The Broken Room
Author: Peter Clines
Date: 2022-03-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Science Fiction; Thriller; Fiction; Fantasy; Mystery; Suspense; Mystery Thriller; Action
Description: You can still owe the dead. Hector was the best of the best. A government operative who could bring armies to a halt and nations to their knees. But when his own country betrayed him, he dropped off the grid and picked up the first of many bottles. Natalie can’t remember much of her life before her family brought her to the US, but she remembers the cages. And getting taken away to the Project with dozens of other young children to become part of their nightmarish experiments. That’s how she ended up with the ghost of a dead secret agent stuck in her head. And Hector owes Natalie’s ghost a big
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Praise for The Broken Room

“It’s Jack Reacher meets Stranger Things with American Elsewhere vibes. Heart-racing adventure with highly motivated characters in truly horrific supernatural circumstances. Clines sticks the landing on this one. It’s one hell of a ride and not for the squeamish or faint-hearted.”

—Jennifer Brozek, author of Never Let Me Sleep and Last Days of Salton Academy

“A full-throttle thriller that deftly fuses superspy heroics and paranormal weirdness, The Broken Room is relentless, its nonstop action intensified by author Peter Clines’s compelling portrayal of childhood trauma, adult regret, and the redemptive power of familial love.”

—Marshall Karp, #1 New York Times bestselling author, cocreator/coauthor of the NYPD Red series

“With The Broken Room, Peter Clines weaves a genre-crossing tapestry of compelling storytelling. Characters—living and dead—you care about, and plot twists you could never see coming. Absolutely brilliant!”

—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of V-Wars and the Joe Ledger thrillers

“The Broken Room is one of Clines’s best books and captures that same magic that made King, McCammon, and Koontz household names.”

—Stephen Blackmoore, bestselling author of the Eric Carter series

“The Broken Room is a delightfully unpredictable ride! It was a roller coaster made entirely out of curveballs, but Clines makes it look easy.”

—Brian Clevinger, writer and cocreator of Atomic Robo

“A dark thriller with lovable characters, a dark mystery, and a blood-curdling horror element, The Broken Room delivers a fast-paced thriller with Peter Clines’s signature lovable characters and knack for Lovecraftian mystery.”

—Craig DiLouie, author of The Children of Red Peak

“At once brutally relentless, darkly unsettling, and strangely touching. This is a straight-shot pedal-down road trip with Elmore Leonard driving and Robert Aickman working the map. It’s a cosmic horror John Wick.”

—Robert Brockway, author of Carrier Wave and Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity

“Equally heartracing and heartrending, The Broken Room is a must-read for thrill-seekers longing for spooky season.”

—Sam Maggs, author of The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope

“The Professional meets Stranger Things for a heart-stopping ride through Clines’s America.”

—Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of Ancestor and the Infected series

“It’s rare to find this blend of pulse-pounding action and tremendous heart, but somehow Clines gives us a perfectly balanced narrative. Anchoring the twists and turns are the unlikeliest of duos, two lost souls you will find yourself falling in love with over and over again.”

—Madeline Roux, author of the Asylum series

“With a nod to Lone Wolf and Cub, The Broken Room is a rare mesh of horror and thriller that leads with its wit and heart and follows through with tremendous action. Cline takes the reader on an exhilarating ride to dark and unexpected places, and brings them back mostly in one piece. A fantastic read.”

—Wesley Chu, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the War Arts Saga

Copyright © 2022 by Peter Clines
E-book published in 2022 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Luis Alejandro Cruz Castillo

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced
or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.

Trade e-book ISBN 979-8-200-86198-9
Library e-book ISBN 979-8-200-86197-2
Fiction / Thrillers / General

CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520

www.BlackstonePublishing.com

PART ONE
A GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR

ONE

If a dive bar had family, the Pharaon would’ve been the redheaded stepchild. Or the black sheep. Possibly both. The story went that, sixteen years ago when it first opened, it was supposed to be the Pharaoh. But the sign painter messed up and the original owners just didn’t care enough to go back up and add a vertical line with some red paint. The Pharaon was on its fourth owner now, and each one had cared about the name a little less than the last one.

Hector didn’t care about the name at all. He’d chosen the bar for the same reasons he chose most places. Cheap booze. Low lighting. Limited entrances and exits (probably a fire code violation, but Hector didn’t care about that, either). At least three booths shallow enough not to get trapped in, which also gave direct line of sight to the main entrance and the back room’s swinging door.

And right now, out of those things, the only one he cared about was the cheap booze.

Over the past two and a half years Hector’s days had fallen into a nice, simple schedule. He got up with the sun, showered, grabbed a breakfast burrito from one (chosen at random) of the four hole-in-the-wall places within a block of his studio apartment. Then he sat on a bus or train station bench (also chosen at random) and ate the burrito. Sometimes, if said form of public transport came while he sat there, he’d pay cash and ride it for an hour or two.

Hector paid cash for everything.

One way or another, at half past noon, he walked into the Pharaon just after they unlocked the doors. Then his day really began with a drink in one of the three booths with direct line of sight to the main entrance and the back room’s swinging door. Sometimes he’d let one drink sit for hours, sipping at it as all the ice turned to water in the yellowed double-rocks glass. Other times he’d kill an entire bottle before dinner. It all depended on how he’d slept the night before.

Usually, he killed the bottle.

Today had been a rare day so far. Almost four in the afternoon and he’d had only three drinks. The whiskey gave the bar a soft edge, rubbing at the shadows like a charcoal artist. It had been, overall, a peaceful day, internally and externally. The first one Hector had experienced in at least two months.

He raised his hand, signaled Stu at the bar for a fourth drink, and the girl walked in.

Hector assessed her, as he did everyone who stepped through the big swath of afternoon sunlight and paused to let their eyes adjust. He didn’t dismiss her because of her clothes. Every item was new. Superhero T-shirt, jeans, red-and-blue sneakers, sweatshirt, denim jacket, school backpack, and a sparkly, sequin-covered baseball cap declaring unicorns rule. Lower-end stuff, but all of it new, barely broken in at all. Despite the hat—because of it, really—he was also pretty sure the outfit had been picked to blend into a crowd. To let attention slide off the girl.

His attention didn’t slide.

He put her weight at fifty-three pounds. Four foot four. Short, dark hair peeking out from under the cap, closer to a crew cut than a pixie. A decent amount of Latino heritage, like himself. Slightly malnourished. She was twelve, tops.

She blinked twice and looked back and forth across the room.

Stu stepped around the bar, holding a glass of liquid amber and pointing himself at Hector’s table. “Whattya want, kid?”

The girl looked at him and blinked again. For a moment, Hector thought she didn’t understand the man. Then she shook her head and said “Nothing,” in a voice like a stage whisper.

“Bathroom’s for customers only, and you’re too young to be a customer.” He stepped past her and delivered Hector’s drink to the booth.

Hector nodded his appreciation but didn’t take his eyes off the girl.

She turned her head, pointing her eyes at each of the seven afternoon patrons. She paused at Hector, then settled on a guy at a tall table near the bar. Hector had never spoken to the man, but eavesdropping and observation had taught him that Jorge worked as a security guard at one of LA’s many film studios and was freshly divorced after he caught his wife cheating on him.

The girl walked in a wide arc, circled Jorge, and parked herself at the table across from him. She was two-thirds turned from Hector, so he could see her jaw and mouth move but couldn’t read her lips. He watched Jorge’s expression. The security guard shook his head, then looked back over his shoulder at the bartender.

“Kid!” Stu’s voice hit the loud, slow pitch people somehow thought translated across all languages. “You can’t be in here. So get out before I call your parents.”

She ignored him and walked a beeline across the bar to Hector’s booth. He sipped his drink and stared at her. She stared back.

“Hello.”

“What’s up, kid?”

“Are you Hector Ramirez?”

His eyes and hands never moved, but something tickled the back of his neck. He hadn’t been Hector Ramirez in at least six years. He’d even destroyed the Ramirez passport, license, and other docs. Standard procedure.

“Name sounds familiar,” he said. “Why are you looking for him.”

She set her hands on the table and balled them into tiny fists. “Are you him?”

He lifted his glass, let his drink touch the tip of his tongue. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to answer a question with a question?”

“My mother’s dead. And my father.” Her lips kept moving, forming silent words as she stared.

He flinched. “Sorry, kid.”

“You are him,” she said. No, not said. Stated. Whatever doubt had been in her voice had vanished like smoke in a hurricane. She knew.

“Maybe.” He set his glass down.

“You are,” she repeated. “You’re supposed to help me.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Are you selling band candy or something? Girl Scout cookies?”

She stared at him as her head pivoted back and forth. Left side up. Right side up. Back to center. “I don’t know what band candy is.”

There was an odd cadence and tone to the words. To all her words. Hector recognized it from a few different places around the world. She hadn’t been taught English. She’d picked it up, learning random words here and there from different people.

“Candy for your school band,” he said. “You know, musical band. You sell the candy to pay for uniforms or trips to DC or drum skins or something.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly not having any idea what he was talking about. “I’m not selling band candy.”

“So what’s up?”

The girl slid into the booth across from him and laced her fingers together on the tabletop. “I’m being pursued by two standard two-man retrieval teams with a tactical support team on standby. I think I’ve lost them, but I know they followed me here to Los Angeles. They want to take me back to the Project.”

He’d been reaching to pick up the drink again. Instead, he set his palm flat against the cheap Formica. The tickle on the back of his neck grew into an itch that spread down his spine like a rash.

“Hey,” Stu called out. “You know that kid? She begging for money?”

“No,” Hector said, still not taking his eyes off the girl.

“I have plenty of money,” she said with a nod.

“Who are you?”

“Natalie Gamma Sixteen.”

“Gamma Sixteen?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s my group designation. There were thirty-five of us in each group.”

He set those facts to the side of his mental desktop, somewhere he could grab them quickly if he needed them. “But what’s your name?”

“Natalie Gamma Sixteen.”

“Your real name.”

“I don’t know anymore.”

The drink called to him, but the back of his neck buzzed hard, the way it used to. “Who said I’d help you?”

“A friend of yours.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

Her head did the side-to-side thing again. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you can’t just say ‘a friend.’ You have to give me a real name.”

“Timothy Steirs. He said you’d help me. He told me where you’d be.”

A chill blotted the itch for a moment as he processed the name. Heat replaced the chill. Annoyance. A bit of anger. A generous amount of suspicion.

Hector hid it all. He’d been trained to hide sudden emotions. “Really? Tim Steirs sent you?”

“Yes. He said you’d help me.”

He reached out with one finger and caught a drop of condensation as it rolled down the outside of the glass. His eyes had never left the girl, but his attention was on the exits now. “Did he? When did he say this?”

“He told me about you for the first time eight days ago, just before I escaped. He said you’d be able to help me, and that you would.”

Hector flicked the drop from his fingertip. “See, that strikes me as odd.”

“Why?”

“Because according to everything I’ve heard, Tim Steirs died seven years ago.”

Across the table, the girl’s shoulders sagged beneath her backpack straps. “Yes. This is good.”

“What is?”

“You already know. He thought you might take it hard.”

“Take what hard?”

“Finding out he was dead,” said Natalie Gamma Sixteen. “We were worried I’d have to tell you.”

TWO

Hector sat up in his side of the booth. He took a slow breath in through his nose, let it slide out between his lips. He watched. He listened. He examined the posture of every other figure in the bar.

“All right,” he said to the little girl. “No more jokes. Who sent you?”

“Tim Steirs.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I.”

For the first time since she walked into the Pharaon, Hector let his gaze drift off Natalie Gamma Sixteen and look up at the half-open entrance. No movement. No people, no shadows, no unusual noises coming from the four parking spaces Stu referred to as “the lot.”

“How did you find me?”

“Tim figured out where you’d be.”

“Who told you?”

“Tim Steirs.”

“Kid . . .” He let another breath go in and out, kept processing. Don’t get bogged down in minutiae. Stay focused on the actual issues. That’s how he’d learned to survive.

He flexed his fingers on the tabletop. “Natalie, I don’t know what they told you, but I’m a very bad man. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Now, who sent you here?”

Her head went side to side again. “No, you’re not.”

“Not what.”

“A bad man. Tim says you’re a good man who . . .” She paused, closed her eyes as if remembering the exact spelling of a long word, and then said, “You’re a good man who did bad things so nobody else had to do them.”

Hector stared at her.

“He also says you owe him for El Salvador.”

The cold chill washed down his back again. “How do you know about El Salvador?”

“I was born there.”

“No, I mean . . .” His eyes flitted to the drink. He mentally kicked himself. Focused his attention back on the girl and the doors again. Still no movement, even though this had to be some kind of setup. “How do you know about him and me in El Salvador?”

“I don’t know what you mean. He said to tell you that you owed him for El Salvador. It’s a marker, and he’s calling it in.”

“Who told you about that?”

“He did.”

“Who?”

“Tim.”

“Tim Steirs is dead! He’s been dead for years.”

“Yes. He said you wouldn’t be this upset about it.”

“About . . .”

“About him being dead. He said you both knew it was just part of the job. It happens, you accept it, and you go back to work. And he said you’d help me.”

Hector sank back into his side of the booth. The drink called to him again. This time he listened to it.

Natalie sat on her side of the booth and watched him swallow two big mouthfuls of whiskey. Her mouth kept moving. Flexing. It seemed like a nervous habit.

He set the mostly empty glass back down on the table. “You said there were people after you?”

“Yes. Two standard two-man retrieval teams with a tactical support team on standby.”

“Those aren’t terms a little girl usually knows.”

“Tim taught them to me.”

“Right. How do you know about them?”

“The teams?”

“Yeah.”

“I escaped four days ago. They chased me for almost a full day before I lost them. I saw the first team the next day, in a town. A man and a woman wearing suits and ties with wires in their ears.” She reached up and tapped her right ear for emphasis. “The woman’s name is Ross. She was at the Project, but I’d never seen the man before. The day after that, in a city, I saw the other team. Two men. I saw the first team again this morning. I don’t think any of them have seen me.”

“And the tac team?”

“I haven’t seen them, but Tim says they’d be standard for this kind of search-and-retrieve operation.”

“Right. And the place you escaped from . . . ?”

“The Project.” She leaned into the “P,” leaving no question it was capitalized.

“So you’ve been on the run for a week.”

“No. Four days.”

“And you’re Natalie Beta.”

“No. Natalie Gamma Sixteen. Tim said you’d probably test me and try to find holes in my story.”

“Am I going to? Find holes in your story?”

“No. It’s not a story. It’s what happened.”

“You said one of the people chasing you was at the Project.”

“Yes.”

“Does Tim work there?”

“No.”

“So why was he there?”

She paused. Her fingers wiggled in their neat, interlaced knot. “He wasn’t. He isn’t there.”

“I thought you met him there.”

“Yes. No. It’s difficult to explain. That’s why we were all at the Project.”

“We?”

“All of us. The Gammas, the Alphas, and the Betas. And the Deltas, but they were all eliminated very early. There were Epsilons, too, but I’m not sure if they were on-site. They might be eliminated too.”

“And they’re all like you? They’re all . . . kids?”

“Yes.”

The drink called to Hector again. He slid it over to the end of the table. The itch on his neck told him sobriety was coming at him hard and fast, whether he liked it or not.

“All right,” he said. “You and a bunch of other kids were being held at the Project.”

“Yes. The others are still there.”

“And four days ago you escaped. With Tim Steirs’s help.”

“Yes.”

“And since then you’ve been on the run.”

“Yes.”

He focused more of his attention on her. Noticed the tiny spots of dust and oil in her hair. The faint streaks of watered-down dirt. The extra weight of tired eyelids. “When was the last time you ate something?”

“Yesterday. In the middle of the day. A store called Jack in the Box. I liked all the clown pictures.”

Hector let a small part of his attention shift over to the bar. The Pharaon had a hot plate, a dorm-room fridge, and a microwave in the back room. There wasn’t a menu so much as a few things the two bartenders knew how to make and might be convinced to if things were slow. Exact prices depended on said bartender’s mood at the moment and how much the given customer had annoyed them that day.

Stu wasn’t busy behind the bar. He’d cooked for Hector a few times before. His skills extended to oversalted microwave fries and a “special” he’d angrily insist was not the worst grilled cheese sandwich in Los Angeles.

“Hey, Stu.”

Stu looked over, nodded, reached for a bottle and a new glass.

Hector shook his head.

“What?”

He waved a hand at Natalie. “Can you throw something together for the kid?”

“We don’t do Happy Meals here.”

“Just give her the special.”

“Fine.”

“And put some . . . I don’t know, some tomatoes or something on it? Try to make it healthy.”

Stu let out a laugh that turned into a snort. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. I wanted to open a goddamn Whole Foods in the back anyway.” He shook his head and walked off to the back room.

“Thank you,” said Natalie.

“Don’t thank me until you’ve eaten it,” said Hector. “Pretty sure the food is why this place never became a gang hangout.”

Her head bobbed side-to-side again, like she was keeping time with music.

“Never mind. You’ll find out soon enough.” He pointed two fingers at her sparkly cap. “You stole clothes from somewhere to help hide yourself from the people chasing you.”

“No. I bought them.”

“How?”

“With money.”

“But where did you get the money?”

The little knot of fingers wiggled again. “I’m not supposed to say.”

“But you’re supposed to trust me.”

“No. You’re supposed to help me.”

“How can I help you if you don’t trust me?”

Her lips twitched again, murmuring a few more silent words. She unwove her fingers, then threaded them back together. “I got the money from Tim.”

“He gave it to you?”

“No. He told me where it was and how to get it.”

“Was it his money?”

“Yes. He said he’d never use it now.”

“Because he’s—”

“Dead.”

Something about her detached, overly specific delivery gnawed at him. It went past just second-language English. He’d hear people refer to it as being “on the spectrum,” and maybe that’s all it was. But he’d also seen similar reactions in soldiers and agents flagged with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that’s where his gut leaned.

“Two things make me want to believe you,” Hector said.

“Yes?”

“Only one other person on Earth knew about El Salvador. And he’s dead now.”

Her head shook back and forth. “No.”

“No what?”

“It’s not only one other person. I know too. That’s three people.”

He reassessed his thoughts on the autism spectrum versus PTSD.

“I’m sorry.” She met his eyes, then looked at her interwoven fingers. “I’m supposed to be precise when I explain things.”

“It’s all right.” His gut had been right. It usually was. “Don’t worry about it.”

Stu arrived with a big chipped plate to fill the uncomfortable silence. He set it down in front of Natalie, then added a fork and a couple of thin paper napkins. “Special with tomatoes and onion,” he said. “Extra healthy.”

Hector noticed the sandwich was charred notably less than usual. Stu had cut it in half diagonally and also put a small pile of pickle slices on the plate next to it along with the french fries. “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” echoed Natalie. She gave Hector a quick glance, then scooped up half the sandwich, driving one corner of it into her mouth.

Stu grunted and swept up Hector’s glass. “Refill?”

“I think I’m good for now.”

The bartender grunted again and wandered away.

“The other thing that makes me want to believe you,” said Hector, “is the Project. Not a lot of people know about them.”

She swallowed a mouthful of toasted bread and cheese. “You do.”

“I know it exists. I’ve heard stories about the kind of things they work on. They’re like a black-budget DARPA.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s part of the Department of Defense. The government. They do lots of research into how to make soldiers better and safer. And they do other stuff too.”

Natalie said something in response, but Hector only half heard it. A flicker of movement caught his eye, focused his attention. Shadows in the doorway sunlight. The sounds of shoe leather and strange voices.

Two men stepped into the bar. They wore nice business suits tailored to help hide their holsters. Each of them had an earpiece with curling wires that slid down beneath the collar of his jacket.

THREE

“Natalie,” said Hector, “I want you to just keep eating, all right?”

She registered him looking toward the door, and the sandwich froze halfway to her mouth.

The two nondescript men took a moment in the doorway, letting their eyes adjust to the gloom inside the Pharaon. The door’s corner placement let them scan the room with a few easy, casual passes. They both looked at Hector. The booth hid Natalie from them.

“Don’t get scared,” Hector said, making a point of not looking at the two men. “Guys like this like it when you’re scared. Be tough. Don’t let them have any fun.”

Her head went up and down once.

No other movement or sound from the back. No extra shadows at the front door. Just the two of them. There might be others nearby, but they weren’t here at the Pharaon.

The men walked up to the bar and spoke with Stu. Hector smiled at Natalie and focused past the random noise of the bar. He heard the phrases “searching for” and “missing girl” and “any chance she might’ve” and then reached out to take a limp french fry off her plate.

For a moment it looked as if Stu, a definite anti-authority type, might tell the two men what they could do to themselves in their free time, and then demand they leave the bar. But then one of the men, the slightly taller one, slid a phone from his pocket. The screen lit up with an image, and he turned it for Stu to see. Hector knew the picture would push the bartender over the edge.

As the thought crossed his mind, Stu looked over and locked eyes with him. The bartender’s gaze flitted down to the plate on the table and to the hidden side of the booth. The two men followed his gaze across the bar. So did Jorge the studio security guard and two other patrons. They all looked at Hector.

“Thanks,” said the slightly taller man.

Hector kept his attention on the men but turned his eyes to Natalie. “Just keep eating,” he said. “If I ask you anything, anything at all, you smile and nod. Got it?”

She took another bite of grilled cheese sandwich, smiled, and nodded her head.

“Good.” He waved the soggy french fry at her and popped it in his mouth just as the two men reached their table. It turned to salty paste on his tongue.

“Afternoon,” said the slightly taller man, just a bit too loud and friendly. He nodded to Hector, then smiled at Natalie. “Looks like you’ve found our runaway for us, Mister . . .”

“Yeniel,” said Hector. “Think you’ve made a mistake, guys. This is my cousin’s kid.”

“Really,” said his pale-eyed partner. Not so much a question as an accusation.

“Yeah. Sorry we can’t help you.”

“Thing is, Mr. Yeniel,” said Slightly Taller, “your cousin’s kid looks a lot like our missing child. Which could make things very uncomfortable for you.”

He held out his phone. Hector took it, squinted, and held it out at arm’s length like a man having trouble focusing. It put his hand right beneath Slightly Taller’s chin.

The Natalie Gamma Sixteen in the picture had even shorter, almost buzz-cut hair and wasn’t smiling. Her dark eyes were open wider and dilated just a little too much. She wore a gray T-shirt that gave off a prison vibe even through the photograph.

“Huh,” said Hector. “I don’t see it, myself.” He turned the phone to Natalie. “What do you think, honey? Does she look like you?”

Natalie looked at him, looked at the phone, and nodded with a big smile before shoving the last of the sandwich into her mouth.

Hector shrugged. “Well, her eyes are better than mine these days, y’know?” He held the phone back out to Slightly Taller. “Again, sorry, guys.”

“Look, Mr. Yeniel—”

“Just Yeniel.”

“—this is the girl we’re looking for. Her parents are worried about her. We’re taking her into custody, and if you interfere in any way, you’ll be placed under arrest.”

Pale Eyes pulled open his coat to show off his pistol. Stupid move, tying his hand up with something else at a moment like this. “Easy way or the hard way, pal.”

Natalie swallowed and stared at Hector. Her smile faltered.

“Hey,” bellowed Stu, his anti-authority streak finally ignited. “Wait a minute. What the hell’s going on here?”

Slightly Taller turned, slid a leather wallet from his coat, and flashed some kind of badge back at the bartender. Hector couldn’t see it. “Government business,” said Slightly Taller. “We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

Half a dozen things twisted in Hector’s chest. The comforting familiarity of the bar. All the ugly parts of his life he tried to forget. The fact that the man had a badge. And probably a support team. He didn’t even know this girl. And she was just spouting impossible nonsense. Even if she knew about the marker.

Slightly Taller reached into the booth. His hand closed on Natalie’s arm, just above her elbow. He dragged her out of the booth and her wide, scared eyes caught Hector’s.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered.

He put his hands on the table.

“Hey,” snapped Pale Eyes. “You move your butt an inch out of that booth and I’ll—”

Hector got out of the booth.

Pale Eyes let go of the hem of his coat, flicked it back to put his hand by his holster, and in that second Hector looped a relaxed arm halfway across the man’s shoulders as if he were leaning in to share a secret. Another tenth of a second passed between them, face to face, when Pale Eyes realized what a horrible mistake he and his partner had made, and then Hector kicked one of the man’s feet away and flung his head down at the Formica tabletop. Pale Eyes slammed into the table with a crack that echoed through the bar, bounced off, and hit the floor like so much dead weight.

Slightly Taller released Natalie, got his hand on his sidearm, even got it halfway out of its holster, and Hector’s forehead smashed into the bridge of his nose. He drove an elbow into the man’s gut as he staggered back, swept his legs out from under him, and Slightly Taller crashed down hard onto the Pharaon’s concrete floor. His shuddering arms reached for the pistol in its clip-on holster, but Hector had plucked it away before the man fell. A Glock 23, nine millimeter going by the muzzle. Sixteen-round magazine, going by the weight.

The pistol spun in his hand, settling against his palm like slipping into a comfortable pair of old shoes.

Four seconds had passed since Hector got out of the booth.

He reached down and flicked away Slightly Taller’s earpiece as the man struggled to his knees, then yanked at the man’s tie, pulling his throat mic loose. Hector looked over at Natalie, wide-eyed in the booth. “Did he hurt you?”

She scooted back across the bench seat and gave a quick shake of her head. “No.”

“What the hell is going on?” shouted Stu. His eyes were locked on the pistol. “Take it outside!”

Hector held up a hand, held up one finger, and Stu choked on his next words.

Slightly Taller snarled up at him. “Huge mistake, buddy. Hu-u-u-uge.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hey, you know what? It’s fu—”

Hector’s hand whipped out and rapped Slightly Taller on the top of the head with the Glock’s barrel. It would sting. Probably leave a welt. “What’s your name?” he asked, shoving the gun back in the man’s face.

“Why don’t you go fu—”

This time the pistol hit hard enough everyone in the bar heard it. Almost split the man’s scalp. Basic conditioning. Get them used to answering questions fast. “What. Is. Your. Name?”

“Webster,” grunted Slightly Taller.

Two people scurried out of the bar. Hector didn’t care about people going out. He let them leave.

“What do you want the girl for, Webster?”

“Like I told you. We’re just trying to get her back to her parents.”

Hector swung the pistol. He pulled his hand back at the last minute and let the hard knob of his wrist backhand slightly taller Webster in the side of the head. The man wobbled on his knees.

“Next time it’s the barrel,” said Hector. “It’ll break your jaw. You’ll lose teeth. Maybe even mess up your eye socket. What do you want the girl for?”

“It’s a medical thing.”

“Explain.”

“I don’t know specifics,” said Webster. “I swear. She’s part of some kind of drug trial, I think. She’s a test subject.”

Hector shot a glimpse at Natalie, slowly going fetal in the corner of the booth. “Do her parents know she’s a test subject?”

“What do you think?”

“They dead?”

Webster shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Really.”

“What’s your call sign for the tac team?”

Webster’s brow furrowed. “How do you know abou—”

Hector turned his hand and slammed the butt of the pistol into Webster’s temple. The man tipped over and dropped to the floor. Jorge the guard let out a high-pitched shriek.

Hector shoved the pistol into his jeans at the small of his back, hiding it under his coat. He rolled Webster over, relieved him of a spare magazine and the badge wallet in his coat. He flipped Pale Eyes over and took his wallet as well.

“We need to go now,” he told Natalie.

“Yes.”

He thumbed through the wallets, pulled out all the cash, and tossed it at Stu as they walked by. “That’s my tab,” he said, “and half an hour of you not remembering anything about us leaving.”

They walked out before Stu could comment either way.

Out on the sidewalk, Hector shoved the pistol magazine into his coat pocket and continued to disassemble the wallets. One Virginia driver’s license, one Texas. Five credit cards between them. Six identical business cards for Steelwall Security in one of the wallets. No name, just a generic card. The kind used by people who hadn’t earned personalized cards yet. Each wallet had a higher-end generic badge, the type security guards and movie cops wore. Also an equally generic photo ID with a lot of flags and stars and eagles, but no mention of any branches or departments.

He tossed all of it in a garbage can as he and Natalie walked past a bus stop.

Hector turned left at the corner and kept walking. Not rushing, not dawdling. Just walking like a man without a care in the world.

Natalie kept up, just half a pace behind him. “Where are we going?”

A fair question. He’d planned for this moment, naturally, but never expected he’d have someone else tagging along. It created stumbles in a few steps of his quick and simple get-out-of-Dodge strategy.

His little studio apartment, just four blocks away, was out. Never going there again. And by design, nothing there could point them to him in any way. Hell, he’d grabbed all the furniture out of nearby alleys on the first of the month—even the lumpy futon mattress.

He had three hundred and ninety dollars on him, distributed in different amounts in four pockets. A trick he’d learned haggling in Egypt that worked well around the world in a number of situations. It let you empty everything out of a pocket and claim it was all you had.

He had a grab-and-go bag stashed in a bicycle locker down at the Orange Line station just a few blocks away, but heading there gnawed at him now. One man could vanish into a crowd. One man traveling with a kid—especially a little girl—always caught a few eyes. He needed to be careful and make sure he caught them all in the right way.

He didn’t have papers for the girl, either. He had three well-established identities waiting for him downtown in a Civic Center bike locker, but none of them involved a child. He could improvise, but if someone was actively looking for both of them now . . .

“You,” he said to Natalie, “are going to make my life really difficult, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But Tim told me you could deal with it.”

“Yeah. This way.” They turned another corner and headed down a wide street.

“This is a main road,” said Natalie.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Tim told me to avoid main roads.”

Hector smiled. “Good advice for you alone, bad for us together. Catch up, walk alongside me or at least one step ahead.”

“Why?”

“If you’re behind me I’m a bad dad. Attracts more attention. Next to me, talking like this, we’re just heading down to the store or the park or something. People will see us but they won’t really notice us.”

She took a few quick, skipping steps and placed herself just in front of him. “Are we?”

“Are we what?”

“Heading to the store or the park?”

“No. We’re going down to the bus station, but we’re not getting on. I just need to pick something up.”

“Is it a secret bag of money?”

He coughed. “Maybe.”

“Tim gave me one of his secret bags of money and things.”

“I kinda figured. We need to lose this.” He plucked the sparkly cap from her head and tossed it into the yard of a nearby apartment. It landed next to a Siamese-esque cat that arched its back, hissed, and swatted at the cap with one paw.

“That’s part of my disguise,” she said.

“It was, and it was good. Now they’ve seen it, so it’s a flag. Try to mess your hair up.”

“Why?”

“They’re going to be thinking of you in the hat. You with hair’s a different person.”

“Okay.”

They walked for half a block as she mussed her inch-long hair the best she could. He walked, she plodded. She moved like someone who’d walked a lot already. Hector adjusted his pace, trying to make it look like a game or some kind of role-playing.

As they waited at a traffic light, he stuck his hands in his coat pockets. His fingers slid along the Glock magazine resting there. “What else did Tim tell you before he died?”

“Nothing.”

The light flashed the bright image of a walking man at them. “Nothing at all?”

She shook her head, then stuck her hands into her own pockets, mimicking him. “No. I never talked to him until after he died.”

Hector looked down the street. “We’re going to get to that part of your story, don’t worry. Stop here. Look at those flowers.”

“Those are weeds.”

“Look anyway.”

Down at the far end of the block, a black SUV with tinted windows waited at the intersection. It sat in the turn lane, third car back. Waiting to head over toward the bus station.

It could be anyone. Absolutely anyone. SUVs were common out here in the Valley. And black was the third most popular color for them in the US.

He took a few casual steps forward as the light changed. The SUV turned the corner. Then it turned again, pulling into the Orange Line station.

It could be anyone, but Hector hadn’t survived this long by taking dumb risks.

“New plan,” he told Natalie.

“What is it?”

“Not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

They might not know about his grab-and-go bag. The Orange Line station would’ve been one of his first choices if he was tracking someone. Which would mean the Civic Center Station. Eighteen miles away.

He stepped between two parked cars and watched traffic go by. Felt the weight of the pistol against the small of his back. He could get them a vehicle, but how fast would it be reported? Then the teams would have the LAPD working with them. Hell, depending on how someone spun Natalie being with him, they could issue an Amber Alert and have everyone in the city looking for them.

A car slowed in front of him. His fingers slipped around the pistol’s grip. Then he saw the pink and purple emblem glowing on top of the dashboard.

He adapted. Smiled. Waved the car forward.

The passenger side window slid down. “Hey,” said the driver, a balding man with a band of curly hair above his ears. “Alex?”

“No,” said Hector. “Man, look, I need a huge favor. Can you get me down to Little Tokyo?”

“Sorry. Already got a passenger.” He waved a hand at the cell phone mounted on the dashboard.

“I know, but look, I can’t get a cab out here, and the bus is running late.” He gestured back to the sidewalk where Natalie stood. “If she’s not at her mom’s office by five-thirty I’m going to get so much hell from the lawyers. They’ve just been looking for an excuse to take shared custody away from me.”

The driver took in a breath, pressed his lips together, then looked over at Natalie. He gave a quick shake of his head. “Sorry, man. You’re gonna have to set up your own ride.”

“I can’t.”

“Just download the app.” The driver tapped his glowing sign. “You can probably get it set up and have someone here in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“No time,” said Hector. “I have to be there by five-thirty. C’mon, man. Please.”

“It doesn’t work that way. If I don’t pick up my passenger, it’ll ding my rating and then I’ll—”

“Two hundred bucks,” said Hector, adding just a touch of desperation to his voice.

“What?”

“I can give you . . .” He pulled the cash from the left front pocket of his jeans and made a show of counting it, even though he already knew exactly how much was there. “I’ve got two hundred and sixteen dollars. It’s all yours, man, I just . . . I can’t lose my little girl, y’know?” He fanned the bills out in his hand.

The driver eyed the cash. His fingers twitched on the wheel. He looked at the phone again.

“Please,” said Hector again, leaning the fan of bills farther into the car.

The driver pressed his lips together again, then yanked the sign off the dashboard with a quick swipe of his hand. “Get in.”

Hector smiled. “Thank you, man. Thank you.” He opened the back door and turned to Natalie. “Hey, baby girl! Want to go for a ride to see Mommy?”

She stared at him for a beat, then smiled broadly and nodded.

They piled into the back seat. Hector folded the fan of bills over and handed it forward to the driver. The man counted it quickly, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and smiled at them in the rearview mirror. “Welcome aboard. I’m Jason. Most people just call me Jay. I’ll be your pilot this afternoon.”

“Thanks again, Jay,” said Hector. He slid his hand over, tapped a finger against Natalie’s wrist.

“Thank you,” she chimed.

“No problem at all,” said Jay. “Glad to help.”

Hector glanced over his shoulder as Jay pulled back out into the street. Two doors down, he got a quick glimpse of a silver-haired man glancing between his phone and the street. Probably wondering where his rideshare was.

“Why don’t you take a quick nap, baby girl,” Hector said. “Your mom’s going to let you stay up late, so you might as well squeeze in a couple of winks now.”

Natalie’s head did its side-to-side thing, but she curled up in the back seat. She sank below the window, hidden from anyone outside the car. She looked up at Hector, then closed her eyes.

They reached the intersection. Made the turn. Hector let his head drift over. At the bus station, a man and a woman stood by the SUV. They both wore dark suits. The woman held a cell phone up to her ear.

“So what do I call you?” Jay asked.

“I’m Diego,” said Hector, looking into the rearview mirror. “And this beautiful girl is Desirea.”

“Cute kid.”

“Yeah. She got her mom’s looks but my personality. Lucky for both of us.” He gave Jay a quick you-know-what-I-mean widening of his eyes. The driver responded with an equally knowing smile and nod of his head.

“Well, kick back and enjoy the ride,” said Jay, guiding them onto the freeway ramp. “Any musical preferences?”

“Whatever you want, man,” Hector said. “You’re the hero here.”

FOUR

Jay the hero driver dropped off Hector and Natalie at the edge of Little Tokyo, just past City Hall and the courthouse. They thanked him again as they climbed out, and he assured them it was no problem, absently patting the bulge of currency in his shirt pocket. They waved as he drove off.

Once his car turned the corner, Hector set a hand on Natalie’s back and started walking.

They walked north in silence for two blocks before she spoke up. “Where are we going?”

“We,” he said, guiding her to turn at the corner, “are going to get supplies. And then we’re leaving town.”

“Then where are we going?”

“We’ll figure that part out later.”

Natalie grabbed the straps of her backpack and looked at the tall buildings. He could guess what she was thinking. It wasn’t the best part of LA, but it was pretty far from the worst. A few trees broke up the stark lines and broad expanses of the federal buildings. Compared to some cities he’d been in, it could almost pass for civilized.

A police car passed them on the street, sending a mild tingle down Hector’s spine. He felt Natalie’s shoulder tense under his fingertips. But the car never slowed, and the driver never stopped chatting with the officer in the passenger seat. Just cruising at the easy pace cops used when they wanted you to think they might be watching you.

“Why didn’t you just have Jay drop us off at the supply store?” she asked.

“Because we’re trying to confuse anyone who might be following us,” Hector explained. “This way it’s safer for us and him. He dropped us by a bunch of tall office buildings, and I told him we had to get you to your mom’s office. So he’s not going to have any suspicious thoughts, and if anyone finds him and questions him, he won’t even be able to say which building we went into.”

She considered it, then nodded her assent.

“We’re going to stay with our quick cover for now,” he added. “Anyone asks, I’m your dad, Diego, and you’re Desirea. Your mom works in an office building back there. Her name’s Debbie. Our last name is De la Vega. All ‘D’s,’ easy to remember, right?”

“Yes.”

They walked another half block, and the buildings gave way to the sprawling Grand Park area. Lots of trees and open grass across the street where a few people played with dogs. Up on the right, wide steps led up to a plaza lined with different versions of the American flag. An artsy monolith decorated in a dozen languages welcomed them to the park.

People strolled and ambled everywhere. Hector assessed all of them as he headed up the steps, making an effort to keep his pace slow and casual. Students. Dog walkers. A police detective on the phone as he came down the stairs, his holstered pistol sticking out where his arm lifted the hem of his suit coat.

They crossed the plaza. Hector let his attention settle on five more people, one after another. A drug dealer sitting on a granite bench, trying to be discreet. Two jurors still wearing their pin-on badges. A jogger heading away from them, bouncing up the far steps in three big strides. A man doing yoga on a swath of grass.

“Relax a bit,” he told Natalie. “We’re walking across to those other steps. Father-daughter time, remember?”

“Yes,” she said. She hopped out in front of him. Turned back to show a pasted-on smile. Her hands stayed on the straps of her backpack.

He let out a fake laugh and took a few quick steps to catch up with her. They walked past the man doing yoga, and when he reached for his bag Hector’s fingers twitched toward the pistol. But Yoga Guy was just stretching the other way, his eyes closed, glossy white headphones blocking his ears.

Hector and Natalie went up the stairs to the Civic Center Metro station.

The plaza was bright and clean. Lots of concrete and steel. Escalators and stairs beneath an elaborate canopy stretched down to the actual station beneath the surface. At the far end of the plaza, a stout pillar held a pair of elevator doors. Steel-framed signs and schedules. A few concrete benches.

An early-thirties white guy in a dark suit on the phone. Wearing sunglasses. Staring at them.

Hector stretched his arms wide, yawned, reached one hand around to scratch his back, inches from the pistol’s grip.

The man laughed. Talked into the phone. Hector lip-read the words “weekend” and “wasted.” The man shifted on the concrete bench, and Hector saw that his suit was cut too tight for a holster.

Safe for the moment.

“This is a train station,” said Natalie.

“Yes, it is.”

“Are we leaving town on a train?”

“No. We’re just here to pick up supplies.”

He pointed her toward the elevator. They walked past a set of train schedules and a line of empty bike racks, stopping at a low, semicircular structure almost the same height as Natalie. The bike lockers looked like half a steel cake, cut and waiting for someone to remove a slice. He stretched his fingers into one of the pockets of his baggy coat while she peered through the round holes. “Is this how we’re leaving town?”

“Not exactly.” He’d hidden the key inside the bottom seam of the pocket years ago. His fingertips plucked at the stitches, pulling the threads loose one at a time until he could work his finger in and snap half a dozen loops at once. He closed his hand on the key and walked around the lockers until he found the one he’d rented as Jaime Garcia. Cash payment, of course.

With the water bottles, air pump, and hefty under-seat saddlebag, the bike had cost Hector a hundred bucks at a shop on Sepulveda, out in the Valley. The front tire had gone flat during the years it sat in the locker, and the back one was visibly soft. He dragged it out and locked the door closed. “Let’s go.”

“Yes.”

She walked next to him as he pushed the bike out onto the sidewalk and down the street. It rolled well enough with no weight on it, although the front rim caught and scraped across the concrete. They passed a parking lot and a bus stop before he reached down to unstrap the triangular saddlebag beneath the seat. Without breaking stride, he shoved the bag under his arm and leaned the bike against a lamppost they were passing. He set a hand on Natalie’s shoulder and kept her walking.

“You left the bike,” she said.

“Yeah.” He squeezed the saddlebag under his arm. “We’ve got everything we need now.”

A bit of a lie. It was everything he needed. He’d already tweaked his Los Angeles exit strategy a few times in his mind to accommodate the girl.

“Next thing,” he said, “is our own transportation. No trains or buses or Ubers.”

They headed down the street, and he felt comfortable going faster. People tended to walk with more purpose on empty sidewalks, especially ones with no shops or doorways. Human nature desired the imaginary freedom of being able to turn left or right, to stop and look at something.

Natalie kept up her half-skipping, half-bouncing walk. It looked a little too young for her, but not so much as to draw attention. Just an excited kid out with her dad.

They crossed at an intersection and kept heading west. They passed two women waiting for the next light, a man with a messenger bag half-jogging for the intersection. An old man dozed at a bus stop across the street. The next-closest people Hector could see were almost two blocks away, past the next intersection.

The back of his neck began to tingle, and it spread fast.

He heard the engine accelerate, turned in time to see the SUV squeal to a stop behind them, tires bumping up onto the sidewalk. Standard shock-and-awe move. Normally smart. Dumb dealing with someone like him. Shock and awe tended to give the attackers just enough of a morale boost that it made for a quick, more severe drop when things went south.

Three men leaped out of the car, rifles raised, shouting orders. Real tactical gear, not the glorified stuff some cops and security types wore to look tough. But still shiny. Not used, or not used often. The rifles were desert-tan FN SCAR MK 16’s. Hector noted a pistol on each man, a SIG going by the grips. Two also had knives sheathed hilt-down on their chests.

A second and third SUV slid into place around him. Two more men in tactical gear with rifles. A man and a woman in suits, both with handguns drawn but only the woman had hers pointed. Almost definitely the man and woman he’d seen at the Orange Line station.

How’d they find him so fast?

Natalie. A tracker in her clothes, or maybe her backpack. Something for him to figure out later.

Eight seconds had passed since the first SUV stopped. The five men of the tac team had surrounded him. The shouting was still at the near-random phase, everyone trying to assert command. Everyone trying to intimidate him.

Did they not know who he was?

Hector raised his hands, let practiced looks of confusion and fear roll back and forth across his face. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, you got the wrong guy.”

One of the men, the driver of the second SUV, darted in, grabbed Hector’s shoulder, and drove a boot into the back of his knee. If the man hadn’t been so caught up in the moment, he probably would’ve noticed his kick barely landed. Hector expected it, flowed with it, dropped to the sidewalk as they thought he would.

Natalie yelped and landed on her knees next to him. She shrieked as they batted the bicycle pack out from under Hector’s arm and dragged her backpack off her shoulders. Hector made a show of turning toward the man who’d grabbed the backpack and shouting a few choice profanities in English and Spanish. The man smirked and tossed the packs aside.

“It’s going to be fine, baby girl,” Hector told Natalie, leaning toward her. “It’s just a misunderstanding. Trust me, this’ll all be fine. Just trust me.”

The woman in the suit had her phone out, still holding her pistol on them with her other hand. She had a jagged scar on her neck, half covered by her collar. Either a clean wound that had been stitched up poorly, or a messy one that had been stitched up as well as possible. Maybe an animal bite. “Package is in hand,” she told the phone, ignoring Hector’s babbling. “Let him know.”

They were all too confident for their own good.

He let his voice drop. “You haven’t known me long, but I need you to absolutely trust me right now.”

Natalie gave a quick nod. “I do.”

“When I tell you, curl into a little ball, put your arms over your head. Wrap yourself up tight, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Most important thing. Close your eyes tight. No matter what, you don’t open your eyes until I tell you to. Got it?”

She swallowed once. Her hands trembled in the air. “Yes.”

“Hey, snapped one of the tac team. One of the ones with a knife on his chest. He stepped closer. “Stop talking!”

“You’re scaring her,” Hector yelled at the man, and then quietly added, “Now.”

Natalie’s head dropped to her knees. Her arms came down and wrapped over her head, her hands covering the back of her skull. She pulled tight into a fetal ball.

“Get up,” snapped Knife. He stepped toward Natalie, his hand reaching for her collar.

Hector got up.

FIVE

Natalie kept her eyes shut tight, scrunching up her face with effort, but she felt Hector stand back up. She heard the crunch of sand under his shoes. His coat brushed her sleeve.

All the men were shouting at Hector. Ordering him back on his knees. Telling him to freeze. Ordering him down onto the ground.

Heavy footsteps came nearer. She counted them, one-two-three-four. One of the shouting men got closer to her ear. She could feel his voice shaking the air against her skin.

Then the man coughed. A quick, gasping sound, like when Dr. West told the Gammas to cough while she listened to their backs. It stopped the man’s shouting. And everyone else’s too.

Something big and heavy hit the ground in front of her and all the shouting started again.

Shoes scraped and scratched on the sidewalk. People shouted commands. Natalie felt wisps of movement in the air, heard two fast thuds, almost claps, and then a piece of wood broke somewhere near her. Someone’s shout turned into a scream, but then they coughed and got quiet too.

A gunshot, like when father died. Then one-two-three more. She pulled herself into an even tighter ball as two more heavy things hit the ground.

“Not the girl,” Ross shouted. Natalie recognized her voice. “Don’t touch the—”

Two more gunshots. Natalie heard a grunt, a sharp breath, and a sound of things colliding together. She squeezed her arms tighter against her head and tried to block her ears. Hot smoke prickled her nose.

More thumps. More grunts. A hollow clang. Another piece of definitely-not-wood splintered and left somebody howling. Natalie recognized that sound from the Project too. She heard a loud, sharp slap and the howling stopped.

Somebody grabbed her collar, twisted her jacket, yanked her up onto her toes. “Drop it!” shouted one of the guards she remembered, Cook. “Drop it or I’ll—”

She felt a fast breeze and Cook’s words turned into slurping sounds, like the almost-empty drink she’d had at the Jack in the Box store. He let go of her. Her feet slipped and she landed hard on the sidewalk, banged her knees and one elbow. Her eyes flinched open, just for a second, but she only saw concrete. Her eyelids mashed shut again.

Something spat and rustled and scraped on the sidewalk. Somebody let out a weak cry—maybe Ross, or one of the men, but the sound ended with another sharp slap. She heard footsteps, some muttering, and then another gunshot rang in her ears.

A familiar mix of scents reached her nose. Blood and meat and pee. The smells of the broken room. Her body shook and shivered. Her stomach twisted back and forth. She pulled her arms tighter around her head.

Someone moved closer. She felt them looming near. They touched her shoulder.

“You good, kid?” asked Hector. “Did he hurt you?”

Natalie uncurled her arms and lifted her head toward his voice. “Can I open my eyes now?”

“No,” he said. “No, you should keep them closed for now. Let’s get away from here first. Did he hurt you?”

“No. Yes. It hurt when he dropped me.”

Hector wrapped his arms under her and lifted. She wrapped her arms around his neck and sat in the crook of his arm. Lots of smells swam in the air around him, more than she was used to on people. Everyone at the Project smelled like antiseptic. Hector smelled like skin and sweat and leather, with a little metallic smoke and blood swirled in on top of it all.

She could make out voices. People talking. Some sounded scared. She felt Hector’s steps, heard his shoes on the sidewalk, and the voices faded away. A slight drop, some quick steps, and then back up. His head moved side to side, his chin bumping against her shoulder. His breathing slowed down. “I think they were it,” he said, half to her, half to himself.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Nobody else. Not yet.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Tim said they’d send more. That’s how it works. They either send more, adequate people or fewer, better people. But they always send more.”

“Where’d you get all this stuff, anyway?”

“Tim told me.”

“Right.” His arm shifted, his body tilted, and she slid out of his grip down to the ground.

“Can I open my eyes now?”

“Yeah.”

Light flooded her vision. Two buildings framed the setting sun right in front of her. She blinked twice and looked up at Hector. A faint bruise blossomed on the side of his face, close to his ear. A patch of blood stained his right sleeve. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head as he slung her backpack off his shoulder and gave it to her with a nudge. They stood in front of a dirty three-story garage. A sign with a giant letter P hung above the entrance. He guided her toward the entrance. “Take my hand. Walk a little ahead of me, like you’re pulling me.”

She did. It reminded her of being with Aunt Gabby. They’d pretended to be mother and daughter, but it hadn’t worked.

“And smile. Smile big.”

She stretched her mouth into a wide smile. It felt silly, but Hector looked pleased by it. She swung the backpack up onto her other shoulder and noticed that the bag from the bicycle locker was tucked under his arm again.

They stepped into the parking garage just as the lights began to flicker on for the night. They were long tubes, like in the halls and rooms at the Project. A bored man with a tie and rolled-up sleeves sat in an office chair inside a square of orange cones. He stared at his phone and didn’t look up at them.

“Have a good night,” Hector called out to the man. His voice bounced off the concrete walls as he lifted his free arm and waved.

The man looked up. At Hector. At her, with her wide smile. He gave a half nod and looked back at his phone.

They walked past to a stairwell and went up. They passed a landing, a floor of cars, another landing, and another floor of cars. Hector kept going up.

“Do you have a car here?”

“Nope,” he said. “Never owned one.”

She processed this. Repeated it quietly to Tim. Listened to his response. “Are we stealing one?”

“Yes, we are.”

They stepped out onto the rooftop lot. Natalie could see dozens of parking spaces. Maybe a third of them had cars in them. “Why these?”

Hector looked at some of the cars, then headed toward the far left corner of the roof. “What do you mean?”

She followed a few steps behind and tried to see what he saw. “Why not a car down below? Why up here?”

He looked at one car, then another. “Most people don’t like parking on the roof. Lots of stairs. Bird shi—bird poop.” Hector settled on a silver car with four doors and walked around it once, studying it, before stopping at the driver’s side.

“And sun damage,” he continued, unzipping the bicycle bag. He pointed at a few points on the car’s roof. “Sun’s really intense here in Southern California. Can kill your resale value. So odds are, the people who parked up here parked too late to get one of the spaces down below. And getting here late means they’re probably going to leave late, so we’ll have more time before they notice their car’s missing.”

Hector pulled out a little roll of black ribbon. Then he stretched it out between his hands. The ribbon popped, shook, and became stiff, like a long black ruler. He pushed it down into the car door by the window, slid it back and forth, and yanked it up.

The car made a heavy sound that reminded her of the air locks unlocking. Hector opened the door. He shook the black ruler and it rolled back up with a snap. “Get in.”

She slid into the big seat, and he nudged her to keep going. He climbed in after her, reached under his seat, and it slid forward a few inches. Then he pulled something else from the bag and pushed it into the column behind the steering wheel. He wiggled his wrist, stabbed the column again, and then twisted the tool.

The engine revved to life, then settled quickly to a smooth rumble.

“Get your seat belt on.”

Natalie looked where the belt would go on her jeans, then behind her, then down by her feet.

“Your seat belt,” Hector repeated.

“I don’t know what that is.”

He reached past her, grabbed a strap hanging at the side of the seat, and pulled it across her. “How’d you get to LA?”

“Buses and a train.”

“Risky.”

“Tim said it was worth the risk.”

“Of course he did.”

They drove around and around the parking structure, past the man with the rolled-up sleeves and the tie. Hector waved again as they drove by. The man didn’t even look up this time.

They moved into traffic. Some people honked at them, but Hector made sure they kept moving. “Rush hour,” he muttered. “Lousy time for you to need an extraction, kid.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Forget it.”

Natalie decided Hector was talking to himself. Some of the doctors at the Project did that. West would talk and ask questions when working with the Gammas or examining them, but she didn’t really want answers.

Some of them had thought Natalie talked to herself, too, when they first heard her talking to Tim.

But not Dr. Lourale.

SIX

Hector drove along the freeway, watching for tails behind him or roadblocks ahead. He didn’t let anyone come alongside them. He’d slow down or speed up, never allowing anyone’s windows to line up with the stolen Civic’s for more than an instant.

Natalie sat low in the passenger seat, peering out at the other cars. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere, yet.” Hector glanced down at her. Tried to read her all-but-blank expression. “We need to figure some things out. Is this a setup?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Are you setting me up? Who sent you to me? Really.”

“Tim.”

“Stop lying!”

Her eyes went wide. “I’m not lying.”

“Natalie, come on!” He banged his hand against the steering wheel. “If this is legit, I . . . I’ll help you. I will. But I need you to tell me the truth.”

“I am telling the truth. Tim told me to—”

“Tim Stiers is dead!”

“Yes. He is.”

“I’ve seen a lot of dead people. None of them talk.”

“He talks to me. I can hear him.”

Hector’s hand came up to slam the steering wheel again. Then he set it back down, tightened his grip until his knuckles ached, and took in a few slow breaths. Staying in control meant survival. He checked all the mirrors. Assessed the cars behind them and ahead of them as the sun settled down below the trees and hills.

The girl knew about El Salvador.

She knew something about El Salvador. She hadn’t given him any specifics. But Hector had never told anyone how the mission had almost gone completely pear-shaped, and Tim Stiers had never been the kind of guy to blab about how assignments were carried out. “What happens in the field stays in the field,” the old man had half joked once.

He’d saved Hector’s ass in a threefold way and never said a word. But they both knew it was a favor he might call in someday. That was just the way the job worked.

When word of Tim’s death finally reached Hector, he’d breathed a small sigh of relief. Stiers had been a good man, but nobody liked having a marker hanging over their head. Especially one that big.

Natalie knew about El Salvador. Somehow. She knew Hector owed Tim for what happened there.

Goddamn it.

He checked the Civic’s mirrors again. Loosened his grip on the wheel. Flicked on the headlights. Glanced at Natalie, still curled up in the passenger seat, her arms wrapped around the backpack, staring at him.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s figure out how they found us so fast.”

She relaxed a little.

“How long have they been after you?”

“Since I escaped. Four days ago.”

“Here in LA?”

“No.”

“Somewhere in California?”

“No. Colorado.”

“D’you know where in Colorado?”

“No. Just near the city.”

Hector ran some numbers in his head. Most of the big cities were on the far side of Colorado, a thousand miles away. If she was jumping on and off trains and buses, he could see it taking four days.

“And they followed you the whole time?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

He looked over at her. Examined her outfit. “Are all your clothes new? Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Even your underwear?”

“Yes. I didn’t have underwear at the Project. None of us did. They just had us wear thin shirts and pants with no pockets. Like some of the doctors wore.”

“Backpack?”

“I bought it at a store with the rest of my clothes.” As she spoke, Natalie loosened her grip on the pack but kept it in her lap.

“Did you keep the receipt from the store?”

“No. I threw it out with all the tags from the clothes.”

“Too bad. It’d give us an idea where in Colorado you were.” He glanced in the rearview mirror again. What looked like SUV headlights were two cars behind them. He split his attention between them and the road.

“So it’s not your bag,” he said. “Not on your clothes. Definitely not anything of Tim’s. He wouldn’t be that stupid, to leave any kind of GPS tag.”

“Global positioning system?”

“That’s right. Something else Tim told you about?”

“No. They talked about it at the Project sometimes.”

“Did they ever make you swallow anything?”

“They fed us three times a day.”

“Anything besides food and water?”

“Yes. We took pills sometimes.”

“What about a big pill?” asked Hector. “Maybe something plastic or metal?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He mulled it over. “Did they ever inject you with anything?”

“Yes. We got injections.”

“Any of them with a big needle?”

“Yes. If someone collapsed in the broken room, the doctors would put a big needle in their chest to start their heart again. It didn’t always work.”

Hector looked at her. “They did that to kids like you? The Gammas?”

“Yes. They did it to anyone who collapsed.”

“Did a lot of people collapse after going in the . . . the broken room?”

A tremor shot through her when he said it. “Yes.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. Until Tim talked to me.”

He made a mental note of that too. “But it was in special cases. There wasn’t a big needle they gave everyone?”

“I don’t know. There were lots of needles.”

In the rearview mirror, the SUV headlights slid across two lanes and vanished down an exit ramp. Hector watched to see if another car replaced it. Standard multicar tailing trick, passing off the watch between two or three different vehicles.

Nothing replaced the SUV. Whoever was after the girl didn’t seem like surveillance people, but he wasn’t going to make any assumptions.

He cleared his throat. “Did they ever make you go to sleep?”

Natalie started to answer. Stopped. Opened her mouth again. “Do you mean bed or anesthesia?”

“Your vocabulary’s kinda messed up for a little kid, you know that, right?”

“Yes.”

“I meant anesthesia.”

“Yes. Sometimes we had minor surgeries with local anesthesia.”

“To take things out or put things in?”

“I don’t know.”

Hector sighed and thought of some of the various things he’d had implanted in his body over the years.

Natalie inched higher in her seat. “Where are we going?”

“Right now we’re just getting out of the city. But not too far. Having a few million people around us works for now. We’re going to find a nice hotel somewhere and then we’ll stop for a bit.”

“To sleep?”

“Not yet. Are you tired?”

“Yes. A little.”

“Just hang on for a while.”

Natalie nodded once, then went back to looking out the window.

SEVEN

For a lower-end car, the Civic had a nice aftermarket stereo system. Hector didn’t turn it on. If they figured out he’d stolen the car, some smart person could start matching up satellite radio codes. Besides, music could be distracting. Multiple surges of adrenaline had washed their way through his system, and now he had to stay sharp even while fatigue weighed him down.

Three hours ago, he’d been sitting in his booth, looking forward to a somewhat blurry evening.

He looked over at Natalie. The backpack still sat in her lap. She looked out the window, staring at the freeway signs and exits going by.

“Here’s the deal,” Hector said. “From now on, if anybody asks and we haven’t talked about what to say, you’re my niece. We’re going to use my last name, De la Vega. Got it?”

She turned from the window and focused on him. “Yes.”

“You’re used to Natalie, so we’ll stick with that, but I’m going to call you Nat from now on.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re looking for Natalie. Nat’s shorter. It rings different in the ear. Just different enough they’ll have to think twice, maybe even overlook it. It’s a little thing that can make a big difference in the long run.”

She stared at him for a few more seconds, then said, “Okay.”

“Also, it’s shorter. Faster to say. I don’t want to be shouting ‘look out, Natalie’ when there’s an avalanche coming. Those extra two syllables, that’s time you could be running.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“Do you think we’re going to run into an avalanche?”

“What? No. No, that was just a joke, kid.”

“Oh. Is your last name De la Vega or Ramirez?”

“It’s been both of them, depending on when you asked me. I’m guessing you asked the other guy at the bar if he was Hector Ramirez.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you’re going to use De la Vega.”

She nodded. “Tim said he’s had different names too.”

He bit back a sigh and turned most of his attention back to the freeway. He looked past the exits, looking ahead and off the freeway, trying to get a sense of what they might find if they pulled off. He didn’t want gas stations or suburbia. He needed a certain level of hotel. Not so high-end they’d turn him away on sight, but not so low-end they wouldn’t have what he needed.

“So,” he said, “what’s in the broken room?”

Nat shifted in the passenger seat. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes.”

“Are the walls cracked or something?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Do they break things in the room? The doctors?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The doctors don’t break things.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Does talking about this scare you?”

“No. Yes.” She moved her thighs again, wiggled into a new position beneath the seat belt.

He tried to read her expression in the fading light. “Do you just not want to talk about this? I’m going to need to know soon, but it doesn’t have to be right this minute.”

“No.” She punctuated it with a hard cough. Her teeth clacked together as she closed her mouth.

“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

She swallowed. “The doctors get upset if we’re not precise,” she explained. “Even though most of us don’t speak good English. They get upset. Especially the one in charge, Dr. Lourale.”

Something knotted up in Hector’s gut, and he felt his jaw tighten. “Do they . . . did they punish you for not being precise?”

“Yes. Sometimes. The guards would push our heads or hit us. Dr. Lourale would grab our arms very hard. Or our chins. We had to be precise, and we had to obey. That was one of the first rules they told us.”

His fingers squeezed the steering wheel again, but his voice stayed calm. “I’m not going to punish you for not being precise.”

“I know. It . . . it’s hard. Not following the rules.”

“Nat,” he said, “how long were you there? At the Project?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you guess? It’s all right if you’re not precise.”

She was quiet for a long time.

“You don’t have to answer.”

“Years,” said Nat. “I was there for almost two years.”

He squeezed the steering wheel. “How old are you?”

“I’m not sure. I think I’m twelve now. Alejandra lost track of days.”

“Who’s Alejandra?”

“She’s my friend. Alejandra Gamma Fifteen. They kept us in the same room.”

A freeway sign tempted him with restaurants and lodging. He pulled off, followed some more signs, and saw a good-sized strip mall. The signs guided him around a turn, past a freeway entrance that would take him back toward LA proper, and then they drove into a small neighborhood with a vaguely Old West theme. They passed what looked like a tiny farm, or maybe a petting zoo, and Nat pressed her face against the passenger-side window.

The neighborhood rolled into two sprawling strip malls and then a trio of adequate-looking hotels. Big enough for multiple floors. The type that didn’t have actual restaurants but still had a little shop and maybe some kind of breakfast service. Hector drove past the first one, pulled into the one standing alone on the opposite side of the street. He unzipped the bicycle pack and selected a weather-beaten nylon wallet filled with cards, cash, and IDs.

Natalie stared up at the hotel. “Why here?”

“A lot of staying ahead of people is staying ahead of them up here,” said Hector. He tapped the side of his head with one finger as his other hand shoved the wallet into his back pocket. “Once you know how they think, you can get an idea how they think you’re going to think. And then you know how they’re going to act and react.”

She nodded.

He gestured at the hotel lobby. “We’re going to get a room. What’s your name?”

“Nat de la Vega.”

“Good girl. One more thing. When we’re in there, if I sigh like this”—Hector let out a low whistle of air, pushing it out between his lips—“I want you to count to ten and then complain about being tired.”

“How?”

“Just say something like ‘Dad, I’m tired.’ You can even sound a little whiny. Got it?”

“Yes.”

They went inside. A few people milled around the lobby, checking phones more than talking on them. Hector sized each of them up as he guided Natalie to the desk.

The woman behind the desk smiled. “Good evening. How can I help you?”

“Hi,” said Hector. “I know it’s kind of last-minute, but do you think we could get a room? Just for one night?”

“I think you’re in luck,” she said. “How many guests?”

“Three,” he said, tipping his head back toward the parking lot. “Two adults and the little one.”

The clerk tapped on her keyboard and named a price for a large room. Hector asked if there was anything smaller and the keyboard clicked some more. A new price was announced and agreed on. Hector slid an Oregon driver’s license from his wallet and handed it over. It had his picture and a name he’d only said out loud twice in the past four years.

“Do you mind if I pay cash?” Hector pulled some bills from the wallet. “I had to max out my card on a punctured radiator this morning.”

The woman twisted her lip. “I can take cash for the room, but I’ll still need a card for incidentals.”

