Chapter 16

I followed Gret to the park in silence. She did a quick sweep, and when she didn’t see Sandra, Rosie, or that rich man she was avoiding, she threw herself down onto the dry ground beneath a supplicant tree and thrust the glass of water up at me.

“Will you just drink it?” she said.

I took the water and sipped.

“Was that so hard?”

No. Yes. I sat down on the other side of the tree trunk, my spine grinding against its roughness.

Gret said, “Don’t be mad at Luc. It’s hard for him to shake off assholes’ headspaces sometimes.”

I placed my hand over my scars and said, “His father would have wanted him to be good at dealing with — with assholes. He’d want to put Luc in a room full of world leaders, have him figure out their weaknesses, and … exploit them.” Just like Luc had done today.

“Who cares what that old bastard wanted?” Gret said. “That doesn’t matter anymore.”

How could she say that as an armed nonstandard? The first werewolf who had weaponized her DNA may have died eons ago, but did those violent intentions really mean nothing to her?

But I had other things to worry about. Luc obviously had suspicions about my own intentions. My plan for dealing with Dr. Topher wasn’t as buried as I thought it was.

The wristband whirred and its needle punched through my skin. Gret leaned around the tree, and we both held our breath until the light turned green.

“But I guess you already knew that,” I said, tucking my sore wrist back into my lap.

Gret sighed. I peeked back at her through my hair. Her broad shoulders were bunched up tight beneath her t-shirt.

“I’m glad you used the mud, at least,” she said after a while.

“Gret —”

She looked around at me, then away again. I stared at her back. Even coiled so tight, her body was ostentatiously healthy. Only nature could have produced this girl — and maybe a spirit of change. Something bruised and aching inside of me opened up as I watched the rise and fall of her breath.

“I appreciate everything you’re doing,” I said, “but it might turn out — I mean, there’s a chance that you won’t be able to help me.”

“Nope,” Gret said.

“Nope?”

She shrugged sharply, like she was dislodging a hornet from her shoulder. “I don’t accept that.” She turned and raised one eyebrow. “You know, Luc used to do that shit.”

“What?”

“Talk like he’d already died. Like he was bestowing his forgiveness on me from beyond the grave,” Gret said, spreading her arms in an ironic half-bow. “I told him to cut it out. You should too.”

The tender spot disappeared. “You can’t save everyone.”

“Not trying to save everyone,” Gret said. She stood up. “I should find the others. I’ve got a good read on you now. You can go home if you want. Keep using that mud.”

We went our separate ways.

That night I fell asleep with Rosie’s thumb drive in my hand. I had not connected it to my laptop. As much as Mr. Patter told us not to, I knew that some people at the compound had searched for information about themselves. My dreams that night reminded me why I didn’t. Again and again, Dr. Topher’s clamp closed on my leg. Again and again, my teeth closed on human flesh.

 I awoke to pounding on my door. Only the tangled sheets around my knees kept me from falling out of bed. I stared at my wristband, fumbling with the buttons, but the last reading was green.

“Millie!” a voice called. “Millie, it’s me!”

Sandra. I whipped the sheets off of my legs and staggered to the door.

“Morning,” Sandra said when I managed to get it open. “Oh, shit, did I scare you?”

She pushed past me into the apartment. Her rage from yesterday seemed to have disappeared.

I took as deep a breath as my lungs would allow. “Is there something you need?”

Sandra flopped down on my bed. “I just thought — look, we kinda got off on the wrong foot, and I don’t want you to be more stressed out than you already have to be with the whole, you know, adaptationist thing. Which you’re handling great! I mean, I wouldn’t have even answered the door if — oh. That’s why I scared you.” She made a face. “Yikes.”

I massaged my temples, which had begun to throb. Sandra took off her glasses and cleaned them on her shirt. Her face looked oddly elongated without them. She replaced them on her nose and looked around my apartment. Her eyes widened when they came to rest on me.

“Is that where —”

I looked down. My pajama shorts were smaller than my regular clothes; nearly half of my scar was visible. I sat quickly at my desk, obscuring my leg from her sight.

