Thoughts of Sam, Willow, and Alec swirl in my head while I try to sleep. Three people who couldn't be less alike but are somehow connected to one another—and to Marcus. He hasn't said a word since we both settled into bed, but I know he's awake. He'll turn over in bed occasionally, and sometimes he'll let out this sigh like he has too much on his mind.

I search my memory for inconsistencies, but everything seems solid. Real. I remember small details, like the ice melting on the edges of the pavements as spring crept closer. The ice in Sam's eyes whenever he spoke to me. The way my classmates' laughter felt like bruises on my skin when Julie Kabisch accidentally squirted mustard all over the front of my white parka in sixth grade. Her final act of shedding the stigma of having once been my friend.

I remember the day my mom's best friend took me to the grocery store for cake when she found out it was my seventh birthday. I remember the disappointment when, after two months of my clinging to her every chance I got, she told me I was becoming a huge pain and had no interest in playing my mother.

I turn over and face the wall, my knees drawn into my stomach like that'll contain the ache. It's all too real to be fake. I don't have Marcus's memory problems, though that might not be such a bad thing.

I'm in an office, seated in one of two cream-white upholstered chairs positioned in front of a gleaming desk. The room is spacious and covered with a plush carpet. Wood-paneled walls, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase behind the desk, a conference table that easily seats a dozen people.

No windows.

The door to my left opens, and Sam enters. He looks nothing like the Sam I know at home. He has on a fitted, charcoal-gray suit that makes his shoulders appear wider and his chest broader. His shoes are as shiny as the oak desk. His hair is brushed back as usual, but combined with the outfit, he looks like a wealthy and influential man.

"We're done," he says as he goes over to the desk and sits behind it. "Reed is bringing around the truck. He'll be taking you home."

Reed is an aptly-named man: tall and so skinny he barely takes up any space when he enters a room. He's one of Sam's most trustworthy guards. The only one allowed near me.

In the year since Sam started bringing me here, I've been kept away from the others. I've spent most of my time in the east wing, going through tests and evaluations. Men and women in white lab coats have checked my vitals while I've lifted weights or run on treadmills. They've injected me with strange liquids and taken vials of my blood. They've attached electrodes to my head while making me do everything from watching a sitcom to confronting a giant Rottweiler frothing at the mouth to get to me, its leash the only thing keeping me alive.

They've treated me like a guinea pig. All because, according to Sam, I have some latent power that needs to be triggered.

I wouldn't have believed him if it weren't for this place. This research facility, a massive underground building run by Warden Sam Parker and designed for people like me.

People with extraordinary potential.

He showed me videos that first day to illustrate his point. I saw children who could do unimaginable things. Reading and controlling minds. Telekinetically moving objects. Creating shields capable of stopping bullets.

I don't understand how any of it is possible. That's not important, Sam said dismissively when I asked the first time. The second time I pressed him for answers, he ignored me. And the third time, he punished me by locking me inside a tiny dark room until Sunday evening.

I think about what he said just now. It's different from his usual script.

Go home and rest. We will resume next weekend.

Throw in a scathing line or two about how he expects me to be worth all this effort, and that sums up Sam. But he doesn't say any of that now. He sounds . . . dismissive.

"I'm not coming back next weekend?" I ask.

"No."

I don't know how to feel about that. Never returning to this place means the hellish experiments will end, but doesn't it also mean that everything I've endured has been for nothing? Am I such a failure that Sam is finally giving up on me?

"Why not?"

He looks up from the stack of paperwork he's rifling through to shoot me a look of mild annoyance. "Because, as I just said, we're done."

"But we're not done. We can't be. I don't have—I can't do any of the things those kids could. Is that why you haven't let me go near them? Because I'm not as good as them?"

Whenever they've escorted me from one part of the facility to another, I've seen kids in the distance. Teenagers—probably the same children in the videos, except older. I've seen them eating in the breakroom, studying, lounging in a commons room, or sparring against one another in the gym.

"Do they come here like me?" I asked one of the doctors once.

"They live here," the woman responded, giving me a smile that was both polite and wary. "They're the reason we understand so much about people like you."

"Alright." Sam puts down his papers. I'm surprised by this: I don't think he's ever given in so quickly to my whims. If ever at all. "I should warn you that you won't remember anything I tell you by tomorrow morning."

He gets up and walks around the desk, leaning against the edge. His deep-set blue eyes hold me rooted in place. "It's possible your memory of the time you've spent here will return to you in the future, though for your sake I hope that doesn't happen."

