I sit there trying to think of a reason why.
“What do we do now?” Howard says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Howard’s face goes pale.
“But you always know,” he says.
I lean back on the bed. My body feels heavy.
“Are you all right?” Howard says.
“I haven’t slept,” I say. “I can’t think straight.”
I lie down on the bed. I try to keep my eyes open, but it’s a struggle.
I suddenly see my father’s face in front of me. He’s leaning over me, tucking in the covers around me.
I open my eyes to find Howard pulling a blanket over me.
“My father,” I say. “You have to help me find him.”
“You mean your commander from The Program?”
“No. My real father,” I say. “Mike told me he was alive at the end of my last mission.”
“Who?”
I try to make Howard understand me, but for some reason I can’t communicate properly through the fog.
“Help me.” That’s all I can say.
“I’ll help you,” Howard says. “Whatever you need.”
Exhaustion overtakes me, and I fall into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
I OPEN MY EYES NOT KNOWING WHERE I AM.
A strange room, a strange city, a mission I can’t remember.
The room is lit by the laptop screens that line the desk. I hear snoring across from me.
I sit up in the bed, and I remember.
I am in a hotel room in Manchester. Howard is sleeping in a chair across the room from me, his face glowing blue from the computer open on his lap.
Then I remember other things. Things that I have done in the last day. Things that have been done to me.
I slip out of bed, looking for some way to judge the time. I peek out between the blinds and see it’s nighttime. The position of the moon tells me there are a few hours left until dawn.
I walk quietly to the bathroom in the adjoining room. I close the door and flip on the light.
I’m still wearing my clothes from Liberty: a T-shirt and camo pants.
I lean over to turn on the water, and I wince in pain. I take off my T-shirt. There are black-and-blue marks forming along my ribs from the fight with Francisco. Damage under the skin that is only now showing.
I feel along the length of my ribs until I find the source of greatest pain, I wince as I probe there, but I determine that nothing is broken. I reverse the process, feeling along the other side. Then I run my hands up my chest, across my shoulders, performing an impromptu battlefield wound assessment on myself.
I finish without finding any serious injuries, but I keep going, probing where there is no pain, in the flesh between my elbow and humerus.
Francisco said I would search there for the chip, and he’s right. I need to know.
I examine the area, but I do not find anything.
If something was implanted in me, there will likely be a scar, even a tiny one. Yet there are a thousand places to hide a chip on the human body. I see an illustration of the body in my mind, and I charting the places where the chip might be, assigning each one a percentage of likelihood. I focus first on areas of soft flesh bordered by hard structure that could keep a device anchored in place.
Next I use the schematic to search my body, feeling for gaps, probing as deeply as I am able with my fingers.
I don’t find anything.
I lean across the sink to get closer to the mirror, and something hard knocks against the porcelain. Something inside the pocket of my camos.
The knife from the freelance team’s truck.
I pull out a black knife handle with silver screws.
I flick the handle and a silver blade slides out.
I press the blade in the joint between the humerus and elbow. A half inch deep, then slightly farther. I detach myself from the pain, placing it far away from my consciousness, as I’ve been trained to do.
I feel flesh and skin, but no foreign bodies. I slit down, opening the wound farther toward my wrist, making sure not to nick the radial artery. I probe for a minute with the tip of the knife, but I can’t find anything.
Next I check the inside of my elbow, the bony growth with an indentation between it. I push the blade in there, more gently this time. I don’t cut deeply, just enough to pop through skin and the thin layer of fat just beneath. Again I probe with the blade.
I find nothing.
I strip off the rest of my clothes, stand naked with the blade ready in my hand.
I glance up and catch sight of myself in the mirror—a boy with crazed eyes, blood flowing down both arms, holding a knife.
I am insane, I think. Just like Francisco.
But I can’t stop thinking about the chip, where it could be, how such a device might be implanted.
Suddenly I think of Dr. Acosta at the hospital the other day. The strange MRI scanner. The pain and heat I felt—not everywhere, just one specific location.
Under my scar.
If The Program implanted me with something in the past and wanted to cover up the scar, what would be the best way to do it?
Camouflage a scar inside a scar.
I think back to the fight years ago that ended with a knife blade inside me. I remember the way The Program brought me to a clinic afterward, how I was cleaned up, the shots I was given. The minor operation to close the wound.
How I was sutured afterward.
A scar inside a scar.
Dr. Acosta said it was an MRI that had been adapted for a special use. Could it be used to adjust a chip that was already inside me?
I press my thumb against the scar, remembering the sensations I felt there, deep inside my chest.
I rinse the knife with water, and I use it to slice open the scar tissue on my chest.
Blood pools in the wound and drips down into the sink. I probe first with the knife, then I use my fingers to separate the skin, watch a pink slit open in my flesh. The pain is intense now, but I am trained to deal with pain.
I feel it, but it does not stop me. I do what I have to do.
I lean in close to the mirror and peer into the wound.
There, on the muscle of my pec, is a fistula of flesh growing out from the muscle. I prod it gently with the knife tip. It is hard inside, not bone but something else nestled inside scar tissue.
Flesh grows around a foreign object in the body, forming a protective shell. I know this from my biology studies. I cut through the flesh, a nick that opens the internal scar tissue.
That’s when I see something shiny there, a faint blue glow inside.
It’s a sterile Gorilla Glass tubule, the size of a fat grain of rice.
I look again, making sure I’m not imagining it. I tap it with the edge of the knife, feel hard glass.
It’s real.
I take a deep breath. Then I reach inside myself, and I pull it out.
I wash the tube in the sink, drain the blood from around it. I hold it up to the light. I see something that resembles a miniature chip with a tiny antenna coil wrapped around it. The entire device is sealed into a neat and nearly undetectable package inside the tubule.
It was glowing inside me, but not anymore.
A short double wire extends from the bottom of the tube. That’s the part that was inside my muscle when I pulled it out.
Francisco was telling the truth.
The Program was inside of me, hidden in the last place I would look: the scar above my heart.
I step back from the mirror. The blood runs down my body and drips onto the floor at my feet.
I don’t feel any different. Maybe Francisco was wrong about the purpose of the chip.
Suddenly I hear a noise behind me, and I spin around.
Howard is standing in the doorway, watching me. His face is pale, and he’s shaking.