“That’s some real bullshit, Millie. I’m sorry,” Sandra said matter-of-factly. An unexpected lump formed in my throat, but Sandra had already moved on to her next thought. “I left a note saying I’d meet the others at the grocery store. You should totally come.”

“Why?”

Sandra scrunched up her nose, her glasses bobbing on her face. “’Cause it’s friendly.”

I looked at her dubiously.

“And Gret needs to see you every day anyway,” she added.

I sighed. “Let me put some clothes on.”

Sandra stepped out onto the stairs while I got dressed. I could hear her humming; her voice soothed me in spite of myself. I put on my longest shorts to make sure my scars were fully covered.

As we walked to the store, Sandra asked, “So, Millie, what do you do for fun?”

“Fun?”

“Please don’t make me define fun. That would be too depressing,” she said. “Come on, what’s your favorite thing to do?”

“I love to drum,” I said without thinking.

Sandra beamed. “A fellow musician! What kind of drum?”

“Small frame drum,” I said shortly. “It got busted. I don’t do it anymore.”

“Can’t you get a new one?”

“EP doesn’t pay for stuff like that,” I said. I cast around for a change of subject and landed on Gret. “How did you and Gret meet?”

“It was a few towns over. I was sleeping in a schoolyard, and some cops woke me up and started asking for ID. I … shook them loose, but I didn’t know where I was going. It was my first night in that town. Plus I didn’t have glasses yet, so I ran smack into Gret. She’d been sleeping nearby and heard the whole thing. She knew a bunch of hiding spots. And then we never stopped hiding together, I guess.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Almost four years.”

I looked up at her, stricken. She and Gret had been sleeping in schoolyards when they were thirteen years old?

Sandra seemed to guess what I was thinking. “I wasn’t always homeless. My dad died a few months before me and Gret met. I couldn’t go into the care system. Unregistered,” she added in a stage whisper.

“Why?” I blurted.

“Why did my dad die?”

“No, why aren’t you registered?” I whispered.

“You seriously think the government should be able to track our every move because of a choice some ancient asshole made?”

I just held up my wristband.

“Yeah, well, my dad would’ve had a whole lot to say about that,” Sandra said with a snort. She threw her head back to face the sky and pointed at the mountains. “Look, the moon’s still out!”

The moon was ghost-pale in the morning sky. Sandra beamed at it.

“Corrective eyewear, Mils. It’s a modern miracle. Before I got these, I thought there was supposed to be this big fuzzy haze around the moon. I’d forgotten it had craters.”

Thoughts of celestial bodies and dead parents carried me into the grocery store, where Gret and Luc were already shopping. Neither of them seemed particularly surprised to see me. Gret glared at Sandra.

“Just wanted to clear the air! Which I totally did. Unless I didn’t?” Sandra said, directing this last part at Luc.

“Leave me out of it,” Luc said, but he smiled at me.

The gentleness had returned to his eyes and voice. Whatever grip the angry boys had on his mind yesterday seemed to have lessened, but was the borrowed cruelty still there, waiting to surface? What part of me now lurked in Luc’s mind?

Rosie was nowhere in sight. Small blessings, I thought as Sandra launched into an outraged explanation of EP’s refusal to provide frivolities to synthetics. At least Sandra had the good sense to keep her voice down in public, though there were barely any people in the store at this hour. Still, I felt like the entire town could hear her when she said, “Millie had a drum, and they wouldn’t even buy her a new one when it broke!”

Luc winced, but I was the only one who noticed.

“How’d you get the drum in the first place?” Gret asked.

“It was a gift,” I said, pretending to be interested in a can of chickpeas.

Sounding alarmed, Gret said, “From —?”

“No, of course not,” I snapped. “From my lawyer.”

Luc’s frown deepened.

“You work for EP,” Sandra said. “Can’t you spend your money how you want?”

I glanced at Gret, knowing how little she was going to like my explanation. “We work to pay off our debt.”

