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  I press my lips together, not bothering to explain myself. Mother hates excuses. She says they’re signs of weakness. Zoe gives me an Are you just going to stand there? look. I shift my eyes away from her.

  Mother places the phone back on the receiver and steps away from the wall. I grit my teeth, warning myself to stay quiet. But I must be weak, after all, because I can’t do it.

  “Mother,” I start, “I—”

  Mother lifts a single finger, stopping me. Her nails are bloodred, like the soles of her shoes. “Not a word until they get here,” she warns.

  I turn to Zoe for help, but she stares straight ahead, refusing to look at me. I shift my eyes to the rows of cots, the sleeping kids, and feel a quick jolt of rage. I want to scream and stomp. I want to throw things.

  The empty feeling rises like the tide, washing my anger away. For a moment, I consider letting it drag me down into its depths. I’m so tired of being afraid, and horrified, and curious. Maybe Mother was right all along. Emotion is weakness.

  If I let the numbness take over, I lose my humanity forever. I picture my anger like a flame inside my chest, flickering but not quite going out.

  Hold on, I think.

  A man in a dark uniform enters the room. I recognize him—it’s the guard who caught me sneaking into Mother’s office the last time I broke into the Med Center, the one who called the cops and had me thrown into a cell when I wouldn’t show him identification. His eyes widen when he sees me.

  “You again.” He moves toward me, pulling a set of handcuffs out from his belt. The metal links clank together.

  “You’re going to have me cuffed?” I glance at my mother. “Really?”

  She clenches her eyes shut, and a vein leaps to life in her forehead. “They’re just girls, Phillip,” she says to the guard. “Bring them back to your office. I’ll be there to deal with them in a moment.”

  Phillip clips the handcuffs back onto his belt. “Yes, ma’am,” he says. He takes my elbow in one meaty hand and grabs Zoe with the other. Zoe yanks her arm away.

  “I’ll carry you if I have to,” he says, reaching for her again. Zoe dances backward, reminding me how easily she dodges her opponents in fencing.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” she demands, looking at the unconscious patients lying in the cots around the room. “Are we going to end up like them?”

  Mother presses her lips together. “We’ll discuss the ramifications of this incident in a moment,” she says.

  That wasn’t a no. I glance at the cot nearest to the door, the one holding the girl with the burned skin and the leather restraints around her wrists.

  The guard finally manages to catch hold of Zoe’s arm. A muscle in her shoulder tenses, and I think she’s going to pull away again. It’d be so easy. We’re both strong. The guard is large, but he’s more fat than muscle. He’ll be slow. Clumsy. We could get away.

  I catch Zoe’s eye and shake my head, glancing at my mother. Not in front of her. She’ll just call more guards—bigger ones. Better to wait. Zoe nods, and her shoulders go slack.

  The guard leads us to the stairs. I pause before stepping into the closet, and glance back at the strange white room. Row after row of sleeping kids lie, motionless, in their cots. I look at their faces, wondering what they were like before they ended up here. If they were happy. Whether they had families.

  The guard tugs on my arm, and I start moving again.

  We let the guard lead us down the hall, around the corner, and toward the stairs. There’s no one up here, not a single nurse or doctor. Everyone’s at the gala.

  I catch Zoe’s eye and nod. Now.

  We move together, and it’s almost like a dance. Zoe twists out of the guard’s grip, and kicks him in the back of the leg. He goes down, hard. I pull my arm away, and his grip breaks so easily. It’s like he’s not even trying. I start to run, but I stop at the end of the hall. Zoe’s not beside me.

  I turn and look back. The guard is standing again, and he has both arms wrapped around her chest. She throws her head, catching him in the jaw, and his face reels backward.

  “Go!” she shouts. “I’m right behind you.”

  I don’t stop or think. I just go.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Wind brushes against my arms as I push through the back entrance. It doesn’t feel cold. It doesn’t feel like anything. I turn around, gasping.

