ALTERED SAGA: Sam's POV from Altered Scene

It was alarming, how out of place he felt here. Sam glanced around the clothing store that sat between a bookstore and candle shop in the Cook Towne Mall, and wished he could be anywhere else. Generic pop music played from the sound system overhead, drowning out the important sounds, the sounds that would tell him whether or not they were being tailed by the Branch.

Crowded places, like malls, left him agitated and wary. Especially now, after he’d spent five years locked in a lab in a basement. He’d always prided himself on being able to easily adjust to sudden shifts in environment, but the world had changed since he’d been in it. He no longer knew his place, or where he fit in.

When he felt Anna’s eyes on him, he looked up.

“Are you getting that?” she asked.

He glanced down at the coat he’d slipped into. For a second, he’d forgotten he’d put it on. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have a coat, but this seems more practical. It’s thick, but lightweight. Easy to run in.”

“And it looks good,” she said.

His gaze snapped up again. Color burned into her cheeks. She was always so giving with her thoughts, letting them dart out like rabbits from holes.

In the past, he’d always chosen silence over words. Silence had been beaten into him at the Branch. Mouthing off, in the beginning, had gotten him into trouble, so he’d learned to be selective, carefully choosing what to say, and when to say it. But with Anna, he found he wanted to talk, that a thousand things stacked up behind his teeth, pressing to get out. Instinct had him biting it back, though, so instead he said nothing and Anna, as always, filled his silence.

She hoisted up an armful of clothing and said, “I’m trying this stuff on,” before scurrying away.

Sam waited for her to disappear inside the fitting room before taking up a post outside of it. From the new vantage point, he scanned the store’s entrance, the mall concourse, and the employee entrance in the back. He was watching for the Branch, for Connor or Riley. They weren’t safe anywhere, and he wasn’t sure if they ever would be again.

A black-clad figure caught his attention in the mall concourse, and Sam eased behind a display of winter gear. The man swept the mall with a quick gaze. There was an earpiece in his ear.

In the span of a heartbeat, Sam went into survival mode. He could almost hear the ticking of a clock in his head, telling him how long they had before the Branch agent caught them. Sam had to be faster.

He rounded into the fitting room. The attendant, a lanky guy with a head full of red hair tried greeting him, but Sam cut him off and handed him a few twenties. Money could buy a lot, including silence.

“Take this,” Sam said. “If a man comes through asking about a boy and a girl, we were never here.”

“Dude, I don’t know…” the attendant said, but Sam didn’t have time to argue with him. He went to the only fitting room with a closed door. “Anna? Open the door.”

“What?” Her voice came out shrill and unsure.

“Now, Anna!”

The clock was ticking down. He could feel the press of the lost time in his chest.

The door swung in and Sam barged through, shutting and locking it behind him. He pushed Anna into the far corner, moving their shadows away from the space beneath the door. He pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhhh.”

And then he realized she was shirtless, in nothing but a green bra and now his heart was beating erratically for an entirely different reason.

He might not have been entirely human, not after the Branch genetically altered him, and warped him into something closer to a machine, but he suddenly felt human in that moment, with Anna small and pressed against him, and his finger on her lips. He pulled his hand away, but he couldn’t seem to do the same with his eyes as Anna raked her teeth over her bottom lip, like a razor drawing over flesh, teasing it.

He suddenly wanted to kiss her. It was a primal need, uncurling inside of him and stretching out its arms. He leaned in, driving away the voice that said he should be doing anything else but this. He was an inch away from kissing her when a new voice cut into the fitting room and snapped Sam back to reality.

Instead of meeting her mouth, he shifted at the last second, putting his face alongside hers, his breath at her neck, her breath at his. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. The new coat suddenly felt heavy on his shoulders, the small fitting room blisteringly hot.

They waited.

The Branch agent asked the attendant if he’d seen a young man and woman. The agent had a picture, from the sound of it. The attendant played his part and said the guy and girl had left fifteen minutes earlier. To Sam’s ears, the attendant sounded scared shitless, and he hoped the agent didn’t catch on.

Less than a minute later, the agent’s footsteps faded away and the attendant gave them the all-clear signal.

Sam took a step back, and avoided looking at Anna’s face, or her chest, or anything at all but the gray partition wall in front of him as she finally slipped into a t-shirt.

“The clothes work okay?” he asked.

“What? Yeah. Fine,” she said quickly.

“Then we need to leave.”

As he pulled the door open, and cooler air rushed in, he was thankful for the distance between him and her, and the renewed mission: they had to escape the Branch. At all cost. And he couldn’t let Anna, or her lips, get in the way.