Jackson is gone. That part of my life is gone. Now we only have our mission to focus on. I let the anger finally flood in. It’s not revenge; it’s more important than that.

We’re going to end Innovations Academy for good. We’re going to destroy the corporation that created us. And when that’s done, we’re going to find our parents—our investors—and stop them, too.

I walk into Imogene’s room, covering my nose, to find the girls and me more presentable outfits. After all, we’re about to see Leandra Petrov again.

Girls with Kind Razor Hearts

Open your eyes, my father said

The day I was born.

You will be sweet, he promised threatened

You will be beautiful

You will obey fight back

And then he I told me myself

Above all

You will have a kind razor heart

For that, they will love fear you.

They will protect revere you

They will keep run from you

Because you belong to them no one

So be a girl to make them proud afraid

4

Leandra Petrov takes her time, examining each of us on the couch as she paces in front of the fireplace, her brown leather bag dropped by the door. She brushes back her light hair, her fair complexion nearly perfect except for the fading bruise in the corner of her eye—a side effect from impulse control therapy at the academy.

She’s changed her clothes since we saw her last. She’s wearing a sleek black suit: cropped tuxedo pants and a black blazer. It isn’t exactly a burying-a-body kind of outfit. Her pacing reminds me of how she used to behave when she’d measure us at Running Course or appraise our appearances before the open house events at the academy. She held us captive, too. We haven’t forgotten that.

Leandra used to be one of us, just like us, until she was married to the headmaster. If nothing else, that means she should have been better to us. She should have found a way around the cruelty that her husband demanded. She didn’t.

Leandra glances at Imogene. “Did you burn the papers I asked you to find?” Leandra asks her. Imogene says that she did.

“What kind of papers?” I ask.

“The invoice,” Leandra says. “Bill of sale, if you will. As well as the marriage license and pictures. We need to scrub all traces of Imogene from that man’s life.”

“Imogene told us you have the name of an investor,” I say, cutting to the point. “Why didn’t you give it to us before we left?”

“I think Imogene may have misspoken,” Leandra says, casting an irritated glance in her direction. “But to be clear, I expected you girls to find Winston Weeks.”

“We want nothing to do with him,” I tell her. “We don’t trust him.”

She smiles thinly. “Either way,” she continues, “I didn’t expect you to show up here. If you would have contacted Winston like I suggested, he could have given you the information you need to find the investor. But now”—she motions around the room—“you’re here, and Imogene has murdered a man. I had to make some decisions.”

Leandra walks over to her bag, her stiletto heels clicking on the slate floor. She picks it up and brings it to the couch. She takes out a folder and sifts through the papers before holding one out to me. I’m surprised to find it’s a printed bus ticket.

She hands Sydney the entire folder. “I’ve printed five tickets to Connecticut. You’ll also find identification, fake birth certificates, and a state ID. We have templates for these things ready prior to graduation, in case your sponsor requests them. I’ve taken the liberty of changing your last names. There are also phones in the bag and a few other essentials that I could gather in time. Altogether, it should be enough to get you started.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would we go to Connecticut?”

“Because you said you wanted to end this,” she responds. “You want to take down the corporation? I’m telling you where to start.” Leandra begins to pace again.

“Innovations Academy was funded several years ago by four unnamed board members of Innovations Corporation,” she continues. “To this day, these investors are the main source of income for the school. Sales are good, but technology is expensive. In a bid to keep their involvement anonymous, the investors’ names and identifying markers are redacted from all documentation and financial disclosures. They are, in a word, secret. Even my husband doesn’t know their actual names.” She taps her red lip with her long nail. “The best way to end Innovations is to cut off their funding. And as that crumbles, the corporation will be starved of funding. It will shatter.

“I’ve been looking into the school’s financial records,” Leandra continues, “and found that one of these investors launders their donations through a private high school in Connecticut. After some digging—times and dates, locations and statements—I reason that the investor has a child there. A son, most likely. I want you to use this boy to get access to files, records, or anything else you can uncover. And if that doesn’t work,” she says, “a rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He’ll give you something we can use.”

Marcella laughs. “I doubt this boy will just hand over information that would destroy a corporation.”

“I’m sure you can be persuasive,” Leandra says. “And whatever information you find, we’ll be able to leverage it to get the investor to withdraw his support from the academy, step down from the corporation. We’ll cut off one main source of income, and then we’ll move on to the next.

“You cut off the money, you cut off the power,” she adds, smiling. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll expose him. Because trust me, girls, if the investor is involved with Innovations Academy, he’s also involved in criminal enterprises.”

“Why not just tell the world what he’s done to us?” Brynn asks.

“Do you want the horrible truth?” Leandra asks. When Brynn nods tentatively, Leandra sighs. “We have to expose the first investor without mentioning the academy because the fact is, what these investors have done, what the corporation has done to us, is not illegal.

“We have no rights,” Leandra continues. “Creating something to abuse may be unethical, but it’s not against the law. Like the doctor told us, they followed the rules. Number one”—she holds up her finger—“only artificial girls can be created. Two, they must be over sixteen. And three … our bodies are unable to reproduce. Those are the arbitrary rules of men—a loophole in a society that lets them treat girls and women exactly how they want.”

She pauses, glancing around. “That reminds me …” She looks dead at me. “Where is the boy? Imogene said he was here.”

“Gone,” I say curtly. “He’s gone now.”

Leandra studies me a moment and then smiles. “Good,” she says, and turns away. “Now, to make the matter more pressing”—her voice drops lower—“when the professors wake in a few hours, when my husband wakes, he’ll discover that Innovations is without a doctor. They’ll want to bring in a new one immediately. A new batch of girls will be growing by next week.”