The bridge’s girl defender goes down as someone tears off her second flag, but she takes one of the red flags with her. For a second, the five remaining players are a dancing mass of limbs, then two Red Riders break free.
I signal to Audrey and Yen, and we burst through the underbrush, scrambling to the top of the ravine. The other teams are already running after each other, creating a perfect opening along the side of the gym where the Dead Philosophers have hidden their prize—aka an RTC water bottle with “Dead Philosophers” written on it in masking tape.
“There, go!” someone shouts in our direction. We’ve been spotted, and chaos breaks loose.
I outmaneuver one of the Red Riders and snatch the bottle from under his fingers. A second defender lunges for me, and I toss the bottle to Yen as I run.
Audrey, who’s hung back, takes off over the bridge. We still need to get the bottle to our team captain—in this case Alanna, who is sitting the game out with a cold—and have it verified with the student council seniors who act as the official judges. And then I need to hope my defensive squad and second and third offensive teams have done their parts, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Even the best-tested plans depend on mere humans to carry them out.
Yen lets out a holler as we make it across the bridge and start down the path to the dorm that’s serving as home base.
“Now!” I tell her, and she passes the water bottle to Audrey, who tucks it under her shirt.
Coming out of the grove into the overcast sunshine, I scan the grounds. Home base is right ahead, but getting there won’t be easy. Kyle and a senior girl are co-captains of the Dead Philosophers, and they’ve stationed several people around the dorm perimeter. The only way we’re going to get Audrey through is for Yen and me to draw their attention.
“Break,” I say, hoping they remember the plan.
I turn right, putting on an extra burst of speed, Yen at my side like she’s protecting my flags. Together, we pull the opposing team as far from Audrey as we can while she aims for Alanna, who’s drinking tea and talking with the other team captains as she cheers us on.
Then, from behind, Kyle yells, “Go for Audrey! We’ve got them.”
Spinning around, I see Kyle and another guy charging us down. Damn it. Yen and I split, and Audrey takes off, realizing our ruse didn’t go as planned.
Luckily, several members of the fourth team are also running this way, chased by more members of the Red Riders. The dorm quad erupts in colorful confusion as green, red, blue and yellow flags fly. A whoop goes through the crowd, and I see another of our teammates is racing over with the fourth team’s prize water bottle.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kyle yells. “They snagged two?”
I grin, egging him on, and he pushes his legs faster. No one seems to know which of us has the bottle hidden, and I wait for Audrey to collapse in front of Alanna in the “safe zone” with it before easing up.
“Hernandez, you are going down.” Kyle grabs for my flag, and his foot snares my ankle.
We both end up going down, hitting the cold grass. Kyle falls on top of me, forcing air out of my lungs. It occurs to me, just briefly, how close he is. His elbow digging into my back. His legs pressing against mine. His face inches away. Despite the October chill, he’s been running, and I can smell his skin. It’s like being gassed—it does funny things to my insides.
He seems to notice too, a flush spreading over his face as our eyes meet. Then he recovers and grabs one of my flags before I can crawl away.
“Damn you!” I laugh to cover the slight tremor in my voice.
Now he’s the one grinning. “Oh, shut up. Your team snagged two prizes, and we’ve still got ten minutes until time’s called. I should take your other flag.”
“Not a chance.” I fling myself forward as Kyle starts to get up, and grab hold of his ankle. He falls back down, landing on his knees. Crawling as fast as I can over the grass, I reach for his closest flag, but he rolls out of the way.
Kyle blows hair out of his face. “This is what I get for helping you with that Candide paper?” He lunges at my last flag. This time I roll, and he ends up smacking me in the butt.
“That’s enough, you two,” Alanna calls, laughing at us. “Get a room!”
I climb to my knees. Through my veil of hair, I see Kyle’s face has turned red. That makes me laugh too as I head over to the out-of-bounds area.
