Birth to grave, we know it’ll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I AM SHAKING WHEN I walk out of Wharton’s office, trembling with such force that I’m afraid I’ll stumble as I make my way down the stairs. Sam’s blood is staining my skin, soaking through my pants. I force myself to walk across the quad, hunched over so that my coat hides the worst of it. Most students are gone on the weekends, and I am careful not to take any of the paths, and to veer away if I see anyone. I stick to the shadows of trees and darkness.

Once I make it to my dorm hall, I head straight for the communal bathroom. I see myself in the mirror. There is a smear of red across my jaw, and for a moment, as I try to wipe it and only smear it wider, I feel like I am looking at a stranger, someone older with hollow cheekbones and lips curled in a mean scowl. A madman fresh from a murder. A sicko. A killer.

I don’t think he likes me much.

Despite the scowl on his face, his eyes are black and wet, as if he’s about to start crying.

I don’t like him much either.

My stomach lurches. I have barely enough time to make it into one of the stalls before I start to retch. I haven’t eaten anything, so it’s mostly sour bile. On my knees on the cold tile, choking, the wave of anger and self-loathing that sweeps over me is so towering and vast, I cannot imagine how there will be anything of me that’s not carried away with it. I feel like there’s nothing left. No fight in me.

I have to focus. Yulikova will be here in a couple more hours, and there’s stuff I need to take care of, things that need to happen before I can go with her. Arrangements. Last details and instructions.

But I’m frozen with horror at everything that has happened and everything in front of me. All I can think of is blood and the guttural, raw sound of Sam moaning in agony.

I better get used to it.

I take a shower so hot that my skin feels sunburned when I get out. Then I dress for my date with the Feds—crappy T-shirt that got chewed up by one of the dryers, my leather jacket, and a new pair of gloves. The bloody clothes I run under the tap until they’re less foul, then wrap them in a plastic bag. Even though it’s a risk, I keep my phone, turning off the ringer and tucking it into my sock.

I shove a bunch of other things into my jacket—things I plan on transferring to the duffel I left in the car. Index cards and a pen. Styling gel and a comb. A few pictures of Patton that I print out with Sam’s crappy ink-jet and then fold. A beaten-up detective paperback.

Then I walk to the corner store, dumping the plastic bag of bloody clothes into the garbage can outside. Mr. Gazonas smiles at me, like he always does.

“How’s your little blond girlfriend?” he asks. “I hope you’re taking her someplace nice on a Saturday night.”

I grin and get myself a cup of coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich. “I’ll tell her it was your idea.”

“You do that,” he says as he gives me my change.

I hope I get to take Lila out some Saturday night. I hope I get a chance to see her again.

Trying not to think about that, I go back to the parking lot and force down my food, sitting in my parked car. Everything tastes like ashes and dust.

I listen to the radio, flipping through channels. I can’t concentrate on what I’m listening to, and after a while I can’t keep my eyes open either.

I wake to a tapping on the window. Agent Yulikova is standing beside the car, with Agent Jones and another woman I don’t recognize beside them.

For a moment I wonder what would happen if I refused to get out. I wonder if they’d have to leave eventually. I wonder if they’d get one of those jaws of life and pop the top off my Benz like it was a tin can.

I open the car door and grab for my duffel.

“Have a nice rest?” Yulikova asks me. She’s smiling sweetly, like she’s the den mother of my Boy Scout troop instead of the lady who wants to send me up the river. She looks healthier than she did in the hospital. The cold has made her cheeks rosy.

I force a yawn. “You know me,” I say. “Lazy as a bedbug.”

“Well, come on. You can sleep in our car if you want.”

“Sure,” I say, locking the Benz.

Their car is predictably black—one of those huge Lincolns that you can spread out in. I do. And while I’m getting comfortable, I lean down to put my key into my bag and surreptitiously lift out my cell. Then, leaning back, I palm my phone into the pocket of the car door.

The last place anyone is going to look for contraband is in their own vehicle.

“So, you have something to turn in?” Yulikova says. She’s in the back with me. The other two agents are up front.

The gun. Oh, no, the gun. I left it in Wharton’s office, under the desk.

She must see it in my face, the flash of horror.

“Did something happen?” she asks.

“I forgot it,” I say. “I’m so sorry. If you let me out, I’ll go get it.”

“No,” she says, exchanging a look with the other female agent. “No, that’s all right, Cassel. We can get it when we bring you back. Why don’t you tell us where it is.”

“If you want me to get it—,” I say.

She sighs. “No, that’s fine.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” I ask. “I’d really feel a lot more comfortable if I was in on the plan.”

“We’re going to tell you everything. Honest,” she says. “It’s very simple and straightforward. Governor Patton is going to give a press conference, and when it’s over, we’d like you to use your gift to change him into—well, into a living thing that can be contained.”

“Do you have a preference?”

She gives me a look, like she’s trying to gauge whether or not I’m testing her. “We’ll leave that up to you and whatever is going to be easier, but it’s imperative that he doesn’t get away.”

“If it’s all the same, I’ll turn him into a big dog, I guess. Maybe one of those fancy hounds with the pointy faces—salukis, right? No, borzois. Some guy my mother used to know had those.” His name was Clyde Austin. He hit me in the head with a bottle. I leave those details out. “Or maybe a big beetle. You could keep him in a jar. Just remember to put in the airholes.”

There is a sudden flicker of fear in Yulikova’s eyes.

