I find them at our table with Carson. "That girl was my block mate," Willow is saying, shaking her head. "She was unusually quiet this morning, but I had no idea anything was going on with her. It didn't even occur to me to check her eyes."
Willow looks better than usual. Her eyes are brighter, more alert. Which is odd; after the way she was crying in the shower room yesterday, I expected her to get barely a wink of sleep. She must have known we'd be put on lockdown after the Blank attack. That would explain why she was crying in the first place.
She trades a look with Alec as she speaks. It happens so fast no one would notice unless they knew what to look for. I wonder how many other surreptitious exchanges I've missed.
"I'm glad we don't have to worry about her blanking," Alec says with a shudder.
"Are you saying you approve of what Eli did to her?" I ask.
"No, of course not," he replies, surprised. "I'm not a psychopath like him."
"Maybe not, but you haven't been honest either."
He returns my frown. "What?"
"I remember."
Alec's frown deepens. My gaze flickers to Willow, who is staring blankly at me. "You remember what?" he asks in a confused tone.
I lean forward on my elbows. "Everything. The research facility. You and Alec. And the other kids."
Their silence tells me what I need to know.
"Huh?" Carson asks.
"I remember what you did to me," I say to Willow. "I also remember the promise you made. The one you didn't keep."
Not giving me back my memories is the worst thing she could have done to me. She deprived me of the chance to make sense of this place. Maybe then I could have done more. Tried harder to pull Baxter in before he was taken. Warned that girl the first day not to surrender and let them take her away. Saved Camille and all the others.
Willow's controlled expression doesn't change, but her voice is different, unfamiliar, when she says, "I don't owe you anything."
I rear back, surprised by the acidity in her tone.
"What promise?" Carson asks.
"It's not her fault," Alec answers. "They didn't give us a choice about telling you guys anything."
Willow's eyes are fixed on the far wall now. One of her hands is on the table, clenched into a fist. It's almost as if a whole different girl is sitting across from me, wearing Willow's girl-next-door-pretty face, but everything about her is so alien now. Her perky demeanor is gone, replaced by a sullenness so unlike her. What is going on?
"Who the hell are they?" Carson demands, looking from one face to the next. "And what didn't they want you to tell us? Can someone tell me what's going on?"
Alec sighs and turns to him. "Some of us grew up in a facility owned by Gardiner—the Takers. They experimented on us so they could turn us into Mods without triggering whatever makes us blank. It worked for some."
"Mods?" I ask.
"Modified human beings. Kids with mental abilities. Like Weasel, Lisa. Buzzcut." He glances at Willow. "We were thirty-nine kids growing up, but the six of us are the only ones left. The others . . . most of them blanked."
"And you're one of the Takers?" Carson asks.
"No, we're not one of them. We're just like you. Property of Gardiner."
That doesn't help me relate to Alec any more than I did five minutes ago. He's nothing like the rest of us. "Why didn't you tell us from the beginning?"
"I told you—we couldn't. You saw what they did to Baxter. They killed the ones who surrendered. They killed seven kids in their beds because they were already blanking. What makes you think they'd spare us for ruining their plans?"
"You're telling us now," Carson points out.
"You think it matters at this point? They've done everything they can to control our transformation. They've isolated us. They've created an environment where we live in fear, but there's still comfort in routine—a steady supply of food, order and cleanliness, a countdown that gives us time to prepare for what'll happen next, while also adding on to that fear. None of it has worked. This whole experiment has failed."
His words have a sobering effect. I'm reminded of what Sam said about Alec's father. He wants us all dead—and maybe he'll have his wish if there's no hope for any of us. "I'm guessing Mods don't turn into Blanks," I say. "Why don't they save the Mods?"
"No outside interference. This plays out to the end, even if it gets us all killed." He smiles. "Of course, that's a risk Gardiner is willing to take. We're expendable."
He's the son of Jonathan Blaine, the director of Gardiner, but he seems to resent the organization. He may not be their man, but can the same be said for Willow? Especially now that she's shutting me out. Whose side is she on?
"What's with the noise treatments and the electric shocks?" I ask.
"Anything that puts people like us in an extremely heightened emotional or physiological state can trigger a seizure. That's how we become Mods. But even though the power is there, learning how to get it to work can take time. Sometimes months, sometimes years. For some people being a Mod doesn't come easily."
"Like Marcus," I say, remembering his struggle with his super-strength. "He has a physical ability. And Lisa. Invisibility isn't mental either."
"I've seen someone with Lisa's power before," Willow answers. "One of the kids we knew back at the facility. He didn't turn invisible. He sent out some kind of psychic interference that made anyone close to him think he's not there."
Carson leans forward. "That's seriously cool. What about Marcus?"
"I don't know," she says. "Marcus is an anomaly. He got his ability when he was ten. He could punch through a wall, but that failed more often than it worked."
"I thought he became a Mod after he came to the facility," I say.
