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We go into a windowless room with a cheap table and five chairs. There’s an empty coffeepot on a sideboard and a mirror—probably two-way—on the wall.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say, nodding toward the mirror. “I watch television, you know.”
“Hold on,” says Agent Hunt. He goes out, and a moment later the lights go on in the other room, turning the mirror to tinted glass. The room beyond the mirror is empty.
Agent Hunt comes back. “See?” he says. “It’s just the three of us.”
I wonder if he’s counting anyone listening to us via whatever recording devices are in the room, but I decide not to push my luck. I want to know what’s going on.
“Okay,” I say. “You got me out of class. I appreciate that. What can I do in return?”
“You’re a character,” Agent Jones says, shaking his head.
I study him as best I can, while trying to look bored. Jones is built like a barrel—short and solid, with thinning light brown hair the color of bread. There’s a scar at the edge of his narrow upper lip. He smells like aftershave and stale coffee.
Agent Hunt leans in. “You know, most innocent people get upset when they get picked up by the Feds. They demand to see their lawyer, tell us that we’re violating their civil liberties. Only criminals are calm like you.”
Hunt is longer and leaner than Jones. He’s older, too, his short-cropped hair dusted with gray. When he speaks, his voice has the cadences of someone used to speaking to a congregation. I’d bet there’s a preacher somewhere in his family.
“Psychologists say that’s because subconsciously criminals want to get caught,” Agent Jones says. “What do you think about that, Cassel? Do you want to get caught?”
“Sounds like someone’s been reading too much Dostoyevsky.” I shrug.
Agent Hunt’s lip curls a little. “Is that what they teach you at that private school of yours?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what they teach me.” Hunt’s contempt is so obvious that I add a mental note about him to my imaginary profile: He thinks I have it easy, which means he thinks he had it hard.
“Look, kid,” Agent Jones says, clearing his throat. “It’s no picnic, leading a double life. We know about your family. And we know you’re a worker.”
I freeze, my whole body going stiff and still. I feel like my blood just turned to ice.
“I’m not a worker,” I say. I have no idea how convincing I sound. I can feel my speeding heartbeat all the way to my skull.
Agent Hunt opens the folder on the table and pulls out a couple of sheets of paper. They look familiar. It takes me a moment to realize they’re exactly like the papers I swiped from the sleep clinic, except these have my name across the top. I am looking at my own test results.
“Dr. Churchill sent these to one of our contacts after you ran out of his office,” Agent Jones says. “You tested positive. You’re hyperbathygammic, kid. But don’t tell me you didn’t know that already.”
“There wasn’t enough time,” I say numbly. I think of how I ripped all of the electrodes off my skin after I figured out what the test was for, how I ran out of the office.
“Apparently,” says Agent Hunt, understanding me perfectly, “there was.”
* * *
Mercifully, after that they offer to get me some food. They leave me alone in a locked room with a piece of paper charting my gamma waves. It means nothing to me, except that I am well and truly screwed.
I take out my cell phone and flip it open before I realize that this is probably exactly what they hope I will do. Call someone. Reveal something. The room is definitely wired; it’s set up for interrogation, whether they’re using the two-way mirror or not.
There are probably hidden cameras, too, now that I think of it.
I flip through the functions on my phone until I get to the one that lets me take pictures. I turn on the flash, aim at the walls and ceiling, and take picture after picture until I get it. A reflection. Pretty invisible when I was just looking at the frame of the mirror, but the tiny lens glows brightly with reflected light, captured in the photo.
I grin and pop a stick of gum into my mouth.
Three chews and it’s soft enough to stick over the camera.
Agent Hunt comes in about five seconds later. He’s holding two cups of coffee, and he’s obviously been rushing. The cuff of his shirt is wet and stained with sloshed liquid. I bet he burned his hand too.
I wonder what he thought I was going to do, once I was hidden from the camera. Try to escape? I have no idea how to get out of the locked room; I was just showing off. Letting them know I wasn’t going to fall for the really obvious stuff.
