blur that had become school, half focusing on teachers while thinking about all that I still needed to know about the changes.

  And, of course, when I was deep asleep I didn’t have to worry. If I had dreams about that night, well, I didn’t remember them once I woke up. One small mercy.

  I popped the sleeping pills from my sweaty palm into my mouth, then downed the cup of lukewarm tap water. No, Nighttime Emily, I was not going to let you out, because letting you out would lead to the werewolf, which would lead… Who knows where.

  I didn’t want to think anymore. Or remember. The pills swirled in my stomach, and my lids grew heavy.

  Do you think you can hide from this forever? Don’t you think our stepmom is going to notice her disappearing pills sooner or later? Someday you’re going to have to let yourself face the night. You know it’s true.

  I ignored the voice, even knowing that she made far too much sense.

  And then sleep came and took everything away.

  My eyes snapped open, pulling me from my dreamless sleep.

  It was dark in my room save for the glow from my digital alarm clock and the faint tinge of streetlight that seeped through my curtains. I wasn’t supposed to be awake before morning.

  A chill draft touched my skin. Goose bumps bristled on my arms. My heart pounded fast, as though my body knew what my sleep-addled brain didn’t want to know.

  Someone was watching me.

  I pulled the covers to my chin and cradled my stuffed toy dog, Ein, as I scanned my room. Everything that wasn’t veiled in black was in shades of gray. The room was still, silent. Outside I could hear a car alarm going off somewhere down the street. I half expected to see Dr. Gunther Elliot there, some undead version of him coming to take his revenge on me for killing him.

  No one was there. It was PTSD, I rationalized. Just more residual fear from a night that seemed so very far away even at the same time it felt like it had just happened moments ago.

  My self-assurances didn’t stop my hands from shaking or my pulse from pumping.

  For what felt like a long time, I lay in bed, my eyes darting around my room from the closet to the door to the window, my brain telling me to calm down, my body refusing to listen.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye: movement.

  My eyes shot toward the window and came to settle on a figure at the foot of my bed, the size and shape of a grown man. Only this man was a shroud of misty blackness that had congealed to form a featureless, three-dimensional shadow that stood perfectly still and silent.

  My heart thudded faster, pounding out a dance-track beat that became all I could hear. I swallowed, trying to convince myself that I was not seeing what I thought I was seeing. Because I’d seen this thing before, or something like it. Before, it had appeared only when I was a wolf. I wasn’t a wolf now.

  Yet here it was.

  I could see my DVD case and TV right through it, but it was more than a shadow, I knew it, I felt it. It wasn’t the dead man. It was something worse. I whimpered as a primal fear I had only ever experienced as a wolf came over me.

  The shadow’s head tilted, slowly, methodically. It was studying me.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, willing the thing to disappear, to leave me the hell alone. I lay there, sheets to my nose, for how long I couldn’t tell you. Then, as my heart finally began to slow to a waltzlike crawl, I opened my eyes.

  The shadowman was above me, its featureless face inches from my own. It raised a hand, reaching for my head with long, slender, translucent fingers.

  I opened my mouth to scream. But all that came out was a squeak, like some pitiful horror-movie cliché. As I lay there, unable to move, the shadowman’s cold fingers grazed my cheek. It wasn’t solid, exactly; more like the wispy touch of wet fog against my bare skin.

  Still, it was touching me. Now was not the time to get all paralyzed.

  I rolled to my left, away from the shadowman. I knocked Ein to the floor and grabbed a lamp from the bedside table, the squat one that my best friend, Megan, and I had long ago decorated with various shades of glittery nail polish.

  Yanking the lamp, I managed to pull its cord free from the wall. In the same motion I turned back toward the shadowman and swung.

  The lamp and my hand went right through it.

  My fingers stiffened with cold, became numb and heavy. The nail-polish lamp slipped out of my useless hand and clattered to the floor.

  I yanked my arm back, clutching my frozen wrist in my other hand. The shadowman stood at the side of my bed, watching me with a tilted head, like a dog trying to understand what its master is saying.

  “What do you want?” I wheezed. “What are you?”

