“Do you remember your family?” Thirty-one asks.
I open my mouth but I do not answer. An image of my grandfather flashes through my head, standing next to the stove, stirring a pot of spaghetti and asking me about my latest article for the school paper. But then the memory shifts and he’s curled in a tight ball on the floor of a cell, rocking back and forth, moaning in pain and fear.
My grandfather was the one who told me about the Montauk Project in the first place—and now they’re using him as leverage so I’ll work for them, knowing that the threat to his life is enough to keep me in line.
“I don’t know why I remember mine,” Thirty-one says when I don’t respond. “I just do. I can . . . There are flashes of my mom. I had a sister. She was ten. We were close.”
I stare down at the floor, at the way the black tiles meet the white ones in never-ending diamonds. “When were you taken?”
“A year ago, I think. Time gets muddled down there. You know.”
I do know, only guessing at the nine months that have passed since I was taken. “Still,” I say. “That’s not long. Most recruits are kidnapped earlier, put through training for longer.”
“General Walker said they couldn’t have brought me in any earlier or time would have been messed up. I’m needed for this mission, I guess.”
I look down at him. “Me too. He said it was my destiny.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know.”
“They said they needed to speed up my training,” Thirty-one says. “Maybe that’s why the brainwashing didn’t totally stick.”
His words are light but his eyes are drawn at the corners and white lines appear around his mouth. It is a mask, his casual behavior, in the same way Wes’s coldness is a mask, hiding the part of himself that the Project tried to strip away.
“This is why we can help each other. Even if it’s just to have someone we trust.”
Help each other? I think of what the Resistor told me, about how he was starting a movement against the Project. Since I’ve become a recruit, I haven’t heard or seen any evidence that he has succeeded, but a small resistance could exist. For one brief moment, I consider asking Thirty-one, consider opening up to someone in a way I haven’t in months.
There’s a muffled sound from the hallway and I automatically take a step backward, away from the bed and Thirty-one. Wes and Twenty-two will be back soon. They can’t find us questioning the Project. Wes might understand . . . at least, the old Wes would have. But Twenty-two is too much like the other recruits: unfeeling, hidden, more robot than human. I don’t know if I can trust Thirty-one, or even Wes, but I know I can’t trust her.
“We were chosen for a reason. If we’re too distracted, we will fail.” I mimic Lieutenant Andrews with his clipped, military tone.
Thirty-one stares at me, but I do not waver, keeping my expression empty, my mouth a thin line. Finally he sighs and stands up from the bed. “Right.”
He sounds disappointed, but I can’t be what he wants. I can’t be his lifeline. The only person who matters now is my grandfather. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to save him.
When Thirty-one steps closer to me I freeze, my new muscles flexing under my skin. Those hours and hours of training take over, and I have to fight the urge to twist his arm up over his back, to show him that even though he’s strong, I’m quicker. But he stops just before he can touch me and looks down into my face. He’s not much taller than I am, and even this close I do not have to tilt my head back to look at him.
He leans forward slightly, moving until his mouth is hovering right above my ear. “Tim,” he whispers.
I stop breathing.
“My name is Tim.”
He pulls back, watching my face, waiting for my reaction. I do not give anything away, but when he turns his back to me, I finally allow myself to smile. It is just a small one, a tilt of my lips, the slight pressure on my cheeks. But for the first time in nine months, it’s there.
Despite what I said to Wes earlier, I remember my name, my identity. Lydia Bentley. And so does Thirty-one . . . Tim. I had thought that all the recruits were like Wes and Twenty-two, broken and lost and cold. But maybe Tim really is who he says he is: different from the others, capable of memory, of feelings, not a mindless slave of the Montauk Project.
And maybe that means I’m not as alone as I thought.
Chapter 3
“The fund-raiser starts in less than an hour,” Wes says to the three of us as we stand in a half circle in the center of the room. The red-tinted light is gone. Right after Wes and Twenty-two returned, Tim walked over to the lamp and switched it off.
“It’s like a whorehouse in here.”
“Leave it,” Wes said. “Ly—Seventeen put it on.”
“It’s fine. The red was too overwhelming anyway,” I put in quickly, afraid someone may have noticed his
