I leave the office and find Mona sitting in the living room with a crocheted shawl wrapped around her. She looks at me with hollowed eyes and opens her mouth, like she wants to ask how everything went, but in the end she must decide it’s too much effort, so she just nods.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Mona doesn’t respond. I show myself out the back door to find Abe. He’s slouched on the wicker bench, his head resting on the back and his arms crossed over his chest.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Abe opens his eyes. “Did he tell you anything?”
Tons.
“Nothing about a blackout or XP. He’s never heard of either.”
“Shocking. He probably knows exactly what they are but isn’t telling out of spite.” He pushes off the bench and walks toward the side of the house.
“He doesn’t know, Abe— Where are you going?”
Abe lifts the latch on the fence gate. “We’re leaving.”
“But . . . You didn’t say good-bye to Mona.”
Abe shrugs. “She’ll figure out we left.”
I inhale sharply. “What are you doing, Abe? This isn’t you. She’s your grandmother, and she’s sick. Tell her good-bye.”
He hesitates, and I get angry.
“Do you even know how good you have it? Your life is a damned family values ad that runs during every election season—mom, dad, kids, and grandparents, huddled around a professionally decorated birthday cake while some blowhard politician talks about ‘the way things used to be.’ I would kill for this.” I point toward the back door.
Abe is silent.
I shake my head, just once. “Do you know how much I wish my biggest family problem was a stupid fight with my grandfather?”
And then Abe yells at me. It’s the first time he’s ever done it. “Can you let me know how much longer I have to feel sorry for you and your crappy home life before you’ll finally acknowledge that other people have real problems, too?”
“I . . . what?” His words land a sucker punch in my gut.
Neither of us says anything for a moment. Then Abe mutters, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. And you’re right. I’ll go say good-bye.” He disappears inside the house, but his absence doesn’t get rid of the pain I feel, mostly because he has a point.
The back door opens and shuts, and Abe’s at my side again. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Really.”
“Me, too. I don’t like fighting with you, Abe.”
“Me either.”
“Can we just . . . call a truce for now? There’s so much else we have to focus on.”
“Truce.” Abe weaves his fingers through mine as we walk back to the car, and I try to ignore the fact that his are cold.
CHAPTER 10
I linger in the hallway outside Sit Room One the next morning. It’s a few minutes before eight, the typical time that a small, weekend breakfast spread is set out in the dining room. I take a breath, then step into the room.
Red shuffles a bunch of papers into a folder, then looks up at me. “You do realize you get Saturdays off, right?”
I shut the door behind me and take a breath to calm my nerves, which doesn’t help. So much is riding on this. I glance back to make sure the door is fully closed and that Bonner isn’t hanging around outside, then I look at him. Red’s at least six inches taller than me, and he has a way of standing and staring that makes me uncomfortable, that oozes authority.
“If I were to say the word blackout to you, how would you respond?”
“How about you cut the bullshit and tell me what you’re doing here?”
Okay then. So much for that approach. I begin again. “I know there’s more to Orange’s disappearance than you’re letting on.”
“Excuse me?”
“I trust you, Red, and I want to tell you what I know—everything I know,” I say without hesitation. If I hesitate, I’ll lose my resolve. “So please just let me tell you, and then we can talk about what it all means afterward.”
I’m met with silence, so I jump back in.
“I recently became aware of three things, and I don’t know how much you know about them.”
“Try me.”
“First. You know about XP.” I say it as a statement because it is a statement.
All I get in return is a blank stare and the tension ratcheted a degree. I’m suddenly reminded that Red isn’t just another teammate. He’s a superior.
Red clears his throat. “And?”
“Right.” Forget my nerves. I just have to do it. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I have a hunch about what happened to Orange.”
Red raises an eyebrow.
I walk farther into the room and rest my palm against the edge of a table. “I have it on good authority that there might be a secret operation taking place inside Annum Guard. An operation that’s responsible for making people disappear.”
“A blackout,” Red says.
“You’ve heard of it?”
“No, that’s what you just told me. Where did you hear this from?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Uh-uh, wrong answer.” Red crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s one hell of a revelation, accusation, whatever label you want to slap on it. And you’re going to tell me right now where you heard this.”
This makes me hesitate. Because what I did was illegal, and I don’t want to admit that to my boss. Or to the guy who would have been my boss had Bonner not come along.
“Now, Iris.”
I clasp both hands in front of me. “I read it in some Senate testimony.”
“Whose testimony?”
“Zeta’s.”
Red cocks his head. “And how did you come across this testimony?”
“Is that really important?”
“You know it is.”
“I accidentally”—I hold up my hands to deflect Red’s look—“I swear, it was accidental. I found his testimony on top of a stack of papers when I was meeting with the vice president.”
“And, what, you accidentally read it while she was in the bathroom?”
“No, I very deliberately took pictures of all the pages I could while she was on a phone call.”
Red’s brow furrows and his skin reddens. But then, he composes himself. “Show me.”
“I can’t. I deleted the images from my phone, then scrubbed it. They’re gone.”
