“Thanks.”
He nods and makes his way to the tree line. Wes gives me one last look before he follows him, and then Twenty-two and I are alone.
I expect her to say something, but she just sinks back down to the ground, cross-legged with her hands folded in her lap.
We are silent for a minute, then two, then ten, and she seems content to sit there, staring at nothing. But I am getting bored, and the old me, the Lydia who’d wanted to be a journalist, who’d wandered down into that open bunker at Camp Hero just because I needed answers, has never been very comfortable with silence.
“So you’re not going to try and kill me again?”
She shakes her head, facing the trees. “Eleven said I couldn’t.”
“He did?”
“He said that you were too important to the mission, and if I killed you then he’d leave me here alone.”
“It seems like you’d rather be alone.”
She turns her head, and although we are several feet away from each other, I see the animosity in her gaze. “I’d rather you be gone. And the other one. But Eleven and I will complete this mission together, just as we have all the others.”
I scoot closer to her, ignoring the glare she gives me. “Exactly how many missions could you have been on together? W—Eleven introduced himself to you in the hotel room like you’d never met.”
She lifts one tiny shoulder. It is deceptively small; I have felt the strength in it when she held me pinned with the knife. “Five. Maybe seven. He was introducing himself to the two of you, not me.”
I feel my neck and face start to burn. “You’ve spoken before this.”
“Of course we have.”
Wes was lying to me. I squeeze my hands into fists, picturing the two of them in different eras, relying on each other to stay alive. I don’t know why I feel so betrayed. It’s not the first lie he’s told, or even the worst.
“Not that we needed to speak much.” With each word, her voice grows more and more bitter. “Recruits complete their missions. We don’t need to discuss every tiny thing that happens. It’s you and Thirty-one who are so insistent on opening your mouths.”
“Just because we’re not like you doesn’t mean we’re not capable of seeing this through.”
“You have no idea.” Her eyes flash. “What do you think happens if we get caught out here? We’re not regular criminals. We have no identities. The law wasn’t made to protect people like us. We’re ghosts. If the Secret Service doesn’t shoot us immediately, then they’ll torture us to try to find out who we’re working for. How long do you think you’ll last? How long before you spill about the Project and your sad little life? I give it an hour. Maybe two, if you’re feeling really strong. Do you think the Project will rescue you then? I don’t care if you’re the special one. It won’t matter. At that point you’ll just be a liability. They’ll go back to the hospital on the day you’re supposed to be born and shoot your mother in the head.”
She is on her knees, leaning toward me. I press shaking fingers into the moss as I inch backward.
“Thirty-one remembers his dad. You weren’t even surprised by that. There is no way you both could have gone through what we did and still remember. You don’t know what it’s like to feel electricity shooting through you, burning you alive. You don’t know how it feels to have water poured in your face, to think you’re drowning for hours and hours.” She looks nothing like a recruit now, her eyes bulging, her upper lip curled.
“You’re right,” I whisper. “I don’t.”
She sits back, running a hand over her face.
I stand up slowly. Her words run through me like ice water, making my joints feel stiff and frozen. I know we are in danger out here; I have been briefed on what could happen if we’re caught. I even took a training course on tactics for withstanding torture. But I’m not ready to hear the truth of our situation out loud.
Twenty-two stares down at the ground, one open palm pressed to her forehead as she tries to regain control. I suddenly need to be out of this clearing, away from her. I pick the plastic container up out of the supplies from the barn. “I’ll just go get water,” I say. She ignores me.
Before I leave the clearing, I grab the shotgun, tucking it underneath my arm.
Tim is standing knee-deep in the stream when I push through the trees and onto the tall bank. He has found a natural pool, where the water is still and glass-like this time of night. Wes is standing on rocks near the shore and when he sees me he puts his finger to his lips.
Tim lowers his hands into the water, so gradually that it’s hard to see if he’s moving at all. His fingertips break the surface, not even making a ripple, then slowly, slowly, sink down until he’s submerged to his wrists. I see a large catfish nearby, spinning in lazy circles. Tim moves his fingers in small waves and the catfish comes closer. He waits until it is right on top of his hand, and suddenly there is an eruption of water as he hurls it toward the bank.
Wes catches the slippery fish as though they have done this hundreds of times, bends over, and bashes a rock against its head. The catfish bleeds red, and the color leaks onto Wes’s hands, a watery pink against his skin. “Finally.” Tim wipes his brow with his hand, flinging drops of water onto his cheeks and eyelashes. “I thought we’d never get one.”
“We can’t cook it,” I say. “No fire.”
“We’ll eat it raw.” He pushes through the stream and climbs up onto the bank next to Wes. “Now that there’s not as much pollution in the
