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"Ge to take you to convince the usefulindefensible?"

Understanding froze me at my center "You want ents--"

"And you have three hours before we leave," Cole said, letting his fla fast"

3

IN THE SCRAMBLE LEADING UP to our departure, everyone had different tasks to attend to Some were sent to relieve the others on watch; soear we’d accumulated; others, like Liam and Chubs, divvied up the last bit of food between the different teaents like an unexpected breeze, brushing up against their minds just as softly Cole and I had decided the order I should work in to make the shift in plan seeent Sen

I stood behind her, back-to-back, as she studied the map andho Having opened hera key into a greased lock

With each agent, I started to feel h scenes of bleak violence, training, dreams I’d spent six months with these people, but it took me less than two hours to finally understand the trajectory of their hatred--for Gray, for us, for everything that stood in their way There was soloss between them, they created a black hole that sucked one another in

When I finished, I felt like a rock that had survived a landslide Steady enough to go three doors down the hall to deal with Clancy Gray

I nudged his side with my foot, a bit harder than I maybe needed to "Wake up"

He groaned, eyes bleary as I shone the flashlight directly into his face "If this chat doesn’t involve cutting my hands free, a mirror, either of the Stewart brothers’ messy and untimely deaths, or a clean pair of clothes, I’ hih the dark fringe that hung over his eyes in spikes The slime from the sewers he’d taken to escape HQ had faded froray that flaked off him when he sodeprivation as torture is sodirect"

"This isn’t torture," I said, rolling my eyes At least not in the traditional sense I don’t know that Clancy was all that bothered that we kept him separate from the others, in a kind of solitary confine blocked from inforh the wall That was Clancy Gray’s perfect hell That, and the filthy clothes that stuck to his skin in odd places