“And don’t worry,” he whispers. “When you do have it all figured out, I won’t hold it against you.”
Huh? Hold what against me?
Indigo stands up, grabs his rifle, and hooks the bayonet to the front. He slides the gun over his shoulder, gives me a salute, and heads toward the underground stairs.
What in the world was that about? I shake my head and amble down the hallway. First door. Bathroom. Second door. The door is shut, but there’s a bronze plaque just to the right of it that reads ZETA. Right below the plaque is a keypad. I look across the hallway, where there’s a plaque that reads ALPHA, along with another keypad. There’s another office to the right of Alpha’s door with a plaque that says RED. Red has his own office? Does everyone have an office but me?
Well, here goes nothing. I raise a hand and rap my knuckles on the door.
“Come in,” a voice calls from the other side.
I take a breath and turn the knob. The office is small. Maybe ten-by-ten. There’s a desk set in the middle of the room, and Zeta sits behind it. He sets down the file he’d been reading. He’s wearing normal clothing today: a pair of tan pants and a navy sweater with the sleeves pushed up past his elbows. Even though all that’s peeking out are his forearms, my guesses about him the day before are confirmed. Zeta works out. A lot. His forearms are freaking sculpted.
He holds out a hand. “You have an essay for me?” I hand it over, and he points at one of the two chairs in front of the desk. “Sit. Please.”
The “please” was a total afterthought, but I look past it and sit anyway. Zeta plunks the essay onto the desk and picks up a red pen. He reads the essay quietly, then flips it over, as if hoping there’s something more on the back. That’s not a good sign. He sighs and hands it back. “Do it again. You’re not even close.”
“But I don’t know where to start. No one’s even tried to explain the difference between enhancing and altering to me.”
“And whose fault is that?” Zeta’s eyebrows arch up. “Figure it out. I trust you’re a smart girl. Alpha wouldn’t have picked you otherwise.” There’s something funny in his voice. A little inflection that I can’t quite decipher.
I make a fist, crumbling the corners of the paper with my fingers as I leave his office. I want to slam the door behind me, but that would be childish. So I close it softly as if nothing’s wrong. No emotion, I tell myself.
Alpha’s door is right in front of me, and, without thinking, I knock.
“Enter,” Alpha says on the other side.
I open the door to find that his office is a mirror image of Zeta’s. Alpha has his back turned and is typing something on a computer screen. It’s a memo of some sort. I squint my eyes and read it. I make out the words Iris and Boston Massacre in the first sentence and sigh. Alpha turns, sees me, and flips off the screen.
“Hello.” He swivels the chair around to face me. The black notebook is sitting on the desk, and Alpha scoops it up and tosses it toward the computer.
“Level with me,” I say. “What are my chances of being promoted to a full operative?”
Alpha leans back in his chair. “Do you want to sit?”
“No.” I feel more in control when I stand.
“Do you want me to be blunt?”
“Yes.” I think I do.
“Your chances aren’t up to me. I don’t get to make that call. But if it was up to me, I’d have some serious doubts at this point.”
Ouch. It takes every ounce of my being not to recoil. Instead I stand up straighter. “That’s hardly fair. No one explained to me the difference between altering and enhancing. I thought I was enhancing.”
Alpha raises an eyebrow. “We’ve never explained to recruits beforehand the difference between enhancing and altering. Your task is to figure it out for yourself in the field. And I do believe you were given very specific instructions not to do anything without first running it past your superior. So if you’re going to make excuses for yourself, you’ll have to do better than that.”
Dammit. I am making excuses again. So I simply say, “Point taken. May I be excused?”
“No. Let me see the essay.”
I hesitate a second before handing it over. I wish I’d just gone back to the library and kept quiet. Alpha scans my essay and hands it back.
“I’m not going to spell it out for you,” Alpha says, “but I will say this. The key to understanding the difference between enhancing and altering isn’t to look at the effect. It’s to look at the cause. If you want a man to be late to work, are you going to blow up his house, or are you going to let the air out of his car tires? When in doubt, be subtle. Understand?”
I nod my head.
“Now you may be excused.” He swivels around in his chair, flips on the computer monitor, and starts typing.
I wander back toward the library. Look at the cause, not the effect. That makes sense. I’m already thinking about how I can crib what Alpha just told me and change it enough so that Zeta will think it’s my own idea.
The library isn’t empty anymore. Tyler Fertig is standing to the side, a book in his hand. My heart leaps, and I shut the door behind me.
“Tyler,” I call.
He drops the book to the floor and whips around with a shocked look on his face. But then his eyes narrow when he sees me, and he flies across the room, so fast I barely know what’s coming. He grabs me by the shoulders and slams me back into a bookshelf. It rattles, and several books fall to the floor.
“It’s Blue!” he spits. “Blue! Don’t ever call me by that name again. Tyler is dead. Do you understand me?”
He’s holding me all wrong. He has the front of my shoulders pinned and nothing else, so I could easily drop down, punch him where the sun don’t shine, and spin away before he falls. But instead I nod my head.
Blue gives me one last push into the bookshelf, then unhands me. I stare at him. Long and hard. I look right into his eyes, and he stares back at me with a hollow glare. And then it hits me. It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Blue is sad.
I don’t mean sadness in the sense that your dog just died or your girlfriend dumped you. I mean sadness that never ends. Sadness that wraps over you like a blanket, consuming you with its darkness. Sadness that holds you tight and won’t let you go. I know it well. It’s the sadness that I’ve watched overtake my mom, watched battle with the manic episodes for control. I see her depression in Blue’s eyes, looking back at me, pleading with me, begging me not to go; and I look away.
“You don’t belong here,” Blue whispers. “This place is going to kill you just like it does everyone else, and you don’t have to be here.”
An image of Blue as Tyler pops into my head. Tyler strutting into the dining hall at Peel two years ago, months before Testing Day. He was smiling and laughing, and his arm was thrown around Deanna Verster. Heads turned to watch him walk, because you had no choice but to admire his confidence. And then I think of him the following year, when he was a senior. He kept his head down, never said much. I watched his friends move to the other side of the table, then find a new table. Deanna Verster started hanging out with someone else. Tyler sat with freshmen but stared at his food the entire time and never talked. To anyone. It was like he knew what was coming after graduation. He knew about Annum Guard. But how?
“What happened on Testing Day, Blue?” I whisper. “Junior year. What happened?”
Blue stares past me to the bookshelf. Then he whispers, “They lied to me.”
“Who lied to you, Blue? About what?”
“They told me if I did well enough, I could go someplace else. I wouldn’t have to follow the path. I could be free. They lied.”