Jamie’s shoulders are stiff, and he isn’t looking at me. His hand can store information, but he’s… ashamed of it? No, I can see it in his eyes. He feels inferior because he has an ability that comes to him artificially rather than naturally. He wants to be able to do something like this without having to rely on technology, without being tied to his father.

He wants to be an aberrant like me.

Gallagher holds out his hand, and after a long moment, Jamie reluctantly shakes it. The manifest is presumably transferred between their microchips at that point. If these are the only two copies which won’t self-destruct, this is why Mongoose couldn’t figure out where the manifest was being kept.

But it means I have to dig out a microchip from at least one of their hands.

This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

“You’ve allowed that shipping container to sit on the dock for long enough,” says Gallagher disapprovingly. “You need to deal with it now, Jamison.”

“I’ll do it in my own time,” snaps Jamie. His hand is clenched tightly, as if the manifest might leak out from between his fingers. But after a moment, he reluctantly touches his left index finger to his right hand. As his palm begins to blink red, he grabs his cell phone and stalks out of the lobby without looking back.

Wait. I don’t want to be left in here, alone, with yet another member of the Hart family who’s trying to kill me. As Gallagher gives me a hard look, I feel a sudden jolt of fear. I’ve seen that look before, in the pale green eyes of the butler, on the scarred face of Mellie Hart, and I just know he’s about to try to kill me.

I grab the revolver hidden in my corset and point it at Jamie’s father before he can reach into his jacket.

“We both know I’m not afraid to use this,” I say, my voice edged. “Tell me what’s in the shipments.”

Gallagher gazes back at me without moving, then gives a brief jerk of his head. “I’m not a threat to you, Eliza. I presume Jamison has informed you that I want you dead. All I’ve been trying to do is protect my son. He wishes to take over Ophidian as a way to gain my attention, but he must fail. I’m confident that after you view the manifest and shipment yourself, you will no longer be interested in working for the Executive.”

“Why did you call me Eliza?” I tense my finger on the trigger, trying not to give away anything in my expression. I don’t even want to know how Jamie’s going to react if he walks back in and sees me training a gun on his father.

Actually, he’ll probably just be attracted to me that much more.

“Would you like to see the manifest?” Gallagher is looking at me differently now, almost with pity. I should play along. I’d rather dig a microchip out of his hand than Jamie’s, after all.

“Do it,” I say, not lowering the revolver.

Gallagher reactivates his microchip and picks up a laptop from a side table, pressing his blinking palm against the device. I watch warily as a program opens on the screen. I’m expecting to see blueprints of future technology, designs for hovering cars, maybe even pictures of killer robots, but there’s nothing like that. What I see instead are thousands of documents.

Each one is labeled with a child’s name.

He selects a file at random, then another, and another. Each contains a profile of a child under the age of five, providing every detail about their background: picture, date of birth, parentage, birthplace, nationality, residence, medical history...

And aberration.

“These are the shipments?” I ask, trying to stay calm. “You find aberrant children and, what, send them to the Executive?”

Gallagher gives a condescending laugh. “Not exactly, my dear. How do you think Jamie formed his idea for the future? I’m sure he’s told you all about his desire to turn people into aberrants. What he failed to tell you is that we already have a gene therapy which does this successfully. In exchange for converting a small percentage of the world’s population into aberrants, Ophidian receives significant funding and favorable legislation in almost every nation.”

And then he says something that makes me forget how to breathe.

“It just doesn’t work on adults.”

My hands shake as I struggle to piece together what he said, the realization hitting me with full force. Instead of finding aberrants who are children, Ophidian and the Executive are taking normal children and turning them into aberrants. I didn’t choose my fate, but at least it wasn’t forced onto me like this. At least I wasn’t a file in the manifest.

If this is true, I’m never, ever working for the Executive again.

I blindly turn and walk out of the lobby, following the map in my head to the rear of the building. One of the back doors isn’t guarded, and I wedge a silver hairpin into the gap as I step outside, keeping it from locking behind me. I can sense my anger simmering just below the surface, but I don’t let myself feel it. I can’t let myself feel anything right now, because otherwise I’ll lose the ability to behave like an operative who might have to kiss someone or cut open a hand at a moment’s notice. No, far better to be numb, to be prepared for what has to happen next.

Around the side of the building, Jamie is standing next to the shipping container, browsing through the manifest on his cell phone. He’s waiting for several employees to open up the door as security guards stand by with tranquilizer guns at the ready, their faces shadowed beneath black caps.

When Jamie looks up and sees me, he hesitates. “You don’t want to be here for this, Eliza—”

But the shipping container is already open. The security guards seem to understand that I’m not supposed to be touched, though they keep glancing at Jamie uneasily, as if expecting him to change his mind at any second.

I grab a flashlight and push past Jamie, stepping into the shipping container, my hand sending a wobbling beam around the interior. The world around me suddenly feels claustrophobic, as if I’m in the midst of drowning, and the noise of my surroundings has diminished to nothing except for what’s before me.

These are the shipments.

This is what the shipments are.

Staring up at me are ten small children, no older than two or three years, locked in steel cages inside the shipping container. They look disheveled, as if they’ve been in here for hours, and most of them have been heavily sedated.

