I’m not spared for long, though. After class, Audrey and I end up walking to lunch with Chase and Kyle.
“Why are you taking physics anyway, Aud?” Chase asks. “Aren’t you an English major?”
Audrey glares at him, but her cheeks turn pink. “Don’t give me crap. I need one more science elective to finish them off. Besides, I like science. I used to be good at it in high school.” She sighs. “It’s the calculus part that’s going to do me in. But Sophia is a math genius, and she’s going to help me.”
I laugh because genius, I am not.
Chase groans. “No, geniuses aren’t good either. They ruin the curve and make the rest of us look dumb.”
“That’s only ’cause you are.” Kyle pushes him into the doorway with his shoulder as we step outside. “So does this mean I’m going to have competition for keeping the highest average in Fernald’s class?” He raises an eyebrow as he looks at me.
I return the expression. “You don’t want to compete with me. I’m very competitive.”
“A challenge then. It’s on, Hernandez.” He kicks a stone down the stairs. “Meet you guys at lunch. I gotta pick something up in the library.”
“Library?” Chase yells after him. “Already? I’m surrounded by nerds.”
While Audrey pretends to take offense, I follow Kyle’s path toward the old stone building. The bell tower atop it is the highest spot at RTC. It’ll be a good place to set up some surveillance equipment this afternoon.
Four hours later, I’m prepared to do just that.
The sun beats down golden on the concrete path. Sweaty from my run, I pull my hair off my neck. I made three complete circuits around the campus for a total of 4.47 miles, including several stops to inspect weaknesses in the stone wall separating RTC’s hallowed educational halls from the Greater Boston morass. Despite school security, this place is as easy to breach as a Walmart grand opening.
And, since it doesn’t appear I’m going to get out of here anytime soon, that’s a problem. The enemy might be coming for X, and the longer it takes me to find him or her, the greater the chance they’ll succeed first. I have to discover how they might arrive and how I can escape if they do. The need to be prepared has been drilled into my head at least once a day, every day, since I was five years old: Five-thousand-two-hundred-fifteen lectures on the topic to be exact.
Adjusting my backpack, which is filled with surveillance cameras, I cross the concrete courtyard into the library. It’s too early in the year for it to be busy, but I like this building with its long windows and musty smell. It’s so different than what I’m used to. I thought different things would make me uncomfortable, but so far, that’s not true. Like Audrey, whose differences fascinate me, the library, which is warm and inviting, does too. It’s one of the oldest buildings on campus, and photos of it a hundred years ago line the entryway walls.
Earlier this week, I’d poked around and discovered the door in the back room that hid the bell tower stairs. According to information on RTC’s website, before everything became electronic, the library’s bell used to ring the hours. These days, the bell only rings on Sunday evenings or special occasions. And it, too, is electronic, programmed to play classical music, holiday tunes and even pop songs. Part of the Fall and Spring Games is for students to guess the tunes. Points go to the team that guesses the most correctly.
I smile at the librarian sitting at the circulation desk, then turn the corner into a smaller side room. From here, her back is to me. I take one more check around, then swing my legs over the gate leading into a tiny alcove.
Before me are two heavy wood doors. One leads to offices. The other leads to the tower stairs. Both were locked yesterday. The librarians wear key chains around their wrists, so stealing the key will be harder than picking the lock, especially when I have tools designed for that purpose.
I stick my ear to the door and try the handle to get a feel for it. The latch gives.
Blinking stupidly, I step back and push the door open an inch. Okay then. Either someone left it unlocked by accident, or someone is already up there. Since it’s only my first week, I decide to play dumb if I get caught.
The door hinges creak as I push it open another few inches. Holding my breath, I look over my shoulder for the librarian, but she doesn’t notice. Quickly, I slip through, close the door behind me and climb the five narrow flights of winding steps to the top. No one meets me on the stairs, and when I reach the end, I find the final door to the outside hangs slightly open. I press my eye to the crack.
