He turned his face into the gentle wind, tilting his head to catch . . . there. He smelled her. Even over the fresh mineral scent of the rolling water, even over the scent of . . . another human. A male. No, two.
He moved forward, crouching, silent. He came to the edge of the trees, moving in the shadows, using the light and dark to draw closer.
“I know you’re here, Jak,” one of the men called out, making Jak freeze, a growl coming up his throat that he swallowed down. That voice. He knew that voice. “Cameras. They give the advantage, despite your stealth.” The man looked at Harper, who was standing closer to the falls, and smiled. Another man, a younger one, was standing behind the man who’d spoken, his eyes focused on the dark trees where Jak hid. “We can’t have them everywhere, of course. But I get the numerous feeds on my phone. Riveting TV. A true reality show if ever there was one.”
This man had been watching Jak too? The monster who’d been at the top of the cliff that awful night?
Anger moved within Jak, anger and grief, as he suddenly saw his life—all his suffering—in a different and even more terrible light. But on the top of both of those emotions was fear. His skin prickled. Chest
burned. The fear of Harper standing in front of a man who Jak knew meant to harm her.
The man nodded back to the young man behind him. “Daire.”
Daire pulled a gun from his coat pocket, making Jak’s blood freeze.
“Come on out, Jak,” the older man said, the one with white stripes in his dark hair like a skunk. “It’s pointless to hide in the woods.”
Jak paused for only a moment and then stepped from the shadows.
The man smiled, an expression that looked truly . . . affectionate. “Hi, Jak. My, you’re even bigger in person. It’s . . . truly wonderful to see you.”
“Jak,” Harper said, her eyes darting to the gun in the other man’s hand, her smile breaking. Jak moved toward her, pulled, but neither man stopped him.
When Jak had made it almost all the way to where Harper stood, the older man said, “That’s good. Stay right there.” He sighed. “I’m going to explain to you our mission. Why, you might ask, am I telling you? Because you deserve to know. You deserve to understand that your sacrifice will not be in vain. Quite the opposite. You are both part of something so much bigger than the two of you. Despite what must happen here today, I revere you. My pride in you, and admiration for you both, knows no bounds.”
Despite what must happen here today. Jak’s brain spun, trying to understand. This man, he had been there the night it started. He was working with Driscoll. He’d watched the cameras. He’d seen everything. His thoughts tumbled, brain buzzed.
“I understand why you killed Driscoll, Jak. I truly do. It all went so wrong. If we had had a chance to de-brief you, you would have understood your purpose, found pride in the suffering you’d endured.” He looked very disappointed for a moment but then smiled. “Ah, well. What’s done is done.” The man thought Jak had killed Driscoll. He had left the note in Harper’s apartment.
Jak’s eyes met Harper’s, hers wide with fear, searching. Trusting. She knew it wasn’t true. Knew he didn’t kill Driscoll. She’d trusted him that night, too, he realized. She’d put the pocketknife in his hand because she’d trusted him to do something. He glanced to the man with the gun, too far away to rush before he could shoot them both.
In front of him was the gun, behind him were the deadly falls. Trapped. They were trapped.
“Dr. Swift, wha . . . what did Driscoll and his Spartans have to do with any of this?” Harper asked, her voice shaking. Trying to keep him talking. Giving Jak time so he could figure out what to do.
Dr. Swift sighed. “Driscoll was obsessed with history, with the Spartans.” He waved his hand as if that didn’t matter. “We like to give our camp leaders room for creativity.” He turned slightly toward the man behind him. “Daire knows all about that, don’t you?” Daire didn’t answer, but Jak saw something flicker in his eyes. But with a blink it was gone. Dr. Swift turned back toward Harper and Jak. “But see, the Spartans brought up one very important fact. Driscoll was right: there’s much to be learned. See, they started with the children. It’s where our idea was first conceived. We try to alter adults, change people who cannot be changed. Study them, put them through useless programs that show dismal results. Nothing changes, do you see? It’s all backward. And so the cycle continues. Your own mother was proof of that, Jak. Born to a junkie herself, raised in the system. What does she do? Becomes a teenage mother, hooked on drugs, willing to sell her child to feed her habit. And the cycle continues.” He made a disgusted sound in his throat.
“What do you think would have become of you, Jak, if she had kept you? The same thing, that’s what. You’d have eventually been placed into a group home, either ended up a menace or an inmate—either way, a complete drain on society, only to go on and create more just like you. You think it isn’t true? Read the studies. Society has set up a system that incentivizes the breeding of degenerates, criminals, and predators.”
Dr. Swift looked off into the distance for a moment before speaking again. “Isaac was right on another front. Jak was taken from his mother and raised by a singular caregiver in the vein of the Spartans. It seems to show the best success. But of course, they knew their stuff, didn’t they? You’re understanding all this, aren’t you, Jak?”
Yes, Jak understood. At least enough to feel sickness turning in his stomach.
“Just so you know, Jak, I tried to convince Isaac he should teach you how to make fire at the very least. But he said no. He liked discovering what you would come up with to trade for matches.” He shook his head, lips together.
Make fire? The world spun. His heart dropped to his stomach. He looked at Harper and her expression . . . it looked like Dr. Swift’s words made her want to cry.
“It’s a sort of irony, isn’t it, Harper, that you entered the foster care system, the one we deem a useless failure, because of us.” He smiled but his smile only made Jak feel sicker. “But because of it, you should understand better than anyone that the system doesn’t work. Would it have been worse, Harper? To live out here? Free? Not listening for every bump in the night?” He looked at her, stared, like he knew what had happened to her as he swept his arm around. Harper looked down, her face almost as pale as the melting snow. Jak took a step closer, two.
Free? he thought. There was no freedom in being set up, watched, used, and lied to.
“So what are the applications for these programs, you might ask?” Dr. Swift went on as he paced one way then turned. Jak took the moment to meet Harper’s eyes. It’ll be okay, he wanted to say, if only to comfort her.
The river to the left, woods far off to the right. No way to run to either before Dr. Swift’s gunman shot them down, and then what? Buried their bodies out here somewhere they’d never be found?
“So many exciting applications,” the doctor was saying. “These people, these survivors, later trained in weaponry of all kinds, will have proven their worth, their will to fight, again and again and again, under the most arduous of circumstances. Circumstances that would take down the strongest of men. And women. They’re already being used by wealthy men, and governments all over the world. Elite security. The guarding of assets. Even assassins when it’s for the greater good.” He smiled like a proud father. “They’re soldiers—the best of the very best. Observed since birth. Revered. Their lives, their skill sets, their proven grit of great intrinsic value.”
“And the ones who don’t survive your . . . training?” Jak asked, his heart constricting as he remembered the faces of the other two boys as they’d looked on the cliff that night. The face of the boy he’d killed.