“I lost my parents, and then The Program came for me. Would you believe it?”
“It’s hard to know what to believe when The Program is involved.”
“Exactly,” he says. “The Program told me they were offering me a new life. I was lost after my parents died, and so I agreed. I chose to go with them, but I didn’t know what I was signing up for. None of us do.”
I remember Mother in a room of the training house after my parents died. I remember her talking to me for the first time, giving me a choice between life and death.
“How old were you when they came for you?” Francisco asks.
“Twelve.”
“Do you think a twelve-year-old should be asked to make a choice like that?”
Life or death. Not much of a choice.
“What does it matter now?” I say. “It’s over and done.”
“I’m not blaming you,” he says. “We all made the same choice in the same situation.”
“We? You mean there are more of us?” I say.
“There are a few.”
“Before this mission, I only knew about two. Me and the one who brought me in.”
“Who was that?” he says.
“He has many names. But I know him as Mike.”
“Mike,” Francisco says. His face goes pale. “I thought they’d send him for me.”
“You know him?”
He nods.
“If you know him, then you would have seen him coming,” I say.
“Maybe. You never know with Mike.”
“You’re afraid of him,” I say, surprised.
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m not afraid of anyone.”
“That’s what you believe,” he says.
“Because it’s true.”
He smiles and shakes his head. I don’t like the look on his face.
“I’m afraid of Mike for good reasons,” Francisco says. “I’m afraid because he is Alpha.”
“Alpha?”
“The first. The Program began with him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m Beta.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The Program has been cloaked in mystery to me, revealing to me only what they felt I needed to know.
The curiosity inside me is overwhelming.
“What am I?” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
“You don’t know, do you?”
I shake my head.
“I can’t say for sure,” he says. “But looking at you, I’d say you’re Epsilon.”
Epsilon. The Greek number five.
I sort the information Francisco is giving me. I see the schematic in my head.
Francisco — Beta
Mike — Alpha
? — Delta
? — Gamma
Me — Epsilon
“There are five of us,” I say.
“Maybe more,” he says, “but five that I know about.”
“Mike is the oldest.”
“And you’re the youngest.”
“What happens after?” I say.
Francisco smiles then. A kind smile.
“You’ve thought about it, too,” he says.
I look at the ground, ashamed.
I have avoided these questions and the dangerous places they can take me in my mind, but talking with Francisco, the questions come rushing to the surface:
What happens when we reach an age where we no longer fit in? What happens when we can’t pass for kids anymore?
What happens to a teen assassin who is no longer a teen?
Francisco says, “I don’t know what happens, because nobody has aged out yet. Mike is the closest, but he’s found a niche for himself.”
“A niche?”
“Recruiter. I was next in line, but I wasn’t going to wait around to find out what would happen. Not when there were better options.”
Camp Liberty. Francisco’s assignment turned into his way out.
“I have a question for you,” Francisco says. “What was your exact assignment?”
“Moore,” I say.
I see him swallow hard. “What about me?” he says.
I shake my head. “They thought you were dead. They didn’t send me for you; they sent me because of you. Because you lost the mission.”
An expression of pain crosses his face. He stands and rubs his forehead, pressing at the sides of his temples.
He is emotional, much more than I would expect for someone with his training. It makes me wonder about him, gives me some clue into his strengths and weaknesses.
“So you’re my replacement?” he says.
“That’s right.”
He laughs, a loud laugh that echoes through the forest.
“That’s fucking great,” he says. “I went off grid and they couldn’t figure out how or why, so they told you I was dead, right?”
“They had to assume you were dead,” I say. “What else could you be?”
He laughs again.
“Don’t you see? I confused the hell out of them,” he says. “Their soldier turned against them. It’s so inconceivable to them they could only assume I was dead. I would pay to have seen Mother’s face after I dropped off the grid.”
“How did you go off grid without them knowing?” I say.
“I destroyed my phone,” he says. He steps toward me, his voice dropping to an intense whisper. “And something else.”
“What else?”
“I’ll show you,” he says.
He looks around the woods to check that we’re still alone, and then he unbuttons his shirt, slips one arm out of the long flannel. It’s afternoon now, and the woods are cast in a golden glow. He runs his fingers down his arm, tracing something there.
I step closer, squinting until I see them, cut marks running up and down his arms and across his chest as if he were attacked by an animal. Some are scarred over, others are still healing.
The flannel shirt. He wears it to hide the marks.
“It took me a while, but I found it,” he says.
“Found what?”
“The Program. It’s inside us.”
He points to one particular scar on his bicep, near the shoulder joint.
“You’re implanted, too,” he says.
“Implanted?”
“They put a chip inside you,” he says.
I flash back to the house where I was trained. I try to remember any medical procedures, surgeries, anything invasive enough to have been an implantation surgery.
I don’t remember anything like that.
“What kind of a chip?” I say, not believing, but wanting to keep him talking.
“It’s a neurosuppressor,” he says. “You already know what it does.”
“How would I know?”
“Because you’ve felt it,” he says. “It takes away your fear.”
I look at Francisco standing without his shirt on, a ghostly glow around him.
I am alone on a mountain with someone trained just like me, someone who is my enemy, miles from help or support.
I should be afraid, but I am not.
I’m never afraid.
Through mission after mission, through dangerous, near-death situations, I do not get afraid. I have moments of fear that fade as soon as they arise.
“Let’s say you actually found a chip. How would you know what it did? Did they tell you?”
“Never,” he says. “They’re not going to tell us we’re the subject of an experiment. I know what the chip does because I took it out. Then everything became clear. It’s like an emotional throttle. You start to feel fear, and it clamps down, sends a signal to your brain that takes the edge off. This is why I could go into any situation, no matter how dangerous, and still function. I could think clearly no matter what was going on around me.”
He’s describing my own skill set. Characteristics I thought were a part of my personality and training.
“The part they don’t understand…” he says. “If you don’t feel fear, you don’t feel joy or love. Not in any real way. Without the fear, the risk is gone. And without risk, rewards don’t matter. You’re left with nothing much at all. You’re numb.”