A blond boy sits on his knees on the rough floor facing south. A gust of wind sends his hair flying, and he turns left for a second, shielding his face. It’s Kyle.
Great. I have an assignment to do, and it doesn’t include guys who wear weird T-shirts that say Sweet Cartwheeling Jesus on them. What does that mean exactly?
Whatever. That’s one mystery that’s not my problem. Not when the enemy could show up any day. Yet, like Kyle’s hair, it interests me, and that is as good a reason as any to leave the tower this afternoon and come back when he’s gone. I don’t need distractions any more than I need an audience while setting up cameras.
But I don’t move. I want to know what he’s doing up here. I want an excuse to talk to him even though talking to him is a bad idea.
“Courage isn’t about not being scared,” I hear Fitzpatrick say in my head. “It’s about being scared and doing what’s necessary regardless.”
That settles it. Not the part about courage, but knowing that if Fitzpatrick were here, she’d tell me to come back later. Screw Bitchpatrick.
I open the door and step onto the tower. Kyle scrambles to his feet. Halfway there, he sees me and stops. The oh shit expression on his face fades as he flings those bleached locks out of his eyes. “Sophia?”
“Last I checked.” I shut the door behind me all but the crack that Kyle left it, and join him by the southern railing. His shoulders relax as he settles back down. “Awesome view.”
I’m not as tall as him—I’m not tall at all, even for a girl—so my nose barely clears the railing when I’m on my knees while Kyle clears it with his chin. Still, I can see well enough despite my literal shortcoming. The Boston skyline rises from beyond the Charles River, piercing the perfect baby blue above. Boats, rendered to nothing more than amorphous shapes in the distance, glide by.
Kyle smiles, and my insides do an annoying dance that is unfortunate for so many reasons. “Yeah, it is. That’s why I’m here. What about you?”
“I was curious.”
“Ah.” He rests his chin on the rail. “I wondered if you could see me up here. We’d be in deep shit if we got found out.”
“Couldn’t see you. Not when I looked up anyway.”
He narrows his eyes. “Most people don’t look up.”
“I always look up. Especially when I’m trying to figure out if people are going to see me sneaking around.”
“And I was hoping you came up here to talk.”
We both duck farther into the tower as a group of seagulls soars disturbingly close.
I sit back, leaning against my pack and wondering if I’ll get a chance to install my cameras today. “Since it took a while to figure out which door I needed to get up here, I assume you came up so no one would find you. That suggests you don’t want to talk.”
“True. But I’d talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“Also true.” Kyle fights the wind over the direction of his hair. His bleach job needs touching up in the back. Half-inch black roots show through. “I guess that works out well then.”
Self-consciously, I tuck my own hair behind my ear. “It does. So did you pick the lock to get up here, or did you get lucky like I did and find the door unlocked?”
He grins and pulls a key from his pocket. “Don’t need to pick a lock if you kno
w where they hide the spare.”
“Aha. So is that what you needed to get at the library earlier?”
He makes an innocent face. “Maybe. But I do pick a mean lock, not to brag or anything.”
“No, obviously you would never brag. You’re totally humble about your physics grade too.” I roll my eyes. “So let’s see—that covers lock-picking and breaking-and-entering. With your mad math skills, I bet you can also count cards. What other criminal tendencies do you have?”
“None that I’m aware of. You?”
“The same.” Plus a few hundred other tricks he doesn’t need to know about, although none of them are criminal exactly. They can merely be used that way.
The moment of silence between us spreads into a lull. I stare at the bell, pretending it interests me when really I’m trying not to stare at Kyle.
There’s an inscription around the top of the bell in what appears to be Latin. No one’s ever bothered to give me instruction in Latin. Back home, it was determined I could pass for belonging to a handful of ethnic groups. The languages of those groups are the only ones anyone bothered to teach me. I wouldn’t mind learning Latin, though. Maybe I’ll teach myself while I’m here. RTC offers classes in it, naturally.