“You’re upset. I can see that,” she says, reaching out and touching her gloved hand to mine. It’s an intimate, motherly gesture, and I have to force myself not to flinch. “You’re always sarcastic when you’re nervous. And I know this isn’t easy for you, not knowing details, but you have to trust us. Being a government operative means always feeling a little bit in the dark. It’s how we keep one another safe.”

Her face is so kind. What she’s saying is reasonable. She seems truthful, too—she’s got no obvious tells that would indicate otherwise. The thought nags me that Barron could have made up everything he told me about the content of the files. That would be profoundly awful and totally plausible.

I nod. “I guess I’m used to relying on myself.”

“When you first came to us, I knew you were going to be a special case. Not just because of your power but because of where you were from. We seldom have significant contact with boys like you and Barron. The average LMD recruit is a kid who’s been living on the street, either because they left home or because they were forced out. Sometimes a family contacts us with a child who they think might be a worker, and we bring them into the program.”

“Nonworker families, you mean?” I ask. “Are they scared—the parents?”

“Usually,” she says. “Sometimes the situation is so potentially violent that we have to remove the child. We have two schools in the country for worker children under the age of ten.”

“Military schools,” I say.

She nods. “There are worse things, Cassel. Do you know how many worker children are murdered by their own parents? The statistics are one thing, but I’ve seen the bones, heard the terrified excuses. We’ll get a report of a kid who might be a worker, but when we get to the town, the girl will be staying with “relatives,” whom no one has any reliable contact information for and who don’t have a phone. The boy will have transferred to another school, only there’s no record of where that might be. They’re usually dead.”

I don’t have anything to say to that.

“And then there are the neglected children, the abused children, the kids who are raised to think their only choice is becoming a criminal.” She sighs. “You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this.”

“Because that’s what you’re used to—not kids like me, with mothers like mine and brothers like mine.”

She nods, glancing toward the front of the car, where Agent Jones is sitting. “I’m not used to being thought of as the enemy.”

I blink at her. “That’s not what I think.”

She laughs. “Oh, I so wish for a lie detector test right now, Cassel! And the worst part is that I realize it’s at least partially our fault. We only know about you because you had no other choice but to turn yourself in—and now with your mother being in a lot of potential trouble, well, let’s just say that our loyalties are not in alignment. We’ve had to make deals, you and I, which isn’t how I want us to proceed. I want us to be on the same page, especially going into such an important mission.”

She lets me chew that over for a while. Eventually the car stops in front of a Marriott. It’s one of the innocuous massive box hotels that are perfect for keeping track of someone in, because every floor leads to one central lobby. Pick a high enough floor, and all you need is someone posted outside the room and maybe another person by the stairs and another by the elevator. That’s three people—exactly the number in the car with me right now.

“Okay,” I say as Agent Jones kills the engine. “After all, I am entirely in your hands.”

Yulikova smiles. “And we’re in yours.”

I grab my duffel, they take navy overnight bags and briefcases out of the trunk, and we head for the main entrance. I feel like I am going to a very dull sleepover.

“Wait here,” Yulikova says, and leaves me standing in the lobby with the nameless female agent while Yalikova and Jones check us in.

I sit on the arm of a beige chair and stick out my free hand. “Cassel Sharpe.”

She regards me with all the suspicion that Jones usually does. Her short ginger hair is pulled back into a low pony-tail, and her navy suit matches her overnight bag. Sensible beige pumps. Panty hose, for God’s sake. Tiny gold hoops in her ears complete the effect of a person with no tells and no inner life. I can’t even tell her age; it could be anywhere between late twenties and late thirties.

“Cassandra Brennan.”

I blink several times, but when she reaches out her hand, I take it and we shake.

“I see why they gave you this job,” I say finally. “Brennan family, huh? Yulikova said she hadn’t worked with many people who come from worker families. She didn’t say she’d worked with none.”

“It’s a common enough name,” she says.

Then Yulikova comes back and we head to the elevators.

My room is part of a suite, attached to the rooms where Yulikova, Jones, and Brennan will be sleeping. Of course, I’m not given my own key. My door, predictably, does not exit into the hallway but opens onto the main room, where there’s a crappy couch, a television, and a mini fridge.

I dump my duffel in my bedroom and head back out into the central room. Agent Jones is watching me, as if I’m about to pull some kind of ninja move and escape through the air vent.

“You want something from the vending machine, you ask one of us to accompany you. Otherwise you won’t be able to reenter the room—the doors lock automatically,” he says, like I’ve never been in a hotel before. Jones is about as subtle as a two-by-four to the face.

“Hey,” I say. “Where’s that partner of yours? Hunt, wasn’t it?”

“Promoted up the chain,” he says tersely.

I grin. “Give him my felicitations.”

Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I’m a slug.

“Are you hungry?” Yulikova asks me, interrupting our little conversation. “Did you have dinner?”

I think of the remains of the sandwich moldering in my car. The thought of eating still fills me with a vague queasiness, but I don’t want them to notice.

“I didn’t,” I say. “But I am eager to hear some specifics about what happens next.”

“Perfect,” Yulikova says. “Why don’t you wash up, and Agent Brennan can go out and get us some food. There has to be a Chinese place around here. Then we’ll talk. Cassel, is there anything you don’t like?”

“I like everything,” I say, and walk into my room.

Jones follows. “Can I have a look at that bag?”

“Go right ahead.” I sit down on the bed.

He smiles thinly. “It’s just procedure.”

My duffel seems to bore him after he feels around the lining and looks at my pictures and blank index cards. “Have to pat you down too,” he says.

I stand up and think of my cell phone in the pocket of their car door. It’s hard not to smile, but I remind myself that congratulating myself on my own cleverness is a good way to get caught.