“Yeah. You?”
“It’s my third. Lee has a ton of great ideas.” Max nodded to a guy in a backwards baseball cap with a sleeve of tattoos when he passed. “He thinks we should chuck the rule book out the window and get rid of HOOK ourselves.”
Vivienne followed him down the stairs. “Outsiders would find out about us.”
“So what?”
He had a point. If HOOK wasn’t a threat anymore, would it be so bad for outsiders to learn about the PAN?
She had to push her way past a bunch of guys to get into the crowded unfinished basement. When she and Max stopped moving, she found herself standing on top of the floor drain. A bare bulb light with a pull string swung over her head.
“Let’s get started,” a strong voice commanded from amidst the buzzing crowd. “First, I’d like to thank you all for coming.”
She shifted in search of a better view, but she was too short to see. Through the gaps between people, she caught glimpses of a man wearing jeans and a black T-shirt.
“Let’s go up front so you can see better.” Max grabbed her hand and pulled her forward.
“I know a lot of you, but it’s nice to see so many new faces in the crowd. You’ll be happy to learn that I heard from Peter this week. He wants to meet with me. It seems they are finally taking us seriously.” The delight in the man’s voice seemed to resonate with his followers. “Tonight’s meeting will be brief. I’m sure all of you have better places to be than in this musty basement on a Thursday night—except for Calvin.”
The good-natured jab received a resounding chuckle from everyone, even Vivienne. Max stopped when he reached the front of the crowd. She waved to Joel on her left.
“For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lee Somerfield.” Lee had addressed the crowd, but Vivienne felt like he was looking directly at her. “What I’m about…what I’m here to represent…is freedom.” He may have been handsome in his younger years, but it was hard to tell beneath his bushy, graying beard.
The group clapped and cheered at the welcome declaration. Their response echoed off the cinderblock walls.
“Leadership wants you to believe being part of Neverland gives you the freedom we all deserve, but I’m here to confirm what you already know: They. Are. Wrong. What kind of freedom requires you to hide away in secret for the rest of your never-ending life? What kind of freedom comes with being hunted like wild animals with no repercussions? There are evil people whose only goal is to open us up like frogs and experiment on us until we are no longer useful, or dead—whichever comes first. And yet, we are the ones in hiding.”
The group muttered in accordance with each point Lee made.
Vivienne remained silent, even though she found herself agreeing with what he had said so far. She couldn’t stop thinking of her dad and imagining what he would be saying if he was the one up on stage.
Lee lifted his hand, waiting for silence. “If HOOK was gone, we’d have no more reason to hide. My friends”—he held up a tarnished Charlie Bell—“HOOK’s time is up.”
The response was deafening.
As people began to filter out, Lee stepped down from the plywood stage directly in front of Vivienne. “You’re Vivienne Dunn, aren’t you?”
Her spine straightened. “Yeah.”
“Boy,” he laughed, “you look just like your mom. My brother and I were friends with both your parents.”
“Really?”
“It was a long time ago.” He nodded toward the handful of PAN still in the basement, speaking in low tones to one another. “Your father started this to protest Leadership’s response when my brother and I got neutralized.”
“HOOK got you?” Seeing the wrinkles that shouldn’t be on his forehead left her touching her own smooth face.
“They sure did.” In the crook of Lee’s right elbow, his veins looked like someone had traced them with a black marker. “I was young, so I was grounded. Nick wasn’t as lucky.”
“What’d Leadership do?”
Lee scratched his beard. “Nothing.”
“At all?”
He shook his head.
Vivienne touched her own arm. “HOOK tried to get me too.”
Lee drew in a carefully controlled breath. “They’re so sure we won’t retaliate that their attempts to get our DNA are becoming more brazen. Someone needs to stop them.”
She stepped close enough to see the sadness in his dark eyes. “Do you really think that’s possible?”
“If we can get enough people on our side, we can do anything.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Longest five minutes of my life.
She’d completely forgotten about Deacon. “Sorry, I gotta go.”
“You should come back again,” Lee said, extending his hand to her. “It’d mean a lot to have you here to finish what William started.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, putting her hand in his. “I’ll definitely be back.”
“Five minutes, eh?” Deacon started the vehicle and drove toward Kensington. “I was this close to coming for you.”
“Sorry,” she muttered, checking the backseat to see Ethan lying face-down. “I was talking to Lee.”
He twisted his grip on the steering wheel. “About what?”
“My dad.” She smoothed down her skirt. “Did you know Lee thinks we shouldn’t hide anymore? He wants us to go after HOOK.”
“Right now, we have one enemy, Vivienne. One. We know about them and understand how they operate. We win more often than we lose. What do you think would happen if we had hundreds or thousands of enemies? Do you honestly think the world would just accept us and our abilities?” He snorted. “Will HOOK stop their experiments because we come out of the shadows? Or will governments add to HOOK’s funding? Will our enemies disappear, or will they grow exponentially until we cannot exist? Outsiders are not as accepting of differences as we would all like to believe.”
She thought about what he said the entire drive back to campus.
“I think you’re wrong,” she told him when he stopped in front of the Hall. “The world would be a better place if people knew how much magic there was in it.”
Deacon leaned across the center console, said, “I love your optimism,” and kissed her until she forgot about everything.
“Hey, Vivienne. It’s Julie. I’ve got some important paperwork you’ll have to sign before your first mission. Could you come by sometime today?”
Vivienne stopped buttering her bagel long enough to check her watch. “How’s right now?” Despite going to bed late, she had woken in a tangle of sheets an hour earlier than usual, drenched in sweat. Thinking of her dreams the night before made her blush.
“Perfect. I’ll see you shortly.”
She turned to see Emily jumping up and down in the kitchen. “What’s gotten into you?”
Emily clapped her hands beneath her chin. “I wanna hear all about your date!”
“I’m kinda in a hurry,” she said between bites, hoping to delay this conversation for as long as possible. She and Deacon were going to try having a relationship, but they’d gotten distracted before discussing what exactly that meant. “Julie needs me to sign something before I leave for Maryland.”