Sure enough, Gret slammed down a box of crackers hard enough to break them into crumbs. “What debt?”

“They pay for our food and clothes and shelter. And medicine. We’re not cheap.”

“They’re your guardians. That’s what guardians do,” Gret said, not relinquishing her grip on the crackers.

I shrugged. I didn’t need a lecture on the facts of my own life.

“You answer complaints for them, right?” Sandra said. “So tell one of the complainers you’re some kind of indentured servant.”

“They wouldn’t care,” I said.

“You don’t know that,” Luc said.

“You don’t read their messages. Trust me, they’d only care about me if the next time I transform, I turn into a bottle of as-close-as-we-can-legally-get-to-steroids ‘strength enhancer’ that finally gives me my money’s worth this time, you charlatans. Anything else, forget it.”

Sandra and Luc stared at me, nonplussed. Maybe they weren’t bitter enough for compound humor. But Gret made a choking noise that could have been the beginning of a laugh. I hid my own smile and hurried into the next aisle, but I kept peeking back at Gret over the shelves. She and Sandra began to argue about what they were going to purchase.

Gret held up a jar and Sandra said, “The real tragedy of Stasis is your ancestors never adapted themselves some better taste buds.”

Gret fixed Sandra with a look, but then her whole face relaxed and she broke into a smile, bigger and more genuine than I’d ever seen from her. I knew I was staring, but I couldn’t help it.

“Okay, but we do have to buy something at least semi-healthy,” Gret said.

“You are annoyingly reasonable,” Luc said.

“Yeah, aren’t you supposed to be some sort of societal scourge?” Sandra said. “Get on that.”

“Oh, I’m sure the nuclear families of the Preservations would find some way to turn ‘gay werewolf teen makes friends eat vegetables’ into a horror story,” Gret said.

Sandra and Luc laughed, but I barely heard them over Gret’s voice echoing in my head: gay werewolf teen. I had a dam in my throat, stopping up my words, but Gret didn’t. How did she just speak of herself out loud?

The bells on the door tinkled, and a dark, handsome woman in early middle age strode in the store. Luc inhaled sharply, then extricated himself from the others and wheeled over to me. Oh, no, not now! I thought, trying to stamp out the whirling emotions in my head. I didn’t do a good job, but Luc’s face was blank of whatever I was feeling when he looked up at me.

“Millie,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “the others are going to notice in a second. The woman who just walked in is the rest of the pack’s boss. You should know —”

“Dr. Joyan!” Gret said.

Luc sighed. “Just stay by me.”

The woman — Dr. Joyan — pushed her long braids over her shoulder. “Fancy meeting you here, girls! Great work this week.”

I peered over the cartons on the grimy shelf and stifled a gasp. Sandra seemed pleased by Dr. Joyan’s praise, but Gret — Gret looked radiant.

“We’re close, aren’t we?” she said.“Tell Sandra. She says I’m exaggerating, but I think town-wide implementation can begin as soon as —”

“As soon as we get funding,” Dr. Joyan said with a laugh. “How close we are depends on that.”

“But that’s great! That means we’ve done all the heavy lifting, and everything works, and Supplicants Grove could be self-sufficient in like less than a year!”

“Yes,” Dr. Joyan said, smiling. “As long as we try very, very hard.”

“I will,” Gret said, earnestness overflowing from every cell in her body. “We all will!”

The world tilted sideways. Try for me, marvel. I am, I am! A second ago, Gret’s eagerness had seemed like something wondrous; now I felt sick.

Luc’s flinch was all the warning I got that things were about to get worse. A man in a SAVELOTS apron appeared behind Dr. Joyan. I recognized him as the owner of the store, and almost certainly the inattentive cashier’s father. Their resemblance was uncanny to my orphan eyes.

“You talking about how you’re gonna put us out of business?” the owner said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Gret’s joy evaporated, and my nausea redoubled.

“You know that’s not what we’re about, Gary,” Dr. Joyan said. “We’ll help your business —”

“You will not,” the owner spat. “I’ll never buy your freak food. Who knows what filth you’ve put in there?”