I shake my head, utterly confused.

"You asked me before why I said you're gifted," he says. "The simple answer is that you were born different."

"Born different?" I repeat, the words strange in my mouth.

"Do you know what you share with the children in the videos? Your mothers lost their minds during their pregnancies and died giving birth to you. That's how we located you. We forged your death certificates and placed some of you in foster care and others in the homes of trusted employees, to ensure we would be able to monitor your development."

I stare at him. Sam has lost his mind. "My mother isn't dead. She's alive."

"Maggie Parker isn't your biological mother."

"What?" My knees are weak. I need to sit down before they give out, but I can't move. "Why would you—" I almost accuse him of lying, but I know he's not. Sam doesn't believe in lying. He either tells me the truth or makes it clear I'm not allowed to know a thing.

"I don't understand." I can't believe this she's-not-your-mother bombshell isn't the biggest thing he's dropped on me. "What do you mean, they died? Why?"

"We don't know yet what caused it, but their bodies couldn't handle what was happening to them. You."

"She's dead because of me?"

"More or less, yes."

I cross the room and sink into a brown leather couch near the door. Holding my head between my knees isn't helping. Breathe. Just keep breathing and sooner or later my body will return to normal.

Nothing will ever be normal again.

"Pull yourself together, April."

The soft command straightens my spine. This is Sam. He has no desire to deal with messy emotions. And over the years, this has forced me to shove everything into that box inside me, cramming it with every worry and fear I'm not allowed to voice.

"The others like me." I pause when my voice comes out funny. "They're here?"

"Some of them are. You will meet the rest when you begin your testing."

"What kind of testing?"

"You will be sent to a secure and isolated location where you will experience stress conditions designed to awaken your powers."

"Can't I stay here?" I swallow the whine in my voice. Sam has a way of making me feel like a child.

"What did I tell you about fear?"

"It sets you up for failure."

"That's right. Fear is an anchor that will drag you under and drown you even in shallow waters. And you will have no one to blame but yourself. I've spent a lifetime teaching you to fight it so that you would be ready to face it today. Are you?"

I pause, remembering every cruel lesson. Swimming in the river and the nights spent in pitch-black darkness and standing in icy rain as punishment for complaining about my scratchy comforter and Sam ordering me to ride downhill right after taking the training wheels off my bike and so many other moments that flood my head and make it impossible to speak.

So I nod instead.

"People like you are a risk to society. You're lucky we chose to take you in instead of killing you the moment you were born. Don't think you deserve any special treatment from me."

Tearing my gaze from his, I swallow again, this time to clear the lump from my throat. "This testing—is it dangerous?"

There's the barest moment of hesitation. "You will be supervised in the stress facility but beyond that there will be no interference from Gardiner. If circumstances within the stress facility are made difficult by your fellow subjects, however, so be it."

"You sound like you're saying I'll be locked up with hardened criminals," I say, feeling a spark of defiance at the futility of it.

Sam walks over to me and clutches my chin, forcing me to look up at him. "Watch your tone, April. You might get away with being a smartass to other people, but don't forget your place when you're talking to me. Is that understood?"

His fingers are warm, but they radiate ice-cold fear though my body. I nod as much as his grip will allow me, exhaling when he turns away from me and returns to his chair.

"It will all be over in a month," he says. "I'm not telling you this to prepare you for what will happen to you at the stress facility, but what might. The changes you could potentially undergo are two types. The first is the desired outcome. The abilities."

"And the second?" I ask.

"Whatever it is that makes you different will take over your mind. You will lose yourself in the same way your mothers did when they were pregnant with you. If that were to happen—if one of you turns into a Blank—your encounter with it will trigger your memories. That's why I hope you never remember. For your sake, I hope you never have to meet a Blank."

"What is—?"

He holds up a hand to stop me. "The conditions required to awaken your abilities might cause some of you to blank. We've done what we can to prevent this from happening, but we're still dealing with a lot of unknowns. If one of you blanks, the stress tests will be halted and the facility will be on lockdown for weeks, perhaps months, until we've ensured there are no more Blanks. In that time, those of you who don't blank will have to survive or be killed by the mindless beasts. Once everyone has transformed, you will be released from the facility."

I look at him with wide eyes, my heart pounding. "You can do something to stop these Blanks, can't you? Why won't you help us?"

"Jonathan Blaine, the director of Gardiner, believes that if one person blanks, we should kill everyone. Is that the alternative you prefer?"

"No, but there has to be another way." I look at Sam, this man who has raised me since I was eight years old. The only father I've ever known. "Don't you care what happens to me?"