Hector sighed. “Yeah, but the card’s maxed out.”

“I’m sorry. I need something.”

“I mean, can I just give you cash as, like, a deposit or something? We’re not even going to use anything.”

“It really needs to—”

“Dad,” whined Natalie. “I’m tired.”

He reached over, gave her head an affectionate scuff. “Just a minute, baby girl. We have to figure out how we’re gonna pay for the room.” He turned his eyes back to the clerk.

The woman met his gaze, then glanced over her shoulder at the office door. “No movies,” she said. “And please don’t take anything.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “Thanks so much.”

“I had to max out my card for a vet bill last month,” she said, tapping at the keyboard.

“It just messes up everything,” Hector said in agreement.

She slid the Oregon license back to him. “One room, two adults, one child, one night only.”

“Oh, do you think we could get a room on the first floor?” Hector asked the woman. He jerked his thumb back out at the parking lot. “Don’t want to haul everything up a couple flights of stairs if I don’t have to.”

The woman’s lip twitched. “Sorry,” she said, handing him a small cardboard sleeve. “We’re both kind of pushing our luck here.”

Hector let out a very practiced chuckle. “Fair enough.”

The woman chuckled back. Hers wasn’t as well practiced.

“Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.” She looked down at Natalie. “Sleep tight.”

Natalie stared back at the woman for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

They went back out to the car. “Good job in there,” said Hector.

“These are all our bags.”

“I know.”

“Why did you say we have more?”

“Because when people come looking for us, they’re going to be looking for two people traveling light.”

Her head did its side-to-side thing, like a little metronome.

“Traveling without any luggage. Just on the run with the clothes they’re wearing. But when they ask that woman, she’s going to remember us as a family of three with a lot of luggage.”

“Even though she didn’t see it?”

“Yeah. People fill in a lot of details on their own. You stay ahead by making sure they think what you want them to think.”

“You said we stayed ahead by knowing how they think.”

“There’s a lot of ways to stay ahead of the other guy. I try to use all of them.”

EIGHT

They waited by the car for five minutes while Hector watched the clerk through the hotel’s sliding glass doors. Another clerk, a man in a blazer, walked out of the office, talked with her for a moment, and then she walked away. Hector guided Natalie back through the lobby, holding the sleeve of key cards where the man at the desk would see them if he bothered to look.

The elevator carried them to the third floor. Not ideal. Hector glanced at the fire escape routes posted across from the elevator. Noted the door marked “staff only” by the ice machine.

A man walked past them in the hall and gave an absentminded nod. Hector’s arm tensed. Natalie leaned against him.

The key card opened their door. Hector closed it behind them, flipped the swing bar over, and twisted the lock. He stepped into the bathroom, tore the immaculately folded point off the toilet paper, and wadded it into a spitball he jammed over the door’s peephole.

Natalie stood in the middle of the room, staring in awe at everything. “Are we staying here?”

“No. Sorry. Just a quick stop to take care of a few things.”

“What things?”

“We need to make sure they can’t track us anymore. That the trail stops here.” He nodded at her backpack. “Is everything Tim gave you in there? The stuff he told you how to find?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

She tensed a bit, then slid the pack off her shoulders. Her fingers squeezed the straps. She looked him in the eyes and held the pack out.

“I’ll give it back,” Hector said. “I promise.”

“Yes. I know.”

The backpack weighed more than he expected. A Star Wars character decorated the back—the skinny woman with the white robes and a light saber. He unzipped the pack and slid the contents out onto the bed.

Four wallets, each with just enough of a bulge to show they held full identities. A pair of eyeglasses with what looked like very weak prescription lenses. A pair of aviator sunglasses. Four tightly wrapped cylinders of fifty-dollar bills, US currency, and a fourth cylinder of much more colorful money—Canadian at a glance, but some Mexican bills and euros toward the center, going off color. A folding knife with a pocket clip. Two P226 magazines loaded with 9mm hollow-point rounds.

“No pistol?”

“Yes. But Tim said not to take it. It would cause problems if someone saw it. I left it at the storage unit.”

“But you took the ammo?”

“Yes. He didn’t tell me not to.”

Hector nodded and ran his fingers through the items again. He’d hoped for one or two other things, even though they weren’t items in his getaway bag, either. “I’m going to go get some stuff,” he told her. “Will you be good here alone?”

Natalie shivered. “Yes.”

“It’ll be fine.”

She didn’t say anything.

He slid out of his jacket, tossed it on the bed. The T-shirt underneath was gym gray. It would do for now. He repositioned the pistol against the small of his back, untucked the shirt to cover it. “I promise, you’ll be safe. They might know what I look like, but they definitely know what you look like. So you have to stay hidden for now. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“It won’t be for long.” He poured some water into the room’s small coffeemaker, then gestured at the TV. “You can watch some cartoons or something.”

He took one of the key cards and made sure the door closed behind him.

The hotel didn’t have a shop, but it had three high-end-looking vending machines in an alcove just off the lobby. One had snacks, one had drinks, and one sold simple necessities. Aspirin. Toothpaste. Toothbrushes. An assortment of condoms took up most of the bottom row. Hector fed some bills into the machine and bought a three-pack of disposable razors, a packet of aspirin, and some Band-Aids.

It also had a small bar. Just half a dozen tall stools around a small curved counter that could probably be rolled away. The bartender was an older man wearing the same blue shirt as the woman at the front desk. He had maybe ten bottles behind him.

A drink or two would calm his nerves. Also help with the ache in his back and neck and shoulders. He hadn’t been in any sort of fight in years, and he could feel it. Maybe just one before he headed back up to the room.

Hector thought of the man in the suit grabbing Natalie’s arm. The look on her face. The fear shaded with betrayal.

He wandered out front, found a man smoking, and asked about bumming a cigarette and some matches. A quick bit of negotiating got him three cigarettes and a bright orange disposable lighter for five bucks. He smiled, thanked the man, and tossed the cigarettes in a trash can on his way across the lobby.

He stopped at the bar for one drink. Just a shot of whiskey, thrown back fast. He left a ten and told the bartender to keep the change. Not high enough to stand out, but not low enough to be remembered as cheap.

Back in the room, Natalie stood in the middle of the floor, almost exactly where he’d left her, her mouth making its tiny, nervous movements. Her shoulders dropped half an inch when she saw him. The television wasn’t on.

“No cartoons?”

“I didn’t want to make any noise.”

Hector got everything set up on the room’s small desk. He twisted two of the razors apart, splintering the plastic until he had four thin blades of steel lying on a washcloth. He set out the Band-Aids and two cups of water he’d boiled with the coffeemaker, along with the paper wrapper from one of the hotel glasses. Both spare rolls of toilet paper from the bathroom sat within easy reach.

“What are you doing?”

“Hopefully nothing,” he said. “Come here. I want to check you for scars.”

“Scars?”

“I think they might’ve implanted something in you. A tracking device.”

“Inside my body?”

“Yeah. Probably close to the surface in case they had to replace it for some reason. Under bones could make weird signal echoes, depending on what they were using.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.” He waved her closer.

Hector spent ten minutes going through her hair, looking for something hidden under her scalp. Under her jaw. The base of her skull. He pushed her sleeves up to her armpits and felt his way down her arms, looking for discolored flesh or bulges under the skin. He pushed her jeans up to her knees and ran his fingers along her skinny calves.

He turned her to face the wall away from him. “I’m going to lift your shirt in the back. Is that all right?”

“Yes. I trust you.”

He bundled the shirt in his fingers, lifted it up past her ribs, past her shoulders, to her—

There.

A thin pink line, maybe an inch and a quarter long, stretched between her spine and the top edge of her left shoulder blade. He could see the faint bulge under it. He ran his fingertips across it, pressed down, felt the shape beneath the skin.

“I’ve found it,” he said.

“Are you going to take it out?”

“I need to, yeah. Or they’ll keep finding us.”

Natalie pulled the back of her shirt up over her head, leaving her spine and shoulders exposed. She sat sideways on the desk chair. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure? I won’t lie to you. This will hurt. Do you want a towel or a pillow to yell into?”

“I won’t make any noise.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He pinched one end of a thin blade, lifted it, and passed it through the lighter flame until it was hot enough to sting his fingertips. “Still ready?”

“Yes.”

Hector slid the blade along her scar, pushing as deep as he dared. The skin parted and blood welled out. He grabbed a wad of toilet paper and caught the streams as they ran down her back.

She shuddered but didn’t make any noise.

The toilet paper stuck to her back. He used his thumb and fingers to pull the cut open a little more. For a moment he was worried he hadn’t gone deep enough, and then a blood-covered cylinder rose up out of the wound and settled against the wad of tissue. He tossed the blade into the paper wrapper and wrapped the toilet paper around the tracker.

“We got it,” he said. “You still good?”

“Yes.” But her voice trembled a bit.

He took one of the cups of water. It had cooled but should still be more or less sterile. He pressed the whole roll of toilet paper below the incision and poured water on it in quick bursts. The blood rinsed out, soaked into the paper, and the cut swelled with red again.

After a few more rinses, the blood slowed a bit. He stretched three Band-Aids across the gash, pulling it shut. Then he rinsed it one more time and dabbed it dry with the last of the toilet paper. “You’re really brave,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I’ve had to do less than this to soldiers, and some of them cried and whimpered like little gir . . . well, they weren’t as tough as you. You can pull your shirt down.”

She did. “Are we safe now?”

“We will be soon.” He peeled back the blood-soaked wad open to reveal the tracker. “They chipped you. Like you were a dog.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You should heal fine. The scar’s going to be pretty big, but nobody’ll ever see it back there.”

“Tim says scars are awards your body gives you for surviving things.”

Hector smiled. “Sounds like him.”

“Do you have scars?”

The smile dropped off his face. “I’ve got enough.”

He walked to the sink. Washed off his hands. Rinsed off the tracker. Set it in the steel soap dish. Then he tossed the bloody wad into the toilet, flushed it, and tore one of the soaked rolls into chunks.

She watched him. Her head went side to side.

“We don’t want to leave any blood here,” he explained, tossing the first chunk into the bowl. “Mine’s definitely on file somewhere, and I’m willing to bet yours is too. Even if they weren’t, the cleaning crew will remember finding a bunch of bloody towels and they’ll tell someone. Especially if that someone flashes a badge.”

She looked at the mangled roll of paper. “So we flush everything down the toilet.”

“You got it. Even the blade I cut you with. It all gets flushed away.” He pressed the lever down again. “Get everything loaded back into your pack. We’re going to leave in a few minutes.”

Once the bloody paper had all been flushed, he splashed some water on his face and picked up the last razor. A few careful passes cleaned up his face. The thick stubble off his upper lip and chin. Smooth cheeks. He tugged the blade at his minimal sideburns, raising them even higher.

It didn’t change his face a lot, but it’d change the way people registered his face. Borderline homeless man to respectable father figure, just like that. He’d need a new coat too. First thing tomorrow. And then he’d figure out what to do with this kid.

He scrubbed his face with the towel. “Let’s get out of here. You ready?”

She pulled the backpack up onto her shoulders. “Yes.”

They took the stairs down to the ground floor, walked down a hall leading away from the lobby and out a side door. They circled the hotel back to their car, and Hector paused to slide the tracker into an oversized potted plant near the front door. Then they were in the car, pulled out, and made their way back to the freeway.

Hector got them up to speed, matching the other vehicles, and they headed into the night.

NINE

Hector found the dead spots in the traffic, the long stretches with no one around them. Cars up ahead, cars behind, but none within a few hundred yards. He analyzed any vehicle that came closer, finding new dead zones as needed.

Across from him, Natalie settled into the passenger seat and stared out at the night. She leaned her head back, gazing up through the side window. Her backpack was in her lap again, but her hands just rested on it.

“You feeling good?” Hector asked.

“Yes.”

“Your back doesn’t hurt?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“It hurts, but we got hurt a lot. It raised our pain thresholds.”

“Yeah. There’s that vocabulary again.”

“It’s how people talked at the Project.”

“I figured.”

“Where are we going?”

He pictured the area north of LA in his mind. “I think we’re going to drive for twenty minutes or so and then find a good-sized gas station. I’m going to fill up the tank and get a really big coffee. After that, the plan is we drive until morning, see where we end up. Maybe we’ll find a rest stop and get a couple hours of sleep there.”

“Will you be okay?”

“Me?”

“Driving without any sleep?”

“I haven’t done it in a while, but I think I’ve still got a couple all-nighters left in me.”

Her head tipped left, then right as she stared at him. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’ll be fine.”

“Good.”

“And somewhere in there we can finally talk about you. And how you know Tim.” He glanced over at her. “Do you think we can do that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not too tired?”

“No. A little. I’ll be okay.”

A pair of headlights zoomed up behind them, whipped past, and kept going. Some little coupe sports car. Just some kid enjoying the long, straight stretch of freeway.

“We should get new clothes too,” Hector said after a few minutes of quiet. “Even if they haven’t ID’d me, they’ve got descriptions of both of us. Time to change into something else.”

She whispered something under her breath.

He glanced at her. “No?”

“Tim agrees with you. He asked if I was attached to the backpack.” She patted the glossy nylon bag in her lap. “I said no.”

Something crawled up Hector’s back, like a spider seeking the high ground. “What?”

“Tim agrees with you. He asked if I—”

“He’s talking to you right now?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I hear him?”

“You weren’t in the broken room.”

“But he’s here?”

“No.”

Hector fought back another swelling urge to pound the steering wheel. “So he’s not here, but you can hear him and see him?”

“No.”

“You just said you could.”

“No. I said I could hear him. I can’t hear him and see him.”

His grip made the steering wheel creak. So it would be a “twenty questions” conversation. As much up to what he asked as what she answered.

“You can’t see him?”

“Yes.”

“You just . . . wait, yes, you can’t see him?”

“Yes.” She gave him a frustrated stare.

“Sorry. I know, you’re trying to be exact.”

“Yes. Precise.”

Up ahead of them on the freeway, a car crawled along, going at least ten miles an hour slower than the surrounding traffic and stubbornly refusing to switch lanes. Hector checked behind him, made sure no one was close enough for a sudden block-and-smash move, and then slid into another lane. He zipped past the car, let it slip behind them, and then moved back.

“All right,” he continued. “So Tim isn’t here, you can’t see him, but you can hear him.”

“Yes.”

“Can he see you? Or me?”

Natalie studied her backpack. Patted it with her hands. Studied it some more. “No.”

“Kind of a pause there.”

“Yes.”

Hector thought back over the question and how he’d phrased it. “Could he see you or me, if something was different?”

“Yes.”

“Can you—would you explain that?”

She wrapped her arms around the backpack. “I could let him see. And hear. But then I couldn’t.”

“He’d be seeing and hearing instead of you?”

“Yes. If I let him in, it means I lose everything.”

“Lose everything. You mean you die?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Would it make more sense if I knew everything?”

“Yes.”

Another car rushed up behind them. It lingered there long enough for Hector’s hand to come off the steering wheel and drift down toward the pistol. It flashed its lights and his fingers settled on the grip. Then it roared around them and sped off down the freeway.

Hector lifted his hand back up to the steering wheel.

Up ahead he saw a glowing white-and-blue sign just off the freeway. The gas station he’d been looking for. He pulled off, parked the car to hide Natalie from the collection of cameras above the gas pumps, and left his jacket on the driver’s seat when he went inside.

A quick path through the store gave him a bottle of water, an energy drink, an extra-large coffee with two shakes from the canister of powdered creamer, and forty dollars of prepaid gasoline. At the register he grabbed a package of mini donuts too. He cracked open the energy drink while the cashier counted up his change, and it was gone before he made it back to the car.

He leaned into the Civic, handed Natalie the water, and slid the packet of vending-machine aspirin out of his coat pocket. “Water to help you swallow. Donuts for afterward.”

She held the water. Stared at it while he pumped gas. Didn’t reach for the donuts.

Hector filled the tank, holstered the gas nozzle, climbed back into the car. Natalie hadn’t opened the water, the pills, or the donuts. He reached beneath the steering wheel to start the car again. “Have some aspirin.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Not now. But it might in an hour. Take the aspirin now, get ahead of it.”

“I don’t like pills.”

“I figured. But we’re trusting each other, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s just aspirin. If you don’t want to take it, I won’t make you. But you might be in pain later and we won’t be able to slow down because of it.”

Natalie picked up the donuts, turned the package over in her hands, and tore one end open. She plucked out a donut, and a light dusting of white powder drifted over her Captain Marvel T-shirt. The donut went into her mouth. She stared at him.

“All right,” he said. “No aspirin. Don’t complain to me later.”

She chewed the donut.

He took a deep sip of his coffee, set it into one of the ergonomic cup holders—right where he wanted it to be—and got them back on the freeway.

They drove in silence for ten minutes. They’d made it past the range of Los Angeles rush hour, both in distance and in time, and the cars had thinned out. The freeway lights vanished, the dark swallowed them, and a knot between Hector’s shoulders loosened a bit.

“We’ve got enough gas to get us up to the Bay Area,” he said. “It’s a good four- or five-hour drive. I think we’re safe for now.”

The dashboard lit up Natalie’s face. She pushed another donut into her mouth. Flecks of white on her lips stood out like little stars in the dark. She stared at him as she chewed.

“So,” he said. “This might be a good time to start explaining things.”

Natalie cracked the seal on the water bottle and took three big gulps. She held the bottle with both hands while she did. She licked the last of the powdered sugar off her fingers, set the packet with the remaining donuts into another cup holder—they were all over the car—and had a last swallow of water before twisting the cap back on.

Then she told him everything.

PART TWO
THE PROJECT

TEN

I remember when Father said we had to leave Santa Ana, because it was right after we buried Mama.

She’d been sick for a long time. I was little, so nobody wanted to talk about it around me, but it was cancer. I heard enough to know, and I asked a teacher at school. She said lots of people get better from cancer, but not everyone. I knew she meant Mama was one of the ones who wouldn’t get better.

Father would go to the hospital every day and take me with him every other day. We had my eighth birthday there with Mama. Sometimes I had to wait in the hall because she felt very sick and didn’t want to scare me. All her hair was gone and she looked very old. She smiled at me whenever we were together, but they were always sad smiles. Sometimes I cried on the way home. Sometimes Father cried too.

Mama died after summer ended. It was on one of the days when Father went alone. He didn’t come home for a long time. When he did come home, he just hugged me for hours.

Grandfather was there when they buried Mama’s body. He talked with Father after everyone else had said nice things, away from Mama’s stone. They were angry. They used lots of words I didn’t know. And some I wasn’t supposed to know.

On the way home, Father tried to explain things to me. Bad men had wanted him to do his job in a bad way, but Mama had protected us. She kept bad things from happening to Father and to me, because Grandfather wanted her to be happy. But now that she was gone, the bad things had to happen. Father thought they might be very bad, because they had been good for so long.

So we were going to leave Santa Ana and go to America. I didn’t want to leave our home and my room and my friends, but Father said we had to. The bad men would find us if we stayed. Lots of people were going to America. We would be safe there.

People came with us in Father’s nice car. One was his sister, Gabby. She had a cat named Quasimodo but had to leave him behind, and it made her very sad. She talked about him a lot. The other two people worked with Father.

We drove in the car all day, but we stopped a lot. There were borders and soldiers. One time the soldiers got angry because one of Father’s work friends, Daniel, didn’t have any paper. Daniel said everything would be fine and stayed with the soldiers and we kept going. This made Father’s other work friend, Esmy, very sad. She cried a lot.

At the end of the day, we stopped at another border. A country border. Father talked to the guards for a long time. We had to leave his nice car there, but they let all of us cross into Mexico.

From that point on, we walked. We carried everything. Father carried both our bags. Gabby carried hers. Esmy tried to carry her bag and Daniel’s, but at the end of the first week she traded his for some food and drinks for all of us. She kept two of Daniel’s neckties and wore them at the same time, tucked in her shirt.

We walked a lot. We slept outside. Father and Gabby slept on either side of me on cold nights to keep me warm. Sometimes Esmy slept next to Gabby too. Once it rained on us and Gabby got sick. She sneezed a lot and was always cold. She had a fever. Father asked if she wanted to rest for a day, but she wanted to keep walking. She moved very slow, but she got better in a few days.

Other people walked with us. They were going to America too. Some of them stopped in towns to spend the night with friends or family. They did not always come back to walk in the morning. Some came to tell us they were staying. Others we just never saw again.

We had been walking for several days when we met the first man with the truck. Father and Gabby and Esmy talked with him, but they said he wanted too much. Gabby told me later the man wanted to give Esmy lots of kisses because she was pretty, but Esmy didn’t want to kiss the man. I understood because a boy at school had tried to kiss me and I hit him. I got in trouble, and I knew Esmy didn’t want to get in trouble.

We walked on roads, and one time across a field. Some of the roads were dirt, but most of them were gray and hard. I was hungry a lot. Father bought us food for lots of days. Then he gave people things. Exchanges were made.

One time soldiers came and asked everyone questions. Father answered all the questions and gave one of the soldiers his wristwatch. The soldiers were happy, and they let us keep walking. Father thought they were going to give us a ride, and he said lots of bad words about the soldiers for the rest of that day. And some of the next day.

My bag was heavy. Not really heavy, but heavy for me because I was small. It had wheels so sometimes I could roll it on the road, but other times I had to carry it. I wanted to leave it behind, but Father said I had to bring it. It was all I had, and I would miss it later. So I kept rolling it and carrying it.

He was right. I do miss it. And him.

My feet swelled from all the walking, and had blisters and lesions. I wanted to take my shoes off, but Father said that would make things even worse. My socks turned red. My feet made lots of scabs and scars. Awards my body gave me for surviving.

A man gave us a ride in his car. He and Father talked about crime and bad men and Mama. The man could only drive us for a day, but it made Father and Gabby and Esmy very happy. The car had carried us farther than we could’ve walked in five days. The man said he was sorry and gave Father a little money. We spent it on food in a town. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember it tasted very good.

We walked for more days. Lots of people walked with us now. They all wanted to go to America. Some of them had family there. Others had friends. A few just talked about how much better things would be there.

I wanted things to be better. I wanted Father to be happy. He tried to look happy for me, but I knew he’d been sad since Mama died.

We walked along a city, but we didn’t go through it. The capital. It was loud and beautiful and tall and scary and exciting. So much bigger than Santa Ana. Father was worried, and he was happy when we had gone past it. He said it was a good place to live but not to visit. Gabby laughed when he said it.

Two more days of walking. One of the wheels broke on my little suitcase, and I had to lean to one side to make it roll. It made my wrist hurt. Most of the time I just dragged it. Father dragged his bag too. So did Esmy. Gabby carried hers on her back.

Then we met the second man with a truck. He said he would take us all the way to America, but we would have to pay him. He and Father and Esmy talked about it while Gabby stayed with me. Gabby didn’t like the man and said I shouldn’t trust men like him who wanted things.

The man and Esmy went away to sit in the truck, and when they came back Esmy looked sad but she told me we could ride in the truck now. Father hugged her and so did Gabby. I was happy, because I knew we were finally going to reach America and we wouldn’t have to walk anymore.

But the man said he would only let two of us ride in the truck. If we all wanted to go, Gabby would have to go sit with him too. He said a word I didn’t know in Spanish or English. I’d heard it before, but I didn’t know what it meant. I just knew it was a bad word.

Father and Esmy and Gabby got angry. They yelled at the man. He yelled back. Then the man had friends. Everybody kept yelling. Father put his suitcase in the back of the truck and then put mine in there too. He yelled at Gabby and Esmy to put their bags in the truck.

One of the man’s friends had a gun. He pulled it out of his coat and shot Father two times. Father fell down and coughed a lot like Mama did. He told me he loved me like Mama did. He told Gabby to take care of me. He kissed me and held my hand and got quiet and then he let go of my hand when he died.

The man felt bad and said he would take us to America. Gabby and Esmy yelled at him. But we got in the truck and he drove us for a little bit and then told us to get out. Gabby said we weren’t at America and called the man lots of names. He drove away before we could get Father’s suitcase out of the back.

We walked some more with lots of other people. I remember when we saw America. I think it had been two months since we left Santa Ana. Lots of people were happy. But we met some people who were sad. They said America had become a scary place. People at the border were angry and mean.

Gabby told me it didn’t matter. We couldn’t go back. And it was still better than things would have been for us in El Salvador.

We got in lines and waited for a very long time. Esmy went off in another line. We never saw her again. Gabby carried me and told me to say she was my mama. She said they’d keep us together if we were family.

She was wrong.

The Americans took us to separate rooms. They took my suitcase. They asked questions about me and about Gabby, but it was like getting in trouble at school. They didn’t listen to what I said. They had already decided what they were going to do.

I saw Gabby one more time. She was in a line on the other side of a big room. She looked sad and tired, more than she ever had while we were walking. I yelled her name, but so many people in the big room were talking in different languages that my voice didn’t go far. She didn’t hear me. I yelled her name again and again, but she never heard me or saw me. An American soldier in spotted clothes told me to stop yelling. They closed a door and I never saw her again.

The Americans put me in a different room with other children close to my age. Some of them were older than me, but many of them were younger. They were all scared. People came and asked our names and ages and where we were from and where our parents were. The people wrote down the answers and then we got on a bus. It felt like going to school except there was a man with black clothes and a big gun who stood in the front and watched us. One of the boys tried to make a joke about how scared the man must be to need such a big gun and the man yelled at him. I don’t think he understood the joke. He just yelled at the boy for talking.

They took us off the bus and put us in cages. There were five of us in my cage. Three boys, two girls. The littlest boy was only three. He cried all the time. We didn’t have beds or a toilet. We took turns sleeping on each other, using bellies and legs for pillows.

We were there for lots of days. I don’t know how long. Weeks. Maybe months. There were no windows and they never shut the lights off. When they gave us food it was cold and mushy. Sometimes they would take us to a bathroom, but sometimes we had to pee or poop in the corner of the cage. And then some of the guards would laugh at us and call us names.

We asked for food. We asked for water. We asked for beds. We asked for our mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles. Most of the soldiers didn’t speak any Spanish. Many of them ignored us. Lots of them teased us and laughed at us.

Another boy in our cage got sick. He didn’t eat. His skin got pale and clammy, and he shivered all the time. We tried to keep him warm, but we were scared everybody would get sick. After a couple of days the soldiers took him away. We never saw him again.

One time, doctors came. Some of them spoke Spanish. They checked our temperature and blood pressure and pupil dilation. They took samples. Some of them gave out pills to a few children, and we all felt better for a while.

Another time they moved us to different cages. Clean cages with blankets. A man with a necktie walked through and smiled and laughed. He said things to us but none of the children understood. Then he laughed more. People took pictures of him standing near our cages. When he left, the soldiers took us back to where we started. They let us keep the blankets. One of the older girls said it was Christmas, but I didn’t believe her because it didn’t feel like Christmas.

We had been there for several more weeks when new doctors came to look at us. Scientists. They ran all the tests again. Made sure we were healthy. Many of them spoke Spanish. They asked us our names and gave some of us thin plastic wristbands with lots of letters and numbers on them. They gave me one. The other girl in our cage, Victoria, also got a wristband. Neither of the boys did. The little boy cried about that too.

After the doctors left, the soldiers gathered up all the children in the room who had bracelets. There were twenty-three of us. I counted while we stood in line. They took us all to another bus, one with black windows. There were already some children in the seats. They drove us for a little while and then picked up even more children. We had to sit three or four to a seat. Seventy-nine of us altogether, all wearing wristbands. Thirty-seven boys and forty-two girls.

The bus drove us for a while. Lots of kids fell asleep. I did too. After the cages, the bus seats were so soft and comfortable. I sat next to a boy named Osmin and we slept leaning on each other.

We woke up when the bus stopped. It was nighttime. They had us all get off. We were in a big parking lot, surrounded by fences. There was another bus with even more children. There were more soldiers here, but in different uniforms. And more doctors. I recognized two of them from when we were all tested. They guided us around the buses and through a pair of big doors—like on a church but metal and smooth.

I looked up just before we went inside and saw the sky and the stars and the moon.

Then the doors closed, and I didn’t see the sky again for almost two years.

ELEVEN

Once we were inside the Project building, they split us up. All the boys went with one group. All the girls went with a different one. They had us walk down a twisty staircase to a door with a white sign that said SB-2 on it. On the other side of the door was a long hallway with bright tube lights. The floor was black and white squares. The walls were made of big concrete bricks that had been painted a very pale blue.

They had us line up again and looked at our wristbands and asked us more questions. A woman with dark red hair—I learned later she was called West—asked me my name and birthday. A soldier stood behind her while she talked, and another man with a plastic bag and a computer tablet. She asked me about Father and Mama and if they’d ever been sick. I told her Mama had died of cancer and she asked me what kind but I didn’t know. West asked me about pets and allergies and if I’d seen doctors before and what for.

When I answered all her questions she looked at the letters and numbers on my wristband and cut it off with a pair of scissors. The other man, not the soldier, took a bracelet out of his bag and handed it to her. It was red and made of hard plastic. A light flashed inside it when she snapped it on my wrist. She told me not to play with it and then all three of them went to the next girl and West asked what her name and birthday was.

When all of us had bracelets, they took us to a new room, a big room with benches. They said they were going to let us clean up and someone would do laundry. West and another woman spoke Spanish, but the others said it in English. They gave us plastic bags to put all our clothes in. They would all be cleaned for us and be waiting in our rooms. One girl asked if we should write our names on the bags, and one of the women said we didn’t need to. Then the men went outside, and the women told us to get undressed.

All of us were nervous. The women clapped their hands and told us to hurry or we wouldn’t get dinner. They kept clapping and telling us to move faster.

A girl near me took off her skirt and shoes but tried to keep her shirt on. One of the women yelled at her in English. When the girl cried, the woman grabbed her, pulled her shirt off, and stuffed it in the bag. The woman had rubber gloves on.

I put my clothes in the bag. The shirt Father had bought me. My favorite jeans. The lucky yellow socks Mama had given me. The sneakers I’d walked to America with. Then I used the bag to cover myself. The room wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm. I tried to take off my bracelet, but it wouldn’t open like before. It was too tight to go over my hand.

Once most of us had our clothes off, they guided us into another room. It was all white tile with drains in the floor. There were poles with shower-pipes on them, and shower-pipes on some of the walls.

The showers all came on at once. The water was cold at first, and I yelled. Lots of girls yelled. But then it got warm, and it was like taking a nice bath. They had us wash our hair and then wash it again. The soap smelled like bad medicine and made my head tingle like a sunburn. We washed hands and feet, arms and legs and bellies and shoulders. After the cages, it felt good to be clean.

The showers shut off, they gave us towels, and then everybody got hospital clothes. Just until our other clothes were clean, they said. West and the one woman yelled in Spanish while the others yelled it in English. Hurry up and get dressed! Thin green pants and gray T-shirts. No shoes. No socks. No underwear. We all got the same sizes. The pants were very loose and the shirt was too big. One girl was too big for her shirt, and I saw many like me who were too short for the pants. I tried to say something, but nobody listened to me, so I rolled the pants up around my ankles.

They cut our hair. They just grabbed it all tight in a ponytail and cut it off with scissors. Snip-snip-snip, Mama used to say when she cut my hair, but this was just one snip. It was very quick and scary. Lots of girls cried. I was too scared to cry. I remember I had hair stuck to my feet because they were still wet from the shower.

We went down a hall with a cold floor and bright lights and a lot of doors. Then we waited in line and some boys came and got in line. They had all been cleaned, too, and they wore the same green pants and gray shirt.

The boy I was looking at scratched his head—his hair had been cut, too—and I remember his bracelet was bright yellow because it reminded me of my lucky socks when they were fresh and clean. I looked around and saw lots of children had different-color bracelets. Some had red bracelets like mine, but there were yellow and blue and black ones too.

Then I smelled hot food. All the other children smelled it too. I wasn’t sure if the others had been in cages, but everyone was happy at the thought of hot food.

The line moved and they gave us trays like at school, with little compartments for the different food. There were cubes of chicken and corn and lentils and rice. They gave us plastic spoons and cups of water and had us all sit at long tables with long benches. The men and women and guards all walked between the tables and told us in Spanish and English that we had ten minutes to eat and we had to eat everything. Most of them yelled at us in English.

The food was good. Maybe it wasn’t, but we’d had bad food for so long it tasted good. Some of the children even laughed and said how lucky we were to have been chosen to come here. We didn’t know it was the Project yet. We all just called it here. For a long time, that’s all we knew it was. We were all Here now.

After the meal they got us all in line again. A man with glasses waited at the front of the line, and as the soldiers walked us past him, he tapped the inside of our elbows and pressed a tube against our arms. It made a pop sound and every child jumped. He did it quick so nobody had time to get scared, but some children cried afterward. When it was my turn he pressed the tube against the skin of my arm, and I felt a bite when it popped, like the tube had lots of needles in it that all stabbed at once. The girl behind me asked if we were all sick from being in the cages, but nobody answered her.

We were taken to bathrooms. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Stalls, like in school again. They told us to do what we had to, because we would not get to use the bathroom again until morning. We all did what we had to and got back in line.

They split us up into four groups. All of us with red bracelets were in the same group. Seventeen boys, eighteen girls. A man led us down a hallway, clapping his hands and waving at us. Two soldiers walked behind us. One of the soldiers was a woman.

The man led us to a hallway with a big red stripe down both walls. There were three doors on each side, and the man started touching heads, guiding us to rooms one at a time. He didn’t speak to any of us. I was the tenth person in line. His hand turned my head to point at one door, and he gave me a push.

I walked into the room. There were three bunk beds. Each one had a thin mattress, a thin blanket, and a thin pillow. A girl younger than me sat on one of the lower beds. She had folded the pillow in half and hugged it to herself. I told her my name was Natalie. She didn’t say anything, so I sat next to her and hugged her.

Another girl came in. She looked at both of us, then sat down on the other side of the pillow girl and hugged her too. Then another girl came in. And another. There wasn’t any more room on the bed, so they stood in front and we all hugged each other.

A last girl came in. She was tall and skinny, and her arms hung long out of the gray T-shirt. She looked at us, looked at the beds, and just stood in the middle of the room.

The man yelled something in the hall. In English. He said it twice. Something about minutes.

“They’re turning off the lights,” whispered one of the last girls to join the hug. We all looked up at the two long tubes in the ceiling. They were under a metal screen.

Behind the skinny girl, the door swung shut on its own. It closed with a thump and locked with a click. It had a square window, maybe the size of a book. There was wire in the glass to make it strong.

The man called out again.

Skinny stepped to one of the other bunk beds and climbed up to the top. She stretched out and sighed. “It’s better than the cages.”

The first girl to join the hug, the one with jet-black hair, let go and went over to the opposite bed. She rolled onto the bottom bunk and slid her legs under the blanket. The girl in front of me went to the bunk under Skinny, and the other girl reached for the frame of the bed we were on to lift herself up to the top bunk.

The lights went out and everything was dark. I gasped. The girl I was hugging cried even louder. Someone else in our room shrieked, which made someone else cry out, and the girl with me sobbed even more. I could hear other cries and wails through the walls, through the cracks around the door. Some light still came in through the little window. The big hall lights were off, but other, smaller lights had turned on.

After a few minutes my eyes adjusted. I asked the girl if she would be okay. She didn’t answer but she cried less. Her hug got loose, and then she slumped on the bed.

I patted her arm the way Mama used to pat mine, and then I climbed up to the last empty bunk. The bed frame was cold. The mattress was thick enough if I stayed flat on my back. “I’m Natalie,” I told the dark room.

“Nery,” said a voice.

“I’m Sara,” came from the bunk beneath me.

There was quiet, and then Skinny said, “Tabora.”

The crying girl and the other girl said nothing.

“Are they taking us home?” asked Sara.

“I think this is jail,” Nery said. “I think we’re in prison.”

“It’s not a prison,” said Tabora. “Prison is bad.”

“This is bad,” I said.

“Prison is worse.”

“The people in uniform are guards,” said Nery. “Not soldiers. Prisons have guards.”

“It’s not a prison,” Tabora said again.

“It’s like a hospital,” whispered the girl with jet-black hair. “It’s a hospital for crazy people.”

“I’m not crazy,” said Nery.

“Neither am I,” I agreed.

After a while, Tabora said, “It’s still better than the cages.”

“I just want to see my parents again,” said Sara. “Maybe they’re cleaning us up before they bring us back to our parents.”

Nobody said anything. We all wanted it to be true. We all knew it wasn’t.

TWELVE

The next morning, the lights came on in our little room. The door opened. The people outside clapped their hands until we were all out in the hall.

They made us shower again and gave us new clothes the same as the old ones. Green doctor pants. Gray T-shirt. No underwear or socks or shoes. One of the girls asked if our own clothes had been cleaned yet. Nobody answered her.

Once the boys and girls were together again, we waited in line and they gave us breakfast. A scoop of scrambled eggs with vegetables in them. Juice. I sat with Nery and the jet-black–haired girl, and the crying girl followed us. She’d stopped crying but still wouldn’t talk.

I asked Nery if she’d seen anyone else she knew, but one of the guards snapped her fingers and pointed at us. More clapping. More loud talking. No Spanish this time, but they said “minutes” three times. I recognized that word, even in English. They were telling us to hurry again.

After breakfast, we all saw doctors. They took us up to the stairs and we waited in line and they took us four at a time, each to a separate room. The room they took me to was like the nurse’s at school. Small but with a doctor’s office packed into it. We were measured and weighed. They looked in eyes and ears. Down throats and up noses. Wrapped things on our arms. Clipped things on our fingers. Went through our hair. Checked our teeth. Checked our fingernails. They stuck us with needles and took out blood. Stuck us with other needles and put in clear liquids. My arm hurt from all the injections. They poked our stomachs and necks and backs. They sent us into small rooms and had us pee in little plastic cups with lids.

Nobody spoke to us in Spanish. They repeated words in English. Sometimes they pointed. A few times they would just grab an arm or a hand or move our head for us. If we talked too much in Spanish, they would give us little slaps on the head.

After seeing the doctor, they took us back down to a big room and had us run around. It was like school, before playing football. I was glad to move after so long in the cages and being locked in the room. But they had us keep going. We could walk, but we couldn’t stop to rest. Even a heavy boy, who we learned was named Jareth. They clapped at him and poked him and pushed him to keep going.

Three of the boys and two of the girls were bald now. They’d had bugs in their hair, so it was all cut off. The girls were embarrassed to be bald. So was one of the boys. The other two didn’t care. They said it was less itchy and they thought it made them look tough.

It was only children with red bracelets. We hadn’t realized yet that we were being isolated. All the groups were.

After exercise we lined up for lunch. Then more exercise. And then dinner. After dinner we were given bags with a toothbrush and yellow liquid to swish in our mouths. And then we showered and were given new green pants and new gray T-shirts.

And then back to our rooms. Everyone in the same room. Me. Sara. Nery. Tabora. The crying girl. The girl with jet-black hair. A few minutes later the lights went out.

In the dark, our blankets and pillows smelled clean too. Washed, or maybe just replaced. Everything new.

The next day, we did it all again. Wake up. Cleaning. Breakfast. Doctors. Exercise. Lunch. More exercise. Dinner. More cleaning. Back to our rooms.

And the day after that. And the day after that. And we kept doing it for many, many days. Maybe weeks. Tabora tried to make marks on the wall, but her fingernails couldn’t scratch the paint. And then they trimmed all our nails.

Every night, we whispered and compared notes of what we’d seen and heard and learned. Over the many days, we learned several things. Some of them we didn’t understand until much later.

The girl with jet-black hair was named Alejandra. The crying girl was Patricia. One of the boys in our group was Osmin, who I’d sat with on the bus that brought us from the cages. The youngest girl in our whole red-bracelet group was Isabel. She was four. We called her Izzy to make her smile.

Tabora was the oldest child in our whole group. She was thirteen, just small for her age. She’d lied and told them she was eleven hoping they might be nice to her. She had an older brother, but he’d been left back at the cages.

Sometimes I would see Dr. West, the red-haired woman I’d met when I first arrived. There was another physician I saw a few times, but she was meaner than West. The boys said there was a male doctor named Connors.

The doctor in charge of everything was named Dr. Lourale. Everyone always said his whole name and title, even though some of the other doctors just used their names with each other. Tabora thought he made them say it like that. Dr. Lourale almost never smiled and almost never spoke directly to us. He was tall and skinny, and his clothes were always wrinkled. He had a thick mustache and not a lot of hair on his head. His eyes were very green, like little hard jewels.

Dr. Lourale never wrote anything down. There was a young postdoc who followed him around, Kirk, who would make notes for him. Kirk was a prodigy and he had a computer tablet decorated with toy gears and pipes to make it look like an old machine, the way some children made their tablets different colors or have designs on them. He had short blond hair and smiled at us a lot, but sometimes when he did one side of his face moved slowly. Sara heard West say one time that Kirk had a palsy from direct exposure.

The doctors and assistants and guards never spoke Spanish to us, but for a few days we also saw different postdocs who tried different languages, like a test. One of them we saw a lot was completely bald and very mean. He always did things fast and blamed us for not keeping up. When he gave us the language tests, I recognized Portuguese. Sara said one was German. Tabora was pretty sure they’d asked her something in Japanese or maybe Chinese. None of us could speak other languages, except for Nery who spoke a little bit of English.

Nery had to help us all, because English was the only language they allowed. If we spoke in Spanish or used the wrong English word, they’d yell at us and clap hands near our ears. Some of them would smack our shoulders or the tops of our heads. So we all tried to learn as many English words as we could. If the doctors used words we didn’t know, we’d try to remember them and bring them to her.

We never got our clothes back. Sara wanted to believe they were saving them for when our parents came. Tabora said they’d been thrown away. I thought Tabora was probably right.

We asked for socks or underwear with our hospital clothes, but they ignored us. They almost always ignored us. The doctors. The assistants. The guards. They never answered any of our questions.

Our whole group was called Gammas, everyone with a red bracelet. Nery said Gamma was a kind of letter, but one of Osmin’s friends, Juan José, said it meant we were like the Hulk. Juan José was one of the boys who’d had his head shaved. I didn’t think he was very smart.

We almost never saw any of the other children, but we learned the ones with yellow bracelets were Betas. One time by the doctors’ offices, I saw Victoria, who I’d been locked in the cages with so long ago. Her bracelet was black, and she managed to tell me they were Alphas.

Every day we got food and got tested and exercised. After the cages, some children gained weight. A few, like Jareth, lost weight. Alejandra had grown up on a small farm, and one night she said it felt the way they treated us was the way her family treated livestock. Like they were trying to get us healthy.

A few days after that, we found out she was right.

We all agreed it had been at least a month when we all started hearing a new word. Quarantine. We didn’t know what it was, but it had ended, or was about to end, and the doctors were happy. Especially Dr. Lourale. I saw him smile once, but it always looked like he was only pretending to smile.

One morning we were cleaned and clothed and fed. But then they took us back to our rooms. We all walked in, not sure what was happening, and the door closed behind us.

Then we realized Patricia wasn’t with us. She hadn’t come back into the room, or maybe she hadn’t even been in line. None of us were sure.

We waited and waited, but the door didn’t open and Patricia didn’t come back. My stomach rumbled, and Tabora said she thought we had missed lunch. Nery thought we were being punished.

The door finally opened and one of the guards stepped in. He had one of the tablet devices the assistants used to identify bracelets. He held it out, we stuck out our arms like we’d been taught, and he waved it across the bracelets. It passed over Sara’s and her bracelet lit up and flashed twice. The tablet beeped twice.

“Gamma Twenty-Three.” The guard put his hand on her shoulder and led her out of the room.

“Where is she going?” asked Tabora.

He didn’t answer. The door closed behind them. And now there were only four of us in the room. Nery said again she thought we were being punished, but this time Tabora and I both told her to be quiet.

An hour later they came for Tabora. It was a different guard this time. She tried to fight back when her bracelet lit up, but the guard twisted her arm behind her back. She kicked and fought, but he dragged her into the hall and then another guard grabbed her too. The door closed, but we could hear her screaming out there. The guards spoke to each other in English. One of them laughed. They took her away.

After a while, Alejandra banged on the door and yelled that she needed to use the bathroom. That was a word we’d all learned, so she yelled in English. Nobody came. She told me she didn’t need to go, she just wanted to see if they’d come.

Our stomachs began to growl for lunch. Nery thought they would starve us. Alejandra said they may just be putting us on a new schedule, like they did at school sometimes. I had no idea what was happening, but I was very worried.

When the door opened Alejandra smiled. But then the guard came into our room with the device to check our bracelets. Nery tried to put her arm behind her back, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled it forward so the device could check her bracelet.

“When are you going to feed us?” asked Alejandra. “Or let us use the bathroom?” She said it half in Spanish, half in English, filling in the words she knew.

He ignored her and reached for my bracelet. I held it out because I didn’t want him to grab me like he’d done to Nery. He held the device out and I felt a buzz in the bracelet, like a telephone ringing. It lit up.

“Gamma Sixteen,” said the guard. He put his hand on my shoulder. He guided me out of the room. Nery and Alejandra didn’t say anything, and the door closed.

The guard half led me, half pushed me along, keeping me next to him but slightly ahead. His hand stayed on my shoulder, and his fingers squeezed a bit. We went through doors and around a corner and into an elevator that went down three floors. Then through another door, this one made of all glass. The guard had a plastic card on his belt, and he waved the card to make the door unlock. There was another glass door just past the first one, and he used the card to open that one too. I learned later that the two doors were called an airlock. The floor was cool on my bare feet.

I also learned everything on the other side of the airlock was called the Complex.

The guard took me to a room with lots of shelves with boxes and coils of cable on them. In the center of the room was a stool and a broom and a trash can. A man I’d seen once or twice stood by the stool. I didn’t know his name. I sat down, which is what I’d been trained to do when there was a doctor and a stool.

He cut off all my hair with buzzing clippers while the guard stood there. It just took a few minutes. Some of my hair fell in my lap, but most of it landed on the floor. He rubbed a towel on my head and it made a scraping sound. I reached up when he was done and my head felt like Father’s cheeks, all soft and scratchy at the same time. The top of my head felt cold. I asked if I had bugs in my hair like some of the other children had when we arrived. Neither of the men answered me. I started to cry. Neither of them cared.

The guard took me to another room, like the doctors’ rooms upstairs, but this one had some different machines. West was here. She didn’t look surprised I had no hair now, or that I’d been crying. The guard sat me down on a stool across from her and stepped back.

I tried to talk to West in Spanish, but she wouldn’t answer me. She kept speaking English. After saying the same things a few times, she tugged the bottom of my shirt and pointed up.

I looked at the guard behind me, then lifted my shirt up.

West picked up a wide ribbon, peeled a round sticker off it, and pressed it onto my ribs. Then she peeled off another one. They were like thick plastic Band-Aids, and each one had a little bulge in the middle and a wire. West put six on my chest altogether, all on one side of my ribs.

Then she picked up what looked like an empty playground ball covered with wires. She lifted my chin, stretched the rubber cap open, and pulled it down over my head. It felt clammy against the bare skin up there. She wrapped a strap under my jaw and added a little device that clipped over one fingertip. Another strap went around my chest, binding all the wires and cables to me so I didn’t need to hold anything.

West stood up, spoke to the guard, and then gestured for me to follow her. She said a few more things, but I couldn’t understand them. I had only learned maybe forty or fifty English words at this point, and many more were close enough to Spanish for me to recognize. But nothing West said to me made any sense.

We went out the door and down a hall. We walked past a big glass door into a room where six or seven people worked on computers. Some of them looked out and saw me. One of them, a man with brown hair that all went up in little points, put his thumb up and smiled at me.

West opened another door with her own plastic card and pushed me through. The door closed behind me, leaving me alone in another airlock. Then the second door opened and two people in big, baggy suits waved for me to walk toward them. I did and the door closed behind me.

When I got closer, I could see their faces through the big plastic masks. The man had eyeglasses and an angry mouth. A piece of tape had his name on it, which was Dr. Moreau. He was angry and mean a lot, and West said later people sometimes made fun of him because his name was funny for a scientist. The woman had a hard face and I thought she was another man when I first saw her. The piece of tape on her chest said CHAN and I learned later her name was Phyllis Chan. I remember it because Moreau always called her Phyllis. There were only three people at the project that I learned both of their names, and she was one of them. The other one was a guard named Mark Guest who was very mean, and the third was a guard named Edgar Lynch, who I eventually punched between the legs.

They led me to another glass door. The woman, Phyllis Chan, took the bundle of wires strapped to my chest and connected it into a big cable as thick as my thumb. Then she gave it back to me, said something in English, and wrapped my fingers around the cable tight. She squeezed them hard and it hurt.

Moreau stood by the door with another plastic card. I heard voices over a speaker. A man counting. Other people saying things fast. Phyllis pushed me toward the door.

Moreau waved his card and the glass door slid open. Another airlock, but the door at the far end wasn’t glass. It was all metal. He put a hand on my shoulder and guided me through the door. I was scared. I didn’t want to go. So his hand slid down from my shoulder onto my back and he pushed me. I screamed and tried to get away, but I tripped and fell forward, and then he did something with the card and the door slid shut.

I banged on the glass and voices shouted orders at me over a speaker. Not shouted, but they were very loud. Phyllis pointed at the ground, at the cable I’d dropped, and yelled at me through the glass. She moved her hand up and down, told me I needed to pick it up again.

I picked it up again. I stepped away from the glass. I stared at Phyllis and Moreau.

All the voices stopped yelling.

The other door of the airlock, the metal door at the far end, opened.

I looked down at the cable and saw the glass door had a little space in it. They’d made it with a space in the bottom corner like a mouse hole, so the cable would have room to slide. I looked through the glass and saw Phyllis holding more of the cable.

I turned around and looked through the open door.

The room on the other side looked like all the other rooms. It had flat-white walls and tube lights and smooth, hard floors. It was more cold than warm. I leaned forward and didn’t see anything in it except a wooden chair.

Moreau said something behind me. He was hard to hear, with his mask and the glass door between us. And I didn’t understand his English anyway. Then a voice came over the speakers and said the same words. Very close to them. I still didn’t understand.

After a moment of looking, I stepped into the other room. Nothing happened. It was just another room. The metal door slid closed. It had a mouse hole too. I took a few more steps and brought the cable with me.

I looked around the room. It was just like the room we slept in, but with the chairs instead of beds. One door. No windows. Walls made of big blocks.

I looked back at the door. I walked over to the chair. I remember counting to twenty in my head, waiting for someone to say anything, to shout at me. Then I sat down.

This was the broken room.

THIRTEEN

I didn’t know it was the broken room. Not yet. I sat on the chair and waited. I thought they would tell me to do something. Or they would do something.

The room was fifteen feet wide by twenty-three feet deep. The walls stood ten feet tall to a solid ceiling. There was a metal rack in the center of the ceiling that held four long tube lights. A small, round camera sat up in each corner, a white ball with a black lens in the center of it. They had internal microphones, but I didn’t find out about those for another two weeks. The door was behind me, on the left side of the ten-foot wall if I faced it. The floor was concrete painted gray, and I learned later it was to help define the floor from the walls on camera.

I didn’t know any of this at first. Just the very simple things. The white walls, gray floor, and metal door. That first time I was too nervous and confused to pay attention to many details. They hadn’t told us all to be precise yet. But I spent so much time in there while I was at the Project, I came to learn every inch of it. I’ll never forget any of it.

The wires didn’t weigh much, but it was enough the stickers pulled at the skin on my chest. One of the ones on my ribs itched, and so did a few points where the rubber cap pressed against my head. I wanted to rub at them, but I was worried somebody would get angry if I knocked them loose.

I was in the room for several minutes that first time before I noticed it was broken.

It’s very difficult to explain. I think I had just turned ten, and I didn’t have the words in English or Spanish. It wasn’t until much later, maybe a year, that I was able to explain myself at all. All I knew then was, the lines and corners and angles of the room weren’t correct. Looking at the left corner was like staring at the sun, even though it was just concrete and paint. It made my eyes and head hurt if I looked at it too long.

I was still looking around the room when I heard the buzz. I looked up at the lights, because many of the lights back at the cages buzzed and crackled. But this was different. It was like bugs flying near your head, but not close to your ear. I could feel the sound more than hear it. I tried to spot the bug. It came by my head again and I waved my hand at it, but the hand on that side was the one holding the cable.

I remember thinking it was strange that the bug liked the cold.

I counted to five hundred, but I lost count a few times when I’d try to wave at the bug. That first time, I wasn’t sure how long I was in the room. I learned later it was always the same amount of time for us Gammas.

The metal door slid open. I turned in my chair and leaned far over so I could look into the airlock. I wondered if somebody was coming into the broken room with me. But Phyllis and Moreau stood outside behind the far door, the glass one. Moreau waved at me. Then he clapped his hands and waved again. I could barely hear his hands hitting each other.

I slid off the chair, showed them I had not let go of my cable, and walked over into the airlock. Phyllis had the cable in her hands, and she took a step back. I felt it tremble in my hand like it was scared. The loop behind me slithered into the airlock and around my heels. I remember thinking it didn’t like the broken room either, and then I laughed because I knew that was silly and it was just Phyllis pulling on the other end.

The metal door slid shut. I stood there holding my end of the cable and waited. There was a big whoosh and lots of fans blew on me. Phyllis and Moreau looked at me, said a few things to each other, and then he waved his card and the glass door slid open. I stepped out and held up my end of the cable. I think I hoped they would thank me or reward me somehow, like a proud teacher. Just some kind of reaction.

Instead, everyone was talking around me again. Moreau disconnected the cable and kept leaning his body back to talk up into the air. Phyllis had a light she shined in one of my eyes, then the other. There was a big clock behind her with red glowing numbers. I remember it said fifteen-oh-eight. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t the time, but a big stopwatch, like a gym teacher would have. It was how long I had been in the broken room.

How long I had been exposed is the term they used at the Project.

Phyllis waved a wand at me. She crouched and went up and down my legs and over my back. On both sides of my head and my arms and my body. Sometimes the wand made a clicking pop. It made a bunch when she waved it around my head.

Phyllis put her hand on my back and pushed me to another door. Moreau was still talking to the air. The other airlock I came in through. I could see West on the other side with her bright red hair. She was talking with Dr. Lourale. A guard was there too. Dr. Lourale walked into the room with all the people working on computers and West turned to look at me through the glass doors.

This airlock had fans blow on me too. Once I was through, West led me back to her doctor’s office room. The guard walked behind me. West sat me down on the stool and yanked the cap off my head. It tugged on my skin and scratched on the little short hairs I had left. Then she pulled my shirt up without asking and pulled off the big stickers on my chest. One of them stretched my skin and pinched. I yelled again, and this time she looked me right in the eye. Then she pulled the last two stickers off quick.

West pulled off her gloves and threw them into a red box. She grabbed a bundle from her small desk and dropped it on her own stool. A change of clothes. Green pants. Gray T-shirt. She also gave me a plastic bag and some quick instructions in English. She pointed at my chest, then at the bag.

I looked over at the guard. He stood in the door and watched me. They had never made me or any of the other girls change in front of men before, but the guard didn’t look away.

West snapped her fingers and said a few more quick words. She pointed at the bag again. Said something else. Pulled on a new set of gloves.

I pushed the pants down and put them in the plastic bag. The T-shirt was big on me, so it was almost like wearing a dress. I pulled it off quick and reached for the other shirt, but West put out her hand and pointed at the bag, snapping her fingers once. I put the old shirt in the bag, and then she gave me the other clothes.

While I got dressed, she closed the bag and wrote on it with a thick black marker.

She checked my eyes with a little flashlight. Had me follow her finger. Snapped her fingers on one side of my head and then the other. She listened to my heart and had me breathe.

Then she had a soft yellow ball she tossed to me and had me throw back. We did that a few times, and it was almost fun. She tapped at my knee until I stood on one leg, and then tossed the ball to me again. When I switched to stand on the other leg, the floor got wobbly and I almost fell over. She made me sit down, looked at my eyes again, snapped her fingers by my ears. She had two silver bars she slapped in her hand and they hummed. Kind of like in the broken room, it was a sound you could almost feel. It made one of my ears hurt.

She tapped at her computer tablet for a moment, then said something to the guard. He grabbed my shoulder and push-pulled me out of the room. We went to another room and the bald scientist was there. He gave me all the language tests again and also asked lots of other questions about how being in the broken room felt, but also questions about geography and countries and other things. My English wasn’t good enough to understand most of them, and he just spoke louder and louder until he was almost yelling at me. When he was done he tapped at his own tablet and said some angry instructions to the guard.

I picked out three English words I’d learned. Gamma. Quarantine. Hours.

The guard put his hand on my shoulder and led me out of the room. It was his other hand, on my other side. Not the way he’d first brought me to West. I remember because he had a collapsible baton there in a sheath and it kept tapping my elbow. It was hard and after the third or fourth tap it hurt a lot. I wanted to walk on his other side, but I didn’t know how to ask in English. He wouldn’t’ve done it anyway.

When we went back out though the airlock to the elevator, he let go of my shoulder to wave his card. He hadn’t done that on the way into the Complex. That time he’d used his other hand to do everything. I looked over to see if he’d hurt it while I was in the broken room.

His other hand was on his pistol.

The elevator took us up and the guard pushed me down a different hall. The walls had different signs, but I didn’t know how to read any of them yet. He waved his card and opened a door. I took a step and he pushed me through, closing the door behind me.

This room was smaller than the room I shared with Alejandra and Tabora and the others. It had one bed and a steel toilet. The bed had the same thin pillow and thin blanket and thin mattress. It had four round cameras up in the corners instead of my friends.

I remembered thinking that was the first time I’d thought of them as friends, and I missed them. I wondered if I’d ever see them again. I remembered what Nery said about us being in prison.

I wondered if I had done something wrong. If the broken room was a test, like at school, and I had done very bad on it. Maybe I was being punished. I sat on my bed and wondered what was going to happen.

After a short time there in the quiet room, I realized I wasn’t alone. The quiet, whispery buzzing had followed me out of the broken room. I hadn’t noticed it when they waved me out through the airlock or when West had run all her tests. Everyone had been talking and making noises, and the buzz was very quiet. Nobody had heard it.

I looked but couldn’t see any sort of fly or mosquito. I didn’t know what it was. It would sound close and then get far away.

I didn’t know what it was then. I just assumed it was a fly or a mosquito or maybe a bee. I didn’t know what else it could be because I didn’t—

“Stop talking,” said Hector.

FOURTEEN

Natalie’s mouth closed with a snap. Hector heard her teeth connect.

The car had been slowly moving up behind them. An SUV. He could just make out the shape of it. Four Xenon headlights. Great for blinding other drivers, accidentally or deliberately.

Sometimes very deliberately.

He’d been watching the SUV close the gap between them for eight minutes while Natalie talked about arriving at the Project. They were well out of Los Angeles, past the satellite towns and cities that circled it, but no matter where or when you were on the road in California, there were always other cars. There’d been four others on his side of the freeway in the same time period—two coupes, a sedan, and a pickup—and one motorcycle. They’d all roared past him, enjoying the mostly empty freeway.

But not the SUV.

It was traveling two, maybe three miles an hour faster than their stolen Civic. A few seconds of observation would make it appear it was just matching their speed. Hector paid attention long enough to see that it wasn’t.

It could be innocent. Some random person who’d decided to use the Civic as a pace car but couldn’t help their heavy foot on the gas. Just a random coincidence that they happened to be in a car very similar to the one his and Natalie’s attackers had used a few hours earlier.

Hector knew a lot of dead people who’d brushed off coincidences.

He’d killed some of them.

Another minute and the SUV would be in strike range. Ready to ram, or possibly dart to the next lane and sideswipe. What they’d been taught to do would give him a sense of how they’d been trained and who they were.

Less than a hundred yards away. Almost nothing at these speeds on a straightaway. Still not aggressive. Still creeping closer.

Time to switch up the game.

Hector took his foot off the gas, let the Civic coast for a moment and shed some velocity, tapped the breaks. The SUV surged forward, suddenly moving much faster than them. It didn’t change course, Hector’s grip tightened on the pistol, he started to raise it, and the SUV lurched to the side, hitting its brakes at the same time. The Xenon headlights flashed in the rearview mirror as they weaved back and forth on the freeway, and for a moment Hector caught a quick glimpse of a pair of faces, lit from below by cold blue-white light.

He hit the gas, pulled ahead again. The big vehicle steadied itself behind him, and then he heard its engine rev behind them. Moving forward again. Faster this time.

Might just be a pissed-off driver. Maybe planning to zoom around and do the same to him. Or the driver might be calmer and just not want to be behind the Civic that randomly hit its brakes at high speed.

The cold light popped off as the SUV closed the gap. Just what someone would do if they wanted to cut inside reflections and get their eyes adjusted to the dark. It’s what he would’ve done.

Of course, he’d been letting his eyes adjust to the dark for a while now.

He let the SUV pull a little closer, watching its tires in the side mirror, looking for the slight shift that would send them into the side of the Civic. At the rear would mean they were trying to make him spin out. A full-on side impact would mean they were trying to flip the car.

Unless it was just a pissed-off driver.

Hector pushed a tab and his window hummed down. Wind roared through the opening. The sleeve and collar of his jacket rippled. “Cover your ears,” he told Natalie, not taking his attention from the mirror.

The SUV’s bumper passed the Civic’s trunk. Its rear door. It was next to Hector now.

He snapped his head up quick, staring at the SUV’s passenger. A man with a hard face and a military-cropped haircut. Their eyes met and the man took half a second to yell something to the driver.

The man raised a gun.

Hector pressed the gas and pulled the wheel hard, jerking the Civic hard toward the SUV. The cars collided with a screech of metal and fiberglass and the driver pulled away, dodging most of the impact. Just as Hector figured he would.

Hector pulled his pistol, tossed it to his left hand as he jerked the wheel the other way. He stretched his arm out the window, into the gap between the vehicles, and fired three shots—one at the passenger window to panic them, two down low—before slamming on the brakes.

Hector’s shots burst the passenger side tire and it shredded on the pavement. The SUV’s driver overcompensated, trying to regain control and stay on the road. The big vehicle dropped down onto its steel rim as it passed the braking Civic, and momentum kept it moving that direction. It skidded and flipped over in front of them.

Hector steered into the skid, guiding them around the rolling SUV and back into their lane. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the four Xenon headlights come to a rest, upside down. One of the four flickered and went out.

He pulled his arm inside and stashed the pistol at his side again. He could feel the heat of the barrel on his thigh. His fingers pressed the tab, and the window shuddered back up into place with a squeal from the motor.

In the corner of his eye, Natalie hadn’t moved. Her hands were still up, pressed flat over her ears.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You can put your arms down.”

She did. “They found us.”

“If they’d found us, it would’ve been more than two guys,” said Hector. “Whoever’s after you probably had people heading out from LA on every major freeway. Those guys just stumbled across us.”

“I understand.”

“Downside is, one way or another, the people in charge are going to have a better idea which way we’re heading. Either those guys will get a report in to their bosses, or their bosses will find their . . . will find their car out here and figure out what happened.”

Hector reached for his gas station coffee, still fairly warm in one of the Civic’s cup holders. Some of it had sloshed out of the top. He wished it had whiskey in it. Or vodka. Anything.

The car’s tires hummed along the dark pavement. Natalie stared out the windshield.

“Are you waiting for something?”

“No.”

“Are you going to finish your story?”

“Yes.”

More silence.

Hector sipped his unwhiskeyed coffee. “Well?”

“You told me to stop talking.”

“That . . . that was just because of the SUV.”

She stared at him from the passenger seat.

“You can talk again. Tell me more of it. You’re still up for it, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Maybe we can save some time and just cover the key points.”

She stared at him. “That’s not how it happened.”

“I know. But you look like you might nod off any minute, and I need to know more.”

