My eyes widen. Then I realize my reaction could give him away, so I rein in my surprise and ecstatic bolt of hope. Not that it matters. Gladius and Pike are still bent over the tray trying one tiny, extravagant morsel at a time.
Trigger works quickly, but the angle is difficult and the cheese knife isn’t very sharp, so it takes him several minutes to cut through the plastic. When he’s done, he glances at our distracted guards, and when he’s sure they’re not watching he turns and is able to swiftly cut through my binding in a single firm stroke, since he is no longer limited by his own restraints.
“Keep your hands behind your back,” he whispers. “And get ready to run.”
Nerves crawl in my belly like an army of ants. But I am ready.
Trigger tenses for a moment with his eyes closed, and I wonder if he’s visualizing what he’s about to do. Then, in a sudden burst of motion, he explodes off the bench and races across the cell.
Pike looks up as Trigger steps into the hall, cheese knife in hand. Before he can do more than stare in shock Trigger swipes his knife across the inside of the soldier’s right elbow, severing the most prominent tendon. I gasp as blood arcs across the floor. Pike screams and slaps his left hand over the gushing, flopping ruin of his right arm.
Trigger grabs the pistol left vulnerable on the injured soldier’s right hip and aims it at Gladius, who is frozen in midbite. “Drop your gun and kick it toward me.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Gladius insists while Pike whimpers and bleeds a couple feet away.
“Drop the gun and you’ll live. Refuse and I’ll put a bullet through your forehead.”
For one long moment, Gladius stares at Trigger, sizing him up. Does he know Trigger 17 is a member of the Special Forces unit? That he is the best in his class? That he is perfectly capable of carrying out his threat?
Trigger’s grip tightens on Pike’s pistol. Gladius flinches. “Okay!” The soldier slowly removes his gun from its holster and bends to set it on the ground. He kicks it and the weapon slides across the floor with a clatter, right past Trigger and into the cell where I’m still standing, transfixed.
I glance at it. Should I pick it up? My finger is surely capable of pulling the firing mechanism—the trigger—but is my heart? The soldiers are only doing their job. On a day when so many lives have already been ended, could I possibly take another one?
“You are an embarrassment to your unit.” Trigger lowers his aim and fires. The sound is little more than a soft thwup, yet I jump. Gladius howls in pain and falls to the floor. Blood pours from a hole in his thigh. “But you’ll live,” Trigger promises. Then he slams the butt of his stolen gun into the wounded soldier’s head.
Gladius goes limp on the floor, still bleeding and now unconscious. One second and another blow to the head later, Pike is also out cold, his bloody right arm flopped on the floor beside him.
Stunned, I can only stare at them both, my hands limp at my sides. I’ve never seen so much blood. I’ve never witnessed an injury worse than Violet’s soccer concussion. I’ve never even seen anyone in true pain. But Trigger never hesitated to inflict any of that.
He could just as easily have killed both men.
Why would Lakeview make inferior soldiers like Gladius and Pike, when they could have made more like Trigger?
“Come on!” Trigger waves me out of the room, and I follow him into the hall on shaky legs. We head for the door into the parking lot, but it opens before we get to it, and more soldiers pour into the building, evidently having been alerted by Pike’s screams.
“Stop!” they yell as we spin and run back the other way. We pass the open cell and the unconscious guards, then race toward a set of stairs leading to the second floor.
Something whizzes past my head and thunks into the wall, and I stop, staring in shock at a bullet embedded just an inch to the left of my head.
“No!” one of the soldiers shouts behind us. “Ford 45 wants them alive!”
“Go.” Trigger pushes me up the next step and I’m running again. “I’ll take care of them, then catch up with you.”
Before I can argue, he turns and runs toward three soldiers, wielding both the cheese knife and the stolen pistol. I watch long enough to see that they are no match for his training, then I race up the stairs.
The second-floor landing empties into a wide hallway carpeted in a bright red length of rug. Several closed doors line both sides of the hall. I try knobs indiscriminately, but none of them open, and I know better than to stick my wrist beneath the scanners built into the wall beside them.
At the end of the hall there is a door with no scanner and no keyhole. I race toward it and twist the knob, then burst into the largest closet I’ve ever seen in my life. The room is lined with metal rods, from which hang coats in every color and material imaginable.
I close the door at my back, then stare in fascination at feathers, fur, leather, and some kind of oddly dyed reptile skin. I reach out to run my hand over the fabric, and it is bumpier than I imagined. Yet somehow also smooth. The coat is long enough to reach my knees, with shiny, oversize black buttons, and there’s no name embroidered over the left side.
Each of the hangers is labeled with a handwritten tag, but I don’t recognize any of the names. As I reach for the nearest tag, puzzled by a name I have no association for, I hear a soft thump from farther into the closet, behind a rack of coats.
“Shit,” a male voice mutters.
I’m not familiar with the word, but it seems to mean “ouch.”
I stand rooted to the carpet, my heart pounding violently beneath my breastbone. I don’t know if I should run and risk being caught by the soldiers or stay and risk being caught by whoever’s behind those coats.
Before I can decide, a boy about my age steps around the end of a rack of coats, wearing the strangest suit I’ve ever seen.
His eyes widen. His mouth falls open. Then he smiles. “Hey, Waverly. What are you doing here?”
“I thought you couldn’t come tonight,” the strangely dressed boy says.
“I…um…” I have no idea what to say. He isn’t on the run like Trigger and Wexler, nor trying to arrest me like the soldiers are. Which means he has no reason to say anything to me, beyond telling me that my work honors us all. Not that I would know how to respond. I can’t tell for sure from how he’s dressed what bureau he belongs to.
He’s obviously mistaken me for one of my identicals, and the moment I realize that, a fresh ache seizes hold of my chest. Waverly, whoever she was, is now dead. Because she looked like me.
Yet the boy doesn’t seem to know that.
How could he recognize my face yet not know that it isn’t supposed to exist anymore? There was a citywide bulletin about the recall. Little else will be discussed among the various bureaus for months. Maybe for years.