TWENTY-FIVE

Razor had stared at her in silence for a full minute, daring her to explain who she was.

She’d stared back. The entire minute. Thinking about what she had just learned because of the healed wound. As a child, she’d been remarkably insulated. From strangers, from children, from activities that might damage her. She’d never been cut, beyond casual scrapes; never hurt herself badly enough to discover this strange thing about her flesh, unless it had happened when she was too young to remember. Then this was just one more thing that Jordan had kept from her.

Finally, Razor dropped the blood-soaked shirt on the floor, leaving it as a mute accusation. He’d gone back into the kitchen.

Caitlyn sat alone on the couch. She heard strange sounds coming from the kitchen of the luxury suite. Muted clattering. She wasn’t in the mood to be curious but walked over anyway and looked around the corner.

Razor was moving contents from the fridge into the oven beside it. To all appearances, inexplicable. Razor glanced at her. Said nothing. As if daring her to ask. So she didn’t.

She returned to the couch, wondering again if she should just take her chances on the roof. Maybe if she bolted and threw herself from the roof, she’d make it past the waiting sniper and have a chance to land far enough past the blockade on the ground to find a way to escape. Billy and Theo were at the soovie park. Waiting. Ready to go west. Until this—the helicopter outside—there was only one thing she had to do to reach that dream. Become invisible. Not like the Invisibles. Truly invisible. Through surgery that would remove the outer signs that her DNA had been spliced and manipulated at an embryonic stage by the man who called himself her father.

That was the terrible contradiction she had faced. To become free, she’d have to give up what truly made her feel free. Surgery would be Jordan’s redemption. Not hers. It had been easier to make no decision.

She stared at the gray sky. At the chopper. Hovering. Waiting. Holding a sniper in place to execute her. It was no longer just Mason in pursuit, but the power structure of the Outside. She and Billy and Theo had made a plan, had dared to dream. But her darkest secret was as inescapable as the forces pursuing her. If somehow Razor got them out of here, the only way she could live without hunters on her trail was to give up who she was.

Razor grunted as he pushed the fridge on wheels out of the kitchen area. He stopped it just before the door that led to the hallway and elevator.

“Remember the mirror down there?” Razor asked, puffing slightly from the exertion of moving the fridge. “It’s where I practice illusions. I like games. I like creating illusions. I like fooling people. That’s why I didn’t hand you over to Melvin. I thought this was a game I’d enjoy. I thought it was a game I was good enough to win. If it had just been Melvin, I could have.”

Leaning against the fridge, Razor looked beyond her at the helicopter. “Believe it or not, I’ll get past them. I’ll get you out too if you want, but then you’re on your own. This is your game, not mine. I want out.”

“Maybe you’re creating an illusion right now, just to turn me in.”

“I’m done playing.” The exasperation in his voice told her it was truth. “You said it yourself. I’m worth a lot to them.”

“Help me move this fridge. I’ll get you out.”

“Make me trust you.” If they got out of here, she’d find a way to the surgeon.

He paused, searching her face. “I used the computer in the bedroom to access the building’s security system. When the fire alarms go off, we have about ten seconds to get this fridge out the door and into the elevator. Stay and you’re dead.”

“Or go with you and have you turn me in.”

He opened the door and pushed the fridge halfway into the hallway. Looked back at her. “You’re spooky. You can fly, trick or not. A bleeding knife wound that doesn’t even need bandages, and somehow you stop me from bleeding too. They’ve assembled an army to kill you. And they’ll know that I now know these spooky things about you. If you’re this valuable to them, there’s only one guarantee I can’t tell anyone about you. If I’m dead. I need to help you long enough so we can walk away from each other. Alive.”

Suddenly the fire alarms began to scream.