“I understand.”

FIFTEEN

They fed me a lot of times in quarantine. Many days of meals. I lost count the first two or three times, but as it went on we all compared notes and confirmed it was twenty-two or sometimes twenty-three meals, depending on what time of day they put you in the broken room.

The meals came in through a little hatch in the bottom of the door. They never had spoons or forks, so I had to eat with my fingers. Sometimes I just licked the food out of the bowls and pretended I was a cat. When a new meal came, the people in the hall would call in and bang on the door until I pushed the old tray out.

I wasn’t sure if the first meal was a late lunch or an early dinner. I fell asleep after eating it. They gave me another meal a while after I woke up. While I ate the second meal, I noticed the bug was gone. I couldn’t hear its wings buzzing anymore, no matter how quiet I was or for how long.

I sang and tapped the bed and told myself stories to pass the time. I told myself this was still better than the cages. After the third meal I fell asleep again.

It went like this for several days. I ate and slept. I told stories. I counted the big blocks in the walls.

There were three hundred twenty-four of them, but some were partials at the corners and doors. The quarantine rooms were all slightly different. Eventually we could all tell which one we were in by the number and pattern of the blocks.

One day I finished a meal, and an hour later the door opened and they took me back to my friends.

Everyone was there except Alejandra and Nery. Everyone’s hair had been cut off, just like mine. We all hugged each other and talked and told each other what we’d been through. Tabora thought the two of them might still be in the little quarantine rooms. I felt dumb I hadn’t thought of that. We might have all been in rooms near each other, just on the other side of the walls.

All of us had been put into the broken room, but we didn’t know why. We also agreed the room was wrong, but we didn’t know why. We had seen lots of the same people on the way in and out. Patricia had heard flies in the room too. So did Sara, but none got out with her.

Tabora had been very upset about undressing in front of her guard when West had told her to put her clothes in the bag. She said she was too old and it was creepy for them to be watching her. When she refused, the guard held her wrists and West cut Tabora’s clothes off with scissors. She had yelled and screamed the whole time and given herself a headache.

We kept talking and hugging each other. A while later the door opened and they let Nery back into the room. Her hair was gone too. We all hugged and talked more about what had happened and what we’d seen. Nery had just finished telling us what had happened to her when they brought Alejandra back. With her hair so short now, I could see Alejandra had a little group of freckles all around the back of her neck, and they reminded me of the star maps we saw sometimes at school.

The door swung open again a while later and they took us all to lunch. Everyone in the lunchroom was happy and relieved. All of us, all the Gammas, had gone through the same thing. None of us had hair. We tried to talk about it, but if the guards caught us they yelled and snapped their fingers and clapped their hands. They would point so everyone saw who had been talking.

After lunch they took us back to the gym room and had us exercise. Mostly just walking or slow running. One of the doctors stood there and watched us and made notes on a tablet. Another one watched up above. There was a bridge that ran across the room up in the air. The one up there was Kirk, Dr. Lourale’s assistant who had the tablet decorated like an old machine.

Our lives at the Project settled into a pattern. Wake up. Breakfast. Doctor visits. Lunch. Exercise. Wash up. New clothes. Dinner. Back to our rooms and sleep.

Every seven days they would take us back to the broken room one by one. The cap would be put on our head, and the stickers—which were electrodes—would be attached. We would go inside the broken room for fifteen minutes. We would get our eyes and ears and balance and reflexes tested. We would describe everything we saw and heard and felt. We would spend seven days in quarantine. We would be brought back to our regular rooms. Seven days later they would repeat it again. Every forty-two days they would shave our heads again.

Every time I went inside the broken room, there were bugs. I heard them but never saw them. Sometimes they followed me out, but if they did they wandered away after a few hours. Or maybe there were different bugs in the quarantine rooms. They had to be small, I thought, because I never saw them. Patricia, Nery, and Sara heard them too. Alejandra never seemed to.

We compared notes and observations whenever we were back together. Details changed sometimes. We didn’t always leave the room at the same time. Different guards might take us to the broken room each time, but it was always the same guard for the entire trip. Most of us saw West, but sometimes it was the man named Connors. Sometimes they had different tests for us. New ways to balance. Something to squeeze. Arrows to follow with our eyes or fingers.

Tabora always yelled when she had to change clothes in front of the male guards. It always gave her a headache. She was in a bad mood whenever they brought her back from quarantine.

One time we got blue pants after going into the broken room. We all thought it was amazing and talked about it all night and what it might mean and blue clothes we used to have. But then our regular green pants came back, and we never saw the blue ones again.

We tried to keep track of time by chanting the number of days every night before we slept. It was hard to do in quarantine, but we still did it. Alejandra was the best. By her count, we kept that routine for one hundred and forty days. Each of us had gone into the broken room ten times, counting the first time. They had shaved our heads three times.

On day one hundred and forty-six, the guards came again to take us away one at a time. I was the third one to leave our room that time, after Alejandra and Sara. I went into the broken room for the eleventh time, sat in the chair, listened to the faint buzz of wings, and began to count off minutes while I didn’t look at the corner.

I remember looking down at my arms and seeing I was shivering. The broken room had always been wrong, but now it had become a cold, scary place. I pulled my legs up to my chest and squeezed them hard. I yanked on the cable when I did, and the wires across my head and chest tugged tight and made me wince and that made me even more nervous.

The bugs sensed my fear. Father told me once that dogs sensed fear, and I guessed bugs were the same. They buzzed around my head, darting closer to my ears, flying away. I waved my arms, but they were too fast and I never touched them. Their wings tickled my ears and let out humming whispers.

It was the first time I screamed in the broken room.

The metal door opened and I ran out of the room. I dropped the cable and it dragged behind me on the chest strap. It felt like something was trying to drag me back into the broken room. I screamed again.

The fans blasted me and the other door opened and I tried to run past the scientists in their baggy suits, but one of them grabbed me. I don’t know who. The bugs were still whirling around my head, their wings hissing in my ears. They’d gotten past the fans.

The scientists held me in place until they’d disconnected the cable and waved the wand at me. It clicked like it always did. They waved the other airlock open and I ran until I hit the far door. I remember very little of it. I just knew I had to get far away from the broken room.

Some of the bugs followed me into the second airlock and out into the hall beyond it. I kept waving my arms, trying to swat them away. The big guard outside grabbed me and pinned my arms. She carried me to West’s office.

West wasn’t there. It was the bearded man. He grabbed my chin and held it tight. The guard put her hands on my shoulders. They kept me still while they did all the usual tests. The doctor asked me why I screamed. Asked me to describe the sound of the bugs. Asked me if I heard anything else. If I didn’t answer fast enough, or if I talked too fast or too loud, he would smack the top of my head and yell “Hey!”

I calmed down and the guard let me go. I pulled my clothes off before the doctor offered me new clothes, even though I was still cold. I just wanted the tests to be done so I could get away. I wanted to be as far from there as possible.

They took me to the bald man—we had learned his name was Torrissen—and he asked me about the sound of bugs too. Then he gave me the language tests and asked me about countries and what continents they were on and what languages people spoke there. I rushed through the answers, which was easy because I didn’t know most of them.

Twenty minutes later I was in my quarantine room. A few bugs followed me. I still thought that’s what it was. In my mind I saw flies and mosquitoes and flying cockroaches. So many insects buzzing and hissing, all making noises in my ear that grew louder and faded and grew loud again.

They gave me a meal through the door slot, and then another meal, and then I slept. The bugs were still there when I woke up. I spent the day with the thin pillow wrapped around my head. It scratched and caught on my short hair. I cried and wailed and waved at the air.

The bugs were gone the day after that. I had five days alone in the quiet room. I cried a lot. I wished Father or Mama or Aunt Gabby would come rescue me, even though I knew Mama and Father were dead. It had been months since Gabby and I had been separated at the American border. Maybe longer. I’d been in the cages for so long, and then at the Project before they started the tests. Maybe it had been a year.

I wanted to die so I would be with Mama and Father.

A guard took me back to my room on the seventh day. The other girls were there. Everyone had heard bugs this time. Even Tabora, who still got headaches. Patricia stopped crying. She didn’t cry or talk much after that. Right then we hugged each other and cried and told each other happy stories. After an hour or two, we told each other what had happened and compared notes.

The schedule went on like always. Fifteen minutes in the broken room. Seven days in quarantine. Seven days until they did it again.

The bugs were louder for everyone now. Or there were many more of them. Or maybe they were more aggressive. We all had theories. None of them were right, but we didn’t know that yet.

We never saw the other children. The Alphas or the Betas or anyone else. Alejandra thought the schedules kept us apart. We figured out it would take almost two whole days to put all the Gammas in the broken room one after another, considering we never saw each other on the floor where it was. If all the children went to the broken room, maybe the Alphas and Betas and Deltas were being put in the room on our quiet days.

When we saw the other Gammas at meals or showers or in the exercise room, we tried to compare what was happening. What was being done to us. How long we had been at the Project. One phrase we had all learned by then was no talking, so we tried to share everything in low whispers. Sometimes the guards caught us and shouted and pointed and slapped our shoulders, but other times we shared our small secrets and facts.

I sat with Alejandra and Osmin at many meals. He did not like the broken room and hadn’t liked it from the start. He would whisper escape plans to us, like in the movies. He was funny, for a boy.

The schedule went on for days and weeks. At some point during one of the quarantines, we lost count of the days. Alejandra insisted she could still keep track and kept counting, but I think even she knew it was hopeless.

Tabora got lots of headaches. She still yelled at the guards, especially when she had to undress, but now we all thought the headaches were from the bugs. She heard them much louder. She said it was like lots of people yelling at her from another room.

Patricia became very quiet and grumpy. She had a temper. One time one of the boys bumped into her in the line for food and she bit him. He missed lunch because they had to take him to the nurse to stop the bleeding. They took Patricia too, but she was back in our room at the end of the day. She didn’t want to talk about what she’d done.

We never saw the others, the Alphas and the Betas, but sometimes one of the doctors or postdocs or technicians would mention them in front of us. My English was getting better, but I usually didn’t understand the other terms they used. Not at first. But I recognized the mention of the other groups.

On day two hundred seventy-eight, according to Alejandra, we started a new testing cycle. The last one before we’d get our heads shaved again. The guards came to check our bracelets and take us to the broken room one at a time. They took me to West’s office. She put the electrodes on my chest, and the tight rubber cap on my head.

As they pushed me through the airlock I heard the doctor talking. My English was getting better. I understood most of what she said.

Most of us had reached a saturation point and passed a certain threshold.

Which is how they ended up killing Tabora.

SIXTEEN

Being in the broken room now was different. Over the next few weeks we all heard lots of terms like critical dosage and cumulative effect and passing thresholds, plus even more that we never learned what they meant. It was a very exciting time for all the doctors. It was very scary for all of us.

The broken room had always felt cool. But now it felt like how being in the ocean could made you cold even when everything else was warm. It took as much warmth as it could from us in those fifteen minutes.

All the smells were gone now. Before, the room might smell cold and dusty, or like water and chemicals when it had been cleaned. But now the air in the broken room was empty and bland.

The bug sounds were constant. They were so loud, but quiet at the same time.

When they opened the door for me that time, I didn’t even hear it, the buzzing was so loud. When I saw it was open, I had trouble getting out of the chair. I was cold and so tired I wanted to cry. I think I did cry at some point. My head tingled from all the buzzing.

I stumbled out of the room and had to lean on the wall in the airlock. The fans blew air at me. My arms and legs felt so heavy. Walking out of the airlock felt like the end of one of the long days walking toward America.

The bugs followed me back to West’s office and then to quarantine. They gave me food through the hatch, but I knew I’d just throw it up. My head didn’t feel right, and my stomach still felt cold.

I stretched out on the bed and tried to sleep.

The buzzing kept going. It was so loud, and the quarantine room was so quiet. My head buzzed too. I could feel the echo inside my skull. I remember that was when I realized they weren’t bug wings. It was lots and lots of sounds all one on top of another until they just became a buzz.

It kept me awake, despite how tired I was. I put the pillow over my head like Tabora sometimes did when she needed to yell. Or like Alejandra did when Tabora was yelling. It was dark, but it didn’t help. I could still hear the buzzing.

I cried into my pillow until I fell asleep. When I woke up the buzzing had gotten quieter. I didn’t know how long I’d slept or if I’d missed meals. I was just scared and confused.

When my time in the room ended, they took me back to the others. Nery and Sara were there. Nery was very sweaty and looked too awake. Scared-awake. Sara told me she had an awful headache. We hugged each other.

They brought Tabora back next. We thought she’d been in a fight because she walked in a stiff, off-balanced way. There was blood under her nose and on one of her ears. She kept her eyes and mouth closed tight. We helped her onto Alejandra’s bed. She winced when her head touched the pillow. She wrapped her arms across her eyes, and I gave her my pillow. She covered her face with it and whimpered a thank-you.

We whispered our stories to each other. We had all heard the buzzing for so long and so loud in the broken room and in quarantine. It left each of us tired and sick and cold. And scared. We all felt scared.

Nery admitted she had awful nightmares when she was little, so bad she would wake up screaming and her parents would come running to her room. She’d dreamed there were monsters behind her. She could hear them and smell them and feel them moving and when they breathed near her. But she couldn’t turn to see them. She said that’s what being in the broken room was like now. The whole time, she felt like something scary was right behind her.

Alejandra came back later. She had one hand pressed next to her eyes. She sat down on her bunk and leaned her head against one of the steel posts. We talked more, but mostly we just enjoyed being together and safe again.

Then they brought Patricia back.

The door swung open and the guard shoved her into the room. It was the one named Mark Guest. We didn’t like any of the guards, but there were some we all agreed were bad, and Guest was one of them. He was a bully, and Tabora called him the stupid one.

He’d been holding Patricia by the neck with his arm out, and I remember thinking it looked like he was holding an animal away from him.

She staggered in and fell. The door closed. She crouched there on the floor, breathing hard. Her breaths were rough and wet, like she had water in her throat.

She raised her head to stare at us, but her eyes didn’t focus. Her mouth hung open and she kept taking deep breaths. It was like they’d made her run for seven days instead of putting her in quarantine. Maybe they had. Maybe someone had decided she was too small or too young to go back into the broken room.

When the guard pushed her into our room, Patricia hadn’t landed on her hands and knees. She’d landed on her hands and toes. She looked like she was crouching to jump. Or to pounce. She pushed herself up and wobbled as she got her balance. She stood on her toes so her knees bent forward and her thighs leaned back. When I was little, Father had read me old fairy tales about monster men with goat legs and horns. Patricia stood the way the goat-men had stood in the pictures.

Nery thought the guards had hurt her feet. Sara asked if she was okay, but Patricia wouldn’t answer her. She just stared at us like she was angry. Like she blamed us.

She stood there for ten minutes before she climbed up to the bunk above Alejandra. Sara tried to talk to her again, but Patricia just screamed at her. Except it was more like an animal trying to roar with a little girl’s mouth. She curled into a ball on the top bunk, wrapped her arms around herself, and stared at us.

We left her alone. None of us were sure what time it was, but our bellies told us it was too late for dinner. Everyone shifted beds and found new places to sleep. I told Tabora she could keep my pillow, and she said thank you without lifting it off her face.

The lights went out half an hour later. A while after that, Tabora managed to tell her story. Her voice was dry and scratchy. She told us she had screamed the whole time she was in the broken room. The buzzing had been so loud and she could feel it, like someone squeezing her head and her shoulders and arms. Her head still hurt. She had to crawl out of the room when they opened the door, and they had to carry her to West’s office. She had been too tired to even change clothes. The guard had to hold her up while West cut her out of her old clothes and redressed her.

Tabora admitted she had started screaming again. Not because of the guard holding her, or having her clothes cut off, but because of West pulling new clothes onto her. It had reminded her of being in the broken room.

“I felt like I was a shirt,” she said, “and I was too small for the person trying me on.”

Nobody talked after that. I could hear Patricia breathing on the bunk across from me. I wondered if she was asleep or if she was staying awake at night like an animal.

And I could still hear the buzzing, even though it had gotten quiet. It had been seven days since they put me in the broken room, but it still hadn’t faded away. It was like hearing a television in another room. I hadn’t seen a television in close to two years at that point.

The next morning Patricia seemed calmer, but confused. She said she’d been somewhere dark and didn’t remember being brought back from quarantine. She asked how long she’d been back in the room with us.

The door opened and the guards called us out into the hall. They took us upstairs to the bathrooms and then to breakfast. All of the other Gammas looked like us. Everyone was bald and tired and looked around the room like nothing could be trusted. We helped Tabora carry her tray and sat down with Osmin and Jareth. We talked in whispers, and they told us the boys in each of their rooms had gone through the same things we had.

Jareth had lost a lot of weight since we arrived. I wondered if we all had. I remember looking at my hand while the guards warned us we only had ten more minutes to eat. It looked pale. I could see the veins under my skin.

We had seven days away from the broken room. Meals. Checkups. Exercise. Showers. Sleep. Time together.

Tabora’s headache never went away, but it got small enough she could walk and eat with us. She was never happy, and she had a temper. She had curves now too. She thought she might have turned fourteen or maybe was close to it. We heard one of the guards talk about her, and she said West had noticed, too, and asked if Tabora had told them her real age. Tabora said she had.

To us, that night, she said she was worried she should’ve told the truth. She had lied at the cages hoping they would treat her nicer if they thought she was younger. Her big brother had told her bad things could happen to her if the Americans thought she was older. When they brought her to the Project, she kept up the lie because whatever happened here had to be better than being back in the cages. Now she wasn’t sure.

We all talked quietly in the dark about what the doctors might do if they found out Tabora had lied. Would they be glad she told the truth, or angry she’d lied for so long? I thought they’d be upset, because it would mean all the answers were wrong on her tests. Sara thought maybe they’d send her home, but none of us thought that would happen. Nery thought whatever they did, it would be bad because Tabora had caused problems.

The next morning the doors didn’t open for breakfast. We were going back to the broken room again. Then a guard came and checked our bracelets. They took Nery first. Two hours later they came back for Tabora. And then they came for me.

The guard who scanned my bracelet was Guest, and Alejandra gave my hand a quick squeeze before he dragged me out of our room.

Guest guided me through the halls to the elevator. He did it with pushes and shoves. I think he thought it was funny, but I never understood why. He waved the elevator doors open with his key card and we went down. Then he pushed me through the airlock and past a blinking red light. I’d seen the light before, but it had always been green.

We went down the next hall to West’s office for my electrodes. I heard the screams before we got there. Guest kept pushing. I wasn’t sure if he heard them or not. Asking questions could get us in trouble, but I wondered if maybe the screams were like the buzzing. Maybe Guest couldn’t hear them.

I could see West through the glass door and walls of her office. She was in there with two other guards. The guards were holding a girl as she thrashed and kicked and screamed. She had no clothes. She screamed and her head went back and forth and red spots splattered on West’s white coat.

The girl in the office was Tabora.

SEVENTEEN

Tabora’s mouth screamed again, but she was silent. The walls of West’s office were like the doors of the broken room. They were made to keep sound inside.

Her arms were very straight. She tried to yank her stiff arms away from the guards and kicked at them with stiff legs. She moved like a toy, like her knees and elbows couldn’t bend anymore. I remember thinking they were so tight and straight her bones had to be cracking. It hurt to look at them.

West had a big needle and kept reaching for Tabora’s arm. She yelled at one of the guards, and the man tried to hold the arm steady, but Tabora threw herself left and right and kept shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

All the veins on her head were swollen. They looked like fat blue worms under her skin. Even out in the hall, through the door, I could see her veins pulse.

Tabora’s head turned fast to her shoulder and I saw her face. Her eyes were open wide and very dark. She had tears of blood and a bloody nose and blood came out of her ears and mouth. Her chin was all red and wet. She took in a breath and screamed again. Blood splashed out of her mouth and onto the guard.

Guest waved his card and opened the door. It let all the sound out. Tabora’s screams were so loud I put my hands over my ears. He left me in the hall and ran inside to help.

Her mouth opened even wider, and I remember hearing a pop as it went extra wide. She screamed even more and her head shook. I think her jaw was stuck open.

Guest grabbed her shoulders from behind. Her head tipped back and hit his chin. The other guards grabbed her wrists and pulled. Her stiff arms stretched out to either side. West grabbed one of her arms and tried to line up the big needle.

Tabora’s screams changed. She was trying to yell words with her mouth stuck open. I couldn’t understand any of them, but she sounded desperate. Angry. Scared. Her tongue flicked blood everywhere.

I heard a sharp, quick snap and Tabora sagged just as West stuck the needle in her arm. She hung between the guards like she’d fallen asleep. All her veins shrunk. I heard a sound like rain, like water drops, and I realized blood was pouring out of her nose and wide-open mouth and splashing on the floor.

Then the door closed and sealed and it all went quiet again.

I tried to tell myself West had put Tabora to sleep with the needle, but I knew that wasn’t what happened. Whatever medicine it was had gone into her arm too late. I watched them lay her body down on the floor in all the blood. It was like all of Tabora’s blood had poured out of her body except for those last few drips.

West was waving her hands and the guards were waving back. Then she saw me standing out in the hall and yelled at Guest. It was almost funny, watching her yell at him with no sound.

It wasn’t until later, when I told Nery and Alejandra and Sara about it, that I realized I had just stood there in the hallway. I hadn’t run or tried to hide or get away. I couldn’t have gone anywhere without a key card, but I hadn’t even tried. Guest had stopped pushing me and I had stopped walking. I just stood there until they told me what to do next.

West kept yelling at Guest and he retreated back to the door. I could see her mouth moving. Then he opened the door and all her words poured out into the hall.

“Take her over to examination room B,” West said. “I’ll tell Lancaster he’s got another autopsy once all this is cleaned up.”

I remembered something from home, back when Mama was alive, before her cancer made her tired all the time. She was drinking coffee and her hand slipped and she dropped one of her favorite mugs. It broke into lots of pieces and splashed everywhere. She said a swear word and slapped her hand on her leg. She did that a lot when she was upset. Then I helped her sweep and wipe and she smiled again because the mess was gone.

West was upset like that. She wasn’t upset Tabora was dead. Just that there was a mess to clean up.

Guest stomped over and grabbed my arm. He yelled something at me I didn’t understand and yanked my shoulder to make me move. The door closed behind him, but before it did I heard West talking. I knew most of the words by then. I’d heard them all a lot, just never all together.

“We’re going to need a full autopsy with biopsies of the brain, adrenal glands, heart, liver, and bone marrow.”

Guest dragged me across the hall and into another room. It looked a lot like West’s room across the hall. He shoved me down onto the stool—the same stool that was in West’s office. I sat there for half an hour before West walked in looking sad and annoyed. She grabbed the strip of electrodes and told me to pull up my shirt.

“What happened to Tabora?” I asked.

I didn’t think she’d answer me. Everyone at the Project tended to ignore us when we said anything or asked questions. So it startled me when she did.

“Gamma Eight was too old,” West said as she slapped electrodes on my chest. Her face was angry, but her voice was tired. Frustrated. “She lied about her age and her mind couldn’t handle the influx.”

I didn’t know the word influx then. It was just syllables. But all of the Gammas had gotten good at remembering random words so we could compare them later.

“I assumed we’d know when all of you hit puberty,” said West. “Exposure must’ve altered her metabolism on a level we weren’t testing. Slowed down the biochemical processes that would’ve made her . . .”

West didn’t finish her thought. She pulled the electrode cap onto my head. She yanked it down hard enough that it hurt, but I think it was because she was thinking of something else.

“Am I too old?” I remember asking it and thinking I didn’t know how old I was. I’d lost track of days in the cages and then again at the Project. I didn’t know if I was nine or ten years old.

She didn’t answer. She looked me in the eyes and put a hand on my shoulder. Then she sent me off with Guest again.

He took me to the broken room. The people there ignored my questions and pushed me through the airlock. They put me in as if nothing had happened.

I saw stains on the floor in front of my chair and I could taste warm metal in the air, like a coin in my mouth, even though the broken room had eaten the smells. Tabora’s blood? I didn’t know. But there was fresh blood in the broken room.

I wasn’t even in the broken room for a minute before the buzzing roared in my head. I remember being at the beach and hearing the waves hit the shore like that. You could hear other things, but you always heard the waves.

But this was when I finally realized what the buzzing was. It was voices. So many voices, all shouting off in the distance, all trying to be heard over each other.

Sometimes, at school, we would be taking a test, or have a nap time, and our classroom would be very quiet. But you could hear teachers in other rooms. Their voices would go up and down as they talked to their students. That’s what it was like in the broken room. I could hear voices yelling and shouting from other rooms.

The voices had killed Tabora. I didn’t know how, but I knew they had gotten in her head and killed her. The people at the Project had let them get into her head. They’d wanted them to get in.

They wanted them to get into my head.

I spent my fifteen minutes in the broken room trying to fight the voices. To not hear them. Then the door opened, and the voices followed me out. They went with me to West’s office—her real office, all cleaned up with no sign Tabora had ever been there—and then to Torrissen, and then they followed me to the quarantine room.

I was alone with the voices for seven days.

Now and then I thought I could understand the voices. Not understand entirely, but they would be clear enough and loud enough I might hear two or three words. Once I think I heard a whole sentence.

But they were all words and languages I didn’t know. I recognized patterns and phrases, but I didn’t understand them. I just understood these were actual words. All shouting at me from far away and trying to be heard.

And eventually, at the back of all the shouting, there was a voice I understood.

That was when I heard Tim for the first time.

EIGHTEEN

I think I had heard him two or three times before I realized I was hearing him. After being in the broken room there were so many voices shouting at me, all trying to get my attention. His voice just faded into the background.

It was my last day in the quarantine room and the voices had mostly vanished. Just whispers in my ears now and then. They were just sounds.

And then I heard some words in English. They were so far away they echoed. At first I thought they might be coming through the wall, or maybe from somewhere out in the hall.

Someone was asking if anyone could hear them.

They yelled a few times, but it was very distant. I rolled over and listened to the wall. Then I sat up, got off the thin mattress, and went to listen by the door.

I remember thinking I wanted to yell back. To reassure whoever it was that I could hear him. I knew how scary it was in the quarantine rooms. Everybody shouted and cried at least once.

If this was somebody’s first time after all these months, maybe it meant there were new children being taken into the broken room. Maybe American children?

I didn’t yell back. The people who made too much noise got punished. Sometimes just yelled at. Other times they wouldn’t get food. Nery said one of the doctors slapped her hard on her cheek once. It was like being in the cages again.

I went back to my bed. The person kept shouting, kept asking if anyone could hear them. I was pretty sure it was a man. Not a boy, not another child, but an adult.

That was when I realized the voice was in the air. It wasn’t coming from the hallway or through the wall. It was there in the cell with me.

It was one of the voices from the broken room.

I’m not sure what happened next. I know I panicked. All I could think of was Tabora and all the blood coming from her eyes and ears and nose and mouth. I remembered the snapping noise just before she died. The voices had killed her. And now they had me too.

One of the guards opened the door and yelled at me to stop screaming. I didn’t even know I was. I was just sitting on the bed—or maybe the floor—holding my hands over my ears and trying as hard as I could to make the voice go away. To get it out of my head.

The guard dragged me out into the hall and said loud things I didn’t understand into his wrist. I thought he was taking me back to my room. I thought Alejandra and Nery and Patricia and Sara would all hear my head crack and see all my blood. But instead he took me in the elevator to a new room. Lots of people were there. They strapped me to a table and shined lights in my eyes and something pinched my arm. My arm felt like it was in cold water and then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was wearing the rubber electrode cap again and everyone was still around me. Looming over me. West was there. And Torrissen, the bald man. And two guards. And the doctor-director with the silver hair and mustache, Dr. Lourale.

West shined a light in my eyes. My head was strapped down too. I could feel the sensor clips on my fingers.

“Why were you screaming?” Torrissen asked.

“I don’t know.” My throat was so dry it hurt.

“Did you see something?”

“No.”

“Did you feel something?”

“No.”

Dr. Lourale pushed him out of the way and leaned over me. “Who did you want to go away?”

“I don’t know.”

“You kept yelling, ‘go away’ and ‘leave me alone.’ Who do you want to leave you alone?”

“The voices.”

They all spoke at once. Dr. Lourale told them to be quiet. “You’re hearing the voices?” he asked me. “When you’re alone in quarantine?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand them?”

“Yes. No. One of them.”

That made everyone start talking again. Dr. Lourale lifted his hand with two fingers pointed up. That was his “be quiet” signal.

“What do they say to you? Be precise.”

I remember the question because it was when I realized I was calm. I was following commands, like I was supposed to. “They wanted to know if I could hear them.”

“That’s all? Nothing else?”

“Yes.”

His face got annoyed. “Yes that’s all, or yes there was something else?”

One of the guards poked my shoulder. “Yes, that’s all.”

“What language did they speak?”

“English.”

“Did the voice sound male or female?”

“Male.”

“Can you hear them now?”

I closed my eyes. There were lots of sounds in the room we were in. People breathing and moving. Machines humming. One of the wands clicking.

But the voice was gone.

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He turned around and talked to the other doctors and postdocs. They talked fast and used lots of long words I didn’t know. Dr. Lourale kept tapping his fingers in his hand like he was pressing a button.

My throat still hurt, but I tried to raise my voice. “Am I going to die?”

West glanced down at me. Dr. Lourale kept talking. He said something about timelines and projected results.

“Am I going to die like Tabora?”

Dr. Lourale stopped and turned to look down at me. “What?”

“Am I going to die like Tabora did?”

“Who is Tabora?”

“Gamma Eight,” said West. “Expired on Thursday, right after her session.”

Dr. Lourale asked her a question with lots of long words in it. West answered him with lots of other long words. Torrissen said some things and Dr. Lourale nodded. He tapped his palm again and left. Torrissen went with him.

West took the straps off my head and arms.

“Am I going to die?” I asked her again.

“No.”

“But the voices killed Tabora.”

“Tab—Gamma Eight was too old. She’d developed too many neural . . . She didn’t have enough room in her head for the . . . the voices.”

“And I do?”

“We think so, yes.”

She got me off the table and then made me do all the tests again. Throwing and catching balls. Pointing at things. Standing on one leg. Then Torrissen gave me the language tests again. There were more of them this time. He moved his mouth funny when he said some of the phrases. I don’t think he understood all of them, he’d just practiced the sounds. I still didn’t understand any of them except English and some Spanish.

After that, West took off the fingertip sensors and the electrode cap and sent me away with a guard.

My stomach was grumbling, but the guard took me back to my room. Alejandra and Nery and Sara were there. Patricia was crouched in the corner, staring at them. Sara hugged me. Nery hugged both of us. Alejandra waited until they were done and then she squeezed me hard and tight.

“We were worried you were gone,” she told me. “So many people are sick.”

She told me not all the Gammas had been at their last meal. Tabora and I were missing, and also one of the boys, Osmin. Nobody knew what had happened. Nobody wanted to ask.

I told them Tabora was dead. I told them how. I told them what I saw and what it sounded like and what West had said about it. Everyone cried for her.

We talked about the voices. We were all hearing them now. Every Gamma. At lunch, Sara had heard that a Mexican girl, Mariana Seventeen, could hear clear things, too, but it was a language she didn’t understand. And there was another boy who was acting like Patricia.

I remember we all turned to look at Patricia crouched in the corner. The little girl who’d cried all through her first night had dark, angry eyes now. She breathed through her mouth, and it hung open so we could see all her teeth. After a moment, she made a grumbly-growly sound like an angry cat warning us away.

NINETEEN

We fell back into our routine. Breakfast. Tests from the doctors. Lunch. Exercise. Clean up. New clothes. Dinner. Back to our rooms.

We saw two or three doctors all the time now. We got more pills and shots. They had new tests. We got the language test all the time now, and sometimes they’d show us flash cards with different words. Some of the languages had different alphabets. They made us remember words and numbers, and we had to say them all back at the end of the visit, or sometimes the next day. And we had to do math problems, like in school.

Everyone was nervous. Lots of people had headaches. Jareth had an awful one. He said the voices were so loud they echoed in his ears forever. “It’s like a big church bell ringing,” he said one day at dinner. “You can feel it so much it makes your ears hurt.” He said it too loud and one of the guards poked him in the back and yelled at him to stop talking.

Emmanuel could only see out of one eye. He could blink the other one, but he couldn’t see anything. His blind eye was dilated and always rolled around and looked in different directions. He was scared he would go blind.

Patricia didn’t eat with us anymore. She sat with the boy who acted like her, Gabriel, and they growled if people tried to sit near them. Then the guards yelled at them and they’d be quiet. Patricia and Gabriel just ate with their hands. When we were in our room at night, she sat up on her bunk and stared at all of us until the lights went out. I think she slept sitting up. She hadn’t spoken to anyone since her last trip to the broken room.

On the fourth day, Osmin was back for dinner. He sat with us and whispered his story. He had trouble talking now. He was hearing a voice he couldn’t understand, and sometimes it came out of his mouth. He told us when that happened, it wasn’t him talking. The words just came out on their own using his voice. The doctors had kept him in quarantine and run lots and lots of tests on him. He was scared the next time they put him in the broken room he wouldn’t be able to talk anymore. He would only have the other voice.

It didn’t happen the next time, though. The doctors put him into the broken room three more times before he couldn’t speak anymore. He looked scared all the time as bubbly words kept coming out of his mouth, almost like someone half-singing a song.

I still heard my voice too. Every time they put me back in the broken room. While I was inside, all the other voices were too loud, but by my second or third day in quarantine they had quieted down and I could hear the man speaking English.

The man never sounded mean or angry. He just kept asking if anyone could hear him. He even sounded a little scared himself. I didn’t say anything.

In Sunday school the sister told us demons whispered in our ears. They were all evil and would try to make us do bad things. I didn’t think the voice was a demon, but I didn’t want him taking over my mouth.

The doctors kept asking me about the voice. Dr. Lourale got annoyed with me because the voice always said the same thing. He and Torrissen and another doctor argued about if I was making it up. Torrissen asked questions again and again and yelled at me if my answers were different in any way.

The Gammas had another week off. Then we all went into the broken room again. And then quarantine. And then another week off.

Alejandra still tried to keep count of days. She knew her count might not be precise because we hadn’t been able to keep track during our initial quarantine, before testing began. While we were in bed that night, in the dark, she said it had been three hundred and seventy-seven days since we arrived at the project. By her schedule, the next time in the broken room, tomorrow, would be when we got our heads shaved again.

Patricia made a grumbly noise over on her bunk and followed it with a hiss. I’d decided a voice had control of her mouth, just like the one that had Osmin. But she never looked like it scared her.

The next day they came, checked our bracelets, and took us away one by one. Nery went first. Then Patricia. We were all glad. Nobody liked the idea of being left alone in the room with Patricia. She scared all of us. They took Sara next. Alejandra and I sat on the bunk and held hands. Her hands were always very warm. Almost hot.

Then they came and checked our bracelets and took me.

Just like Alejandra said, they shaved my head again. West put the electrode cap on me. They sent me through the airlocks and into the broken room.

The voices started as soon as the door opened. I sat in the chair and stared at the room. I looked at all the lines and edges and corners. I stared until I saw how none of them went together right. Especially in the left corner.

While I looked, the voices shouted and yelled and whispered and hissed in my ears. It was like being surrounded by hungry animals. Some of them were so loud they made my head shiver and my stomach twist like I was sick. I remembered what Jareth had said about being next to a church bell, and I felt sorry he had to go through this all the time.

Sometimes things moved in the corners of the broken room, like bugs running along on all their legs. I never moved my head fast enough to see them.

I looked down and saw blood on the corner of my chair. It was dry, but I knew it was blood. It was in thin lines, like somebody had tried to wipe it off the chair but hadn’t tried very hard.

There was blood in my lap too. I sniffed and felt it in my nose. Another drop fell onto my leg. I remember I wiped my nose on my shoulder and it left a big streak. I was worried, but then I remembered West would give me new clothes soon.

I closed my eyes and listened to the voices. They still didn’t make any sense, even though I could tell they were speaking. I tried to hear the man’s voice, but all the others were too loud. I put my hands over my ears, even though I’d learned a long time ago it didn’t help.

The broken room’s cold pulled at me. It made me tired. It felt like I was sinking into the chair. Or melting on it.

Two sessions back, I’d started going to the door before the end of the session so I could be there as soon as it opened. I tried to do it this time and my arms and legs felt so soft and floppy. I couldn’t make them move. I slid off the chair and my legs bent under me. I hit my knees on the floor and fell over. My head bounced on the floor, and the wires of the electrode cap rustled around me. I saw little white spots in the air.

I was on the floor for a while, and then I swung over onto my belly. I used my elbows and dragged myself over to the door. It was open. Phyllis and Moreau were yelling at me to exit the room, but I could only tell from their expressions and the way their mouths moved. I couldn’t hear them over the voices.

I pulled myself into the airlock and the door closed behind me. The fans cycled the air. The other door opened and they yelled at me again to crawl out. I looked at them for a while, and then Phyllis had a long pole with a hook at the end. It was like a walking cane, but bigger and longer. She hooked it under my arm and dragged me out.

Lots of people moved around me. Somebody picked me up. I saw Dr. Lourale wearing one of the containment suits, and Moreau, and the wall clock said sixteen minutes forty-two seconds. One six four two. Then I was in the other airlock. Then the guard was holding me and I was in the hallway.

Everything stopped moving and I was on a steel table. Torrissen and West were both there. She pointed lights in my eyes and poked at the spot where my head had hit the floor. He snapped his fingers in front of my face, then clapped his hands together twice. He asked me what my designation was—Gamma Sixteen—and what his name was—Torrissen—and if I remembered any of the words from yesterday’s memory tests. West asked if I felt like I might throw up. I answered everything and she poked the spot again. She said I hadn’t damaged the electrode cap and I didn’t have a concussion, so I was lucky.

West wanted to run more doctor tests, but Torrissen made me describe everything I’d heard and felt in the broken room. He made me repeat myself several times. When West tried to interrupt, he told her to go talk to Dr. Lourale. But she didn’t go. She just stayed and looked mad.

Torrissen pretended she wasn’t there. He gave me all the language tests and the geography and math questions. When he was done, he walked out without saying goodbye to her.

Doctor West called him a bad name. The guard laughed and she said, “Yes, he is.” Then West gave me all the regular tests and sent me to quarantine.

The guard had to carry me. They had all seemed scared of us when we first started going into the broken room, but I think now we bored them. She carried me under her arm down a few halls, opened a door, and walked in to put me down on the bed. She left, and I was alone with the voices.

They were still loud when I woke up the next morning, but not as loud. They yelled all through breakfast. My head still hurt, but I did my jumping jacks and push-ups. I sat on the bed and counted all the blocks in the walls and all the tiles on the floor and ceiling. I had been in this quarantine room eight times before.

By dinner the next day the voices had quieted down. Now they were like somebody yelling in the room next door. I remember wondering if the doctors would keep us in quarantine longer now that they knew we were all hearing the voices.

The lights went out. The voices kept going in the dark, like they always did. I listened to them, even though they scared me. I couldn’t do anything else.

Under the yelling and hissing and growling, I heard the man’s voice. He was still asking if anyone could hear him. He asked again and again.

Then he said please.

He sounded so tired and scared. He reminded me of all of us back in our room. Especially for the first few weeks, when we kept trying to talk to the guards and they would ignore us.

I was still scared of the voices and what they might do to me, but I didn’t want to be like the guards.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can hear you.”

He was quiet for a long time. And then I realized all the voices were quiet. They were still there, but they’d gotten very far away.

Then the voice said thank you, and told me his name was Tim. He sounded happy to be talking to someone. Relieved.

I felt good for talking to him.

TWENTY

Tim and I talked for a while. Sometimes he had to say things two or three times for me to understand him. He still sounded very far away, but I only had to whisper and he could hear me.

He told me his name was Tim. He’d been a soldier and a secret agent and traveled all over the world having adventures and helping people. And he was dead. He died on his last adventure, trying to save his friends.

I asked him if he was a ghost and he told me he didn’t know. He hadn’t believed in ghosts before he became one. That made me laugh.

He asked my name and where I was from. He said he’d been to El Salvador a few times for work and thought it was beautiful. He was sad about my mother and sorry about my father and angry about what had happened to me.

I fell asleep while we were talking. The door opening woke me back up. I didn’t think I’d been asleep that long.

The guard waved me out into the hall. Another guard was there. Guest. With his hand near his holster. They stood behind me on either side and guided me down the hall.

They took me to West’s office. She was there. So was Dr. Lourale. And his assistant, Kirk, with the funny tablet. Kirk was the only one who didn’t look sleepy. West put the electrode cap and finger clips on me. She tested my hearing and my eyes again.

Dr. Lourale crouched down in front of me. He asked if I knew who I was and who he was. He said things in other languages I didn’t understand, but I thought were probably questions. He spoke very fast. I think he was trying to trick me.

Then he said, “Who were you talking to?”

“Tim.”

“This is the same voice you heard before?”

“Yes.”

“Can you hear it now?”

“No.”

“What did it say?”

West looked nervous when I said Tim had been a soldier and a secret agent. Lourale looked happy. He asked if I knew Tim’s last name, and I said I didn’t. He rapped my head and asked me again, and I said I didn’t again.

Dr. Lourale said something long and technical to West, and she answered back. They talked about remnants and Turing tests and a Chinese room. They mentioned me twice. Gamma Sixteen. And then quarantine and if I should go back. And they said monitoring and observation.

They had the guards take me back to quarantine. I waited to see if Tim would start talking to me again, but he didn’t. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until they pushed breakfast through the slot in the door.

I stayed in quarantine for another four days. Tim didn’t speak to me again. I tried saying his name, but he didn’t answer. I wondered if calling to me from wherever he was got him tired. I didn’t know if ghosts got tired or not, but it made sense to me.

After breakfast on my last day in quarantine, the guards came. Two guards again. They took me to see West. She ran all her tests and asked if I’d heard Tim again. I told her no. She told me if I did hear him again I had to remember everything he said.

The guards took me to the cafeteria. Most of the Gammas were there, standing in line. Alejandra saw me and said she was glad to see me and the guards yelled at her to shut up. I got in line and looked at the backs of heads, and at the little star map of freckles on Alejandra’s neck.

Osmin wasn’t there. Patricia wasn’t there. Jareth wasn’t there. I didn’t see Gabriel or Mariana Seventeen or little Izzy. There had been thirty-five of us. Now there were only twenty-eight.

Alejandra, Sara, Nery, and I sat together. Alejandra held my hand under the table. We whispered to each other. All three of them had heard the voices, but nothing clear. The voices shouted at Sara and Nery, but Alejandra just heard whispers. Sara thought she could hear something, a single voice, but she couldn’t understand it and it gave her a bad headache all the time. She was worried because Tabora had headaches before she died. She tapped her fingers on her bracelet while she talked.

I told them about Tim and the questions from Dr. Lourale, and how all my other voices had gone away. Nery thought Tim might take over my mouth, like Osmin’s voice had, and then they’d lock me up for good. Sara just wanted her voices to go away, and she said it loud enough that Guest shouted “Hey” and pointed a finger at her.

We all finished lunch and they took us to the exercise room. There were more doctors here. They had us do jumping jacks and sit-ups and then had us run around the room.

Angel had trouble running. He couldn’t balance well anymore and kept leaning to one side. Alejandra and I tried to help him. He told us his hearing had gotten very bad from the voices yelling at him. Sometimes he was deaf in one ear, other times in both of them.

I also remember stopping by two of the research assistants. If the guards were on the ground floor, they made you keep running. But when the guards were up on the catwalk, the research assistants and some of the doctors would let you stop and catch your breath if you didn’t take too long. These two were talking about Gamma Thirteen, Osmin. They said the working theory was that he was speaking like someone named Sue-Marion, but nobody there at the Project could confirm it. They needed to bring in a language specialist. They saw me listening and told me to get back to running my laps. I was happy. Osmin was still okay. His voices hadn’t killed him.

After more running and more jumping jacks and sit-ups, we were sent to the showers and given new clothes. We got dressed and waited in line to go to dinner. I asked Alejandra how long we had been here at the Project. She said it had been three hundred eighty-four days.

The guards had us go flat against the wall. They shouted some more and another line of children came from around the corner, led by other guards. All their heads were shaved like ours. They all wore shiny black bracelets. Halfway down the line I saw Victoria from the cages and the bus. She was pale and skinny. I whispered her name as she walked past me. She looked at me and whispered my name back. One of the guards on her line shouted at both of us. Guest stepped between us and shoved me hard into the wall, yelling at me to shut up and face front.

Their line walked past and vanished around the corner. Guest gave me an angry look and smacked his baton three times in his hand. I thought he was going to hit me with it. He always looked like he wanted to hit somebody.

Another guard yelled at us all to move away from the wall. We all stepped out and turned to face the cafeteria. I looked at the back of Sara’s head. Guest smacked his baton one more time and walked away.

“Seventeen,” Alejandra whispered behind me.

“What?”

“There are only seventeen Alphas left.”

The line started moving. We got our trays of food and sat at the long table. I saw Osmin sit down and he saw me and tried to smile. The last one to sit down was Gamma Seventeen, Mariana. She had red, after-crying eyes.

I looked up and down the table. At the far end, Patricia sat close to Gabriel. She moved her mouth around a lot while she ate and made lots of big expressions. I had seen little kids do things with their faces before, but the way Patricia did it looked wrong. She wasn’t playing games. I realized later it was like someone learning how their face worked, and it made me remember what Tabora had said once, how she’d felt like a shirt being tried on by somebody.

Jareth wasn’t at the table. I wondered if he had a voice now too. Had it taken control of his mouth? But then the whispers came down the table as we ate. Jareth had died in the broken room, sitting in the chair. All his blood had poured out of his ears and eyes and mouth. Someone, Emmanuel, said he looked like a fountain, spraying blood up into the air. I thought he was just being a mean boy, trying to be funny and gross. But he didn’t look like he thought it was funny.

They made the next Gamma clean up the room and drag his body into the airlock. Mariana. She’d spent her fifteen minutes in the room looking at dead Jareth and wiping up puddles of his blood.

Nobody ate much once we all heard the whispered story, but the guards yelled at us for that too. We had to eat. We had to be quiet. We had to do everything they told us.

After dinner, we got back in line and they took us back to our rooms. Patricia climbed up on her bed and stared at all of us. The rest of us sat together on Sara’s bunk. Her, Alejandra, me, Nery. We held hands and squeezed tight.

After a few minutes, Alejandra said, “They don’t go in the broken room.” I remember her grip loosened when she said it. I asked her what she meant and she squeezed my hand again. “I don’t think the doctors and technicians ever go in the broken room. They left Jareth in there and made Mariana clean up all of . . . all of him.”

Patricia made a noise in her throat just then, something like a cough or a grunt. She was still staring at us. Her eyes were always dilated now too. I watched her for a minute, until she blinked. A slow blink, like cats do when they get bored and look away from you. But she didn’t look away.

Nery squeezed my other hand. “West said being in the room killed Tabora because she was too old.”

I thought back and said yes.

“If Tabora was too old,” said Nery, “maybe they’re all too old. Maybe nobody can go in the broken room but us.”

We talked about that a lot. Sara reminded us that Lourale’s assistant, Kirk had gotten his palsy from direct exposure, and maybe that meant the broken room. Alejandra didn’t think it made sense, because they had to build the broken room, and why would they build it if they couldn’t use it? Nery thought they were using it. Dr. Lourale and the others had built it so they could put us inside it.

The lights went out and we made our way to our own beds. We talked a little more and then all said good night. Sara said good night to Patricia, even though she never answered.

I remember thinking as I fell asleep that maybe they hadn’t even built it. Maybe they’d just found it.

TWENTY-ONE

“Wait a minute,” said Hector, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m still kind of lost. Why were they sticking you kids in a radioactive room?”

“The broken room isn’t radioactive. Not dangerously so.”

“But the way you describe it, it sounds like they were wearing protective gear and using Geiger counters.”

“Yes. They were.”

“Well, if you knew that, why didn’t you just say ‘Geiger counters’?”

“I didn’t know what they were then.”

Hector took in a breath, let it out, and checked the mirrors again. This late, this far from the big cities, the roads were pretty empty. They’d passed a few semis and one bus. A highway patrol car had zoomed past them with its lights off, and he’d kept his hand near his pistol for a few minutes afterward.

He sipped the last of his lukewarm coffee. Crushed the cup. Tossed it in the back seat. “So if there was no radiation, why were they wearing the suits and checking you with Geiger counters?”

“Because of the radiation,” said Natalie.

“You said there wasn’t any radiation.”

“No. I said the broken room isn’t radioactive. Not dangerously so.”

“You’re doing that ‘precise’ thing again.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t get mad at you about this.”

“I understand. They got mad at us a lot too.”

“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “I’m just . . . I want to help you. I’m going to help you. But it’s hard for me to do without information, and this almost feels like a game where I have to ask a very exact question or I won’t get the right answer. Like in stories where people make wishes but they aren’t specific enough, so the wish gets granted in bad ways.”

Natalie nodded once, slowly, and turned to look out the window again. “I’d be very good with wishes.”

Hector felt his lips twitch. “Yeah, I think you would. Let’s start over. Was there something radioactive in the room?”

“No.”

“Was the room . . . generating radiation somehow?”

“No.”

“Can you explain where the radiation was coming from?”

“Yes.”

She paused, and for a moment Hector wondered if she was waiting for him to actually ask the question. Then he realized she’d shoved one of the powdered donuts in her mouth and was in the process of chewing. She swallowed, then had some water.

“The room couldn’t stop the radiation from getting in,” she explained, “because it was broken.”

His fingers danced on the steering wheel. “Can you explain that again?”

“Yes. Minor radiation gets in through the broken room. Residual X-rays totaling less than point-two-three millisieverts. That’s how they learned the room was broken.”

“They couldn’t see it was broken?”

“No. Yes. Some people can, but most can’t.”

“Could you?”

“Yes. At first. I could feel it more than see it.”

He looked over at her, barely a shadow huddled in the dark passenger seat. “Let me see if I’ve got all this right so far. They were putting you in this room and monitoring you to see how you responded. And the room was some sort of antechamber to something radioactive, but it was damaged somehow.”

“No. Not damaged. It was broken.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“It was.”

“I believe you,” he said. “I just don’t understand.”

“Am I using the word wrong?”

“Which one? ‘Broken’?”

“Yes. What does ‘broken’ mean in English?”

“It means . . . damaged. Not working, or not working right. Maybe that something’s cracked or come apart, like if you broke a glass or a bottle. Or your arm.” Hector paused and looked at the empty freeway rolling through their headlights. “It can mean people, too,” he added. “When people are broken, they’ve just been beaten down and given up. When they’re broken they’ve just got nothing left in them except depression and panic and . . . despair.”

Natalie nodded once. “Then I’m using it correctly. It’s a broken room.”

“In what sense?”

“What you just said.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. The broken room is broken.”

Hector took in a breath. “Seriously, what the hell were they doing to you?”

“They were exposing us to the broken room at regular intervals and studying the results.”

“Yes, but why? What did they think they were going to get out of it?”

Her head went side to side. She huffed a little air through her nose, equal parts frustrated and nervous. “We’re not there yet.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know yet why they were doing it. Not for sure.”

“You can just tell me.”

“Then it won’t be precise.”

“I . . . it’s okay. Just for this bit, you don’t have to be precise.”

Natalie’s fingers worked their way back and forth across the top of her backpack. “That’s not how being precise works.”

He bit off a frustrated sigh of his own.

Her fingers stopped their little dance. She took a deep breath. “Seven weeks after the last night I told you about, there was a day when we showered early and then they took us to the exercise room and told us to sit quietly. We were there for sixteen minutes when a guard led in a group of eight men and four women. They all had on suits and ties. Kirk had on a tie too.”

“Kirk,” said Hector. “Which one was he again?”

“He’s Dr. Lourale’s assistant. He’s a postdoc. He was exposed to the broken room by accident early in the experimental process, before any of us were there. He spent eight months recovering in a hospital with aphasia and a Bell’s palsy.”

“Right, I remember him.”

“He talked to all of the people in the exercise room and sometimes he would pick out certain Gammas and point at us. He said we were some of the most promising test subjects the experiments had produced, but not the only ones. Dr. Lourale’s theories about the interstice and the information bleeding through it were already seeing—”

“The interstice?”

Her shoulders sagged. She looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” said Hector. “I know you want to be precise, but I need to understand this as quickly as possible. I’m not going to be mad at you for skipping around a bit.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Not telling the whole story in order. Telling me little bits here and there so I can get things all at once and maybe not in the order you learned them or came to understand them. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. ‘Interstice’ was the word they used for the broken room when they talked to other people. It’s difficult to do this if you keep interrupting.”

“Sorry. You were . . . Kirk was talking about Dr. Lourale’s theories.”

She nodded once, turned her head to cough into her shoulder, then stared out the windshield. “Dr. Lourale’s hypotheses about the interstice and the information bleeding through it were already seeing extremely promising results. With two dead languages and one possible protolanguage.

“One of the men asked Kirk why dead languages were worth so much, and Kirk said it was a first step in accessing information from the interstice. He talked about ideas and persistence of memory and used lots of words none of us knew and said that human knowledge continued to exist in another place. Somewhere beyond the veil is how he said it. The interstice let test subjects acquire knowledge—potentially any knowledge—from anyone who’d ever lived.”

“Dr. Lourale wasn’t here for any of this?”

“No. Kirk told them an emergency had come up.”

Hector felt his jaw tense. “I doubt it. He wanted them to see all of you, but he didn’t want them connecting his face with kids as lab rats. Lets them all be a little more distant, stay arm’s length from what they were all part of.”

“Yes. Alejandra thought that too.”

“She’s smart.”

“Yes, she is. Kirk explained that at this stage the process was random, and it wasn’t entirely safe. The sudden influx of information could hurt people’s minds. That some of the test subjects had fatal episodes or irreversible mental trauma. However, Dr. Lourale believed that with further testing they could fine-tune the results and give any information they wanted to the test subjects. Passwords. Troop movements. Launch codes. Undercover operatives. If anyone knew it or had known it, Dr. Lourale believed it was in the interstice.”

Hector felt his gut twist a little. “Anything?”

“Yes. Anything from anyone who had ever lived. That was why they gave us language tests so often. To see if we had acquired new knowledge.”

“That’s why there was the kid speaking in Sumerian? Because he got some four-thousand-year-old information?”

“Yes. No. I didn’t know it was Sumerian yet. I still thought it was two women’s names. And that’s not why he spoke it.”

“Why, then?”

“Because something got into him.”

“Not just information.”

“Yes. We were getting more than just information.”

“Like Tim.”

“Yes. And other things.” She yawned, then winced.

“How’s your back feeling?”

Natalie looked back out the passenger window, up at the sky. “It hurts.”

“You know we had to do that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take the aspirin yet?” He knew she hadn’t. The packet was still on the passenger seat, half-tucked under her leg. She hadn’t touched it.

“I don’t want to take the pills.”

“I know you don’t, but it’ll make you feel better.”

“No, it won’t.”

“It’ll make you feel a little better.”

Even in the dark, he could see her pressing her lips tight together.

“Jesus,” he muttered, “how did Helen ever do this?”

“Who’s Helen?”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “She’s . . . nobody.”

Natalie said nothing. Just stared at him.

“Are you good? Do you need to pee or take a nap or anything?”

She shook her head. “No.”

He glanced at the gas gauge, even though he’d checked it every ten minutes for the past few hours. “We’ve probably got another two hours before we run out of gas. Maybe three. It should get us somewhere we can dump the car and figure out what we’re doing. You think you’re good for that long?”

“Yes. I won’t need to use the bathroom until morning.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. That’s when I use the bathroom. Will you be happy if I take the pills?”

“What?”

“The aspirin pills. I can take them if it will make you happy.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it happy, but I’d feel a lot better. I’m worried about you being in pain. We might have to move fast without a lot of warning, and the better shape you’re in, the faster we can move. Plus, you shouldn’t have to . . .”

Silence rolled around in the car.

“I shouldn’t have to what?”

He focused on the road. “Nat, just take the aspirin. Please?”

He could see her moving on the edge of his vision. Heard the slow tearing of paper. She swallowed loudly. When he glanced over at the passenger side mirror, her head was tilted back, letting the last of her water drain down her throat.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Natalie tried to shake a final few drops from her water bottle, and Hector considered stopping somewhere to get her some more. But an isolated stop this late at night was a ridiculously bad idea. Too easy to pick them off if someone had gotten ahead of them. He would’ve figured it out by now, and after taking out the tac team he had to assume they had someone at least marginally close to his level working on this.

He wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel and stared at the highway ahead of them and read some road signs as they flashed through the headlights. “We’re about an hour and a half from Sacramento,” he said. “Why don’t you rest for a bit. Do you want to take a quick nap?”

Natalie let her arm with the plastic bottle drop. Crushed it. Tossed it in the back seat with Hector’s coffee cup. “No.”

PART THREE
ACTION FIGURES

TWENTY-TWO

Hector found a garage across from a big park in downtown Sacramento and left their stolen Civic on the top floor. He spent a few minutes surveying the other vehicles there, then had Natalie keep an eye out while he traded the car’s license plates with the ones from a dusty silver SUV. He didn’t need her to keep an eye out—his situational awareness had never gotten dull, and over the past eighteen hours it had kicked back into high gear—but he wanted her to feel like she was helping.

He left the scratched and battered driver’s door open enough to be noticeable without looking too blatant.

Natalie wrapped her arms around her backpack and looked at the car. “Won’t they track us if we just leave it here?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They’ll track us eventually. We just want to make that as long from now as possible. Make sense?”

“Yes.”

“The amateur move is to burn the car,” he explained. “Looks good in movies, but it’s basically a big sign saying, ‘We’re trying to hide something over here.’ It tells people to come quick and look for it. This way, it sits for an hour or two before someone ‘helps out’ and closes the door. Then it sits here for another day or two with a new set of fingerprints on it. If we get really lucky, somebody sees it sitting here open and decides to steal it.”

“I don’t understand. Why is that lucky?”

He took his coat off, slung the little saddlebag over his shoulder, and pulled the coat back on. “If someone else steals the car, most police are going to assume they’re the ones who stole it from LA Even if they just go joyriding in it. Their fingerprints and DNA will end up all through it, enough to help hide us for a little while longer. At that point, the car gets buried in the system under another crime, connected to another person. Most police stop looking as soon as they think they’ve got a suspect. It could be a week or two before they realize it’s connected to us.”

Natalie thought about it, nodded her approval.

“How are you doing? You stayed up all night talking. You good to walk for a bit?”

“Yes. I’m used to staying up all night.” She shrugged her backpack up onto her shoulders.

“One stop, and then we’ll get some food. Sound good?”

“Yes.”

They headed down to ground level and walked a half-dozen blocks, then he guided her into a Goodwill they’d passed earlier. Hector found himself a collared shirt and a blazer with enough room to move. Then he led her a few rows over to another set of racks.

“These are boys’ clothes,” said Natalie.

“Yes they are.”

“I’m a girl.”

“You’re a little girl lots of people are looking for, who’ll fit in little boys’ clothes. It’s another thing that’ll let people overlook you.”

She coughed and her head went side to side.

He crouched down so he could be level with her and talk without raising his voice. “A lot of people think blending in, a disguise, is just one big thing. Wearing a wig or a hat and dark glasses or something. But the best disguises are lots of little things. Small changes and adjustments are easier to accept, and that way people don’t think about how big the overall change is. That’s how you hide in plain sight. You nudge their perception of you, you don’t try to shove it out of the way.”

Natalie stared at the row of boys’ shirts. Hector checked the tags at the back of her neck and helped her narrow down her choices. She plucked at some of the shirts, then drifted over to coats and lifted the sleeve of a hoodie.

“You can try on a few things if you want,” he told her. “Get something you like that you’ll feel comfortable in.”

“I don’t know what I’d like.”

Hector reached for the shirts, slid a few hangers aside, and lifted one from the rack. It had a big angular logo from some sci-fi convention. “You said you liked yellow, right? Here’s a yellow one.”

She took it. He handed her a few more things, remembered what she’d said about changing in an alley, and pointed her at the changing room. He still had to pull the curtain closed behind her. He stood outside, watching the other customers.

A woman with a name tag and an armload of jeans walked up and gave him a cautious smile. “Are you and your daughter finding everything?”

He smiled back. “I think so, yeah. Thanks.”

“We have a whole section of girls’ clothes right over there.”

Hector tightened his smile and shook his head in a casual way. “We’re good, thanks. This is her thing now.”

“Are you sure? We got in a couple very cute skirts the other day.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

The woman gave a slow nod and leaned closer. “It’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it? Shopping with them once they start making their own choices.”

He let out a practiced laugh. “Nah. I miss the days when she’d just wear whatever I gave her, but this makes her happy.”

The woman smiled wider. “Let me know if you’re looking for anything in particular. I’ve got a pretty good sense of what we’ve got.”

“I will. Thanks.”

The woman walked off and he tried to calm the itch on his neck. The encounter had gone on just a little too long. Long enough to maybe settle in the woman’s mind and be remembered. He turned his shoulder away from her and hoped the woman would focus on some other customer.

Natalie pushed the curtain aside and stepped out. She still had the backpack clutched in her arms, and he gently pushed it down. The yellow T-shirt was a little too big, the hoodie a little too long, but he thought it worked on her.

“Do you like those sneakers?”

“Yes.”

“They’re comfortable? Not too loose or too tight?”

“I like them.”

“Can you run in them if you had to?”

She took a big stride forward, then another one. “Yes.”

“Good. We’ll keep them for now.” He looked back at the rack. “Might grab you one more shirt. It’d be an easy change if we need it. You want a wool cap?”

She stared up at him. It took him a moment to recognize the look in her eyes. She was waiting for an explanation. Or for orders.

Hector lifted a knit cap from the small shelf above the rack of coats. It was gray with a single red line around it. “Helps hide your hair. And they’re pretty unisex these days, I think.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you’d look good in a cap.” He handed it to her. “Pick another shirt and let’s go.”

Natalie ran her hand along the rack and selected a black shirt. He was pretty sure she’d picked it at random. It had a picture of Spider-Man wearing a dark fedora and trench coat.

“You sure? This one?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Go change back into your clothes.”

She walked into the booth again. Hector looked over his shoulder to make sure the woman with the name tag had gone deeper into the store and wasn’t at the register. He didn’t want another encounter with her.

Natalie came out, her backpack slung across her shoulders. Hector carried their clothes to the front, pulled a small bundle of bills from his pants pocket, and peeled off three of them for the cashier, an older man with a bristly beard. He packed everything into a secondhand plastic bag, and his eyes rolled off them to stare across the store.

Outside, Hector dug the cap out of the bag and stretched it over Natalie’s head. She didn’t fidget, but he felt her tense up.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t like this.”

“The cap?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“No.”

“You’re not turning into a fashion who . . . a fashion nut, are you?”

“No.”

“I’d feel a lot better if your hair was covered.”

“It feels like the electrode cap at the Project.”

“What?”

She reached up and pointed at her head. “It feels like the electrode cap they had us wear in the broken room.”

He stopped walking and looked at her. Her face was still calm, but he could see the tension around the edges. He weighed the odds of someone seeing her and recognizing her versus the odds of someone seeing her and wondering why she might be so tense with an adult male. “You really don’t like it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes . . . ?”

“Yes, I really don’t like it.”

He sighed, pinched the top, and plucked it off her head. “No caps, then.”

“Thank you.”

He shoved it back in the bag and started down the sidewalk. She took a few quick steps so she was ahead of him. She looked back with a big pasted-on smile. “So you look like a good dad.”

