Cristina’s face is placid as she slides the gate closed again, the cattle prod now inert in her hand. I struggle to get up, but my body refuses. Shaking, I collapse while she snaps the locks shut again—one, two, three. She doesn’t bother to say anything to me. She’s not bothered at all.
Through the film of tears, I see Phil and Beckett at the table with the medical supplies. Beckett is sitting in a chair, and Phil leans over him. A surge of fear turns my stomach and I roll onto my knees.
Over my body’s revolt, I can hear voices, Cristina and Phil speaking softly. I have to be stronger than this. I need to know what’s going on. I wipe my face harshly with the edge of my shirt and crawl closer to the fence.
“Just take his vitals and move on,” Cristina snaps.
“Shouldn’t I do a CBC too? Just in case?” Phil moves something on the desk, but I can’t see around him.
“Fine. But hurry.”
“Hold still,” Phil says to Beckett.
Beckett cries out and I flinch, my hands reaching out to clutch the fence. Then I see the syringe in Phil’s hand. Of course, a CBC—a blood draw—the first step. I don’t know what they are planning, but this is minor pain, nothing compared to what will probably happen next.
“Don’t forget the hood.” Cristina nods at the table impatiently.
Phil looks at it blankly for a moment. Then hastily he gathers up what looks like a handful of black cloth. “Is this part necessary?” he says.
Beckett looks from one to the other, then to the door. I know what he’s thinking—can practically see his inner dialogue writ large on his desperate face—but I’m helpless. I can’t tell what Cristina and Phil are fighting about, and I can’t stop Beckett from making a huge mistake. I was wrong to suggest it—our captors are literally standing right next to him, and Zeus is lying against the wall. This is not the right time.
“We didn’t go to all this trouble not to use it.” Cristina’s voice is calm now, but there’s steel in it.
“You aren’t going to be using it!” Now Phil is clenching the black cloth.
“Oh, is that the problem?” Cristina leans forward, her hands on her hips. “Are you afraid of—”
Before I can warn him or beg him not to, Beckett lurches out of his chair, knocking Phil to the floor. Cristina’s hand moves to the cattle prod, but before she can activate it, Zeus uncoils and springs. Beckett turns to the side, taking the brunt of Zeus’s charge on his shoulder.
I have risen to my feet without realizing it, using the fence to pull myself upright. “Beckett!” I scream.
Incredibly, he still tries to stagger toward the closed blast door, even with Zeus’s jaws locked around his arm.
Phil stands up, looking more aggrieved than hurt. He takes a step forward, but Cristina stops him. “Wait.”
Zeus keeps tugging and shaking Beckett’s arm, but I see he isn’t breaking the skin. He’s simply holding Beckett, not wounding him, and Beckett is getting tired—not enough food, water, or rest. His body doesn’t have the fuel to keep fighting.
Cristina is right. Phil doesn’t need to expend any energy subduing us. Beckett and I, we are already defeated.
The second Beckett surrenders, Zeus releases his arm. Without a command, he returns to Cristina’s side, sits, and resumes his guard.
Cristina looks at Phil. “See, they’re ready. Go ahead.”
He picks something up from the table and walks over to Beckett. “That was stupid. Give me your hands right now.”
When Beckett sticks his arms out in front of him, they are as stiff and awkward as the arms of a puppet. Phil wraps a zip tie around Beckett’s wrists and pulls it tight. Beckett drops his arms, and his head droops too. He doesn’t look at Phil or Cristina or me. That could have been me, I want to tell him. I would have tried too.
But I don’t have a chance to tell him anything. Phil pushes Beckett in front of him. “Come on. No more drama.”
Then he picks up a sagging tote bag from beside the table and follows, shoving Beckett whenever he slows. Petty little bully. I will gouge Phil’s eyes from his head and swallow them whole.
“Wait.” Cristina bends down and scoops up the black cloth hood from the floor. She slips it into the top of the bag.
“Thanks,” Phil says, reaching out and opening the completely ordinary door.
“I’ve got the screen pulled up,” she tells him. “If you’ve got the list of questions, everything’s in place.”
All I can see in the open doorway is darkness, a creeping penumbra bleeding into the thin light of the lab.
Then Phil pushes Beckett into that void and it swallows them both.
CHAPTER
20
ZOE
GLENN HAS DROPPED me back off at my parents’ house and driven away, but as I stand on the front steps, I can’t stop arguing with him in my head. He thinks Ava might really be in trouble and I should run. Why? Because I was so much safer in Texas? That’s where I was in the first place when my email was hacked. Good thinking, Glenn.
I unlock the front door. If Ava was taken, kidnapped, they could come after me. There’s no way I can go back to the home I share with Andrew and Emma. Not while Ava is missing. I have brought enough darkness into their lives.
Stepping into the front hall, I pull the door shut and flip the dead bolt. Alone again.
If I were in Texas, it would be time to pick Emma up from preschool. We might head to the playground, where Felicia and Bethany could tell me all the latest gossip, or we might swing by the library. When we got home, I would fix Emma a little snack and we might read together, snuggled up on the sofa. I’d have a load of laundry to do, or some prep work for dinner. There’d be a purpose for me in every room, something I could do to make life easier and more pleasant for my family.
In this house, I’m in the way and nothing is restful to the eye. Even the decorative touches, like the spiky sculpture in the corner, are hostile.
It is so frustrating to be home by myself, trapped. No car, nowhere to go if I had one.
This is not the house where I grew up, but it has the same suffocating feel, as if it is saying, Be quiet. Don’t touch. Sit down. As a teenager, I reacted by shouting, slamming doors, breaking things. I painted my bedroom walls black, ruining the beige carpet. I borrowed the car without asking, failed science classes, and never cleaned up after myself. Anything to get a reaction. Anything to prove I existed.
Spending this morning investigating Ava’s house has made me feel invisible again. She’s not an impostor like I am. Everything inside her house is hers, not someone else’s. She doesn’t have to prove her usefulness or defend her position. She defines her position, and everything in her house has to prove its usefulness to her.
I am tired of sneaking around, tired of pretending to be good. I suck at it anyway.
It’s afternoon and I don’t have a car, so I go to the kitchen, pull a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, and uncork it. A quick rummage through the cabinets and I have a wineglass and an unopened can of fancy Virginia peanuts. The kind given as a gift by people who don’t know you. Makes sense. Not even Ava and I really know our parents.
I have no interest in sitting in their leather chairs, but I try to get comfortable on a modern chaise lounge. It could use more stuffing, arms, and throw pillows, but I put my feet up, pull out my phone, and start Googling the words I found in Ava’s study—“Mindszenty,” “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape,” and “MK-ULTRA.” A slug of wine, a handful of nuts, and another page of information I’m struggling to understand. There’s a lot of medical jargon and abbreviations. Ava is so freaking smart; she probably figured this out in seconds. She never failed her science class or needed a tutor for French.