“What will happen then?” I demand. “You’ll keep going through the TM until your body falls apart, until you’re killed, like Tim? Is that what you want?”
“What else is there? You don’t know. Not like we know.” Her eyes dart toward Wes, then back to me. “You weren’t tortured. You didn’t have to . . .”
“You’re right, I wasn’t tortured. But Wes was, and he’s not choosing to remain loyal to the Project. He’s choosing to get out.”
“There is no way out!” She screams the words. “They’re everything, they’re everywhere!”
“There is a way—” I start to speak but she cuts me off.
“You’ve brainwashed him,” she says harshly. “You’ve made him doubt the Project. It’s your fault they want him dead.”
I rear back and Wes touches my elbow. Twenty-two glares at me, so hard I can feel the heat of it.
“It’s not Lydia’s fault,” Wes says. “She hasn’t done anything other than help me change, and help me realize that they don’t have the right to control us.”
“Lydia,” Twenty-two spits out. “Her name. You all knew it. Why? How?”
“Because I told him.”
Wes’s grip on my arm tightens. He looks down at me briefly before he turns back to face Twenty-two. She is watching him with a desperation I didn’t know she was capable of. “Because for the first time in years, I cared about someone else’s name.” Wes’s voice is steady. “For the first time in years someone asked me what mine was. She helped me remember.”
“Wes?” She half chokes on the name.
I clench my hands into fists, not liking the way she says it, as though it belongs to her.
“And you could remember too,” Wes says, “if we stop the Project now.”
The gun drops half an inch. “What are you talking about?”
Wes lets go of my arm and steps forward. Twenty-two swings her gaze to his, her eyes widening, her mouth parting as he draws near.
“There’s a way to erase everything that happened,” he says. “There’s a way for us to go back to the beginning.”
“What do you mean?” she whispers. I cannot hear her over the wind and the waves, but I watch her mouth the words. I take a step closer, but as soon as I move she lifts the gun again, her eyes narrowing on mine.
“Okay, okay.” I hold my arms up like a criminal. “I’ll stay here. I’m not moving.”
Wes raises his hand, moving it downward in a soothing motion. It works to distract her, and Twenty-two stares at him. “Don’t you want to make it all go away?” he asks. “Don’t you want to stop being a recruit?”
Her recruit mask cracks and breaks apart, and I can suddenly see the longing in her eyes. “Yes. It’s all I want.”
“What was your name?”
She swallows. “I don’t remember.”
“Think. What’s your name?”
She opens her mouth and a low sound escapes.
“What?” He leans forward. “Say it louder.”
“Althea. My name is Althea.”
“Greek,” I say, and her eyes swing to me. She is blinking rapidly.
“My mother was Greek. She . . . died. I had no family. They found me.” She raises one of her hands and presses it to her forehead. I can see it shaking, even through the fog that surrounds her.
“Althea.” Wes says her name. “We can send you back to your own time. What year were you taken from?”
“Two thousand and four.”
“You can go back there. We’ll send you back, and you’ll rejoin the time line. We’ll destroy the TM and then no one will be hunting you. You’ll be free. You won’t forget the Project, but you can have your life back again. Create a new life. A family, maybe.”
“A family,” she repeats, as though it is both sacred and forbidden, a word that must be whispered instead of shouted.
“Give me the gun.” Wes holds his hand out. “Help us.”
“I . . .” She looks at him, down at the gun, over at me. “I don’t know how.”
“Just let go.”
She stares at him blankly.
“I understand that it’s hard,” Wes tries again. “The Project has been making choices for us for too long. But this is your choice. They can’t do it for you, not this time.”
I watch her wrestling with the decision, her brown eyes darkening, her small, compact body braced against the haze that rolls in off the ocean. It is not the choice that is hard, it is the making of it, the act of remembering freedom. She closes her eyes, her jaw tightens, and then she slowly drops her arm. Wes takes the last few steps to reach her and forces the gun from her limp hand. She doesn’t fight him, her body swaying toward his.
He turns to face me. “Let’s go.”
I nod and open the door of the truck.
“We should use the bunker in Sector Three-J,” Twenty-two—Althea—interrupts me.
She sits between us on the bench seat of Wes’s truck, listening to me fill her in on our plan, her back straight, her eyes on the windshield. The old, nearly broken-down vehicle lurches along the road, whining over hills and vibrating under us.
“It makes more sense to use Four-B. It’s closer to the entrance, and less commonly used by the Facility,” I explain.
“That’s because it’s more exposed. The army base patrols that area. Three-J is the better option.”
“The base patrols it in the evenings. It’s morning now. This is the quietest time for the camp, but the Facility will be all over the J entrance. We’re using Four-B.”
“But it isn’t—”
“Lydia’s right,” Wes says. “We need to focus more on the Facility than the army base.”
“Fine.” Althea crosses her arms over her chest. “Keep going.”
I try not to sigh.
Before we reach Camp Hero, Wes pulls the truck off the main road, following a small beach path and parking behind a sand dune. “We’re on foot now,” he says as he turns off the engine and opens his door.
Wes swings the canvas knapsack containing our bombs onto