“Very good,” he told her. “Maybe we’ll hit another store, find you another baseball cap or something. We need to get you a new bag too.”

“They had backpacks in there.”

“I know. But I want to get you a new one.”

“Why?”

He tipped his head back toward the Goodwill. “Pluses and minuses of getting clothes at a place like that,” he told her. “On the plus side, they’re cheap. They almost never have any sort of decent security cameras. It also doesn’t raise any eyebrows if you pay for everything in cash. So we can shop here and stay off the grid.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means we’re not leaving a trail, like Tim told you. Not even a fake one. The minus is that pretty much everything there is going to be out of date. Out of style. That’s one of the first things they teach people like me to look for—people dressed in unusual clothes. Somebody knows anything at all about fashion or trends, we stick out like sore thumbs. So we’ll get you a new backpack and hat to break it up a bit. Some new things, some old things. Make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You hungry?”

She looked back at him again. “Yes.”

“Let’s get you some food. And then you can tell me more about Tim and the broken room.”

Her smile vanished.

TWENTY-THREE

They followed their noses and found someplace for an early lunch. Hector chose a booth for them away from other customers and with a view of both entrances and the door to the back. They each had a cheeseburger and split some fries. Hector studied everyone who entered, watched everyone in the parking lot through the big glass windows.

“So,” he said when she was halfway through her burger, “how’d you get out?”

Natalie’s head did its metronomic side-to-side wobble. “Out of what?”

“How did you escape the Project?”

“That didn’t happen for another—”

“We’re skipping ahead again. How did you escape?”

She stared at him for a moment while she chewed another mouthful of cheeseburger. “Tim gave me things to practice when they let us exercise or when I was in quarantine. He broke them down so it wouldn’t be clear to anyone what I was doing. On escape day, the guards took me for my morning exam from Dr. West. I distracted her by faking a cough and throwing one of the sensor clips across the room.” Natalie held up her hands and tapped her middle finger. “While her back was turned I filled a hypodermic with haloperidol and gave her a high dose. She was too surprised to call for help before it knocked her out.”

“Tim tell you how to do that?”

“Yes. I’d been studying her office for several days and telling him what we’d have access to there. I left Dr. West in her chair, refilled the syringe, and went out to the guards and told them I was done. While they were walking me back, I turned and punched the big one between the legs and kneed him in the chin when he bent over. The other guard grabbed me, but I stabbed her in the hip with the second dose of haloperidol.”

“You took out the big guard?”

“Yes. Tim had told me it was important it was the bigger guard, because big people always think small people can’t hurt them and they aren’t as careful.” She took another bite of her cheeseburger.

Hector gave her an approving nod. “Then what?”

“I used Dr. West’s ID card to get out of the building. I swiped lots of different locks on the way so it would be harder to track me. It was afternoon outside and I hid in the back of a pickup truck that was leaving the complex. I squeezed into the corner of the bed and covered myself with some ratchet straps to break up my lines, like camouflage.”

“Didn’t the driver see you get in the back?”

“No. I stayed very low, and he had lots of stickers on the window. He was thinking more about going home.”

“You knew who it was?”

“Yes. No. Not then. While I was in the back, Tim had me focus on getting my bracelet off. There were some screws in the truck bed, and I used those to pry it open enough so I could undo the latch. Fifteen minutes later we stopped at a gas station and when the driver went inside I got out and hid. When he came out I saw it was Dobson, one of the guards. He was there back in LA, when you had me close my eyes.”

“Are you sure it was fifteen minutes later?”

“Yes. It was the length of one session in the broken room.”

“Oh.” Hector finished off his own burger and gestured for her to continue.

“Dobson left and I waited for another truck I could hide in. That was when I saw the sign for the Colorado city. I had to spell out the words and numbers for Tim.

“Another truck came that was heading away from the Project, one with poles and boards to make the back taller, and I climbed in the back when the driver went inside. There were lots of tools and garden machines. That truck drove for almost an hour. Four sessions. It stopped and the driver got out and walked away. I waited a long time, until the sun was almost gone, and then slipped out of the back. I walked away and headed down the street until the houses became apartment buildings. Tim had me walk down the alley behind them, away from the main road. There were bins of garbage and some of them had clothes next to them.”

She paused to slurp on her straw.

“The doctors had made me change in front of people so many times, Tim had to tell me not to do it in plain sight. I went behind one of the garbage bins, coughed really long and bad, and changed clothes. I threw everything from the Project in the trash where people wouldn’t see it. It was dark, and the clothes didn’t all fit right, but we were free. I remember I looked up when Tim said that. It was the first time I’d seen the stars in years.”

Hector crumpled up the wrapper for his cheeseburger and dropped it back into the bag. “Your big Shawshank moment, huh?”

Natalie dipped her head to her shoulder. “I don’t know what that means.”

He smiled. “It means you were free and happy.”

“Yes. Yes, I was.” She picked up the last of her cheeseburger. “It was my big Shawshank moment.”

A black SUV pulled into the burger shack’s parking lot and became the focus of Hector’s attention. Tinted windows. Out-of-state license plates. No bumper stickers or window decals. It sat in the parking space for sixteen seconds before the brake lights went out. His hand moved to his pistol in the twenty-three seconds it took for the doors to swing open. Three little boys. Twins and one a few years older. As old as Axel should’ve been. Two women slid from the front seats and herded the kids toward the restaurant.

He took another, slower breath. Took his hand away from the pistol. Focused more of his attention back on Natalie. “Why then?”

One of the last french fries stopped a few inches from her mouth. “Because it was the day Tim said we were escaping.”

“But why then? Why not weeks earlier?”

“He didn’t know enough about the Project for us to devise an escape plan,” she said, showing off the mashed remains of some fries in her mouth. “Also, Alejandra kept track of the days. Every forty-two days they would shave our heads again so the electrode cap would fit correctly. When she said they would shave our heads in three days, Tim said we had to escape the next day because we’d be too easy to identify with a clean-shaved head.”

“Fair enough. You done eating?”

She studied the empty wrappers and sleeves in front of her. “Yes.”

“You eat like someone in boot camp.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you eat everything in front of you very fast.”

“Yes. I have a stomachache.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Hector took Natalie to the bathroom and had her change clothes in the stall while he held the door shut with his foot and traded shirts in front of the sink. He pulled the blazer over his shoulders, then flexed his fingers to pop the stitches holding the pockets shut. He reloaded the pistol and tucked it into the small of his back. Items shifted over from his old jacket, then he emptied the contents of the saddlebag into the blazer pockets. After looking at himself in the scratched-up mirror, he shifted a few things from one pocket to another, smoothing out the wrinkles and bulges.

It wasn’t great. Bulkier than he would’ve liked. But it would do for now.

Someone thudded against the door, then rapped their knuckles three times. Hector said nothing but slid his hand behind him again, close to the pistol. He stared at the sign on the door reminding employees to wash their hands before returning to work, and a screed in thick black letters accusing someone named Kris of cheating. He pictured the outline of the person on the other side of the door, where their head and chest likely were.

Two more knocks. Another shake of the handle. Then a grunt and some shuffling, retreating footsteps.

Natalie had a loud coughing fit, something small plopped in water, and then she came out of the stall. She’d put on the black T-shirt and hoodie. He stuffed the other shirt into the backpack. Her old clothes and the triangular saddlebag went into the bathroom trash under some paper towels. She stared at the trash while Hector spent a minute spiking up her hair as best he could with some water.

“You want to carry as much as you can on you,” he explained, following her gaze. “Packs and bags can get taken away or lost. Or maybe you have to lose them.”

She nodded once.

They left the burger place and Natalie coughed again while Hector got his bearings.

“I think we should get you something for that,” he told her.

“I don’t like pills.”

“I know, but we should take care of it. We could get you a liquid or something.”

“It won’t help.”

“Might as well try though, right? After all this, we don’t want someone to recognize you by your cough.”

He spotted a CVS across the street. “We’re going to go in there, but there’s going to be cameras. Don’t look up, all right?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t stare at your feet, but try to never angle your head up.” He reached out and lifted her chin just a bit. “Right there. Understand?”

“Yes.”

They crossed the street and headed in. A few minutes of walking the aisles gave them a Robitussin knockoff. He also found a discount bin with a Transformers baseball cap and a deservedly marked-down back-to-school backpack made of glaring yellow nylon. On the way to the register, he passed an aisle of women’s clothing and grabbed a four-pack of girls’ underwear.

“You need a bag?” asked the cashier as Hector counted off a few small bills.

“We’ll just put it all in the backpack,” he said. “Right, kiddo?”

Natalie looked at his stomach for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

The cashier eyed the bulging backpack already on Natalie’s shoulders but handed Hector his change and receipt without a word.

When they were back outside, Hector handed her the cap and she pulled it down onto her head. He took it off and turned it around, pointing the brim backward. They walked two blocks from the pharmacy before he guided them into an alley that smelled damp and sour. He pulled the tags off the backpack and scuffed its edges back and forth on the ground for a few moments to strategically dull the yellow. Then he opened the cough syrup, filled the little plastic cup that came with it, and handed it to her. “Quick shot,” he said. “Just swallow it all at once.”

She took the cup and stared at it while he shifted everything from her Star Wars backpack into the new one. He finished up and hung the old pack on the corner of a dumpster. “Somebody’ll grab that before the end of the day,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Drink your medicine.”

She held the cup up toward her head but didn’t open her mouth.

He crouched next to her. “Look,” he said, “I get it. You finally got away from the people filling you with pills and drugs and now I’m trying to fill you with pills and drugs. But if we’re going to do this, you need to be healthy.”

Her lips twitched.

“What?”

“That’s what West would tell us. They needed us to be healthy.”

“Come on. I can’t keep fighting you every time I need you to do something.”

“It’s not every time.” She followed it with another cough.

He closed his eyes, took in a breath, let it out through his nose. “Nat, I wish I knew some cool parenting trick to make you feel safe and reassure you, but I don’t. It’s not what I was trained for.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Drink the cough medicine.”

“It won’t help.”

“Just humor me. Please. Like with the aspirin.”

She stared at him, then tilted the cup into her mouth.

“Thank you.”

Natalie handed him the cup back. “You do.”

“I do what?”

“You do make me feel safe.”

Hector popped the cup back onto the bottle and tucked it into the backpack’s side pouch. “Well, it’s good to know I’m doing something right.”

“Yes. You are.”

He straightened up and waved her out of the alley. He rolled his shoulders and let his blazer settle over him. “All right,” he said as they walked down the street, “we want to stay on the move. I’ve got a couple hours left in me before I’ll need to crash hard. Sound good so far?”

“Yes.”

He looked around to see who was near them on the sidewalk. “Then I think we need to get another car.”

“Yes.”

A parking garage loomed nearby. Almost eight blocks from the one where he’d dumped the other car. Far enough nobody would immediately connect the two stolen vehicles. Even better if a day or two passed before somebody noticed the . . .

He set a hand on Natalie’s shoulder. Felt her tense under his fingertips. He crouched, started adjusting her coat and the straps of her backpack.

“What is it?” she asked him.

“Not sure.”

Up ahead, at the end of the block, two policemen stood on the sidewalk talking to a Latino man and a little girl. Their squad car sat nearby. The girl had short hair. The man was close to Hector’s size.

Last night, while he drove and Natalie told her story, they’d passed a half-dozen of California’s big digital traffic signs, the ones that warned of traffic and shutdowns and advised you not to drink and drive over the holiday weekend. And sometimes they had Amber alerts. Descriptions of abducted children, the people who had taken them, and the vehicles they were driving. Hector had watched every sign for an Amber Alert that sounded like him and Natalie. He still didn’t have a sense of whether the Project valued its low profile over getting Natalie back, but an Amber Alert would definitely help with the latter.

The two policemen stood slightly to either side of the man. One of them was talking. The man talked back and gestured down the street. The other officer looked at the girl, at the man, at his partner.

Hector told himself it could be anything. The man might’ve asked the policemen for directions. One or both of the policemen might just be dick cops harassing a Mexican out walking with his kid. Maybe they were all old friends and talking about the little girl’s school play.

It could be anything.

The officer who wasn’t talking rested his hand on his holstered pistol.

A mild itch spread out from Hector’s neck and across his shoulders.

“We’re turning around,” he said. “Head back the way we came, turn right at the corner. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to walk like a boy. No skipping, no swinging your arms, head down, drag your feet. I’m going to be a bit behind you. Don’t wait for me until you’re around the corner. When you do, crouch down and tie your sneakers.”

“My sneakers have Velcro.”

“Then pretend to tie them. But don’t actually loosen them, in case we have to run. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then go.”

She walked past him, and he listened to her footsteps move away down the sidewalk.

Hector let his shoulders hang loose. He watched the police. Watched the man’s reactions. The man looked relieved. He took the little girl’s hand, giving a polite nod to the officers, and walked away in the direction he’d gestured earlier.

It could be anything.

One of the policemen looked up, saw Hector watching them. They locked eyes. Hector felt the man assessing him. He kept his shoulders loose. Let them see he was there alone. Checked an imaginary watch on his wrist, because only rich people and hipsters still wore watches.

The officer’s attention drifted away. He and his partner talked as they got back into their car. They pulled away from the curb, paused at the corner, and made the turn.

Hector counted to five and wandered casually up the street after Natalie.

At least half a dozen excuses came to mind why local police could be given a missing-child report that wouldn’t be an Amber Alert. Would they have blanketed everything within driving distance of Los Angeles? Everything in the state?

He turned the corner and found Natalie kneeling and staring at her shoe. Her hands moved back and forth over the Velcro straps. She murmured to herself, talking in quick, quiet phrases.

“Good job,” he told her. “Let’s go.”

She stood up. “Where?”

“Around the block.” He set a hand against her back to get her moving.

“Have we been eye-deed?” She drew out the letters as if they were new to her.

“What makes you say that?”

“I told Tim what you did. He said it sounded like you thought we’d been eye-deed.”

Hector shook his head. “It means identified. And I’m not sure. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t feel like taking chances.”

“Are we going somewhere else to steal a car?”

He waved a hand up at the parking structure. On this side of the block, it was an office building. “Nope. We’re going for a walk and then inside, just like we planned.”

She looked up at him, then bent over and let out three long, rasping coughs. Spittle dotted the sidewalk at her feet. She took a breath, and one last rattling explosion of air cut it off.

She straightened up and looked at him again. “I’m sorry.”

On the edge of his vision, Hector saw a few people looking their way, attention attracted by the sound. He crouched by her, put his hand on her shoulder, tried to look fatherly. “Cough syrup hasn’t kicked in yet, huh?”

“No.”

“Give it time.”

“It won’t work,” she told him.

“It will if you give it time. You good now?”

She took a breath. Let it out. “Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go get ourselves another car.”

TWENTY-FIVE

The new car wasn’t as nice as the first one, but Hector felt sure it cost enough the owner wouldn’t be ruined by the theft. He stopped just outside Sacramento, at a big shopping mall in Roseville, and swapped license plates with another car on the edge of its sprawling parking lot. He wanted to put as many layers as he could between him and Natalie, and the people looking for them.

He looked over as they pulled back onto the freeway. She sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap. Her new backpack slumped between her feet. As he watched, she tried to bite back a yawn.

“You tired?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I need you to be tough, but you don’t need to fake it for me. You’ve been up for at least twenty-four hours at this point. That’s super tough for a little kid if you ask me.”

Natalie didn’t say anything, but she straightened up a bit in her seat.

“If you need to take a nap, we can talk later. It’s all right.”

“I don’t. We stayed awake a lot at the Project.”

“That’s not healthy.”

“I know.”

They drove in silence and watched as the shopping plazas gave way to small hills and clumps of trees. Natalie stared in awe at all the greenery. Her gaze locked on to the occasional pine tree, and her head would turn slowly as they passed it.

“What you told me about what they did to you at the Project,” Hector said. “All the voices you and the other kids heard were dead people, like Tim?”

“No.”

“Some of them were alive?”

“No.”

“How can they be not dead and not alive?”

Her head went side to side. “No. They’re all dead.”

“You just said they weren’t.”

“No. I said they weren’t all dead people.”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel again. “What’s that mean?”

“Some of the voices are dead people. Some aren’t.”

“What are they, then?”

“They’re what got into some of the other children. Like Patricia and Izzy and Gabriel.”

“No, I mean . . . what are they if they’re not people. Where did they come from? Are they dead animals or space aliens or . . . ?”

Her head went side to side. “No. They’re not dead animals or dead space aliens.”

“So what are they?”

She shifted in her seat, but her gaze stayed fixed out the window. “Dr. Lourale believed individual identity didn’t survive beyond the veil. Any test subjects that showed altered behaviors had just received a small amount of personal information. Enough to alter their personality. He called it the remnant of a person.”

“But that’s not what they are?”

Natalie shook her head. “No. They aren’t just information. They’re like people, but they’re not.”

“That’s . . . disturbing.”

“Yes.”

“And they’re from wherever Tim is? Heaven or purgatory or something?”

“No.”

“No . . . which?”

“No, they’re not from wherever Tim is. No, we don’t know where he is. But he thinks it’s closer than heaven.”

“Can he . . . can you tell me what he sees? Maybe the three of us can figure it out.”

She sighed and breathed the questions into the air. A mile of highway went by, and she whispered a few more things. Then she coughed.

“Do you need some water?”

“No.”

“We can get some when we stop.”

“Tim says there isn’t anything where he is. It’s all gone. He can’t see or hear or smell anything.”

“But he can see you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “He just knows I’m here. He says it’s like being in a dark room but knowing that someone else is in the room with you.”

“I get that,” said Hector. “So why you?”

“Because I was in the broken room.”

“No, why did Tim talk to you and not the one of the other kids?”

“Because other things were talking to them.”

“Things like . . . remnants?”

“Yes.”

Hector’s fingers tapped on the steering wheel. “Are you sure Tim’s real?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, are you sure you’re talking to Tim and you don’t just have a bunch of his memories? Like the doctors at the Project said.”

She turned to look at him. “Yes. I don’t have the memories. Tim does.”

“How do you know? Did they do the Turing test?”

Her head went side to side. “I don’t know. They did lots of tests.”

Hector thought of how to explain a Turing test and admitted he didn’t really know what one involved either, just that it was about figuring out if something was thinking or just acting as if it was thinking. So he switched tactics. “Are you talking with Tim right now?”

Natalie stared at him, and her head metronomed again. “No. I’m talking with you.”

He sighed. “Back to twenty questions again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Not your fault. Could you talk with Tim right now?”

“Yes.”

“What can he tell me that will absolutely, no question, convince me this is real?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, I mean, can you ask him for something like that?”

She coughed twice. Then a third time. “Yes.”

“You can have some more medicine when we stop.”

She ignored him and stared out at the road. Her lips shifted. He caught the barest whispers of sound. She paused for a few moments and then he heard more breaths with just the slightest variation between them.

He glanced over at her. “Well?”

“Tim says he doesn’t know what to tell you because you never listen to anyone anyway.”

Hector bit back a laugh. “That doesn’t prove anything. A lot of people could say that.”

“He also says the general name was Orellana. And you had on a stupid hat.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. The general’s name was Orellena. He says you should know what that means. And you should know the hat was stupid.”

A mild itch worked its way down Hector’s neck. “Ask him how many rounds did we fire. Total.”

She repeated the question at the dashboard with faint breaths and then listened to the silence. A few more whispers, more listening, and then a sigh.

“What’s wrong?”

Her head twitched. Her left eye blinked two-three-four times. Another tremor shook her skull, and a muscle spasmed in her cheek.

“Nat? Natalie? Are you okay?”

“Eight,” she announced as the spasms stopped. “Six from you, two from me. It was your op, I just helped clean up.” She spoke confidently now, and her disjointed accent had vanished.

“What did we have at the airport bar?”

“Shots. One for each life. The airport didn’t have good tequila, but that wasn’t the point. And that’s when you admitted you owed me. And I said lucky for you I wasn’t a man who kept track of that sort of thing.”

Hector stared at the road ahead. The itch rushed over his body and became a chill as he recognized the voice and speech patterns. “Jesus fu—Jesus Christ Almighty.”

Natalie smirked at him.

The chill sparked Hector’s adrenaline, and he grabbed the steering wheel the way a man on a cliff ledge grabs a rope “This is . . . It’s really you?”

“Yeah. In the flesh. Sort of.”

“How?”

“That’d take a while, and I promised her we wouldn’t do this for long.”

“Why?”

“She can explain. Do you believe her now?”

“I . . . yeah, yeah, of course.”

“Good. That’s all that matters. She can explain the rest.”

“But why did you—”

“Because you’re a decent guy, Hector. Always were.” Her chin jerked to the side and her eyes rolled up. She coughed hard four times, each one shaking her whole body. Her left hand pawed wildly at her leg.

“Christ! Are you all right?”

Natalie coughed one more time, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and looked over at him. “Yes. I’m all right.”

“Natalie?”

“Yes.”

“What just happened?”

“Tim got close. He wore me.”

“He what?”

“It’s like what Tabora said. About being tried on. But when Tim uses my mouth I can’t talk, because then it’s his mouth. And when he uses my ears I can’t hear.”

“You just lose everything? Can’t see or hear or talk or feel anything?”

“Yes. Everything he takes is his.”

Hector thought of church stories as a kid and bad movies as an adult killing time in hotel rooms around the world. “So he’s possessing you. He’s a ghost.”

“No.”

“But he’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“So what is he?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t know, either. But he doesn’t like the word ‘ghost.’ It sounds silly.”

“What are we calling him, then?”

Natalie looked at him as if he’d just said something very dumb. “Tim.”

“No, I mean . . . what do we call what he is? If he’s not a person anymore.”

“Yes, he is.”

“He is . . . ?”

“Yes. He’s still a person. He’s my friend.”

Hector processed a dozen different thoughts and questions. “The broken room is some sort of . . . what? Portal? Stargate?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Did they tear a hole in reality, or make a black hole or something?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Natalie stared out the windshield for a moment. “When I was in school, we saw a television show about . . . There are people who study . . .” She thought for a moment, then put her arms up in a triangle and had her fingers burst apart.

“Explosions?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know the word. Tall hills on fire.” She made the triangle and fanned out her fingers again.

“Volcanoes? ¿Volcán? Like, a mountain on fire?”

“Yes. There are people who study volcanoes, but they don’t make volcanoes. They have to go to where the volcanoes are.”

“Right.”

“That’s what Dr. Lourale is doing. Things in the world are supposed to line up a certain way. And in the broken room they don’t. That’s why they study it there.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m still going to help you,” Hector said. “But if you can talk to Tim and he can tell you how to do things, what do you need me for?”

“Because he can only tell me things. You know how to do them.”

“But if he tells you, then you’d know how to do them.”

“No. He can tell me, but I don’t have the experience or the reflexes or the tactical awareness.”

“There’s your weird vocabulary again.”

“We’ve talked about it a lot. Also, Tim doesn’t know what’s happening if I don’t tell him, and then he has to explain them to me. There’s always a delay. He says I need someone in the field with me.”

“That makes sense.”

Hector tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He watched a dark sedan as it approached and rumbled past them. He kept tapping after the car had vanished in the rearview mirror.

A few minutes of silence passed by in the car. They passed more trees. An off-ramp. An overpass. Even more trees.

“How did he die?” asked Hector.

“Tim?”

“Yeah.”

“He was stabbed through the chest.”

“You answered that pretty quick.”

“Yes,” said Natalie. “He and I have talked about it before.”

“What else do you know about it? His death?”

“He had retired but ended up going on one last mission. He’d been on recon. They were spotted. The bad guys got him, but his friends got away.”

“I always wondered how he bought it.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“How he died. People in my line of work—in the work he and I did—we don’t usually retire. We don’t make it that far. I heard that he’d done it and I thought ‘good for him.’ He deserved it more than a lot of people. Then, less than a year later he’d died. Supposedly an empty casket. No body. I figured somebody disappeared him.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means . . . you know how, in movies and TV shows, if there’s no body, they’re not really dead?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s all bull . . . it’s crap. You shoot somebody five times and they fall in the ocean, they’re dead. Body or no body. Some people vanish and it just means they’re dead. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s strange that you don’t like swearing around me, but you still tell me awful things.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m figuring out a lot of this as I go along. Helen used to give me serious shi . . . serious crap whenever I swore around . . .” He looked out at the road. “We should hit Reno in maybe an hour. I want to drive past, maybe get some supplies, and find someplace to spend the night.”

Natalie looked at him, opened her mouth to speak, and a wet, rattling cough burst out of her mouth. Her body folded over the seat belt, and three more long hacks sprayed the floor and the top of her new backpack. Hector saw threads of phlegm and flecks of gray-green. She coughed again, a little one, and then flopped back up into the seat.

“Crap,” he said. “Cough syrup’s not helping at all, is it?”

“No.” She wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

“When we stop, I’ll give you another dose.”

“It won’t help.”

TWENTY-SIX

Hector drove them across the state line, past Reno, and got off in Sparks. They drove north away from the freeway, looking for residential areas. He risked stopping at a gas station with a Dino Mart and kept his head down as he bought some bottled water, a few Soylents, and a half-dozen Lunchables. He wanted to get more but knew that too large a purchase might make someone remember him. It’d have to do for two meals.

He also grabbed a handful of napkins for Natalie to clean up with.

They drove for half an hour, crisscrossing different blocks. Natalie squeezed the food and drinks into her backpack. Hector went through neighborhoods at just over the speed limit, looking at buildings and signs as they passed.

“When you’re in the US, you always drive a little fast in the suburbs,” he told her. “It doesn’t seem right, but people accept a stranger driving too fast more than a stranger driving slow. If I drive fast, I’m a jerk, but I’m not a suspicious jerk. They might yell at you to slow down, but they’ll forget you two minutes later. The guy driving slow through the neighborhood is the guy everybody watches.”

She yawned.

He stifled a yawn of his own. “Not much longer. You think you can last another hour?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I think I just found where we’re staying.”

He drove a little more and found a parking spot he liked. He hoped they’d get another day out of this car, but he still wanted it at least three blocks from where they were staying, closer to the main drag than to the house he’d selected. They parked on a well-lit street, positioning the car on the property line between two homes, and walked back the way they came.

The house had an almost too-neat lawn, still bright green in the shadows of the setting sun. The paint was fresh and sharp. A sign on the front lawn announced an open house on the coming weekend and listed a number to arrange other showings.

Hector marched right up to the front door. Walk like you own the place was a lesson he’d learned early, and it worked in every country he’d ever set foot in. A large black box hung from the front railing on a steel loop.

“Hey,” he told Natalie, “pay attention. This is easy and useful.”

He spun the dials on the lockbox and showed her the four numbers.

“This is the default combination on a lot of these boxes. It’s the year the company that makes them was founded. Real estate companies buy these things, but they almost never reset them to a new combination. See?”

The box popped open, and a shining steel key tumbled out into Hector’s hand. He unlocked the front door, an oversized thing with four small square windows across the top, and swung it open. He waved Natalie in while he did a last, casual check of the street. The houses on either side of this one, and the one across the street all had empty driveways and no lights on. Not a guarantee nobody was home to see them enter, but pretty good odds.

He closed the lockbox, followed Natalie inside, and closed the door behind them.

Hector did a quick scan of the living room. There was an alarm system by the door, but it wasn’t armed. No cameras he could see. Some wood-panel art on the walls with vaguely inspirational sayings. Two big overstuffed chairs.

He moved through the house, keeping away from the windows, and Natalie trailed behind him. The whole place was done in a minimalist “Early American realtor” look. A simple table and chairs near the kitchen. A fireplace that was too modern for his taste. The bathroom had no shower curtain, but there were two lightweight towels, a washcloth, and an immaculate bar of soap in a silver holder. One of the bedrooms had an overdressed queen-size bed with at least six pillows on it, and a nightstand with three comfortably used hardcovers, sans dust jackets. Hector couldn’t remember the last time he’d read a book.

“I think we’re good,” he said. “We can’t turn the lights on, but we should be able to stay here for the night. Get cleaned up, sleep in a bed—all that fun stuff real people do.”

She stood in the middle of the living room. Her eyes drifted over the furniture and the decorations. She stared at one of the chairs and cautiously reached out to touch it.

“Go ahead,” Hector told her. “Sit. Relax. Whatever. I’m going to do another sweep.”

He moved through the house again. Only two windows had line of sight to another house, and he pulled the doors to those rooms until they were almost shut. The house was probably being flipped, and he checked the cabinets and closets on the off chance the workers had left anything useful like food or tools. He found three more bottles of water, a plastic spackle knife, and a roll of coarse blue paper towels. The closet by the front door had a half-full garbage bag and a bucket full of old bathroom tile. Trash meant they weren’t expecting to show the house the next morning.

He ended up back in the living room. Natalie still stood there, her backpack hanging across her shoulders. Her hand was still on the overstuffed chair.

Hector looked around the room, listened, focused his attention. “Something wrong?”

“No.”

He reached over her shoulder, grabbed the loop of the backpack, and lifted. Her arms went limp and it slid free. “We should be good here. You can take your shoes off, take a shower, whatever. Just keep the lights off and stay out of the two rooms with their doors mostly shut. Somebody might see us through those windows. Understand?”

“Yes.”

She stood there.

Hector set the backpack down and crouched in front of her. “They . . . they made you behave a certain way for a long time. It’s hard to stop. Am I right?”

Her shoulders shook a bit. “Yes.”

“And sometimes you don’t say things even when you want to, right?”

“Yes.”

He plucked her Transformers cap off and tossed it onto the chair. “I don’t know if this will help, but I’m giving you permission to talk. Anytime you want. If you ever wonder, if you have second thoughts, I want you to remember this moment right now, and me telling you that you can talk. You can ask questions. You can move around. You’re not a prisoner anymore.”

She rocked back and forth. Her lips quivered. “I . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything. We’re hidden. We’re safe.”

She stood in front of him.

He took in a breath. Let it out. Tried to think of his visits with Helen. Watching her deal with Axel. “Are you hungry?”

Natalie shook her head. “No.”

“Tired?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to sleep? You can have the bed.”

“No.”

Another deep breath. “How about this. Let’s get you cleaned up. You’ve been on the run for five days, right?”

“Yes.”

“Pretty sure you need a shower. One of us stinks, and for once it’s not me.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No,” she said, “you stink too.”

“Did you just make a joke?”

“No. You really stink too.” She stared at him with calm, innocent eyes.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You can take the first shower in case there’s not much hot water. They usually leave the heater on in these places, though. Don’t want to have a showing and there’s only cold water.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Never mind.”

He unzipped the backpack, tossed some of the food onto the overstuffed chair, and tugged out her spare T-shirt and the pack of underwear. Then he pulled out the cough medicine and filled the little cup. “Here. It’s early, but maybe this and some hot water will loosen up whatever’s in your lungs.”

“It won’t.”

“Just humor me one more time. If it doesn’t help, you don’t have to take any more.”

She tilted her head back and swallowed the red syrup.

He guided her into the bathroom. The clean clothes went on the vanity. Natalie stared up at the shower.

Hector glanced at it. “We’ll have to angle the head so it hits the wall. Don’t want to make too big a mess and have somebody call the cops.”

She still gazed up at the showerhead.

“Remember what I said about talking?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead. Say it.”

“I don’t want to take a shower.”

He sighed. “I know I said it like a joke, but you do smell a bit, kid. If we want to stay off the radar we need to blend, and we can’t blend if people smell us coming.”

“I don’t want to take a shower.”

“Why not?”

“It looks like one of the showers from the Project.”

Hector looked up at the showerhead. It was a simple piece of polished silver that was intended to look elegant but gave off a vaguely industrial vibe. Probably conserved water. Probably cheaper than it looked.

The bathroom had been done in a neutral tile that wasn’t far off from “institutional.” Especially without a shower curtain. The colorful towels were really the only thing giving the room any life.

“You know what,” he said. “What if you take a bath instead?”

She blinked.

“Would that be all right?

Natalie’s lips twitched at the corners. “Yes. Thank you.”

He fiddled with the knobs and heard the pipes grumble inside the walls. The water crashed into the tub, and he tweaked the flow until it was quieter. When it was a few inches deep, he scooped up the soap from the vanity and tossed it in with a splash and a clunk.

“I’m going to leave you in here. You can take as long as you want.” He stepped into the hall. “Do you want the door closed?”

She stared at the doorknob.

“Nat?”

“No. I don’t want the door closed.”

Hector nodded and pointed down the short hallway. “I’ll be right over in the living room. If you need anything, anything else makes you uncomfortable, you just yell. Got it?”

“Yes.”

He left, tilting the door halfway shut behind him. A few steps carried him to the living room and the chair with the backpack. He dumped everything else on the kitchen table. The water bottles thumped; the rolls of bills thudded; the pistol magazines clattered.

He heard splashes. “Hector!” Her voice echoed in the mostly empty house.

“What’s wrong?” he called out in a stage whisper.

A long pause before she responded, quieter. “I heard noises.”

“It was just me. Taking inventory.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He set the food to one side. Still plenty of cash. The P226 magazines weren’t compatible with the Glock he’d gotten from the agents yesterday, but the ammunition was. He took a quick minute to thumb a few rounds free and make sure his weapon was fully loaded.

He left the pistol on the table and stared at it.

Before yesterday, it’d been two years since he touched a firearm.

Jesus, it had only been yesterday afternoon. He’d been sitting in his booth in the Pharaon, getting ready to order another drink. This was the longest he’d been sober in a while. Lots of reminders of why he drank.

Now he had a bunch of people after him, and only the barest of idea of what he was walking into. All on the word of a twelve-year-old orphan with PTSD who could speak to a dead spy he’d known almost a decade ago.

He heard a few more splashes and saw a thin wisp of steam slide out from the bathroom.

Tomorrow they’d double back to Reno. Guillermo still had a storefront there, and unless something had changed, he was still a hub, connecting people and services. He’d know competent people who could get Nat somewhere safe. Maybe Canada or the EU.

Then the marker would be paid and Hector could get back to forgetting the past.

TWENTY-SEVEN

They ate dinner at the table, facing each other. Hector had spread out some of the blue paper towels to serve as both plates and napkins. Natalie’s wet hair stood up in dozens of little spikes. She’d wolfed down her first two Lunchable packages and was working her way through the third. She held up each cracker, slice of salami, and piece of cheese, studying them with a practiced eye before pushing them into her mouth with one finger.

Hector picked at his first packet and sipped on one of the Soylents.

Natalie chewed another morsel, coughed, and sprayed a few flecks of cheese onto the table. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I was hoping the hot bath might loosen some stuff up so you could cough it out.”

She wiped some spittle from her mouth and didn’t respond. She pushed another cracker into her mouth and stared at him.

Hector dabbed at the bits of cheese with one of the blue towels. “Did you want to say something?”

“Yes.”

“I told you, you can just talk.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It’s difficult.”

“I know. I’m not upset, I just want you to feel safe.”

“I do.”

“Then don’t worry about talking. Do you have something to say or a question you want to ask?”

“Yes. Two questions.”

“First one?”

“Why didn’t you put the key back?”

He glanced down. The silver key from the lockbox sat on the table next to the two unopened Lunchables. “I want us to be long gone before anyone gets here tomorrow morning. But just in case, this way they can’t walk in on us. And they’ll make a lot of noise while they yell at somebody on the phone for losing the key and to get a new one here. So we’ll get an early warning and be able to sneak out. If we’re even still here.”

She nodded once.

“Second question?”

“Who’s Helen?”

A slice of limp cheese stopped halfway to Hector’s mouth. He clamped down on the flurry of images and emotions sprayed across his brain. “It’s not important.”

“You said her name twice.”

“I know. And I shouldn’t have.” He put the cheese on his tongue and swallowed it.

“Is she your daughter?”

“No.”

“Is she your wife?”

“Jesus, no. She was my little sister.”

“Why isn’t she important?”

He picked up a cracker, turned it over twice, set it back down. “She’s dead. She died almost three years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“How did she die?”

Images of Helen and Axel slid through Hector’s mind again, and his booth at the Pharaon, and the wonderful fuzz alcohol had given the past two and a half years.

“I failed her,” he said.

Natalie plucked a slice of warm pepperoni from the plastic tray as her head went side to side. “I don’t understand.”

He looked at her. The girl who’d lost her parents and been cheated out of a chunk of her childhood. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.” She looked at the slice of pepperoni. Carefully bit it in half.

He took a breath. Had another sip of Soylent. Wished he had something stronger.

“Our mom bugged out early. Dad tried to take care of us and then he got really sick. Crap in his lungs from work. He died. Grandpapa ended up raising me and Helen back in LA. tried to teach us morals, values, family history, all that stuff, but I was a real fu . . . I was a really bad kid. It basically came down to joining a gang or joining the army, so as soon as I was old enough, he marched me over to the recruiter’s office.

“It was a good fit. I did really well. Made Helen and Grandpapa proud. The army . . . taught me to do a lot of things.”

“Yes,” said Natalie. She ate the other half of her pepperoni slice. “Like Tim.”

“Yeah.”

“You killed people.”

“Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Lots of bad people. But I did other stuff too. All over the world. Anyway, Helen . . . she had a baby. A little boy. Axel. After Grandpapa died, she and Axel ended up going out to Phoenix for a job. I was shipping out, so I sent her some money to help with the move.

“It was a long assignment. Didn’t get to check in with her for almost three months. When I checked my email, I had a bunch of messages from her. Some of the locals out by her new place were . . . causing problems.”

Natalie ate another cracker.

“The kind of people who locked you up in a cage when you got to America? They decided Helen and Axel didn’t belong here, either. They didn’t care that our family’d been here for hundreds of years before most of them. They just wanted to get rid of people with skin like ours.” He pointed at his face, then at Natalie’s.

“Next time I got a chance to check in, I didn’t hear from her. Didn’t answer her phone. No emails for almost five weeks. I made some calls, leaned on one or two people, and found out she’d been arrested. Her and Axel both. I left the field as soon as I heard.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Which part?”

“The field.”

“It means where I was working at the time.”

“Why did you leave work?”

“Because the whole point of my job was to keep people safe back home. And then my family back home got threatened by my own country. I was so fu . . . I was very angry. I came back to the States, but it was too late. They’d already sent her and Axel away. To a place they’d never even been before.”

He took a long drink of the Soylent. Finished it. Threw the plastic bottle at the overstuffed chair across the room. Watched it bounce off and spin in the air and rock on the hardwood floor.

“I tracked them down. It’s one of the other things the Army taught me to do. It took a couple weeks, but I found . . . where she’d ended up. Found out what happened to her. She’d been alone in a strange country. Bad men found her. Made her do things. And when she wouldn’t do them anymore, they killed her.”

Hector stopped talking as a drift of memories slid through his mind. The doctor at the hospital telling him the gory details. The man’s bored indifference turning to fear as Hector questioned him.

Across the table, Natalie stared at him. She looked down at the empty tray in front of her, then over at the last two packages. Back at him.

He nudged one toward her. “Go ahead.”

She slid the package over and peeled the lid off. This one had little slabs of turkey and yellow cheese. “What happened to Axel?”

Hector looked up at the too-modern lighting fixture over the table. “I don’t know. I never found him. I think Helen hid him with someone to keep him safe from the bad men and when she died the trail just went cold. But I’m pretty sure he’s dead too. There was a flu epidemic happening then. Lots of kids died. Mostly poor kids. And he would’ve been very poor. I couldn’t find any trace of him. Nothing. So Axel’s either dead or lost in the system.”

“Like I was.”

“Like you were.”

“Did the bad men go to jail?”

“No,” said Hector. “They all died.”

“How?”

“Too much karma.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It doesn’t matter. That’s who Helen and Axel were. And that’s why nothing’s going to happen to you. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Was that when you stopped being a soldier?”

“Pretty much. One of the advantages of being in my line of work is, people don’t keep a lot of records on you. Makes it easier to deny you exist when you screw up. But it also makes it easier to walk away once you get fed up.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Fed up?”

“Walk away.”

“It means when you quit. Retire.”

“Like Tim did.”

“Well, he did it a little more by the rules, but yeah. I retired.” He stood up. “I’m going to take a quick shower. Finish eating. Tonight you get to sleep in a bed.”

She nodded, stuffed a cube of turkey into her mouth, and then coughed it back out. The coughs kept spilling out of her. Long, braying coughs that sounded like dry honks.

Hector stepped around the table and patted her firmly on the back. “Let it out. Just cough it all out.”

Natalie let out another rasping blast of air that shook her body beneath his hand. Then she gurgled and the coughs changed pitch. Another wet sound came from deep in her throat, and the next blast of air sent it up and out.

She sprayed a fan of yellow-green mucus across her paper-towel place setting. Some of it stretched out onto the tabletop. Hector recalled some of his advanced first-aid classes, and that the yellow-green coloration meant a viral infection. A second hacking cough brought up more mucus—a lot more, this time flecked with blood. Pneumonia, maybe?

Then she coughed a third time—a deep, wet, choking sound that bubbled up her throat.

His first thought was Natalie had heaved up something from their lunch back in Sacramento. The color, the wetness of them, planted the thought of swollen beans in his mind even as he remembered they’d eaten cheeseburgers. But just as quickly he saw the objects were too large, almost the size of his thumb, and covered with fine lines of ribbing.

Another memory popped into his mind. A four-week assignment in South Korea. The local contact’s mad obsession with crushing every insect he saw in the small apartment that served as their base of operations. He remembered the man pointing at similar ribbed shapes behind appliances and deep in drawers, constantly complaining and explaining and cleaning, even though they all knew they were only there for a month.

Natalie coughed again and spat out three more oversized egg sacs, each one glistening with yellow-green mucus. She wheezed in a long breath and wiped a streamer from her chin with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you . . .” He stared at the shapes on the table. “What is this?”

“It’s why I can still hear Tim when I’m not in the room,” said Natalie. “I’m broken too.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Hector cleaned up all eight of the oversized egg sacs and threw them in the garbage disposal. He didn’t want to think about what might hatch out of them. He let the gears beneath the sink whirl and grind as long as he dared, flushing them with the hottest water he could get out of the tap.

Natalie wiped her face and went back to eating. She sat and watched him wipe the mucus off the table. She finished off her fourth Lunchable.

He wadded up the blue paper towels, avoiding the gray-green slime. “Has this happened before?”

“Yes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I did. I told you the cough syrup wouldn’t work.”

“You didn’t say why.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s . . .” He stopped. His voice echoed in the empty house. He crouched in front of her. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting that. It . . . it scared me. I was scared for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. You don’t have to be sorry because I’m worried about you. That’s a good thing.”

Her mouth twitched.

“How long has this been going on?”

“I started coughing after Tim first spoke to me.”

He gestured over at the sink and the garbage disposal. “What about those. How many times have they come up?”

“This is the fourth time. It happened once at the Project, the last time I was in quarantine. I vomited one into the toilet. Then once when I was changing clothes in the alley after we escaped. And once this morning, when we changed clothes in the bathroom.”

“Always like this?”

“No. It gets worse. There are more of them each time.”

“Do you know what they are?”

“Yes.”

He waited.

“They’re other things that were dead. They’ve been dead for a very long time, like the remnants. They can get out through me because I’m broken.”

Hector took a deep breath. Let it out. Wished for a glass—for a goddamned case of whiskey. “The other kids at the Project—is this happening to all of them, too? Are they coughing things up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It has to do with the broken room. And which type of thing gets in your head.”

“Like Tim?”

“Yes. But Tim is with me, not in my head. He doesn’t take over like the remnants that got in Patricia and Gabriel.” She paused for a big yawn. “We all get broken, but the remnants fix the break. They just fix you wrong.”

He took a breath. Straightened up. The sun had sunk low, and most of the house was in shadows. “Are you going to be all right? For now?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Tim says I should tell you he thinks it will all be okay if we can get back to the Project and rescue the other kids.”

“Oh, does he?”

“Yes.”

“Why’s he think that?”

She whispered into the dark house. Waited for a response. “He just does.”

Hector took a breath. Let it out. Took another one. Prioritize. Organize. He’d been up for almost thirty-seven hours now. So had she. He had more questions, but they’d both be able to think better with some sleep.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he told her. “You’re probably about to fall over. I’m not too far behind you.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Then you can lie in bed and be not tired.”

He guided her to the bedroom. Beneath the collection of pillows, the queen-size bed had only the comforter and a fitted sheet. Again, more for display than use. But it was clean and in better shape than any mattress Hector had slept on in a couple of years. Probably better than anything Natalie’d slept on, too, from what she said. He batted half the pillows to the floor and folded the comforter back the way he remembered his father doing when he was little. “Shoes off. And the hoodie.”

She followed his instructions and crawled into the bed. “What about you?”

“I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going to get some sleep too.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

He pulled the comforter up over her. “You can try, but I bet you’ll fall asleep.”

“No. I won’t.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

“Yes.”

Hector stood next to the bed, and they stared at each other. Then he nodded and walked out into the hall. He looked back once, and locked eyes with her again.

He went to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. There was enough light coming in the window from the street to get a sense of how he looked. How other people saw him.

Cleaned up, but he could still see the burned-out drunk.

Instead of a hook, the bathroom door had a large knob on the back, which seemed like a uselessly stylized thing. He stripped and managed to get his shirt, jeans, and blazer to balance precariously on it. Everything else went on the vanity. He found the clothes Natalie had discarded for her bath, and stretched those out too.

He tilted the showerhead toward the wall, stepped into the tub, and let it soak him for a moment. Closed his eyes and let the cold water hit his chest until it heated up. He leaned forward and it hissed against the top of his head.

What the fucking hell had Tim gotten him into?

Last Hector had heard, Guillermo had arrangements with three former combat surgeons who were Stateside now. Hector was pretty sure he knew who two of them were. Trusted one of the two. He could drop Natalie off tomorrow morning; she’d be with a doctor before lunch.

But would a surgeon be able to help her? Did she have an implant or an infection or some kind of . . . infestation? Was it in her lungs? Her stomach? He still wasn’t sure what being “broken” meant, but felt pretty damned sure it’d need more than a couple of stitches to fix. The way she described it sounded like radiation damage, but he couldn’t think of any type of radiation outside of a sci-fi movie that would make somebody vomit oversized insect eggs.

He found the soap and scrubbed himself hard. Lathered up his hands and worked the bubbles through his hair. Not the first time he’d used bar soap as shampoo.

Another problem. One of Guillermo’s on-call surgeons had tentative former ties to the Project. Heck, she was the one who’d first told Hector about the place. It didn’t mean she was involved with this particular program, but Hector knew how contracts and loyalties could complicate things.

He wondered what the odds were Natalie’d recover on her own. Maybe with time and distance from the broken room, whatever it was, her body would start to heal. Tonight’s eruption might’ve been a last surge of the disease or infection or whatever it was.

Hector tilted his head forward and rinsed the soap from his hair. Used his fingers to clean it all the way down to his scalp. Turned in a slow circle and let the shower wash everything off him.

Jesus, why did Tim stick him with this?

He still didn’t feel clean, so he scrubbed his shoulders, under his arms, his stomach. A little too much stomach there. Still a solid core, but he’d padded it over the past couple of years. He lifted one knee, then the other, scouring them. Got his face again. Rinsed.

Natalie wouldn’t get better on her own. It wasn’t going to happen. He understood the world enough to know nothing “broken” ever spontaneously fixed itself.

It’d be someone else’s problem tomorrow. Natalie’d be safe and the marker would be paid. The assholes chasing them—chasing her—would never find her. And then whoever she ended up with could deal with her . . . whatever it was. Canada had great medical care. And great scientists.

She’d be much better off.

Hector toweled off and got mostly redressed. Left the shirt and blazer hanging on the knob. The steam had gotten most of the wrinkles out of them. A little more time would get the rest.

He stepped out of the bathroom in bare feet, jeans, and his basic gray tee. The house had gotten darker, but his night vision had always been good. He peered in at Natalie and saw her curled on her side. Her breath was slow and steady.

He walked to the living room. Gathered up their remaining supplies into the backpack. Collected the trash from dinner and mixed it in with the garbage the flipper crew had left behind.

He settled into the chair, his pistol resting on one overstuffed arm just under his fingertips. Only amateurs and idiots slept with a pistol in their hand, finger by the trigger. One jolt, one random twitch, and you’ve shot either yourself or your teammate, or told everyone within five hundred yards exactly where you were. Sometimes a combination of results, if you were especially unlucky.

The chair was well padded and had the nice ease of being freshly broken in. Probably one of the nicest pieces of furniture displayed in the house. He was pretty sure he wasn’t the first person to doze off in it. He slid his butt down until the chair’s back was supporting his head. He might wake up with a slightly stiff neck, but it was still more comfortable than a lot of places he’d slept over the years.

Hector relaxed and let his eyelids drop. Took a few slow, calming breaths. Felt his shoulders slump.

He was halfway across the room, pistol out, before the echo of Natalie’s cry faded from the house. He slid into the bedroom, back to the wall, checking shadowed corners, eyes on the half-open closet. “What is it?”

Her silhouette sat in the bed, looking at him. “I had a bad dream.”

“You what?”

“I had a bad dream. And then I woke up and I didn’t know where I was and you weren’t here.”

“I’m here. I’m just in the other room where I can see the door.”

Her head went side to side in the dark. “You said we were safe here.”

“We are. I’m just being extra safe. Just in case.”

“You’re not sleeping?”

“I’m in the chair. It’s fine.”

She didn’t say anything. Just sat there staring at him.

“You can go back to sleep,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”

Still nothing.

He tried to remember his visits with Helen, the half dozen times he’d gotten to spend time with Axel. How Grandpapa had dealt with him when he was little.

“Do you want me to stay here with you?”

“Yes.”

Hector pictured the house, the street, the backyard. He pictured how he’d assault the house. He added up all the possible places someone could pick up their trail.

Natalie stared at him.

He sighed. Took the top book off the nightstand’s stack of hardcovers. Set his pistol down on the stack, at a better height if he reached for it.

He stretched out on top of the comforter next to her. He grabbed one of the pillows, folded it in half, stuck it deep behind his head, almost to the base of his skull. The mattress flexed and yielded beneath him.

Natalie flopped back, pulled the comforter up to her chin, and swung her head closer to him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Hector. He stared up at the dark ceiling, taking slow, deep breaths. “What was your bad dream about?”

“Horses.”

“You don’t like horses?”

“No. When I was little they scared me. They’re big and they have large teeth.”

“You’re still pretty little, you know.”

“No. Barring damage from the broken room, I’m probably within a year of my first period.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It just catches me off guard sometimes, the way you talk about things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s just who you are. It’s probably more about me not having a lot of experience with kids.”

“Even Axel?”

He took another breath. “Yeah. Even Axel. I knew he liked Transformers and Teen Titans, but not much else. I wanted to be a good uncle, I was just . . . always somewhere else.”

“But you loved him,” said Natalie.

“Yeah, of course I did.”

She settled against her own pillow, her head still close to Hector’s. “Tim is right. You are a good person.”

A minute later she was asleep again.

TWENTY-NINE

They woke up with the sun. Hector did a last pass through the house, making sure he’d neatened up any major trace of them. When the work crews got there, they’d obliterate anything he’d missed, either muddying the trail or scrubbing it away even more. He tucked his pistol against his back and gave Natalie her Transformers cap and bright-yellow backpack.

Going off the sun and his internal clock, he guessed it was just before eight o’clock when they headed out. They walked two blocks, sipping their Soylents as they went. Hector guided them toward the car, and kept his calm expression when he saw the police officer up ahead checking the California license plate.

He saw Natalie tense and gave her a quick pat on the shoulder. “Nothing to worry about,” he told her. “Just a good dad and his kid out for a walk, right?”

“Yes,” she said. She took a few quick steps ahead of him, looked back and smiled.

“Say hello to her when we get closer,” he said. “A big, happy hello. Then let me do the talking. Got it?”

“Yes.”

They covered another block, crossed the street, and approached the police officer. One woman in a white squad car with red and blue stripes down its length. Probably stuck on a boring patrol route because her boss didn’t trust her anywhere something might happen. Hector took a long sip from his bottle and studied her pose, watched her hands. Short blond hair with sunglasses hooked on the top button of her uniform, right next to her badge. She looked over as they approached, and the muscles of her face tightened a bit, shifting her expression ever so slightly.

“Hello,” called out Natalie. She punctuated it with a sharp cough.

“Hello,” said the officer—Cooper, according to her name tag. Her eyes flitted between Natalie and Hector as he lowered the bottle. “This your car?”

He shook his head. “Nope. You writing tickets? That’s a lousy way to start someone’s day.”

“No tickets,” she said.

An itch prickled across Hector’s neck.

Officer Cooper kept looking at him.

He smiled a deliberately awkward, slightly nervous smile. The smile of someone who knew they’d done nothing wrong, but maybe didn’t trust cops. “There a problem, Officer?”

“No,” she said. “Car came up as stolen. Probably dumped here.”

He nodded. “Kids. We get a car left here every other month or so. We’re just far enough off the main roads, y’know?”

Another shift in the muscles of her face. “Yeah,” said Cooper. “Don’t suppose you heard anything last night?”

A shrug. “We’re two blocks over, and to be honest, I crashed pretty early last night. Had to do a lot of driving yesterday and came home to a sick kid.” He gestured at Natalie.

Cooper glanced over. Natalie waved. The police officer looked a beat too long, examining Natalie’s gender-bland outfit.

“Cute girl.”

“She is. Got her mom’s looks, but my personality. Lucky for both of us.”

“Shouldn’t she be in school?”

His brain flew through half a dozen ways to disarm Officer Cooper without seriously hurting her. It continued to three ways he could knock her out quickly and quietly. Before it could list off ways to kill her, Natalie interrupted with a loud, braying cough. She bent over and spat some mucus at the ground.

“Should be,” agreed Hector, “but she’s been doing this for two days now. So she’s missing morning classes and going to see the doctor.”

Cooper nodded once. Slowly. “It’s a nasty cough.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to see the bad ones.” He gestured Natalie down the sidewalk. “C’mon. The doc’s squeezing us in. We can’t be late.”

Natalie smiled at Cooper again and headed down the sidewalk in big strides. Hector gave a polite nod and walked past the police officer as casually as possible. The itch had spread down between his shoulder blades. He kept waiting to hear metal on leather and worrying what he’d have to do next.

He made it to the end of the block, where Natalie waited for him. “Cross the street,” he said. “That way. We need to get out of her sight fast.”

“Why?”

“She’s smart. She noticed details. She’s going to remember us.”

They reached the far sidewalk, strolled past another home and out of Officer Cooper’s line of sight.

“We need another car. Now.”

“Yes.” Natalie looked at a minivan in a driveway.

“Not here. There’s a shopping plaza five blocks that way. We just need to get there before she spots us again.”

“Why?”

“Because any minute now, she’s either going to wonder why we’re walking to the doctor’s office, or why I parked half a mile from our house. And then she’s going to come looking for us. Maybe with a lot of other people. This way.”

Hector guided them through the neighborhood. Every other house had a waist-high chain-link fence. The streets were wide, the blocks were long east to west, and the best cover was the green trash bins people left out along the sidewalk.

Cooper had run the plates, realized they didn’t match the car, and probably ran the VIN number. The car had come up as stolen, and there was a good chance someone was watching for any cars stolen from downtown Sacramento yesterday. He would’ve been if he were running this op, and he’d have a few tac teams scattered in the general area, based on what he knew. Hell, someone especially smart could have a team less than half an hour away.

He felt exposed. His whole back was tingling at this point. His attention spread wide, watching and listening.

They turned onto one of the shorter north-south blocks. The air vibrated with the distant rumble of an engine, and he grabbed Natalie’s shoulder and dragged her toward a driveway. A sun-weathered RV stood there with a dusty tarp stretched across its top. He put it between them and the sound, walking them to the back. Natalie didn’t fight him at all. Her hiding instincts were strong.

They squeezed behind the RV, into the tight space between its back end and the house’s garage door. Hector watched down the length of the big vehicle and waited. The rumble got closer. He hoped nobody was home to come out and ask what they were doing.

Close to a minute ticked by before Officer Cooper’s squad car crept into view. She sat behind the wheel, sunglasses still hanging by her badge. Hector leaned back. Maybe it was just a regular part of her patrol, the way she liked to do things, but it looked as though she was scanning the sidewalks. Watching for someone on foot.

The police car rolled down the street, and Hector slid himself farther back. Natalie took his hand and pulled, guiding him backward around the RV’s oversized spare tire. He watched the car pause at the intersection, then turn right.

Heading back the way she came, maybe? It could be part of her regular patrol. Nothing special about it at all.

But the itch on his neck said different.

“We’re going to head down the block,” he told Natalie. “I want you to skip, speed-walk, whatever, but stay ahead of me and keep looking back. Make me jog a bit. Happy father-daughter. Give people who see us a reason for why we’re moving fast. Make sense?”

“Yes.”

Hector tugged her cap off, folded it, handed it to her. “New look for a few minutes.” He mussed her short hair, making it puff out as much as possible. They squeezed out from behind the RV and moved cautiously to the sidewalk. “Let’s go. Wait for me at the big intersection past this one. We’re turning left.”

Natalie responded by skipping off down the road. She turned and gestured for him to follow her. He started after her at a slow jog, stopped to walk for a few yards, then jogged again. She’d let him get close, then lunge away, making it look somewhere between a sprint and a dance.

They crossed the street, made it down the next block, and she paused at the intersection. He set a hand on her shoulder. “No more running. Walk. There’s a strip mall up ahead. We’re going to find a car there.”

They walked forty or fifty yards, and he saw a sign for a Taco Bell. The safety and comfort of a retail area. The itch crawling across his back subsided a bit but wouldn’t leave. They passed a Pep Boys and then headed into a strip mall parking lot. The big swath of pavement was broken up by a few trees, a McDonald’s, and a sun-dulled sign advertising the plaza’s big stores.

There weren’t a lot of cars. It was still too early for most shoppers. Maybe three dozen vehicles scattered across the parking lot. Pickups. Hatchbacks. A silver Ford Expedition with battered side panels. Employee cars. Spread out enough that he and Natalie wouldn’t get a lot of cover.

“Hat back on,” said Hector. “Walk like a boy. Let’s go look in the store windows.”

“Why?”

“People hanging around parking lots look suspicious. People by stores just look like they’re shopping.” He gave her a nudge.

They walked under the shaded overhang, the square pillars between them and the parking lot. Natalie stared at a pair of puppies that rolled back and forth over each other in a pet shop window. Hector looked into a darkened head shop and watched two more cars pull in, reflected in the glass.

They walked past purple shopping carts and bright orange signs and he watched the road for police cars or SUVs with darkened windows. At the far end of the plaza, Hector turned around, stretched his arms, and yawned. Just a bored dad out with his girl. He counted another fifteen cars in the lot. Two of them—a minivan and a pickup with oversized tires—slowly searched for optimal parking spaces. The last employees and first shoppers were arriving.

And something was making his neck tingle.

Natalie whispered to the morning air, breathing out a few more near-silent words as she looked around.

“Talking to Tim?”

“Yes.”

Hector scanned the parking lot. “He feel something wrong too?”

“No. He can’t see or hear anything where he is.”

The tingle prickled and spread and became an itch. “We need to get out of here and get you back to Reno.”

Her eyes opened wide. “Who is Reno?”

“It’s a place, not a person.”

“Have we been there?”

“We drove through it last night. Now we’re going to double back and see someone.”

“Who?”

“His name’s Guillermo. He takes care of things for people like me and Tim.”

“I thought you took care of things.”

Hector managed a quick smile at her. “He takes care of little things so people like me can take care of big things. Equipment. Medical care. Paperwork. Travel arrangements.”

Two men walked past them in deep discussion about a construction permit. One of them had a red baseball cap, and a holster on his hip. Old, brown gun leather. Nevada was open carry. Very loose with their gun laws and restrictions. Hector didn’t like seeing firearms while his attention was this sharp. More variables to consider.

He gestured Natalie to follow and fell in a few steps behind the two men. Far enough so it wouldn’t bother them, close enough that a casual observer wouldn’t be quite sure if they were together or not. They walked half the length of the plaza like that before a silver-haired woman with an armload of reusable grocery bags cut across their path, arguing with someone on a cell phone. The two men paused, then followed her into the store.

Hector kept walking. Natalie stayed next to him, keeping her steps bouncy. They reached their starting point, and goddamn it, there was a squad car out on the street. He was pretty sure it was Officer Cooper behind the wheel. She was sweeping the neighborhood.

He looked out at the parking lot. The minivan was crawling up one of the far rows. Almost dead center in the lot, near a stunted tree, sat a pair of bland coupes and an old four-door Lincoln. A pickup was pulling in alongside them. He felt the coiled slim-jim in his pocket. The pickup would shield them from the stores, the Lincoln from the street. Enough other cars dotted the lot to help hide them as he got into the car. There were two people chatting just outside the McDonald’s, in easy view of his target, but it looked as though one of them was holding keys, getting ready to leave.

He checked the plaza again. Three people heading from the parking lot to the stores. One more already heading back to her car but walking away from his target. Farther down, the minivan door slid open to release a blonde girl in a private-school outfit, probably close to Natalie’s age. She had a stack of textbooks clutched to her chest and spoke a few words with someone in the minivan. Even from where they stood, Hector heard bubbly talk of “puppies” and “five minutes.”

Natalie swung her backpack from one shoulder over to the other. “What are we seeing Guillermo for?”

Hearing the name fed his itch. What was he missing? “For him to get you somewhere safe. Probably somewhere in Canada for now.”

Her little brows twisted, relaxed, furrowed again under the brim of her hat. “Why?”

Hector scanned the parking lot again. He’d seen something, caught something, and his combat senses were trying to warn him. Someone on a rooftop? “Because that’s the deal.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t. You’re supposed to help me—”

“I am helping you. Now be quiet.”

Her lips slapped shut with a little pop, and she took a few steps away from him.

The itch on his neck had spread across his shoulders and halfway down his back. His fingertips tingled. Something was wrong. Something was very goddamn wrong, he couldn’t figure out what it was, and they needed to get the fuck out of here.

They moved down the walkway. Natalie’s feet almost stomped on the concrete, her stride lengthening. Hector tried to watch everything, kept his attention razor sharp. They passed the puppies in the pet store window again just as a man in a cowboy hat opened the door in front of them. A man in a blue smock walked out of one of the stores and lit a cigarette. The schoolgirl came toward them with bouncy steps, her plaid skirt swishing above her knees, her books still tight against her body.

Officer Cooper’s words rang in his head even as Natalie stopped her angry march and echoed them out loud.

“Shouldn’t she be in school?”

He looked back at the little girl in time to see her grin, to see the familiar gleam in her eyes as their gazes met. He could see the edge of her cheekbones and the faint scar at her hairline that he’d given her six years ago.

Her grin spread even wider. “Good to see you, Foxy.”

The Doll dropped the books and raised her pistols.

THIRTY

Hector yanked Natalie behind one of the pillars before the first gunshot echoed across the parking lot. His own pistol was in his hand, firing three quick shots up into the overhang. Lumps of cheap stucco and clouds of dust rattled down, filling the air, giving him time to swing Natalie to the other side of the pillar and fire two more shots.

The pillar burst apart near his hand and he yanked it back.

“They told me it was some badass named Hector,” the Doll called out, “and I thought no way, it can’t be. I mean, I half figured you’d drunk yourself to death by now.” She was still using the singsong tone that made people underestimate her.

Natalie opened her mouth to talk, but Hector set a quick finger across her lips, then his. He listened to the echo of the Doll’s voice, pictured the walkway and the pillars and the glass windows. He pushed his arm out, fired four shots at the concrete, and heard the sharp whine of ricochets followed by a rapid shuffling of feet.

New sounds echoed across the plaza. Screams, cries, yells. They all sounded more like fear than pain.