“It’s just food,” Gret said, her face and voice at their stoniest. Sandra placed her hand on Gret’s shoulder, but Gret shook it off.

“Bullshit,” the owner said. “Crops aren’t supposed to grow in the desert.”

“The world wasn’t supposed to have this much desert to begin with,” Dr. Joyan said gently. “We have to —”

“Adapt?” the owner said.

There was an ugly silence, broken by his contemptuous snort.

“Unnatural creatures, that’s what you’re making. Get out of my store!”

Dr. Joyan lifted her chin, but she did as she was told. Disturbed dust swirled around her like tiny storms. Sandra hesitated, then followed after her. Gret spared me the slightest glance before she left, too. I couldn’t read her face, and I didn’t want to know what she could read on mine. The owner stomped back up to the register.

“I guess Rosie and I are doing the shopping from now on,” Luc said. “Breathe, Millie.”

Air whooshed from my lungs. When I sucked it back in, my hands and feet prickled.

Luc started, “You know the pack wouldn’t work for Dr. Joyan if —”

I cut him off. “Tell me what they meant.”

Luc took a can of diced tomatoes off the shelf and turned its exorbitant price tag toward me. “You know how much money we have to pay the companies that own the farmland and desalination plants to ship food all the way out here. Families in the desert go broke just to eat. Dr. Joyan started out as a medical researcher – I know, Millie. Trust me, I know.” He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “You know about nonstandard stem cells?”

Of course I did. Within their microscopic borders, all stem cells were tiny oceans of potential: the universe before the Big Bang. That’s how Dr. Topher had described them. She had even let me look once through the microscope, but I hadn’t known enough to understand what the fuss was about. I hadn’t realized that the cells had been reverse engineered from the marrow of my adaptation donor.

Later, I learned that nonstandard stem cells held even more potential than standard ones. Just as the cells would eventually shift into different roles in the body, the nonstandard adaptation itself was present yet unwritten within these walls. One nonstandard was indistinguishable from the next, if only for a breathless second of cellular time, before the decrees of DNA asserted themselves and the body began to form into whatever monster its ancestors had decided it would be.

At the heart of it, all the adaptationists had tried to do was introduce this extra possibility to regular old standards. But the universes of our bodies didn’t expand after the cataclysm of realized potential like nonstandards’ did. Instead, we collapsed.

Luc narrowed his eyes to a migraine squint. “Dr. Joyan used the stem cells as a — a template. Adaptations are responses to harsh environments, right? So she grows food that can respond to the desert.”

“How?”

Luc rubbed his forehead hard. Barely moving his lips, he murmured, “To study nonstandard adaptations, you need nonstandard cells. The pack can help with that.”

“You don’t —” I started.

“No,” Luc said dully. “My cells are too … unstable. Not a good template for anything.”

That should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. Neither Luc nor I seemed able to hold each other’s gaze anymore, so we looked out the window at the bright barrenness beyond, where no gardens would ever grow from our bodies. We remained what we had been made: organisms with no output.

Chapter 17

“Millie, are you even listening to me?”

“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Go on.”

Leela frowned deeply enough that I could see it through the phosphorescent interference on my computer screen. I guiltily minimized the article about Dr. Joyan that I had been reading while Leela was talking. So far, I’d learned that while she was well known in the scientific community, Dr. Joyan’s projects attracted no major donors; all of the biggest companies worked together to keep themselves on top. World governments might have iron-clad treaties demanding that they ignore each other these days, but apparently the corporations were still as intertwined as they had been back when everyone was at war. I was not surprised to discover that EP was partners with SeaWater Salvation, the leading food producer in the country. In one interview, Dr. Joyan said she wished she didn’t have to develop technologically redundant solutions, but until the saline farms’ output was made affordable for all, she would continue to do so.

