Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) by Kim Curran Page A

expression. “Our guest is waiting. We should probably see what he has to say for himself.”
    She spun around, her large boots squeaking on the tiled floor of the Hub, and headed for a tunnel.
    I glanced around at the group who were doing a pretty terrible job of pretending they hadn’t been watching the whole exchange. My squad had been watching too, although judging by the expressions on their faces, they were as annoyed as I was. Only Zac smiled.
    “Permission to fall out?” he said.
    “Yes, of course. Fall out,” I said, waving them away with my hand.
    When I looked back, Aubrey was disappearing through a doorway. “Hang on,” I called, struggling to catch up with her thanks to my throbbing leg.
    She slowed her pace and waited for me.
    “Thanks,” I said. “I still haven’t quite found my way around here.” I reached into my pocket and swallowed two pills straight from the bottle.
    “Zac said you were having trouble.”
    I found myself irritated by the idea that she and Zac had been talking about me, and jealousy added to the mix of emotions rushing through me. Maybe now wasn’t the time to be baring my soul to her. It could wait till later.
    The tunnel sloped downwards, getting darker and damper the deeper we went. The walls became smoother, covered in a slick layer of water breaking through the cracks.
    “How far down do you think we are?” I asked.
    “Oh, about a hundred feet. It’s an old tunnel system that was used during the last war as a shelter. After the strike on Old Street, ARES moved in here and started building.”
    We turned another corner. There was a row of rough wooden doors; they looked old, way older than the rest of the Hub. Black metal hinges had been hammered into place with nails as big as my thumbnail.
    “What are these rooms?” I asked, peering through a small window covered by thick metal bars.
    “Cells. They’re hundreds of years old. CP told me they used to keep those too evil for the Tower of London locked up down here. Chuck ’em in the cells and leave ’em to rot. No reprieve. No buying your way out.”
    I ran my hand against the surface of the wood. “How many do you think died down here?”
    “Who knows? Hundreds? Thousands, maybe?”
    “And on this our country was built.”
    She stopped to look at me with a quizzical, confused expression. “Don’t you believe in what we’re doing?”
    “Of course I do,” I said, quickly. “We have to defend ourselves, right? Protect the country. I get that. It’s just…”
    “Just what?”
    I looked down at my feet. “I lost Cooper today. He was just a kid.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that. But Cooper wasn’t much younger than you.”
    “Exactly! And I’m a kid.”
    Aubrey let out a small snort of air and the corner of her mouth hitched in a grin.
    “What?” I said.
    “Nothing.” She carried on walking. “You’re not like I imagined.”
    I’m not like I imagined, I wanted to say. I wanted to blurt everything out. To tell her that we loved each other. That there was a better place for us all. But the words refused to come. So instead, I focused on not tripping over on the uneven ground.
    “This is it.” She’d stopped in front of a large wooden door. A new chrome lock had been drilled into it, complete with a palm reader. Aubrey nodded at me.
    “What?” I said, not knowing what I was supposed to do.
    “Only senior officers have authorisation.”
    “Oh, yeah. Right.” I placed my hand on the reader, waited for verification.
    “Commandant Tyler. All area access,” the familiar electronic voice chirped as the door opened.
    Inside was a small damp room hewn out of the rock. Sitting chained to a chair was a muscle-bound young man. I scanned his tattoos: swastikas on each knuckle, a bulldog on his right arm, a crown on his left. His face was quadrisected by a red St George’s Cross. I noticed a ring on his little finger that had a gold lion on it, that he’d recently gone down a belt notch, and a hundred