He swapped out magazines, dropping the half-empty one in a pocket and loading the full one. Still one in the chamber, no need to rack the slide and let the Doll know what he was doing. Let her think he’d wasted some of his ammunition.

Natalie tugged on his arm and pointed. One pillar back, behind them, a woman cowered on the ground. She had her phone out and was talking fast.

Hector looked back, then pressed his mouth close to Natalie’s head. “Run to the pillar. That side. Stay low.”

“No,” breathed Natalie. “She’ll see me.”

“She will, but she won’t shoot. You’re why she’s here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Go.”

Natalie ran. Hector spun to the far side of the pillar and hurled himself across the hood of a pickup ambling through the parking lot, oblivious to the past thirty seconds. Classic rock blasted from the truck’s tinny speakers, and the driver shouted a few choice words at Hector. Then a pair of bullets slammed into the pickup’s front panel and the man shut up, throwing himself flat across the bench seat.

The pickup rolled forward a few more feet, and Hector walked with it, keeping his legs behind the tire. He saw a pair of honey-blond braids spin away and fired a round after them. A second shot sent the Doll diving behind a double row of plastic shopping carts. She sent two rounds back in his direction, and the pickup’s front tire sagged, bringing it to a halt.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be!” She’d dropped the act, and her natural, oddly husky voice echoed out from the carts.

“Oh, hey!” he yelled back. “Good to see you too, Jules!”

“Just go back to your bottle, Foxy. They don’t even know who you are, and they don’t care.”

“Sorry. Can’t do it.” He kept his head low and stared at the store window, trying to catch a reflection, watching for movement.

“Hey,” shouted a new voice.

Hector’s gaze flitted over the hood of the truck and saw the man with the red baseball cap and the leather holster standing at the far end of the shopping carts. The idiot had his pistol out—a goddamned revolver—and had it aimed where Hector figured the Doll was crouched.

Her sob echoed out from behind the carts, followed by the singsong voice. “Please, mister, no! Please don’t shoot me! Please!”

“Put the guns down, kid. I don’t want to—”

“Get away,” shouted Hector. “Don’t—”

A shot rattled the windows, and the man’s cap flew off as his head snapped back. He tipped over and hit the ground hard as the Doll raced out from the carts. She ducked behind a pillar as Hector fired after her.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she called out.

“I was gonna say the same thing,” Hector replied.

“What’s she to you?”

“Ah, you know how it is.”

“I know how it used to be. Good times, right?” She dashed out from behind the pillar and he put a bullet in the wall just past her shoulder. She ignored it and raced toward Natalie’s hiding place. He ran along the pickup, fired one-two-three more times, no more warning shots, but he was too damn slow to adjust, and she made it to the next pillar.

He crouched behind the pickup’s rear tire and leaned toward the bumper. He could just see Natalie, pressed flat against her own pillar, the woman with the phone huddled by her feet. Natalie’s lips were trembling. No. She was speaking. Whispering.

Good.

More screams and cries across the plaza. And there were sirens now. There were going to be a lot more bullets flying soon if he didn’t wrap this up.

He waved to get her attention, pointed at some nearby cars. Natalie followed his gesture, nodded. She straightened up to run and a hand reached out from behind the pillar to press a pistol across her throat.

The Doll stepped out, keeping Natalie between her and Hector. One pistol rested under Natalie’s chin, the other one pressed against her stomach. “Drop it, Foxy.”

He stepped out from behind the truck and didn’t drop it. He looked for a shot, but she moved with him, and she was almost the same size as Natalie. Options flitted through his mind. Graze her head. Take out her visible shoulder. If he couldn’t get a kill shot, though, there was a chance she’d pull a trigger instinctively.

A police cruiser roared into the plaza, lights blazing. He could hear more sirens in the distance. Goddamn it. No more time.

“Calling your bluff,” he said, taking two steps forward.

“Don’t.”

“They want her alive.”

“You sure of that?”

Another step. “Yeah.”

“Jesus, Hector,” the Doll sighed. “This is already twice as long as I like to spend on a grocery run.”

The squad car screeched to a halt a few yards away and the pistol against Natalie’s stomach spun to shoot Hector in the leg.

The hot pain shot through him and his balance shifted. He threw his weight to the other leg, felt his knee bend. Hit in the thigh, just above the joint. Hurt like all hell, but his knee was fine. He swayed, trying to keep his balance and keep the pistol on her.

“Drop it,” shouted Cooper, standing behind the door of her cruiser. Of course it was Cooper. She would’ve been closest. “Drop your weapon and get on the ground.”

She was aiming at him. Both the Doll’s weapons were hidden by Natalie’s body. He was the threat, the bleeding Latino with the gun. “Officer,” he called out, “you don’t understand what’s—”

“On the ground now!”

The Doll swung an arm around and the bullet went up through Cooper’s jaw. Blood sprayed from the top of her head. Her eyes swung, suddenly loose and uncontrolled, and she wobbled on her legs before crashing to the pavement.

Natalie twisted, swung her hips, and threw her fist at the small woman’s face. Not a great punch, but it had some force, and the Doll reflexively stepped back to block it. She batted it away, wrapped her arm around Natalie’s, and realized she’d left herself open just as Hector shot her.

He still couldn’t get a clean head shot, so he had to be sure. The first two caught the Doll in the gut. The third was center mass, dead in the heart. Game over, thanks for playing—goddamn it, he just killed Jules.

Natalie took in a sharp breath.

The Doll brought her free hand up over Natalie’s head and got off two shots of her own as she crumpled. The first one went over Hector’s head. The second one sang past his ear, tugging his hair. He flinched away and his balance vanished for just a moment.

He hit the pavement, and pain shot through his wounded leg. Then he was on his elbows, ignoring the pain, crawling fast to where the Doll lay shuddering on the walkway. His wounds caught and snagged as he pulled himself across the pavement. He grabbed her leg and yanked her closer even as he threw himself forward. He landed with one arm across her, his weapon rammed against the side of her head.

She’d dropped one of her pistols, still clutched the other in trembling fingers. He reached out with his free hand and smacked it away. He left the hand on that arm, just in case she went for a knife. He knew how much she loved knives.

Her eyes locked on his. The left one trembled. “God, you’re an asshole.”

“No kidding.”

She managed one laugh and spat out some blood. He felt her wet chest rattle beneath him. She struggled to pull in a breath, and he lifted himself on his elbows. He kept the muzzle of his pistol next to her ear.

“. . . thought sometimes . . . it’d be nice if you were . . . here for it.” She sucked in another breath, half as strong as the last one. “. . . never thought it’d . . . be like this.”

“It’s always like this for us,” he said.

She coughed and spat up more blood. It dotted her upper lip and nose, drew a line from the corner of her mouth. “Guess so. Hope it . . . was . . .”

He heard a click and something clattered on the pavement. She’d gotten a knife from somewhere, a four-inch stiletto switchblade. Popping it open had shaken it out of her hand. He looked her in the eyes, saw one last happy gleam.

“You bitch.”

She grinned. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. He leaned in, turned his head, and her lips brushed against his ear. He felt a wisp of warm air that went still. He pulled back. Her eyes stared up at the overhang.

“Is she dead?” asked Natalie.

He rolled off Jules. “Yeah.”

“You know her.”

“Yeah.”

Hector got his good leg under him and pushed. His thigh felt as if it had been packed with coarse salt, but other than that he seemed all right. He balanced himself and put weight on the leg. It was wet, but it didn’t pulse like an artery, and if it were a major vein he’d probably be dizzy from blood loss by now.

“We need to get out of here fast,” he said. “We don’t know who she’s got with her. She’s probably alone, but if they’re serious, she might have a support—”

The minivan slid to a halt and threw open its side door. Three men piled out. The same dark-gray tactical outfits Hector had seen back in Los Angeles. Steelwall Security goons. Another van, this one basic black, roared into the parking lot from the other side. Four men leaped from it, and the driver aimed a pistol through his open window.

They all kept their rifles on him. They all stayed at least thirty feet back. They fanned out, surrounding him. They knew who he was now. At the very least, they knew what he was capable of. They weren’t taking chances this time.

Natalie took in quick breaths through her nose. They wheezed out through her lips. She backed up against Hector, almost pushing him off balance as she pressed against him.

“The Doll is down,” one of the men said into a headset mic. He had a sergeant’s triple chevrons embroidered on his sleeve in white and black, and a bandanna around his neck with an urban camo pattern. More wannabe military posturing. “Obstacle is wounded. Package is undamaged. Repeat, package is undamaged.”

Hector shifted his fingers on the pistol. Took a slow breath. He had six shots. If he got off all of them, that’d still leave two men to kill him at a distance and take Natalie. If he surrendered, maybe he could lure some of them in closer. After everything he’d done so far, though, they’d have to be a lot dumber than they looked to let him get close to more than one or two of them.

One slid something from a pocket, tossed it over to him. It chimed on the ground and skidded across the pavement. The handcuffs stopped just in front of his feet.

“Drop the weapon,” said the man with the sergeant’s chevrons. “Get on your knees. Put the cuffs on.”

Not as dumb as they looked.

“I’m sorry,” Hector told Natalie.

THIRTY-ONE

“You promised!” Natalie’s cry echoed across the parking lot.

“I know,” Hector said. “But I think we’re out of options, kid. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Drop. Your. Weapon,” repeated Chevrons.

Hector shifted his grip, let the pistol hang loose from one finger. He leaned on his good leg, knelt, and set the pistol down on the ground. He straightened up without taking the handcuffs.

“It’s just for this?” Natalie asked. “You promise you’ll give it back?”

Hector looked down at her. “What?”

She coughed once, twice, then bent over and sprayed yellow-green mucus onto the pavement.

A few of the men tensed. One shifted his rifle to point at her. Hector could see another considering it.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, she’s sick! I’m the dangerous one, she’s just a sick kid. Prioritize targets, you goddamn amateurs.”

Chevrons glared at him. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Ask your client.”

Natalie coughed again and a shudder ran through her body.

Chevrons waved Hector to the side. “Step away from her. Slowly.”

“Tell that asshole to aim at me, not her.”

She swung her head toward Hector and her left eye rolled up and off to the side. Then it whipped around, as if it suddenly remembered to be lined up with her other eye. Her back straightened and she took in a sharp, deep breath.

Natalie’s mouth and brows relaxed, her little nostrils flaring as she slowly released the air in her lungs. She twisted her head from one shoulder to the other. Held out her hands, rolled them into two tight fists, quickly shook them loose.

“Don’t worry, Hector,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

“What?”

She let her backpack slide off her shoulders, dropping down to hit the pavement with a rustle of nylon. She flexed her fingers again and stopped to bounce on her toes, as if testing their strength. Then she winked at him and took a few steps toward the tactical team, raising her hands into the air, fingers spread wide. Hector had done almost the same thing two days ago when they first met, in the same situation. A distracting move. Empty hands assure them you’re harmless. A little nudge to how they think.

“Okay, guys,” she called out. Her calm, confident voice cut across all the chatter and ambient noise of the parking lot. “Professional courtesy. Anybody want to drop their weapon and run, this is your chance.”

“Arthur! Bull!” called out Chevrons. “Grab the package.”

Two of the operatives stepped forward, keeping their rifles on Hector. He guessed the big gym rat was Bull and the scrawny bald guy was Arthur. Neither of them did more than glance at the little girl as she strolled toward them.

Natalie rolled her neck again, stretched it the other way, and then launched herself toward Arthur, sliding in low under his rifle. She grabbed his wrist, pushed it and the rifle up toward the sky, and fired one-two-three finger strikes into the armor gaps under his arm, each one hitting a nerve cluster or muscle group. As the man staggered she swung herself up and over his shoulder, wrapped an arm around his neck, lifted her legs, and threw her weight down toward the ground. A splintering crack echoed across the space, Arthur’s rifle clattered on the pavement, and she was already moving toward Bull.

“What the fuck ?” roared one of the other men.

She ducked a grab, rolling between Bull’s legs, and now he was down and screaming. Hector wasn’t sure the man would be getting up again. Not with what she’d done to his knees. Both of them at once. She sprinted along the side of the black van, her feet pounding against the pavement, with one man and the driver between her and Chevrons.

The operatives shifted their attention between Natalie and Hector. Shock and awe gone bad again. Three of them aimed their rifles in her direction. One turned to look at Chevrons.

Hector dropped to his knees, grabbed his pistol and shot the driver, then the man on his far left. The next operative tried to bring his rifle back and overcompensated, blasting a trio of bullets into the stucco pillar. Hector rolled back and up to his feet, fired again, and the man’s nose exploded in a flash of blood and bone.

Chevrons and the other man had Natalie. She thrashed between them. They each held one of her wrists while they tried to keep their rifles pointed in Hector’s direction, straight-arming them one-handed like idiots.

Natalie threw her weight forward again and again, then shot her leg back, dropped low, swung the two men forward and together with her momentum. It jarred them enough that their fingers loosened and she twisted free. Her hand dipped in close to Chevron’s thigh and she had his pistol. It went off twice and blood sprayed from both men’s shoulders. Their rifles crashed to the asphalt. The girl stepped away, spun around, and shot each of them in both knees, squeezing the trigger with practiced speed.

Hector killed the last man as he aimed his rifle at Natalie, and the final gunshot echoed across the parking lot.

Natalie used her foot to slide the rifles away from the two downed men as Hector limped forward. Not quite fifteen seconds to take out all eight of them. “Police probably got an order to keep their distance,” he told her, “but as soon as they realize what’s happened they’re going to have this place surrounded. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Chevrons let out a moan. The other operative was crying. Hector almost pitied them. A shoulder and both knees blown. That was going to hurt for a long time.

“No,” said Natalie, “you don’t. This was a one-time-only deus ex machina.”

Hector stopped. Looked at the set of her face. The stern line of her mouth.

She snapped her fingers. “Pay attention. I can’t do this again, and it’s made things a lot worse. The break’s growing. You’ve got to get her back to the Project.”

“You wanted me to get her away from them.”

“I wanted you to help her.”

“You picked the wrong guy.”

“No, I didn’t. Catch.” She tossed him the pistol.

Hector snatched it out of the air with his free hand.

Natalie wobbled, shifted her feet, and then coughed hard. The coughing became retching, and she vomited up thick, bright-green slime. He saw a half dozen of the big egg sacs in the puddle at her feet.

She spat out a few last threads, then spat again and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She looked around and found him. Her eyes were edged with tears. “Hector?”

He shoved one of the pistols into his belt and wrapped his arm around her. “You’re all right,” he told her. “You did good.”

“I was so scared. I had to let him . . . I couldn’t see or hear or feel anything.”

“It’s not going to happen again. You were brave. Very brave. I’m so proud of you.”

Hector guided her over to the minivan, scooping up her yellow backpack as he went. A quick check to make sure nobody had stayed hidden in reserve, and the keys were in the ignition. He yanked open the passenger door, spun the pistol in his hand, and used the butt to smash the GPS and the stereo. He swept a few plastic shards from the seat and then waved Natalie into it. “Wait here for one minute,” he told her. “We’re going to get out of here fast.”

He could see movement on the distant edges of the parking lot, peering out from stores, but everyone was still cowed and keeping their distance. Good. He didn’t feel like dealing with another idiot “good guy with a gun.”

He took a few steps toward the closest body, forcing his wounded leg to move. The muscle was tightening up. Bleeding a lot but not pulsing. He crouched, took the dead man’s wallet. He limped to the next man and did the same.

“You know this is pointless,” Chevrons said through gritted teeth. “You’re a pro. You know the situation. You can’t hold us off forever. We’ll get her.”

“Your whole team just got your collective ass kicked by a twelve-year-old,” said Hector, looting a third body. “I’m not seeing you guys as a big threat right now.”

“Then they’ll bring in someone else. Someone worse than her.” He swung his chin at Jules’s body.

“You idiots couldn’t get any of the people worse than her.” Hector crammed the wallets into his coat pocket. He crouched, snapped his knuckles into the bridge of Chevrons’ nose, and dropped the man to the pavement. Hector took his wallet and yanked the urban camo bandanna from his neck.

He listened for approaching sounds as he took a few steps to the puddle of Natalie’s vomit. He stomped on the egg sacs, bringing down as much pressure as his wounded leg could manage. The sacs resisted, like springy rubber beneath his heel, but after one or two strikes they burst. Each impact shot spikes of pain up his leg, but he kept at it until nothing remained of them but smears of brown-green jelly.

He walked back to the minivan with long strides, ignoring the hot, wet pain in his leg. As he dropped into the driver’s seat he heard the first sirens. “Ready to get out of here?” he asked Natalie, twisting the key in the ignition.

“Yes.”

Hector steered the minivan through the parking lot. A few people poked their heads out of stores. Two kids at the McDonald’s had cell phones pointed at them. Not great, but unavoidable at this point.

He kept one hand on the wheel and used the other to work the bandanna around his wounded leg. “Can you tie a good knot?”

“Yes.” She leaned over, grabbed two corners of the bandanna and pulled them tight above his knee. Electric needles stabbed up and down Hector’s spine.

The minivan pulled out onto the main road. They passed a pair of squad cars speeding toward the shopping plaza, and a third flew by them a minute later. Hector drove at three miles below the speed limit until they were back on the highway, and he pushed it up to seventy, just on the higher end of surrounding traffic.

He looked over at Natalie. She reached for his hand, then crossed her arms and turned away from him. An angry act of defiance from a little kid who’d just remembered she was mad at him.

THIRTY-TWO

It took Hector five minutes to backtrack into Reno and get them off the highway. Another five to ditch the minivan on the third floor of the Circus Circus parking garage, close to the sky bridge into the casino, and then steal a silver Dodge Caravan from one of the rooftop spaces. Fifteen minutes more took them on a twisting surface-street route across the city until they reached the gray area across the river between the city proper and the suburbs. Apartment complexes lined the streets, broken up with the occasional laundromat, liquor store, or barbershop.

He saw the sign for the storage center that fronted for Guillermo’s operation. Felt his shoulders relax. This was almost all over. Guillermo would have someone who could stitch up his leg and take care of Nat. Get her somewhere safe where she wouldn’t be found.

Then he felt the itch on the back of his neck.

Four seconds later he saw the car parked by the entrance. A dark blue sedan. Completely nondescript. Just like the dark-red Suburban on the other side of the entrance. And the dark-green one across the street. And the woman in the loose-fitting overcoat sitting on the bench at the bare-bones bus stop. All very nondescript and not worth a second glance.

Way too amateurish to be Guillermo’s work.

“Something’s wrong,” said Natalie.

She’d been sitting quietly with her backpack in her lap since they drove away from the plaza where he killed Jules. She’d get over it. Assuming she got to Canada and that good life he envisioned for her.

Which was suddenly looking less likely.

“Yeah,” he told her. “I think so.”

“The woman at the bus stop is from the Project.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. She usually dealt with the Alphas, but a few times she ended up with the Gammas to cover a shift. I don’t know her name.”

“Fu—damn it.”

His hurt leg twitched, but he kept their speed steady as they turned the corner. Had Jules tipped them off? He couldn’t believe anyone working for Steelwall would’ve rated Guillermo’s client list, so she must have clued them in. Which meant this was either just a stakeout or a full-on ambush.

A lot of cars for just a stakeout.

His gut tightened. His fingers and tongue craved a glass of whiskey. He squeezed the steering wheel.

“What are you going to do?” asked Natalie. She’d stopped saying we. He couldn’t blame her.

“We’re going to do some quick recon,” he told her. A beat later he recognized his own we. He shrugged it off and steered the Caravan around the block. It was closing in on noon. The sun would be in the west very soon, so any half-decent shooter would want to be facing east, maybe north-northeast, with a view of the storage facility.

Right there.

The figure was too close to the edge of the liquor store’s roof. Close enough to have a wider range of vision, but not low enough to hide. Maybe they’d just straightened up to stretch their legs. He hoped they weren’t so amateurish that they were actually just sitting there upright. That’d be embarrassing for everyone involved.

He didn’t imagine they could’ve shut Guillermo down for good, but this location was compromised. Maybe all of them if they knew about this one. Either he’d seriously underestimated Steelwall or they were stupid-determined to get Natalie.

Hector drove past, turned into a little one-story strip mall with a 7-Eleven, and guided the car around it. Down a long back alley. He turned a corner and found himself facing a dumpster and a chain-link fence lined with dirty plastic strips.

“We can’t go this way,” Natalie said.

“I know.” he glanced over his shoulder and started to back up.

“Tim says I’ll be dead in two or three days.”

The car lurched to a stop. “What?!”

She stared out the windshield, not meeting his eyes. “What he did back there, to the men from the Project—it made things worse.”

“Yeah. He told me that.”

“We have to go back and stop this.”

“I’m just supposed to get you safe. That was the deal.”

“No! You were supposed to help me.”

He looked at her. It was the loudest she’d ever been with him. She was looking at him now. Glaring at him.

“I’m trying to help you.”

“No. You’re trying to send me away. We need to go back to the Project.”

Hector squeezed the steering wheel. Forced his shoulders to relax. “Guillermo’s a dead end,” he admitted, “but I know other people. They can get you out of the country, get you to doctors. Good doctors. We just need to figure this out.”

“No. I don’t need a doctor.”

“Yes, you do, kid. I don’t know what they did to you, but it’s definitely not normal.”

“Yes. And they’re still doing it to all the other Gammas. To my friends. To Alejandra. They’re trying to make all of them like me.”

He finally looked her in the eyes. Saw the fire in them. “Is this what you . . . You want to go back to save your friends?”

“Yes.”

He took a slow breath. He’d called her brave earlier, but he had underestimated her. “Look,” he said, “I want to help you. Really. But you deserve someone better than—”

The sound reached his ears a moment before he saw the Suburban in the mirror. The dull-red one. It rushed down the alley and he had his pistol out and got off a shot through the rear window. The SUV hit the back of their Caravan. A good hit. Jarring, but not hard enough to injure the occupants—just stun them for a moment. Natalie rocked forward and her backpack tumbled off her lap.

Two men rolled out. Rifles and nylon and knives. They flanked the car, shot out the rear tires, fired at him even as he fired back at them. The windows exploded. Natalie ducked down and covered her ears.

One of the operatives slid toward Natalie’s door. Hector pushed her head further down and fired. Then he swung his arm around and fired another round at the guy stalking up along the driver’s side, blowing out the side window and sending the guy flailing back against the rear wall of the shops.

The side door flew open and the other guy grabbed Natalie. His knife slit the seat belt and he yanked her out from under the shoulder strap, shielding himself with her.

“Hector!” She reached for him.

He grabbed for her hand, her foot, but the Steelwall goon had her out of the car.

Someone back at the SUV opened up with something heavier, maybe an M249, and Hector threw himself down across the front seat. He rolled down to the floor, putting as much metal between himself and the rifle as possible. A full magazine punched through the back of the Caravan.

Two car doors slammed. A third. The engine gunned. Retreated.

Hector rolled up off the floor, kicked open the door, out of the Caravan. The red Suburban was almost at the corner, thirty yards away. He fired twice, blew out their front tire as they tried to back around the corner. The driver revved the engine and kept going.

One more turn in the alley. Then the parking lot. They wouldn’t slow down to trade cars. They’d wreck the rim and head north a block and a half, back to the other teams setting the ambush.

Hector ran to the rooftop access ladder by one of the back doors. A half sheet of plywood had been chained over it to stop unauthorized climbers. He shoved the pistol into his belt and leaped, grabbing the exposed rung at the top. He heaved, swung his other arm up, heaved again to the next rung and the next, and carried himself up the ladder until his foot hit a rung and then he was over the short parapet and on the roof.

The flat tire would slow them down, but they’d be around the other corner now, turning around, heading across the parking lot for the street.

He sprinted across the roof, aiming for the corner. Gravel crunched. His wounded leg throbbed and strained under the bandanna Natalie’d tied around it.

He could see more of the parking lot as he approached the edge. See the red Suburban passing below. He yanked his pistol free, turned his run into a leap as he hit the parapet, and threw himself off.

He twisted his body and hit the Suburban. The roof yielded and took a bit of the impact. Hurt like all hell, but not enough descent for a bone-snapping landing. His free hand grabbed the aluminum crossbar as he swung himself up onto his knees.

Driver’s hands were occupied. They’d have Natalie center in the back seat, away from the doors, someone on either side of her. Passenger seat empty since he killed one of them.

Hector put three bullets through the roof by the rear passenger door, shifted his weight even as the driver swerved, and put three more through the opposite seat. The Suburban lurched out of the parking lot, swerving onto the street, and he fired three rounds down into the driver. The SUV slowed, listed to the side, and hit a parked car with a low crunch. The engine kept running.

Hector swung his legs around and slid off the roof facing the Suburban, watching for movement. He yanked open the rear door, saw Natalie’s wide eyes, and the Steelwall goon between them stabbed Hector in the ribs. Tried to, anyway. It ended up being more of an awkward, fumbling slash. Dead man walking, or sitting in a crashed SUV, bleeding all over his seat. He’d caught all three rounds, just hadn’t been lucky enough for a kill shot.

Hector took care of that, then dragged the corpse out of the SUV and dumped it on the ground. “You hurt?” he asked Natalie.

“No.”

“We have to go. Now.”

She slid across the back seat into his arms. He held her tight for a second then let her slide down to the ground. He took her hand, shoved the pistol out of sight under his coat, and headed south away from the Suburban.

Cars were already slowing to look, jamming up traffic. The ambush teams would get bogged down. The few pedestrians stopped to gawk, and three or four of them already had phones out, pointed at the scene.

Some eyes followed Hector and Natalie as they walked away, but no phones. The crashed SUV and the dead bodies were the bigger draw. It only took two minutes to walk past most of the spectators. He looked ahead and saw a small parking lot with half a dozen cars. A bar. This early it was either staff or die-hard drinkers. Either way, they’d probably get a little time before anyone noticed that their car was missing.

He gave Natalie’s hand a little tug. “This way.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I know, but you tied it off. I’ll be okay.”

“No. Where he cut you.”

Hector glanced down. His side was glossy and red. The stain crept through the fabric as he looked at it.

“I’ve had worse,” he told her. Six cars in the lot. Two junkers, a pickup, a bright-yellow Mustang with black racing stripes, a purple Prowler—goddamn, who was still driving a Prowler?—and a blue four-door Hyundai.

He unrolled his slim-jim, checked for anyone watching them, and opened the Hyundai’s door. Natalie scampered across and buckled herself into the passenger seat. He did some quick work under the dash and got the engine going. He pulled out onto the street and headed south, away from the crash and the ambush and Guillermo’s.

“Looks like we’re staying together a little longer,” he said.

“Yes.”

THIRTY-THREE

After an hour on the highway, their speed drifted down to a steady sixty-five and the itch finally vanished from Hector’s neck. He still didn’t relax. No matter how much the Project tried to brush it under the rug, this whole thing had just become very visible. Officer Cooper had been killed, and in his experience police in almost every country stayed angry when it came to officer shootings. Plus a shootout in broad daylight in Reno with a ton of witnesses.

Maybe too many. He was a realist. He hadn’t seen it, but somebody must’ve caught him and Natalie on camera. It wouldn’t take too long for someone to connect them to the stolen Hyundai once the theft was reported. Fortunately, the car was right on that nondescript line between blending in and standing out. Bright color, but pretty standard design. It would get them out of the state, but they’d need to ditch it.

“Tim says we need to patch you up,” said Natalie.

He didn’t bother to turn his head. She hadn’t moved since buckling herself in. “I’m fine.”

“He said you’d say that.”

Hector managed a laugh, and his ribs throbbed. “It can wait. Besides, I can’t go in anywhere looking like this.”

“I’ll go.”

“I’m fine.”

“No. I’m supposed to pull rank and remind you not to be stupid.”

“You don’t have any money. No backpack, remember?”

Natalie pulled a roll of cash from the pocket of her hoodie and carefully unwound three twenties. “You carry as much as you can on you,” she said. “Packs and bags can get taken away or lost.”

“You’re a smart kid.”

“Yes.”

“What else did you keep?”

“Another roll of dollar bills.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. With the money we can get anything else we need.”

“Tim tell you that?”

“No. Watch for a gas station sign. We want something big enough to have a store.”

“I know what we need.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry. You’re right. Both of you. I need to get patched up.”

At an off-ramp truck stop, Natalie slid out of the Hyundai clutching her handful of bills. She came out a few minutes later with a bulging doubled-up plastic bag. Hector glanced through it as she buckled herself back into the passenger seat. An emergency sewing kit. A lighter. A wad of tan napkins with a logo that didn’t match the store’s. A box of Curad adhesive bandages. Three bottled waters. A pair of fruit smoothies. Four vodka miniatures.

“How’d you buy alcohol?”

“I gave the man money.”

“I mean, how? You’re not old enough.”

Her head did its metronomic side-to-side movement. “He didn’t say anything. He was reading something on his phone.”

Hector glared out the window at the store.

“We should go now,” she told him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

They got back on the road. The clock on the dash said it was 1:23. Decent chance that any rest area would have a family or two stopping for lunch. They’d just be a father and daughter taking a break from the road. Suburban camouflage.

Natalie coughed twice into her hand. Not violent coughs, but raspy ones. He could hear the rawness of her throat.

He turned his head to her, kept his eyes on the road. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“It seems like you’re talking to Tim easier.”

She didn’t say anything. He glanced at her. She stared back.

“I’m waiting for your question,” she said.

“Are you talking to Tim easier?”

“Yes.”

“Is it because of what you did? Letting him . . . letting him save us?”

“Yes. He’s . . . closer now. I don’t know how to explain.”

“You don’t need to be exact.”

“I still don’t know. He’s where he was, but he’s . . . closer. There’s less between us now. Like I was hearing him through a hole, but now the hole’s bigger.”

“How much bigger?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at her for real. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Bad?”

“No. It feels like . . . it feels like how my arm would ache after West would give me two or three shots in a row. It feels like I got shots in my stomach and my heart.” She touched her chest. “Lots of shots inside, and now they all ache. A lot.”

He squeezed the steering wheel. “We’re going to get you patched up too. I promise.”

Natalie stared out the window and didn’t say anything.

They drove another half hour before they found a scenic rest stop with a sprawling parking lot. One family had taken over a steel-and-fiberglass picnic table. Another gathered around the back of their car like tailgaters. A few spaces away, a woman napped in the driver’s seat of her truck with the windows rolled up.

Hector parked the car at the far end of the rest stop. He and Natalie walked to the picnic table farthest from the people and the parking lot, taking in the view. He tried to move casually while one of his legs swung stiff. He kept one hand on his blazer, making sure it didn’t flap open to show the swath of blood on his shirt.

Natalie skipped ahead to the picnic table. He sat half-turned away from the two families on the far side. She dropped the bag next to him and fished out the sewing kit. “Tim thinks we should stitch up your leg. Is the side wound deep?”

“I don’t think so. The knife hit my ribs, didn’t go between them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ve felt that before.”

“We can clean it and bandage the wound.”

“I can do it myself.”

“No. You’re moving slow, and your cut will make it harder for you to twist.” She looked him in the eyes. “I can do it faster.”

“I can do it.”

“Don’t be stubborn about accepting help. Think about the mission.”

Hector looked over at the other family. As he watched, the dad tore open a bright-red bag of chips and handed it off to one of his two kids. A girl and a boy, from the look of it, but he couldn’t be sure. They all seemed to be having fun. Picnic lunch on a road trip.

“There’s going to be a lot of blood,” he told Natalie, untying the bandanna. “It’ll be gross and a little scary. Are you going to be all right doing this?”

“Yes. I had to mop up my friend’s blood in front of her dead body. This won’t be that bad.”

“What?”

“My friend Sara, from the Project. She died in the broken room. I had to clean up all her blood. Tim told me how to do a fireman’s carry so I could get her body out without dragging it.”

“Jesus. They made you do it?”

“Yes. Nobody else went in the broken room. Ever. Only the children.”

Hector felt his hand tighten into a fist. Forced it to relax. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

“No,” she agreed. “You made me tell the story in a way that wasn’t precise.”

“Fair enough.”

Natalie fiddled with the sewing kit. “You need to take your pants off.”

Hector glanced at the other families again, then unbuttoned his jeans. He twisted on the bench and pushed at the waistband. He felt thick scabs of blood pull and tear as the jeans went past the wound down to his knees. The coarse fiberglass scraped his butt through the boxers.

Natalie shuddered, but her face stayed focused. She opened one of the water bottles and wiped the blood from his wound. She splashed more water on it, then opened one of the miniature vodkas and soaked the wound with it. Hector gritted his teeth.

“One of the little bottles is for you to drink. If you want it.”

The thought danced seductively across his forebrain, but he shoved it away. “Thanks, but I think I may have lost too much blood to be boozing it up.”

“It will make things hurt less.”

“Yeah, I know. But I need to be able to drive afterward. Don’t want to do all this and then get arrested for a DUI.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Driving under the influence.”

“Influence of what?”

“Alcohol.”

Natalie nodded sagely. “I understand.” She threaded the needle, soaked it with the last drops from the miniature bottle, then ran it back and forth through the lighter flame. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

She pushed the needle into his skin, and Hector watched the other families again. The mom from the tailgaters looked his way and he used it as an excuse to pull the two smoothie bottles from the bag and set them on the table. Regular drinks, just like a normal father and daughter would have during their own completely uneventful lunch break from driving.

The mom turned her attention back to her kids.

“Can you tell me how your friend died in the broken room?”

“Yes.” Natalie pulled on the thread and tightened the loop, tugging the flesh together a little tighter.

“How did your friend die in the broken room?”

“The remnants killed her.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“No. She was already dead when they sent me into the broken room. They knew. One of the technicians gave me a mop and bucket and said ‘Cleanup in aisle six.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but Tim told me later it meant she was a horrible person.”

Hector squeezed his fist, cracking two of his knuckles. “And it was . . . messy?”

“Yes. Sara was in the chair, and there was blood all over her front and down into her lap. There was so much, the broken room couldn’t cover the smell. The blood came out of her nose and mouth and eyes and ears. Her eyelids were half closed, but I could tell her eyes were gone. The eyelids curved in instead of out. There was nothing behind them to hold them up. I remember her whole face looked like a ball that didn’t have air in it, but was still holding its ball shape.”

Natalie jabbed him in the thigh again. Her voice sounded as if she were giving a book report on a really boring book. The kind of hollow, numb tones Hector associated with burnout or PTSD.

He cleared his throat. “You’re doing a really good job with those stitches.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Where’d you learn to sew?”

“My mom taught me. She said it would be useful.”

“She was smart.”

“Yes.” She tied off the stitches. She really had done a good job. Better than he would’ve been able to do. She doused the threads with vodka again, patted the skin dry, and stuck a pair of oversized bandages on it.

Hector wiggled back into his jeans.

“Now your side.”

He shrugged off the coat, unbuttoned his shirt, peeled it away from the wound. The blood was sticky and pulled at the edges of the gash. Some blood still seeped from the wound, but no steady stream or pulsing flow. As far as he could tell, the knife had made a four-inch slash and scraped his rib, but that was it. He’d been damned lucky.

Hector leaned to the side, and Natalie washed the wound as best she could. It looked better cleaned off, but not much. The vodka smelled great but felt like someone shoving a handful of icy razors into the open gash. She threaded the needle and sterilized it again with alcohol and fire. It was still warm when it went into his side.

“Why did she call you ‘Foxy’?”

He looked at her. “What?”

Natalie dragged the thread through his flesh. “The small woman. Why did she call you ‘Foxy’?”

He took another breath. “People like Tim and me, in our line of work, we get call signs. Code names. So people can identify us without using our real names.”

“Like ‘Gamma Sixteen.’ ”

“Sort of. But we did it by choice, to keep our real names secret, not so somebody could pretend we weren’t real people. The woman back there—her name was Julia. But everyone called her ‘the Doll.’ ”

“Because she’s small.”

“Yeah. Like a living doll. People mistook her for a little kid a lot of the time, and she played into it. Tim’s call sign was ‘Scalpel,’ ’cause he did things very clean and precise. There’s a woman who goes by ‘Brick,’ a guy called ‘Intersect,’ another one people call ‘the Patchwork Man’—all sorts of names. I got to pick mine, so I went with ‘Fox.’ It’s an old family thing.”

“But she didn’t call you ‘Fox.’ She called you ‘Foxy.’ ”

“Yeah. It’s . . . it was a nickname she had for me. A special nickname.”

The needle pierced his skin again, and Hector turned his attention back to the smoothies. He wiped each one down with a napkin. Busywork for the other families to see if they looked his way.

Natalie pulled on the thread again. “Does ‘foxy’ mean ‘pretty’?”

“No. Sort of. It’s like, it’s a certain kind of pretty.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not going to explain it.”

“Was she your girlfriend?”

“No.”

Four big trucks thundered by out on the main road. A powder-blue Volkswagen pulled into the rest area and parked as close as possible to the bathrooms. A woman dashed from the passenger seat. The driver stood and stretched, then ambled to the bathrooms at a much more casual pace.

“Did you like her?”

“Sometimes.”

“But,” Natalie said, pulling the thread tight, “you had sex with her.”

“I’m definitely not going to talk about that.”

“S-E-X,” she said.

Hector shook his head and stared off at the highway. “Calling it sex makes it sound a lot nicer than it was.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“And you’re never going to. Jesus, forget I said all that.”

“No. What does it mean?”

“Didn’t I say we’re not talking about this?”

“Yes. But then you kept talking.”

“No, you kept talking.”

“No. You did.”

He laughed. “This is the most little-kid thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

Her mouth twitched into something close to a smile as she pulled the last loop tight. She splashed the last of the vodka over the stitches, dabbed at them with a napkin, and then stuck another pair of oversized bandages on them. “Is that okay?”

“It hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t try to stab me.” He stood up. Pulled his shirt closed. Buttoned it as he put weight on the leg. Flexed his knee. “And it’s a better hurt. I can work with this.”

The quick-walking woman was back at her Volkswagen. Across from them, the family at the other picnic table packed up their lunch and wandered back to their oversized white SUV. The dad’s gaze drifted to Hector and Natalie a few times. Not suspicion, just casual awareness of another parent in the area.

Hector gave the man a friendly chin wave, acknowledging him back. “Drink your smoothie,” he told Natalie.

“Why?”

“Because we’re a normal dad and his kid at a rest stop.”

She pulled the bottle out of the bag and twisted it open.

“You should shake it first.”

“Why?”

“It mixes up the flavors. Makes it taste better. Like this.” He took the other smoothie from the bag and shook it up.

She put the cap back on her bottle. Shook it. Sipped it.

“See? It’s better.”

“I don’t know what it tasted like before.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“Then trust me, it’s better.”

“I trust you.”

“Good.”

The family finished packing up their car and drove off. Hector watched them vanish, off to do normal family things in their normal family lives.

He gathered everything up, and they walked to the restrooms. The empty vodka miniatures all went in the trash. His eyes lingered on them, but not for long.

Natalie stood in the doorway while he rinsed out his bloody shirt in the sink for a few minutes. He wrung out as much water and shook away as many wrinkles as he could. It was still damp, but it would dry in an hour or so.

It wouldn’t pass for clean, but it also didn’t look quite as stained as it had been.

“We’re going to need a new car soon,” Natalie said as he stepped back outside. “They’ll be looking for this one.”

“Yeah.” Hector looked at the empty bench where the family had been. He thought about his booth back at the Pharaon. Stu keeping his glass full. All the agents and the tactical teams after them. About Jules. About an afternoon in El Salvador years ago.

And about Helen and Axel.

“You still want to save your friends?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” said Hector. “Let’s go get them.”

PART FOUR
HUNTING SEASON

THIRTY-FOUR

By the time the sun went down, Hector and Natalie had made it through Nevada, swapped the Hyundai for a newish BMW near the state line, and found a little town named Delta a third of the way across Utah.

Hector hated all the back roads and small towns. Cities, even small cities, were easy to vanish in. But these days, stick him in a small town in friggin’ white America and he might as well wear a goddamn T-shirt saying notice me in all caps. Everywhere he went, he could feel a target painted on his back.

And Natalie’s back.

He stopped at a Sinclair station near the edge of town, where he filled up their stolen car, then went into the Dino Mart and grabbed some chicken sandwiches for dinner, a handful of random condiment packets, and two bottles of milk as an afterthought. They had a small assortment of generic blue work shirts that’d go with his dark blazer, and one close enough to his size that it wouldn’t stick out too much.

He also bought four prepaid smartphones. The teenage clerk tried to explain that he couldn’t activate the phones without a credit card, but five extra twenties convinced the kid to use his own card. Going off his enthusiasm, Hector was pretty sure this was the most exciting thing to happen during the kid’s tenure at the cash register. No question he’d be texting his girlfriend or boyfriend or gamer buddies once Hector was out the door. So Hector also made a point to ask about nearby hotels that weren’t part of a big chain. The kid recommended the Diamond D Motel just down the street.

Hector thanked him, went back to the car, and drove past the Diamond D without slowing down.

They found a Days Inn on the far side of town. Natalie walked in with Hector, and they performed their scene of maxed-out credit card, tired daughter, mom back in the car. The clerk resisted a little harder, but Natalie slumped against Hector’s leg and the man relented.

Their room was on the first floor. Hector parked the car three doors away. He checked the street as he let Natalie inside. Nobody following them. Nobody looking at them. Nobody driving by.

The door had three locks. He used all of them. Pushed another spitball over the peephole.

The room had a tiny microwave, and he warmed up their gas station chicken sandwiches. They sat at the table and ate. Natalie swallowed her sandwich in five bites, so he pushed her the extra one. She peeled the top bun off and reached for the mayo and relish packets.

Hector pulled out the wallets from the tac team and flipped open the first one. Texas driver’s license. Two credit cards. A well-worn grocery store club card. Eight random receipts for gas and fast food, too faded to see the location information. Four more nameless Steelwall cards. Forty-two dollars in cash. He set the cash aside and moved on.

The second one had no cash or receipts, but there was an ATM card. Tucked behind the Virginia driver’s license was a red-and-white LEGO VIP card and a folded paper insurance document. Three Steelwall cards in this one.

Natalie watched him. “What are you looking for?” she asked between bites.

“Hints about where the Project is. Maybe a little more specific than ‘near a city in Colorado.’ Receipts. Discount cards from grocery stores or restaurants. Things like that.”

She bit into the sandwich.

The third wallet had a five- and a ten-dollar bill, a gas receipt, three credit cards, a library card for Midland County, and a driver’s license. Also Texas.

The second Texas license gnawed at him. A lot of military enlistees came from there, just because of the state’s size and population, so it wasn’t surprising Steelwall employed a lot of Texans. But it still felt wrong to find two out of three guys from there—and one of the plainclothes goons back in Los Angeles too.

Chevrons’ wallet was last. A badge wallet. The shield matched the ones he’d seen in LA, with a vaguely federal aesthetic but lacking any specific insignias.

“Is that a police badge?” Natalie asked.

“No. It’s fake.”

“Fake?”

“It’s not real. It’s made up. Guys like him, they like to wave badges because they know badges scare people.”

She gave one of her sage nods. “And they like it when people are scared.”

“Right. It makes them feel strong.”

One hundred eight dollars in cash. Two credit cards. Four receipts—one from an LA pizza place, two from gas stations in California and Nevada, one from a coffee shop in Dallas–Fort Worth Airport. A Blue Shield card. Eight Steelwall Security cards with the name George Lucas on them. Either the dumbest cover name ever, or Chevrons’ parents really hated him.

George D. Lucas had a Texas driver’s license.

“You said you were there at the Project for almost two years?”

She swallowed a mouthful of chicken sandwich. “Yes. The last day Alejandra told me was number five hundred eighty-three, the night before I escaped.”

“And guys like the ones from this morning—they were the guards there?”

“Yes.”

“Was it always the same people guarding you?”

“Yes. No. Some guards were always there from the first day. Some changed. I think some were assigned to watch a different group, so I never saw them. One of them left after the ferals hurt him.”

“After the whats?”

“The ferals. It’s what the doctors called the children like Patricia who had remnants in them. Test subjects whose mental damage regressed them to a feral state.”

“It happened to other kids? Going feral?”

“Yes,” said Natalie. “Several of them. One time they formed a big group—a pack, Dr. Lourale called it—in the cafeteria and attacked everyone. They killed a Gamma and two of the guards and one of the postdocs. They hurt several others.”

“They killed them?”

“Yes. They bit Gamma Thirty-One—Emmanuel—and tore his neck open. One of the guards also had his neck torn open. Another one lost his eyes and nose and upper lip and had a cardiac incident. I don’t know how they killed the postdoc, but his name was Harley and he had white hair.”

“And they did all this with their teeth and fingernails?”

“Yes. They also chewed off half of Nery’s ear, and the doctors just cut off the rest instead of trying to fix it.”

“So how many kids have . . . gone feral?”

“I don’t know. At least ten, I think, between all the groups.”

“And they’ll attack anyone?”

“I don’t know. Patricia didn’t attack us in our room, but I don’t know if the remnant in her had taken over yet.”

Hector had dealt with unhinged people before. Some were unbalanced from shock, others were mentally ill, and more than a few were just on a lot of drugs. After what the Project had done to these kids, he wasn’t sure what group they would fall into. He also didn’t want to find himself dealing with a dozen kids who thought they were rabid Dobermans. “Why didn’t you mention any of this before?”

“I tried, but you told me to skip everything and get to the end.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I did.”

One problem at a time. They still had to find the place. Then he’d worry about what to do with the kids.

Hector looked at the collection of Texas licenses again and thought of places he’d been stationed in the Army. And some of the guys he’d served with at those bases. He wondered how long some of them were stationed there before they put down roots—or at least were required to update some paperwork.

“When you escaped from the Project,” he said, “you’re sure you were near a city in Colorado.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s where Tim had his bag hidden?”

“I don’t know. I think it was the same city.” She stared past Hector and began to whisper under her breath.

“You can just talk to him out loud, if you want.”

“No. This is how I’ve always done it.”

“Whatever works.”

“Yes. Tim says it wasn’t the Colorado city. It was Dallas.”

Hector took a breath. Let it out. “I don’t suppose there’s a city in Colorado named Dallas?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you ask him if it was Dallas, Texas?”

“Yes.” Natalie whispered some more words to the air. “He says yes it was.”

“Why did you think you were in Colorado?”

“There was a sign. I spelled it out. Tim said it was Colorado City.”

“So it wasn’t a city in Colorado, it was actually a city called ‘Colorado’?”

“Yes.”

He took another breath and let it whistle out through his teeth.

“Is something wrong?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t understand. I told you it was the Colorado city.”

“I . . .” He stopped. Squeezed his hands into fists. Released them. “It’s not your fault. I should’ve asked for more specifics about when you got the bag.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Really. I’m an idiot for not figuring this out sooner. With the way you talk, sometimes I just . . .”

Hector shoved the last of his chicken sandwich in his mouth. Then he dumped out the rest of the gas station bag onto his side of the little motel room table. Natalie watched him as he pulled the phones out of their plastic clamshells.

“Tim told me it wasn’t safe to use cell phones,” she said.

“Normally it’s not. That’s why we bought these. They’re not connected to us. As long as we don’t use them for too long, and then get rid of them, it’ll be fine.”

He let the phone boot up and sing its opening chimes. Hector walked around the motel room until he found two bars and a flickering third near the door. A quick web search told him there was, in fact, an unincorporated community in Texas called Colorado and also a Colorado City, both three hours out of Dallas, in different directions. Both far enough from everything to have a good-size government complex that people wouldn’t stumble across. “The sign you saw said ‘Colorado’?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else? Any other words or numbers?”

She closed her eyes. “There was a twenty. Two zero. It was inside a . . .” She looked at him and held out one arm protectively in front of her, as if trying to block an attack. She moved it up and down in front of her. “Like the captain. I don’t know the word in English. It was red and blue.”

“¿Escudo? A shield? It was the number twenty inside a red and blue shield.”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Interstate Twenty. So you were near Colorado City.” He played with Google maps for another few minutes. “Well, we’re not as far off as we could be. And on the plus—”

She interrupted him with a cough. Flecks of fried breading and cheese sprayed across the table. The next cough echoed in the room—a raspy sound.

Hector leaned across to her, reaching out, but she waved him away. Natalie’s watery eyes met his, and another blast echoed out from her lungs. She leaned over in the chair, and liquid splashed on the thin motel carpet. Her body convulsed, doubling her over as a second wave of watery mucus surged out of her mouth.

He stepped around the table and saw a half-dozen greenish-brown shapes on the carpet. Even as he registered them, Natalie convulsed again, choked, and what looked like a cocoon the size of a shotgun shell pushed its way out between her teeth. It hit the carpet and flexed as something inside it pushed at the thin walls.

Hector reached out and set a hand on her shoulder as she coughed again and again, vomiting liquid every time. The reek of it wafted through their motel room. Not an acidic smell, though. Something about the yellow-green liquid almost smelled . . . dry. Like dust. Like old, old death smothering all the other smells in the room.

Another cough, the loudest one yet, shook Natalie’s body. Wet threads of drool ran down her chin. She sobbed and sucked in a rasping breath.

A shudder ran through Hector’s arms and into his chest, like the chill that set in after a run sometimes. His bones ached with it. His fingers were sore from the sudden cold.

His fingers touching Natalie.

He sucked in a breath of icy air, felt it roll down into his lungs, felt his veins throb behind his eyes. He let out the breath and it turned to steam between them. She looked up at him and shivered.

She coughed again—a smaller one, finally—and one last egg sac popped out of her throat. It tumbled into the puddle with the others. One last weak cough ended the fit, slipping between her lips with a wisp of cold air.

Hector steadied himself on the table. The chill faded from his limbs, but it left an ache as if he’d been punched hard in the biceps. He flexed his numb fingers on Natalie’s shoulder, then slid them around her neck to pull her against him.

“It’s all right now,” he told her. “You’re all right.” His side stitches burned as she wrapped her arms around him. Tears of pain soaked his shirt.

“No,” she said when she got her sobs under control.

“No, what?”

“No, I’m not all right. I’m getting worse.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Hector stayed up late cleaning the motel room as best he could. They got on the road just after sunrise the next day, only stopping at the Budget Motel down the street to swap license plates and dump the first burner phone in the back of a pickup truck with a University of Denver bumper sticker.

Natalie stared out the windshield and the side window. She asked random questions about cars and scenery. Once she made a hitching inhalation, almost a reverse hiccup, but nothing more. Hector thought the temperature in the car dropped a few degrees, though, and the headache tapped three times inside his skull.

They crossed into New Mexico around noon. Hector decided to risk pulling off in a smallish city called Farmington to get them lunch at a drive-through. He saw signs for a Walmart a block farther from the freeway and took Natalie on a ten-minute shopping trip, getting her two clean T-shirts, some socks and underwear, a new jacket, and a sharp white dress shirt for himself. At the self-checkout, he added a handful of PowerBars. Then they were back on the road.

Natalie crawled into the back seat and changed clothes under a fleece blanket the car’s owner had left there along with two battered mystery paperbacks and a collection of empty ginger ale bottles. When she was done she pulled herself between the seats again and settled back on the passenger side.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“The clothes. It still feels good to wear regular clothes.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Where are we going?”

He pointed through the windshield. “I think Albuquerque’s two or three hours ahead of us. From there we should be able to swing east and maybe be in Texas by sundown. There’s a place called Lubbock. It’s not too far from Colorado City. We’ll spend the night there, rest up, and then find the Project and your friends tomorrow.”

“Will it be that simple?”

“I doubt it.”

She turned her head and stared out the side window. She watched scenery, and Hector watched the other cars as they sped down the two-lane highway. After an hour, her full stomach and the hum of tires on the road lulled her to sleep and he heard her gentle snoring.

Albuquerque approached, swallowed them up, and spat them out the other side. Natalie woke and had a PowerBar. Hector switched highways and watched the outskirts of the city fade away behind them.

They passed a state police car parked in the breakdown lane. No radar gun. Just two cops watching the traffic. Doing it old-school.

Hector’s neck tingled.

“What’s wrong?” Natalie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Your face got very still. It does that when you’re upset.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.” She paused for a moment. “Tim says it’s your game face. He wants to know what’s wrong too.”

“We passed a pair of state troopers back there. Might be nothing. Could be a couple of good ol’ boys just looking for someone to hassle before dinner. Or they could be looking for—damn it.”

In the rearview mirror, the state trooper came creeping up behind them. No lights. No sirens. Just going nine or ten miles per hour faster than their stolen BMW. Closing the distance.

The itch crawled down his neck into the space between his shoulder blades.

He let the car’s speed drop a hair, made sure it was evenly between the lines. A half dozen other microadjustments to make them as inconspicuous as possible on the road. He watched the other cars around them on the two-lane interstate to see if they were in a blocking position, deliberately or not.

Natalie shrank down in her seat. Hector loosened his grip on the steering wheel. Tightened it again.

The black-and-white got closer. He focused on the rearview mirror, trying to see the two occupants. Trying to tell if they were on the radio. The police car leaned to the left, as if getting ready to switch lanes and move past them. Hector felt his chest loosen and the roof rack came on, flashing red and blue lights at them.

He held out another three heartbeats of hope the troopers would rush past them, chasing a speeder he somehow hadn’t seen or answering a call farther down the freeway. Instead they surged forward and settled in less than two car lengths behind the BMW. Two quick bursts came from the siren.

“They’re going to pull us over,” he told her, doing a quick mental inventory of his remaining IDs. “Stay calm. Remember, guys like this don’t scare us, right?”

“Yes.”

“If they ask you, you’re Nat Morales, my daughter. We’re on our way to visit family in Oklahoma City. Got it?”

“Yes.”

He started to pull over but the siren bleated again. He looked back. The driving officer was making big gestures with his hand, pointing ahead of them. Hector glanced ahead and saw the off-ramp maybe a quarter mile ahead.

Just two random cops? Two cops looking for them? Two operatives dressed like cops? Getting them off the interstate could be for safety reasons on a narrow highway. Or it could be an attempt to isolate them.

He shifted the steering wheel, went a little farther, pulled off. The exit ramp sloped up to an empty road and an overpass stretching across the highway. A warehouse-looking structure stood past a few trees off to his right. Lots of open ground. Not the best place for an ambush, but it was possible with the right people.

He stopped halfway up the ramp. The cruiser settled in behind them. Not forcing them to go farther from the highway. A good sign they were just regular cops.

“Remember,” he told Natalie, “you’re my happy girl, because we’re on our way to visit family.”

“Yes.”

He watched the two officers get out and walk toward him. One on each side of the BMW, approaching from their own positions in the cruiser. Standard procedure. The one on the passenger side was lean. Wiry, not skinny. Wearing a body cam. The other, the driver, had broad shoulders, heavy arms, but a bit of a paunch. Neither had undone the straps on his holster. Another good sign.

Hector shifted in his seat, felt the pistol tucked in his waistband, assembled the story and script in his mind.

He lowered the window as the bullish driver approached and stopped by the door. “Afternoon, Officer,” he said. “Is there a problem?”

The officer nodded once. More politeness than agreement. “Good afternoon. License and registration, please.” His name tag said Gerritz.

“Hello,” Natalie called out.

Hector pasted on a mildly embarrassed smile. “Can I ask why?”

“License and registration. Please.” Still polite, but firmer.

Hector slowly, deliberately lifted his coat open and pulled a driver’s license from an inside pocket that had his picture and the name Morales. Officer Gerritz took it, studied it. Hector took the moment to glance past Natalie at the other officer standing by her door. Hands on his hips. Holster still strapped. Good.

Gerritz held up the license. “No wallet, Mr. Morales?”

“Had the same one for years,” said Hector. “It fell apart about a month ago. Haven’t replaced it yet.”

“Registration?”

Hector nodded, reached for the glove compartment, then turned back. “Just to get it out there right up front, this is my brother-in-law’s car. We’re kinda doing a road trip, getting it back to him.”

Gerritz nodded. “If I could just see the registration, please.”

Hector leaned back to the glove compartment, popped it open, shuffled some things around. He grabbed a handful of documents, moved them to the middle of the car where neither officer could get a good look at them, and flipped through the stack. Assorted receipts from oil-change franchises. A tire place. The car registration, made out to an Erick Hudson in Moab, Utah. “Found it,” he called out with a specific level of forced cheer.

He handed it over and Gerritz studied the document. Set the driver’s license next to it in his hand. “So you say Mr. Hanson is your brother-in-law?”

“Hudson,” said Hector.

“My mistake. And you’re driving the car to him?”

“Yeah. He moved out to Oklahoma City from Moab six months ago.” He gestured with his head at Natalie. “We’re having a little father-daughter time, doing some sightseeing on the way, and then we’re going to fly home.”

“And that’s where you’re coming from? Moab?”

“No, Las Vegas.” He made a tiny gesture toward the license in Gerritz’s hand.

“Uh-huh,” said the police officer. “Could you step out of the car please, sir.”

The itch on Hector’s neck crawled another few inches down his spine. “Sorry?”

Gerritz stepped back from the door. “Step out of the car, sir.”

Possibilities and options filled Hector’s mind. What the cops might be doing. What he could do to them.

“Wait here,” he told Natalie. “It’ll be all right.”

“No,” she whispered.

“What?”

“We have to get away.” She sucked in a breath and visibly held it. Her jaw trembled.

“I understand. Just give me a minute. Try to hold it.”

“Yes.”

Hector got out of the car. Made a show of straightening his blazer so he looked more professional and so his pistol was good and hidden. He stood with his arms loose at his sides.

Face to face, Gerritz oozed overconfidence. He waved Hector to take a few steps away from the door, toward the back of the BMW. He held up the paperwork and license. “If I run this registration, am I going to find out this car’s stolen?”

“No. I told you, it’s my brother-in-law’s.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, unless someone stole his car and left an identical one in its place.”

“Don’t get smart with me, son. I’m on your side here.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

Gerritz tilted his chin toward his partner and raised his voice. “Why don’t you get out too, little lady.”

“Hey,” said Hector.

“Is there a problem?”

“Why does she need to get out of the car?”

“Is there a reason she shouldn’t?”

“She’s been sick. Threw up a couple times last night at our hotel. I’m trying to let her rest.”

“We’re not asking her to run a marathon,” said the other officer. He blatantly peered into the back seat of the car.

Gerritz nodded at his partner’s words. “Why don’t you ask her to get out of the car?” It was a tone Hector knew from the military. The polite question that was clearly an order.

“Baby girl,” he called out. “You feel good enough to get out of the car for a few minutes? It’s just a rules thing.”

“No,” croaked Natalie.

Hector bit his lip. “Just for a few minutes.”

He heard the latch click, the door open. He looked over his shoulder and saw the other cop pulling Natalie out of the car. “Hey!”

“Don’t make this a bad thing,” said Gerritz. “Don’t want your little girl to see something bad happen to her father, right? She wouldn’t trust the police ever again.”

“You don’t touch my kid.”

The other officer—his name tag said Jordan—let go of Natalie’s arms in overstated mock compliance. She slumped against the back of the BMW. She looked up at Hector with worry in her eyes.

“Long way to Oklahoma City,” said Gerritz.

“Like I said, it’s a road trip.”

“Especially with a sick girl.”

“She wasn’t sick when we started out. It started last night.”

Jordan nodded at the back of the car. “Why don’t you have any bags with you?”

“We like to travel light.”

Hector’s neck itched like a fresh sunburn. He didn’t like these cops. He just couldn’t figure out where all this was going. He didn’t want to kill them, but he also wanted this to end so he could get away from them.

Gerritz set his hands on his hips. One hand close to his holster. “Mr. Morales, how much cash did you bring for this trip?”

A semi zoomed by on the freeway, blotting out all sound for a moment. It left a gust of wind in its wake that swept Hector’s itch away. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Answer the question, please.”

Hector couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or punch the man. Just a couple of highway cops looking for a payoff, maybe hoping for a big score. “Is this a shakedown, Officer?”

Gerritz’s head swept side to side. “Just a routine investigation. You know how this looks. Two Mexicans driving a nice car that isn’t theirs.”

Hector’s urge to laugh vanished.

“So let’s just make this easy for you, easy for us,” continued the officer as another car rushed by on the freeway. “You can get back on the road, we don’t have to start calling things in and filling out paperwork.”

Hector considered his situation, and the cash divided up in his pockets. Give them too little money and they’d get suspicious. They might search him and find the pistol, which would lead to more headaches. Too much money and they’d get very suspicious about the Latino man trying to buy his way out of a police encounter. And that’d lead to even more headaches. He had to get this just—

Natalie barked.

They all looked. She had one arm around her stomach. Her lips were curled in on themselves. A tremor ran through her body and she looked at Hector.

Get away, she mouthed, and cold steam billowed out with the silent words.

Hector stared at her for a moment, then took two quick steps back.

“Hey,” snapped Gerritz. “You stay right there.”

Hector took another step away from Natalie, back away from the car, onto the off-ramp’s pavement.

Gerritz set his hand on his pistol.

Natalie coughed twice, hard and loud, and threw up.

The yellow-green mucus poured out of her, gallons of it splashing in the dirt and gravel. Steam billowed off the puddle, and from six feet away Hector felt the wave of cold air rolling off her. As the chill hit, the pressure swelled up behind his eyes, crushing at his temples.

Jordan took half a step away from the girl, a condescending smirk spreading across his face. Then he shuddered at the sheer volume of material she was retching up. And the shudder didn’t stop.

“What the sweet fucking hell,” said Gerritz.

Jordan staggered, reached up, and pressed his hands over his eyes. He moaned. Blood leaked out from under his hands.

Wet things flexed and stretched in the pool of bile and Natalie was still vomiting it out, a fire hose that only lessened when she gagged out a cough alongside the liquid.

Hector took one more step back, well past the rear end of the car now, almost in the middle of the off-ramp. Looked at Jordan bleeding out through his eyes. Remembered what Natalie had said happened to people in the broken room when they were too old.

Gerritz heaved out a sidearm that seemed to weigh fifty or sixty pounds. He looked at Hector and took a step forward, his arm shaking with fear and effort. He tried hard to make it tough and fearless.

It took him a step closer to Natalie.

Jordan let out a wail that built up to a scream, and dropped to his knees, splashing into the wide puddle. Some of the egg sacs popped under him as if he’d dropped onto a sheet of bubble wrap. Blood dripped from his nose now. And his ears. And the corners of his mouth.

Natalie coughed—a break in the endless, impossible stream of mucus gushing from her mouth—then coughed again. She managed to look over at Hector before she spit up another gallon. She shook her head and another surge of cold air rolled out to brush his skin.

Hector took another step back. Ten feet from Gerritz’s pistol. Not great defensively, but his gut told him it was safer than being close to Natalie right now.

Jordan fell over in the puddle. Lines of blood striped his face. Sharp frost sparkled on the edges of his badge. He lay in the yellow-green goop and shook like a naked man in a blizzard.

“Stop it!” shouted Gerritz, looking back at his partner. A thin line of blood ran down his own nose as he said it. He took two clumsy steps, getting himself a little past the car. Past Natalie. He raised his pistol with both hands and managed to point it at Hector. “Tell her to stop it right now or I’ll blow both your goddamn heads off!”

Natalie set her hands on the BMW’s trunk, pushed herself upright, and the air shifted.

Ripples of chilled air washed off her, like opening a freezer door on a hot summer day. At the bottom of his vision, Hector saw wisps of cold fog rolling across the gravel and pavement, surrounding Gerritz’s feet. Spiderwebs of frost appeared around the man’s shoes.

Natalie took another staggering step, a little girl pretending to be a zombie or Frankenstein. One arm clutched at her heaving stomach. The other reached out in front of her, fingers stretching as far as they could. The fire hose had stopped, but thick liquid still streamed over her bottom lip and down her chin like an overflowing sink. She coughed hard, threw up another quart of slime, and took two more steps toward Gerritz.