Pushing sweaty hair off my forehead, I sit on the dorm stairs to watch the rest of the game unfold. Kyle plops next to me. His knee touches mine, and I try not to look at that spot where our jeans meet. Instead, I bury my hands in my sweatshirt sleeves for warmth. I want to crack some joke about rolling on the grass with him, but my tongue is dry.
Kyle clears his throat, the blood slowly draining from his cheeks. “I can’t believe you got two. Chase told me you single-handedly came up with this whole complicated strategy.”
I ball my sweatshirt cuffs into my fists. “Hardly single-handed or complicated. I’ve just played with some really clever people before.” Talk about an understatement, but especially given what I know about Kyle now—and what he might suspect about me—I can’t downplay my skills enough.
He elbows me, and I wobble in place then return the gesture. “Watch it there, boy.”
“Me? You’re the one who tried to pull my jeans off.”
Never mind elbowing, I punch his arm. “What? I did not. And it was your fault for grabbing my ass.”
“I did not grab your ass.” But the flush as he says it gives away his lie.
“You’re welcome to grab my ass because my team kicked yours.”
Kyle buries his head in his hands. “Yeah, looks that way. I bow to your brilliance, but I so did not grab your ass.”
“Whatever.” I raise my gaze to the weak sunshine fighting the cloud cover. I’ve had many conversations with Kyle since that day we bumped into each other on the bell tower, but there’s something surreal about this one.
It could be all the endorphins pumping through me because of the game. Or it could be something else—an unspoken acknowledgment that something’s changing between us. Are the teams that Kyle and I belong to far more different and serious than Good Expectations and Dead Philosophers?
I sense this question, and the threat it poses, like the falling barometric pressure.
My initial reaction to discovering Kyle’s snooping was to report him, take my orders and suck it up. But I didn’t. I’ve been trained to act independently in the field. I should be allowed to use my judgment, and my judgment is telling me to let Kyle be. If he’s also searching for X, which seems likely, he could be further along than I am. I have my spyware on his computer. Why not use it to track his thoughts and moves? So long as Kyle doesn’t know I’m on to him, he could be useful.
That letting him be means I don’t have to do anything unpleasant yet, well, that’s just a bonus. Or so I tell myself. But I’m pretty sure this is a rational plan and my feelings have nothing to do with it.
It can be both, right? A rational plan that also happens to mean I don’t need to hurt Kyle?
“So.” Kyle nudges me with his foot. “If I graciously concede to your superior strategy skills, will you return the favor and concede something else?”
“Depends on what it is.”
He fidgets with the zipper on his jacket. “I, uh, was wondering if you wanted to go somewhere sometime. Like out. I mean, dinner or a movie or something less lame.”
“Like a date out?”
“Exactly.”
I feel the air change again, not in pressure but in charge. Like there’s a storm building right around us. Everything’s alive with electricity—exhilarating and dangerous. I’m suspicious of Kyle, yet drawn to him. Wary, but giddy. Part of me is flipping out because maybe Kyle likes me. But the rest of me—the smarter me—hates myself for
it, and for knowing what I should do. After all, getting closer to Kyle is the perfect strategy if he’s the enemy after X.
But why is he giving me that opening then? Unless it’s his strategy too.
I don’t want it to be a strategy for either of us, but I have no choice except to treat it like one. Emotions suck.
Outwardly, I can do nothing to work off this conflict. I’m reduced to biting my lip to keep myself together when really I feel like I’m going to explode. And all the while, Kyle’s watching me like he might vomit.
I squeeze my hands a few times, trying to release the tension. “Yeah, I could do that for you.”
His shoulders relax, and he elbows me once more. “Very magnanimous of you.”
“Hey, if you don’t really want me to go with you…” I don’t know where to take that, so I return the elbow.
Kyle starts talking about our upcoming physics test, and I think he wants to change the subject. That’s fine because thinking about this is going to give me a headache.
“Hey, Sophia!” Alanna waves to me. “Your phone’s buzzing.”
