Mrs. Hansel delivers tea and snacks to us. Her husband leans back in his chair, his pot belly sticking in the air as he cleans his glasses with the edge of his untucked shirt. He grunts a thank you as she scuttles away, and I eye the offering suspiciously.

If the last forty-eight hours have reinforced anything, it is to not trust anyone. Especially someone so deeply involved in the project that led to our creation. Sweet tooth or not, I decide to pass on the butter cookies.

"Start talking," Marcus says briskly, his hands on the arms of his chair like he's ready to bolt. Or more likely, ready to attack.

The doctor pours himself a cup of steaming tea and blows on it. He eyes us suspiciously over the rim. "How is it that you two wound up on the outside?"

"Sam helped us," I say impatiently, hoping he's not going to start clamming up now. I lean forward. "Why did you say Hermes is the reason we're this way?"

"Sam Parker helped you escape? No wonder he's dead. You don't cross Gardiner and expect only a slap on the wrist."

"Answer the goddamned question," Marcus commands.

His eyes narrow. "You're not in any position to give orders, young man. But nonetheless, I will tell you the answer. Hermes was first captured twenty-odd years by Gardiner's affiliates. They knew immediately he wasn't human. Hard to tell from a distance, but once you get up close, you'd have to be blind to confuse him for one of us.

"He was tall and thin to the point of being bony, but he wasn't frail. Far from it, in fact. His hair was more silver than white, and his skin . . . you'd think he'd never spent a single moment under the sun. But it was his eyes that were unmistakably inhuman. Silver like his hair, but luminescent. Timeless as the universe." A slight shudder passed through his body. "One look from him had the power to make you feel as small and insignificant as a grain of sand at the bottom of the ocean."

"So . . . he's an alien," Marcus says skeptically.

"We never did figure out what he is, as far as I remember," Hansel muses. "We only knew there were others like him. They tried to rescue him at the beginning, but they gave up eventually. It took almost a decade of . . . research"—he says the word bitterly—"to create children like you using him. Hence the reason I left the organization. I could not, in good conscience, partake in a project that inflicted suffering on another being, human or not."

I look at Marcus, noting his alarmed expression. "You're . . . you're saying that Gardiner used Hermes to create us?"

"Yes." He says it like a question, like he can't understand why this is news to us.

Marcus jumps to his feet and walks over to a messy bookcase, his palm massaging the back of his neck. I'm frozen in shock. "We didn't know," I explain. "Sam told me the Shroud did this to us, and I'm guessing Jonathan Blaine said the same thing to Marcus."

"They lied to us," he growls. "About every single goddamned thing."

This changes everything. Human beings aren't the good guys, not by a long shot. They captured a being, tortured him, and used him to make gifted kids, and for what? To create their own superhuman army? And now people are dying and the world is in danger, and it's all thanks to a greedy corporation like Gardiner.

"I can't believe Sam was involved," I say, nauseous. Sure, he was an awful human being at times, but believing that he had the best of intentions was the only thing I could salvage from our relationship, and now I might not even have that.

Hansel must hear the betrayal in my voice, because he quickly says, "Don't lose faith in him. He did everything because he believed it was right. I mean, imagine this: we discover that there are beings that are capable of blowing up an entire building with their minds alone. It's a frightening notion. We didn't have the technology to take on such an adversary, so we created our own. It was survival instinct."

Survival. There's that word again. Everything always boils down to survival.

"It was by sheer luck that we captured Hermes many decades ago and learned we're not at the top of the food chain like we thought. But it wasn't luck that kept us safe from him. He could have killed us all if he wanted to. Instead, he endured years of agonizing torture without lifting a finger."

"Why?" I ask, trying and failing to wrap my head around the idea of a being more powerful than any of us have ever seen.

"Perhaps he was biding his time. Perhaps he had his own motives." He takes a sip of his tea and stares off blindly. "I have my own theory about it. He had no love in his heart for us, I'm sure, which means the only reason he didn't hurt us is because he couldn't."

