“Ask nicely,” said Rios.

The prisoner was beginning to glow, the light coming from beneath her skin, a deep red-orange like heated metal. “Let me out!” she screamed, her voice crackling.

And then, she ignited.

Flame licked up her skin, engulfing her from head to toe, her hair standing up in a plume of blue-white light, like the tip of a match.

Several of the recruits recoiled. One covered his mouth. Others stared in fascination. Surprise. Fear.

Dominic feigned shock, but the fear was real. It crept through his limbs, a warning, that old gut feeling that said wrong wrong wrong—just like it had the second before Dom’s foot hit the IED, the instant before his world changed forever. A fear that had less to do with the woman on fire, and more to do with the cell holding her, the heat that didn’t even penetrate the foot-thick fiberglass.

Rios hit a switch on the wall, and sprinklers went off inside the cell, followed by the sizzle of a doused fire. The cube filled with steam, and when the water cut off and the white smoke cleared, the prisoner sat in a heap on the floor of the cell, soaking wet and heaving for breath.

“All right,” said Rios, “show-and-tell’s over.” She turned toward the recruits. “Any questions?”

* * *

THE black van was waiting at the end of the day.

All the way back to the city, the other recruits chatted, making small talk, but Dom closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.

The “demonstration” had been followed by an interview, an explanation of training protocol, a psych eval, each procedure executed in a way so grounded, so ordinary, that they’d been clearly designed to make candidates forget the strangeness of EON’s purpose.

But Dominic couldn’t forget. He was still shaken from the sight of the woman on fire, and certain that he’d never get out with his secret intact, so he was surprised—and suspicious—when, at the end of it all, Rios told him to report back the next day for further training.

Dom closed his eyes as the van sped on. One by one it stopped and the others were deposited outside their homes. One by one, until he was the only one left, and as the van doors slammed shut on him, and him alone, Dom was gripped anew by panic. He was sure that he could feel freeway moving beneath the tires, sure that they were taking him back to EON, to his own fiberglass cube.

“Rusher.”

Dominic looked up and realized that the van was idling, the back doors open, his apartment building visible beyond in the dusky light. The soldier handed Dom the ziplock bag containing his phone, and Dom got out, but as he climbed the steps and went inside, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched.

There, on the street, an unfamiliar car. He switched the TV on, returned to the window—it was still there, idling. Dom changed into workout clothes, took a deep breath, and slipped out of time.

The world went silent, and heavy, and gray, all the sound and movement leached out of the room. Dom made his way to the front door, fighting against the drag of frozen time.

Back when every step was pain, Dom couldn’t bear to spend more than a few moments in this heavy, dark place. But after months of training, his limbs and lungs moved steadily—if not easily—against the resistance.

He descended the stairs, his steps soundless when earlier they had echoed. Through the front doors and onto the curb. Dom paused beside the unfamiliar car and bent to examine the figure in the driver’s seat, a cell half raised to their ear. The man had the look of ex-mil, and the file on the seat beside him was printed with Dominic’s name.

He looked back and up at his apartment, the glow of the TV a splash of light against the curtains. Then he turned and walked two blocks to the nearest subway. Halfway down the stairs, he stepped back out of the shadows and into the world, into light and color and time, and vanished into the evening commute.

* * *

“THEY’RE watching my place,” he said when Victor answered the phone.

He was jogging through a small park, his breath coming in short, even beats.

“I’d expect as much,” said Victor, unfazed.

Dom slowed to a walk. “Why am I doing this?”

“Because ignorance is only bliss if you want to get caught.”

With that, Victor hung up.

Dominic returned to EON the next day, via the black van, to find the initial group of six reduced to five. No Klinberg. By the third day, Matthews was gone too. Rios led them through exercises, drills, tests, and Dom did exactly as he was told. Tried to keep his head down and his expression blank. And still he expected to be cut.

Wanted to be cut.

He was heading back to the van on the third day when he was stopped by Rios.

“Director Stell would like a word.”