  “Come on, Zoe,” I whisper. The doors stay closed.

  It starts to rain. I smell snow in the air, but the rain feels warm against my skin. A light flashes at the corner of my eye, and I turn, spotting Jack’s car at the other end of the parking lot. What’s he doing out here? I cast one last glance at the Med Center doors and then hurry toward him.

  He leans across the passenger seat and pushes the car door open. “She returns.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jack shakes his head. “Get in. You look cold.”

  “I can’t.” I glance at the door again. Still closed. “I’m waiting for somebody.”

  “You’re going to wait in the rain?”

  The rain is coming down harder now. It pricks the bare skin on my back and plasters Ariel’s dress to my legs. I climb into the car and pull the door shut. Rain splatters against the windows.

  “Who are you waiting for?” Jack asks, not smiling.

  I suck a breath in through my teeth. I should come up with a story. But there are so many lies between us already.

  “I know about the serum,” I say finally. “I know you didn’t tell me the truth.”

  Jack’s face falls. “Charlotte—”

  I lift a hand, stopping him. “It’s fine. Really.”

  Wind pushes against the windows of the car, making the glass creak. The heater spits and hums.

  “It’s that school, you know?” Jack places both hands on the steering wheel, staring through the rain-soaked windshield. “It changes you. I used to do things because I liked doing them, and if my dad or whoever was disappointed, well, that was their problem. But since coming here … it’s like it doesn’t count if I’m not the best. Taking the serum made everything easy—”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder where it came from?”

  Jack looks politely bewildered. “Does it matter?”

  His words buzz around my head like flies. I look at him, and it’s like I’m seeing him for the first time. Only I’m no longer blinded by want, so I see him like he really is. The way he makes jokes so he doesn’t have to talk about anything serious. The way he drifts from hobby to hobby because he’s terrified he won’t ever excel at anything. How he pretends he doesn’t care what other people think, but he needs them to like him all the same.

  Every line of his face tells the story of the privileged boy who will one day go off to live his perfect, charmed life.

  I glance at the Med Center doors. Zoe still hasn’t come out. Something must be wrong. “Look,” I say, pushing the car door open. “I have to go right now. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I climb out, my mind already in the Med Center with Zoe, when another car door opens and slams shut.

  “Wait.” Jack grabs me by the elbow and spins me around. Rain clings to his nose and his cheeks. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”

  I try to pull away, but Jack doesn’t let go. “It’s a long story—”

  “Is this still about the serum?” he asks, tightening his grip. He’d be hurting me now, if I could still feel. “I don’t know what you’re getting so bent out of shape for. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Who told you it was safe?” I ask.

  “My dad,” Jack says, looking puzzled. “He took it himself when he was back at school. He and my mom are on the board, so they know all about the program Dr. Gruen set up.”

  “Do they know about my mother’s secret lab?” I snap. “Do they know she’s keeping people’s kids locked up in there? That she’s doing experiments on them?”

  I expect Jack’s face to twist in horror. I expect
him to deny it, to say his parents could never be involved in something so heartless.

  But he just blinks. “Those kids all volunteered.”

  “Have you seen them?” My voice sounds different now. Too high. One more crack and it could break. Jack shrugs with one shoulder. I’m not sure if it means yes or no, but I realize I don’t actually care. It doesn’t matter if he saw them. He knew. He knew and he did nothing. “Let go of me.”

  “I want to talk.”

  “I don’t.” I look down at the fingers pressing into my skin, and violent thoughts flash through my head. I could break those fingers, one by one. I could make Jack fall to his knees.

  Is that something normal girls do? I think. It’s not—it’s something Ariel or Devon would have done. Something a girl with no humanity would do.

  His fingernails dig into my skin. “Please.”

  “Let me go.”

  He squeezes tighter. I feel the pressure in my wrist even though pain is an alien concept. Bones crunch. Skin burns. Jack’s knuckles have gone white, and there’s a vein pressing against the skin in his neck. I don’t know if he realizes what he’s doing.

