“They’ll slow us down. If we kill them, it’ll distract the Secret Service. We’ll be able to get away.”
I feel the blood drain from my face as I think back to the fund-raiser, to the way she touched my arm and talked about my parents so lovingly. I knew she was acting, but I was still taken in by her, lulled into thinking we were on the same side. She tricked me, with her soft voice and her words, and without meaning to I had started to equate her with Bea. I had started to trust her.
All along she must have been planning on killing me and Tim so they’d have a better shot at survival. But Wes wouldn’t agree to that. Would he?
I close my eyes. I once thought I would love this boy forever, and now I’m wondering if he’s capable of plotting my murder.
When I look up Wes is staring right at me. He tips his head forward as though he is trying to tell me something, but I just hold his gaze, letting him see my anger, my confusion.
“Let her go,” he repeats. His black eyes flicker from the knife to my face to the tense set of Twenty-two’s shoulders.
Tim plants his feet and lifts up the shotgun. Maybe Twenty-two didn’t see it before, or maybe she cannot even fathom the idea that Tim or I would be a threat. “Drop the knife or I’ll shoot you.”
“Take care of this,” Twenty-two snaps at Wes.
“The only way we’ll get out of here is if we work together.” He sounds different now, more soothing, less cold, though he does not shift his weight from his forward stance.
“It’s their fault we’re here in the first place.” I feel moisture hit my cheek as she spits out the words. It is a shock to hear her so angry, so emotional. “They screwed up the mission. They blew our cover. They’re too slow. Too inexperienced. We have to get rid of them before they get us killed too.”
Wes puts his hand up. “Remember what Walker said.”
“Oh right, destiny.” Her voice is thick with sarcasm. “She’s the special one. She has to make it out alive.”
I picture General Walker sitting across from me in that cell, his hair speckled with gray, his large frame imposing as he leaned forward so urgently. I figured it was something he told all the recruits, that our destiny was to go on certain missions. But what does the special one mean? Am I different from the rest of them somehow?
Twenty-two’s hand tightens, the point of the knife biting into my skin. Her other arm is wrapped tight around my chest. “It’s not true. She’s just the same as us. Worse, even. They’re dead weight, Eleven. If they don’t die now, then we will later.”
I breathe slowly in and out. She may be a skilled recruit, but I am no longer a scared girl, waiting for someone to save me. I lock my muscles. All I need is one second, one chance.
“Do you think we want to be here?” Tim actually laughs, though the sound is empty. “We’re not like you. We know there are people out there who miss us. We’re not mindless drones of the Project.”
Wes’s face is like stone, his mouth a pressed line. I think of Tag, his best friend from his time on the streets, who took us in when we were in 1989 and treated Wes like a long lost brother. I want to tell Tim he’s wrong about Wes, maybe even about Twenty-two, but I don’t dare move. She is angrier now, and bound to make a mistake.
The sunlight coming in through the boards is getting brighter by the minute, picking up the lighter brown highlights in Tim’s hair, making Wes’s skin seem golden. I wait, my muscles aching, for the moment Twenty-two lessens her grip.
“When did they take you in?” She demands from Tim. “A year ago? I’ve been here for six years. You have no idea . . .” She swallows hard, dropping the knife by barely a centimeter, but I am ready. I grab her wrist and spin until I have her bent over, her arm twisted behind her back, the knife fallen in the dirt.
“We have no idea what?” I grind the words out.
“What they’re capable of,” Wes answers softly. He reaches down to sweep the knife up off the floor.
I let go of Twenty-two and she straightens, stepping away from me. Her olive skin is slick with sweat, her brown eyes wild. Like Wes, she doesn’t know how to handle her emotions, and her anger is a simmering pot that doesn’t boil but explodes.
Now I know why she is so mad. It’s not just that Tim and I are inexperienced, or that General Walker wants me protected for some reason. It’s that we are not like her or Wes and she knows it. Even though Tim was tortured and brainwashed, even though I watched them kidnap my grandfather, we have not been broken by the Project and therefore we have not lost ourselves completely.
“We have no choice in this either.” I push up the sleeve of my T-shirt, revealing a small raised mark on my upper arm. It is the mark of the traveler, the place where I was injected with the time-traveling serum. “I’ve had this scar since I was a baby. They’ve been planning to bring me in my entire life. I wasn’t taken off the street. I have a family. But I was destined to end up here, just like you. I never had a chance.”
Wes—the one tasked with bringing me in, the one who lied about loving me in order to complete a mission—turns his face away.
Twenty-two doesn’t soften. “You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to forget everything and everyone you loved. To know that the Project is all consuming, that they will hunt you down no matter what happens. You learned your combat and your history lessons and