"The seizure last week was a false trigger. It's one of the things Willow put in his head: the second he's exposed to the noise treatment, his body goes into a seizure. Sam hoped it would reset his ability. Make his body think it was new and help him relearn to use his super-strength."
"Willow put what in whose head?" Carson asks, looking utterly confused again. Then his eyes go wide. "Wait, you have an ability, too?"
"I can put suggestions inside someone's head," she says to him, the tension gone from her voice. "Make him think he's a chicken, for example."
"Or make him forget his memories," I say.
Her expression shuts down again. I guess I'm the one she's pissed off at. This only makes me want to keep pressing her. "Marcus said he remembers seeing you two at the research facility. You were together in a room. Kissing."
A blush colors Willow's fair skin, and Alec avoids my gaze. Neither of them answers me. Guess I'll have to be more direct. "Willow is your ex-girlfriend, isn't she? The one who broke up with you because your father didn't approve of your relationship."
He glances at her, his eyes softer. "Yeah. Yeah, she is."
I don't think this will ever get any less weird. "Willow, you told me that first day that you dumped your boyfriend because he cheated on you."
He throws up his hands. "Seriously? First Marcus accuses me of cheating and now you? When have I ever cheated on you, Willow? Why would you make that up?"
Her cheeks are still tinged with red, but now it looks more like a shade of anger than embarrassment. "Sam told us to make up something believable so we'd blend in. I had to embellish the truth."
"By twisting a knife in my back? You couldn't come up with something that doesn't make me look like a scumbag?"
I watch the back-and-forth volley between them, silent with amazement. I've never seen either so fired up. I've never seen Alec angry before, though now that I think back on it, the only times he really got upset were when Willow was concerned.
She looks at him dead-on. "It wasn't a complete lie. With the direction things were headed, it would have happened sooner or later."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about her," she says, her gaze cutting to me. "You've been obsessed ever since you found out about her. She was all you wanted to talk about. That's the reason I broke up with you, Alec. It had nothing to do with your father and everything to do with the fact that you were pulling away from me long before he said anything."
Alec looks like she smacked him right across the face, but he doesn't protest her claims. Pain flashes across her features, there one second and gone the next. She manages to hide it well, just as she's kept everything else under tight wraps. She's better at that than I ever was.
"Is that why you're angry at me?" I ask.
"I'm not angry at you." Her lip curls. "I'm not that petty."
So what is the problem? I want to demand, but she's getting under my skin and I hate letting her know that. I also feel hurt. Willow is the closest thing to a girlfriend that I've had in a long time. It sucks to think she never felt the same way about me.
"I'd prefer we talk about something other than our love life," she says.
I would, too. "I know Sam is the reason you blocked my memories of the research facility. Why did he make Marcus forget his entire life with you guys?"
"Marcus is special," Alec answers, his tone laced with bitterness. "He's always been like that in Sam's and my dad's eyes. But when he—"
"Alec," Willow cuts in. She gives him a stern look and shakes her head.
"What?" I ask.
"It's not our place to tell you. If he wants to know, he's free to come and ask me or Alec. Then he can break the news to you himself."
There's that acid tone again. What the hell is up with her? "What if the others tell him? Janie or Buzzcut—or even Eli?"
"They don't know why Sam had Marcus's memories blocked," she answers. "I do because, well, I'm responsible." She fidgets in her chair and brushes back her hair. "I made the mistake of sharing it with Alec, but I can't disclose it to anyone else. Like I said, I'm willing to discuss it Marcus. But until then . . . out of respect for him, I don't think we should talk about it."
Alec gives me an apologetic shrug. I'm dying to know what they're keeping a secret, but that last part stops me. Out of respect for him. At least she didn't make it personal this time.
"Sam said some of us will blank," I begin, returning to the original discussion. "He said they'll lock us in here until everyone who's going to blank has done so and the only ones left are the survivors. Why would he lie if Gardiner believes we're a failed experiment?"
"He didn't lie." Willow lifts her chin. "You might not realize this, but Sam always keeps his word. If he said we'll walk out of here, then it's the truth."
There it is. The reason behind her animosity. It's all about Sam. She's talking about him like she knows him better than me. Like she thinks she has a better claim to him.
Was he good to her?
Intense jealousy catches me by surprise. This is stupid. I refuse to be jealous when Sam has done nothing but torment me. Pointedly avoiding her gaze, I look at Carson instead. He's sitting with his shoulders bowed forward and his eyes rooted to the table. It's no mystery why he looks down. He doesn't believe he'll be one of those survivors.
Then again, there's no guarantee any of us will be.
"April?" Alec asks, his eyes intent on me as if he knows a transformation is taking over me. A transformation that has nothing to do with blanking. If anything, I'm more desperate than ever to hold on to my humanity.
Sam has always told me to do what it takes to survive. Dubbing my plan Operation Survival seems appropriate. "If we're really on our own, we have to establish full independence from the Takers," I say. "We have to show them we mean business."
Alec laughs in disbelief. "How do you propose we do that?"
I glance back at a red-eyed camera blinking at us from across the cafeteria and turn my back to it. "We blind them."