He heard the sounds and turned away from Hector just as she grabbed his gun belt, dragging herself up against him. The officer spasmed. Hector moved forward, and Natalie glared at him, warning him back.

Hector’s gut fought him, his fingers flexed, but he obeyed.

She threw her arms around Gerritz, and his legs wobbled as she vomited slime onto him. He brought his arms down, tried to push Natalie away, but his arms seemed to be losing strength as fast as his legs. His frost-covered pistol dropped and crunched in the roadside gravel.

Gerritz cried scared, bloody tears. He shoved at Natalie’s shoulder and head but couldn’t push her away. He whimpered out some cold air, blood ran from his ears like a popped paintball, and he tipped over backward. His head thudded against the edge of the BMW’s trunk and he slid down over the bumper. Natalie opened her arms and swayed as he slumped to the ground.

Then she retched on him again, and the flow finally stopped.

She found Hector with her eyes. “I don’t feel good.”

He sprinted forward, catching her as she sagged. “Don’t feel good how?” he asked.

“Dizzy,” she said. “Nauseous. Thirsty.”

“Well,” he said, forcing an uneasy smile, “you just threw up fifty gallons of slime, so nauseous and thirsty is understandable.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. He lifted her and carried her back around the car. Once he’d arranged her limbs in the passenger seat, he grabbed the blanket from the back and layered it over her.

Then he went to take care of the cops. Dealing with them in broad daylight on the side of an interstate was bad, but he didn’t have much choice. Any second now another police car might come by, or some random good Samaritan wanting to help out. Or maybe they’d just take pictures as they drove past.

Hector dragged Gerritz over to his partner, just off the far side of the ramp, stomping egg sacs as he went. Both men were still breathing. That was good and bad. Corrupt cops. Not worth killing, but they’d be able to give descriptions of him and Natalie once they recovered.

He rolled them onto their sides. Didn’t want them drowning in their own blood or an inch-deep slime puddle. He tore off Jordan’s body cam and whipped it out onto the freeway for the next half-dozen cars to crush into bits. He ripped out the cables for their radios. Threw their phones over into the tall grass. It wasn’t much, but it could mean four or five important minutes somewhere down the line.

He got back in the car and floored it. Up the ramp, through the stop sign, and straight down the other side, back onto the highway. He let the car get up to seventy, then eased back. He watched the freeway in both directions, checking every car ahead of them, behind them, coming the other way across the grassy median strip.

Natalie twisted, crawled between the front seats, and fell into the back, dragging the blanket after her. She mashed herself into the corner against the rear door, as far from Hector as she could get. She met his eyes in the mirror. “It’s safer,” she said. “In case it happens again.”

He bit his lip and nodded.

THIRTY-SIX

Hector drove for half an hour before pulling off the freeway. Santa Rosa could’ve been a large desert town or a small city, but whatever it was, it had a Days Inn right off the exit with eight cars in the parking lot. He found the one farthest from the hotel’s few security cameras—a dark-red Buick—pulled out his coiled slim-jim, and a minute later was loading blanket-wrapped Natalie into the back seat.

Just before getting back on the freeway, he stopped at a gas station convenience store. Around the building’s corner, half-hidden by an exterior ice machine, he changed into the white dress shirt he’d bought that morning. A small thing to shift the way people viewed him. Inside, he got some bottles of water and a double handful of napkins. The clerk glared at him, but Hector told a quick lie about his pregnant wife getting carsick that the old man seemed to accept.

He handed Natalie a water and the napkins as they got back on the freeway. She sipped half the water, then used the rest to wash her face and neck and hands with the napkins. She sank down under the blanket and emerged a few minutes later wearing a clean T-shirt. “Do we have any food?”

“You want to eat. After all that?”

“Yes.”

He gave her a PowerBar and she tore at it with her teeth while dabbing at spots on her jeans. “Are the policemen dead?”

“Those guys back there? No. You didn’t kill them.”

She nodded once. Dabbed at her jeans. “Did you kill them?”

“No. I didn’t kill them, you didn’t kill them. They were both alive when we left, and seemed to be doing all right. They were both breathing and didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.”

Natalie stared at him in the rearview mirror.

Hector shrugged. “I don’t know what you—what your break did to them. I think they’re mostly all right. If it makes you feel better, it’s pretty much a universal law that assholes have a better survival rate than good people, and those guys were definitely assholes.”

A small laugh came from the back seat.

“Do you feel any better?”

“Yes. I feel clean and warm.”

The setting sun was bright in the rearview mirror, but Hector still saw the car speeding up behind them. A police cruiser. He tensed, set his hand by his pistol, but the car flew past without slowing down.

The itch had never really disappeared, and it took a moment to dance on the back of his neck.

“What happens now?” Natalie asked.

“We stick to the plan. I think we’re an hour from the state line. That’ll take a bit of heat off us, police-wise. Once those guys talk, though, or somebody finds them, the Project’s going to hear about it. We’ll be back on their radar.”

“Yes,” she said, “we will.”

“So we get to Lubbock, get a good night’s sleep, and then tomorrow we go knock on the Project’s front door.”

Her head went side to side.

“What?”

“If you knock on the front door, they’ll know we’re there. They’ll catch us.”

“Yeah, I’m not actually going to—”

“This is a terrible plan.”

“That’s not actually the plan. I was making a joke.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Why are you so positive it’s bad? Do you and Tim have something planned out?”

“No.”

He waited. “No, but  . . . ?”

Natalie shook her head. “No. Tim hasn’t been talking as much since you went in the store to buy water.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes. I told him about the vomiting and the cold and how it made the policemen sick. He’s worried he made things worse when he . . . when I let him use me. My body.”

“Yeah. He said something similar to me back in the parking lot.”

“He thinks if he’s too close to me, I’ll get more broken. Enough that we won’t be able to fix me back at the Project. He said it’s a slippery slope.”

Hector shifted in the driver’s seat. “When you say ‘we,’ who do you mean? I thought we were making the doctors fix you.”

“No. Tim will do it. With my help.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you ask him?”

She mouthed a few quiet words into the air. “He says he can’t explain it. It’s something that just makes sense where he is.”

“So how will we know what to do?”

Natalie breathed out some more syllables and watched some of the highway go by. Her head wobbled side to side “Was your friend from Russia?”

“What?”

“The small woman. He says it will be like her.”

“Jules was from Nebraska, I think. Pretty sure he knows that.”

“I’m sorry. He says to tell you it will be like a Russian doll. I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I.”

“Tim says that’s the best way to explain how.”

Hector hated not knowing how an op was supposed to go down. It was half a step above flying blind. “Okay, then,” he said. “We’re going to get you back to the Project, get you fixed, and then fix all your friends. And then we’ll get everyone out of there.”

She settled down into her blanket. “Yes.”

“Just rest for now.”

She took three deep breaths, in and out. “What will we do if it happens again?”

“You can feel it coming, right? The coughs?”

“Yes.”

“You let me know as soon as you think you feel something.” Hector gestured off to the side of the freeway. “I’ll pull over, you can get out and go throw up in the grass away from the road. I’ll keep my distance until it ends, and then we’ll get back on the road. It’s not great, but it seems like you have at least eight or nine hours between the big fits. We can make it work.”

“Yes.”

“Heck, if you can do it on command, it’s almost a superpower.”

“No.”

“Get some rest.”

She tugged the blanket closer around her and closed her eyes.

Hector drove in silence for half an hour, watching the cars. He wondered if the cops had recovered yet. He’d seen a lot of downed men in his time. He had a decent sense of who would recover and who wouldn’t, even how long they’d be out. His gut told him Gerritz and Jordan were up and moving ten, maybe fifteen minutes after he and Natalie drove away.

An image of one of the egg sacs flitted through his mind. There’d been one near Jordan’s face that Hector had kicked away and crushed. Had he crushed all the eggs, though? He knew some bugs could lay dozens in one sac. If a few had survived his heel, maybe hatched, and whatever was inside had found its way to Officer Jordan . . .

They were fine. Sick as hell, but fine. They’d probably been calling it in while he was stealing the Buick. At the very least, their dispatcher had noticed that they never checked back in after pulling over the BMW, and sent someone to check on them.

Then again, if they’d been planning to roll Hector for money all along, who knew if they’d even called it in?

And what would they tell the dispatcher when they got back on the radio? He guessed they’d be relatively all right physically, but who knew what Natalie’s break had done to them mentally. In his experience, guys like Gerritz and Jordan weren’t as tough as they liked to think they were, and tended to snap without too much pressure. Would the dispatcher dismiss it? Or would they organize a manhunt because two cops had been attacked?

Three cops, counting Officer Cooper. Wouldn’t take much for someone to connect the dots there. Man and a little kid. Their one saving grace—police departments were notoriously bad about communicating information, especially between states. It could buy him and Natalie a little more time.

The thoughts went back and forth in his head, and he didn’t like many of the paths they went down.

Miles rolled by under the Buick’s tires, and signs told him the state line was getting closer. The sky behind him turned brilliant yellow as the sun crawled toward the horizon. A tall pillar of uneven bricks held out a sign and told him he was finally leaving New Mexico. A dozen yards past the pillar the pavement shifted, a clear borderline where the road on one side was much more recent than on the other. Another sign came up a moment later, a bright green square welcoming him to Texas and asking him to drive friendly.

Hector doubted it was going to be a friendly visit.

THIRTY-SEVEN

A few miles north of Lubbock, Hector started seeing signs for a travel stop. A chain place. The Buick needed gas, and he preferred to stop on the outskirts of the city than inside if he could. They’d have cameras, but lower-quality ones. Even this late, there’d be enough foot traffic to help hide them.

He glanced back at Natalie. “Hey. You still hungry?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to stop and get us some gas and food. You in the mood for anything in particular?”

“No.”

“How do you feel?”

“Better. Not good.”

He found the exit, pulled off the freeway, and did a slow circle of the parking lot. Eleven other cars scattered around the building or at pumps, and he’d seen three semis in the lot out back when he drove in. At least three of the cars probably belonged to employees. Not as busy as he’d hoped, but not so dead they’d stand out.

He parked at the gas pump farthest from the store. Killed the engine. Swung around to look at Natalie. “I’m going to go in, pay for things. Are you going to be all right out here alone for a few minutes?”

“Yes.”

“Sure there’s nothing specific you want?”

Her head went side to side. “Yes.”

“Yes . . . ?”

“Yes, I’m sure there’s nothing specific I want.”

He slid out of the car, ducked his head back in. “I’ll be right back.”

Inside, the travel stop was a cross between a grocery store and a department store. Food, electronics, clothing, camping equipment. Almost anything someone might need on the road. A big man with a ragged gray beard stared in confusion at a display of phone charger cords. A younger man and a woman took turns modeling winter caps for each other. A man with an overloaded tray of nachos counted out coins at the register. The cashier stared past him, her freckled face slack with boredom.

Hector wandered through the store, keeping his head casually turned from cameras, not lingering anywhere long enough to be suspicious. He gathered up some premade sandwiches that looked relatively fresh, a few drinks, and some Band-Aids so he could put clean dressings on all his wounds.

He lingered at the racks of clothing, which had a few kid-sized options. He didn’t think Natalie would go for the bright pink biker jacket, but he could picture her in the classic black one. But a little kid in a leather jacket would be too eye-catching, no matter what color he went with.

A new couple entered the store. Older white man and woman. The woman marched up to the freckled clerk at the register. The man hung back.

“Did you know,” the woman said, “somebody’s abandoned a small child out in your parking lot?”

Hector’s neck tensed.

The cashier blinked twice. She craned her head to look around the woman and out the travel stop’s big glass windows. “What?”

“There’s a little girl trapped in the back of a car out there. We were pumping gas for at least ten minutes, and she was alone the entire time.”

The clerk stopped looking out the window. “If she’s in a car, I’m sure she’s okay. Her folks probably just ducked in for—”

“Anything could’ve happened to her,” interrupted the woman. “What kind of parent does that?”

The older man sighed. Hector moved behind them and took the practiced stance recognized universally as “next in line, waiting.” A silence stretched out.

“I’m not sure what you want me to do,” the cashier said. “I could page her parents, but if they’re in the bathroom they’ll probably—”

“I think someone needs to call the police,” said the woman. “If her parents are this neglectful, child services might need to get involved.”

Hector inched forward. “You weren’t out there for ten minutes,” he said.

The woman turned on him, and the cashier, no longer the focus of the woman’s attention, visibly relaxed. “And how would you know that?”

“Because there was nobody else at any of the pumps near us when we pulled up,” said Hector, “and I’ve only been in here for seven minutes.”

“Are you the girl’s father?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m sure the police would like a word with you about child endangerment.”

“I’m not endangering my kid by leaving her in a locked car in a well-lit parking lot for seven minutes. Eight now that you’re wasting everyone’s time and holding up the line.”

“If you were a responsible parent, she’d be in here with you.”

Hector knew the woman’s type—unpredictable except that she definitely wouldn’t back down unless forced to. She was also making him linger by the register, right on the edge of at least one security camera he could see. And this encounter was cementing him in everyone’s memory.

He looked past the woman to the freckled cashier. “My girl’s sick with the flu. That’s why she’s staying in the car. Do you want me to bring her in here?”

A quick smile flickered across the cashier’s face. “No.”

“You sure?” He hefted the sandwiches. “She’s not coughing much, so she should be all right picking out her own food. I could go bring her in, like a responsible parent would.”

“No, it’s cool. You’re being a good dad.”

“She doesn’t decide if you’re a good parent,” squawked the older woman.

Hector fixed her with his coldest don’t-mess-with-me gaze. “And you do?”

The woman was immune to his stare. Her husband wasn’t. “Let it go, dear,” he said. “He’s right, the girl shouldn’t be inside if she’s—”

“No! She’s a defenseless child and he left her out there alone!”

The cashier cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “Ma’am? If you’re not buying anything, could you please step out of line?”

The woman spun back around. “If you’re not going to call the police, I am.”

Hector’s shoulders ached with tension. He moved past the woman and set the sandwiches and drinks down next to the register. “Could I also get twenty bucks on number eleven?” he asked, adding the Band-Aids to his pile.

“Sure.”

“Give me your phone,” the woman said to her husband.

“Dear, he hasn’t been in here long, and he’s right. If she’s sick, she’s probably better staying in the car.”

“How can you say that?”

Hector handed over some bills and the cashier gave him a plastic sack with his purchases and some change. He let the coins drop into a donation jar on the counter, crashing into the pile at the bottom.

“Sorry about this,” the cashier murmured. “Hope your little girl feels better.”

“Thanks.”

The older woman’s glare followed him out the door, and he felt her gaze on the back of his head. He made himself walk slowly back to the car, a man who’d done nothing wrong and had nothing to fear. When he got there, he opened the back door, crouched, and gave Natalie one of the sandwiches. She stared at him.

“We’re having another father-daughter moment,” he explained.

She nodded once. “Should I smile at someone?”

“I don’t think it’d help this time.”

She peeled open the sandwich and he handed her a bottle of milk. Then he walked around the car and popped open the gas tank. He slotted the nozzle in and stared at the flickering numbers while keeping his attention on the big glass doors.

The husband and wife came out of the store and marched across the parking lot. She snapped at him while he made low comments in a placating tone. Neither of them held a phone. Halfway back to her car, she saw Hector and glared at him for half a second before making a very deliberate point of not noticing him.

The speaker built into the gas pump crackled. “Hey, mister,” said the cashier’s voice. “Thought you’d want to know, her husband talked her down. She didn’t call the police.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” He looked back toward the glass doors and waved. He saw the cashier wave back.

“Have a good night. Hope she feels better.”

“Thanks again.”

The speaker crackled again and went silent. The numbers on the pump slowed, plodded through a few more digits, and stopped. Hector holstered the nozzle and sealed up the gas tank. The metal panel covering the cap was cold to the touch, and he rubbed his fingers on his arm to warm them back up.

Then he backed away from the car.

He circled around wide, staying ten feet away from the vehicle. Natalie had swung her legs around to hang out of the open door. Her sandwich lay on the back seat behind her, one corner bitten off.

She raised her head to look at him and shuddered. Wisps of dry-ice cold streamed out of her mouth and nostrils. “It’s going to be bad.”

She coughed hard once and fluids gushed out across the pavement. She gasped in a breath, hiccuped out another quick cough, and then spat out two of the swollen egg sacs. They landed in the puddle and fresh mucus poured over them before Natalie turned her head to cough again.

Slime sloshed over the sacs, spreading across the parking lot and under the car.

Something moved in the puddle.

Lots of somethings.

One of the ribbed egg sacs had burst open, and at least two dozen thin shapes fought their way through the viscous fluid around it. He couldn’t get close enough to get a good sense of what they were. The other sac, one of the smoother ones, stretched and bulged as its contents fought to get out.

Natalie let out a gargling, phlegmy cough and vomited up three more egg sacs. One cracked open as it hit the concrete and the thing inside uncoiled. Hector thought of the pop-up tents he’d used a few times—a flat disk that unfurled into a simple one-man shelter. The dark thing coming out of the egg did that. It stretched and swelled and unrolled, going from something the size of a golf ball to something like a large earthworm or a small snake, as thick as Hector’s thumb.

Sharp snowflakes formed on the Buick’s rear window. Frost crackled and spread across the gas pump next to the car. Cold steam fogged the readouts and rolled down its metal panels.

The frigid air brushed up against Hector. He took a few more steps back, feeling the veins in his head throb. A headache blossomed behind his eyes.

The worm thing writhed to the edge of the puddle and then lowered dozens of black, wiry legs. They tapped on the pavement with a crackle like static. It dragged itself out of the slime and more legs dropped down from beneath it. Over a foot long and over a hundred legs, easy.

Things that had been dead for a very long time, Natalie’d told him.

A few of the thin shapes had made it to the top of the puddle. They pushed up and out of the mucus and spread wide, membranous limbs toward the lights overhanging the gas pumps. The wings fluttered in the air, spraying off the last bits of liquid on them. They beat faster, snarling like tiny hair clippers.

More yellow-green vomit poured out of Natalie. Tears ran from her eyes. She gagged, coughed, and more bulging shapes surged up and out of her throat. Cold steam rolled off her, poured out of the frost-covered car like a B-movie special effect.

The army-green centipede thing zigzagged away from the car. It headed toward the store, then shifted course and headed for Hector. He took a step back, splitting his attention between it and Natalie and the other things in the puddle.

One of the thin shapes lifted off from the puddle. Another one followed it. More stretched their wings and took a first few cautious swings at the air.

Natalie threw up again, burying some of the creatures under fresh gallons of mucus. The puddle was teeming with movement now. More of the egg sacs had opened, and more shapes struggled to get free of the slime.

Hector felt his shoe scrape on something and glanced down. The centipede was gnawing at his leather toe with tiny jaws like pliers, holding itself in place with its front three sets of legs. He watched as the double set of mandibles hinged open and then scraped at the shoe again.

He kicked it away. It writhed and twisted like a sidewinder snake, then a ripple ran down its length and it was right side up again. It headed back toward Hector’s foot.

Natalie made a sound somewhere between a cough and a belch. A last few cups of mucus splashed on the pavement. And one more pulsing egg sac. She flopped back into the car, exhausted. The air shifted.

The centipede grabbed Hector’s shoe again. It attacked the leather, its double jaws gnashing like a high-speed machine. He could feel the tiny vibration.

He lifted his foot and the centipede came with it, hanging from his toe. The gnawing never slowed. He swung his leg once, twice, and then its claws grabbed the underside of his shoe, pulling itself up along the length of the sole.

It felt like stomping on a sausage. The first two times it was rubbery and resistant, but by the third it was flattened meat. The front legs and mandibles scrabbled at the leather for a few more seconds, then went still. He scraped it off on the ground and stepped closer to the car.

A tiny war waged in the puddle. The winged bugs tried to pull themselves free of the mucus, but hundreds of tiny green beetles, maybe cockroaches, kept swarming over them. He wasn’t sure if the beetles were eating the winged bugs or just biting them. Some of the beetles waded through the mucus, heading for the edge.

As he watched, one of the flying bugs landed on his coat sleeve. It was two inches long and looked like a dragonfly but . . . sharper. The bug’s tail reminded Hector of a wasp. Or a scorpion. Its wings would pause, blur back into motion, then pause again.

The tail jabbed down at his arm. The blazer’s sleeve stopped it. Barely. Hector felt it tap his arm through the layers of fabric. The tail went back up, then stabbed down again.

Hector smacked it fast. Not crushing it, just stunning the bug and messing up its wings. It felt like tapping an electric fence, but the bug dropped to the pavement and joined the centipede on the bottom of his shoe. Another bug darted near his face. He slapped it out of the air, but not before he felt it jab his forehead like a needle.

A few yards away, someone shrieked. The older woman, standing three pumps over with her husband. She waved her arms wildly, swatting at the air. Hector saw a dark line of blood on her cheek.

He looped around the puddle, back to the car, and yanked open the driver’s door. The windshield had iced over. Cold air rolled out, and Natalie groaned once from the back seat. He leaned in, put the car in neutral, let it roll a few yards away from the pump. Away from the puddle.

Then back out and he sprinted for the store. He shoved at the door, twisted through the gap, raced past the register. He wove through the aisles to the small display he’d noted earlier.

“Hey,” said the cashier. The friendliness of her voice wavered. “Did you forget something?”

Camping equipment. Charcoal lighter fluid. One of the long red fireplace lighters. He turned and bolted for the door.

“Hey!” she shouted after him. “Hey! ”

He popped open the lighter fluid on the move, yanking out the soft red ring that kept it sealed. He started squeezing the bottle before he got to the puddle, as soon as he felt the cold, spraying the stream in a high arc. When he got closer, he aimed it, letting the liquid form puddles within the slick of mucus. They shimmered like gasoline on water.

The bugs reacted. They flailed away from the stream and the smell. The flying bugs beat their wet wings even harder, trying to lift off. The roach-beetles scattered as best they could. Hector soaked another centipede and it coiled and thrashed, flicking lighter fluid and yellow-green slime in all directions.

“Hey!” yelled the cashier, coming up behind him. He spared her a quick glance, saw her raise an aluminum baseball bat to her shoulder. A man in a similar corporate jersey hung back by the door.

The lighter fluid bottle sputtered and sprayed out a last few drops. He tilted it forward and got another three-second stream into the puddle. Then he tossed in the bottle itself and tore open the lighter. “Hit the emergency shutoff,” he told her.

He sensed the cashier closer to him, saw her shadow with the bat sliding lower. “What . . . what is all that? What the hell are those?” She sniffed the air twice, yelped, and her shadow swung at the air.

Hector pulled the lighter free of the package, pulled the trigger twice, and a bright flame appeared at the tip.

“Jesus, are you fucking nuts?” yelled the cashier as Hector leaned forward and stabbed the lighter into one of the pools of lighter fluid. The flames shot up, raced along trails, surged as they hit more pockets within the puddle.

The baseball bat hit the pavement.

“Hit the shutoff,” he said again.

He heard her shoes on the asphalt, the distant thump of a button being punched hard.

The flames reached up two, three feet and grabbed some of the flying insects as they tried to get away. The centipede slowed its thrashing as it roasted. The roach-beetles flashed like match heads and vanished. Even the slime itself cooked, turning thick and gray. Black smoke surged up into the night sky and filled the air with the smell of burning plastic and brown sugar.

Hector looked over his shoulder as a car rushed away from the pumps. The cashier had retreated closer to the store, staring at him and the burning puddle. She had a line of fresh blood next to her eye and on her arm. A pair of customers stood horrified near her, their mouths open in awe. The other employee still stood at the door, but he had his phone out, filming the small inferno.

Hector checked the flaming puddle again to make sure nothing moved. He circled around the fire and tucked Natalie’s legs in before closing the car’s back door. He got behind the wheel and drove off.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Hector drove across the entire city and found a Knights Inn on the far side of Lubbock. He used the third and last of his fake identities, paid cash, and slipped the clerk a little extra to get a quiet room as far away from the other guests as possible. In the first-floor room, he pushed the bed into one corner and dragged a chair to the opposite one, putting almost twelve feet between them. The chair had a view of the motel room door and also the bathroom, where a small, narrow window led outside. He tucked semiconscious Natalie into the bed and stepped away from it.

He rinsed his shirt in the sink and hung it up to dry. Threw out his socks and underwear, grabbing the last clean set from the package. He kept his shoes on in case they had to move fast in the night.

His leg throbbed. He’d rinsed it and changed out the Band-Aids, but he was pretty sure there was some low-level infection happening. His side just ached and felt as if somebody had packed his rib cage with salt.

He’d felt worse.

They’d been seen. No question. After today, anyone trying to track them was going to have a really easy time of it. If the cashier at the gas station mentioned Natalie or the weird bugs, Hector might as well go out in the parking lot with a can of spray paint and write we are here in big letters, with an arrow pointed at their motel room door.

The door he watched from the chair, with his pistol in his lap.

It all came down to how badly they wanted to get Natalie back. Granted, nobody hired the Doll because they thought she was cute, and unless something had changed he could guess how much she had cost them. Even just for a grocery run.

He’d killed her. Killed Jules. They both knew it might work out that way someday, one of them getting tasked with retiring the other. It was the price of any sort of relationship in this job. But he’d always hoped it wouldn’t happen. He’d liked Jules. Cared about her. As much as you could care about anyone in the business.

What had she thought when the offer popped up on her phone? Had she suspected it was him from the start? Did she say yes without all the information? Had she decided maybe it was fate, him going active again and her getting the call?

If Jules was the high end of the Project’s efforts to get Natalie back, if they didn’t try to go a rung or two above her, he might be good. Budgetwise, that could mean a smaller nighttime monitoring team. They might not learn about the gas station incident until early morning, which would make him and Natalie safe at the motel until close to noon tomorrow. And he planned to be long gone by noon. Hopefully slipping through the Project’s doors by then, if he was lucky. Stabbing them in the heart while they were all out looking for Natalie.

If he was lucky.

Hector had been lucky a lot of times in his life. Made the near-impossible shot. Dodged a few bullets, metaphorical and actual. Survived two explosions and three missions that had gone so far south they hit the point where everything was north from there. He was keenly aware luck always ran out.

Always.

He just had to hang on to it for a little longer.

The sheets shifted across the room. “Hector?”

“I’m here.”

Natalie pushed herself up. “Would you like the bed? I can sleep in the chair.”

“I’m good. I’m not that tired.”

“Yes, you are.”

He smiled even though he didn’t think she could see it in the dark. “Yes, I am. But I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sorry it’s not safe to be near me.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’ll run to the bathroom if it happens again.”

“I know.”

He heard her breathe a few more times. Heard the stiff motel sheets move again. “The bugs scared me.”

“They scared me too. You were really brave.”

Her head did its metronome movement. “I was too tired to do anything. I fell on my back in the car.”

“People can do a lot when they’re scared. They keep running, keep screaming. Way, way after you thought they’d stop. You didn’t do any of that.”

“Only because you were there. I knew I was safe.”

Hector’s aching chest caught for a moment, as if his breath got lighter and took a bit of pressure off him. “Thank you.”

“Did you burn all of them?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

She nodded once. “Good.”

“You should get some sleep.”

“No.” She shook her head once in the dark, a wobbly shadow.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

“Yes.”

Natalie sat there in the dark. Hector waited to see if she slumped back on her pillow. Scoured whatever scant bits of parenting advice he could remember overhearing from Helen.

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes.”

He adjusted himself in the chair, turning to her even though he kept his attention on the door. “What is it? You worried about tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“What about it.”

“I think I’m dying.”

He forgot the door. “What?”

“I’m going to die. I don’t want to die.”

Hector looked back at the door, then got up and walked over to the bed. “Hey,” he said, sitting down next to her. “No talking like that. We can get scared before a mission and talk through things that might go wrong, but talking about dying is bad luck.”

She looked at him for a moment, then leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. His slashed side prickled and burned as she squeezed, but he pressed his lips together and draped an arm across her. He could feel her breathing and her heart pounding.

“You’re going to be fine,” he told her. “I promise.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. It feels like . . . I think if the coughing gets worse, I’m just going to vomit up everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. Everything inside me. My stomach and lungs and heart and all my bones. I’ll turn inside out and then . . .”

“Then you’ll be dead?”

“Yes. And the break will be outside of me. Lots of things will be dead.”

Hector felt a chill, but it was just his nerves.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. That’s why Tim brought you to me, right? So I’d help you.”

“Yes.” She squeezed him again. “Tim isn’t talking to me. I think he’s listening, but he’s not talking.”

“He will tomorrow. We’ll go to the Project and fix you, and then we’ll save all your friends.”

“What if Dr. Lourale and the guards don’t let us?”

“He will. They all will.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m guessing they’ve got a strong fear of karma.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

THIRTY-NINE

Hector couldn’t find a good car to steal in the morning. The motel parking lot had only two others. One parked in front of the office, the other already surrounded by a family of five, packing up and sharing donuts. Two of the kids waved at Natalie. She stared at them, then pasted on her fake smile and waved back.

He didn’t like spending more time in the same car, but he didn’t see much choice. There just weren’t enough unattended vehicles around. He could draw attention by driving the same stolen car or possibly draw more attention by stealing another one.

They stopped at a plaza near the motel, got a bag of McMuffins and a large coffee, and got back on the road. He’d used another of their burner phones for directions, got them heading toward Colorado City. He left half the phone in a trash can outside the McDonald’s, got rid of the second half at the short stretch of pavement that counted as an on-ramp, and flicked the SIM card out the window after a few minutes on the highway.

Natalie sat in the back again, as far from him as she could be, watching out the window as she ate a McMuffin. There wasn’t much to see. Every part of Texas Hector had ever seen was endlessly flat, and this part wasn’t looking to be the standout.

Natalie crumpled up her McMuffin wrapper and threw it to the far side of the back seat. “How long will it take us to get there?”

“Less than an hour to Colorado City,” he said. “After that, it depends on how long it takes us to find the Project. I’m hoping you’ll see a landmark, maybe spot that gas station you first ended up at. But we’ll find it.”

“How?”

“People. People are always the weak point.”

Movement in the rearview mirror caught his eye. A car came up fast behind them and flashed its headlights. Hector didn’t even have time to consider moving. It caught up, drifted around them, and rushed on down the two-lane highway. His hand relaxed on the steering wheel and the other hand slid away from his pistol.

“If Colorado City’s the closest big town or city,” he said, “then people from the Project have been there. They’ve gone out to dinner. Gone shopping. Gone drinking. And people get noticed. They end up talking. They let things slip. They make friends. I bet a lot of people in Colorado City know about the Project. They don’t know it by name, and they probably don’t know what happens there, but they know a general direction. Maybe even a road.”

Natalie nodded once. “We’ll still need to get in. There are many guards. And gates with yellow pipes.”

“Getting in won’t be hard. From what you’ve said, a lot of it sounds like every other government office building. Parts of it, anyway. They let in vendors, cleaning crews, repairmen, all sorts of people. And I bet some of those are people from Colorado City. We just need to learn the right name to tell them at the gate.”

She considered this. Nodded. “There will still be many guards.”

“Well, here’s the thing.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You’ve recognized some of the people who’ve come after us, right? You know them from the Project.”

“Yes. I’ve known four of them. Ross, Arthur, Cook, and Lucas.”

“Why do you think they sent them after you?”

She stared at him in the rearview mirror. “To bring me back to the Project.”

“Yeah, but why them?”

“To bring me back to the Project,” she repeated. He swore she even said it a tiny bit slower.

“My point is,” said Hector, “they’re sending people you know, that you’d be able to pick out of a crowd. People you’d see coming. So why would they do that?”

She sighed. Loudly. “To bring me back to—”

“No. They’re sending them because they don’t have anybody else.”

Her eyebrows went up in the rearview mirror.

“I’ve heard of this group, Steelwall, before. They’re big, but not as big as some private security firms. Doing a full-time job like this probably uses up a sizable part of their available assets. If they had more people at their disposal, they wouldn’t’ve been so quick to call in an outside contractor.”

“The Doll,” said Natalie.

“Right. I’m sure they’ve still got people there at the Project, but I think after five days of tracking us and a bunch of losses, they’re stretched a bit thin now. And they won’t really adjust for it, because what have they got to worry about? From what you’ve told me, all the kids are conditioned to obey orders.”

“And there aren’t as many of us,” she said, just loud enough to be heard over the car.

“Yeah.” Hector let that sit for a moment. “So even if they’ve figured out it was us at the gas station last night, I don’t think it’d cross their minds that we’d be trying to sneak back in. And if they do figure it out, we’ll still be in there before they’re ready.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” he said. “You can never be sure when to comes to these things. But I think the odds are good.”

A pickup truck on the northbound side of the freeway flashed its headlights three times. It was more or less alone on the road. Hector hadn’t seen another vehicle heading north for at least a minute.

The itch tickled the back of his neck. He watched the truck in his mirror as it headed north.

Everything was so flat he saw the taillights as soon as they separated from the horizon. Two miles away, tops. Lots of taillights. At least fifty cars backed up in each lane.

And flashing lights. He hoped for a moment to see a fire truck or an ambulance, maybe two or three wrecked cars, but no. Nothing but police cars.

It only took him seconds to realize what it was, and that he’d passed the exit. The ramp sloped up, a growing wall on the side of the highway, blocking them in more and more.

“Hector,” said Natalie.

“I know.”

A roadblock. Improvised checkpoint. Even from here he could see stick figures stopping cars and moving between them to examine drivers.

He slowed down and switched to the inside lane, giving himself as much time as he could before coming to a stop. He left maneuvering space in front of the Buick in case he needed it. A blue coupe rolled in behind them and now they were part of the line.

The median strip between the east and west lanes was just a wide swath of yellowed grass. He could make it across, but the Buick would make a dust plume they’d see a mile away. And up at the roadblock, a patrol car sat close to the westbound side, as if daring someone to try it.

The line moved fast. At least five had gone through. Fewer than forty cars now between him and the roadblock. They knew what they were looking for. Not wasting time with people who obviously weren’t their target.

Was it even possible they weren’t looking for him and Natalie? There was no way they’d set up roadblocks for the gas station fire on all the major highways out of Lubbock—even less chance they’d randomly blocked the one road he happened to take. But if the Project thought they were heading this way, why involve the police at all?

Options ran through Hector’s mind.

“Stay low,” he told her without moving his head. “Try not to let anyone in the cars around us see you. I need you to get down on the floor behind my seat. Curl up as small and tight as you can, and get the blanket over you. You need to vanish. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“When I tell you to be quiet you have to be absolutely silent until I say otherwise. Not a single sound.”

“I understand.” She slid off the back seat and pushed herself behind the driver’s seat. He reached down, tugged at the adjustment lever, and slid the seat forward an inch. He heard her shuffle behind him.

Fewer than thirty-five cars to the roadblock. Two black-and-white SUVs narrowed the freeway to one lane. One near the center faced forward, disorienting people with its flashers, the one by the side aimed with traffic. Ready to pursue anyone who ran the roadblock. Plus the cruiser in the median to go either way. Two officers on one side, checking drivers and license plates. One on the other side with a Mossberg shotgun, watching drivers as they approached. Two more standing close to the possible pursuit cars. An overpass maybe a hundred yards past them, the ramps forming walls on either side of the road.

He came up with a script. Ran through it in his head. Looked for flaws. Found a lot. Still thought it was his best option.

Seventeen cars now between him and the officers.

“Time to be quiet,” he said, not looking at her. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”

Nothing from the back seat. He had no idea if she was hidden or not. He couldn’t look to be sure.

Ten cars. Nine. The officer ahead of him looked young. They wouldn’t put a rookie on this detail, but the trooper couldn’t have had his badge for more than two or three years. He had an average build, blond-brown buzz cut under his hat, and a sharp mustache.

The trooper stopped the next car. After a moment, he let that car go. Then the next. Six cars. Five. Four.

The officer with the Mossberg stared at Hector. Hector gave him an indifferent glance and then let his attention appear to drift off the man. The officer kept staring.

Three cars. Two. The officer peered into the car ahead of Hector, then waved it on. He and the one checking license plates, a woman, turned their attention to Hector. They both stayed a few feet back from the car, just out of arm’s reach.

Hector pulled up, stopped directly across from the man, and lazily held out Lucas’s wallet, two fingers propping it open to show off the golden, vaguely federal badge. “This about the BOLO, officer? Man and a little boy?”

The trooper’s eyes met his automatically, and Hector used the moment to close the wallet before it got more than a glance. The spoken words and the badge overrode the man’s expectations, changed his thought patterns. Hopefully changed them enough.

“Yes sir,” said the officer. Preston, according to his name tag. “Man and a kid is what we were told. You’ve heard about it?”

Hector nodded and then gestured at the roadblock. “Didn’t think it sounded like this big a deal.” He could see the woman in the side mirror. She’d heard the “sir” from her partner and stopped to see what was happening. At least twenty cars were lined up behind the Buick now. More pressure on the police to move things along.

“Two officers down over in Arizona,” said Preston. “Might be connected to a third.”

“A shooter?” Hector took a moment to look ahead, getting the officer with the shotgun into his field of vision. The man was just even with Hector’s shoulders. If he shifted his feet, he’d be able to see the bulging blanket behind the driver’s seat.

Officer Preston shook his head. “They’re not telling us everything, but I heard they used some kind of nerve-gas weapon. Possible terrorists.”

“You heard wrong,” said Hector. He tapped the closed wallet on the edge of the window for emphasis, then went in for his bonding moment. “Sounds like I haven’t heard much more than you, but I know enough I can tell you it wasn’t chemical weapons and terrorists. Let’s not spread any more nonsense that might cause a panic and get a kid shot. Clear?”

Officer Preston straightened up, chastised and annoyed. “Yes sir.” Then his gaze went up over the car, and he leaned to his right, looking into the car. “Can I ask what’s behind your seat, sir?”

Hector had his look of mild confusion ready. Deployed it. Gave a half glance over his shoulder. The officer with the shotgun had stepped toward the front of the Buick, blocking one side and giving him a clear line of fire. The weapon wasn’t aimed at Hector, but it was closer than it had been thirty seconds ago.

“Just some gym clothes and tactical gear,” said Hector. “You know how it is. Shit piles up.” He moved his hand to put the badge wallet back in his coat.

Preston rolled his shoulder, took a casual step back, and set his own hand on the butt of his pistol. “Could you shut the engine off and step out of the car, please, sir?”

Hector paused with the wallet inches from the pocket, still in sight. Let a few grains of annoyance creep into his voice. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Kill the engine and get out of the car now, sir.”

Hector ran through options. Keep pushing the bluff? He could floor it, but the Buick wouldn’t provide a lot of protection for him or Natalie if half of them started shooting.

He decided to push it. His leg and side were a bit stiff, but once he was out of the car he felt pretty sure he had enough cover to take out all five of them, even spread out like this. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked in the tone of a man who could end careers with a phone call.

“I’m not going to ask you again,” said Preston, and most of his skull vanished in a red cloud.

Hector heard the sound a heartbeat later, the hypersonic whipcrack of a sniper round.

Preston’s body crumpled to the ground. The other troopers didn’t even have time to figure out what had happened before the officer with the shotgun lost the top of his head. Some of it hit the Buick’s windshield. The woman got her pistol out and up before she dropped.

All in less than ten seconds.

“Stay down!” Hector shouted to Natalie. “And brace yourself.”

He caught a glimpse of a fourth officer in the rearview mirror, running down the freeway between the waiting cars, away from the roadblock. Hector slammed the Buick into reverse, steered it around the car behind them, and went back a dozen feet before the car trembled and dragged to the side. Another shot and the passenger-side tire collapsed too.

People were screaming behind them. A few had abandoned their cars. Others tried to turn their vehicles around in the flat median strip, cutting each other off in their rush to escape. Cutting him off too.

The black-and-white SUV on the left side of the roadblock exploded. An RPG, Hector guessed, hitting the far side. Maybe an M203 with HEDP rounds. Either one put the sniper at the overpass.

The explosion rocked the burning SUV a few feet off toward the median, widening the gap, but the last thing Hector wanted to do was head toward the overpass, even if the Buick could manage it.

He forced the car backward a few more feet and twisted the wheel hard. Natalie squeaked as the Buick lurched and spun to the side, putting most of itself between them and the overpass. Hector pulled his pistol, shoved his door open, and slid out onto the highway.

Trapped. It had happened quickly. Brutally. Everything so far implied a single shooter, and Hector could think of only three people who could pull off something like this on the fly. Two of them he could maybe deal with. He really, really hoped it wasn’t the third.

A dozen feet to the closest car behind them, a bright blue Saturn coupe, abandoned by its owners. Twenty-two feet to get behind it. Twenty-two feet with a target on his back.

He crawled to the side, reached up, pulled open Natalie’s door. His side stitches buzzed in protest. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said from inside the car.

“Get out here.”

She unfolded from her hiding space behind the driver’s seat, stretching out of the car like a cautious cat.

“See the blue car? We need to run and get behind it.”

Her eyes went wide. “No.”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“No.” She shook her head once, side to side.

Hector jerked a thumb back toward the burning roadblock. “They don’t want to hurt you. Just like with the Doll. You’re the package. Whoever’s up there, they’re doing one of two things right now. They’re either coming down here to collect you, or they’re waiting to shoot me.”

Her eyes got wider. “No!”

“Here’s how we’re going to do it. I’m going to stay low and run. You’re going to run right behind me. They won’t shoot at you, so they won’t be able to shoot at me. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“This is going to work.”

“Is it?”

He thought of the three people again. Two-out-of-three chance. He reached out, took her hand, and gave it a squeeze. “One way to find out. Ready?”

She took a breath. For a second, he thought she was going to cough, but then she let it out. “Yes.”

Hector rolled up to his feet, staying in a low crouch. His wounded leg burned with the strain. “On three. One. Two. Three.”

They ran, and were halfway down the Saturn when he heard the whistling. The shooter had been waiting for them to run. Hector spun, wrapped himself around Natalie, and threw both of them down.

He felt the explosion just before he heard it. Two cars back, he guessed. They’d been shielded from any shrapnel by the vehicles between them. The pressure in his ears equalized and he could hear three or four voices screaming behind the snapping, rainlike sound of flames. One of them was wailing in pain, the others in terror.

He opened his eyes, rolled off Natalie. She looked up at him. “What happened?”

Halfway down the line of cars, maybe forty feet away, sat two burning wrecks. They gushed black smoke up into the sky. One of them had been halfway off the road when the grenade hit. As he stared, something in one of the cars caught and sent a bright surge of flame out through the shattered windows.

No retreating through cover now. The only choice was to make a run for it through the open space on either side of the southbound highway. Or he could inch them back behind the Buick and try to take down whoever it was in a—

“Good morning, Hector,” a voice called out over the sounds of fire and pain.

A slim figure walked down the hill from the overpass, already close to the roadblock. His dark clothes made him look even leaner. His strides were measured and deliberate, eating up the distance between them. If not for the M320 grenade launcher resting on his shoulder, he could’ve been a stranded motorist walking along the side of the freeway, hoping to find a gas station. No sign of the rifle, but he would’ve left it up above, wherever he’d made his sniper’s nest.

“Goddamn it,” muttered Hector as his gut turned to ice. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“I am hoping we can resolve this swiftly,” said the dark figure, “like two professionals.”

Natalie crawled to her feet, crouching next to him. “Do you know him too?”

“Everyone in my business knows him. We . . . fuck. We might be fucked here, kid.”

“What’s wrong?”

The slim figure stepped onto the pavement and continued forward. The grenade launcher came down off his shoulder and aimed at their position, his finger oh-so-delicately resting against the trigger. The flames from the ruined SUV lit up the side of his face, and the little round lenses of his glasses gleamed in the morning sunlight.

“They sent the Patchwork Man after us,” said Hector. “They sent Quilt.”

FORTY

Hector took Natalie by the shoulder and moved her in front of him. He kept his pistol aimed straight at the approaching figure. “Hey, Quilt,” he called out. “Been a long time. How’ve you been?”

If the other man registered the weapon pointed at him, he didn’t show it. “I can make no complaints.”

“Good to hear. How’s your daughter?”

Quilt’s blank face twitched as he drew closer, but the grenade launcher never wavered. “A tender topic.”

“Sorry. Did she . . . ?”

“She has decided to pursue other career options. I would prefer not to discuss it further.”

“Sorry. Again.”

“You had no way of knowing. Please drop your weapon.”

“I’d rather not. Speaking of which, why don’t you stop right there.” Hector made a minuscule gesture with the pistol.

Quilt stopped just on the other side of the ruined Buick, maybe twenty feet away. They stared at each other across the hood. Each kept his weapon on target.

The burning cars crackled and filled Hector’s nose with the scents of smoke and hot metal and melting plastic. He could hear distant voices shouting, crying, wailing. Natalie leaned back against him, and the thought flashed through his mind that she was trying to protect him.

He pushed it all away and kept his attention on Quilt. Laser-focused. He knew Quilt was doing the same to him. Was probably four or five steps ahead.

“So,” Hector said, “why don’t you toss the three-twenty over there in the grass.”

“No.”

“You don’t have arming range, and even if you did you can’t use it against me without damaging the package.”

“A custom grenade, as you no doubt have surmised. You cannot shoot me without risking that I pull the trigger, killing you both.”

“No!” Natalie stuck her arms up in the air, covering the lower half of Hector’s face with her fingertips.

“How sweet.” Quilt’s lips pulled into a thin, emotionless smile beneath his glasses. “Drop your weapon, Hector. I shall not ask again.”

Hector guided her arms back down with his free hand without looking away from Quilt. He had no doubts Quilt would use grenades with a minimal arming range, but if their positions were reversed, he’d probably have a practice round loaded in the 320. Just a nice lump of plastic and chalk traveling at 175 miles per hour. More than enough to crack a skull, and it was aimed at his. “Looks like a stalemate. You blow my head off, I blow your head off.”

The thin man sighed and shook his head. His eyes never left Hector’s. “You know why I’m here. Surrender the girl and I will let you walk away. A professional courtesy after Tagrit.”

“I’m going to be honest with you. Tagrit was a complete accident. I was aiming for your head, and the IED made me flinch when it went off.”

Another humorless smile from Quilt. “I appreciate your honesty, even if I find it somewhat ill timed.”

“I just don’t want you thinking I’ve gone soft. That’s not how this is going to go.”

Somewhere behind them, the agonized screaming became a loud wheeze and then stopped.

Quilt’s chin went side to side and he made three disappointed clicks with his tongue. “Someone must be paying you very well for this level of loyalty.”

“Paying off a marker. You know how it is.”

“I do not. I have never been in anyone’s debt.”

“You just said you were in mine.”

“No, I offered to extend you a professional courtesy. But now I am bored, and I think I shall kill you, Hector.”

“You can try.”

One of Quilt’s eyebrows went up ever so slightly.

Hector sighed. Let his shoulders sag a bit. “Fine. You get the girl and I walk away?”

Natalie tensed under his hand.

“Of course.” Quilt bowed his head, keeping his eyes on Hector. “As I said, professional courtesy. If we don’t respect each other, who will?”

Hector took a breath, let the arm with the pistol drop down toward the Buick as he swung his head to the left.

Quilt fired and a whip snapped next to Hector’s ear, right in the space where his head had been, yanking at his hair and sucking the air away.

Hector didn’t move his arm, fired two-three-four shots into the hood of the car. They sparked and punched and ricocheted. Quilt never flinched, flung the empty grenade launcher and it crunched against Hector’s wrist. He managed to hold on to the pistol, but it was still four pounds of steel and carbon fiber slamming into his arm. He brought his weapon back up as Quilt vaulted over the Buick’s hood, kicking the gun from his hand. The man landed low and drove a punch into Hector’s bad leg because of course he’d noticed the damned limp.

Hector roared, brought his own fist around in a wild haymaker Quilt blocked with a raised forearm, giving Hector the chance to slam his other fist directly into the man’s exposed solar plexus. The strike flowed into an elbow to the jaw, but Quilt swung his head back, brought a knee up between them, and kicked off Hector’s hip, pushing them apart.

Hector grabbed Natalie as he staggered back, dragging her with him. She stumbled but didn’t fight him. Hector swung her behind him, not taking his eyes off the other man as they slid down the side of the blue Saturn.

Quilt stood four yards away, examining them with a clinical gaze. He reached up, tugged his collar straight, and brushed some dust from his sleeve. The hand reached back and grabbed something behind his waist. The machete slid out from its sheath with a long chime of steel on nylon. He spun it in his hand like a twirler with a baton, a weightless thing drawing wide circles in the air.

Hector’s wounded leg felt as if a hundred needles had been jabbed into it. He’d ripped out the stitches in his side as well, and blood trickled under his shirt. This wouldn’t’ve been an even fight if he’d been in the best condition of his life, and in the state he was currently in . . .

“Such a shame it came to this,” said Quilt, moving forward with his smooth, measured stride. “You were an impressive operative once. I had a degree of respect for you.”

Natalie’s breath hitched behind Hector as he backed into her. She coughed. A small one, but he recognized it without looking, felt the wave of cold air. She was fighting to hold back the torrent.

Behind his little round glasses, Quilt’s eyes flitted to her for a moment as he took another step.

A story Hector had heard years ago leaped to mind. A rumor about the Patchwork Man that made for a nervous joke. Stupid as hell, but he didn’t have anything else.

“What did they tell you about her?” Hector asked, moving backward between the cars. “Did they explain why they want her back?”

The machete stopped spinning and settled in Quilt’s hand as he moved in between the cars. He held it blade down, edge out—a movie serial killer who’d been trained in knife fighting. “It’s irrelevant. They contracted me to retrieve the child. That is what I shall do.”

“Bioweapons.”

The corner of Quilt’s mouth made a faint upward twitch—probably the closest he came to laughter. “You expect me to believe the girl’s some sort of genetically engineered weapon?”

“Not the girl. What they infected her with.”

The irises shifted behind the spectacles, but Quilt still moved forward, passing the rear door of the Saturn. “A lethal pathogen, I’m sure.”

“Who knows? You know the lab types. Develop a hundred strains, see if any of them do anything fun.”

“It hasn’t done anything to you.”

“Not yet. But it’s been a week. I’m probably infected by now.”

“This is a weak attempt to stall, Hector.”

Natalie coughed. Hard this time. Something wet and solid hit the pavement.

Quilt’s gaze flicked down, barely a second.

Hector lunged.

He got a hand on Quilt’s wrist, the one with the machete. Quilt’s other hand came around for a strike and Hector got his arm up just in time to block it, snapping his own fist at the other man’s face. Then Quilt had his wrist, used his own momentum, twisted it, opened him up for the knee that hit him in the gut. He got his stomach tensed just in time, but Quilt used the impact to roll his other wrist free and then that hand loomed in Hector’s eyes, the hand with the mache—

Everything went white. An explosion of pain right on the corner of his eye. The white faded to gray, shapes started to form again, and it all went white again as a second impact landed just above his ear. He heard a scream, something slammed into his chest, and then something big and hard hit his spine and shoulders and the back of his head. Another whiteout. He forced his way through it, everything turned blue, and he was on his back looking up at the sky.

Quilt stood ten feet away with a pistol aimed at him. Hector’s pistol. Quilt’s other hand had Natalie’s arm twisted up behind her back, almost lifting her off the ground with it. Her chest heaved and her lips fluttered and twitched as she tried to fight against her coughing fit. Her head swung back and forth from checking on Hector to glaring at Quilt, leaving trails of cold mist in the air.

The butt of the machete, Hector realized. Quilt had hammered him in the side of the head with the wood-and-steel handle. At this range, it had been a quicker, cleaner blow than the blade. And once he was down, Natalie had become the priority.

“I worry your stubborn streak could cause me future problems,” Quilt said. “Still, the contract did not specify eliminating you, merely retrieving the child. And professional courtesy should be considered.”

“And you’re always professional about these things,” growled Hector.

“Of course.” He lowered the pistol and put a bullet through Hector’s kneecap.

Hector swallowed most of his scream, but what got out was still pretty close to a shriek. His brain tried to white out again, but sweet fucking Jesus God the pain burned the white into ash and then burned even hotter. It was as if someone had shoved a hundred jagged pieces of glass between his kneecap and his leg bones, but the glass was electrified and soaked in acid and covered with cactus spines. He screamed again, muffling it with his arm, and then willed himself not to scream a third time. Not to let Natalie know how much pain he was in.

He looked up and saw her wrap her fingers into a tight fist, raise it up to head level, and then yank it down and back, slamming her elbow into Quilt’s thigh just below his crotch. His grip loosened enough for her feet to drop down flat on the ground. She brought her knee up and stomped her foot down, aiming for the top of the man’s shoe.

Quilt slid his foot away, letting her smack her heel against the pavement. She tried to twist free of his grip but he yanked her up and off balance again. The hand with the gun reached across her neck and he leaned forward, pushing her throat into the crook of his arm. She struggled for a few seconds, gasped out “Hect,” and went limp.

Hector tried to talk, to growl a threat at the other man, but it came out as a low whine through his gritted teeth. He reached up and pawed at the side of the pickup truck he’d fallen next to, trying to find something to grab. Something he could lift himself up on. He focused all his anger and pain, tried to send it to Quilt with his stare, tried to burn it into the man’s soul.

If Quilt’s soul felt any discomfort, it didn’t show on his face. He released Natalie’s arm, spun her around, and heaved her up over his shoulder. “Goodbye, Hector. If I see you again, I will kill you.”

He walked away with Natalie’s limp body, weaving a path back through the abandoned cars.

PART FIVE
A FOX IN THE HENHOUSE

FORTY-ONE

Hector watched Quilt walk off with the little girl.

With his little girl.

Part of him wanted to scream, to let out all the rage and frustration he’d kept bottled up for the past few years. To drive all of it through Quilt’s head, to watch the man realize what a horrible mistake he’d made, to see it in his eyes. And another part wanted to find a bottle, any bottle, and just add this to the list of failures that needed to be drowned again and again.

But most of him, the biggest part of him, just wanted to get Natalie back before anyone hurt her.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, stretching his back, shifting his leg, and the inferno of razors and nails shot its way up his spine and exploded in his head. He roared between gritted teeth and shoved himself into a sitting position. The world spun and flashed and the pain made most of his body shudder as if he’d been plunged in an ice bath.

Hector looked at the mess of his leg. The kneecap was gone, so if he survived, it was replacement surgery or going without. Surgery either way, probably. The immediate problem was blood loss, though. Had to deal with that.

He reached into his sport coat, grabbed the lining, and yanked. The movement jostled his leg, and he bit back another scream. His fingers had spasmed open, so he twisted the jacket lining around them, bunching it up. He yanked again, pain shook his body, and half the material tore out. Hector twisted the other way, grateful the agony from his knee overwhelmed the pain of his torn stitches, and a third yank gave him most of the lining. A big, silky piece the size of a large bandanna. Two quick flips turned it into a makeshift bandage.

He could feel his heart pounding. Blood racing through his shaky veins. Definitely in shock. That was good. He’d been trained to deal with shock. To work with it.

Working the improvised bandage under his damaged leg fired off half a dozen body-shaking jolts of pain. Forming the ends into a loose knot jarred the fabric from his fingers twice. He took a deep breath, tried to relax his shoulders, yanked hard on the two ends, and electric fire white he was staring up at the sky again.

The back of his head ached, but he felt around and only found a few spots of blood. Everything still felt solid. Pushing himself back to a sitting position caused four brain-seizing surges of pain that rocked his whole body.

The jacket-lining bandage had slipped a bit, but the knot was solid. He wiggled a second hitch down on top of the first one and it felt like grinding shards of glass into his skin. At least he could still feel his heel against the ground and wiggle his toes inside his shoe.

The morning shadows were still in more or less the same place. He’d knocked himself out for a minute. Two tops.

He took another deep breath. And another.

Hector knew one of the secrets for beating pain. It was an ugly, awful secret, and it only worked for so long, but it worked. It had saved his life a few times.

The secret for beating pain was to lean into it. Hard. Make it hurt as much as possible. Because once it hurt as much as it could, it couldn’t hurt you any worse. And you could start working with it.

Assuming you didn’t just black out first.

Or bleed out.

He took a third deep breath and pulled his good knee up to his chest. His foot slapped flat on the ground by his butt. He tilted to the side and the world grayed out for a moment as his ruined knee rotated a few degrees. Color leaked back into his vision as the breath slid out through his teeth. A dull ache reminded him his good leg was the one he’d been shot in two days ago. He counted to three, thought of Natalie, and pushed down hard on the foot, heaving himself up.

Pain tried to white everything out, but he fought it, clawed at the world, forced himself to stay conscious even as his body shook and spasmed and tried to knock him back down to the tilting, spinning pavement. He flailed, grabbed, pulled himself against something hot and smooth and hard. He kept himself pressed against it until the pain faded from a constant fire hose to intermittent, battering waves.

Balanced on one leg. Leaning with his face against the pickup truck’s passenger window. He reached out one hand and looped it over the side mirror, steadying himself. Tried to steady his nerves, to get control of the pain. It made his head spin, messed with his balance.

No time. Quilt had a vehicle somewhere. Probably back to it by now. A minute to restrain Natalie somehow and he’d be on the road, if he wasn’t already. And once that happened . . .

Hector stretched up on the tips of his toes, trying to keep his ruined leg limp. He flexed up, down, and then hopped toward the front of the truck. The move emptied a nail gun’s worth of pain into the remains of his knee, but he slammed his hand down on the hood of the truck and hopped again. This time he screamed.

But he didn’t fall. He couldn’t. He didn’t have time.

Another jump, a big one, got him close enough to lean in and grab the back of the blue Saturn. His leg swung, dragged on the ground, twisted, sent ice and fire and shrapnel out of his ruined knee and up into his head. His eyes watered, the world went white for a moment, but he clutched at the car and sucked in deep, ragged breaths.

Only three cars so far on the northbound side. All of them had slowed down to look, which meant none of them were Quilt. Only a few minutes before the inevitable idiot good Samaritan pulled over to help.

Hector made it to the front of the Saturn with three more whimpering screams and one near blackout. He looked at the Buick and the burning SUV. And the three dead state troopers. None of them were near anything he could lean on. Of course.

A few more awkward hops carried him to the Buick. Each one shook his whole body with pain, but he could almost focus past it now. Almost. He worked his way along the car, and four long lunges carried him to the first dead trooper. He swayed on one leg for a moment, then bent his good knee and lowered himself to the ground by the body. He made it halfway before the gray washed in and he crashed down on his ass and drove a thousand burning spikes through his knee.

No time. No time. Quilt was on the road by now. Had to be. And the patrolman who ran must have called for backup, assuming he didn’t die when Quilt lobbed that last grenade and blew up the cars.

He gritted his teeth, thought of Natalie’s limp form slung over Quilt’s shoulder, and forced the pain out of his head and as far down as he could.

The dead officer was the woman. Officer Logan, according to her name tag. Most of her head was gone. More the idea of a skull than an actual structure remained. Last he’d heard, Quilt preferred to use an H&K G36 rifle he’d modded out, but maybe he’d found something better.

Hector grabbed Officer Logan’s thigh, dragged her body closer. The Texas state troopers kept their belts packed. Pepper spray, spare magazines, higher-end carbon holster for the nearby Smith & Wesson M&P she’d dropped when Quilt blew half her head off. He yanked at the oversized buckle, and when it fell open he started yanking at the snaps on either side. Police belts were essentially just glossy tool belts, only good for holding equipment. They couldn’t even stay up on their own—little “keepers” strapped them to the officer’s real belt underneath and held them in place.

He needed her real belt. And some of her equipment. Once he’d cleared enough keepers to bend the police belt back, he undid her real belt and heaved. It dragged out a few inches at a time through her belt loops.

His knee stabbed and slashed and hammered at him with more pain, but he got the belt off. Then he pushed her body away, getting more pain as he rolled her off the loose police belt. Handcuff case. Two more keepers. Mini flashlight. And her baton. Collapsible steel, not one of the old wooden ones or the fiberglass PR-24s with the side handle.

He grabbed the baton, her pistol, her belt, and the extra magazines—both double-stacks.

It took him a minute to get back up on his foot, and then a blast of pain made him stagger and fall. The only reason he didn’t crack his skull was because he landed on Officer Logan’s dead body, wrenching his neck and shoulder instead. He screamed, swept away his angry tears, and shoved himself upright again.

Ten agonizing, bouncing hops along the side of the road, almost a one-legged stumble, and he made it to the next body. Officer Preston. Again, buckle, keepers, belt, baton.

He made a quick pile on the side of the road, then took a few deep breaths and scooted his butt back a few inches. His feet dragged on the pavement, and his knee sent blasts of chainsaw pain up through his chest, slammed them into his skull and out through his arms. He shuddered, gritted his teeth, and did it again, pulling the damaged leg as straight as he could.

He took a breath to steady himself, let it hiss out, and then flicked his wrists hard. Both batons snapped open and locked. Eighteen-inch steel rods. He set them on either side of his leg and then grabbed the belts. It didn’t seem to hurt as much, sliding them under his thigh and calf, and he wondered if he’d gone numb or if all his bouncing around had damaged some nerves. He wiggled his toes again and felt razors of pain as the muscles in his calf shifted.

Officer Preston had a penknife, and Hector used it to punch two new holes in the belts. Then he cinched them down tight, screaming to the sky as he did. All the color washed out of the world as the second belt squeezed his thigh, but it came back just as quick.

He took Preston’s spare magazines. Checked Logan’s weapon. Fully loaded with one in the chamber. She hadn’t gotten a single shot off during Quilt’s ambush. Not a surprise.

Hector took a breath, got his foot under himself again, and pushed himself back up.

A man and a woman were halfway across the dusty median strip. They’d parked their car on the far side. Something small and compact and bright yellow. “Hey!” yelled the man. “Hey, are you okay? What the hell happened here?”

Hector dropped the magazines into his blazer pockets, shoved the pistol into his belt. He heard the man and woman gasp and mutter. “Call for ambulances,” he told them, waving his hand at the burning cars. “There may be hurt people back there.”

The woman said something, but Hector ignored her. He swung his leg with the improvised brace. Not fantastic, but he’d cut maybe 90 percent of the movement. He’d still be in a goddamn boatload of pain, but he’d be able to move without damaging himself too much more. He put weight on his leg. It was like stepping on a bunch of needles, except the needles all went in through his knee and then spread out in every direction.

He took a breath, let it out though his nose, and lurched toward the roadblock, swinging his leg like a low-budget Frankenstein. The man and woman called after him, and then he heard the man scream, probably after seeing what was left of Officer Preston’s head.

Hector lumbered past the smoking ruin of the SUV to the cruiser on the far side of the roadblock. A bit of soot, a few small holes, and a cracked rear window, but overall it seemed to have made it through the ambush unharmed. Driver’s window down, door unlocked, keys in the ignition. And as an added bonus, a shotgun mounted to the dashboard. Mossbergs for everyone.

He slid into the driver’s seat, dragged his leg over, settled it on the gas. He could work it with his ankle, but he’d have to work the brake with his other foot. Nothing he couldn’t deal with.

He slammed the door, started it up, and floored it. The vehicle lunged forward, its engine built for the chase. He got it up to seventy-five, eighty, then pushed it until the needle danced at ninety.

Quilt had a ten-minute lead, tops. He wouldn’t be expecting pursuers, but he’d be moving fast anyway. Because he was Quilt.

Hector pushed the cruiser faster and headed south, toward Colorado City. And Quilt. And the Project.

And most importantly, toward Natalie.

FORTY-TWO

Natalie woke up in the back of a car. Not her and Hector’s car. This one smelled like the Project. Clean and antiseptic. The seat belts held her upright. One across her hips, one running from above her shoulder down the seat.

Her head ached, as it did sometimes after being in the broken room. The doctors said it was due to lack of oxygen. Sometimes the air was thin in there. Or acted as if it was thin.