“What exactly did they say?”
“Just that there’s some sort of covert operation team inside Annum Guard assembled for Operation Blackout. We’ve been trying to put two and two together ever since.”
“We? Who’s we? I swear, if you’ve told every other Guardian about this . . .” And then understanding dawns on his face. “You have, haven’t you? You’ve told every other Guardian about this.”
“We just want answers, Red.”
“I am pretty damn annoyed with you right now. With all of you. You’re lucky I don’t have much authority these days.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. Then I stand tall. “No, I take it back. I’m not sorry. I want to know what the truth is. And I want you to help me. I need you to help me. We all do.”
“Give me one reason why I should.”
“That’s the second thing.” I pause. “What do you know about the reasons that Annum Guard was started, Red? About its very first mission?”
“That’s classified, you know that. Way above my clearance level.”
“Well, what would you say if I told you I know what the very first mission was?”
“Should I even ask how you know this?”
“Ariel Stender told me.” I need to word this next bit carefully. I need to be resolute, but I don’t want to come off sounding insensitive. And that’s such a fine line. I reach out and touch Red’s forearm. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but I remember that glimpse of a tattoo peeking out under his sleeve all those months ago at Peel. The tattoo of two flags intertwined. Two national identities. The United S
tates flag and one other. “It’s above my clearance level. Yours, too. And I was told it in the strictest of confidences.”
Red looks at my hand on his arm, then looks at me. I can see the struggle in his eyes. I know the business side of him wants to tell me to keep the mission to myself, but the personal side is curious.
Ariel told me this in confidence. But don’t we all have a right to know our origin? What Annum Guard’s original purpose really was?
“The Cuban Missile Crisis,” I say. “That was the first mission. It really happened. In 1962, the Soviets and the US launched missiles at each other, and DC and Moscow both crumbled and burned. Fifteen million people were killed. Our economy was toppled. And Cuba was wiped off the map. Just . . . gone.” I tap his arm once, right where the tattoo is under his sleeve, before I pull my hand away.
I don’t know when Red’s parents came to America, whether it was before 1962 or after, and I’m not about to ask. But I see Red struggling to put together the reality of the situation.
“The very first Annum Guard mission was to stop the bombing. To avert the crisis,” I say.
Now Red looks angry. “And you know I’m a Cuban-American so you’re trying to play to my sensitivities? You want me to weep for my homeland and give you whatever you want? You’re out of line, and you clearly don’t know me.”
I take a step back and hold up both hands. Damn, I did this wrong.
“No, Red. All I’m trying to do is get you to see that Annum Guard needs help. Your help. We need to stop going on missions that don’t matter, stop poring over tens of thousands of irrelevant documents, and we need to get back to what’s important—finding XP, ridding ourselves of the bacteria that’s infesting our ranks, and taking sight of our true purpose again. Changing the past to improve our present.”
“You do know the ‘enhancement, not alteration’ thing is total BS, right?”
“But it doesn’t have to be. Look, we’ve all decided we’re going to dig.”
“I’m pretty sure the first rule of going undercover isn’t to tell your superior what you’re doing.”
“Help us, Red. We’re getting back to the old Annum Guard. The one that existed before any of us were even born. The one with a purpose. The one that you thought you joined.”
Red’s quiet for a moment. Then he squeezes the bridge of his nose. “What exactly are you hoping I’ll do?”
My heart lifts. “You have access to information we don’t.”
“I don’t know what any of the XP missions are. That’s in the realm of the Defense Department.” But the way he says it—in a rushed voice just a smidge higher than his normal tone—tells me that this too is a half-truth. I don’t know what he’s hiding, but Red’s never given me even the smallest indication that he can’t be trusted. He’s come through for me every time I’ve ever needed him.
“Only the DoD has seen Alpha’s notebook,” Red continues. “Or what’s left of it.” Most of the notebook was destroyed in an explosion back at Peel. That notebook detailed every mission Alpha ever sold, to whom, and for how much.
“The notebook! Red, what if I project back to that day at Peel? To before the notebook was burned and its remnants turned over to the DoD?”
Red draws himself up to his full height. “Are you joking? You are not asking me to authorize a mission where you’d go back in time and steal something from yourself. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What would you do if another version of you walked through the door right now and tried to take something from you?”
Fair point. “Well, then, another Guardian could do it. Like Green or—Oh! Abe! I mean Blue. I promise, I wouldn’t have found it weird if he asked me for the notebook that day. And I would have given it to him.”
Red shakes his head. “Nope. All of you were there that day at Peel. That would mean a double version of one of you. No, Iris. The notebook is off the table. What else do you have?”
Is that an invitation? He’s staring at me. I can’t tell if he’s thinking about how he can help—about telling me what he knows—or whether he’s going to make sure I get fired tomorrow.
“Okay, then, we start small,” I say. “We’ll look for any little trail we can find that might lead us to XP, and that’s the direction we’ll take.” I tap the base of my neck, where my new tracker is. “You also control these, right?”
