Delalieu shakes his head at Adam.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you all this. I’m sure it’s painful to hear, especially considering your history with Ella. It’s not fair that you were pulled into Paris’s games. He never should’ve p—”
“Whoa, whoa— Wait. What games?” Adam says, stunned. “What are you talking about?”
Delalieu runs a hand across his sweaty forehead. He looks like he’s melting, crumbling under pressure. Maybe someone should get him some water.
“There’s too much,” he says wearily. “Too much to tell. Too much to explain.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I—”
“I need you to try,” Adam says, his eyes flashing. “Are you saying our relationship was fake? That everything she said—everything she felt was fake?”
“No,” Delalieu says quickly, even as he uses his shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from his face. “No. As far as I’m aware, her feelings for you were as real as anything else. You came into her life at a particularly difficult time, and your kindness and affection no doubt meant a great deal to her.” He sighs. “I only mean that it wasn’t coincidence that bothof Paris’s boys fell in love with the same girl. Paris liked toying with things. He liked cutting things open to study them. He liked experiments. And Paris pit you and Warner against each other onpurpose.
“He planted the soldier at your lunch table who let slip that Warner was monitoring a girl with a lethal touch. He sent another to speak with you, to ask you about your history with her, to appeal to your protective nature by discussing Aaron’s plans for her— Do you remember? You were persuaded, from every angle, to apply for the position. When you did, Paris pulled your application from the pile and encouraged Aaron to interview you. He then made it clear that you should be chosen as her cellmate. He let Aaron think he was making all his own decisions as CCR of Sector 45—but Paris was always there, manipulating everything. I watched it happen.”
Adam looks so stunned it takes him a moment to speak. “So... he knew? My dad always knew about me? Knew where I was—what I was doing?”
“Knew?” Delalieu frowns. “Parisorchestratedyour lives. That was the plan, from the beginning.” He looks at Nazeera. “All the children of the supreme commanders were to become case studies. You were engineered to be soldiers. You and James,” he says to Adam, “were unexpected, but he made plans for you, too.”
“What?” Adam goes white. “What’s his plan for me and James?”
“This, I honestly don’t know.”
Adam sits back in his chair, looking suddenly ill.
“Where is Ella now?” Winston says sharply. “Do you know where they’re keeping her?”
Delalieu shakes his head. “All I know is that she can’t be dead.”
“What do you mean shecan’tbe dead?” I ask. “Why not?”
“Ella’s and Emmaline’s powers are critical to the regime,” he says. “Critical to the continuation of everything we’ve been working toward. The Reestablishment was built with the promise of Ella and Emmaline. Without them, Operation Synthesis means nothing.”
Castle bolts upright. His eyes are wide. “Operation Synthesis,” he says breathlessly, “has to do withElla?”
“The Architect and the Executioner,” Delalieu says. “It—”
Delalieu falls back with a small, surprised gasp, his head hitting the back of his chair. Everything, suddenly, seems to slow down.
I feel my heart rate slow. I feel the world slow. I feel formed from water, watching the scene unfold in slow motion, frame by frame.
A bullet between his eyes.
Blood trickling down his forehead.
A short, sharp scream.
“You traitorous son of a bitch,” someone says.
I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it.
Anderson is here.
Juliette
I’m given no explanations.
My father doesn’t invite me to dinner, like Evie promised. He doesn’t sit me down to offer me long histories about my presence or his; he doesn’t reveal groundbreaking information about my life or the other supreme commanders or even the nearly six hundred people I just murdered. He and Evie are acting like the horrors of the last seventeen years never happened. Likenothingstrange has ever happened, like I never stopped being their daughter—not in the ways that matter, anyway.
