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“We want you to transform Patton.” She looks at me with her kind eyes, as if any answer I give will be the right one. She takes a sip of her coffee.
“Oh,” I say. For a moment I’m so shocked that her words just ring in my head.
But then I realize that of course this moment was going to come. Being a transformation worker is the most valuable thing about me—the reason they want me in the program, the reason that they let me get away with murder.
They let me get away with murder so that I can murder for them.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m just surprised.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” Yulikova says. “I know that you’re uncomfortable with what you can do.”
Agent Jones snorts, and she gives him a dark look.
When she turns back to me, there is still some of that anger in her eyes. “And I know what I’m asking isn’t easy. But we need for there to be no trace of him. This can’t seem to be an assassination.”
“Even though it is?” I say.
That seems to take her by surprise. “We’d like you to change him into a living creature. I understand that it would be possible for him to survive like that indefinitely. He won’t be dead. He’ll just be contained.”
Being caged, trapped like Lila was in her cat body, forever, seems as awful as death. But maybe it will let Yulikova sleep better at night.
She leans toward me. “I have gotten approval to make you an offer, in light of the huge service you’ll be doing for us. We’ll make the charges against your mother go away.”
Jones brings his hand down hard on the arm of his chair. “You’re making another deal with him? That family of his is slipperier than black ice on a highway.”
“Do I have to ask you to wait outside?” Her voice is steely. “This is a dangerous operation, and he isn’t even a part of the program yet. He’s seventeen years old, Ed. Let him have one less thing to worry about.”
Agent Jones looks from me to her and then away from both of us. “Fine,” he says.
“Here at the LMD we often say that heroes are the people who dirty their hands so other hands get to stay clean. We’re terrible so you don’t have to be. But in this case you do have to be—or at least we’re asking you to be.”
“What happens if I don’t agree—I mean to my mother?”
Yulikova picks off a piece of her muffin. “I don’t know. I’m authorized by my boss to offer you this, but he’s the one who would be making it happen. I suppose your mother could continue to evade justice or she could be picked up and extradited—if she’s out of the state. I’d be afraid for her safety if she were locked up in any place Patton could get to.”
I am suddenly gripped with certainty that Yulikova knows exactly where my mother is.
They’re manipulating me. Yulikova letting me see how sick she is, saying nice things, making us sit down to lunch. Jones being such an asshole. It’s classic good cop–bad cop. Which isn’t to say that it’s not working.
Patton’s a bad guy and he’s out to get my mother. I want him stopped and I want her safe. I’m very tempted by anything that lets me have both. Plus there’s the fact that I’m backed into a corner. Mom needs a pardon.
And if I don’t trust my own instincts toward right and wrong, I have to trust someone’s. That’s why I wanted to join the government, right? So that if I was going to do bad things, it would at least be in the service of good people.
I am a weapon. And I have put myself in Yulikova’s hands.
Now I have to let myself be used as she sees fit.
I take a deep breath. “Sure. I can do that. I can work him.”
“Cassel,” says Yulikova. “I want you to understand that you can decline this job. You can tell us no.”
But I can’t. She’s seen to it that I really can’t.
Jones doesn’t say a single snarky thing.
“I understand.” I nod to show that I really do. “I understand, and I’m telling you yes.”
“This is going to be a very discreet mission,” Yulikova says. “A very small team operating with the tacit support of my superiors—providing we can pull it off. Otherwise, they will disavow all knowledge. I will be running this—any questions should come directly to me. No one else needs to know. I trust I can count on both of your discretion.”