The air felt funny when she breathed in. The tip of her nose looked very pale. White. So did her cheeks. Something was over her nose and mouth.

The car was moving. She heard the engine. Felt the tires on the road through the seat.

Her head cleared and she saw the white plastic strip binding her wrists together. Zip-tights? She couldn’t remember the name. She’d seen them at the Project. And back in the cages, when she first arrived in America. Another glossy white band wrapped around her ankles, and one just below her knees.

The man Hector called Quilt was driving. A pale gray mask covered his nose and mouth. Blue gloves, the kind the doctors wore, stretched over his hands. He didn’t hum or tap his fingers or even take loud breaths. He barely moved as he drove.

He’d choked her. Done something to her neck and made her pass out. Taken her away from Hector.

The thing on her face was a mask, too, like the doctors wore. It was supposed to keep infections out. She remembered what Hector had said about diseases and wondered if Quilt thought it would keep disease in as well.

Natalie took a quiet breath and asked Tim if he was there. If he could hear her. She tried to explain what had happened.

“Who are you speaking to?”

Her head snapped up and her breath caught in her throat. Quilt was staring at her in the rearview mirror. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or annoyed or curious. His eyes were dark and dead through his glasses.

“Nobody.”

“You were telling someone you were tied up in the back of a car.”

“Yes,” she said automatically.

“Who?”

She stared back at him.

“I asked a question.”

“I was talking to myself.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“We all talked to ourselves at the Project. They kept us apart for weeks at a time. It makes you feel comfortable.”

He stared at her. Examined her. Judged her.

She took another breath and felt the mask tremble on her face. The air caught in her throat again. Tickled her throat. She tried to hold back the cough. Failed. It was one quick gasp into the mask.

Quilt continued to stare at her in the mirror.

“I think,” she said, “you should stop the car.”

“I disagree.”

“I’m going to start coughing really bad. It makes me throw up.”

“Hold it. We are thirty minutes from our destination.”

“I can’t stop it.”

“Try.”

“No. It doesn’t work like that. I need to—” Her breath caught again. Her lungs fluttered in her chest. Her stomach bubbled and she felt the chill in her throat.

She thought of the broken room. Of being tough. Of Tim helping her be strong.

She thought of Hector, telling her not to get scared. Because guys like this liked it when you were scared. Don’t give them any fun.

“I’m going to throw up in the back of your car now.”

“You will not.”

Another cough crawled up her throat and she let it out. A long one. Her insides spun and twisted as she coughed again. A few flecks of liquid came up and the mask caught them. She could smell the flat, wrong air that came out with the coughs.

Her throat tickled and her tongue twitched. The air in front of the mask turned pale and hazy from the cold. Next to her, the car window crackled as long lines of frost stretched out across it.

Her seat belt tightened as Quilt pressed down hard on the brakes. The car swerved. The ground beneath the tires crunched. They lurched to a stop.

Quilt threw open his door and stalked around the car. Pulled open her frost-covered door, released her seat belt, and yanked her out by her collar. He dragged her two-three-four long strides from the car and dropped her onto her knees in the grass. She almost fell but caught herself with her bound hands, and the frozen grass crunched beneath her fingers. And then she couldn’t hold back the coughs anymore.

The first one spattered on the inside of the mask. She felt it on her nose and her lips and her chin. Her stomach rolled and turned, her lungs fluttered, and she could sense more of the things coming. Pushing out through her break, eager to be out in the world.

Something hard brushed against her skull, and the mask fell away. She looked over her shoulder and saw Quilt step back. One of his blue-gloved hands delicately held a black knife with a square tip.

Then her body convulsed, and things poured out of the broken place inside her. So much thick liquid. So much cold air. The soft egg sacs that felt so much bigger forcing their way up her throat. The harder ones that scraped her tongue and lips as they pushed out.

And even more this time. Something buzzing and tickling and scratchy all at the same time. Lots of somethings, pricking at her insides as they came up.

Natalie opened her mouth and the insects poured out. No eggs this time. Already hatched and ready to fly. Their wings spread as they passed her lips and they glided over the slick of steaming mucus she’d made on the ground. At least a dozen of them crawled across her tongue with their pointed feet and dragged themselves out of her mouth.

Her stomach ached. Her lungs felt as if she’d breathed too much smoke at a campfire. Her throat was raw. Slime coated her mouth and tongue.

She felt another egg sac blocking her throat, and the things pushing behind it. She choked, got out another cough, and it was like things were sizzling in her throat. One more heave, and the egg sac plopped into the puddle and ten more insects rode out on a wave of mucus.

She heaved. Two more ribbed sacs. One of the dark, round ones. Another bucket of yellow-green liquid. She’d turned the side of the road from grass and weeds and a few yellow wildflowers into a large, swampy puddle. The flowers shriveled in the cold. The little green beetle-bugs broke out of their eggs and swam through the slime. One of the long snaky bugs with all the legs uncurled itself at the far side of the swamp.

Another hard cough, another convulsion inside her, and another wave gushed out of her mouth. But it was the last big one. She could feel it. The worst had passed.

The gunshot made her leap away. Hector had found her and saved her! Or maybe Quilt had decided to kill her and just bring her body back to the Project. But then she saw the long bug flailing in two pieces, and a second shot sprayed its head back into the puddle.

She threw up again. When the mucus finished pouring out of her, she looked back and saw Quilt with his pistol in one hand. His glasses were circles of white above his gray mask.

One last retch dropped another golf ball–size lump into the steaming puddle. Natalie pulled in a slow breath, waited for her lungs to object, then took in another when they didn’t. She sat back, balanced herself on her bound legs, and reached up to awkwardly wipe her mouth on her sleeve.

“Are you done?” Quilt stood next to her. He moved even quieter than Hector.

“Yes.”

He stretched a fresh mask across her face, snapping the elastics behind her ears. Then he had her by the collar again and dragged her back to the car. She tried to hop along with her tied-together feet, but he moved just too fast. She thought he did it on purpose.

He shoved her back into the car, jerked the seat belt across her, closed the door. While he walked back to the driver’s door, she whispered quick words to Tim. She told him everything that had happened, every detail she’d noticed.

He didn’t answer. Still keeping his distance. Still trying to protect her.

She was on her own again.

Quilt got back in the car. Started the engine. Pulled back onto the highway.

Hector had tried to warn the man off. To scare him. Saying she was sick. That she was infected.

“The mask won’t help,” she said.

He didn’t flinch, but his eyes flitted to her in the rearview mirror. Just for a moment. “It will do.”

“It won’t.”

He ignored her.

“I throw up bugs,” she said. “You saw. Flying ones and cockroaches and big long ones with hundreds of legs. Hector had to burn down a gas station to get rid of them all.”

He kept his eyes on the road.

“You should let me go.”

“I will. At the Project.”

“It’ll be too late.” She tried to think of something scary the doctors would say. Something to worry the man. “Even just a minuscule amount can compromise you.”

Quilt said nothing. But his grip on the steering wheel tightened.

FORTY-THREE

Hector focused past the hot slices of broken glass filling his knee and pushed down harder on the accelerator.

The police cruiser roared along the route to Colorado City—little more than a two-lane rural road at this point. No dividers. No breakdown lane. Not even much of a shoulder.

Hector had it at thirty-five over the speed limit. He wanted to push it faster but also didn’t want to risk any delays. He wasn’t going to add to Quilt’s lead.

After what felt like an hour of passing green fields and low farmhouses—though the dash clock claimed it hadn’t even been twenty-five minutes—he saw a white water tower, a speed-limit sign that showed half what he was driving, and another small sign telling him he was entering Colorado City. He passed a storage center, a John Deere dealership, a midsize hotel, and then . . .

An intersection.

It was a fairly large one. The road he was on ducked beneath what looked like a two- or three-lane highway and kept going. A frontage road ran alongside it, and it looked as though maybe one ran along the far side of the freeway as well.

He stopped at the red light. Stayed there when it went green. Studied all the different stretches of pavement.

Everything he’d done until now assumed that Natalie would be with him at this point. That she’d eventually recognize a landmark or a building, maybe the gas station from the night of her escape. On his own, he had . . .

Nothing.

He had no idea where the Project was in relation to Colorado City. He might’ve already driven past it. He didn’t doubt he could find it—just as he’d told Natalie—but that was a process. It might take a day or two. Maybe a whole week.

He ignored the traffic lights and rolled the cruiser out into the intersection. A dark-green pickup lurched to a halt. He waved it past, and the driver stared as he drove by.

Hector looked to his left, past a bright, shiny Chevron station. To his right, past a Dairy Queen. Straight ahead led deeper into Colorado City and looked a little more suburban.

He’d been at the intersection for over a minute. Almost ninety seconds. Quilt had still been driving. Getting farther away with Natalie.

A car came up behind him. Waited. He waved it through with a quick glance at the woman driving. She looked back at him. No question, the highway patrol was already searching for their missing car. Even if they didn’t have GPS, they were going to start getting calls about the bloody Latino guy driving a black-and-white.

Left. Right. Forward. Maybe even backward.

A bug bounced off the windshield, carried by the breeze ruffling the trees at each corner of the intersection. Then another bug did a loop in front of him, trying to fly against the wind, and just as Hector realized it was big enough for him to notice it from eight feet away, a third one landed right on the windshield. It braced itself, stretched out its wobbly wings and its scorpion tail, then launched back up and the breeze whisked it away.

The breeze came from the east.

He stared left down the road, watching for anything else in the air. Movement on the ground caught his eye. Right where the pavement crested, maybe three hundred feet away, a black line wriggled across the sun-whitened road.

Hector gunned the engine, spun the wheel, and the cruiser lunged down the frontage road.

One of the giant dark-green centipedes ambled across the road, stretching and contracting. It reared up as the tires screeched in front of it, raising its front seven or eight sets of legs and gnashing its mandibles. It swayed like that as Hector rolled down the window.

He could smell frost on the air, and beneath it the dusty emptiness that came with Natalie’s incidents. Back behind the centipede, he saw cold steam swirling in the grass and wilted flowers. Just a few last swirls of it, vanishing as the sun warmed the air back to normal temperatures. As he stared he could see other movement in the grass. Lots of insects crawling and scattering.

The steaming ground was ten yards past the freeway entrance.

Quilt had taken her this way. They hadn’t gotten on the freeway. And her coughing fit had slowed them down. They were five or ten minutes ahead of him at the most.

The centipede dropped its legs back down. Its head bobbed back and forth and then it continued its journey across the road. He could hear the rapid-fire tap-tap-tap of its hooked claws on the pavement.

Hector let the cruiser roll forward and crushed the back half of the centipede beneath the driver’s-side tire. He didn’t check to make sure it was dead. The cruiser picked up speed as the frontage road made big curves, separated from the freeway by just a few feet of grass and a low crash barrier.

He went around another curve, hit a decent straightaway, and caught a quick glimpse of a car just over two miles ahead. Far enough away that it wasn’t much more than a flash of silver and a quick impression of size before a distant building blocked it from his view. Not too big, not too small. A good-sized car. Average. And the right kind of glossy silver. Just shiny enough to toss back all the colors around it. A tough car to describe or notice.

The kind of car Hector would’ve picked.

He felt an itch on the back of his neck.

He pressed down on the accelerator and barely noticed the dozens of stabbing pains in his knee.

FORTY-FOUR

Natalie made a point of coughing one or two more times. Not real coughs. Just enough to bother the man, Quilt. His expression never changed, but his fingers would squeeze the steering wheel just enough that she could see his hand flex.

The car made a few turns and slowed down. A little building with a big glass window appeared near Quilt’s side of the car. The car window slid down as another man approached. A guard dressed in a dark-gray uniform that made Natalie’s skin crawl.

“Please tell Dr. Lourale I have his package,” said Quilt. He held up something as he spoke—a card or an ID badge—but never turned his head to look at the guard.

The guard studied thin, dark Quilt in his gloves and face mask. Examined the card. He glanced at Natalie tied up in the back seat, and she saw his eye twitch.

Then he stepped back into the little building.

She heard a hum, then a rattle, and a yellow-and-black-striped barrier rose in front of the car. The pipe. Her stomach twisted as she stared at it through the windshield. It went up and hung in the air.

Quilt pulled forward.

The building loomed ahead of them. It was only two stories tall, but in Natalie’s eyes it loomed. Not quite a school. Not really an office building. The Project wasn’t like any other building she could remember seeing.

She whispered to Tim. Explained where they were. Who had them. How she was bound. She hoped something would make him want to help her.

Quilt drove right up to the main entrance. No other cars were there, and Natalie didn’t see any parking spaces, but he stopped the car by the wide set of stairs. They led up to a wall of big glass windows and big glass doors. They were the only windows Natalie could see.

Quilt got out, opened her door, and reached to unbuckle her seat belt.

She screamed. She kicked and thrashed and flailed. He pushed her back into the seat and she battered at him with her bound hands. All she could think of was him taking her back inside. Getting put back in quarantine.

Getting put back in the broken room.

Her head jerked to the side and her cheek burned. He’d slapped her. She made her bound hands into fists and swung them at his head. He blocked them without looking, slapped her again with the same hand. Harder.

“If you fight me,” he told her, “I will drag you up the stairs.”

Natalie scowled at him. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Then continue to fight.”

He unbuckled the seat belt and dragged her out of the car. She wobbled on her bound legs, and he grabbed the collars of her shirt and jacket, yanking her toward the staircase. Her body tipped, her arms bent to protect her, and the hard corners of the concrete steps rushed up at her face.

Quilt twisted his fingers into her collars. Her knees banged on the ground, but her head hung a few inches above the step. She could see shiny bits in it, like tiny pieces of gold and silver and glass.

He jerked her back to her feet. “Move.”

She hopped up the stairs. As they reached the top, she thought about letting herself fall back down. Maybe if she hurt herself, they’d send her to a hospital. But Quilt tightened his grip as if somehow sensing her thoughts, and she already knew it wouldn’t make any difference. The Project had hurt too many children to care about one more.

The big glass doors slid open and cool air rolled out. Quilt dragged her inside. Natalie shuffled her feet, inches at a time, and he lifted her off the ground by her collar and swung her forward when she fell behind. She looked around the lobby, saw some big potted plants and a man in a bright red jacket sitting behind a desk. The man stared at her as she was pulled through another set of doors.

And now they were inside. The halls. The paint. The lights. The smells. The door locks. The familiarity of everything overwhelmed her.

She was back inside the Project.

Not even two weeks outside.

Quilt slowed and pushed her ahead of him. She almost stumbled again. He kept her upright, swung her around a corner, and yanked her to a halt.

Kirk was standing there. Dr. Lourale’s assistant. He had his silly computer tablet with all the pipes and gears on it. He smiled at her, but his eyes didn’t look happy. It took her a moment to recognize the look there. She remembered seeing it on some of the other children sometimes. He had the eyes of someone who’d been hungry for a long time and was looking at food.

Then he blinked and the look was gone. “This is amazing,” he said. “Less than thirty-six hours after being contracted. It’s good to see you again, Gamma Sixteen.”

She remembered what Hector said about not being scared.

Kirk turned his attention to Quilt, his gaze going from the mask to the gloves and back. “Why are you wearing all that?”

“The girl appears to have some form of infection.”

He chuckled. “It’s not an infection. What she has isn’t contagious.” He reached over and flicked the elastic off Natalie’s ear. The mask swung loose, and she shook it off.

“You are certain?”

The younger man gestured at his own unmasked face. “I’m not sure what you’ve seen, but I can assure you there’s no risk at all.”

Quilt stripped off the mask, folded it in one hand, and slipped it into a pocket. He removed one glove, then the other. “Contact your head of security, Mr. Handerson. We were followed. It may be the police, but I believe it is Hector.”

Natalie took in a breath. “What?”

“What?” echoed Kirk. “I thought you were supposed to kill him.”

“I was only contracted to retrieve the girl.”

“You’re sure he followed you?”

“Not certain, but a highway patrol car followed us on surface streets for the last two miles. I would estimate if it is Hector, he’ll be arriving within the next five minutes.”

One of Kirk’s pupils dilated, went back to normal, and stretched open again. His palsy, but now, after being away, it felt especially wrong to Natalie. He looked at his tablet. One of his hands went back and forth and tapped it.

Natalie turned to look back at the hall. Back toward the door. Hector was coming for her. For the first time since she’d seen the Project, Natalie felt herself relax. She whispered to Tim.

Quilt shook her. “Where is Dr. Lourale?”

“He’s just gone down below,” said Kirk, “but I’ve been authorized to—”

“The contract is with Dr. Lourale through Mr. Handerson. I will deliver the girl to either of them. Now, please.”

Kirk’s eyes went from Quilt to Natalie and back. His fingers went back and forth along the edge of his tablet. His gaze landed on her, and his pupil twitched wide again, and he smiled. “Very well. They’re both this way.” He turned and walked down the hall.

Quilt straightened her head and pushed on the back of her neck. She shuffled after the younger man.

She saw the elevator doors ahead and breathed out a few more words to Tim.

Kirk swiped his badge and the elevator pinged. The doors made a faint pop as they settled open. Then she heard another one, and Natalie realized the sounds weren’t coming from the elevator.

“Ahh,” said Quilt. “Hector is here.” He pushed Natalie into the elevator, staying right behind her.

Kirk followed them. “Shouldn’t you go deal with him?”

“Again, dealing with Hector is not what I was contracted for.”

Kirk sighed, swiped his badge, and tapped one of the buttons. He crossed his hands over his tablet and hummed as the elevator went down. It didn’t sound like a song or music to Natalie—some of the other doctors hummed or whistled sometimes. He just hummed a continuous note that went up and down, quiet and loud, like . . .

Like insect wings.

Natalie stiffened and stared at the man, even as the elevator doors opened and air wafted in from the hallway. Her body tensed. A sound tried to jump up out of her stomach and withered away in her mouth. She thought Kirk had taken them all the way down, but even that couldn’t be right, because the elevator didn’t open near the broken room. The first thing down on that floor was all the airlocks.

The hallway outside the elevator was definitely SB 1.

And SB 1 smelled like the broken room.

FORTY-FIVE

Hector was pretty sure the industrial-looking complex was the Project, even from a distance. The faint dust trail left by Quilt’s car led in that direction, and it was the only major structure for three miles in any direction. It had the odd vagueness of purpose that often came with government structures. Office buildings the government was great at, but anything else, not so much. The complex didn’t look quite like a factory or a warehouse, but it also had a vaguely educational aesthetic. A six-foot, single-line chain-link fence surrounded it. High enough to be a good barrier, not high enough to make people wonder. The lack of barbed wire made it seem less threatening.

Two more turns put him on the straight strip of pavement leading to the complex. It might’ve been planned as a road at some point, but now it wasn’t much more than a long driveway for the Project. Over two hundred yards. Wide open. No structures on either side.

He focused his attention and took in details as the police cruiser picked up speed. As he expected, a set of traffic spikes stretched across the exit—a perfect line of gleaming points along the concrete. Two heavy steel pipes, just big and heavy enough to stand out, served as paired barriers there. The entrance, though, a few yards away, was a smaller setup with a slimmer bar, also striped yellow and black. Research facilities almost always prioritized the exit. More worried about people leaving with things than coming in with them.

The building itself had one main entrance across a small parking lot of maybe a hundred spaces, two-thirds filled. The silver car he’d been following sat right by the entrance steps. He couldn’t be sure from this angle, but it looked as though the back door was open.

The guard at the gate saw him heading down the long driveway. Hadn’t registered the cruiser’s acceleration yet. He stepped out, showing off his stripped-down Steelwall uniform. Again, professional but not too threatening.

Five days sober and wired on pain and adrenaline, Hector slipped back into the mode. Breathing controlled. Emotions pushed down. Situational awareness on full. His eyes found weak spots and painted targets. He hadn’t used his code name in years, but he remembered something Jules had said the four times they actually worked together. Her gleeful term for when things were about to get wild and bloody.

“The Fox is in the henhouse,” he murmured.

Forty yards from the gate, and the guard figured out Hector wasn’t slowing down. He wasted time pulling his pistol and barely got himself out of the way. He slammed into the side of the booth as Hector blasted past him.

The cruiser’s push bar hit the yellow-and-black pipe, snapping it right off the mounting. It clattered alongside the car and flew free, spinning across the parking lot. The cruiser passed it while it was still bouncing.

Hector yanked the wheel hard. The police car went into a spin, kicked up a cloud of dust, and pointed him back at the guard shack. It kept turning, putting its bulk between him and the front gate, and he slammed on the brakes. The cruiser was still rocking when he swung his damaged leg out, ignoring the white sparks as it tapped the pavement, aimed over the roof and put a round in the gate guard’s unhelmeted, not-too-threatening head.

Hector turned and shot the man in the cranberry-red jacket who came out the doors holding a rifle. The man’s head snapped back and he crumpled at the top of the stairs. Another man charged out a moment later, this one in his full tactical outfit, and got a torso-head combo just to be safe.

Somewhere inside the building, a red light flashed. Hector could see it highlighting the ceiling and the door frames and some kind of fern in an oversized planter. He limped around the silver car and up the staircase.

When he got to the top, he let his injured leg slide out to the side, keeping it as straight as possible, and crouched by the man in the red jacket. The man had a lanyard around his neck holding an ID with a magnetic stripe and, from the feel, an embedded RFID chip. Probably even more tech in there. It went into Hector’s pocket. He considered the rifle for half a second—another FN SCAR MK16—but his leg already threw his balance off and he didn’t want to waste time spraying ammo into the ceiling.

He pushed through the doors into the air-conditioned lobby and shot another guard in the head. Four big potted plants. One desk. One set of double doors. The guard crashed to the floor with the sound of linoleum over concrete.

Hector staggered behind the desk. Security setup. Cameras rotating between half a dozen exterior views and one of a hallway. The other side of the double doors. Two men and a woman with an eyepatch, all in full tactical gear, heading his way.

The double doors hissed open and the three Steelwall operatives came through. Weapons still down. Idiots. The woman got her rifle up first. Hector shot her right in the center of her eyepatch. The other two got an extra second of life.

The doors tried to hiss closed, but the bodies blocked them.

Hector stepped over the bodies, dragged his bad leg over them, and wobbled for a second as the white sparks of pain blotted out the hallway and the sounds and his balance and—

He shook his head clear. Gritted his teeth. Shot the man with spiky dark hair and rough mustache who came cautiously around the corner. Civilian clothes, no visible weapons, so Hector put the bullet in the man’s thigh. Right in the meat, away from the bone and any major blood vessels.

The man fell to the floor, the box in his arms dropping with a crash, his messenger bag sliding off his shoulder. He stared at his leg with wide eyes as Hector limped toward him. He let out a long, loud scream, more horror than pain. His right eye twitched open and shut. The mustache was streaked with blood under his nose.

Hector shoved the Smith & Wesson in the man’s face. “Where is she?”

“You shot me!”

“Where’s Natalie?”

“Somebody help!” shrieked the man. Now there was pain in his voice. “I’ve been shot!”

Hector rapped him on the head with the pistol butt and the man shut up as if he’d been turned off. “The girl,” Hector said. “Quilt just brought her back here. Where is she?”

“I don’t know who . . . You mean Gamma Sixteen?”

“Her name’s Natalie.”

The man slumped to the floor, trying to sink into the linoleum. “I . . . yes. Yes, they just brought her back. I think they were taking her to Dr. Lourale.”

Hector twisted his fingers into the man’s shirt and yanked him back up. “Where?”

He waved his hand down the hall. “Down the hall to the left. The elevator. Sub one. Subbasement one. He spends all his time with the Pack now.”

“The what?”

“The Pack. It’s all the test subjects—the ones that went feral. Please, don’t kill me. I just want to get out of here. Things have gone really wrong.” As he spoke, a fresh bead of blood swelled under one nostril and ran across his lips.

Hector remembered Natalie’s stories of growling children. He let the man drop, caught the fluttering badge between two fingers. Thomas Ivan. But Thomas was in all caps, probably the man’s surname. He yanked the badge away and the lanyard snapped on Ivan’s neck. “How many guards, Ivan?”

“I . . . I don’t really know. That’s not my department.”

He jabbed the man’s nose with the pistol.

“Maybe, like, twenty-eight altogether,” Ivan guessed, cringing back. His eye twitched open and closed again, stretching wider each time.

“Twenty-eight total, or twenty-eight currently here on the grounds?”

“We had fifty-four. They rotated shifts and worked with the four test groups. But a bunch of them are out looking for Gamma Six—for, ummm, Nellie.”

“Natalie. So twenty-eight here. All inside?”

“Ummm, maybe. I think they’ve had to reshuffle a bit. Most of them, twenty of them, should be down in the subbasements, dealing with the test subjects.”

“And the rest are up here?”

“I guess? It’s not my department.” He sniffed hard and the blood on his upper lip trembled. “Look, I know we did some things here that seem bad, but if you look at the big picture, it was all for—”

Hector cracked the Smith & Wesson’s barrel across the top of Ivan’s head. His scalp split open, wet red between the dark spikes. Ivan wailed and started to cry. Blood swirled in his tears.

Eight guards on the ground level. He’d eliminated more than half of them already. Unless Ivan was wrong. But the man had used specific numbers, and Hector was willing to bet attention to numbers was part of Ivan’s job description.

The man was blubbering, begging for mercy, explaining how he needed to pay off grad school and a car, and it wasn’t as if anyone would miss these kids. Hector hit him with the butt of the S&W and he slumped back to the floor.

Every staggering step down the hall felt like someone hammering a nail into Hector’s knee, and each impact sent sharp vibrations up through the bones of his leg. He gritted his teeth. Kept his shoulders and arms loose. Resettled the pistol in his hand.

He turned the corner to the left and saw the elevator up ahead. A scanning plate where call buttons would normally be. He waved Ivan’s badge at it and heard motors and cables start to move behind the doors.

The doors opened with a low chime, and a smell wafted out. It brushed Hector’s nose before it vanished, churned away by central air conditioning. He couldn’t identify it, but it made the back of his neck itch.

He made sure the elevator was clear. Another RFID plate and a selection of buttons. Second floor, ground level, basement, and several below that. SB 1 all the way to SB 6.

Natalie had only ever mentioned the subbasements. Ivan had just referenced them. Hector swiped the badge and hit SB 1. The doors closed. The elevator sank down into the building.

He rolled his neck to loosen his shoulders again. Tensed and loosened the muscles of his wounded leg. The belts had slacked on his improvised brace, but they’d have to do. He didn’t want to let go of the pistol to fix them. He dropped the magazine, slapped in a full one.

The elevator settled to a halt, the low chime sounded again, and the itch flowed down his back like beads of sweat.

The doors opened.

The smell wafted in from the hall, hung in the air, and gave him time to identify it. The dampness and the meatiness and an all-too-familiar scent—like a handful of warm coins, despite the chill that came with it. It was El Salvador and Afghanistan and Iraq and North Korea and so many other places he’d been.

The hallways reeked of death.

FORTY-SIX

Kirk led them on a strange path through the subbasement, heading left, away from the elevator. Natalie wondered if he was trying to confuse her by following a long, confusing path through the hallways. It seemed silly since she’d never been on SB 1 before. She recognized the general layout, but the doors were different colors and the signs had words she didn’t know.

Through it all, the smell she associated with the broken room never went away. The smell of dead friends. It buzzed inside Natalie’s nose.

Quilt’s hand on her shoulder never changed. It didn’t tighten or tense. But she felt his unease through it. A faint shift, like when she coughed and his eyes would change.

Kirk turned a corner and there was another door. A wider one. It had an ID scanner by it. He swiped his badge again, opened the door, waved them through.

“Dr. Lourale is inside,” he said. His mouth twisted into a smile. Not quite a smile. He showed his teeth to them. He was always showing his teeth.

Natalie didn’t move, and in the second of not moving, a sound echoed out the door. A growl. And more smells. More blood.

She twisted free from Quilt and threw herself away from the doorway. With her knees and ankles still bound, she didn’t get far. Her second hop didn’t even touch the ground before his fingers were on her collar again, yanking her back. She staggered, then threw herself forward again, trying to get away, to go back the way they came.

Quilt pulled her back like a puppy on a leash. She spun, twisted her hips, and brought both fists around like a hammer. The thin man tapped it aside with the edge of his hand. He looked down at her through his round glasses as if he’d just noticed her there.

Then his fingers were on her shoulder, squeezing. She tried another punch, but turning made her shoulder hurt even more. She screamed at him, at Kirk, at whatever was through the door.

“Don’t hurt her,” snapped Kirk. “I need her unharmed. And conscious.”

Quilt kept her arm twisted and flashes of pain sparked from Natalie’s elbow. She tried to whisper to Tim, but Quilt stared at her. At her lips.

“I said don’t hurt her.”

Quilt’s gaze left Natalie and turned on Kirk. The two men stared at each other. She tried to whisper again, but Quilt squeezed her arm without looking and the flashes of pain became a single long agony.

Then Quilt pushed her in front of him. Pointed her at the door. His hand slid up her arm to her shoulder, then landed on the back of her neck. His thin fingers were like spider legs stretched around to just under her ears.

“Please,” said Quilt. “Lead the way.”

Kirk’s fingers flexed on his tablet. Then he spun around fast and walked through the door. Natalie thought he acted impatient. Or excited.

The door led out onto a metal walkway up in the air. They were in another big room, but the floor was down below them. She tried to do eye measurements and decided the floor was fifteen feet down. The walkway stretched around the walls of the room, and part of it stretched straight across the center, like a bridge.

The rec room. She’d just never seen it from this angle. Up on the catwalk, where the doctors and assistants watched and made notes.

Dr. Lourale stood out on the catwalk, right at the center of the room, staring down. His face had the intent look of deep thought that Natalie recognized from dozens of encounters. He wasn’t looking at anything, just pointing his eyes while his mind worked.

Patricia crouched on the floor below. Her hair had grown out even longer than Natalie’s, as if they hadn’t trimmed it in months. Her clothes were filthy, and she had dirt smeared around her mouth. Or food. Her eyes were so wide and black they almost looked like empty sockets.

Not just Patricia. Natalie recognized Gabriel, too, even though he had a big scar on the side of his head. And there was little Izzy. And three, four, five other children Natalie thought looked familiar. Two of them had black bracelets, two yellow, and one blue.

The thing wearing Patricia stared up at Dr. Lourale, but the rest of them shuffled and scuttled back and forth across the big room like animals. Moving in bursts of speed. Growling.

Then they all looked up and saw Natalie.

Her belly trembled.

The bridge clanged as Kirk walked across it. The children below forgot Natalie and their eyes followed the man instead. He stopped, spoke to Dr. Lourale.

Lourale’s face shifted, as if he’d been woken from a daydream. His eyes focused on Kirk, then Natalie, and he smiled like he’d found a lost toy. “At last.”

Kirk turned and gestured at Natalie and Quilt to come join them.

Three seconds passed, and she wondered if the thin man was finally going to get scared and turn and run away. Then he pushed her shoulder and she stumbled out onto the metal bridge. Her feet made echoing pings that seemed to bounce up and down, back and forth through the bridge and the wires holding it up.

The Patricia-feral heard the pings and her head swung back to Natalie. They locked eyes. Patricia’s jaw bounced up and down, never closing all the way, as if she were biting an invisible apple. Hard popping sounds came out of her throat that made Natalie think of a woodpecker tapping on an old tree.

Then Patricia broke the stare to look at something else, something down on the floor with her. Natalie looked between the railing pipes and saw . . .

Dr. Lourale grabbed her chin in his hand, pulling her upright and jerking her head left and right. Stared in her eyes without looking at her. He had a crust of blood mixed into his droopy mustache, the fresh remnant of a bloody nose. She rolled her head and twisted free of his hand. He reached for her chin again and she snapped her teeth at his fingers.

“Has she gone feral?”

“Actually,” said Kirk, “I think she just doesn’t like you.”

Dr. Lourale looked at the younger man and laughed. “I suppose not.”

“If you are satisfied,” said Quilt, “then this concludes our contract.”

Dr. Lourale looked at the slim man. “There was no problem getting her back?”

“None.”

“She’s uninjured?”

“I have no idea. She was not injured during my retrieval.”

“When was the last time she ate?”

“Again, I have no idea.”

“No, of course not,” said Lourale. He turned to Kirk. “Could we resume testing by the end of the week?”

“I don’t think we need to wait that long.”

“Really? We should do a series of . . .”

Natalie felt Quilt shift behind her. He had the quiet-but-impatient air Hector had sometimes. “If you are satisfied, this concludes—”

Dr. Lourale waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, whatever. What we’re doing here is beyond any dollar amount you want to quibble over. Cut her loose.” He pointed at Natalie, then turned his attention back to Kirk. “Let’s get her cleaned up, give her a full examination, physical and psych. It’s possible we could still resume testing in three days and reconfirm her connection with the source.”

Natalie felt a loosening at her knees, and the white plastic bindings fell away from her. The other one dropped from her ankles. She looked up and saw Quilt with his square-tipped knife.

Then she leaned to the side again, trying to see what Patricia had been staring at.

Another one of the ferals, a child she didn’t know, wandered into view, then moved back under the walkway. Natalie looked back over at the thing wearing Patricia and . . . couldn’t see it. She looked to the other side of the catwalk and back, twisted to look over her shoulder and felt Quilt’s grip tighten.

Where had the Patricia-feral gone?

She looked at Dr. Lourale. He kept talking to Kirk. The younger man—the prodigy—looked past the doctor and locked eyes with her. His gaze flitted down at his shoes. At the catwalk. Through the catwalk to the figures loping down below. He looked back at her and smiled one of his lopsided smiles. His teeth gleamed in the light.

Dr. Lourale kept talking about recordings and tests and possible demonstrations. It was almost a full minute before he noticed Kirk smiling. He glanced over his shoulder at Natalie. “Is something funny?”

“In a way,” said Kirk. “I didn’t expect Gamma Sixteen to be the first one to notice.”

Dr. Lourale stared at her like she was a strange little bug he’d just noticed. Then he turned and looked over the railing. She watched his gaze go from one feral child to the next. Then he turned to look down at the other side of the room, at the big double doors.

Natalie looked too. The doors were very solid. Aside from the doorway they were first brought in through, they were the only double doors she’d seen at the Project.

One of the feral children, the one with the blue wristband—Natalie thought it might be a boy—loped past the double door. His shadow rippled. Just for a moment, as it crossed the seam between the doors, it was a thin blade before filling back out.

“How did this happen?” Dr. Lourale’s voice sounded scratchy. The sound of a suddenly dry throat.

Natalie tilted her head and watched as the feral boy’s shadow slipped off the door and onto the wall, shifting again. She recognized the shift. She’d seen such things hundreds of times. It just took a moment to resolve it with her own assumptions.

The second door was at a slight angle. It was open. She just couldn’t see the small gap between the two of them from her angle.

“I let them out,” said Kirk. “I thought you’d be in hysterics when we got down here.”

FORTY-SEVEN

The elevator door closed behind Hector.

Three hallways. Signs with arrows for offices, lockers, laundry, and observation. Going right dead-ended by some stacked-up cardboard boxes and a metal rack on wheels. Left had a branch eight yards down. A four-way intersection dead ahead, maybe ten yards. No visible doors in this length of hall. A funnel in every direction. Enclosed fluorescent lights. It all screamed government contractor.

He stood still for a moment. Watched for shadows or movement. Listened for any sound.

Natalie and Quilt couldn’t be that far ahead of him. If they were on this floor, he should hear voices. Footsteps. Something.

His neck itched like the worst sunburn ever. The scents of death hung in the air, so thick he could almost taste them on his tongue. This place—the Project—was supposed to be a lab, and every nerve in his body shrieked at him that he was on a killing floor.

After a minute of silence, he went left toward the offices.

He moved sideways, keeping the pistol aimed ahead. He lifted his bad leg. Brought it around. Forced himself to hold his breath as he shifted his weight to it and the hot nails exploded up his leg, up his back, into his skull. Skipped his other foot ahead and then did it again.

He looked behind him, ahead, and behind him again. He kept looking at the far corners. At the elevator. Normally he’d say nobody could sneak up on him.

Normally he wasn’t within a few hundred yards of Quilt.

The corner was eight feet away. Five feet away. Three.

Hector glanced behind himself again. Still nothing. Still silent.

With his bad leg, he could turn the corner fast, but it’d be awkward getting back behind cover if he needed to. He could drop, let himself fall behind the wall, and hope nobody shot his legs up before he dragged them clear. Or he could try giving the hallway the side-eye.

He thought of Natalie, slumped over Quilt’s shoulder as he carried her away.

Hector stepped around the corner.

There were five Steelwall operatives. Four men and a woman. Also six kids, dressed in hospital scrub pants and gray T-shirts. He wasn’t sure if the kids were girls or boys. They all had short, ragged hair, and colored cuffs on one wrist—bracelets, like the ones Natalie had described to him.

They were all dead. Maybe fifteen–twenty minutes, going off the smell. Half an hour tops.

Four of the kids had been shot. He could see clear entrance or exit wounds on three of them. The fourth had been shot in the head—probably from under the jaw, but there was too much damage to be sure. The two other kids . . . One looked like blunt-force trauma to the head. The other one had a misshapen torso that told Hector the child had been kicked to death.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen dead children. He’d expected to find some here. It didn’t make it any easier.

The guards looked like animals had attacked them. Bites on noses, defensive wounds on hands. Throats ripped wide open on two of the men and the woman. Bad way to go, but not the worst. One of the other men had both eyes gouged out. The woman was missing one as well. Another man was missing three fingers and at least half his face.

The kids with recognizable faces had blood around their mouths. One’s jaw hung open. Hector could see a ragged chunk of flesh on the tongue.

The feral kids Natalie had told him about. The ones with remnants in them. Acting like animals and working as a pack. They’d gotten out. Hector didn’t have a lot of sympathy for the guards—karma at work—but it was another complication on his long list.

He moved through the bodies. The blood-and-meat-and-shit smell of death was strong here, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He’d seen people play dead before.

One of the bodies blocked a door, which told him Natalie and Quilt hadn’t gone that way. Assuming they had come this way. The complex couldn’t be that big.

He reached the next intersection. A T with one branch continuing ahead and the other heading back the way he’d come. He paused at the corner, listened. Turned the corner with gun raised.

More bodies. Just like the others. Three children and a guard. Best guess, the guard had fatally wounded the ferals and they’d died tearing him apart.

He limped down the hallway, sliding his wounded leg through the bodies. Another blocked door. Another intersection up ahead.

Based on Natalie’s story, this had to be most of the feral kids. If two test groups had been wiped out by the room, and four or five had changed from her group, then there couldn’t be many more.

Unless the other two groups hadn’t been killed. She said they’d been “eliminated,” and he’d assumed dead, just as she had. But maybe they’d just been eliminated from the testing.

The air shifted. A faint squeak, hard rubber soles on the concrete floor. Hector tensed, started to turn—

“Freeze.”

The man said more than “Freeze,” but Hector had already tuned out the voice. It came from behind him and to the left, no more than ten feet away. The blocked door. Stupid, rookie mistake. It opened inward. The bodies wouldn’t block it from opening, just closing again.

Another disturbance in the air. Two more steps. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like combat boots. He’d heard a lot of footsteps in combat boots over the years.

“Don’t know who the fuck you are,” said the voice, “but right now I’m not trusting most of the people I do know. So you’re going to set that pistol down on the floor right now, or I’m going to blow your fucking head off.”

Too much talking, not enough acting. Shorter than Hector, based on where his voice was coming from. He’d moved closer with his two steps. Used a lot of profanity too. Trying to sound strong and act strong rather than just knowing he was strong. Which meant he was probably going to try something macho and stupid.

“Drop the pistol!” The man took a less subtle step and jabbed Hector in the back. A heavy, stiff jab with mass straight behind it. A rifle, not a sidearm. Still from the left. The man hadn’t centered himself. “I’m not going to warn you aga—”

Hector spun on his good leg, elbowed the rifle away, smacked the Smith & Wesson’s butt into the man’s forehead.

The Steelwall agent staggered back. The arm that batted the rifle away came down to hammerfist the man’s forearm. The other one pistol-whipped him across the top of the head, and the man fell against the wall. Another strike broke his wrist, and the rifle clattered to the floor.

Hector’s knee shot electric razor blades up his spine, but the new surge of adrenaline kept most of them out of his brain. He got in front of the man, rapped the butt of the S&W just above his nose, and watched the man’s skull bounce off the cinderblock wall.

Whatever fight the Steelwall man had left dribbled out of him. His scarred face sagged and his left eye twitched wildly, the iris opening and closing as if some heavy drugs were kicking in. His shoulders drooped inside his armored vest. He took in a breath to cry out and Hector jammed his pistol under the man’s chin hard enough to snap his jaw shut.

“Name.”

“Who the hell are y—”

Hector whipped the pistol around and snapped the barrel against the top of the man’s ear. “Name!”

“Mark!” he yelped. He sniffed hard, trying to control his bloody nose. “Mark Guest! I didn’t . . . I’m just doing my job, man.”

“Where’s Natalie?”

“Who?”

“The girl who escaped two weeks ago.”

“You mean . . . You’re talking about Gamma Sixteen?”

Hector’s pistol snapped against the man’s earlobe. Blood dripped out of the ear canal.

“I don’t know where she is, I swear! She escaped and hooked up with some friggin’ badass who’s wasting everybody Handerson sends . . .” Guest’s eyes went wide. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, it’s you. The badass Mexican guy.”

“They brought her back. Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know they brought her back. Everything went crazy here half an hour ago. The ferals got out and killed a lot of the staff.”

“What?”

Guest raised a cautious hand. Pointed. “Look around, man. They’re fucking animals. Like they all get possessed by mountain lions or velociraptors or something. This was the rest of my squad. Handerson sent us in to get them under control and they just . . . they . . .” He swallowed and his eye stretched open wide. It moved around independently of the other eye. “We gotta get out of here.”

“Did you kill any of these kids?”

“Man, that’s not important right now. We need to get upstairs and get the fuck out of—”

“Did you hurt them, Guest?”

He swallowed again. Tried to look brave with his one twitching eye and bleeding nose. Tried to summon his fake strength. “I did what I needed to do. This is survival! And if you don’t get that—”

Hector smacked him in the forehead. Hard. Guest’s head rebounded off the wall, and the pistol hit him again. The man dropped like a bag of dirty laundry.

The ferals had gotten out just as Quilt took Natalie. Just as Quilt might’ve been reporting his success. Not good. Something else was going on here, and it had Hector’s neck burning.

She was here somewhere. He needed to find her and get out. Guest was right about that at least.

Hector staggered the rest of the way toward the corner. End of the hall. Left turn. Door in the wall to his right. The plaque on the wall said Lockers.

He paused at the corner. Listened. Turned.

Two children crouched at the next intersection, resting their weight on their knuckles. The bigger one might’ve been ten. Bent over with their hair buzzed short, he couldn’t tell if they were girls or boys.

They glared at him. Their pupils were dilated wide, making the eyes look like glossy black pits in the tiny sockets. Blood dotted their chins and painted their mouths. It was bright red between their white teeth. One of them, the one on the right, raised a hand and flexed its fingers. Like a cat testing its claws, or a bird stretching its talons. Hector could see blood on those fingers, some fresh, some dried.

The other one let out a low growl that grew into a hiss.

Hector stayed silent. Raised his pistol. Aimed at the child in the center.

They shifted their weight, rose, and leaped forward.

FORTY-EIGHT

Natalie gazed down at the feral children still wandering in the big room. One of them—the one that had been Gabriel—saw her staring and snarled at her. He ran three quick steps and leaped, hurling himself into the air. She flinched back, even though he came nowhere near as high as the walkway.

Her stomach bubbled and shook, but she tried to ignore it.

“You did what?” said Dr. Lourale. He looked down at the floor below, blinked, shook his head, and glared at his assistant. “You know how valuable these test subjects are. This is years of work you’ve endangered for . . . what?”

“To bring everyone back,” said Kirk.

“That’s what he’s for,” said Lourale, waving a hand at Quilt.

The thin man still stood behind Natalie, one hand on her shoulder. She could feel his fingertips squeezing her shoulder. His Hector-intensity buzzed in his fingers as if he were made of bees.

“He brought her here,” said Kirk. “I want her to help me bring all of us back.”

Dr. Lourale’s mouth scowled under his droopy mustache. “What are you getting at?”

The assistant shook his head. “I’ve been amazed by you since I arrived here. A man so close to brilliance, and yet so determined to keep his eyes shut to the truth.”

Lourale made the face Natalie remembered. His lips curled up under his droopy mustache. Wrinkles spread across his forehead.

Natalie heard something scurry above her, like mice in the ceiling or rats running through trees. She twisted her head and Quilt tightened his grip on her shoulder. She leaned into it, ignored his squeezing fingers, and saw something drop down behind them.

One of the feral children crouched on the platform, between the catwalk and the door. Natalie didn’t recognize the girl for a few moments because of her lopsided posture, twisted lips, and wide, dilated eyes. All the feral children had the same face-muscle issues as Kirk.

No.

He had the same condition as all of them.

Natalie saw the black Alpha bracelet on the feral’s wrist. Remembered the dark hair when it had been longer, years ago back in the cages. Then the girl—then Victoria growled at them.

Something moved up in the wires and beams and struts above them, and another feral dropped down on the walkway. A boy with a blue wristband and a scar crossing his lips. Had someone attacked him? One of the other feral children? Or had he done it to himself as a remnant took over his body?

On the edge of her sight, Quilt turned his head. Just a little. Never away from Dr. Lourale and Kirk. Maybe enough so the feral children were on the edge of his sight.

Kirk moved and caught Natalie’s attention. He gestured at her with his tablet, wrapped in its silly copper tubing and brass gears. “With Gamma Sixteen back, we’re ready to move things forward. My work can go ahead as planned.”

“Your work,” scoffed Lourale. “Everything you’ve done here has been my work. My hypotheses, my schedules, my predicted results. Any success or progress here is mine and mine alo—”

Kirk swung his tablet and its edge hit Dr. Lourale in the temple like an axe. He staggered against the railing. The impact shook the walkway.

Natalie felt a breeze behind her but couldn’t take her eyes off the two scientists.

The skin next to Dr. Lourale’s eye had burst and blood ran down the side of his face. He leaned against the railing, touched his head, looked at the red on his fingertips. His eyebrows came together and he glared at Kirk. “You’re finished,” he bellowed. “When I’m done with you, you won’t be able to get a position cleaning out—”

The tablet hit him again. Straight in the mouth. It cracked against his teeth. Red and white bits sprayed from his lips.

Natalie took a step back. Didn’t bump into anything. Glanced over her shoulder and Quilt was gone. When had he let go of her shoulder? How did he get past . . .

The two feral children sprawled on the floor. Natalie stared at the bodies for a moment. Just the time it took her heart to beat twice.

The railing next to her had a bolt sticking out below it where two sections connected. She stuck her hands beneath the railing, brought them up so the bolt was at her elbows, and threw herself back. The bolt caught the zip ties around her wrist and yanked at her shoulders. She braced herself against the edge of the walkway and did it again, even harder. The plastic cable snapped, the bolt scraped the inside of her wrists, and she staggered back, hitting the far railing.

Natalie shook her head clear and saw Kirk hit Lourale a third time, breaking the tablet in half as he brought it down on the doctor’s head. Lourale spat out a few random sounds. Kirk grabbed the man’s shoulder, put his other arm under a leg, and flipped him up and over the railing.

Lourale never made a sound. He tumbled in the air and slammed headfirst into the floor sixteen feet below. He crumpled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t blink or move or make any noise.

Natalie turned to run and Kirk grabbed her by the back of the neck.

She twisted, threw her elbow back over Kirk’s wrist as she turned. Now his hand was tangled under her arm, twisted in her jacket. His crooked eyebrows twitched, and Natalie realized she wasn’t free but now she had him too. She stomped her foot down on his, shifted her hips, and threw a punch into his boy parts with her free arm. Kirk gasped out some air, then grabbed her again. This time with both hands. She kicked him in the shin, and when he lifted her she brought both knees up to her chest and kicked out at his stomach. He staggered back and she crashed down on the walkway.

The impact shook her, but she pushed herself back up. Her stomach bubbled and fizzed and pushed up into her throat but she swallowed it down again. She pushed at the walkway, got herself moving toward the doorway, and Kirk wrapped an arm around her throat.

“Stop fighting. You’re back where you belong. You’re with us again.”

She screamed and slammed her elbows back into his body again and again. He squeezed tighter with his arm. But not like Quilt had done it. Kirk’s arm pressed against her throat, making it harder and harder to breathe. She coughed out air, fought to get more, and then her stomach saw its chance.

Her body convulsed and the first wave came up. It hissed in her tight throat and sprayed between her teeth. Kirk’s arm loosened and the flood bubbled up and out. She dropped to the walkway and heaved up gallon after gallon of cold mucus. It poured through the steel mesh and rained down on the room below.

Another chain of coughs racked her body, and egg sacs dropped from her mouth—four, five, six of them. Three of the smaller ones slipped straight through and dropped down to the floor. Another got caught and slid slowly through the gaps, pushed by the torrent gushing out of her.

One of the larger sacs burst open to let out a centipede. It flailed on the walkway until its legs were under it, then went scurrying away. Its claws ping-ping-pinged on the steel as it spiraled up the supports.

Natalie’s stomach convulsed again, and more liquid surged up and out of her. It slid across her tongue and splashed across the walkway. Another cough made her insides tremble, and she spat out a last mouthful.

Kirk inhaled behind her, a deep breath. She could hear excitement and anticipation in it, like the way Dr. Lourale got when she spoke to Tim. “This is wonderful,” said Kirk. “You’re further along than I hoped.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. A peaceful, almost happy expression covered his face. It reminded her of priests at church.

She took a breath of her own, made sure her stomach was done, and leaped to her feet.

His hand clamped down on her shoulder, just as hard as Quilt’s had. But his voice was light, almost concerned. “How long has this been happening? The physical displacement?”

Natalie tried to pull away and looked down through the walkway at Dr. Lourale. His feet and legs were soaked with slime now. A dark puddle was spreading on the floor behind his head. A feral boy crouched to lap up some of it. “You killed him,” Natalie said.

“Yes.”

She tried to twist away again, but his grip was too tight. “Why? You worked together. You were friends.”

“Hardly. It made things easier to let him believe I was working for him.”

He shoved her backward, toward the door. She had to keep shifting, readjusting, moving her feet not to fall. The walkway rang under their feet. The ferals snarled below.

“You’ve been having these episodes since when?”

She looked over her shoulder. Halfway to the door. Just a few feet from the first of the dead bodies. She knew Quilt had killed them. “I started coughing before I escaped.”

“But the physical displacement? The . . .” He made a few quick sounds with his tongue and teeth, clicks and pops and a low sound in his throat. Like the noises the feral children sometimes made, but more rhythmic. Then he shook his head. “The . . . the creatures. How long have they been manifesting?”

Her foot brushed an outstretched hand on the walkway as he pushed her back. Her heel came down on a finger. She could feel it squish under her sole, squeezing between the walkway gaps. She hopped and stumbled. “Last night. The first time was last night, an hour after sunset.”

“Excellent.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means we don’t have to give you any more sessions. We can start right now.”

“Start what?”

“Dr. Lourale and I were a lot alike. Scientists. But he misunderstood the very basic premise of what was happening here. All that nonsense about universal knowledge. He had it backwards.” Kirk paused to wave his free hand at the two dead children on the walkway. At the few of them still down below, scampering around Dr. Lourale’s body. “These aren’t the failures. They’re the successes. They’re what I was hoping for.”

Natalie worked through what he was saying as he pushed her back a few more steps. Kirk, the youngest member of the research team. “You’re one of them. You’re a feral. A remnant.”

“He was more right than he knew with that term. Ferals, though . . . They just haven’t learned your language yet. And they’re trapped in bodies they don’t understand, so they can’t use ours, either.” He looked down at her and smiled. “This thick, blunt tongue. All these little teeth. It took me months to get used to it.”

She stumbled back and hit the door. Kirk kept his grip on her, waved his ID at the reader, and pushed her out into the hall. The door swung shut behind them, and the growls of the feral children ended.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I hope not.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Yes. I think it’s going to hurt you a lot.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what I need to do to get my family back together. To get all of us back here.”

“Are you going to change me?”

“Change you?”

“Yes. Into one of you.”

“Maybe. Eventually. Right now you’re a miracle, and I need you just the way you are.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Things went wrong with you and a few of the other test subjects, Gamma Sixteen. But in your case, the wrong was so very right.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means we’re going to reclaim this world much sooner than we thought,” said Kirk. “And it’s all thanks to you.”

FORTY-NINE

The two feral children leaped at Hector. He fought with decades of training and experience. Forced his finger not to tighten on the trigger. Rolled his free hand into a fist.

Their little feet touched the ground once, pushing them forward, and on the second step one of them went limp and crumpled to the ground. Its face relaxed, its eyes rolled up into her head. Hector registered the first gunshot just as the second one echoed in the hallway and the other feral dropped.

“Hello again, Hector. How’s the knee?”

Quilt’s dry tones rasped against the walls. He stood at the end of the hall. He didn’t lower his pistol but kept it aimed at the dead children. He spread the fingers of his other hand wide, showing the empty palm.

Hector didn’t look at the hand. Or the pistol. Or Quilt’s eyes. Eyes were always misleading when it came to fighting. He kept his focus on the top of the man’s sternum, senses sharp for any movement.

And he kept his own pistol aimed three inches below that, favoring the left. Quilt had his pistol in his right hand, meaning he favored the right. He also knew that Hector would be aware of this, so if he dodged he’d dodge to the left.

A dead guard lay sprawled at Quilt’s feet. Judging from the puddle of blood, she’d been there a while. Or maybe Quilt had stabbed her in a major artery and she’d bled out fast. Either was possible.

Hector took a careful step forward, willing himself not to show weakness. Razor-sharp flames tore their way through his knee as he put weight on it, and the joint trembled inside his jeans. He shifted onto his other leg, made it look casual.

“Very impressive,” said Quilt. “So many operatives have their Spartan fantasies about focusing past pain. So few can do it when the time comes.”

Hector increased pressure on the trigger.

Quilt kept his hands where they were. Statue still.

“I propose,” he said, “a truce. Temporary, of course.”

Hector stared at him.

Quilt stared back.

“I haven’t blown your head off,” said Hector. “That’s your cue to keep talking.”

“You’re here for the girl.”

“Who says I care about the kid? It was a marker. It’s paid.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Maybe I just wanted a second shot at your head.”

“Please, Hector. I am many things. One of them is a father. Your feelings toward the girl could not be more apparent.”

“So what?”

“You want to rescue the girl, which means getting past me. I wish to exit the Project, which means getting past you. It is in each of our best interests to let the other pass.”

“Or I could just shoot you and go rescue the girl.”

“You could try. We both know that in your current state it’s far more likely I’ll kill you. But I would rather not risk an injury that may slow me down, and you . . .”

Quilt tilted his head ever so slightly back behind him.

“. . . I believe you are going to need every round you have.”

Hector took a breath. “And . . . ?”

“And?”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. That is all. A simple agreement not to kill each other. I suppose as an added bonus for you, on my way out I’ll kill any guards who escaped your wrath, so if you get the girl and survive you’ll be able to make a faster exit.”

“I’ll get the girl.”

Quilt’s lips pulled into one of his tight, dry smiles. “Then it sounds as though we have reached an agreement. Truce?”

His hands still didn’t move.

Hector still didn’t lower his pistol. “Did you hurt her?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Did. You. Hurt. Her?”

“The contract was to deliver the package undamaged. Have you ever heard of me to fail on a contract?”

“That’s not an answer.”

Quilt sighed. “No, I did not harm her.”

“If you’re lying, if you hurt her in any way, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

“Then we’re both fortunate I’m not lying.”

They stared at each other.

“I believe the situation here is changing rapidly, Hector. I wish to leave, you wish to save the girl. There is no time for this stalemate.”

“Then drop your weapon.”

The thin man sighed again. Then he bent his wrist, pointing his pistol straight at the floor, and dropped it with a slight flick of his wrist. It bounced off the dead guard and clattered on the floor.

Hector blinked.

Quilt spread the fingers on both hands, turned them palms up, palms down, and back. A magician showing how unprepared he was. That he had nothing to hide.

And like a magician, the man was hiding a lot.

Quilt took a step forward, then another. His eyes never left Hector’s face. Hector’s eyes never left the man’s chest. His finger stayed tight on the trigger as he watched for an extra shifting of muscles, an unnecessary flex. His knee throbbed and he ignored it.

Quilt moved down the hall toward Hector, his hands out and open the whole time. He moved closer to the wall, and Hector’s finger clenched across the trigger again. Kicking off a wall could give someone a lot of movement fast. But Quilt stayed pressed against it until he slid past and stepped back out to the center of the hall.

He walked backward away from Hector, hands still spread. “If I may offer some advice—”

“No.”

“As one parent to another, you do not have much time. As I said, the situation here is changing rapidly. The client who contracted me, Dr. Lourale, was just killed.”

“By you?”

“By his assistant. Who I believe is in league with these children.” Quilt dipped his head at the bodies on the floor as he continued to back away.

Hector tracked him all the way to the corner. “Make sure there aren’t any surprises waiting for us upstairs.”

“I can assure you, there will be nothing waiting upstairs.”

“Goodbye, Quilt.”

“Goodbye, Hector. As always, a pleasure dealing with another professional.”

The thin man vanished around the corner, never turning his back. Hector kept his pistol aimed and counted to ten. Then he counted to ten again, just in case.

And then he turned and limped down the hall, back the way Quilt had come.

FIFTY

Natalie kicked and fought and twisted, but she couldn’t break Kirk’s grip on her shoulder. He kept her at arm’s length and forced her down the hallway. Now that he wasn’t taking the long route around the halls, she saw the bodies. Guards. Children. So many children. Alphas. Betas. Gammas.

“You see,” said Kirk, “my family is desperate. We’ve been dead for so long. Longer than you can understand. Every sign of our existence was dust before your ancestors had stopped laying eggs. But many of us have continued in that place Lourale called the afterlife. And all of us yearn to be alive again. To have physical form after so very long.”

“Are you demons?”

“No, but we’ve been called that. And angels. But really, if you wanted to use a term from those old books, we’re the plague of locusts.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s not important. You’re what matters. You see, because of our desperation, my family’s rarely willing to wait. When we find an opening back to the world, we force as much of ourselves into it as we can. Fill it and seal it. If we hesitate, one of our brothers or sisters gets there first. The opening, the cleft, exists just for an instant.”

Kirk dragged her around the corner to the elevator and there was Hector at the far end of the hall. His pant leg was bloody and wrapped with belts and shiny rags. He had a pistol in his hand.

Hector was here!

Kirk’s hand twisted in her coat and yanked her up. Her feet left the floor and dangled in the air. He marched forward, holding her in front of him, in front of the gun. Hector stepped to the side, but his leg made him slow and Kirk swung her to stay between them. She tried to turn, to throw her fists and elbows back, but she just swung at the end of his arm.

Four fast, low tones came from behind her. A woodpecker on a tree. Kirk making more sounds.

“He’s going to put me back in the broken room,” she called out.

“No, he’s not,” said Hector. He had his game face on.

Natalie heard the familiar sound of bare feet on the Project floors, and something flew at Hector. A feral boy, someone she’d never seen before, with a blue wristband, slamming into Hector’s waist, his arms wide. Hector brought his own arm down and his elbow hit the boy’s back, but Natalie could tell he wasn’t hitting as hard as he could. He didn’t want to hurt the boy.

He didn’t understand it wasn’t a child anymore.

She heard the doors open behind her and she swung again as Kirk stepped back into the elevator, carrying her with him. The feral boy bit Hector’s leg. Hector tried to aim past Natalie again, but Kirk swept her back and forth, and then the doors closed.

The elevator hummed. Her stomach bobbed and her eyes throbbed. Kirk let her drop to the floor but kept the shoulder of her jacket twisted in his hand. “He’s right. I’m not putting you back in the room.”

“Why not?”

“You already have a cleft in you. An opening back into the world.”

“I’m broken.”

“Yes. In a good way. In the best way. One of my brothers or sisters should’ve found you, but instead he did. Your other friend.”

“Tim.”

“Yes. There are things in the afterlife more like you than us. ‘Souls’ is your best word for them. But they all act the same way my family does. They’re so desperate, almost as hungry as we are to have form again. They don’t hesitate to force themselves into an opening if they get the chance. To fill the lack. They were the real failures here, with their dead languages. So confused to find themselves back in a world they no longer recognized, even though they’d been gone barely any time at all.

“But not your Tim. For some reason, he claimed the opening within you, but he didn’t claim your form. He stayed back. Left that break open between here and the afterlife. And he was strong-willed enough to keep any others from forcing their way past him.”

“He takes care of me,” said Natalie. “He protects me and teaches me how to protect myself.”

Kirk showed his teeth to her as the elevator doors opened. “How nice of him.”

She saw three feral children halfway down the hallway. Two of them crouched low on either side of a dead guard. One stood as tall as possible. Patricia, one eye open wide, her teeth bared, her shoulders cocked at an angle while her back was so straight it almost arched.

The empty smell of the broken room was everywhere. It filled the halls and rolled into the elevator. Natalie could feel the cold of it prickling her skin.

The cold emptiness pushed its way into her nose, up into her head. Her eyes ached. She could feel her heart beating on the sides of her skull.

The thing in her belly turned and stretched.

She threw herself back, away from the open doors. She fought and twisted and punched. She wrapped her arm over Kirk’s, stomped his feet, screamed in his face.

He withstood all of it. He made three quick noises with his tongue and the feral children galloped forward as he dragged her into the hall. The boys grabbed her wrists and arms, and Kirk let go. He clicked his tongue again, three different ways, and Patricia made a gargling sound, a drowning growl that turned into two hard pops.

Natalie calmed herself while they talked. She couldn’t show them she was scared. They’d like it if they thought she was scared.

She looked around and realized Kirk had only taken her down to SB2. Still four floors above the broken room. But the smell of it was everywhere, making her head ache and her stomach thrash.

The boys dug their nails into her arms. Another black wristband and a yellow one. How many kids in the other groups had changed? How many Gammas had changed?

Kirk walked down the hall, and the ferals dragged her along behind him. She knew the hallway without looking at the signs. She’d spent years here.

“Your Tim protected you,” Kirk said, ignoring her struggles, “and that gave the break inside you a chance to get stronger. Then you escaped and it grew into another full cleft.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said automatically. The feral boy on her left snarled at her. She could see blood between his teeth, and dark red drops on his cheeks.

“You’ve given us an exceptionally rare opportunity. Something that hasn’t happened in many, many millennia. Two openings, two clefts between worlds at the same time.”

He waved his ID and opened the door to the showers. The smell of water and soap had vanished, smothered by the empty smell of the broken room. It had spread everywhere.

Dr. West lay on her side beneath two of the tall shower columns. A dark puddle spread on the concrete under her shoulders. Her hair was sticky with blood. Her eyes stared at Natalie without seeing her. Two of the fingers on her right hand bent at wrong angles. Another was missing altogether.

She’d tried to hide in here, Natalie realized. And the remnants had found her.

Kirk ignored the body. Stared at the floor. Down through all the quarantine rooms and offices and the floor they’d filled with concrete. Down to the broken room.

He pointed at a column and made a few low sounds. The two ferals dragged Natalie across the painted concrete. Her foot dragged through Dr. West’s blood. They pushed her back up against the column, and the pain swelled up like someone squeezing her head. The thing deep in her stomach bubbled and swelled. The two children pulled her arms tight, holding her in place.

What would Hector be telling her to do right now? He’d want her to think like Kirk. To get a few steps ahead of him.

