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  She regarded him with cold eyes. “You’d be wise to watch your tongue. I don’t care much for your tone of voice.”

  “Speaking of children, they grow up so fast,” said the man with the bulging eyes, reaching into his pocket. He took out his wallet and showed the table a photograph in the billfold. His swollen cheeks flushed with paternal pride. “Andrew is turning twelve in November.”

  “Let’s change the subject,” Francine said tersely.

  Listening to the conversation, Hades felt nothing at all. He could not imagine what it was like to have a mother and father or why children were loved by their parents. The idea of a family was an abstract concept to him, something he’d read about in books but that didn’t exist in real life.

  Dimitri had told him once about the circumstances of his birth. His conception had been sexless, initiated in a petri dish, while his gestation was similarly impersonal. He had never known a mother’s love or a father’s paternal touch. He didn’t even know the names of his cell donors.

  As the men and the woman played poker over drinks, Hades stood afar. He knew how to play, but he didn’t join in. Or rather, he wasn’t permitted to.

  He didn’t care. How could these people derive pleasure from something as insignificant as a card game?

  Usually, he found some entertainment in watching the guests’ impassive faces, learning the subtle cues that betrayed their thoughts and, in doing so, calculating the possible outcomes of each hand. Tonight, his mind went to Elizabeth Hawthorne.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw her face as clearly as if she were actually there. His fingers craved to close around a pen or paintbrush and turn his vision into a reality. He had drawn her twice already, destroying each sketch after he had finished so that Dimitri wouldn’t find it.

  Even then, his drawings were only shallow depictions of the real thing. No matter how many times he drew her features, he would never be able to endow his work with the warmth that radiated from her lovely smiles. He couldn’t capture her musical laughter on flat, unfeeling paper, let alone the gentleness of her touch.

  He curled his hand into a fist, remembering how soft Elizabeth’s fingers had felt when they had briefly closed around his wrist. Such lovely fingers, and so delicate, too. She was unsullied by the filth of the outside world. She didn’t belong in this stinking cesspool of a city, but he could easily envision her surrounded by the verdant splendor of the forest. He wanted to take her there someday, to one of those quiet spots he hiked when he had no missions to complete. Would she feel at peace under the forest canopy, the way he always did?

  “Dimitri, why don’t you have the boy join us the next round?” a man said, catching Hades’s attention. His dark hair was shorn to military shortness, and one of his hazel eyes was a slightly different color than the other. Hades had a feeling it was a prosthesis.

  “Two doesn’t know how to play,” Dimitri said, for whenever Hades was in the company of others from the Project, he was again reduced to a number. A weapon must not have a name.

  “I know a bit, sir,” he said.

  “Dogs shouldn’t sit at the table,” another man said and laughed. This one was tall and blond, with a fine-featured face that was marred by a scowl when it wasn’t twisted into a sneer.

  “Let’s give Two a chance,” said the man with the false eye.

  “I’m not covering him, Christian,” Dimitri said.

  “I will,” Christian said, smiling.

  “Your loss.”

  “If you haven’t managed to fry his brain, I think he should do quite well,” Christian said, with a hint of condescension.

  A place was made for him, and as Hades sat, he felt almost certain the people were laughing at him. Not on the outside, but on the inside. Mocking him the same way others dressed up their pets in people clothes.

  “One thousand should do,” Christian said, and, as Dimitri stiffly handed Hades a pile of chips, explained each color’s monetary value and the rules of the game itself.

  Francine watched them with subdued interest, in silence.

  “Do you remember me?” Christian asked, after he had finished explaining.

  “Should I?”

  “I teach military logistics at the Academy. You were one of my students.”

  He shrugged to avoid having to tell Christian that his memory of the Academy was largely anecdotal, told to him by other people. Every so often, he would recall fragments detached from context. The memories were like unlit ships passing each other in the night, just a brief presence that was gone before he knew it.

  The cards were dealt. Hades picked up his hand and gave it a cursory glance. He looked around the table, gauging the group’s reactions to their cards.

  Blondie wrinkled his elfin nose ever so slightly. Poor hand.

  Dimitri stroked the mole on his chin. Decent to good.

  Francine’s eyes flickered to her right then back again, and she nibbled on the silver tip of her cigarette holder. Likely, she had a very good hand.

  From the other two men, Hades was able to make similar inferences. Eye contact improved or lessened, pupils dilated, wrinkles formed, fingers moved, and the facial muscles flexed in minute contortions. All cues.