Sam pauses. "You might not remember this, but you lived in this facility until you were three years old."

This is the last thing I expect him to say. "I did?"

"We housed all of you together until we could find you homes close to our base of operations. By the first year, most of the children were gone except for the forty of you that would make the facility your home. You were meant to grow up here.

"You were a special child. Precocious. Quiet but resilient. Strong-minded and soft-hearted. I wanted to encourage those traits, to foster in you a deep sense of independence and resilience, but being around the other children had an undesired effect on you. It distracted you from your own personal growth. You were too focused on their needs that you neglected yours. So I removed you from that environment. Maggie taught you to rely only on yourself. I waited until the lesson had solidified before stepping in personally to wean you of bad habits."

His words wash over me, transporting me back to the day I met him. My so-called mother had never mentioned any specific man in the medley of suitors who always showed up at our door. I woke up that morning thinking that life would continue as it always had, not knowing that Sam had planned a different course for me.

Just like he's planning something for me now.

He leans forward on his elbows, pinning me with an intense look. "You want to know about the kinds of people that I care about? They are the ones who will do what it takes to survive. They're not afraid of facing a challenge. Does that include you? Or will everything I've taught you for the last nine years be in vain?"

I hear the anger in his voice, but I can't get over how ridiculous his expectations are. "If you wanted me to be tough and brave, you should have prepared me for this."

"April," he says, the anger more audible now.

No. He needs to hear this. He needs to understand what he's created. "All you've done is teach me to bury my head in books and run away from confrontation. And now you expect me to be something completely different? How does that work?"

My eyes are stinging. I curl my hands into fists, letting my fingernails bite deep into the flesh of my palms. "I'm not special, Sam. I'm average at best, and on most days, I'm so pathetic I almost can't bear to live with myself. And you did this. Everything I am is because of you. You don't get to rip me apart and ask me to put myself back together better than before."

I brace myself for the worst, hating my stupid mouth for getting me deeper into trouble. But he looks less upset than he was a minute ago. He looks . . . amused.

"Don't be melodramatic, April. You're more blessed than you think you are. That will be all. I've indulged you long enough." With those dismissive words, he presses a button on his speakerphone. "Send her up."

"Yes, sir," comes a female voice over the crackle of the speaker.

"Who is she?" I ask sullenly.

"She's one of you. When she's done with you, memories of the time you've spent here will be blocked from your mind. You will wake up tomorrow believing that you've spent these past weekends doing your usual activities."

A soft knock sounds on the door. "Come in," Sam says.

A fair-skinned and freckled teenage girl about my age walks in. Her curly light-blond hair is her most distinctive feature; it hangs in messy locks down her back. She's wearing casual clothes, and a fine gold necklace with a ruby pendant. I'm guessing she didn't come straight from the grueling workout sessions they usually have in the afternoons.

Her strides are stiff and deliberate as she walks over to his desk and clasps her hands behind her back. She doesn't look at me. "Yes, sir?"

Sam points to a chair and says to me, "Take a seat."

I collapse into the chair and study her warily as she reaches into her back pocket. She pulls out a syringe. I grip the armrests, my eyes swinging over to Sam. "What is she doing?"

"I need to sedate you," she replies.

"Her power of suggestion doesn't work on a mind that's conscious or alert," Sam explains. "I don't expect you to be able to fall asleep right now, especially taking into consideration your emotional state, so we'll have to use the next best thing."

The girl holds out a hand, looking at me with somber hazel eyes. "Give me your arm."

I squeeze the armrests harder. A shameful whimper breaks free from my mouth, followed by short bursts of air. I don't want this girl to take my memories. I'm going to need them if I want to stay alive wherever they're taking me.

"Don't fight it," she whispers. "It'll be over soon. You have nothing to be afraid of."

I shake off the soothing effect that her words have on me, reminding myself I have too much at stake to give in. But would resisting make a difference? This is what Sam wants, and he always has his way. It's a lesson I've learned so many times it's burned into my mind. The only question is how hard I'm willing to make things for myself until then.

Choking back futile protests, I whisper, "I need to remember. Please. Promise me when we get there—that you'll help me. Promise me."

"Get on with it, Willow," Sam snaps.

A frown crosses her brow, but it's quickly gone. "Okay. I promise."

The needle of the syringe sinks into my flesh. I try to fight the wave of drowsiness crashing over me, but I don't have anything to hold on to. The sedative and the powerful glint in her dark eyes pull me under.