"But you just said he's powerful."

"I don't mean that he's weak. I mean that he is, for all intents and purposes, a pacifist. His people were the same whenever they tried to rescue him. They never left behind casualties. Perhaps having so much power has made them more responsible than the average human."

Marcus turns around with a laugh. "You're kidding, right? The Shroud is turning people into monsters that kill innocent people by the dozens, and you want to call them pacifists?"

"Yes, it does seem paradoxical," Hansel muses as he rubs his beard.

I sit there and absorb the conflicting information, trying to put in a format I can understand. My eyes shoot up to Hansel's when an idea pops into my head. "Is it possible they just can't harm us? Like it goes against their nature? Which would explain—"

"Why they're turning people into Blanks," he finishes, nodding furiously. "Of course! The Blanks allow them to fulfill an objective that they themselves cannot."

"Which is what, to wipe out the rest of us?" Marcus asks.

Hansel shrugs his round shoulders. He absentmindedly places his empty cup on the desk instead of the saucer. There are round stains on its surface from past cups. "When threatened, any organism will naturally be inclined to defend itself. And in their case, it seems they're willing to go to great lengths to do so."

"How do we stop them?" I ask. Ultimately, it does come down to survival. Humans might've started this war, but that doesn't mean we all have to pay the price.

He looks at me gravely. "My dear, if any of us had the answer to that question, we wouldn't be stuck in this mess. Though if Sam wanted you out here, it must be because he thought you would find it."

The thought of humanity's salvation resting solely on our shoulders makes me squirm. "Where is Hermes now?"

"I was only starting out in my department when he was still there. That was nearly two decades ago. If he's communicating with you, it seems to indicate that he's found a way to free himself from Gardiner."

And here he is, sending messages to me. At Sam's request.

It doesn't make sense. He should be putting as much distance between him and Gardiner, or plotting revenge against humanity--unless contacting me is his idea of revenge. It doesn't explain why we're not in the hands of the Shroud.

"That's all I know," Hansel says firmly, his pointed gaze making it clear he wants us gone as soon as possible.

"Do you know anything about the metamorphosis inhibitor serum?" I ask before kicks us out.

"What about it?"

"It might be the key to saving Blanks," I say, annoyed with his impatience.

He snorts. "The serum doesn't work. It was a shot in the dark to counteract the Blank condition, but it failed. Once the Ancients take control of an individual's mind, there is no way to reverse the damage. At least, not with a lab-engineered injection."

"But it did work," I protest, "Sam's serum was supposed to be taken between the onset of symptoms and the actual blanking. That's what happened with me. I took the serum for almost a year, and it stopped me from blanking. Um, I blanked eventually but only because I stopped taking the doses I needed. But it still worked. Look at me now."

He looks me up and down, scrutinizing like he's seeing me for the first time. There's a mixture of curiosity and suspicion on his face. "That's impossible. I've worked on that serum with Sam extensively. It simply doesn't work."

"You're wrong."

He chortles. "Yes, the scientist is wrong and you, little girl, seem to have all of the answers. So why are you here?"

"B-but it doesn't make sense," I sputter. "I—I blanked, and I turned back."

"I couldn't begin to tell you why. And frankly, I have no interest in finding out. I freed myself from Gardiner years ago. It's frightening, knowing that Hermes can locate me so easily, but I have no wish to be found again." Fear clouds his eyes. "Tell him that I wasn't on board with what they did to him. I did what I could to speak out against it, but they wouldn't listen to me. And please leave my family alone, all of you."

"Doctor Hansel, we need to find—"

"I want you to leave now."

Marcus takes a step forward when Hansel jumps to his feet and comes across the desk. "That includes you, too, young man. If you want my advice, I would suggest that you remove yourself from this mess. Go off into seclusion, find yourselves a nice cabin deep in the mountains somewhere, and save yourselves from this inevitable apocalypse."

"Look, we're not going anywhere. We have friends that were taken by Gardiner, and you're going to help us find them."

