“Shut up.”

“Nice website, though.”

I knew that class project would come back to bite me in the butt.

“Assuming you play by my rules, your cover is safe with me. And if you win, I’ll even let you mind-wipe me, or whatever it is the government does to keep the ten of you its nasty little secret.” Amelia somehow made those words sound incredibly reasonable.

“If we win what?” I tried to match her tone, but couldn’t quite keep the frustration out of my voice. Being held at gunpoint sucked.

“Since you don’t seem to like the word game, let’s call it a challenge. I’m going to tell you who has the nanobots and what they’re planning to do with them, and in the morning, you’re going to share the news with your little team. Then, tomorrow afternoon, right before the action goes down, we’re going to stop it. Like I said before, I don’t particularly want anyone to die, and if we don’t do something, someone will.”

“You want to work with us?” This kept getting stranger and stranger.

“Not exactly.” She looked down the barrel of the gun, straight at me. “Think of it more like a competition. I want the weapon. You guys want the weapon. Neither of us wants it used tomorrow.”

Where were the men with the little white coats when you needed them? This was seriously insane. “You’re actually challenging us to see who can get to the weapon first?”

She had to realize how little sense that made. If she wanted the weapon for herself, why even clue us in to begin with?

“That’s the gist of it,” Amelia said. “And stop looking at me like that. I’m not crazy. I’m bored, and the person who has the bots isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. I could take him with one hand tied behind my back, but what fun would that be? Unfortunately, in addition to being no fun, that would also be stupid on my part. If I did steal the bots back and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray found out that I’d been holding out on them, I’d be a dead girl. If, however, there’s government involvement, then the firm will blame whatever goes down on them. They may not know about your team, but they know they’re being watched, and they know there’s an operative presence in Bayport. If there’s even a hint of government involvement, do you think they’ll suspect for even a second that the pretty little piece they hired to run their errands was involved?”

I seriously had to wonder if the fact that she was making sense to me meant that I was a few people short of a pyramid myself.

“How do I know you’ll keep up your end of the bargain?” I asked. For all I knew, she’d already blown our cover to the firm. At this rate, I might not have to deal with homecoming after all. If Jack’s father found out who I really was, if Jack found out who I really was…

“Simple. Tomorrow afternoon, we’re going after the same thing. Beat me to it and take me down. After that, it’s just a matter of lie detectors and memory-altering drugs.”

“And if you win?” I had to ask, even though I couldn’t imagine Amelia outsmarting the entire Squad. Again.

“If I win,” she said, “you’re just going to have to trust me. Either way, as long as you play by the rules, my lips are sealed, and your cover is safe. You can believe me or not, but I actually don’t have anything against your team. People underestimate you.” She smiled, wryly this time. “If there’s one thing I understand, it’s that. Who knows? If things had been different, maybe I’d be the one running around in one of those stupid skirts.”

Was it wrong that I felt a vague feeling of kinship with her when she said the phrase stupid skirts?

“Tell me when and where,” I said. “We’ll be there.” I really couldn’t see how we had any other choice. If we sat back and did nothing, the weapon would either be deployed, or it would end up in Amelia’s possession. Neither one of those was what I’d call a good outcome.

Amelia, keeping her eyes on mine, lowered the gun. “Tomorrow at three in Walford Park, Anthony Connors-Wright is going to kill his father, and he’s planning on using the nanobots to do it. There’s a political rally, and his father is in charge of security for the good senator. Anthony has some major Daddy Issues and doesn’t have the foresight to realize that unless you pick the right target, the nanobots aren’t that big a deal.”

“Not that big a deal?” I repeated. “How many people at this rally have to die before it’s a big deal? If he releases the weapon—”

Amelia tilted her head to the side. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“There’s a reason that so many terrorist groups wanted this thing,” Amelia said, “and there’s a reason Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray was funding the research. Biological weapons are a dime a dozen. If you want to attack a crowd, there are a half dozen toxic agents a lot less expensive than DNA-wiping nanobots. There aren’t, however, many biological weapons that can be programmed to attack a certain individual.”

I thought back on what Chloe had told me. The nanobots were revolutionary because of the amount of programming they could carry despite their microscopic size. We had assumed that future development on the programming front would concentrate on identifying the specific base pairs to be attacked within a DNA strand, but what if, instead, the programming identified the DNA to be attacked?

“Are you saying that you can let these things loose in a crowd, and they’ll attack only one person?”

“It’s called assassination, and yeah, that’s what the guys at Peyton seem to think this does.”

Suddenly, Chloe’s magnet analogy took on a whole new dimension, because Amelia was standing there telling me that like a metal to a magnet, these nanobots would zero in on a single individual, based on their DNA. You let them loose in a crowd, and they set their sights on their preprogrammed target, leaving everyone else unharmed. I wasn’t sure exactly how to rate this development. On the one hand, instead of killing thousands of people, this weapon would only kill one. On the other, that one person could be the president.

Suddenly, of the two negative outcomes I’d considered earlier, the one where Connors-Wright deployed the bots and killed his father was looking good, because if Amelia actually got a hold of this technology, there was no telling what she would do with it, or who she would sell it to. The Big Guys were going to freak, or at least, they would have, had I actually been able to tell them about it.

“I said what I came here to say.” Amelia raised the gun again and backed toward my window. “You know the rules. Tonight, you tell no one. Tomorrow, Walford Park, three o’clock, winner takes all. You can do all the recon you want, but move in on the target before three, and you can consider your cover blown.”

And then, with stealth that would have made Bubbles proud, she disappeared out the window and into the night.

CHAPTER 28

Code Word: Liberty

“I’m in, but I am NOT wearing one of those stupid skirts.” I knew even as I said the words that I would, in fact, be wearing many a stupid skirt, and that something about this whole scenario wasn’t quite right. I didn’t have time to ponder it, though, because the next order of business was filling the last open slot on the Squad.

I listened and talked and made quips about Bitch Quotients, but even as my mouth moved, I knew that I couldn’t be here again. I’d already done this. Today wasn’t my first day on the Squad, and we’d already chosen April.

Hadn’t we?

Kiki McCall. April Manning. Hayley Hoffman.

The names were flung back and forth and the other girls debated in slow motion. It was all “legacy this” and “aptitude for climbing” that. And just as we were getting ready to vote April in, I realized what was wrong with this whole situation—other than the obvious.

I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

“Dance with me, Toby.”

Jack? What was Jack doing in the Quad? He couldn’t be here. If he knew about us, we’d been exposed—permanently. More importantly, he couldn’t be here—I WAS NAKED.

“Come on, Ev. Just one little dance.”