The details of Dr. Joyan’s work were hard to come by. She had avoided federal funding, which was unsurprising; the government was wary of dabbling in anything that smacked of “experimentation.” Dr. Joyan was also a careful speaker. She made it sound as though her remarkably robust plants had merely been inspired by nonstandard adaptations. But I remembered the adhesive I’d seen on the inside of Gret’s arm and the undisturbed skin around it. I’d seen countless bandages in the same place on synthetic arms, after their blood was drawn for study.

Dr. Joyan herself was standard. Her name did not appear on the Supplicants Grove registry. It was the first time I had checked it, and I was more surprised than I should have been by how many nonstandards were hiding in plain sight here. I’d only seen a couple of visibly nonstandard people since arriving in Supplicants Grove, but they were a minority within the minority; they’d been the easiest targets when Stasis began. But all those times I’d checked my palms obsessively when I went to the grocery store, I had statistically passed by at least a few people secretly like – well, not like me, but like Gret and Sandra, at least.

In retrospect, of course there were nonstandards here. Where else would they be, the Preservations? Hardly. Did they know what Dr. Joyan was really doing? Were they helping, too, or was only Gret’s pack brave enough?

Or naïve enough.

It’s just plants, I told myself for the thousandth time. But how many nonstandard cells did Dr. Joyan need in order to do her work? I could imagine vats full of disembodied fluids, their genetic codes ripe for the reading. And what did Dr. Joyan do with the excess samples? Did biological waste lay formless on a table in her lab?

“Millie!” Leela said. “Why do you keep zoning out? Is something wrong?”

“You told me Mr. Bicks said the world needs fixing,” I said slowly. “Do you think people can say that and actually mean it? Or — no, it’s not about them meaning it, it’s about … fixing things the right way or … how can you tell when people are trying to make good changes?”

“I have no idea what you’re asking,” Leela said blankly.

I sighed. “Me neither. Ignore me. I should just stop thinking about it.”

“No!” Leela cried.

Her vehemence startled me. “Um, what —”

“Sorry,” she said, her gills fluttering. “That’s just always your answer. I know it was important when we were kids not to think about — anything — but maybe that doesn’t help anymore?”

I remained silent. Leela’s adaptation was so different from mine. Whatever Rosie’s father had wanted from her, at least it wasn’t violence.

“Well, anyway,” Leela said softly. “We can figure it all out when you come to visit.”

We said our goodbyes and signed off. I took Rosie’s thumb drive out of my drawer and stared at it. In the past week, I had experienced more of the real world than I ever had before. I’d been to new places in Supplicants Grove and learned about the dreams of some of the people who lived here. I remembered how Gret looked when she was talking to Dr. Joyan about their work. I couldn’t pretend that Gret didn’t intimidate me, but her tough facade wasn’t as impenetrable as she probably thought it was. It was plain to see that she only wanted to help.

I wanted — no, I was a synthetic. I would have wanted to help. I would have wanted to stay.

But I couldn’t. The only reason all of this was happening was because Dr. Topher wanted me back, and was close to getting me. And because —

Because I had used the teeth she gave me.

So maybe I was wrong. Maybe Dr. Topher had found some potential to expand in me, but it was only the potential for violence, and I’d seen the outcome of that in the ruins at the edge of town. Fine, then. Gret would help this forsaken world in her way, and I would help in mine. But before I could, I needed to know what Dr. Topher knew about me. I couldn’t let her exploit weaknesses that I didn’t know I had because I was too afraid to look for them.

At least, that was what I told myself as I inserted the thumb drive into my laptop. But when I opened the file that popped up on the screen, another unbidden thought flitted across my mind: Talk me out of it.

One second later, that thought and all others were wiped from my brain. The first page of the file displayed my vital stats.

Name: Millie Peng. Age: 17. Race: East Asian. Adaptationist: Dagny Topher. Father: unknown.

Mother: Ina Peng. West Sonoran Penitentiary. Life sentence.

I shot out of my chair and staggered backwards, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that name. My mother’s name.

I had a mother?

