We strolled toward the movie theater as if we were in no particular hurry, talking about nothing in particular, waving to passing classmates.
Persephone glanced around. “When I break off, follow directly behind me. Walk where I walk. Single file.”
My heart was thump-a-thumping a techno beat, but I kept a smile on my face, like I didn’t have a care in the world.
“Where are you going?” an unmistakable voice called. Eve was hurrying to catch up to us, her thick, powerful legs covering the ground quickly.
“Um, we’re going to, um—” I tried to think of somewhere Eve wouldn’t want to go, but my mind was a blank.
“To study for tomorrow’s test,” Persephone blurted.
“Why?” Eve asked. It was a good question. We hadn’t cracked a book in weeks.
“Ms. Spain got on us because our grades are so bad,” Persephone said.
Eve studied Persephone’s face as we walked. “Why are you lying?”
Could she smell when we were lying? Or maybe she had senses we didn’t even have? Maybe she could see the carbon dioxide that came out of our mouths and it looked different when we lied. Then again, it wasn’t a very good lie. None of us had shown the least bit of interest in schoolwork since we’d arrived. Ms. Spain hadn’t even shown much interest.
“I think we have to tell her,” Lorena said.
Persephone threw his hands in the air. “Well obviously, now that you’ve said that.” We’d agreed not to tell Eve what we were doing until after we’d done it. We were afraid she might accidentally do something to give us away.
“Tell me what?” Eve asked.
Persephone gestured for us to follow. She led us to a spot behind our dorm, near the air-conditioning unit.
“We think we’ve figured out a way to snoop around the offices without being seen,” Persephone said. “We’re going to see if we can find out about you.”
“We were planning to tell you everything we found,” Lorena added. “Honest.”
“I want to go,” Eve said.
Persephone shook her head vigorously. “No, Eve, that won’t work. We’re going to try to slip through their surveillance and hope they don’t notice we’re gone. If you dropped out of sight, they’d notice immediately.”
Eve crossed her short arms and made a low hiss. “But I want to help.”
Three kids appeared around the corner of the building, heading toward us on the brick path. When they spotted Eve, they veered off at the next fork and headed in a different direction.
“You can help by going to the movie and acting like nothing’s wrong,” I said.
Eve made a noise that came from deep in her belly. “That’s not helping.”
“Hang on,” Lorena grabbed my arm. “She could create a diversion. If Eve has a meltdown, they’ll all be watching her instead of us.”
Persephone’s big eyes grew even wider. “Could you do that? Pretend to get angry about something? Flip out a little?”
“But make sure no one gets hurt,” I added.
Eve lifted her arm and sucked on one of her fingers, considering. “Sometimes the popcorn at the bottom of the bucket is burnt. That could make me angry.”
Lorena pumped her fist. “Perfect. Wait about twenty minutes, then make some noise.”
As Eve eagerly headed off on her mission, we strolled along the back of our dormitory.
“Nice call,” Persephone said over her shoulder. “For a minute there I thought the whole plan was about to unravel.” She hung a sharp left and led us along the side of the cafeteria. Through the bank of windows, I could see the tables set for dinner.
Persephone stopped at the corner and consulted her map. “This way.” She cut diagonally past a fountain I hadn’t noticed before, shaped like a giant drinking fountain, then along a brick garden wall . . . and then right across the quad.
“They can’t see us here?” I whispered as we crossed the wide-open expanse.
“Shh. That’s right.”
Weird. As we approached the center of the quad, Persephone made a sharp left, toward the administration building. She led us the long way around the building into Tulipville, where we picked our way through a bed of butter yellow tulips, avoiding the brick paths completely. We reached the edge of the building and pressed close to the rough concrete wall until we reached the back door.
Persephone peered through the window in the door. “All clear. Let’s go.” We ducked inside into the short hallway that intersected the main hallway.
Footsteps clopped down the main hallway, growing louder. We scrambled, each of us pressing up inside a doorway, making ourselves as flat as possible. I closed my eyes, which was stupid because it didn’t make me less visible, but I couldn’t help it.
The footsteps faded. I exhaled.
We tiptoed to the corner. Holding up one hand, signaling us to hang back, Persephone peered around the corner.
She waved us on.
The first office had a smoked glass window, and we could see it was dark inside. Persephone tried the knob. It was locked. So was the second door. Evidently, Persephone hadn’t thought past getting inside the building unseen. Now that we were in, it wasn’t like people just left their doors unlocked. Even if we found one that wasn’t locked, what were the odds there were things inside that would tell us what Eve was and why we were here?
A familiar voice drifted from a partially open door halfway down the hall. Ms. Spain. She seemed like a good target. The problem was, how were we going to get inside her office?
There was a bathroom just beyond Ms. Spain’s office. I cracked the door and listened: no sounds. We ducked inside.
“Seems like Ms. Spain’s office is our best bet,” I whispered, “But how do we get inside?”
“I’ll bet as soon as Eve starts up, she’ll get word and take off,” Persephone said.
“But she’ll close the door on the way out, don’t you think?” I asked. It seemed likely these doors locked automatically when you closed them. Since lock picking was not a skill taught in your average gifted program in middle school, that option was off the table. I tried to think of another way into Ms. Spain’s office.
Muffled voices rose in the hallway. Without a word, the three of us piled into the single stall and locked it, just as the door squealed open. Through a crack between the steel panels of the stall, I watched Principal Winn pass us, heading for the urinal. A moment later, he stopped at the sink to wash his hands. We stood perfectly still. If he so much as glanced under the stall door, he’d see three pairs of scuffed tennis shoes, and we’d be doomed.
Principal Winn shut off the water and grabbed a paper towel on the way out.
We piled out of the stall.
