I must try to escape.
If I step away from the cover of the cabin wall, my heat signature will give me away. My only hope is to stay where the gas is heaviest. It may disrupt their enhanced vision long enough for me to get away.
I dive for the nearest cloud of gas, but the soldiers are on me before I can do anything, a closing maneuver that overwhelms with sheer force.
I freeze, caught in the open.
The laser sights of their weapons play over my body. They surround me, circling, two dozen men with guns, with technological advantage, with overwhelming power.
I rapid-scan the area, looking for angles, routes of escape, any way to reduce their firing solutions, but I do not find any.
I am caught.
I note the feet of the soldiers around me shuffling back and forth. Nerves. Overwhelming numbers and power, yet they are nervous.
Which means they know who I am.
How is that possible?
Suddenly the circle parts, two of the soldiers stepping back to make space. A man comes out of the shadows and strides purposefully into the circle. He wears no protective suit, carries no weapons. Even before I see his face, I know who he is. I know from the certainty with which he moves. I have not seen him in more than two years, but we have spoken on the phone dozens of times as he guides me through my assignments.
This is the man who trained me.
The man I call Father.
He is not my real father. He is something else. My commander.
Now I know who has come for me. It is The Program. But why have they come like this, with dozens of soldiers?
I watch Father’s face. It is impassive, unreadable.
Something contracts in my chest, my breathing suddenly shallow.
I give the feeling a name:
Fear.
But it fades almost as quickly as it arises.
That’s how it’s always been. Things that would make other people afraid don’t seem to affect me.
I look at Father coming toward me.
Instead of being afraid, I recalculate the angles and odds. With a circle of fire aiming inward, Father’s presence has reduced the firing solutions by as much as twenty percent. They cannot shoot through him, so he has unwittingly tilted the odds. Not yet in my favor. But better.
He comes closer until he is no more than eight steps away. Far enough to be out of range of a physical strike, close enough to be heard.
“They do not know your name, so I will not use it,” he says quietly.
I look at the soldiers.
“These are not our people,” he says. “They think they’re backing a Homeland Security operation.”
The Program is not Homeland Security. We are something else. Something that does not officially exist.
“Why do you need them?” I say.
“A precaution,” he says. “We didn’t know your status.”
I scan the area, judging the size of the operation.
“It’s a lot of people for a status check,” I say.
I note the tension in Father’s jaw. There’s something he’s not telling me.
“What do the soldiers know?” I say.
“They know you are deadly. They know you are potentially an enemy to the United States.”
An enemy?
But I am the opposite of an enemy. I am a soldier for The Program, which means I am a patriot defending the United States. This is the basis of my training, the entire reason for The Program’s existence.
Why would they think differently?
Father does not provide me any clues. He crosses his arms and examines me from a distance.
“It’s been a long time since I put eyes on you,” he says.
“True,” I say.
I haven’t seen Father since graduation day. I had fought dozens of people by that time, and I had an inch-deep knife wound in my shoulder. The knife belonged to Mike, my so-called brother in The Program. My brother who was ordered to kill me as a test.
I survived my first fight with Mike. So I completed my training.
“Graduation day,” Father says. “That was the last time.”
He remembers, the same as I do.
“That was two years ago,” I say.
“Two years and a lifetime. You’ve done so many amazing things since then, grown in ways we could only dream of. Mother is very proud of you.”
Mother. The woman who controls The Program.
“So am I,” Father says. “Which is why I’m surprised to find us in this predicament.”
He gestures to the soldiers around us.
Predicament. Now I understand why this is happening. At least a little of it.
“I’ve been off the grid for seventy-two hours,” I say.
“Seventy-two hours or seventy-two minutes. You don’t go off grid. It’s not a part of what you do.”
My protocol is to complete the assignment then wait for the next one. This is the perpetual cycle of my life. Work and wait. Work again.
Simple.
“Why would you come to a place like this?” Father says, looking around disdainfully.
“I needed to get away,” I say.
“Away from what?”
My memories. But I don’t tell him that.
“Just away,” I say.
“You are a soldier,” Father says, as if he understands the problem without my telling him. “You do work that has to be done. Sometimes it can be unpleasant, but that’s not news to you.”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
The truth is that I don’t know. The old me would never be here at a camp, disobeying orders, even in the smallest way. The old me did not go off the grid. It wouldn’t even enter my consciousness.
That was before my last mission.
Before the girl.
“Are you going to hurt an entire summer camp to punish me?” I say.
“Hurt? No. They’re sleeping. About six hours, and they’ll wake up with terrible headaches and diarrhea. They won’t remember anything. Worst-case scenario, they’ll examine last night’s dinner in the trash. It will be filled with salmonella. We’ll lace it before we go.”
“That will explain their symptoms.”
“An entire camp feels bad the morning after Fish Thursday. Life is cruel like that.”
But maybe I am the cruel one. I came here after all. And what did I think would happen to these boys? To Peter?
Father takes another step toward me. His voice softens.
“I know why you did what you did,” he says.
The statement surprises me. I watch Father more closely.
“The thing with the mayor’s daughter shook you up,” he says.
His voice is uncharacteristically sympathetic, like he’s talking to someone he cares about and wants to help. I feel my body relax the tiniest bit.
“You understand?” I say.
“You needed some time,” he says. “You could have asked us for it. You could have made the call.”
My special iPhone. Destroyed at the end of each mission. That’s standard operating procedure. But I didn’t pick up another one. That’s where things got strange.
“It was wrong of me to cut off communication,” I say.
I look at the two dozen soldiers around me standing at full readiness, fingers inside trigger guards.
These men are prepared to fire.
That’s the first lesson of weapons training. Do not touch the trigger unless you’re prepared to fire.
Father said the soldiers were here as a precaution, but they have not lowered their weapons. Which means Father does not trust me.
It’s true that I went off grid, but this reaction seems out of proportion. Father could have sent a car to pick me up or passed a message through channels. He could have made up some excuse and knocked on the door of my cabin. There are a thousand ways he could contact me if he wanted to do so, none of which involve weapons.