My head buzzing, I tore the drive out of my laptop and left my apartment, hardly aware of what I was doing. West Sonoran Penitentiary — that wasn’t far from here, was it? Why was she there? What did someone have to do to receive a life sentence? Other than be an adaptationist.

I stopped dead on the crumbling sidewalk. Could Ina Peng have — no, that didn’t make sense. Like I’d told Luc, Dr. Topher had underlings, not collaborators. I resumed walking. I may not have known my mother, but I did know the woman who raised me, and for the first time ever, I was relieved that I did. Even sacrificing me knowingly would have given Ina Peng some sort of claim over what emerged from the experiments. Dr. Topher never would have allowed that.

These thoughts carried me all the way to the squat. Luc greeted me at the door. “What are you doing here?” he said, sounding alarmed.

“I need to talk to Gret,” I said.

“But the storm,” Luc objected.

I looked up. Dark thunderheads gathered above the town. The wind that lifted my hair carried moisture and electricity instead of just dust. The nearest mountains were still bright red, illuminated by the setting sun at the opposite end of the sky. The contrast between the stone and the clouds was as sharp as a slap.

I shivered. I’d been walking outside for twenty minutes and hadn’t noticed the storm. I hadn’t lost awareness of my surroundings like that since I was a newly rescued wreck of a kid, shunted from place to unfamiliar place. This was not a good sign.

“The others went to help out Dr. Joyan,” Luc said, bringing me back to the present. “They’re getting the greenhouses ready.”

“Can the greenhouses withstand floods and fires?” I asked, not knowing whether I wanted him to answer yes or no.

“We’re not going to get the worst of it,” Luc said, then rolled his eyes at the look I gave him. “I was on Rosie’s laptop. Empaths can’t predict the weather.”

I took a chance and said, “Other psychs can.”

“So can satellites,” Luc said dryly. “What’s worse: being feared or being obsolete?”

How about both? I thought. Guns were more efficient than werewolves, but given the choice, most people would brave the bullets.

“You should probably go before the storm starts,” Luc said. “Gret already saw you today.”

“I mean — I’m already here. Won’t they be back soon?”

“I hope they’re on their way,” Luc said, casting a worried glance at the sky.

The rain hadn’t started to fall yet. Now that I was here, I didn’t want to leave before I saw Gret again.

Luc coughed and said, “Well, come in, I guess. I was just working on lesson plans. I can show you if you want.”

I swallowed hard, remembering Gret’s accusation. I didn’tblame Luc for what he was, but that didn’t mean I wanted him in my head. Not while my mother was in there, too.

Luc lowered his eyes. “Or you can wait somewhere else.”

His left leg twitched. He rubbed it, and I saw there was a tremor in his hand. Under the darkening sky, there was a whole town that didn’t realize they had two synthetics in their midst. How many people had Luc felt without them even knowing he existed?

I closed the door behind me. “What are you teaching?”

Luc smiled. His hands were steady enough to steer his own wheelchair. He led me down the hall to the second door on the right. A meticulously neat bed was made up in the corner, with a small end table next to it. The boards in Luc’s window were more tightly fitted than in the kitchen or entrance, but a tiny lamp illuminated the scene with dim light. The room looked a lot like a compound bedroom, except smaller and darker.

“How did you get all this stuff?” I asked, waving my arm at the furniture. “How did you even get the squat?”

“Gret,” Luc said. “It was about a year after she found Sandra. This building was supposed to be a little boarding house for passers-through, but Supplicants Grove doesn’t get many of those. It costs too much to knock it down, so no one did. It’s technically for sale. If anyone ever buys it, we’re in trouble, but we’re fine for now. Rosie was able to mess with our utility registration so no one notices that the laundromat pays for our water.”

Luc motioned for me to sit. I perched on the edge of the mattress.

“Was the building abandoned with beds in it?” I asked dubiously.

Luc laughed. “We bought the beds. I came with a little money. Gret and Sandra had to lug them in pieces from all the way downtown in the middle of summer. The rest of the stuff we trash picked when Rosie came with the car.”