Hansel scoffs. "I've been running from the organization for two decades now. I have no idea where they would've taken your friends—if they're even still alive. Which is exactly why you should leave if they're hunting you. I don't need you bringing trouble to my family."

"You're being selfish—"

"I told you to go!" He shoves his finger in the direction of the door. " I thought I made it clear you're not welcome here when you called me. The only reason I've entertained you this long is because Hermes is involved, and—and I don't want him to think I'm not willing to cooperate. But I can't have Gardiner showing up at my doorstep, either. So for the love of God, get out of my house and never come back."

"Marcus," I say sharply, noticing his hostile stance. He looks like he's willing to beat answers out of the terrified man. I get up and walk to the door. "Let's just go."

"He can help us. He has to help us."

"Not like this."

Marcus shoots me an angry look, but I'm used to it by now. When I don't cower, he mutters something under his breath and stalks through the door.

I get his impatience. Here is a man who knows more than we do, who has been involved in the project from the onset and could help us make sense of some things. But he's not the one with all of the answers. He's not at the heart of it all. He's not the Source.

We have much bigger fish to fry.



Dinner at a TexMex diner in the middle of nowhere. We've secured three booths in a quiet corner for ourselves, but Pablo refused to be left out of the discussion happening at my booth and pulled up an extra chair. I push around my plate of extra-cheesy nachos and listen to Marcus give Willow, Janie, and Pablo a break-down of everything we learned. Jones glares at us from over at his booth, clearly not appreciating being left out with the others. The only reason I'm not in his place is because I'm the gateway to Hermes.

"Jesus," Janie mutters as she spears her salad with her fork. "Every time I start thinking things couldn't get any weirder, they do."

"Why lie to us?" Pablo asks. "Why not just tell you all from the beginning we were made like this by Gardiner? It's not like they had anything to lose by telling us the truth."

Willow looks away from the window. "Absolution."

"Huh?"

"By blaming the Shroud for our condition, Gardiner removed all blame from itself. At the end of the day, despite everything Gardiner did to us, it would still be the hero in our eyes."

Janie nods thoughtfully. "I never did like Jonathan Blaine—or Sam Parker, for that matter. They were both assholes who got off on torturing us. But deep down, some part of me believed it was all for a good cause. I really did think there were beings out there who would kill all of us if we ever let them."

"And obviously that was much worse than anything Gardiner could have done to us," Willow finishes.

Marcus is quiet through all of this. Done with the burger, he reaches across the table for the napkin dispenser. I hand it to him without thinking and try to ignore the way his shoulders tighten and the way he stares at the napkin as he wipes his hands vigorously. His discomfort now is infinitely better than rage. Something is changing between us; we've gone from outright hostility to awkwardness, and I'm not even sure why.

"What are we going to do about Hermes?" Janie asks, looking at me seriously. She hasn't cracked a joke or poked fun at someone all day. "You are going to text him, right?"

"Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that an alien is using a cellphone?" Pablo chimes in.

I glance at Marcus. "I thought I'd ask you guys first what you think I should say."

Pablo snorts.

A frown crinkles my forehead. "What?"

"Just that you've known about this dude for probably months now and never bothered to mention him to us," he says.

"I don't remember any of that, thanks to Willow," I point out.

"Doesn't change the facts. It was still you."

"Maybe I had a good reason."

He snorts again, this time louder. "Pablo," Willow warns.

It hits me then that she knew about Hermes. She must have, if she got into my email account and had the power to delete my emails. I watch Willow as she reminds Pablo that he shouldn't talk about the past, this uneasy feeling in my gut that she knows a lot more than she's letting on. Or maybe that suspicion is left over from the facility days.

"Shut up, Pablo," Janie finally snaps. She rests her hand on the table and leans toward me. "What are we going to do? We need to decide as a group. That includes you, Marcus. I don't know why you're so quiet all of a sudden, but we need your input, so get it together."

