Scattered around the living room, we each had a stack of the stolen files to read and sort through. It was worse than slow going. To my utter dismay, a good portion of the files I’d grabbed were heavily redacted or referenced other documents that we didn’t have. No matter how resolutely I tried to focus on the papers in front of me, I couldn’t escape the fact that I’d killed someone tonight. I hadn’t even batted an eyelid over doing it either; I had acted on impulse and barely even registered what happened until we were in the car on the way back and I’d begun trembling, my adrenaline surging once more. I didn’t say anything. The guys were all experienced in this field, and I didn’t want them thinking I couldn’t handle myself, especially after the scene with Austin in the woods. I could. I just needed to quietly get through my emotional breakdown first.

Thankfully, Wesley announcing he’d found something pulled me out of my internal guilt trip. Thank God. I rushed over to where he perched at the kitchen island and tried not to snatch the file out of his hands.

“What is it?” River asked, looming over my shoulder.

“This first page is a copy of a letter sent by a Dr. Samuelson to someone by the name of Dupree. It reads:

REGARDING THE RECENT BREAK OUT IN THE WASHINGTON TESTING FACILITY. IT IS NOW CONFIRMED THAT TWENTY-SEVEN TEST SUBJECTS HAVE ESCAPED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF SEVERAL EMPLOYEES WHO DISAGREED WITH OUR LESS CONVENTIONAL METHODS. OF THOSE TWENTY-SEVEN, TWELVE HAVE ALREADY BEEN DETAINED OR TERMINATED, HOWEVER THE REMAINING FIFTEEN HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND. THIS INCLUDES TEST SUBJECTS 37, 82, AND 113. FINDING AND RECOVERING THESE THREE IS, OF COURSE, OUR PRIMARY OBJECTIVE, AND WE UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT ON OUR EXPERIMENT IF WE WERE TO LOSE THEM. WE HUMBLY ASK FOR AN INCREASED BUDGET ALLOWANCE TO CONTINUE OUR SEARCH AND RECOVER THE SUBJECTS.

I paused, flipping to the next page. “The response simply reads, ‘Granted.’”

I set those two pages aside. The rest of the folder included files on the twenty-seven escaped patients. The first few I skimmed through had a red inked stamp of DECEASED across the person’s photograph. Some of the patient numbers were in the thousands, which gave me a chill to think about how many people might have died in this experiment.

Quickly flipping through, I searched for the three specifically mentioned in the letter: 37, 82, and 113. I pulled them from the stack but froze at the photo for patient 37.

It’s me… Or it would be, if I had been alive some thirty-odd years before, as per the date stamp on the bottom of the image. Her hair was shorter than mine, cut to sit above her shoulders, and her eyes were green as opposed to my ice blue, but other than that it was like looking in a mirror. I scanned all of the information listed, despite the redactions. Patient 37 was a female of indeterminate age, but she entered the program in… 1882?

That wasn’t possible. The photo was in color and dated only thirty years before. The girl looked to be my age, not more than twenty. It must be a typo. Her physical characteristics listed her as being only five foot three and of slight build. In a section labeled “attributes,” all of the information had been blacked out, but it looked like a long list.

There wasn’t much more of any use in the file. Trying to curb my disappointment, I paged through to find patients 82 and 113. Both were men, but again there seemed to be a discrepancy in the intake date versus the photo date. All three photos were dated the same day, so they must have done an update across all the files on that day. The intake dates were different—patient 82 came into the program in July 1911. Patient 113 arrived October of 1946. Neither of those seemed any more possible than patient 37 being admitted in 1882. Both men looked a similar age, maybe in their early to late twenties.

I returned to staring at patient 37 again, the file clutched tightly in my shaking hands when I heard a curse from Caleb. He’d picked up the patient files I’d discarded and begun looking through them.

“What?” I snapped a little more abruptly than I intended, but the adrenaline overload from the night’s activities had me badly on edge. Austin peered over his shoulder at the file and released a grunt of surprise before snatching the page and handing it to me.

“Kitty Kat.” Caleb frowned. “Isn’t that Mr. Gregoric?”

I studied the picture in my hand, and sure enough, our newest teacher stared back at me from a paper labeled Test Subject 897. Once again, dated thirty years before. I stared wide-eyed at Caleb and handed the picture to Lucy, who sucked in a breath.

“I have no idea what to make of this.” I groaned, rubbing my face with shaking hands.

“I guess it means you’re not the only one that can heal yourself,” Wesley commented, earning everyone’s attention.

“How do you mean?” I frowned, uncertain of the connection.

Wesley shrugged. “Well it stands to reason if your body can heal injuries, it can probably heal all the associated effects of aging too. After all, growing old is just our body deteriorating.”

A very valid point, but by that reasoning, did that mean I would never age? The train of thought hurt my head, and I rubbed my face again, the quivers in my hands now radiating up my arms. Lucy must have noticed because she gave me a nudge.

“Why don’t you go for a run or something?” she suggested quietly, giving my hands a pointed look. “I need to head back to school anyway. Someone needs to feed that fucking fox of yours; I keep finding him sitting outside your window.”

“Use the gym,” River interrupted. “I don’t want you outside alone just now.”

I couldn’t argue with his unspoken reasons. Nor did I want to argue with Lucy. I gave her a quick hug before leaving the others, and I headed down to the basement gym. I needed to burn off my fear, my mad… my whatever the hell I was.