Except I shouldn’t be signing up for extra classes. Classes aren’t my priority at all. Gathering intel is, something I’m not currently doing unless Kyle is why I’m here, but I have no reason to suspect that. Not yet anyway. Maybe when I’ve gathered some of that intel, I’ll know differently, but out of eight-hundred-seventy-seven possibilities, Kyle, has only a 0.001 percent chance of being X. I don’t require any intel to know those are bad odds.
Kyle taps my leg with his green Converse. “So I haven’t gotten to talk to you much. Where did you go to school before RTC?”
Oh, crap. The personal questions. With so many people gathered around the table at lunch and dinner, and with Audrey being so chatty, I’ve managed to avoid prolonged conversations with Kyle. Part of it was luck. Part of it was intentional. Conversations with Kyle feel faintly dangerous.
So I hesitate, playing with the cuff on my hoodie. “A different school,” I say at last.
“Really? I’d never have guessed.” He kicks me lightly, and I blush. “What school? Where?”
I have a story to tell him, complete with a doctored online history documenting it. But the lies don’t roll off my tongue as easily with him as they have with the others who’ve asked. Something about Kyle is different. Or, honestly, something about me is different with Kyle. Emotions aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be.
“A small college in Pennsylvania,” I say, aiming to be as vague and truthful as possible. “You’ve probably never heard of it. Very different from RTC.”
“How so?”
I fold and refold the cuff, trying to perfect the crease. “Technology focused. Big on science and computers, that sort of thing. Which I decided wasn’t my sort of thing. So that’s why I’m here. What about you? Where are you from? I mean, when you’re not at RTC?”
Kyle stretches out, his face turned to the sky. “Everywhere. My parents do a lot of moving. That’s why I love it here. This has become the only stable location in my life.”
“You don’t like moving around? I’d love to travel.” That much is true. It’s why coming to RTC is such a big deal and why it was such an honor that I got chosen. One day I’ll see more of the world than I can imagine, but for now, I’m deemed too inexperienced. I have more training to complete, which I think is insane. I’ve been training my whole life. If nineteen years can’t prepare me for missions, nothing can.
Worry flutters through my gut. There are forces back home that think just that. I will never be ready. My unit will never be ready. We are mistakes.
I have to prove them wrong for all of our sakes.
Kyle shrugs, and I snap back to the present. “I like going to new places, but it gets old after a while. I’m just glad I don’t have to keep changing schools anymore. It sucked having to start over somewhere new every year. I couldn’t wait to get to college.”
“Yeah.” I get this pang in my gut when I think about it. Guilt over those I left behind and over the way Kyle makes me feel. “But maybe that’s not always a bad thing. This is a fresh start for me. A new me—the RTC me.”
Me as Sophia. Although it’s strange, I’m starting to like it.
Kyle drops his gaze from the sky to look at me again. “Yeah, I get that. I have an RTC me too. It’s different from the home me. I thought that made me weird.”
“It might, but I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
“Done. And I won’t tell that you sneak up the bell tower if you don’t tell that I sneak up the bell tower.”
I laugh. “Also done, but we’ll have to coordinate schedules so we’re not sneaking up at the same times.”
“I was hoping you’d say we should coordinate so that we are sneaking up at the same times.”
That would seriously interfere with my plans. Bad idea. But then again. “Well, maybe both.”
“Good.” Kyle scoots closer. “So what other classes are you taking? What else do you do—sports, music, drunk unicycling?”
I laugh without feeling it. Right. The things normal students do. Fortunately, I have this all worked out. Unfortunately, it means I have to lie again.
Chapter Three
Eleven Weeks Ago
Maybe I won’t get stuck at RTC forever after all. Just as I’m starting to resign myself to the slow and tedious route, my perfect opportunity to be efficient and effective arrives in the form of something called a pep rally.