  The shadowman’s smoky black arm rose slowly, as if someone had dropped the speed on the Blu-ray player. It walked sluggishly forward—through my bed.

  Yeah, no.

  Rolling again to the side, I dropped off my bed opposite the shadowman. I landed on all fours, crouched and silent like a cat. Which was strange, since I was supposed to be me, regular old Emily Webb, not the death-defying version of me that could do that kind of thing. Regular me would have landed with an “Oof!”—limbs flying every which way like I was going for a pratfall on a bad sitcom. In my head I was me, at least, but the reflexes were all Nighttime.

  I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  I leaped up to my feet and spun to face my bedroom door—and the shadowman was there, nose to nose with me. So close that the fine hairs rose on my arms as its chill seeped through my oversize T-shirt and into my skin.

  I spun again, this time toward the window. The same second-story window I’d jumped out of several times already—but never as normal me.

  Did I really have Nighttime’s reflexes? What if it was just adrenaline? Could I really leap out a window and not break both my legs? How could I know?

  Swallowing a trembling breath, I realized I had no choice. It was the only way out.

  I darted forward and whipped open the curtains. My thawing fingers scrambled over the latches to unlock the thing and get myself free. Icy air brushed against my back, and I sensed the shadowman growing closer, way too close. I needed to get out, now, now, outside NOW, why wouldn’t my hand work already and get the latches open?

  A chill flowed down my neck, coating my shoulder blades and making me shiver. The shadowman was directly behind me.

  My heart thudding, I gasped for air and spun around, my back as close to the window as I could get without smashing through.

  There was nothing, no one, there.

  I stood there for a long moment, half sitting on the sill, taking in shallow, gulping breaths. The room was dark, and none of the shadows cast by the streetlight outside my window moved or were alive. Slowly, my heart began to pace itself back to normal. My breaths evened out, and the hand that had gone through the shadowman’s incorporeal body once more flowed with warmth.

  I turned back to the window, half expecting to find the shadowman floating outside. If this was a horror movie, the director totally would have done that as an easy jump scare. In fact, if I ever sell the movie rights to my life, I’m totally suggesting that the director do that.

  But in reality, there was nothing there. Jus
t a view of the clear, starry sky and the darkened streets.

  Something caught my eye in the road. A large dog, maybe, lumbering down the center of the street.

  Only it wasn’t a dog, even if that’s what was reported by the local newspaper my dad insists on getting instead of just reading the news online like normal people.

  It was a werewolf.

  Shaking my head, I closed the curtains. “You were supposed to take the sleeping pills, Spencer,” I muttered.

  I closed my curtains and, after a cursory glance around the room to be sure the shadowman was gone, climbed back beneath my covers. I pulled the comforter over my head, willing my breath to slow down, iiiiiin and ooooout, to calm myself down. Whatever that thing was, it was gone now.

  But it had been so close. Much closer than any of the previous times I’d seen the shadowmen—which up until now had only been as werewolf me. I didn’t know what that meant.

  A clattering and buzzing sounded from my end table. I took in a sharp breath, then realized that, duh, it was just my phone.

  Lowering the covers, I slapped the end table until I grabbed my phone. The glowy screen on the front read SPENCER.

  I flipped it open to see I had a text message.

  2:34 AM PST: Em Dub, u awake

  I blinked at the message a few moments, because hold up, hadn’t I just seen Spencer outside? As a wolf-boy?

  Behind the times as I am, I slowly hunted down the keys to type back a message—and I mean the number-pad keys, folks, as in press 1 three times just to type a c. Megan used to be the only person who ever called me, and she hated texting, so I never really had to do it before. How I longed for a smartphone, especially since I can’t not type in complete sentences. It’s a thing.

  The pads of my thumbs beginning to ache, I finished typing my response and hit send.

  2:37 AM PST: Yeah, I’m awake. I thought I just saw you outside.

  2:37 AM PST: not me. Im in my room, just saw shadowman. it came at me but then it dispprd.

  My fingers trembled. I looked around the room again, expecting the shadowman to leap out at me, grab me with its icy fingers. Nothing was there.