  “Charlotte,” he pleads. He tugs my arm and I stumble on my heels, knees knocking together like a baby deer.

  Something inside me switches off. Like a light going dark. I don’t give myself time to think about what a normal girl might do in this situation. I’m not normal. In a single, fluid movement, I grab Jack’s arm with my free hand and twist the other. Something cracks, and Jack’s fingers pop open.

  It’s easy. Like snapping a twig.

  Jack stumbles, his foot slipping out from under him. He hits the ground, his head smacking against wet concrete. His eyes flicker, and I think he’s going to pass out. He looks pale all of a sudden. The blood drains from his face.

  It takes a moment for my mind to catch up with my body. I blink and it’s like I’m seeing what I did for the first time. Jack’s hand flops to the side at a strange, ugly angle. A bit of bone pokes at his skin, not quite breaking it. All it took was a second of losing control, and look what I did.

  First Darren, and now Jack. I should be disgusted with myself. But I’m just glad he let go of my arm.

  Jack forces his eyes back open. He cradles his hand to his chest. “Charlotte?” he groans.

  “I’m sorry.” I keep backing toward the Med Center. There needs to be distance between us. Miles and miles of space to keep me from hurting him again. “Go home, Jack,” I say. “Just please go home.”

  “Zoe?” I call once inside the Med Center. I make my way through the labyrinth of hallways. The sounds of music and laughter fade. Something’s wrong. Really wrong. I call Zoe’s name again, but nobody answers. I make my way up the stairs, back toward Mother’s office.

  Something glimmers from the floor. A tiny red spot against the tile.

  I press my hand to my chest, to the exact spot where I’d feel horror if I could still feel. It’s blood. There’s blood on the floor.

  I keep walking, scanning the tile as I go. There’s another splotch of blood near the wall, and one at the corner, where another hallway connects. I follow the trail like someone compelled, like the drops of blood are bread crumbs leading me out of an enchanted forest. A smear of red below a water fountain. A smudged handprint. A single, bloody boot.

  I kneel and pick up the boot, turning it over in my hand. Men’s size 11. It must be Phillip’s. I turn down one last hallway.

  The security guard lies on the floor, a pool of blood gathered below his head. I stop beside him and stare down at his broken body.

  His throat has been slashed. The skin gapes open, spilling blood so dark it looks black under the garish light. His eyes are open, the whites nearly yellow, the pupils too large and unmoving. There’s blood on his teeth and his hands, and on his remaining boot.

  He doesn’t seem real. I could be looking at a photograph. There are bruises along his arms. They must’ve fought hard. He’s a big guy, not as easy to take down as we thought he’d be.

  I place the boot next to the security guard’s body and stand.

  “Zoe?” I call. She couldn’t have gotten far. I turn the corner, and there she is.

  She lies on her back on the floor, her arms stretched to either side of her like she was crucified. I can’t see the blood against the red fabric of her dress, but it’s everywhere else—splattered across the floor and the walls. In her hair. On her cheeks. There’s a bit of it crusted in her eyelashes. Her pink pocketknife lies on the floor beside one of her slashed wrists.

  I drop to my knees and Zoe’s blood seeps into my dress, staining the lacy, beaded fabric. I check for a pulse, even though I know she’s dead. Blood clings to my fingers and my wrist.

  It’s still warm.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I stumble away from Zoe’s body, my feet slow and heavy, my dress soaked with blood. There’s a disconnect between these physical sensations and what’s happening inside my head. The pain buzzes against the surface of my skin, like a dragonfly skimming over a pool of water but never landing. I don’t feel sorrow or horror or shock. I don’t feel anything.

  I walk through Mother’s office and into her closet. Her samurai sword winks in the darkness. I push her coats aside, revealing the secret door to her secret lab.

  Mother stands in the middle of the white room, surrounded on all sides by the monsters she’s created. She has her back to me, her shoulders stiff beneath the soft silk of her gown. I start down the stairs, and she jerks around, fear and fury carved in every line of her face.

