“Yes.” I reached up and touched his head, tracing the scar that Cyrus left. Sebastian’s sleek buzz cut was growing out, and he’d started a scraggly beard.
He pulled away to arm’s length. “How’d you get away?”
With a hug. A snap.
“I promised them we’d make Morton babies.”
His laugh spilled out across the silent neighborhood—huge, rampant, absurd as always. Dogs in backyards began to bark in answer, and someone yelled at him to shut it. No matter who I had become, he was still Sebastian.
Then he went silent, looking into the dark.
“The car’s already packed,” he said, pulling me inside.
He barely gave metime to shower and change.
“I bought some clothes for you,” he said. “You’ll hate them.”
I was still drying myself, my skin buzzing from the novelty of being warm and clean, from Sebastian being near. “We don’t have to leave right away. No one followed me.”
“Still.” He glanced at the front door again, and I imagined him here alone, all those days since we’d been parted, staring at that door. Waiting for me—or for the family, because I’d spilled his location.
My heart broke a little. “You can check my clothes for a tracker.”
“Already did.” He waved a hand at the kitchen window. Out in the backyard, a fire was going in a metal trash can. Not just my clothes—the white sparks of burning lithium batteries rose like fireflies against the dark.
We were starting over completely, somewhere far away.
All I wanted was to rest, here in this place he’d made for himself, even if it was only one night. I hadn’t slept in a bed for three days.
“Sebastian. They thought you were coming to Helshire to get me. They didn’t expect me to run. I made it out clean.”
“You can be sure of that?”
I stared back at him, trying to feel my old certainty. I was a prodigy, trained to evade, to outrun, to disappear.
But our family had always been a step ahead. They’d indoctrinated,manipulated, and programmed me, then fired me like a seeking missile into the heart of their enemies.
Sebastian’s only real reason for trusting me was that I hadn’t already cut his throat.
“They think I’m one of them now,” I tried again. “But I’m not.”
“How did you manage that?”
My mouth opened, but the answer was unspeakable. Her arms around me, welcoming.Blessica!
Suddenly, the dark outside was full of ghosts.
“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We drove all night.
I couldn’t sleep—the car was old, the seats poorly sprung. When my eyes closed, I flashed back to waking up in the hospital, recovering from a forgotten crash. Every time a car passed us, I expected to see familiar faces inside.
We talked about my imprisonment. How I’d sacrificed Xavier Lindqvist, and how Kumar and Leopold had fled, leaving Helshire careless except for Regina.
“And Gertie,” Sebastian reminded me.
“Yes, but Tom’s further away than ever. Seeing me locked up didn’t change his mind. Turns out, he was the last vote on Peter.”
