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“Mom!” I called from the bathroom as I ran my hands through my pink hair. “You’re a freaking genius!”
My mom was a genius.
It took me another thirty minutes to write down the entire ingredients and procedure for that mixture. I explained everything as clearly as I could, then put some of that brown mixture into two small plastic bottles and put them in my purse. I was too excited not to take this in right away, even though I could have really,reallyused the day off. Hunter and the girls hadn’t come in, and they didn’t plan to come in tomorrow, either. But we did make plans to see each other in the evening. I’d tell them all about it then.
Right now, I went straight to the Research crew to meet with Robinson. When I showed him the list and gave him one of the bottles with the disgusting brown liquid inside, he only stared at me for a few seconds.
“Like I said,” I repeated. “Itworks. As you can see.” I made a point of touching the pink ends of my hair.
Robinson shook his head, then stepped back to the other side of the hallway to rest his shoulder against the wall. He gripped the bottle tightly in one hand and went over everything I’d written down on those pieces of paper for him.
For at least five minutes.
Eventually, I sighed. “Are you going to give it a try or not? There’s enough in there for a glass, which is what I took.”
He held up a finger to tell me to shut up. I rolled my eyes but resisted reminding him that I needed to go. I had other things to do before the day was over.
“Yourmommade this.” He finally showed me the pieces of paper.
“Yes, she did.”
“Last night,” he repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
He narrowed his grey brows at me. “And this is the only thing you took to get your color back?”
“Yes.” I’d told him all of this already.
“What about your magic? Is it back?”
I flinched. “I didn’t have much to begin with, but yes. It’s there, all right.” I felt it under my skin. Not much, but definitely present.
“Huh,” he said, nodding his head. “I will try this on one of the soldiers who got shot last night and see what it does.”
I nodded. “That’s all I wanted.” If it worked on me, it was going to work on all of them. And the Research crew could make more than enough of it to give to everyone affected by the drug the night before. And maybe, if we found people who took too much Crackdown in time, we could feed them the mixture and maybe at least save them from dying.
“Good. I’ll let you know how it plays out.” He turned for the double doors to our right—his offices. “What is your mom’s name?”
“Alice De Ver.”
Robinson nodded. “Alice De Ver,” he whispered to himself, and without another look my way, he walked through the door and disappeared from my view.
One down, one more to go.
It occurred to me that this was a bad idea even before the cab stopped in front of Dominic’s house. Ahorribleidea, in fact. I was in no way ready to see him again, not after everything.
But I also couldn’t wait. Too excited. Too panicked. If I had to live like this for the rest of the day, I’d go nuts for real.
So, taking in a deep breath, I paid the driver, got out of the cab, and made my way straight for the gates. I was doing this no matter if the idea was stupid or not.
But before I even made it to the fence, the phone in my purse rang. I thought it was my mom—she would probably still be panicked, even after she saw that I was okay. It was going to take a few days for her to calm down.
Instead, it was Chief Randall.
Heart in my throat, I hit the button and brought the phone to my ear. “Hi, Chief.”
“De Ver, where the hell are you?” he exploded.