Dominic stiffened. He’d never met the man, but he knew Stell’s reputation. Knew he was the detective who sent Victor to prison back in college. The man who tracked Eli to Merit. And, of course, the man who’d started EON.

Run, said a voice in Dom’s head.

He looked from Rios to the compound’s entrance, the sliding doors hissing closed.

Run before they shut.

But if he did, that would be the end of it. His identity would be known, his cover blown. And then Dom would have to keep running. Always.

He forced himself to fall in line.

Rios led him to an office at the end of a long white hall. She knocked once, and opened the door.

Director Stell sat in a high-backed chair on the opposite side of a broad steel desk. He had black hair just starting to silver, his face reduced to angles as he stared down at a tablet.

“Mr. Rusher. Please sit down.”

“Sir.” Dominic sat.

The door closed behind him with a click.

“Something has been bothering me,” said Stell without looking up. “You ever forget something, and you can’t remember what it is? It’s a vicious little mind game. Distracting, too. Like an itch you can’t scratch.” Stell set the tablet down, and Dominic saw his own face staring up from the screen. Not the photo taken in the security scan, or one pulled from hall surveillance. No, the photo was a few years old, from his time in the service. “It was your name,” continued Stell. “I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t remember where.” Stell turned the tablet and nudged it across the steel table. “Do you know what that is?”

Dominic scanned the screen. Beside his photo was a kind of profile, basic details—age, birthday, parents—along with facts about his life—address, schooling, etc.—but there was an error.

Dominic’s middle name was listed here as Eliston.

His real middle name was Alexander.

“Have you heard of Eli Ever?” asked Stell.

Dom stilled, searching for the right answer, the right amount of knowledge. It had been public news—but how much of it, and which pieces? He’d only met Eli once, and only for an instant, the breath it took to step into the Falcon Price and pull Sydney—and her dog—out.

“The serial killer?” ventured Dom.

Stell nodded. “Eliot Cardale—known as Eli Ever in the press—was one of the most dangerous ExtraOrdinaries in existence. He killed nearly forty people, and briefly used the Merit police databases—and the police force, for that matter—to create a list of targets, profiles of those he suspected to be EOs. This,” said Stell slowly, “is one of those profiles.”

Once, when Dominic was overseas, he’d walked into a room and found a live bomb. Not like the IED he’d stepped on. No, he’d never had time to see that explosion coming. But the bomb in this room had been as big as a steel drum, and the whole place was booby-trapped around it. He remembered looking down, seeing the trigger wire, barely an inch in front of his left boot.

Dom had wanted nothing more than to run away, as far as possible, but he hadn’t known where the other wires were, or even how he’d made it that far without triggering them. He’d had to pick his way out, one agonizing step at a time.

And here he was again, his footing precarious—one wrong move, and everything would blow.

“You’re asking if I’m an EO.”

Stell’s gaze was steady, unflinching. “We have no way of knowing if every person Eli targeted was actually—”

Dominic slammed the tablet down on the table. “I gave my flesh and blood and bones to this country. I gave everything I had to this country. I almost died for this country. And I didn’t get any special powers out of it. I wish I had—instead, I got a body full of scrap parts, and a lot of pain, but I’m still here, still doing what I can, because I want to keep people safe. Now, if you don’t want to hire me, that’s your choice. But have the balls to make up a better reason than this . . . sir.”

Dominic sat back, breathless, hoping the outburst had been enough to convince the other man.

The silence stretched out. And then, at last, Stell nodded and said, “We’ll be in touch.”

Dismissed, Dom rose from his chair and left. He went into the men’s room across the hall, and into the safety of a stall, before vomiting up everything in his stomach.

III

THREE WEEKS AGO

EON

BARA smacked his palm on the table and got up.

“Hate to eat and run,” he said, “but I’ve got a mission.”

“No way,” said Holtz, “they cleared you for fieldwork?” He turned on Rios. “What gives? I’ve been petitioning for weeks to get on Containment.”