Shift:A Virals Adventure(2)

I stared at the message. Got that sinking feeling in my gut.

This is how it starts. Always always always.

Her “request” was short and sweet: Virals. Outside. Now.

I checked the recipient list, knowing what I’d find. Me. Hiram. Ben.

There are only four Virals in the world.

My pack. Three people with whom I share a special bond. Or a dark secret, depending on your take. Tory’s wolfdog is one of us, too, but that part’s just weird. I try not to think about it. Bad for my digestion.

“Something wrong?”

I glanced up to find my mother studying me.

“No.” Thinking fast. “It’s Tory. She wants to get started with Coop. Stay. Sit. All that stuff. I’d better get going.”

I bused my dishes, then hurried out the door on my father’s heels. Waste too much time and I’d be hauling sea kelp, no matter what Dad said.

Kit was standing on the grassy common that stretched from our town houses to the Atlantic. He’s a bit on the short side, with a close-cut mop of curly brown hair and hazel eyes. That day he wore khaki pants, a blue button-down shirt, and worn loafers. And a grim expression.

Kit had been named director just a few weeks earlier.

LIRI was his responsibility.

A word about the neighborhood.

My friends and I live on Morris Island, a four-mile run of sand hills perched at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. We’re light-years from downtown, with only a single strip of blacktop connecting us to Folly Island and the rest of the world.

No buildings. No people. Nothing but cattails, dunes, and rabbits.

As close to complete wilderness as you can get.

With one exception: our digs.

Built on the ruins of Fort Wagner, an old Civil War fort, our block consists of ten identical town houses owned by the Loggerhead Trust, which also owns LIRI and Loggerhead Island. The Morris units are leased exclusively to LIRI employees working out at the institute.

Ben, Hi, Tory, and I are the only teens living on Morris, making us perhaps the most isolated crew on earth. It’s part of what connects us. That and our super-high, slap-you-silly intelligence. True story.

Here’s the thing: We like books, learning, and—gasp—science, and aren’t afraid to admit it. If other kids think we’re uncool because of that, so what?

I don’t need more friends. I got my pack.

Okay, our main bond is the designer supervirus that scrambled our DNA.

A nasty little pathogen that rewrote our genetic code. Opened evolution’s doors.

Made us Viral, to the core.

The transformation welded us into a unit, but for me the connection started before that, when luck brought four kindred spirits together.

It all tied back to living out here, together, alone in the wild.

Morris Island, represent.

Kit was talking with a woman I didn’t recognize. Definitely not his dingbat girlfriend, Whitney. That ditz traveled in a cloud of perfume you could smell a football field away.

Spotting my dad, Kit waved him over. The adults began speaking in hushed tones.

I snuck past them to greet Tory, who was hustling down her steps with Coop.

“What’s the word, Brennan?”

She held up a hand. “Let’s wait for the others.”

Don’t like the sound of that.

Tory is tall and thin, with red hair that hangs midway down her back. Pretty. Maybe more than pretty when she smiles. Piercing green eyes. Pale skin. A healthy dose of freckles. Definitely maybe, though she’s like a sister to me.

Tory moved to Morris last year, after her mom was killed by a drunk driver. Must’ve been terrible. She doesn’t talk about it, and I don’t pry. I’m just glad she’s here.

The whole thing was like something out of a movie—before Tory came to live with Kit, they’d never even met! Her biological dad, but a complete stranger. She still calls him by first name.

Those two make a strange pair. Neither seems to know what to do with the other, though they get along pretty well.

Nuts, huh? But that’s life, I guess.

I squatted to scratch Coop’s gray-brown ears.

He turned deep blue eyes on me, then nuzzled my hand, relishing the attention.

The love child of a gray wolf and stray German shepherd, Coop had grown to nearly seventy pounds. Not a beast you wanna mess with.

Everything Viral started with the wolfdog.

Patient Zero.

We were infected by the superbug while rescuing Coop, who was being used as a medical test subject. Unfortunately for us, the germ was contagious to humans. The newborn invader unzipped our human chromosomes and jammed canine genes inside.

We’d gotten sick. Really sick. Headaches. Sweats. Chills. Even blackouts.

And worse. Animal urges. Canine impulses.

A total nightmare, but the madness eventually passed.

That’s when we discovered our powers. When we learned how to flare.

We developed abilities no one else on the planet possesses. Or can even fathom.

Physical strength. Sensory acuity. A host of other skills we’re still figuring out.

So I guess I shouldn’t complain. No virus? No flare power. No pack.

Our minds wouldn’t have connected. Would never have melded.

I suppressed a shiver. I didn’t understand the mental stuff, left that to Tory. But the four of us shared some weird telepathic bond. Coop, too. Maybe it sprang from the canine DNA. Maybe it’s something all wolves possess.