“Wait.” Persephone was staring at the base of the wall. I followed her gaze, but there was nothing there. She went and squatted at the base of the wall, then fiddled with a doorstop that was there to keep the door from slamming into the wall when people opened it.
A moment later, she stood holding the little rubber tip of the doorstop. “If we set this at the bottom of the door frame, it’ll block the door from shutting. If Ms. Spain is in a hurry, she’ll just pull the door closed behind her and keep going. She won’t notice if the door doesn’t shut completely.”
Lorena slapped her forehead. “Girl. You’re brilliant.”
In a million years, I never would have thought of that. “You’d make a good CIA agent.”
“You guys stay here.” Persephone poked her head out, looked up and down the hallway, then slipped out.
Lorena and I stood as still as statues, waiting.
Persephone slipped back into the bathroom. “Done. Now we just need Eve to come through.”
Persephone had told Eve to wait twenty minutes. It felt as if more than that had already passed, but it was possible time was moving slowly because of how nervous I was.
After what seemed like another twenty minutes but was probably only two, we heard a shout, then a shouted reply, followed by the click-clop of people running down the hall in dress shoes. When the hall grew quiet again, we ducked out of the bathroom and headed for Ms. Spain’s office.
Her door looked closed, but when Lorena pushed it, it swung open. We hurried inside. I eased the door shut behind us.
“Score. She didn’t have time to log out.” Persephone moused over files on Ms. Spain’s computer. One section consisted of all video files, labeled with dates going back ten years. Persephone turned the volume down and clicked on one at random.
A younger, smaller Eve was sitting behind a glass partition, wearing a white hospital gown. There was another being who looked just like Eve standing behind her, watching. Or maybe the one watching was Eve—it was hard to tell them apart.
“That must be Adam.” Lorena tapped the seated figure. Evidently she could tell them apart.
“Concentrate,” a voice said from off screen. “Remember, if you can’t solve the puzzle, you don’t get lunch. It’s Eve’s favorite—pizza—so try your hardest.”
Persephone closed the file. She scrolled to an early one and clicked on it.
Four baby Eves lay in identical cribs. A younger Mr. Pierre, still with a goatee, his hair more brown than gray, was standing over one of the big barrel-shaped, plum-skinned infants, holding a photo of a woman.
“The gaze-tracking software still isn’t working,” someone else in the room said. “Their visual systems are just too divergent from ours.”
“Then we’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” Mr. Pierre said. “Get a timer, and come over here and time how long she gazes at each photo.”
“Try something else,” Lorena suggested. “We don’t have much time.”
Persephone closed the video and opened a folder labeled Medical. Some of the file names made my skin crawl. Susceptibility to Pathogens, Pain Tolerance, Exploratory Surgery.
Lorena pointed. “What about Physiology? That might explain what she is.”
Except the entire file was in medical speak, so it was hard to understand. Blood composition, descriptions of Eve’s organs and what functions they served, something called BfR genomic comp. Persephone printed out a copy of the file.
There were files on each of their personalities, what made them angry and violent, what scared them, intelligence tests. Nothing that flat out said, This is what they are, or This is where they came from.
“What’s this?” Persephone clicked on a folder labeled Students. Inside were files on each of us. Persephone clicked on her name. Inside were test scores, family history, how often Persephone had gotten in trouble at school, even video of Persephone at school, taken from a hidden camera in one of her classes.
“We’re running out of time.” My forehead was drenched with fear-sweat. My jaw was quivering slightly. “By the time we hear them in the hall, it’ll be too late.”
“Yeah,” Lorena said. “We should probably get out of here.”
Persephone muttered under her breath. She clicked on a few files at random, scanning the contents before moving on to the next.
“Persephone, we gotta go.” I stepped toward the door. Out in the hall, a door thunked closed. “Now. Right now.”
I took off running, with Lorena on my heels. We ducked down the side hall and pressed into a doorway just in time.
“She’ll never be ready in time.” I recognized Ms. Spain’s voice.
“She has to be,” Principal Winn said in his gravelly voice. “Whatever it takes, she has to be.”
As soon as they passed, Lorena and I slipped out the back door into Tulipville beyond. We’d made it out without getting caught, but would it matter after Ms. Spain discovered Persephone in her office? I knew Persephone wouldn’t sell us out, but Winn would guess we were involved.
The back door swung open. Persephone burst through it, winded from running.
“What happened?” I asked.
Persephone gestured for us to follow her farther away from the building.
“Ms. Spain followed Winn down to his office to finish the conversation they were having. As soon as their backs were turned, I bolted.”
I held out my fist and Persephone gave it a bump. We fist bumped all around, then headed off to find Eve. It was a shame we hadn’t found out more about what she was, but we knew a little more, at least. Actually, what we’d overheard outside the office was more interesting than what we’d found on Ms. Spain’s computer.
She’s never going to be ready in time, Ms. Spain had said. Ready for what?
Beside me, Lorena burst out laughing.
I glanced at her. “What’s so funny?”
“That was awesome.” Lorena grabbed my hand and pressed it to her upper chest. “Can you feel my heart racing.”
“Wow. Yes,” I said, my own pulse suddenly putting hers to shame.
She let my hand go. “We almost got nailed!”
We passed into Star Wars Park and paused in front of the Millennium Falcon fountain. I turned to Persephone. “Did Spain and Winn say anything useful after we left?”
“Winn said he thought this entire project was a mistake, that they were wasting time they couldn’t afford to waste. He said he should have known better than to trust a psychologist.” Persephone took a few steps to her right until the clock tower came into view. “It’s seven ten. Why don’t you two find Eve and tell her what we found out?”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
Persephone held up the printout she was carrying. “To see if I can decode more of the medical report.”