I take the badge from him and slip it over my head. It hangs halfway down my chest, almost the same length as Wes’s watch.
“We need to hurry,” he says.
“Wait.” I reach up to touch his sleeve. My arm is starting to throb, a low, dull ache. “I need to know that I can pass as a recruit.”
His eyes travel up and down my body and I try not to blush under his direct gaze. “The black sweats aren’t perfect, but they’ll do. It helps that Seventeen had reddish hair too, though it doesn’t matter much—she spent most of her time at the Center in this time period. No one should recognize her in the Facility in 2012.” He frowns. “Besides, it’s not like anyone pays much attention to us. Keep your eyes down, follow my lead, and you’ll be fine.”
“What’s the Center?” I’ve never heard him mention anything other than the Facility in Montauk.
“A training base in New York City.”
I hold my hands up. “Wait. I thought the Facility was the headquarters of the Montauk Project. Are you telling me there are more places like this?”
He must hear the dismay in my voice because he tilts his head down toward me. “Not exactly. The Center is where the recruits are trained. After the . . . reconditioning takes place, recruits are sent to New York for the other stages of training. The Facility here isn’t big enough to house everyone, though this is where the paranormal experiments take place. And where the time machine is.”
“The other stages of training . . . you mean tutoring, survival, and combat.” I say the words like a student reciting a lesson, and Wes smiles a little. I know we’re both remembering that moment in 1944 when he first told me about the Recruitment Initiative—the branch of the Montauk Project that kidnaps and brainwashes children into their puppets.
“So the kids are initially brought to the Facility here, then after they’re . . .” Like Wes, I hesitate. The only word that comes to mind is broken, but I can’t say that out loud. “. . . brainwashed, they’re brought to the Center for the rest of training.”
Wes nods.
“Why would Seventeen spend so much time there then? She had to have been trained years ago.”
Wes starts walking again, and I move with him, struggling to navigate the dark forest. “The Center is also an outpost for recruits when we’re in the city. There are sleeping quarters and weapon rooms. It’s usually where we stop off before we go on any mission.”
“But you must travel all over the country. Why just New York?”
“It’s close to Montauk. We’re less noticeable in a city, and we can travel in and out more easily.” His voice changes as he says, “And it’s where many of the recruits were found. There are a lot of homeless kids in New York who no one will miss.”
Kids like him. “Wes . . .”
“We shouldn’t talk anymore. We’re almost there.”
I bite my lip to keep from saying anything else.
Sometimes I feel like Wes is changing—opening up and letting me in. And other times—like now—he just shuts down. He has been living with this life for so long that I’m afraid it’s like when a broken bone heals the wrong way. The only way to fix it is to rebreak it and start over from the beginning.
But I don’t know if Wes will ever be willing to relive those memories—not even to be whole again.
We walk through the woods until we reach one of the old bunkers. It looks like the one my grandfather loved to visit, the one I snuck into a few weeks ago. There’s a wide, sealed door that’s set in the base of a small hill. Two concrete wings frame the entrance on either side, then taper down to the ground.
“There’s one other thing.” Wes’s voice is even lower than a whisper, and he constantly scans the woods around us. “While we’re in the Facility, we have to act like strangers. You can’t react to anything that happens in there. You have to hide all your emotions.”
“I can do it.”
His black eyes find mine. “I know you can.”
Without another word, he steps forward and slides his ID badge into an almost hidden crevice near the bunker. The cement door glides open quickly and noiselessly. We slip through, and it slides shut behind us with a smooth humming sound.
We’re in a small, narrow space. It’s completely dark, completely silent. But even without light, Wes moves easily toward one of the walls. I listen for his footsteps and follow as best I can. In the blackness, I feel him take my hand. He guides it up to the keycard around my neck, then gently tugs. Taking his cue, I step forward and touch the wall in front of me. The cement is rough, like sandpaper on my fingers. I trace the grooves until I find a small slit in the wall. I push my card into it.
There’s a low beeping sound and a light above us flashes green. A door swings open in the concrete, revealing a long staircase on the other side.
Wes goes first. I can hear his steady footsteps in front of me as we descend into the Facility. Somehow it seems even darker down here. With each step, I feel my heart pounding in my chest, my throat. All