"Calm the hell down, princess," he answers mildly. "We're going to text old Hermes, of course. Ask him what his angle is. The doctor was right: we can't trust him to have our best interests at heart."

"Ask him where Gardiner is keeping the others," Janie says eagerly.

Willow fiddles with the pepper shaker. "What if he does tell us where they are? We can't just break into Gardiner's base. We barely got out the first time."

"That was then," Marcus answers. "We've been training for the past eight months. We're stronger, smarter—except for Jones over there—and we know how to use our powers in a fight. We'll find a way to save them."

His confidence is inspiring, but I wonder if these kids would be willing to put their lives on the line like that. Pablo doesn't seem the least bit interested. Jones is pretty self-serving, too, based on what I know of him so far. The others at the nearby tables are too scared and desperate for safety to want to leap back into the fire.

For all intents and purposes, it boils down to the four of us.

With input from the teenagers around me, I send two text messages to Hermes. We sit there for a good ten minutes, watching the phone sitting on the table. Nothing. The clock ticks closer to nine-thirty. Closing time.

The hypnotized owner isn't going to kick us out, but we all know we have to get moving anyway. Too many risks. One of the humans at the diner could blank, Gardiner could find us, the police could catch up with us. There's no break for us.

As the others pile out of the diner, Marcus stops me with a hand on my wrist. "Hang on a second." He instructs Pablo and Janie to get the vans ready and tells Willow to buy him time while he touches base with me.

I'm not sure what that means, so I wait nervously until we're more or less alone. The table has been cleared of food, and I have nothing to keep myself busy so I won't have to look at him. Because now he doesn't seem to have a problem looking at me.

"What is it?" I say when he doesn't speak immediately.

Marcus shakes his head. "I'm trying to wrap my head around it."

"Around what?"

"Why didn't you tell us about Hermes?"

"I already told you why," I say, frustrated. "I don't remember. Do you guys think I'm keeping secrets? Because I'm not."

"You have to have some idea. Why would you keep this from us? From me? What were you doing all those times you just disappeared?"

"I wasn't with him," I blurt out and then duck my head. "Davey, I mean. In case you still think that. He told me I didn't reach out to him as much as I used to. I can't figure it out either. The only reason I'd be so secretive is if I was trying to protect you guys from something. Maybe knowing the truth would've hurt you more than not knowing."

He leans back. Stares at me. "You think your actions were so noble. Let me break it to you, April: these last few months, you didn't give a damn who you hurt."

"Is that what I did?" My gaze almost falters under his intensity. "Did I hurt you?"

"Would you care if you did?"

"Of course I would," I answer vehemently. This is my chance to bridge the gap between us once and for all. "I—you're someone I've come to care about very deeply, Marcus. I can't imagine what I did to hurt you, but I'm not . . . her. I'm not the same person. But if you want me to apologize, then I'm sorry."

"What you did," Marcus repeats, shaking his head. "It's not about that. It was never about that. It's about how you feel. How you've always felt, right from the beginning. I tried to change that so damned much. Tried to show you things could be different, but all you saw was the worst in me. How can you sit here now and pretend you don't feel the same way?"

There's hurt and anger in his eyes, and I'm lost. So completely lost. Someone outside honks the horn, but I barely hear the noise. "Marcus, I don't know what's happening. What am I pretending? What do you think I see in you right now?"

Another honk. He closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. "Forget it. We gotta go right now before Janie calls any more attention to us."

"We'll talk about this later," I say, following him out of the door. "We need to--"

"No." He turns abruptly to face me, and I have to slam on the brakes before I knock into him.

The expression on his face is tight and resentful, and I feel like we just took ten steps back. "Look, I've worked hard to put it all behind me. Call what just happened a lapse in sanity, but this conversation isn't going anywhere. The only thing we have left is the job. We're working together. That's it. There's no way I could ever make myself even like you again, so let's just forget about all of this, alright?"

Janie lays into the horn. He growls and turns back to the door, storming through it.

I barely grab it before it hits me in the face.