I jump up and head over to her. I hadn’t wanted to carry my phone into the game, and I’d forgotten Alanna was watching it for me.
“Thanks,” I say, then frown at it.
Your Aunt Kate is waiting at the admin building.
I don’t have an aunt. This wasn’t part of my cover.
“I didn’t know you had an aunt nearby,” Kyle says, reading over my shoulder.
That makes two of us. I shove the phone in my pocket. “Yeah, I do. But I wasn’t expecting her to show up today.”
“Or to refer to herself in the third person?”
I cringe. “She’s weird. I guess I’d better go meet her. Later.”
I figure it out on my walk toward the administration building and groan. Fitzpatrick’s first name is Kathleen. Shit. Fitzpatrick is here. This cannot be good.
She’s waiting for me outside the entrance, and it’s completely wrong seeing her framed against the building’s homey, colonial exterior. It’s even more wrong seeing her in civilian clothes. In my mind, Fitzpatrick does not wear jeans or bright blue windbreakers or gold jewelry. Fitzpatrick belongs back home in fatigues.
Fitzpatrick definitely does not belong here with Sophia.
“Let’s walk,” she says in her gruff voice.
I almost protest because part of me is stuck as Sophia. I’m at her college, in her clothes, and just agreed to go on a date with the guy she likes. But I shake it off and return wholly to myself. It’s discomforting.
“You realize why I’m here?” she asks once we’ve left the driveway. It’s not really a question, and I refrain from answering how I want to. “We are not pleased with your report on the AnChlor attempt.”
I stuff my hands in my sleeves, refusing to believe that’s the sole reason for her visit. One, that was weeks ago. Two, there’s no way Fitzpatrick would come here on a surprise visit simply because of that. But I play along. “No one informed me that one percent of the population experiences severe allergic reactions to AnChlor.”
“Because it doesn’t matter. You should have ignored the distraction and gone on with your assignment. Why didn’t you?”
I clench my jaw. Because I couldn’t. Because I was shocked. But those are not the reasons Fitzpatrick wants to hear, even though they’re the truth. Actually, I’m pretty sure Fitzpatrick doesn’t give a damn about my reasons in the first place. Certainly no more than she gives a damn that David Cohen survived the day in spite of what I did to him.
“You are a failure.” It’s a sentence she’s uttered many times, and her mouth begins to move, to add my real name to the end of that statement like she usually does, but she catches herself. Fitzpatrick is not a failure. She won’t name me in public. “I warned everyone you would disappoint them, and I was right.”
Unclenching my jaw takes effort. “Is that why you came all this way? To tell me that?”
Fitzpatrick peers down her sunglasses at me. “No. I came all this way to make sure you understood the extent of my displeasure. Your failure reflects not only on you, but on your unit and on me. Use your remaining AnChlor, discover X’s identity and get out.”
“As I stated in my reports, I’m working on another plan that’s less risky.”
Fitzpatrick stops abruptly. Blood rushes in my ears, and I swear it’s as loud as the traffic. “Less risky for who? If you use the AnChlor correctly, it poses no risk.”
“Obviously, that’s not true, and now that I’ve used the AnChlor once, trying again would raise too many questions. I can discover X through other means without anyone else getting hurt.” For a moment, I consider telling her that I believe I’ve uncovered an enemy agent here and that using the AnChlor again is too risky for that reason too. But until I can confirm my suspicions, preferably with some hard evidence off Kyle’s computer, I’m keeping them to myself.
Fitzpatrick sneers at me. She’s the only person I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet who can do that without it looking comical. When she does it, I want to punch her.
“Anyone else getting hurt?” She repeats my words in a sickeningly sweet mockery. “You’re weak, but don’t worry your little head about people getting hurt. You’ve been on the outside for a month now. Did you realize that?” She leans closer, and her coffee breath washes over me. “You will do whatever needs to be done, and don’t fret about your conscience. You’ve been here far too long to be allowed to remember this assignment. When it’s over, we’ll scrub all the nasty details from your memory, I promise. So do your job and stop embarrassing me.”
