We go into an elevator and come out on the fourth floor. The carpet is the same.
Agent Jones punches in a code and twists the door-knob. The con artist part of my brain thinks that I should be memorizing numbers, but I’m not that good. His finger is a blur of movement, and all I get is that he might have hit the number seven once.
We go into a windowless room with a cheap table and five chairs. There’s an empty coffeepot on a sideboard and a mirror—probably two-way—on the wall.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say, nodding toward the mirror. “I watch television, you know.”
“Hold on,” says Agent Hunt. He goes out, and a moment later the lights go on in the other room, turning the mirror to tinted glass. The room beyond the mirror is empty.
Agent Hunt comes back. “See?” he says. “It’s just the three of us.”
I wonder if he’s counting anyone listening to us via whatever recording devices are in the room, but I decide not to push my luck. I want to know what’s going on.
“Okay,” I say. “You got me out of class. I appreciate that. What can I do in return?”
“You’re a character,” Agent Jones says, shaking his head.
I study him as best I can, while trying to look bored. Jones is built like a barrel—short and solid, with thinning light brown hair the color of bread. There’s a scar at the edge of his narrow upper lip. He smells like aftershave and stale coffee.
Agent Hunt leans in. “You know, most innocent people get upset when they get picked up by the Feds. They demand to see their lawyer, tell us that we’re violating their civil liberties. Only criminals are calm like you.”
Hunt is longer and leaner than Jones. He’s older, too, his short-cropped hair dusted with gray. When he speaks, his voice has the cadences of someone used to speaking to a congregation. I’d bet there’s a preacher somewhere in his family.
“Psychologists say that’s because subconsciously criminals want to get caught,” Agent Jones says. “What do you think about that, Cassel? Do you want to get caught?”
“Sounds like someone’s been reading too much Dostoyevsky.” I shrug.
Agent Hunt’s lip curls a little. “Is that what they teach you at that private school of yours?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what they teach me.” Hunt’s contempt is so obvious that I add a mental note about him to my imaginary profile: He thinks I have it easy, which means he thinks he had it hard.
“Look, kid,” Agent Jones says, clearing his throat. “It’s no picnic, leading a double life. We know about your family. And we know you’re a worker.”
I freeze, my whole body going stiff and still. I feel like my blood just turned to ice.
“I’m not a worker,” I say. I have no idea how convincing I sound. I can feel my speeding heartbeat all the way to my skull.
Agent Hunt opens the folder on the table and pulls out a couple of sheets of paper. They look familiar. It takes me a moment to realize they’re exactly like the papers I swiped from the sleep clinic, except these have my name across the top. I am looking at my own test results.
“Dr. Churchill sent these to one of our contacts after you ran out of his office,” Agent Jones says. “You tested positive. You’re hyperbathygammic, kid. But don’t tell me you didn’t know that already.”
“There wasn’t enough time,” I say numbly. I think of how I ripped all of the electrodes off my skin after I figured out what the test was for, how I ran out of the office.
“Apparently,” says Agent Hunt, understanding me perfectly, “there was.”
Mercifully, after that they offer to get me some food. They leave me alone in a locked room with a piece of paper charting my gamma waves. It means nothing to me, except that I am well and truly screwed.
I take out my cell phone and flip it open before I realize that this is probably exactly what they hope I will do. Call someone. Reveal something. The room is definitely wired; it’s set up for interrogation, whether they’re using the two-way mirror or not.
There are probably hidden cameras, too, now that I think of it.
I flip through the functions on my phone until I get to the one that lets me take pictures. I turn on the flash, aim at the walls and ceiling, and take picture after picture until I get it. A reflection. Pretty invisible when I was just looking at the frame of the mirror, but the tiny lens glows brightly with reflected light, captured in the photo.
I grin and pop a stick of gum into my mouth.
Three chews and it’s soft enough to stick over the camera.
Agent Hunt comes in about five seconds later. He’s holding two cups of coffee, and he’s obviously been rushing. The cuff of his shirt is wet and stained with sloshed liquid. I bet he burned his hand too.
I wonder what he thought I was going to do, once I was hidden from the camera. Try to escape? I have no idea how to get out of the locked room; I was just showing off. Letting them know I wasn’t going to fall for the really obvious stuff.
“Do you think this is a joke, Mr. Sharpe?” he demands.
His panic doesn’t make any sense. “Let me out of here,” I say. “You said I’m not under arrest, and I’m missing ceramics class.”
“You’re going to need a parent or guardian to pick you up,” he says, placing the coffees on the table. He’s no longer flustered, which means they planned for me to ask to be let go. He’s back to a script he knows. “We can certainly get your mother to come down and get you, if that’s really what you want.”
“No,” I say, realizing I’ve been outmaneuvered. “That’s okay.”
Now Agent Hunt just looks smug, wiping his sleeve with a napkin. “I thought you’d see it my way.”
I pick up one of the coffees and take a sip. “And you didn’t even have to spell your threat out. Honestly, I must be some kind of model prisoner.”
“Listen, smart-ass—”
“What do you want?” I ask. “What is all of this for? Fine, okay, I’m a worker. So what? You’ve got no proof that I’ve ever worked anyone. I’m not a criminal until I do, and I’m not gonna.” It’s a relief to tell a lie this big; I feel like I’m daring them to contradict it.
Agent Hunt doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t seem suspicious, either. “We need your help, Cassel.”
I laugh so hard that I actually choke on the coffee.
Agent Hunt is about to say something else when the door opens and Agent Jones comes in. I have no idea what he’s been doing all this time, but the lunch they promised is nowhere in sight.
“I hear you’ve been a handful,” Agent Jones says. Either he was watching the camera feed or someone told him about my little trick, because he glances over at the gum.