“Are, um — are people still looking for the stolen car?”

“Do you mean are people still looking for Rosie?”

I shrugged defensively. It was worth knowing.

“They are,” Luc said gravely. “But we won’t let them find her.” He paused, then added, “My father is not looking for me.”

I flinched. Luc waved his hand in a defeated gesture.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t reply to unsaid things. I just knew you were curious.”

“Curiosity isn’t an emotion,” I protested. “It’s a thought process.”

“Most things are both. Anyway, my father probably looked for me when I first ran, but when it was clear that I hadn’t turned him in, I imagine he was relieved I was gone. He’s terribly afraid of me.” Luc’s face darkened with the memory of his father’s fear, and he looked ghoulish in the low light. His voice dripping with contempt, he explained, “He left the country not long after. A spiritual journey to our collective evolutionary home. Living in East Africa must be so annoying. All the disaffected rich white people showing up and looking for answers. Like Africans aren’t in Stasis, too.” He paused. “My mother was from Kenya.”

“Your mother,” I repeated. “I —”

Luc waited, but I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“I don’t remember her,” Luc said. “She left when I was a baby. Except … I don’t think she wanted to. My father felt guilty whenever I asked about her.” He shook his head. “I should’ve stolen more money when I left. All his accounts are different now. Not even Rosie can get into them.”

“At least he’s gone,” I said.

“At least,” Luc agreed. He cleared his throat and opened the top drawer of his nightstand. “You wanted to know about my lesson plans?”

I looked in the drawer. On the left side, there was a stack of lined and lumpy notebooks. The top one proclaimed Property of Rosie in exuberant bubble letters. The right side was crammed with textbooks and novels. I’d never seen so many in one place.

“What do you teach?” I asked, rifling through the books.

“Whatever the pack wants to learn. I basically spent my childhood reading in bed, so I know a little about a lot of things.”

One of the books in the drawer was The Ecotech Revolution in the United States. I ran my hand over the peeling title.

“That’s Gret’s,” Luc said.

“Unsurprising.”

Luc grinned. “Yes.” He hesitated, then tentatively asked, “What about the people you grew up with? Are you friends with a bunch of do-gooders, too?”

Do-gooders? As synthetics, the most good anyone in the compound could do was nothing at all.

A wave of shame washed over me, and I heard Luc’s breath hitch as it hit him. What had I been thinking, coming here? I had to talk to Leela. She had to know that I had a mother, which meant she might, too …

The front door opened and a flood of voices filled the hall. Luc wheeled himself out of his room, pausing to touch my hand gently as he passed.

“Millie’s here,” he announced.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Gret called back. “But why? Storm’s starting!”

I poked my head out into the hall just as an enormous clap of thunder shook the house. Everyone jumped. Sandra let out a peal of too-loud laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Gret said sourly.

“Aren’t storms great?” Sandra cried.

“No,” Gret and Rosie said in unison. Gret added, “They’re dangerous.”

Sandra laughed even louder. “So are we!”

Her glasses were opaque in the darkness of the squat, turning her face into a mask of frenetic delight. Beside me, Luc’s thin chest rose and fell rapidly.

“It’s all right,” he said, dismissing my alarm. “It’s just a thrill.”

Lightning lit the squat from between the boards in the windows. An even louder crash of thunder followed. As Gret sidled up to me, I told myself that it was only the storm that made my heart race so fast.

“You can’t walk home in this,” she said. “You’ll have to wait it out with us.”

“What if it lasts all night?” I said, my voice all but drowned out by the sudden cacophonous rain. “I didn’t bring —”

“I have a toothbrush and some extra clothes for you,” Gret interrupted.

“What? Why?”

“I like to be prepared,” Gret said. She hurried down the hall before I could ask more questions.

I watched her leave, biting my lip. What was she preparing for? Not just rain. I’d only talked Gret into allowing me to hunt for Dr. Topher in the short term. If I didn’t succeed, Gret was ready for me to leave with the pack. This werewolf could keep me safe.

If I let her.