My mouth goes dry. “What?”
“It’s SOP for agents like you who have been in the field too long and gotten their programming corrupted. Don’t act all surprised.”
“My programming isn’t corrupted.” I drop my voice as a group of people pass, but I’m not sure I believe myself. Didn’t I just have that sort of thought regarding Kyle? Conflicting emotions are bad. Liking the enemy is bad.
Yet having my memories of Sophia erased is terrifying. I’ve seen and learned and experienced so much since coming to RTC. I can’t lose it. I won’t lose it.
“I’m not corrupted,” I repeat. “I’m trying to be logical about the best strategy to use under the circumstances. Let me prove it.”
Fitzpatrick stares at me, expressionless. I’m not moving her, nor impressing her, but beyond that, I can’t tell what she’s thinking. She’s as stony outside as in. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a data stick. “You have no choice but to prove it. That’s the other reason I’m here, so I can deliver your new assignment in person. Take this.”
I flip the data stick over in my hand. “What am I supposed to do?”
“It’s a quick side project. You’re supposedly our best agent in Boston right now. Either prove you still have the nerves to do your job, or we’ll be replacing you at RTC. All the information you need is on the stick. Understood?”
I nod because I’m feeling too ill to speak properly, and I slide the data stick in my pocket.
“For the record,” Fitzpatrick adds, “I don’t trust you to pull this assignment off successfully either, but some people seem to like you. That said, you’d better consider this your last chance with them.” Then she spins around and disappears into the crowd.
Bitch. My hands ball into fists, but there’s nothing I can do. The data stick feels like a lead weight in my pocket the entire walk back to campus.
Chapter Ten
Seven Weeks Ago
From where the escalator lets us off, it’s a short walk to the formal wear department. I try not to look like I’m gaping at all the clothes, but I totally am. The mall nearest home in Pennsylvania is so small it only has one floor. Also, it’s an hour away, so my number of trips was limited. Not to mention heavily supervised.
>
“You’re the most prepared person I’ve ever met,” Audrey says, coming to a stop in a glittery aisle. “I can’t believe you don’t own a dress.”
I chew my lip, taking in the rows and rows of dresses. Oddly enough, this excites me. Fun! Pretty! Colors! Ruffles! When did I turn girly? Nine would laugh her ass off at me. I’ve even been experimenting with that stupid makeup.
I’ve been assimilated. It’s not quite as bad as corrupted, but it’s not good either.
I run my hand down a fluffy skirt. “I’ve never had a formal to go to before.”
Although I still hope to have completed my assignment well before winter, I am like Audrey said—the type to be prepared. It had just never occurred to me before to be prepared for a formal dance.
I’m not even sure how I ended up agreeing to go to one. Kyle asking me out has changed everything and nothing. We did grab dinner, but things have stayed similar to what they were before. Besides kissing him, that is. That part is definitely different. And nice. Very nice.
Not as nice as it could be though, because every time I touch Kyle, I wonder who I’m really touching. And I wonder if the next time our bodies meet, it won’t feel so good. If one day I’ll need to trade the gentle explorations of his skin for all-out blows.
And then I pull away, confused and trying hard to hide my turmoil.
Then there’s the dance. Somewhere, in the middle of this week’s insanity, it was just assumed I’d go to an end-of-the-semester formal with Kyle. I don’t know much about it except the men’s and women’s track teams are co-hosting it, which means Kyle will be there and he expects me to be his date. It’s weeks away yet, so far off. If I’m still dating Kyle then, what does that mean for us and my mission?
I have no way to answer that question, so when Audrey suggested I needed to go dress shopping, it was easiest to simply say yes. Sophia would be excited, after all. And part of me is very much so too.
Bad, Sophia. Bad, Seven.
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