Kirk kept talking to her. He’d been keeping his secret for so long. He wanted to talk.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked him, trying to ignore the pain in her head and the churning in her belly. “There aren’t any more children to give to the broken room.”

Kirk kept studying the room. Making sure she was in the best place. “There are all we need and more. When your cleft balances with the one below, their interaction should resonate and create an even larger break.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

Kirk finally looked at her with his dark eyes. Spread his arms wide. “Imagine a large piece of fabric. If I punch a hole through it here, and another one here . . .”

He wiggled the fingers on each hand.

“. . . they have almost no effect on the fabric. It stays strong. But if I make them closer together, at a certain point they’re close enough that the material between them becomes compromised. Too many threads are broken, and the weave comes apart. The holes connect and become a single, much larger hole. And if that hole is large enough, it continues to fray and grow on its own.”

She moved her head back and forth as if she was thinking.

“That’s what we’re doing here,” he continued. “At just the right spot, the cleft inside you and the cleft inside the room are going to weaken the space between them to create a much larger cleft. One that should grow several magnitudes larger, if I’m correct.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said. But she had an idea. It was a phrase she’d heard before from some of the engineers.

“It means the resulting break should have a radius of approximately six hundred and eighty-four kilometers. Four hundred twenty-five miles.”

“Then more of you come here?”

“Then all of us come back here. We take back our world. I told you, we’re the locust swarm.”

She moved her head side to side.

“Didn’t you read your book?” asked Kirk. “The Bible?”

“Yes. No. I read some of the stories in church.”

“Do you remember what comes after the plague of locusts?”

“No.”

“After them everything goes dark,” he told her. “And then death comes.”

FIFTY-ONE

The feral tried to bite Hector again and this time he yanked his leg away, shaking the kid off. Even with his brace, the move twisted and flexed his knee. Razor shards of bone stabbed and sliced and set off sparks of pain that reached behind his eyes. He let himself fall against the wall.

The feral stumbled back, took three galloping steps on all fours, and launched himself at Hector again.

Hector’s hand came up by instinct. He stopped himself before a palm strike snapped the feral’s head back and momentum cracked its neck. He hit the shoulder instead, knocking the kid off balance, making him spin. His back slammed into Hector’s chest, and before he could get away Hector had an arm around his throat. The same sleeper hold Quilt had used on Natalie.

The feral thrashed and spat and his fingers came up to claw at Hector’s face. They just couldn’t reach past the squeezing arm. The kid—the remnant inside him—didn’t fight like a person. His thrashing, the way he used his jaws and hands and back legs—his legs—made it feel like wrestling an animal. Hector’d fought dogs once or twice. This wasn’t quite the same, but it felt closer to that than any fight he’d ever had with a human being.

The ragged, blood-caked fingers grabbed at the air in front of his eyes, then sagged and fell limp.

He counted to three, let the pressure off the boy’s neck, and counted to five. When the boy didn’t move, he lowered him to the floor as gently as possible. The kid crumpled on the painted concrete and let out a wheezy snore.

Too damned slow. His reluctance to kill the ferals was slowing him down. His ruined leg was slowing him down. Two solid years of drinking was slowing him down.

He couldn’t afford to be slow.

Hector wrenched his leg back in line and white light burst in his head and in front of his eyes. He resettled the pistol in his hand, lumbered to the elevator, and swiped his found ID. The low vibration of cables and counterweights echoed behind the sliding door.

His nose twitched a few times, registering the difference in the air before his mind did. He could feel it in his nostrils. He knew if he opened his lips he’d taste it on his tongue. His brain spun, trying to figure out what the hell the elevator was pushing up through the shaft.

Once or thrice, he’d had to live rough in bad places. Not a big deal. He’d been trained to do it. A lot of the time it meant boiling the water, often distilling it to get everything out he could. The water tasted empty and flat, but it was better than cholera. Or poison.

The air coming up the shaft was empty and flat and lifeless. It wasn’t a scent or taste, but a lack of it. Like airplane air that had been filtered another hundred times to strain everything out of it except the most basic molecules.

Natalie had said the broken room smelled empty. He hadn’t understood it until now. Not so much a scent as an absence of scents. It even covered up the smell of blood and death on this floor.

The elevator pinged. He stepped back as the doors opened. The smell of the broken room rolled out and hit him in the face. His eyes throbbed.

The elevator car had a polished dome over its security camera. Easy to see all four corners in its reflection. Nothing lurking. He checked the ceiling for loose or misaligned panels, checked the service hatch to make sure it was secure, keeping his pistol up the whole time.

Nothing.

Hector swung himself into the elevator, looked at the panel. Five more floors down. It had taken sixteen seconds for the doors to open once he’d called it by swiping the ID. A newer elevator, designed for people and not freight.

He jabbed the button to take him down one floor.

The elevator hummed and his stomach lifted. It kept rising and nausea bubbled up in his throat. The bubbling reached his head, simmered and swelled behind his eyes.

He settled against the back wall, pistol up, off center from the doors.

The elevator jounced to a stop and jostled his insides again. Another surge of pain behind his eyes. He focused past it. The doors slid open with a ping.

Cold, flat air rolled into the elevator and slapped him in the face. It stung his nose and eyes. The ache burrowed into his skin, met with the pain behind his eyes, joined forces with it. His skull throbbed.

Another dead guard a few yards down the hallway. Ragged wounds. Lots of blood. He couldn’t smell any of it, as if the air had just eaten up the scents of blood and death.

He felt a chill at the realization, at sensing the truth of it. The air wasn’t covering smells. It ate them. Devoured them. The air itself was broken, so hungry and desperate to fill itself, to not be so empty.

There were tracks in the blood. A few right in the puddles, some bare outlines of dark red. At least five sets of small bare feet. One adult set with hard-heeled shoes.

One child wearing sneakers.

Hector focused his attention. Listened. Watched every shadow and reflective surface for movement. He stepped out of the elevator and followed the sneaker tracks.

His head pulsed with every step, almost drowning out the pain from his knee. He’d had a few railroad-spike hangover headaches. Hell, he’d been hit in the head with a baseball bat once. But this was different. A unique pain, like his skull was being pried open, the sides and back and top all slowly pushed apart. Like something too large forcing its way into his head.

A phrase from Natalie’s story drifted into his mind. The older girl called Tabora. She’d said she felt like a shirt somebody was trying on—a shirt that was too small.

And then Tabora had died. Natalie said her head had all but burst open. Because she was too old. And the remnants had killed her.

A sound whispered through the chilly halls. A faint gasp, followed by an echo of conversation. Hector moved toward it, pistol up, moving as silently as his shattered knee and throbbing head would allow.

He followed the bloody prints down the hall. All moving in the same direction now. Sneakers resisting, flanked by bare feet on either side.

More sounds. Natalie’s voice. An adult man. The man who’d taken Natalie. A faint growl, more big cat than guard dog.

He paused at a corner. Listened. Voices. Muffled echoes. Not in the hall around the corner, but one corner past that, and still close. In a room on the next hallway.

He swung himself around the corner and found himself face to face with one of the remnant-children.

It glared at him with its dark eyes and lunged.

Hector knew the twenty-one-foot rule. An opponent can cover twenty-one feet in the time it takes to unholster a pistol. He also knew the rule got used as an excuse by poorly trained people to shoot anyone within a given range, even when weapons were already drawn.

His trigger finger flinched, but he resisted the instinct to put a round through the kid’s forehead. Instead, he flipped his wrist around and smacked the gun barrel down between the remnant’s eyes, right across the bridge of its nose. The dark eyes rolled, the body went limp, and Hector stepped aside as the kid crashed to the floor, out cold.

His arm came back around on its own, aiming the pistol at the door into what looked like a communal shower at a gym. Or a prison. Natalie stood against one of the shower turrets, her arms held by two more dark-eyed children, a haze of cold air around her.

The room reeked of flat, empty air. It came off Natalie in cold waves, like a winter tide coming in, letting the ocean overwhelm the shore. Whatever was in his skull swelled and pressed against the backs of his eyes.

The man in front of her turned and Hector got his first good look at him. Early twenties, maybe. White, blond, trimmed hair, groomed-thin facial hair, very white teeth. He had the feel of administration. Too young to be Lourale. The assistant, Kirk, with the tablet and the palsy.

The man had eyes so dark and cold he could give Quilt a run for his money. Shark eyes. Predator eyes.

“He’s a remnant!” yelled Natalie.

Hector shot him.

FIFTY-TWO

Three rounds center mass, point-blank.

Kirk started moving as soon as Natalie shouted her warning. He twisted away fast, faster than Hector could adjust for with the drumbeat battering his head. One round grazed the man, cutting through some meat, but no stopping power. Hector followed, tried to lead him, and one of the ferals holding Natalie launched itself forward.

Hector kept his eyes on Kirk and fired off two more shots as he braced his leg. He brought his free hand up in a fist and slammed it into the lunging body’s sternum.

The feral had speed and momentum. Hector had weight and strength. He felt the low pop of one or two ribs disengaging from the sternum, and the feral sailed up and back, crashing down on the concrete floor. In the corner of his eye, it flailed at the air, reminding him of the beetles Natalie had vomited up.

Kirk lunged and brought a hand down, raking his fingernails at Hector’s face. Hector ducked his head back and the strike swung to the side, slapping the pistol’s barrel away. He twisted with it, brought his fist around and his knuckles made Kirk’s jaw shift. The young man’s head rocked to the side with the blow, but he went with it, raked at Hector’s face with the other hand, and then sank his nails into the wrist behind the pistol.

Hector flipped his hand over, tried to roll out of the grip, and drove another punch into Kirk’s head with his free hand. The man spat out some random syllables, his jaw popping as it moved. Hector hit him again and then white razorblade fire roared up his leg as the remnant-kid dug its fingers into the wounded knee and tore at the flesh.

Kirk smacked the pistol again. Hector tried to keep his grip, but the agony arcing up out of his knee made his fingers spasm. The second blow jarred the gun loose and it clattered across the floor.

The feral bit his leg just above the knee, still clawing at the wound.

Kirk turned. His eyes opened wide, the irises just two black holes with white visible all around them. He bared his teeth and growled.

Hector flung an elbow at the man’s chin and heard teeth crack. He brought the arm back, grabbed a fistful of Kirk’s hair, and yanked his head down even as he threw an uppercut. Kirk’s nose snapped under the first punch. The second one caught him right on the ear. Then Hector grabbed the ear and used both hands to slam Kirk into the remnant-kid. Their skulls collided with a hard, wooden sound and they both sprawled back.

Hector took a breath of cold air. Two-second assessment. In the back corner of the room, Natalie grappled with the last feral holding her. His pistol sat next to a dead woman—too far away, especially with his bad leg. Said leg was on fire and being stabbed with a thousand electrified needles going in deep enough to hit the bone.

His skull ached as if he’d taken a few hits to the head. Every vein felt like a blood pressure cuff, pulsing and squeezing inside and out. His eyes were going to pop out of his head if he didn’t clench their lids shut.

It was all throwing off his balance and timing. A fight against two people shouldn’t’ve taken him longer than two punches. He needed to end it.

Hot sweat ran down his face, beaded up along his upper lip, dripped off his chin. His mouth was open just enough for a few salty drops to hit his tongue. Salty and heavy. Too metallic for sweat. He sniffed and smelled blood, very close.

His eyes and nose were bleeding.

His two-second assessment ended as Kirk sat up.

The feral with blood on its mouth rolled over onto all fours and loped at him again.

Hector reached down and slid the batons out of his improvised knee brace. The belts around his leg, suddenly loose, slipped down. He shifted his weight onto his good leg. His bad knee wobbled.

The feral snarled and lunged again. Hector flipped his wrist and jabbed out, going for another knockout blow. The feral’s head turned just enough and the baton struck right on the eyebrow. Not a knockout, but hopefully enough to stun—

The feral sank its teeth into the tendons on the back of his knee.

He whipped the baton down, pulling the first strike so he didn’t break bone. It snapped against the side of the feral’s head. The kid yowled like a cat.

Kirk stepped in close, almost too close, but Hector managed to hit him with the other baton. Not as hard as he wanted. The feral messed with his balance. He spun his wrist, reversed, hit Kirk on the other side, punched him in the face again.

No more time to be gentle. He brought his other hand down like a hammer, striking the feral kid in the forehead with the butt of the baton. Out cold, probably with a concussion. Its clawed fingers tangled in the loose belts around Hector’s calf and thigh, pulling him farther off balance.

He heard something whipping in the air and got the baton up in time to take some of the blow. The impact jarred it out of his hand. He had an instant to register one of the black carbon-fiber batons the Steelwall guards wore before Kirk pulled back and swung it forward like a club, aiming for Hector’s gut. Easier to block a thrust. Hector knocked it to the side with his forearm, wrapped his arm up around it, and yanked the other man in for a baton strike.

Kirk relaxed his arm and let his weapon slide.

Hector wobbled, felt his center of balance tilt, but finished his attack, bringing the baton down on the other man’s collarbone with a satisfying crack.

Kirk ignored it, twisted hard, yanked his club back.

Hector went with it, but his leg flared and sliced at his nerves. He tipped to the side. He tried to wrench his battered body upright and fell.

The impact jarred his ruined knee. Tore open the last stitch or two in his side. And his throbbing head, his goddamned head. Static overwhelmed his brain. Everything went white. His sight. His hearing. His thoughts.

Color and form and pain all returned maybe a second later. He rolled onto his side, knee and elbow pulled tight together to shield him. He’d dropped the other baton. Couldn’t look for it. Kirk loomed over him, the carbon-fiber club in one hand, Hector’s expandable baton in the other. He swung the heavier one down and Hector’s good foot lashed out, kicking it back.

Kirk quick-stepped away. His lips pulled into a teeth-baring grin. The look of a hunter enjoying the last bit of fight from his prey.

“You don’t understand,” Kirk said. “This is over. We succeeded as soon as she was brought back. It can’t be stopped. You can’t get away in time.”

He darted forward, swung down with the steel baton. Hector smashed the man’s arm away, catching his wrist with the back of his hand. Enough to deflect most of the blow. The movement shifted weight and he felt bone fragments grind and slice inside his knee. He shot his foot out again and caught Kirk in the thigh. It was a solid kick, enough to drive the two men apart.

“Hector!”

Natalie stood between the bodies of the dead woman and the other feral. She kicked something dark and sent it skittering across the floor toward him. He reached out his hand for it.

Kirk swung with one baton, then the other. Tried to stop the skidding object rather than just smashing Hector’s arm. Stupid, overconfident mistake. Both swings missed.

The pistol slid to Hector’s hand. His fingers found it, knew it, spun it into his palm. His arm came up and he pulled the trigger.

Kirk twisted again, like a snake thrashing away from a blow. The first round hit his shoulder, but Hector had a better sense now of how fast he was. How much to lead him. The next two hit him in the chest, the last right in the Adam’s apple.

Hector put two more rounds through his forehead, just to be safe.

Kirk tilted and crashed to the floor. The batons clattered on the concrete. The sound echoed in the big room.

Hector rolled, twisted, swung the pistol around, checked the room. The pressure in his head swelled. He felt blood running down his face.

Natalie crouched next to him. “How bad are you hurt?”

A few things ran through his mind, but he settled for honesty. “Pretty bad,” he said as a shudder ran through him. “I think your broken room is in my head. And I’m pretty messed up past that.”

She looked down at his knee. “You’ve lost blood.”

“Yeah. Still losing it.” He wiped his hand across his mouth and it came back painted red. “I think it’s—”

“The broken room,” she said. “You’re too old.”

“Like the man said, it’s not the years. It’s the mileage.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re too old.”

“Just give me a minute. We can still do this.” Even as he said it, he felt the pulse behind his eyes again, as if his veins had swelled up into garden hoses, surging bigger with every beat of his heart. He blinked and his eyelids were sticky with blood. “Let’s go. Find your friends and shut this thing down.”

Natalie grabbed his arm with icy fingers, cold enough to feel through his clothes, and leaned back. He sat up and his stomach churned in a seconds-from-vomiting way. He yanked the arm away, caught himself before he fell flat on the floor again, tilted his head away from her.

His ruined leg had gone almost numb. Never a good sign. He wondered if one of those exam rooms she’d mentioned was nearby, maybe with some bandages, painkillers, maybe even epinephrine.

Natalie stood up, looked at her hands, stepped away from him. “It’s me.”

“What?”

She pointed at Kirk’s body. “It’s what he wanted me back for. The broken room and the break inside me are amplifying each other. They’re combining and growing.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“If the break is bigger, more remnants can come here. They’ll possess more children. And they’ll kill most of the adults they try to possess. Like they’re killing you.”

His head throbbed again. He put his hand against the side, tried to push back against all the pressure inside his skull. The side of his head felt wet and sticky. His ears were bleeding.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t see a school. There’s probably only a dozen other kids within five miles of here, if that.”

“No. He said the new break would be bigger than that.”

He pressed his hands on either side of his skull. “How much bigger?”

“Four hundred twenty-five miles.”

His eyes popped open. “Across or radius?”

“Radius.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He was precise.”

Hector closed his eyes, pushed past all the pain in his head, tried to picture a map with an 850-mile-wide circle on it. “Natalie, that’ll reach Dallas. Hell, I think it’ll reach Houston. It’s Oklahoma City, Albuquerque . . . it’s over thirty million people.”

FIFTY-THREE

Natalie tried to wrap her mind around the number. Thirty million people. All in the broken room. Most of them screaming and bleeding as things tore them apart from the inside. And some of them, thousands, maybe a million of them, becoming like Patricia and Kirk and Gabriel and Izzy.

She looked at the bodies sprawled on the concrete floor with their colored wristbands.

“We’ve got to stop this,” said Hector as a shudder ran through his body. A fresh surge of blood came from his nose, and more trickled down from his eyes like tears. He winced in pain.

Natalie couldn’t remember him ever looking like he was in pain. Even when she stitched him with needles. She took another step back, felt the air shift as the cold and warm air mixed.

Her stomach sloshed as she moved, but it didn’t feel as if she was going to throw up. It felt like something had her hooked, like a string pulling on her belt or her shirt. Except it was just pulling on her. Her insides. Her mind. Dozens of strings, barely threads, all tugging, all stretching her toward the broken room. The wisps of cold ran down them, like water heading toward a drain.

The concrete frosted around her feet.

Hector pushed himself up onto his good knee, reached up to grab at a set of shower knobs, and heaved himself to his feet. He turned his head so she couldn’t see the face he made. His leg straightened out and he sucked air in between his teeth. “Damn it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I dropped the ID card somewhere.” He took a few awkward steps to Kirk’s body, looked down, then back to her. “Get his key card,” said Hector. “I won’t be able to get up if I fall over.”

“No. You need to move away from him.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No,” she said, the words rolling out on a cloud of cold steam. “It’s getting worse. You need to move away.”

He looked at her for a moment. At the jagged lines of frost around her sneakers. Then he turned, swayed, and hopped over toward West’s body, staying as far from Natalie as possible.

Natalie walked to Kirk’s body, felt the threads tug at her. She resisted, coughed, and her belly swirled again. She snatched Kirk’s key card badge.

Hector crashed back against the shower column. “Goddamn it,” he said, his head hanging low. “You’re packing a serious punch, kid.”

“Yes. It’s because I moved away from the broken room,” she said. She pointed at the floor across the room.

“You sure?”

“Yes. I can feel it pulling at my break. They’re trying to stretch out and connect.”

He nodded. The pistol moved in his hands and the magazine dropped out to clatter on the concrete floor of the showers. He pulled another one from his coat and slapped it into the pistol. “I think I can get us there.”

“No.”

“No what?”

She stepped away from him, keeping the ID card close to her body. “No, you won’t get us there. You’re already too close.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No. It will kill you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

He shook his head. “You told me the scientists here used to wear containment suits. Let’s find one of those.”

“No. There’s no time,” Natalie said, “and the broken room’s too strong now. The suit wouldn’t keep you safe.”

“Well we’ve got to do something.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” she repeated, streamers of cold fog pouring from her mouth. “I have to do something.”

Hector shook his head. “I’m not going to let you go down there alone.”

“I’m not alone.” She reached up and touched her head. “I have Tim.”

She walked to the door and the invisible threads rippled. She remembered flying kites, how the string would go loose, then tight, then have a gentle pull. She was a kite being flown by the broken room. By whatever was trying to get out of the broken room.

Another shudder racked Hector’s body. His legs wobbled. He used his arm to wipe some of the blood off his face. It left dark streaks on his sleeve. “I’m not . . . I can’t let anything happen to you.”

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’m going to save you.”

FIFTY-FOUR

Natalie ran down the hall. Cobwebs of frost stretched across every office window as she passed. She saw another dead guard and a dead child with an Alpha wristband.

The hollow smell of the broken room filled the hall. No matter how fast she ran, it clung to her. Moved toward her. Or maybe it was coming from her now, like the smell of sweat after exercise. Or the cold scent of her vomit.

She got to the elevator, waved the key card at the sensor. The door chimed and opened. She hit the button to go down to subbasement six.

Her stomach twisted. The threads tugged at her, let her fall back, snapped tight again. There were more of them now. Some were stiff like wires, trying to push her back, to keep her at the proper distance. Others pulled her in close.

Natalie remembered what Kirk had said about his brothers and sisters. Too hungry for their own good. Unable to stop themselves, even if it hurt their greater plans.

The elevator gave her sloshing belly another shake and the doors opened. She glanced up behind her. There was no guard, but for a moment she’d been sure one would be standing there, ready to push her out into the hallway.

Unlike the messy floors above, the hall leading to the broken room was clean. The walls and floor glistened wet. She knew there was a word for when water came out of cold air, but couldn’t remember it. She also knew the wetness wasn’t water. And it hadn’t come out of the air.

The empty scent of the broken room, the cold coming off her, the clouds pouring out of her mouth—it all mixed and surrounded her in a haze she felt more than saw. The swirling particles settled on her like a thick fog.

The broken room tugged at the thing inside her, trying to tug it wider.

Natalie stepped out of the elevator. The floor seemed hard. Distant. She’d never been down here with shoes on.

She felt a swell of uncertainty. Once she was in the chamber, the small in-between room, what if the doors didn’t open? What if she was trapped there?

Tim told her not to worry.

“I missed you,” she said.

He told her he’d missed her too and was sorry he’d had to stay away.

“I understand,” she said. “I’ve had to stay away from Hector to keep him safe.”

He said he was glad she got it.

Natalie swiped the key card, and the first airlock slid open. She walked straight through to the far door. The glass walls crackled and frosted as she passed them. The far door frosted up before she reached it. Another card reader sat high next to the door. She had to reach up to swipe the ID.

She walked past the empty control room. Six seats. Some of the computers and machines still had bright screens. She wondered if they were always on. She heard the click-click-click of claws, and a giant centipede crawled up and over one of the computer screens.

Her lungs twitched, and a cough pushed its way up her throat. Her stomach wrenched, and she felt bubbles forming. She coughed again.

Tim asked if she was okay.

“No. Yes. I think so,” she told him. “It doesn’t feel like I need to throw up. It feels . . . excited. Like Christmas morning.”

Tim said that didn’t sound good.

“No. It also doesn’t feel good.”

She walked into the room where Phyllis Chan and Moreau would usually be waiting for her at their monitoring stations. The last airlock. The cable. The cleaning supplies.

A feral crouched there, its back to her, one hand resting on the mop.

Natalie curled her hands into fists. Then she recognized the little cluster of freckles on the back of the feral’s neck. Like a star map. She started to say a name, stopped herself, and made a squeak instead.

Tim asked what was wrong.

“It’s Alejandra,” she whispered. “A remnant has her.”

The feral swung its head around. Its eyes were shiny black with no whites at all. A line of blood went straight from its hair across one eye, down its cheek.

Its lips pulled back in a toothy snarl.

Tim reminded her they had to get into the broken room.

“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t want to hurt her.”

Tim told her he knew, but they had to fix things before it was too late.

Alejandra flexed her fingers on the mop handle and swung it forward.

Not a mop, Natalie saw. The feral girl had snapped the head off, turning it into a spear. The jagged end pointed at Natalie.

Rushed at Natalie.

The feral lunged and Natalie got out of the way just in time. She brought her fists up but couldn’t bring herself to hit Alejandra, and then the spear swung around and clubbed her hard in the shoulder. It jarred her body and almost knocked her over.

Alejandra stepped forward again, thrust, and this time caught Natalie in the side as she tried to dodge. The rough tip caught in her shirt and coat even as it raked open a ragged slash in the skin under her arm. She stifled a grunt as the remnant spat some growls at her.

Natalie turned and her clothes pulled tighter on the snagged spear. She grabbed it with both hands, and frost crackled along the shaft as she pulled. Alejandra yanked back and thrust her leg out at the same time. Her heel went into Natalie’s stomach.

Natalie hard-coughed out some air and sprayed gray-green mucus into the feral’s face.

Alejandra let go of the makeshift spear. Natalie crashed to the floor, slime still splashing out of her mouth. Not much, though. She could feel it building up, saving itself.

The spear was under her, still tangled in her clothes. Her little finger was mashed under it, and a moment later the pain reached her brain. She heaved herself up, got her hand out from under the spear, and rolled back to her feet. A quick tug got the spear free of her jacket.

The feral wiped more mucus from her face and tried to focus on Natalie with a slime-coated eye. She snarled and darted forward, driving Natalie back. Fingers slashed at the air.

Natalie stepped back. Ducked low. Swung the spear like a baseball bat. The feral tried to leap but Natalie still caught her in the shins. Not hard enough to break bones, but hard enough to make the girl land on her hands and knees.

Alejandra whirled on all fours like an angry dog. Or a beetle. She crouched and let out a string of watery woodpecker pops that turned into a snarl.

Natalie threw the spear behind her. It clattered on the floor beneath the control booth’s big window. She shifted her hips and kept her eyes on the feral’s chin.

Alejandra leaped.

Natalie swung her hips and brought her fist forward. Two rough fingernails scratched the back of her hand. Her knuckles landed right on the corner of Alejandra’s mouth. It knocked the feral girl off to the side and her leap ended against the control panel.

Natalie stepped forward. “I’m so sorry,” she said before throwing another punch. It landed in the back of the feral’s head. Natalie felt the soft, dark hair against her fingers and Alejandra’s head banged down on the metal-and-plastic console. Something cracked—maybe a button, maybe a bone—and the feral bounced back to hit Natalie’s knuckles again before crumpling to the floor.

Another surge of nausea, this one not from the thing in her gut, made Natalie shudder.

She’d dropped the key card. Panicked that it might be under Alejandra. Saw it across the room, the lanyard hidden in a tangle of thick wires running between two machines. She scooped it up, swiped it, and the door’s glass panels frosted over as her hand passed them. The lock’s hum made her shudder again.

The feral let out a half-gargled groan. Dragged her arm close to her body. Pushed at the floor.

Natalie stepped into the last airlock, and the door slid shut behind her. The dead air, the hollow smells—it all made her heart pound. She had a hiccup caught in her throat. She tried to swallow it down.

Frost formed on the floors and walls as she stepped to the far end of the airlock. The card reader at the other end had ice on it. She tried to run the key card through, then chipped at some of the ice with the edge of the card. Frost sparkled on the card and lanyard too.

A thump from the far end of the airlock. Alejandra hit the door again. Glaring. Her mouth moved silently, and she slapped the glass with hot fingers, leaving a brief handprint before the icy spiderwebs spread back over it.

Natalie chipped at the ice. Rapped her knuckles on it. She thought about breathing on it but was pretty sure that wouldn’t work. It might make things worse.

“It’s frozen,” she said. “I can’t get the card to go through the slider.”

Tim told her to hit the side of the box a few times on the side away from the card reader.

“What if I break it?”

He told her she might break the housing, but the reader itself was built out of thicker material. The housing should flex and break off a lot of the ice.

She did, and it did. The key card scraped the first few times she ran it through, but on the fourth try a few bits of ice popped loose and the square above the door turned green.

The door slid open.

Natalie stepped into the broken room for the last time.

FIFTY-FIVE

Walking into the broken room felt like wading out into the ocean, back when she’d been a little girl. Waves surged against her, crashed down on her, tried to push her back toward the land. Then everything would shift direction and the hungry water would drag at her legs, pulling her away from shore.

Just like the ocean when she’d been a little girl, the broken room hit her in the stomach and knocked her down.

The air made her insides spin and twist. It swirled with so much cold emptiness it made her dizzy. She dropped to her knees, then to all fours. She took a deep breath, but it made her stomach and head whirl even more. Sharp buzzing sounds pricked at her ears, and she knew this time there really were bugs all around her. Coming out into the broken room the same way they’d come out through her.

Natalie pushed herself back up to her knees. Took another breath. Gazed around the room.

The broken room looked the same. The wooden chair. The four long light tubes. The concrete floor. Every line and crack and paint bubble she’d memorized during the years she’d been held here.

But now scorpion-tailed bugs launched themselves into the thin air from the back of the chair. Long centipedes spiraled along the lights. Green beetles scuttled and swarmed across the floor. Some of them rushed at her and then circled away, recognizing that she belonged here too.

And somehow, the broken room took up more space. She couldn’t tell which ones, but she knew some of the room’s measurements had changed. It was like closing your eyes but still being able to tell if you were in a small room or a big one. Except her eyes were open.

One of the lights flickered as a centipede crawled across it. The thin glass chimed under dozens of tiny claws. The bug climbed along the tube and then around the edge of the light’s big rectangular case.

Natalie threw up.

No coughs. No warning tickle in her throat. The mucus and slime and egg sacs sprayed out of her like an open fire hydrant. They spattered across the concrete floor.

Tim said something reassuring, but it was lost as she threw up again, buckets and buckets of it gushing out of her. A pair of centipedes wriggled up her throat and rode the wave blasting out of her mouth. The first few eggs burst open. Things uncurled while other things stretched wings. Swarms of green beetles swam toward the slowly spreading edges of the puddle.

Tim asked if she was okay. He was worried about her this close to the break.

She spat out a mouthful of mucus, then spat again to get the taste off her tongue. She wiped her mouth on her shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “I’m okay. We’re here. What do we have to do?”

Tim explained that she needed to find the break and get as close to it as she could. Could she see it or sense where it was?

“Yes.” Her eyes went straight to the far left corner. The sinister corner. The shadows were longer and darker there, as if the corner went deeper into the wall somehow. As if it was much farther from the center of the room than all the other corners. As she studied it one of the scorpion-bugs buzzed out of the shadows.

Out of the break.

Natalie lifted one knee to stand up and her stomach bubbled. She let her leg settle back down, raised the other knee, and felt liquid surge deep in her throat. She stared across the room. It looked like twenty feet, but maybe it was even more now.

She shuffled forward across the frost-covered concrete floor, staying on her knees. She paused for a moment before wading into the large puddle of slime she’d vomited up. She could feel it seep through her jeans, making her knees and shins damp and cold.

The centipedes and beetles thrashed in the slime as she approached. They moved closer. One of the dark-green centipedes reached her knee and tried to climb up her thigh. She smacked it away and it curled and flailed by one of the unhatched eggs, flicking drops of mucus into the air with its dozens of legs.

She pushed forward. The air fought against her. Resisted her movements. Her eyes ached. She felt a sharp stab of pain above her ear and panicked. But it wasn’t one of the strange insects. Just a headache bursting full-size inside her skull.

The slime rippled around her, pushed forward by her knees. Left, right. Left, right. Sloshing through it. A slow wave of mucus scattered a swarm of tiny green beetles and pushed them away from her.

Natalie had taken at least twenty knee-steps and she wasn’t across the puddle yet. Had she thrown up that much? She let her gaze rise a bit.

The corner still sat twenty feet away.

She looked behind her and saw the airlock door and chair far behind her. Forty-five feet. The length of some of the hallways upstairs.

The cold slime had soaked all the way through her jeans. She felt it on her skin. It squished between the denim and her knees as she moved forward.

The backs of her knees were wet.

She looked down at the puddle, looked behind herself.

The slime didn’t cover her legs, but it was close enough to ooze up across her jeans. She estimated four inches deep. Maybe five, but she couldn’t be sure without reaching in to feel where the floor was.

She was not going to reach down into the puddle.

Two of the flying insects buzzed past her head.

“The puddle is getting deeper,” said Natalie, shivering.

Tim asked her to explain. She did. He told her he didn’t understand how it was happening either, but she had to get to the break, and he knew she could do it.

She thought of Hector upstairs, waiting for her to save him.

The broken room hit her with another wave of its emptiness. She braced herself as the cold, flavorless air washed over her, pushed her back toward the door. She felt the dozens of threads in her belly stiffen against her, prickling her insides.

She remembered the ocean tossing her back and forth on the beach.

Another wave surged out of the sinister corner, and she leaned into it. Pushed against it. It broke on either side of her, and then the threads dragged at her. Pulled her toward the break.

She stopped fighting it. Her headache got worse, but she took three big knee-steps forward through the puddle, and part of a fourth, before the wave of wrongness surged against her again. She clenched her fists, waited it out, and then moved forward as the broken room inhaled again.

The room took another breath. That was what it had been doing all along. It was alive. Or something like alive. Maybe not the room. Maybe whatever was on the other side of the cleft. Something enormous that made reality move back and forth like a cartoon feather as it breathed.

Concrete scraped her knees again as she waded out of the puddle. A green beetle scuttled across the back of her hand. A scorpion-bug zipped by her face, so close it made her flinch and close her eyes.

“I made it across,” she said, opening them again.

Tim asked if she was at the break.

“Almost.”

She took a breath. Coughed it back out. The empty air dried out her mouth and throat. She took another breath, ignored the pain in her head and her churning stomach, and pushed herself up onto her feet. The broken room spun, and she saw little white spots. Another wave of wrongness hit her in the stomach, made things bubble inside her, tried to knock her back down.

Natalie tricked the room. She let herself wobble, fell forward as it inhaled again, but caught herself on one leg. The fall became a quick run across the mucus-wet floor. Six-seven-eight-nine-too-many big steps, but then she hit the wall, bounced into the other wall, and she was in the sinister corner.

In the cleft.

The push-pull of the room hit her head like a drum. It punched and yanked at her belly, at the thing inside her, and the thing inside her fought back, pulling and shoving at the sinister corner. They fought over her like hungry dogs fighting for meat.

She took a deep breath, but there wasn’t enough air in it. Her throat and lungs fluttered. More white spots danced around her. She sucked in a deeper breath and her vision cleared.

“I’m here,” she gasped.

Tim said that was good and he was proud of her. His voice seemed louder. Natalie looked over her shoulder at the cinder-block walls, sure he had to be right behind her.

“What now?”

He told her she needed to wait for a minute or two. She had to hold the break open.

“How do I do that?”

But even as she said it the corner seemed to narrow, as if the walls were a giant book closing its pages on her. She pushed back, fighting, shoving her arms and legs out against the painted concrete. The break slowly moved away from her, but she could sense it tensing to crush down again, to slam shut.

“We can’t take too long. Hector’s counting on us.”

Tim told her it wouldn’t be long. He was pretty sure what was going to happen, but he didn’t know how it was going to happen. She might want to close her eyes.

“No. I’m not scared.”

He said he knew she wasn’t.

Natalie’s own break twisted and thrashed inside her. The long kite strings she’d felt before looped tight around it, cutting at it, cutting at her. Then they snapped free and tried to tear it apart, pulling in every direction at once. The broken room tightened around her again, torn between pulling her in and pushing her away.

She heard a faint noise, like wind on the corner of a house. It got louder, but she still couldn’t tell where it was. Then she felt it on her face—a sharp wind, stinging her with grains of dust and sand.

Tim told her to get ready. He sounded much closer now. Almost as if he was standing beside her, whispering secret instructions like Hector would.

The wind got faster. Louder. The broken room squeezed and tore at the break inside her. It crushed her, made it hard to move, hard to breathe.

Some of the flying bugs spiraled through the air, their long, sharp tails swinging back and forth. They drifted toward her, picking up speed as they got closer. She managed to lift a hand and swat at them as they buzzed past her ears and made tiny gashes with their tails. They went silent behind her.

Her own break fought back. Churning. Boiling. She could feel it surging up her throat. More liquid and bugs and wrongness.

Something came out of a shadow by the door, rushed at her from across the room. It had teeth and dark eyes and long, sharp fingers. Its face twisted up in a snarl as it saw her. She tried to bring up her fists, to push herself off the wall, and—

The shadow thing reeled from an invisible punch. It spun and grabbed at the air, its shadow-balance gone, and fell sideways toward Natalie. It vanished and a cold shudder shot through her body. Her stomach twisted and the push-pull got worse and she coughed out the tiny amount of air she’d managed to get into her lungs. A spray of liquid came with it, out into the air and then splashing back against her. More of it surged in her throat and she turned her head and let the icy wind take it away. A flying bug zipped past and scraped the tip of her nose.

Another shadow thing rushed at her, teeth bared, and this time she heard Tim groan as the thing swung its claws. He swore and she felt him swing, felt him fight back, like the memory of throwing a punch. The creature turned, fell, disappeared somewhere inside her and behind her, and her break stretched and thrashed.

Tim asked if she was okay.

“Yes. Are you?”

He said he was hurt but didn’t think it was going to kill him. She was going to ask if that was a joke, but then a centipede came writhing across the floor and bit at her ankle as it went by, slashing her jeans and her socks and a bit of skin. She tried to lift her leg to kick it away, but it had already skittered and slid past her and vanished into the corner.

The fight between the broken room and her broken insides yanked her back hard against the cinder blocks. She coughed out more air and more slime. Her foot slipped on the wet floor and then the other foot and then her feet were off the floor, but she didn’t fall. The wind held her pinned in the corner and pushed her up the wall.

“What’s happening!” she screamed.

Tim told her it was the things from where he was. The remnants.

“The ones inside the ferals?”

He said that was right. All the ones left in the Project. Her being far away from the broken room had made it bigger. Stronger. But now that she was inside it, right in its heart with her own break, she’d turned it inside out. It had gone from being a sprinkler letting water out to a drain sucking it all down.

Her feet dangled above the floor, and another remnant came at her. The shape of a body, the bare details of a face, made of rippling air and dust. Tim made another sound, a trying-to-ignore-pain sound, and her gut twisted up tight again before snapping back.

“Like a toilet,” she shouted over the wind, watching a centipede and a handful of green beetles roll across the floor toward the corner. “We’re flushing them all away.”

Tim laughed once, but he sounded tired and hurt.

The bugs clawed at the floor, beat their wings in the cold air, and one by one by one they flew past and vanished behind her. Another centipede grabbed her shoulder, tried to wrap itself around her arm, and tore at her jacket before it was dragged away. A scorpion-bug bounced off her forehead and nicked her scalp before the silent wind carried it back where it came from.

Two more remnant shapes came at her at the same time. Tim yelled. This time her broken insides didn’t untwist. They stayed tight and shook inside her, like something bent close to a breaking point but not quite there. Slime was bubbling in her throat and leaking out the corners of her mouth. She had to squint against the sharp wind.

Another shape clawed at the air, trying to swim away from her even as bugs were pulled through it. Its eyes were so dark and angry. It stopped grabbing at the air and swung its long claws at her face. She felt a moment of heat cut through the chill of the broken room, and a roar from Tim. Then another remnant rushed past, so quick she almost missed it, and then another.

The sinister corner pulled her even tighter, stretching her arms and legs, then tried to squeeze tight around her. The walls pressed against the back of her head and pushed her shoulders forward. Her hips shifted and her knees locked so hard they ached. The icy wind forced its way into her mouth and dragged another remnant through the bubbling slime between her lips.

The broken room shuddered, and she remembered what Hector had said. That if she could do it on command, it was almost a superpower. She let her head roll back, tried to relax, and the slime gushed up and out of her throat, streaking into her nose and across her eyes and through her hair. The wind tore at her, and the icy strings tried to cut her break out of her.

“How many more?” she spat out.

Tim told her he thought there were still two or three left, maybe four, and as he said it the wind screeched across corners she couldn’t see, and another remnant tumbled toward her. She caught a glimpse of dark eyes and teeth and then it was gone and her insides hurt. Her broken parts were twisted up so tight, she wheezed in pain. She knew if she could move her arms and lift her shirt, her belly would be wound up in a spiral.

Fat raindrops smacked her arms, her body, her neck, her face. The puddle of slime. The wind raced across it, grabbed bits of it, hurled it at her hard enough to sting.

Her arms ached and she couldn’t breathe, but she thought of Tabora and Sara and Patricia and Nery and Alejandra. She thought of Father and Mother and Gabby. She thought of the huge number Hector had said. Thirty million people.

She opened her mouth. Spat out more slime and let the wind fill her lungs. She shoved out against the broken room with her arms, her legs, with the break inside her, and the room shook and roared and something behind her shook and roared with it.

A few more bugs whipped past her head. One slashed at her cheek just under her eye. Another remnant appeared in the distance, tried to fight the current and tumbled across the room. It turned to howl at her, gnashing its teeth as it tried to grab her, to halt its fall. She heard Tim cry out, felt another flash of heat, this time around her neck, and it was gone.

A centipede slid across the floor, clawing at the concrete. The wind picked it up, threw it at her. It hit her in the stomach, in her twisted belly, and its hooked claws tangled in her shirt. She couldn’t move her head, but she looked down into the dark, dead spots of its eyes. Its claws pinched her skin and then it was gone, winding her broken insides even tighter.

Tim yelled, her eyes went up, and a remnant glared at her from inches away, fighting back against the wind. She wanted to flinch from the anger and hate in its eyes as its long teeth chewed the air in front of her face. But she wouldn’t let it see she was afraid. She knew it would like that. So she glared back at it and saw the faint shape of its face twitch once. Like a palsy.

Then it roared and Tim roared and it was gone.

A slimy raindrop hit her eye. Another bug flew at her. Its scorpion tail snagged on her sleeve, pulled straight and tight, and then it was gone.

Tim asked if she was going to be okay.

“Yes” she told him. “I can take it. Just one more?”

He agreed with her. Just one more.

Natalie gritted her teeth. Took a breath. And another one. And a third. As much of the cold air as she could get. “Where is it? Can you tell?”

Tim told her it was already in the room.

She looked around, trying to spot the shape of dust and shadows, and then she realized where the last one was. “No!”

He told her she had to. They couldn’t fix the broken room if some of the parts were on the wrong side.

“But this is your side,” she said. “You’re from here. You need to stay.”

He told her about stones and arches and how they couldn’t be solid without all the pieces, without the key pieces.

“You have to. We can find a way. Hector can find a way.”

Tim laughed, just a sad little sound, and said Hector was very good but this was out of his league.

“Then I’ll go with you. We’ll take care of each other.” She pushed hard and managed to turn herself. Her shoulder slipped into the sinister corner, like falling into a small hole. Or taking a leap.

He told her to stop.

“No.” She wiggled as best she could while the freezing wind held her halfway up the wall, and tried to reach deeper into the corner.

She had to stay. He had to go. And he had to go now, before the remnants came back. Being thrown through the sinister corner had scattered them, but as long as the cleft existed they would come back. He was too tired and beat up to hold them off anymore. They would come for Natalie. And for Hector.

She tried to talk again, but the air was thin and she choked on the dry, empty taste of the broken room. “But I . . .” She took another deep breath. “You’ll be all alone.”

And Tim told her that was how it had to be. She had to let him go. This was how they saved all those people. One of them on each side of the cleft.

“Will it hurt?”

He didn’t know. He hoped it wouldn’t and he’d get to rest. But he thought, one way or another, it would leave a scar.

“A prize for surviving.”

Yes, he told her.

She felt a finger on her cheek, brushing softly right below the slash the bug had given her.

Natalie felt another catch in her chest. A different one. “I love you.”

He loved her too.

She took a deep breath. She remembered to be brave. She told herself she was strong enough.

She let him go.

Everything was quiet for a moment. Quiet and empty. Nothing but the tension between the sinister corner and her twisted, broken insides, holding her three feet above the floor.

Then a bright light, and the tension snapped, and she dropped.

FIFTY-SIX

Natalie crashed onto the floor of a different room.

She landed hard and wasn’t ready for it, so her heels hit the concrete and jarred her ankles and knees and back. She wobbled and fell over on the floor. Her hands caught her, but her knees still banged on the concrete. She grumbled, got back to her feet, and let her eyes wander around the room.

Four white walls. A gray-blue concrete floor. A box of fluorescent lights. The far corner of the room had a heavy-looking glass door with a key card reader. A familiar-looking wooden chair stood seven feet away from her. It had the same style and lines as the one in the broken room.

It was the chair from the broken room.

She looked at the room again. The wrinkle of paint. The smudge of dirt. The smears and stains on the floor. It was all the same, but it all looked so different.

“Tim?”

No answer. Not even the deep silence in her head she recognized as him listening. She called his name again, even though she knew he was gone.

Natalie swallowed twice and felt an ache in her throat, but also a clearness, an openness, that she hadn’t felt in weeks. She took a breath, and the faint scents of old latex and cleaning supplies and musty air swirled up into her nose. It had a dull warmth. She filled her lungs, then filled them again.

She’d fixed the room.

She and Tim.

She turned. The sinister corner was gone. Just a corner now, even if she couldn’t say what had changed. The angles and lengths were all normal now.

Not entirely normal. The lanyard with Kirk’s ID key card hung from the wall. Three inches of dark-blue cord vanished into a white-painted cinder block without so much as a ripple where they met. She rubbed the welt on her neck where the lanyard had snapped apart when she dropped.

Nothing left of the puddle but a faint, thin outline, as if it had dried up years ago.

Just a regular room in the subbasement of a building.

Tiny holes and slashes dotted her dry clothes. Her hair was dry too. And eyelashes. No trace of the slime on her either. She ran her fingers across her face and felt the tender slash under her eye. It would probably leave a scar.

She unclipped the key card from the lanyard and walked to the door. Eight steps to cross the room. No more. The card slid through the reader with no difficulty.

The door didn’t open.

Natalie slid the card again. And again. Nothing happened.

The light wasn’t on. The keypad was deactivated on this side.

She was trapped in the room.

She called to Tim out of habit, then sighed.

Natalie kicked the door once, but it was pointless. She’d spent enough time in the room to know how thick the glass was (one-and-three-quarter-inch Lexan, Moreau had said more than once). She was trapped until someone let her out.

If anyone let her out. As far as she could tell, Kirk and the ferals had killed everyone at the project. Hector was four floors up, on the other side of two airlocks, and possibly unconscious. Or worse.

There were still some ferals left. Or were there? She and Tim had sent all the remnants back to where they came from, but she didn’t know if that meant the children were still alive. Alejandra might be sleeping outside the airlock. Or dead.

She pounded on the door a few times. Then a few times more. She knew it didn’t matter. Shouting barely got through the airlock. How many times had she seen Phyllis Chan and Moreau mouth instructions to her over the years?

Natalie slid down the door. Her stomach grumbled. Just a plain old hungry grumble. It had been months since that happened. She didn’t feel sick at all. She thought about food and water. And air. Could air get into the room? She didn’t know. Wasn’t that the whole idea of the airlocks? There weren’t any vents. Maybe the room only had an hour or two of air.

Maybe she was going to die here after all.

At least she’d saved a lot of people. And Hector. And maybe Alejandra. It was only speculation, but she decided she’d tell herself that.

She closed her eyes and rested against the door. Her fingertips slid back and forth across the floor. The painted concrete felt familiar and oddly soothing.

Her eyes shot open as four sharp bangs echoed through the room. She felt it through the door. She rolled to her feet, brought her fists up, saw the shape looming outside the airlock . . .

Hector. It was Hector, looking so alien and out of place standing where Phyllis Chan and Moreau had stood for so many dozens of trips into the room. When she looked in his eyes she saw his shoulders relax. He rested his head against the door on that side. He had his pistol up, holding it by the barrel. He’d been banging on the other door with it.

She waved and pointed, and he found the card reader on his side. His hands moved. The door by her slid open.

Natalie walked out of the room and heard the door close behind her.

Then the other door opened and she grabbed Hector’s waist. He returned the hug, then pushed her back to look at her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yeah. I am now.”

She hugged him even tighter. “How did you find me so fast?”

“I knew it was down. There’s only one hallway on this level. It wasn’t hard.”

“But you got here so fast.”

Hector’s mouth bent into the faint curve that was his smile. “Kid, I’ve been following you since you left me upstairs. I was just moving a little slower than you.” He loosened his hold on her and waved a hand at his leg. He’d belted the two rods around his knee again.

“We should fix that,” she said. “There are medical supplies here. I can sew it again.”

“It can wait for now,” he said. He hugged her tight. “I was worried about you.”

“I was worried about you.” She squeezed him again. “Tim’s gone.”

Hector didn’t say anything.

“He said it was like an arch, and he was the keystone. It would all fall apart without him, and everything would be broken again. He had to go back to where he’d been. To the other side.”

“I understand half of that,” said Hector, “but I know Tim. He wouldn’t’ve left you alone if he didn’t absolutely have to.”

“No.”

“No?”

“He didn’t leave me alone. He left me with you.”

“I guess he did.”

She hugged him again. She heard the groan and thought he was being funny. Then she heard it again and let go of him.

The feral girl rolled over, groaned again, put a hand up to the huge bruise on her jaw. Her eyes flicked up to Hector and went wide. She skittered back on all fours.

Natalie stepped forward. She tried to understand the expressions on the other girl’s face, but they were changing so fast. Fear. Pain. Desperation. Panic.

But no anger. None of the remnant hatred she saw in all the ferals’ dark eyes. And they weren’t dark anymore. Natalie could see the warm golden-brown again. “Alejandra?”

“Yes.” The girl’s eyes jumped to her. They flitted up and down, looking at her clothes, trying to make sense of them. Natalie wondered if she looked strange to Alejandra’s eyes now, as Hector had looked to her.

The girl’s mouth moved a few times before she pushed words out. “Natalie?”

“Yes.” She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Alejandra. The other girl latched on to her. Natalie thought she was coughing, then realized her friend was crying.

“They put me in the room and the remnant . . . it sent me away. I wasn’t anywhere. I thought I was dead. I couldn’t see or hear or feel.”

“I know,” said Natalie. “You’re safe now. We’re safe.”

“Is it over?”

“Yes. It’s over.”

“Who is he?”

Natalie looked over her shoulder. “That’s Hector. He took care of me after I escaped, and then he came back with me to save everyone.”

Alejandra’s shoulders shook. “I don’t know if anyone’s left. So many of the other children changed after you left. And then I . . . I did too.”

Natalie hugged her tight. “You’re safe now,” she said again.

They stayed like that. Natalie enjoyed the feeling of Alejandra’s hair on her cheek. It had never felt this good before. Alejandra’s breathing settled down. It was like falling asleep in each other’s arms again.

Hector cleared his throat. “You two ready to get out of here? At least away from this place?”

Natalie looked at Alejandra. Squeezed her hand. Looked back at Hector. “Yes.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Hector led them back to the elevator and back up. Alejandra didn’t deal with corpses as well as Natalie did, but she still handled it better than any kid should. She spat at one of the dead guards, and Hector figured there was probably a story there he would’ve killed the man for if he weren’t already dead.

The three ferals he’d knocked out wandered the halls with the same confused look Alejandra had woken up with. The bruised kids mobbed each other. Held each other. One of them laughed with joy. Another cried with relief. The third talked to them but never lost the confused look in his eyes. Natalie called him Angel and Hector thought he remembered the name from her story.

Natalie guided him to an exam room where Hector found some bandages, disinfectant, and a wonderful local anesthetic. She stood by him while he cleaned the mess of his knee, sending fresh threads of fire through his leg, hot enough to burn past the dull haze of lidocaine.

He searched the larger cabinets for a crutch or maybe a cane. Instead he found some cold packs and a higher-end knee brace. A sleeve of Velcro and black neoprene with hinged steel struts on either side. Not a perfect fit, but much better than what he’d improvised. He pulled it on with some help from Natalie and then tied the cold packs to his leg with an elastic bandage.

Another elevator ride took them to “the rooms,” as the kids called them. They reminded Hector of prison cells. An hour of searching brought the number of kids up to fifteen. Natalie and Alejandra hugged one girl with a crescent scar where her left ear should’ve been. They grabbed blankets for all the kids to wrap themselves in. Some of them made hoods. Others just left the blankets draped across their shoulders.

It took two elevator trips to get everyone up to the ground floor. Hector led the way, pistol reloaded and ready, but Quilt had been true to his word. A consummate professional. Every Steelwall operative they found was dead. Some shot. Some stabbed. Some with thin, dark bruises across their necks. There were a few dead civilians, too, but Hector didn’t feel any great sympathy for them. Neither did the kids, judging from their looks.

When they stepped over the trio of bodies and into the lobby, the kids all froze. The sky outside looked orange, and the low sun blasted in through the big glass wall. He urged them on, then remembered how long it had been since they saw the outside and shut up.

Hector left them with Natalie and hobbled over to the double doors. He pushed them open, stepped outside, and slowly, painfully lowered himself to the corpse of the man in the cranberry-red jacket, sprawled at the top of the steps. He searched the coat pockets, found an iPhone, and made a few quick guesses at the password. The phone put him on time-out after the fifth attempt and he tossed it aside. The dead Steelwall man in tactical gear had an Android in a black nylon phone holster, which felt to Hector like an especially pathetic attempt to seem badass. The phone itself had an urban camo–patterned case, and Hector got the security code—death—on his fourth attempt. He rolled his eyes as he tapped in a number from memory.

The phone at the other end rang three times. Someone picked up halfway through the fourth ring, as always. Helped maintain the illusion of an office bogged down with work and bureaucracy, even after hours.

“Land Management and Resources Division,” yawned a voice on the other end. “How may I direct—”

“This is the Fox,” said Hector. “Last authenticator you have on file for me is four-theta-eight-one-five-one-six-zulu-romeo-romeo-zero. Get me someone who can talk.”

The person on the other end took a short breath, let it out, and the silence on the phone dulled down for forty-two seconds.

Then the empty tone shifted again, and a new voice said, “Jesus fucking Christ. Try to blow up any gas stations lately, Hector?”

“Is that you, Colonel?”

“It’s ‘General’ now. Where the hell are you?”

“Two hundred fifty miles west of Dallas, sir. You should be able to find this phone. There are fifteen kids here. All of them are suffering from PTSD. Four of them are going to need serious therapy. Also a lot of dead guys from Steelwall Security.”

“You kill them?”

“Some of them. The rest . . . you’ll be able to put it together. There are cameras.”

“What kind of place was it?”

“It was a branch of the Project.”

Another short silence. “Fucking hell, Hector.”

“They were doing experiments on kids.”

“How’d you find out about it?”

“That’s not relevant.”

“Was there a leak?”

“The facility was compromised, sir. Now it isn’t. And now there are fifteen kids who need food, medical care, and probably foster homes. Maybe some kind of diplomatic intervention as well.”

Hector heard a soft tapping. He pictured the general’s fingers going back and forth across a keyboard. The tapping stretched out past ten seconds.

He glanced behind him. Natalie had led half the kids to the doorway. They shivered. He wasn’t sure if it was from cold or awe. He should’ve grabbed more blankets for them. The others still huddled far back in the lobby. Probably agoraphobic after all this time.

“I can have three helicopters there in under ninety minutes,” the general said. “Eight corpsmen and a support squad. Ground transport can be there in three hours.”

“Tell them to keep it toned down. These kids have been held by Steelwall for close to two years, maybe longer for some of them. They’re not going to react well to a heavy military presence.”

“Are we going to need a heavy military presence? How many survivors past the kids?”

“None.”

“Christ. And it’s definitely one of the Project’s installations?”

“Yeah.”

“Remind me why I’m doing this?”

“Because unless something’s changed in the past two years, sir, you’re a decent person who wouldn’t want these kids to suffer any more. And because you’ve still got time to get here and publicly denounce the goddamn awful things they went through, open a full inquiry, and make sure some heads roll.”

“Still got time before—?”

“Before I go public with it. And with enough other stuff so people know to take me seriously.”

The phone was quiet for a long time. “That sounds a lot like you’re threatening the US government, Hector.”

“Speaking freely, sir, you’ve never liked these assholes either. When you see what they’ve been doing out here, you’re going to shoot the corpses a few times just for fun. Whoever approved this deserves an appointment with a black bag and a waterboard.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“Is it, sir? Now you’ve got an excuse to go after them. Crazy rogue agent threatened to go public, didn’t leave you any choice.”

A long pause from the other end of the call. “They’ll send people after you.”

Hector managed to laugh. “Yeah, how’d that work out last time?”

The general managed a small laugh of his own. “I’ll make sure the kids get everything they need. Anything else I should know?”

“Nope. I’m going to mute the phone now, but I’ll leave the line open. Looks like the battery’s almost full, so it should give you plenty of time to find it.”

“It’s already found. Any chance you’ll be there when the first wave shows up?”

“None.”

“You coming back in?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Goodbye, General. Congratulations on the promotion, however many years late.”

“Take care of yourself, Hector.”

“Always.” He muted the phone and dropped it on the Steelwall guard’s chest.

He turned and saw Natalie standing a few feet away. Behind her, the rest of the kids had reached the door. They all stared out at the world. A few of them were crying.

“You were wrong,” she said.

“How?”

“You said there were fifteen children here. There are sixteen of us.”

He nodded. Looked at the collection of cars still in the parking lot. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

She made a wheezy noise and Hector realized she’d been wound up tight. “Yes.”

“Good.” He gestured at the kids. “We can stay with them for a while, but we need to be gone before the cavalry gets here. Understand?”

“No.”

“Before the people I called for help get here.”

“Yes. I understand.”

He saw Alejandra watching them. “Are you sure? Once we go away, you’re probably not going to see any of them again. They’re going to get shuffled into the system. Hopefully sent back to their families.”

“If I stayed with them,” she said, “we’d all be separated anyway.”

“Yeah, you would.”

“Then yes. I want to be with you.”

Something relaxed in his chest, and he realized he’d been wound up tight too. “Good.”

“Where will we go?”

“Is there anywhere you’ve wanted to visit?”

Her head went side to side. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means we can go anywhere you want.”

“I would like to go to the water. The ocean.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. Thought about it. “We could live in San Diego for a while. Would that work?”

“I don’t know what San Diego is like.”

“Warm. Sunny. Beaches. Big enough to hide in for a while.”

“Yes,” she said. “That would be good. Will we need to keep lying about who we are?”

“I don’t think so. If anyone asks, you can say you’re Natalie.”

“Should I keep using your last name?”

He hugged her shoulders. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you should.

Afterword

Okay, so, this book kind of came out of nowhere. I know people say stuff like that all the time, but I’m serious. It just . . . appeared.

Sort of.

If you happen to follow me on social media, you know I spend a lot of my Saturdays watching B-movies and tweeting out critiques or praise. Usually critiques. One weekend back in 2019—a simpler time in some ways, a worse time in others—I ended up watching a movie that began with a young woman walking into a bar, looking around, and instantly focusing on a guy sitting across the room. An older guy who still had a hard edge to him, but also looked a little . . . well, drunk.

The description of the movie had been kind of vague, and my brain exploded with ideas about how this scene was going to play out. Maybe the woman was here to call in a marker from an old spy buddy. Why wasn’t he cashing in the marker himself? Because he was dead, and she could talk to his ghost. And somehow, some people had discovered this and wanted to get to her to learn everything the dead spy knew about . . . something. So this old drunk guy was going to have to help her.

Well, needless to say, the movie didn’t go that way. But the story that had popped into my head stuck with me. The idea of this badass guy slowly drinking himself to death in a dive bar who gets confronted by the ghost of a former work associate. And I can’t remember what shifted in my head but one day I realized, no—it’s not a young woman who shows up looking for him. It’s a girl. A little girl barely into double digits who’s basically got retired Jason Bourne stuck in her head. And, as sometimes happens, I just sat down and wrote out the first four chapters over two days No outlines, no plans, nothing. It just all sprung out almost exactly as you read it here.

You did read it first, right? You’re not jumping to the end? Don’t be one of those people.

Anyway, you’re still hoping for some insights, so what other fun things can I tell you . . . ?

I almost never think of my books as movies. It’s really rare for me to think “this actor would be amazing as this character.” It’s struck me a few times after the fact (I still want to see Galadriel Stineman as Danielle/Cerberus some day and maybe Reno Wilson as John Henry), but when I’m writing I don’t think I’ve ever pictured a character as an actor or vice versa. But I wasn’t far into this back in October of 2019 when I thought, wow, you know who’d be a friggin’ fantastic Hector? Pedro Pascal from Game of Thrones. And he’s doing that Mandalorian bounty hunter show for Disney that premieres next month . . .

Needless to say, at the end of that first episode I was screaming with joy, but also thinking “goddammit, now he’ll never play Hector . . .”

You may have caught a few easter eggs here and there. If some of them make you look back on other things I’ve written in a new light, cool. Past that, please don’t overthink them too much. Just have fun with it. That’s what this is all about, right?

Despite how easy this started out, I quickly ended up needing to do some planning and research. Which meant I bugged a lot of people smarter than me with questions and requests. And they all came though, which is doubly impressive when you consider that by this point we were into the pandemic and all those casual talks over drinks at a bar had become Zoom calls and very long email chains and a lot of DMs.

So, let me name some people and offer some thanks.

Brooke Binkowski answered so many questions about the border situation, to the point that I was embarrassed how much I didn’t know. If any of those aspects of the book make you uncomfortable, please try to understand how much I toned things down for this, and that the way people are treated at many border facilities is all-too-often much worse.

LN gave me many pointers on breaking into cars. And hotwiring cars. And dealing with car alarms. Honestly, it hit the point I decided I probably shouldn’t put too much of our talk into the book for legal reasons. On the plus side, I no longer fear locking my keys in the car.

Marcus helped me develop Steelwall so it was a little more than “guys with guns and vests.”

Mary, as always, helped me get a lot of the medical stuff right. She helped expand on a lot of things personal experience had already taught me about severe knee injuries, and also told me about assorted fun drugs.

Mike Walsh chatted with me for an afternoon about Turing tests and Chinese rooms and how you might tell a “real” ghost from a pile of random memories. Also about the Australian mouse epidemic and monstrous crab swarms, but that was just for fun.

As always, I have probably tweaked some of the hard facts these smarter folks gave me to better suit the story, so if I got something wrong, it’s entirely my fault and not any of theirs.

Kristi, Autumn, and John all read early versions of this manuscript and offered praise, mocking laughter, and disparaging eye rolls in all the appropriate places. It’s a better book because of them.

The entire Blackstone team has been fantastic. Josie, Rick, Michael, Kelley, Samantha, and Megan. Check out that amazing cover from Alex Cruz! I know I’ve missed someone and if it was you, my deepest apologies and thanks.

David, my agent, championed this book even though he’d been expecting something completely different from me. He also suggested what ended up becoming one of my favorite action scenes in the whole book.

Thanks to all of you reading this, who continue to be entertained and thrilled and a little creeped out by the stories that pour out of my head.

As always, so many thanks to my partner Colleen, who listens to me ramble on about out-of-context character relationships, structure problems, and action scenes. I still don’t know how she puts up with me, but she is fantastic and I couldn’t do this without her.

P. C.
San Diego, November 7th, 2021

About the Author

Peter Clines is the toy-collecting, movie-loving, New York Times bestselling author of Paradox Bound, Terminus, The Fold, 14, the Ex-Heroes series, a pair of short-story collections, a classical mash-up novel, some unproduced screenplays, and countless articles about the film and television industry. He currently lives and writes somewhere in Southern California.

Table of Contents

- PART ONE: A GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR

- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE

- PART TWO: THE PROJECT

- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE

- PART THREE: ACTION FIGURES

- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE

- PART FOUR: HUNTING SEASON

- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY

- PART FIVE: A FOX IN THE HENHOUSE

- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN

- AFTERWORD

- ABOUT THE AUTHOR