I try to stop coughing. It’s hard. I think some of the coffee went down the wrong pipe.
“Listen, Cassel, there’s lots of kids like you,” Agent Hunt says. “Worker kids who fall in with the wrong element. But your abilities don’t have to lead you in that direction. The government has a program to train young workers to control their talents and to use them in the cause of justice. We’d be happy to recommend you.”
“You don’t even know what my talents are,” I say. I really, really hope that’s true.
“We employ all different types of workers, Cassel,” says Agent Jones.
“Even death workers?” I ask.
Agent Jones regards me closely. “Is that what you are? Because it would be very serious if it were true. That’s a dangerous ability.”
“I didn’t say that,” I say, hoping that I sound unconvincing. I don’t care if they think I’m a death worker like my grandfather. I don’t care if they think I’m a luck worker like Zacharov, a dream worker like Lila, a physical worker like Philip, a memory worker like Barron, or an emotion worker like Mom. So long as they don’t guess that I’m a transformation worker. There hasn’t been one in the United States since the 1960s, and I am sure that if the government happened to stumble on one now, they wouldn’t just let him go back to high school.
“This program,” Agent Jones goes on. “It’s run by a woman—Agent Yulikova. We’d like you to meet her.”
“What does that have to do with you needing my help?” I ask.
This whole setup feels like a con. The way they’re acting, the grim glances they share when they think I don’t notice. I’m sure their generous offer to let me be part of some secret government training program is part of the shakedown, what I’m not sure about is why they’re shaking me down.
“I know you have some familiarity with the Zacharov crime family, so there’s no point in denying it,” Agent Jones begins, holding up his hand when I start to speak. “You don’t need to confirm it either. But you should know that over the past three years, Zacharov’s been stepping up assassinations both in and out of his organization. Mostly we don’t get too worked up about mobsters killing one another, but one of our informants was the most recent target.”
A creeping dread chills my skin as he puts a black-and-white photograph down on the table in front of me.
The man in the photo has been shot several times in the chest, and his shirt is a mess of black. He’s lying on his side. Blood has soaked into the carpet underneath him, and his loose hair partially obscures his face. Still, it’s a face I would know anywhere.
“He was shot sometime last night,” says Agent Hunt. “The first bullet penetrated between the seventh and eight ribs and entered his right atrium. He died instantly.”
I feel like someone punched me in the gut.
I push the picture back toward Agent Jones. “What are you showing me this for?” My voice shakes. “That’s not Philip. That’s not my brother.”
I’m standing, but I don’t even remember getting up.
“Calm down,” Agent Hunt says.
There is a roaring in my ears like a tide coming in. “This is some kind of trick,” I shout. “Admit it. Admit that this is a trick.”
“Cassel, you have to listen to us,” Agent Jones says. “The person who did this is still out there. You can help us find your brother’s killer.”
“You’ve just been sitting here chatting with me, and my brother’s dead? You knew my brother was dead and you just let me—you let me . . . ,” I stammer. “No. No. Why would you do that?”
“We knew it would be hard to talk with you after you found out,” Agent Jones says.
“Hard to talk to me?” I echo, because the words don’t make sense. And then something else strikes me, something that doesn’t make sense either. “Philip was your informant? He would never do that. He hates snitches.”
Hated. Hated snitches.
In my family going to the cops is cowardly, despicable. Cops already can do whatever they want to workers—we’re criminals, after all—so going to the cops is kissing the ass of the enemy. If you turn someone in, you’re not just betraying the people around you. You’re betraying what you are. I remember Philip talking about someone in Carney who’d reported on somebody else for some petty reason—old guys I didn’t know. He spat on the floor whenever he said the man’s name.
“Your brother came to us about five months ago,” Agent Hunt says. “April of this year. Said he wanted to change his life.”
I shake my head, denying what has to be true. Philip must have gone to the Feds because he had nowhere else to go. Because of me. Because I thwarted his plan to assassinate Zacharov, a plan that would have resulted in Philip’s closest friend leading the crime family. A plan that would have gotten my brother riches and glory. Instead I got him killed; if Philip is dead, Zacharov must be behind it. I can’t think of anyone else with a reason. And what would Zacharov care about his promise to leave my family alone, especially if he was faced with the discovery that Philip made a deal with the Feds? I was an idiot for believing Zacharov’s word was worth anything.
“Does my mother know Philip’s dead?” I finally manage, throwing myself back down into a chair. I feel like I could suffocate on guilt.
“We’ve managed to keep it quiet,” Agent Jones says. “As soon as you leave here, she’ll get the call. And we won’t be much longer. Try to hang in there.”
“There’s a kitten poster like that.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own.
They both look at me oddly.
I feel suddenly so overwhelmingly tired that I want to put my head down right there on the table.
Agent Jones goes on. “Your brother wanted to get out of organized crime. All he needed from us was to get a hold of his wife so he could apologize for what he put her through. We were going to send them into witness protection together. As soon as we got them into the program, he said that he’d give up everything he had on Zacharov’s hatchet man. Maybe bring down Zacharov along with him. The guy’s real bad news. Philip gave us the names of six workers this sicko killed. We didn’t even know for sure they were dead, but Philip was going to lead us to the bodies. Your brother really was trying to turn over a new leaf, and he died for it.”
I feel like they’re talking about a stranger.
“You find Maura?” I ask.
Maura lit out of town last spring, their kid in tow, once she discovered that Barron had been changing her memories. He’d made her forget every fight she’d had with Philip and remember only some kind of sweet dreamlike relationship. But not remembering their problems didn’t stop those problems from cropping up again and again. Plus, being worked that often results in bad side effects, like hearing music that’s not there.