If not for the flashlight, it would be completely dark in here.

I should say something to these children, make them feel comforted after what must have been the most traumatic experience of their lives. But I’m too shaken to form words that would make sense to small children right now.

I’m so sorry.

Are you hurt? Are you okay?

I’ll kill whoever did this to you—

No, if I stop to think about what they’re feeling and compose an appropriate response for it, I will start screaming.

And I will never stop.

The anger finally surges through me, red-hot and boiling, like a massive firestorm obliterating everything in its path. I stride back out of the shipping container and confront Jamie, still gripping the revolver in my hand, not even thinking about the danger I’m in right now. This is the most highly guarded secret by Ophidian, and I just forced my way into it. I’m one of the few people who knows where the manifest is. They have every reason to kill me on the spot.

No one would ever know.

“How could you?” I spit out at Jamie. I’m too furious to pretend to be in love with him anymore, even if he is my last and only lifeline on the island. “This is what Ophidian has been doing? You’ve been shipping children?”

He looks put out. “I thought I told you this was obsolete, Eliza. I’ve been trying to stop it. At least with adults, you’d have people who wanted to become aberrants. And we wouldn’t have to waste so many resources on dealing with children.”

Obsolete? Try wrong. Try something that makes me want to rip out his freaking heart and that of anyone else involved in this. Jamie has been helping his father deal with the shipments for who knows how long, and he acts like this is a chore akin to taking out the trash. To think that we were drinking champagne at a wedding while these children were locked in a shipping container, alone in the darkness, for hours...

He’s as guilty as the rest of them.

“Aren’t there enough aberrants already?” I demand. “Some of us were born into this, and it was a curse we couldn’t escape. And now you’re forcing it onto children who didn’t have to bear it at all, who could have been normal...”

Oh, no. Something’s wrong. Jamie is looking at me with pity, the same way his father did, and I just know I’ve missed something again. He gestures at the employees to unlock the cages and remove the children from the shipping container. I’m on the verge of strangling him with my bare hands, but I make myself wait to hear his response. Maybe it won’t be that bad. I mean, how much worse can it get?

But what he says next shatters my entire world, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put it back together again.

“None of you were born with it.”

“What?” I hear myself ask. I feel as if I’m falling, the blood rushing loudly through my ears, even though I’m standing completely still.

“Ophidian has been turning children into aberrants for decades, ever since the gene therapy was developed,” he says, sounding impatient. “The less powerful ones are returned to their families or put up for adoption or foster care. The rest are sent to their respective governments, which mandate testing so that no one falls through the cracks. Your aberration isn’t a curse, Eliza. It’s a gift from my father.”

Jamie turns away from me, directing the employees and security guards to bring the children around to the front entrance. No one seems to notice or care that I’m still paralyzed outside the empty shipping container. They’re too busy carrying the ten children into the building, into a future that none of them could ever want. And all the while Jamie is assigning predetermined code names to each child based on the manifest: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta...

Echo.

Feeling as if I’m moving underwater, I return to the building unsteadily, removing the silver hairpin and letting myself in through the back door. Gallagher Hart is no longer in the lobby, but the laptop is still there with the manifest on it. I don’t know how much time I have before the program self-destructs.

I set down the revolver and run a search for children with my date of birth, but my fingers keep shaking so violently that I mistype the numbers over and over again. I have to struggle to make myself focus. It feels as if I’m being held at gunpoint, and I have no way of knowing if I’ll survive or not. But I finally manage to get it right, and several results pop up.

I click on the only one that says Echo.

A picture of my childhood self stares up at me from the screen, with every detail of my own history in the file before me.

I’m in the manifest after all.

I scroll through the file, my eyes scanning the lines again and again, until the words begin to blur together: Taken from orphanage. Enhanced with ability to orally administer poison. Kidnapped by rogue operatives during Ophidian incident. Located after death of guardians. Brought in by Agent A9...

I can see everything that’s been happening, now, as if in perfect vision for the first time. As a small child, I was turned into an aberrant by Ophidian, and then I was rescued by rogue operatives and placed with the couple I knew as my parents. That’s why I was never tested. But when my aberrant trait emerged in the form of poisoned lips, the Executive was able to find me again.

Ryan code name Romeo must have learned that something like this had happened to him, that he’d been working for the same agency which had turned him into an aberrant and was still turning children into aberrants, and he killed himself because of it.

The very thought would be enough to make anyone sick.

August knew this would hurt me. He tried to protect me from the truth for as long as he could, even though I had to find out eventually. I finally understand why he did all of it. Why he never told me about Mongoose. Why he never told me the real reason for my aberration. Why he never told me what Ophidian was doing for the Executive. My entire life has been dedicated to serving the very people who did this to me, to allowing them to continue to turn children into aberrants, and my actions have indirectly forced countless innocents into becoming operatives and who knows what else.

This is what the butler meant when he tried to kill me. This is why he said it. My aberration was something that was done to me. I was not born with it, and it was not my burden to bear. I could have been normal, but because of Ophidian, because of the Executive, I was forced to become something else. For the first time in my life, everything is as clear to me as the light of day.

Aberrants are a lie.