The means by which to take advantage of this opportunity came with me in my luggage—a not very well-known but highly useful chemical weapon called AnChlor. About five percent of the population has a natural resistance to it. That means of the eight-hundred-seventy-seven students at RTC who might be X, only forty-four will have no symptoms if they’re exposed.
Neither will I or I couldn’t be doing this.
For all I know, X might be one of those naturally immune forty-four, or they might not, but it doesn’t matter. Because X is X. My most important clue about X’s identity is clear: if X is not resistant, he or she will recover from exposure way faster than a normal person. So either way, exposure to AnChlor will narrow down the possibilities considerably. If I’m lucky, it could lead me straight to X. My mission could end today. All I have to do is spread the AnChlor around the gym during this afternoon’s pep rally.
That’s all.
No biggie.
So why am I dragging my feet?
This isn’t even true AnChlor that I’ve been given. It’s more like AnChlor-lite. It will dissipate quickly, and the irritation it causes will subside soon enough. There’s no reason for me to hesitate. No reason except that I’m going to be ruining a lot of people’s day.
Grimacing, I wiggle the bag of AnChlor that I’ve stuck in my sweater sleeve down to my hand, open it and carefully sprinkle some of the crystals along the bleachers. Hesitation can be deadly. Someone is trying to ruin X’s life. Surely everyone else at RTC can deal with the minor inconvenience of a ruined pep rally and temporary chemical burns.
I mean, what’s the point of a pep rally anyway? I’ve never been to one before, but the idea of it seems silly. There are so many strange, pointless things people at this school do—pep rallies, the Games, and so much time wasted playing around online or watching dumb TV. It’s like everyone is oblivious to all the serious issues going on in the world.
Sometimes I get annoyed at them for it. Other times I pity them. Still others, I envy their carefree ignorance. Then I get annoyed at myself.
Adjusting the bag of pompoms in my arms, I continue both my helpful but silly task and my covert, real task. Setting the pompoms out on the bleachers is the perfect cover for dispensing the AnChlor, but I st
ill need to be careful. Keeping watch over my shoulder, I spread a thin line of the chemical along the bottom bleacher row. It’s sure to get stepped on this way, breaking the crystals and releasing the gas into the air. No one pays me much attention, and I work quickly, eager to get rid of the evidence.
Audrey joins me after I finish covering the bleachers, and I stick the bag with the remaining AnChlor back up my sleeve. “Woohoo, pep rally.” She makes a sarcastic face.
“Explain to me why we’re here again?”
“To support our exciting new football team, of course. They’re only toddlers, dear things. They need encouragement.”
They’re only toddlers—meaning the football team has only been around for three years. Apparently, RTC didn’t always used to be so silly. When I read up on the school before arriving, I was impressed by how different it was than most colleges. No Greek system, and until recently, no football team. The school had a reputation for its academic rigor, and being so close to Harvard and MIT created competitiveness.
But the school caved to student and alumni pressure—and declining application numbers—a few years ago. Thus, RTC has joined the ranks of practically every other college and has their first-ever football team. The pep rally followed as a way to increase school spirit. Audrey filled me in on the controversial details earlier, even though she hadn’t enrolled until after the decision had been made.
Audrey puts her hands on her hips. “Can’t you feel the excitement?”
It’s the student council’s responsibility to set up the gym, so Chase, who is the sophomore class president, has recruited a small group of us to help. Most of his handful of friends aren’t thrilled to get stuck with the extra duty, but I’m weirdly happy he thought to include me and thankful for the opportunity it gives me to try out the AnChlor. Using it in the dining hall wouldn’t have been ideal because people come in and leave too erratically. I need time to observe the effects, which makes the pep rally perfect. I also know from Audrey that attendance at the rally is usually high because the school gives out all kinds of free stuff—boring things like school T-shirts, but also gift cards to the local coffee shops and restaurants.
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