Red doesn’t answer.
“And what’s the third thing?” he says.
“The what?”
“You said there were three things.”
“Oh. Right. Our interns. It’s a pretty big coincidence that Orange went missing right after they started.”
“You think we have a mole.”
“I think we should try to find out.”
He’s quiet again.
“So now it’s your turn, Red. Am I on the right track with any of this? What was Orange really doing when he disappeared?”
Red kicks a chair out from behind the table, and I sit quickly.
“What I’ve told you is the truth. I don’t know who XP is, and I don’t know what any of the XP missions are. But believe me that I share your frustrations with our current administration. Bonner is leading us on one wild goose chase after another, and don’t for one second think I haven’t asked myself why.”
He opens the top drawer of the file cabinet in the corner and pulls out a plain tan folder. He slaps it onto the table in front of me, and I flip it open. A picture of Orange is clipped to the left side. This is Orange’s personal file.
I scan it. Orange’s real name is Jeremy Greer. He’s twenty-seven. His mother—my breath catches—his mother is Epsilon. I think back to my very first day at Annum Guard. To the woman in the wheelchair with the broken, mangled body. A warning against the havoc that time travel can wreak on humans.
I look over the rest of the page. Orange grew up in Arlington, just across the river. Both of his parents still live there. There’s a handwritten note at the bottom of the page, and I immediately recognize Alpha’s handwriting. The note is dated nine years ago. It must have been written right after Orange joined. The note says that, at Orange’s request, 30 percent of his salary is to be withheld and put in a special needs trust for Epsilon.
And with that, I flip the file shut. This is too much. Too personal.
“He’s my friend,” Red says quietly. “He’s been my friend for a very long time. Yellow, Green, and Blue—Old Blue—didn’t join the Guard until two years ago, and Indigo and Violet the year after that. For seven years, third generation was only me and Orange. He’s my friend.”
“What happened to him?” My voice is soft, too.
“I found something buried in a file. A note about how Eta referred to the election mission as ‘The Cannonball Mission.’ That’s not how we name missions, and she was talking about a Massachusetts governor’s election. Why would she call it that? It had nothing to do with a cannonball. So I dug and I searched and I dug and I searched. For weeks. And then I found a tree native to Central and South American rainforests nicknamed the cannonball tree.”
I nod politely. What in the world is he talking about?
“Its scientific name is couroupita guianensis, so by a stroke of luck, I decided to do a search for that, and when I did, I discovered something called morphnus guianensis. The scientific name for the crested eagle. Eta probably thought she was being smart, that no one would ever be able to reverse engineer the scientific name of the bird back to a cannonball.”
I sit up straight. Crested Eagle was the code name of my Peel headmaster—Vaughn—who was working for XP.
“So you thought the election mission might have something to do with XP?”
“It was a strong hunch, one that proved to be correct. Orange knew what he was doing. I told him about Cannonball not five minutes after I found it. He knew the real mission was to look for any signs of George Vaughn or XP. But neither of us were expecting that they’d be waiting. It was an ambush.”
“We’re going to
find him, Red.” I meet his gaze. “We are. But the only way we’re going to do it is to keep digging.”
Red looks past me to the clock. It’s nearly eight thirty.
“Hope you’re not very hungry,” he says. “We need to plan.”
CHAPTER 11
Phase One of our plan is to sniff out the interns.
Okay, actually, phase one of the plan is to put Yellow in charge of sniffing out the interns. Yellow may look like a helpless gazelle grazing in the savanna, but that’s part of her charm. The truth is that girl is a cheetah through and through.
“Here’s what we’re doing,” Yellow says as she pushes next to me on the stairs after the six thirty a.m. Monday briefing. She glances at the door to make sure Bonner isn’t right behind us. “Tonight, you, me, and our potential moles are going out.”
“Going out where?”
“Someplace fun. You’re going to love it.”
But she can’t fool me. I can see the stress lines creeping across her forehead, the dark circles under her eyes from sleepless nights. She holds the door open for me, and I squeeze her shoulder as I walk into the common room.
“Why are you being intentionally vague?” I ask.
The interns are already in the library. Paige and Mike are sitting at desks, going through documents. Colton has plopped himself in an armchair and is scrolling through his phone.
“Bring socks.”
“Socks? You’re . . . you’re not talking about bowling are you? Please tell me you’re not talking about bowling.”
Yellow’s face lights up with a huge, exaggerated smile, and she turns toward the library. “I need to get out. I feel like I’m just constantly stuck here.” She’s talking loudly, and Colton directs his attention from his phone. Yellow grabs my arm. “Hey, we should do something fun tonight.”
“Like . . . bowling?” I say in a flat voice.
Yellow gasps. “Yes, like bowling! Who’s up for Lucky Strike tonight?”
Paige and Mike exchange a confused glance, as if they’re not sure whether Yellow is talking to them. Colton looks at Yellow in a way that makes my stomach turn. He sees her as a conquest, which I know is playing right into her plan, but it makes me want to kick him in the nuts.
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