After she told me Under was dead, she was silent. Neither of us spoke for upwards of fifteen minutes. I didn't ask where we were going, though I really, really wanted to.

Deep down, I knew she wouldn't be the one to break the silence. She would be perfectly content to stay like this, no matter my discomfort or confusion, until we arrived wherever we were going. I also had a feeling she knew I would not be okay with such a long lasting silence.

So I broke it.

"What does LASAR stand for?"

Her gaze flicked from the road to me, just long enough to arch a brow. She turned back toward the road before answering. "Lethal Assembly of Special Agents in Reconnaissance."

I blinked owlishly. "Isn't reconnaissance just militant information gathering? Why would you — um, we — be ... assassins?"

"We gather information, yes. But sometimes — a lot of the time — knowledge demands action. Hence the addition of the word lethal," she said with a wry smile.

I did my best to pretend I was taking this well, but she still side-eyed me in my quiet. It invoked a sigh from her.

"I forget you've been embedded with false morals," she muttered.

"What, with the ... the telepathic alterations?" I asked, speculation still heavy in my voice.

She merely hummed and nodded.

"What's the deal with that, anyway?" I asked, feeling a little disgruntled as I slid further down in my seat.

"Which part?" she asked calmly. "The fact that telepathy is real, or the complete reorganization of your mind?"

"Let's start with the last one," I sighed, scratching the back of my neck. "I have a feeling that explanation will take longer."

She shrugged again. "As I said, Under was good at what she did. She suppressed all of your legitimate memories and made up a fantasy world. Said fantasy was activated when we crossed city borders into Kingston."

"Apparently it doesn't work in reverse," I muttered. "Because my memory didn't change when we left Kingston." I gave her a wary look then. "Are we leaving New York entirely?"

"I haven't decided yet," she said calmly. "As I was saying; the fantasy was installed. But with you, there weren't any cracks— well, I shouldn't say there were none," she hummed, "maybe just too few for you to notice ... whereas my memory was apparently coming out via the stories that Mickey wrote."

"Your — er, her stories were all just memories?" I didn't know why I was incredulous. I guess I should've expected it.

She nodded. "I looked over a few of the writings before I destroyed them. They were memories from our real life."

I took a few moments of quiet to try and process through that. It was difficult to wrap my mind around, but not impossible. "Okay," I said slowly, "then why weren't my memories leaking out?"

Her smile was smug. "I actually think I have that figured out," she admitted, "which is good, because Under didn't leave any explanation for memory leaks in her letter. I think that your head's wrapped up tighter because she probably put extra subconscious walls in place to prevent the accidental use of your power." She gave me a quick look, a smirk on her lips. "Super strength."

I gaped at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. "Say again?"

She nodded calmly. "You have super strength. You knew I had telekinesis — I checked that excerpt she emailed you — but yeah, you've got super strength."

"Wouldn't you ... she ... whatever, have been able to access that kind of ability? Wouldn't I? Memories bar none?" I asked incredulously.

She merely scoffed. "Not if the pathways the brain had formed that allowed access to such knowledge, or in this case ability, had been blocked off." She shrugged. "That's what's going on with you right now. Just because I told you you have super strength, doesn't mean you'll be able to use it. That pathway in your brain has been temporarily rerouted."

I processed that for a long moment in stunned silence. My heart was thudding in my ears; the only sound, aside from the purr of the engine, in the air. "So ... Under reinforced my, um, false personality," this was all so awkward to say, especially when my default thought was but I'm Jason!, "more than yours, because of the super strength."

"That's the theory."

My brow furrowed. "Is that why I keep having random thoughts that don't sound right?"

"I'd assume so," she agreed. "What kind of thoughts? When?"

"Usually when I'm about to get into a fight," I muttered, glancing out the window. We seemed to be heading toward another city. I could tell because the buildings around us were growing closer together the longer we drove.

"Makes sense," she chuckled.

It didn't take me long to come up with my next question. "Do I know Russian?" I blurted, so fast it almost came out as one huge word.

Her smile turned sly. "I was wondering when you were going to ask me about that. Yes, you do. I'm guessing you're asking because of last night?"

I nodded slowly. "I didn't even realize ... Mom came in and asked ..."

She continued to smirk. "Part of the LASAR training was languages. That was done at an especially young age. As a whole, agents were instructed in three or four languages fluently before we turned seven. Any languages after those were a choice."

"How many languages do you know?"

"Fluently, six," she said flippantly. "I can get by in two more, it's just not the same."

"How many do I know?" was my next question.

"Same as me, six," she said, granting me an amused smile. "You could get by in three more, though."

I stared hard out the window. A passing sign informed me that taking a certain exit would lead us to New York City, as a few others had been doing along the way. I shouldn't have been surprised that that was where we're going. But if it was, then we had at least another hour to go before we'd arrive. "So there's English, Russian," I began, before giving her a quick but pointed look.

"Mandarin, Spanish, French, German," she finished for me. "I'm adequate in Dutch and Italian, you're okay at Arabic, Cantonese, and Portuguese."

I in no way felt that I had that many languages rolling around in my head, but then again, I also hadn't thought I could fight like I had earlier. Sure, I had known I could fight — but not like that. That had been effortless and smooth; I hadn't needed to devote any thought to carrying out the actions. It was all muscle memory.

Then again, I supposed, the same could be said of when I had spoken Russian.

I chose to switch to a different line of thought. "You never answered my question about the crash."

As usual, she remained unfazed. "It was planned. Not by Boss though, or even Gray."

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess Boss is the founder of LASAR."

"Yup," she confirmed. "Gray was the second in command. He worked with us more than Boss did. But neither of them planned the crash. Boss was another casualty in the Kinetic's attack, and Gray is MIA."

"So whose call was it to set this up? The false memories, the telepathic connections?"

She thrummed her fingers against the steering wheel. "Gray did. But that didn't mean he'd pull us out so soon. If it was up to him, I have a feeling we would've been left in a stasis for longer. Just to be certain the Kinetic wouldn't anticipate our survival. But, Under spoke to Team Bravo before her death — they're the ones that stole the truck and rammed the Charger."

"That's no more outlandish than everything else I've heard today," I muttered. "Why did it take Team Bravo so long, then?"

She bit her bottom lip. "Under didn't give anyone a location."

I stared at her hard. "Could I just see the letter she left? Maybe that would help things make more sense."

"No," she shot me a look of warning. "It wouldn't." She shifted in her seat then, switching hands on the steering wheel and using her free one to shove her bangs from her line of sight. "Look, we're going to be in NYC in an hour — I hope you've figured out that's where we're going — and then ... then things will make more sense."

I remained silent, watching her. Though her expression betrayed nothing, and her eyes remained stone-hard and devoted to watching the road and her windows, I knew what she'd left unsaid. "I have to go into a coma."

She sighed, a soft but heartfelt sound, and this time I had a feeling she was purposefully not looking my way. "Unfortunately, that is up to you."