  Her shoulders droop when she sees that it’s just me. “What are you doing back here?”

  “Zoe’s dead.” My voice doesn’t crack. “She killed that security guard, and then she slit her wrists.”

  I hold out my hands so she can see the blood staining my palms. Mother stares for a moment, and then she sinks into a metal folding chair beside the nearest cot. It’s like all the energy has drained from her body. Like she can’t hold herself up any longer.

  “You were never supposed to be a part of this,” she says in a voice that belongs to a different, softer person. “That’s why it took so long for me to bring you to Weston.”

  I kneel on the floor in front of her, the lace of Ariel’s dress pulling against my thighs. “Why are they killing themselves?”

  Mother stares down at the clenched hands in her lap. “Every year, we choose six students, three boys and three girls, and we give them a concentrated dose of the same drugs every other student gets in the food.” Mother’s eyes go hazy, like she’s remembering a fond memory. “The serum is the most important thing I’ve ever done. It makes people smarter, stronger. Whoever takes it excels at everything he or she attempts. In the past, students who were given this serum went on to do extraordinary things. They became world leaders. Politicians. Writers and artists. The results have been so impressive that the Med Center’s board of trustees encouraged me to tweak the formula. To see if I could stretch the limits of human ability even further.

  “Unfortunately, this brought about unsettling side effects. Loss of fear translated into a loss of all emotion. The early subjects we tested became dangerous. I warned the board that the serum wasn’t ready, but they insisted on moving forward with our next stage of trials.”

  Mother pauses. She presses her lips together so tightly that they seem to disappear into her face.

  “I was scared, Charlotte,” she says. “You have to understand that. I was worried that I was unleashing monsters into the world. So I built a fail-safe into the early doses of the serum—the ones given to Ariel and Devon and Zoe. It was designed to kick in the moment the subject did something inhumane.” Her eyes flick to mine, guilty. “If she burned down an animal shelter, or broke another student’s arm, or killed a security guard, she would—”

  “Commit suicide,” I finish.

  “It was supposed to be a precaution,” Mother says weakly. She closes her eyes. “I never thought … a
ll of them.”

  I rub my hands against my thighs. It wasn’t all of them. I took the serum, too, and I’m still here.

  I see the same thought flicker across Mother’s eyes. “The girls were dosed first. Once we saw the side effects, we discontinued their treatment, tweaked the formula. I don’t know which dose you took,” she explains. “The doses given to the male subjects were fine. Maybe—”

  “You said there was an antidote.”

  “There is,” Mother says. “But it hasn’t been tested yet.”

  I look over the rows of cots holding sleeping kids. Tubes twisting away from noses. Strange machines beeping. The boy with the metal halo around his head twitches in his sleep. The girl with the burns up the side of her face moans softly.

  “Human trials are imperative,” Mother continues. “The students at Weston are the sons and daughters of the most powerful people in the world. We couldn’t use them, so we found … others. People who no one would miss. They all volunteered,” she says as though that could possibly make this better.

  “So they’re guinea pigs?”

  “I know it seems monstrous to you, but we aren’t hurting them. We’ve given them gifts. How many of these kids, in their old lives, would have a chance to be part of something extraordinary?”

  I look out over the cots, trying to see what my mother sees when she looks at them. Gifts. Extraordinary.

  “One of our patients got loose several weeks ago,” Mother explains.

  “Patient?” I repeat. “Your missing asset was a kid?”

  Mother nods. “That’s why I was gone—I spent the last few days trying to locate her. She—well, many of them can be dangerous.”

  The girl with the burned face lies a few feet away, her chest rising and falling beneath a thin blanket. I stand, examining her under the harsh fluorescent light. Her eyelids flicker while she sleeps. Beneath the puckered, blackened skin, she doesn’t look any older than me.

  “How was she dangerous?” I ask.

  “That’s classified.”