  He felt no need to maintain a poker face, because a cold expression was his default. He didn’t care what his hand was, and the thought of earning money meant nothing to him because he had no real desire for material objects. Just like everything else in his life, this was simply a way to kill time.

  He folded on the first round. Christian offered him a cigarette, which he accepted out of politeness and took a few drags before grinding it out in the ashtray. He hated smoking, and the smell of cigarette smoke bothered him for a reason he couldn’t explain. Then again, so did the odors of cloves, antiseptic solution, and Epsom salt.

  He won the second round, adding three hundred dollars to his pile.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Blondie growled.

  Hades felt a subtle satisfaction at the man’s displeasure. After that point, he began playing to win. By the sixth round, he had tripled his earnings. It was all just a number to him.

  Blondie threw down his cards and lurched to his feet. “This game is rigged. The kid’s counting cards or something.”

  He looked up at the man and favored him with a warm smile. “How does it feel to lose to a dog?”

  “You little bastard! I refuse to be treated with such disrespect by the likes of you!” He swiveled toward Dimitri. “Control your subject.”

  Dimitri glanced toward Hades, his cold gray eyes narrowing into slits.

  In an instant, he realized he had crossed the line.

  “Heel,” Dimitri said, gesturing toward him with the hand that held a cigarette.

  Hades placed down his cards and rose to his feet. As he walked around the table, anger seethed through him, but he restrained it. His smile thinned into an impassive line.

  “Take your shirt off.”

  He pulled off his shirt and clenched it in his fists, twisting it into a noose. The air conditioner breathed coldly against his bare back. In a way, he felt more exposed than if he had been ordered to strip from the waist down. Everyone could see his mark now.

  Sitting next to Dimitri, Francine stiffened.

  “As you can see, he has a history of being disobedient,” Dimitri said, chuckling. “It takes a little pain to get him to behave.”

  “Is that Charles Warren’s work?” the blond man asked, amused.

  “Yes, a souvenir from the Academy,” Dimitri said, then looked at Hades. “Two, get down on your hands and knees.”

  He loathed having to humble himself before the man, but it was necessary to maintain this charade of servitude. The moment he disobeyed an order, Dimitri would realize he was the one in control.

  And yet, he didn’t move. He didn’t want to debase himself in front of everyone.

  “I said get on your knees,” Dimitri said.

  He sank to his knees and looked at the pattern in the ru
g. His fingers dug into the wool fibers, and he clenched his teeth. He didn’t feel powerful anymore. He didn’t feel like he was evolving but regressing into a rudimentary beast.

  “This will make as good an ashtray as any,” Dimitri said, and Hades sensed a presence looming over him. “It’s already ruined anyway.”

  A sharp pain flared on his back as Dimitri snubbed out a cigarette against his skin. The harsh odors of tobacco smoke and burnt flesh filled his nostrils.

  The breath hissed through his gritted teeth. Didn’t matter. No shame. This body. This body was just a corpse. Meaningless.

  Losing himself in the rug’s pattern, he pulled an image of Elizabeth Hawthorne from his memory. Her radiant smile filled his mind, and the throbbing pain soothed into a mellow stinging. The colors drained from the woven carpet, and everything turned gray and hazy. He stayed where he was, on his hands and knees, feeling his consciousness recede into a distant part of himself. Apathy took over.

  “Go ahead, John,” Dimitri said. “You look like you could use a new cigarette.”

  “Enough,” Francine growled, and from far away, Hades heard her chair scrape against the hardwood floor. “You have already proven his obedience, Dima. And as for you, John, might I remind you that referring to A-02 as a dog is a callous affront to his cell donors and the dignity of the Project as a whole? We are not raising animals. We are raising future leaders who will return this country to its former splendor, and while A-02 is an outlier among his peers, he deserves to be treated with respect. Do I make myself clear?”

  A stunned silence filled the room. Hades couldn’t imagine what they were so surprised about. He stared at Francine’s feet, which was really all he could see of her with his head bowed. He wondered if she realized she had a run in her black nylons. Maybe he should point it out to her.

  “Get up,” Dimitri said, sounding slightly less jovial than before.

  Hades climbed to his feet.

  “It was simply a demonstration, Francine,” Dimitri said, rising as well. “No offense was intended.”

  “Of course not,” Francine said, then turned to Hades. “May I see your back?”

  He hated it when people stared at his bare back, but he did as he was asked, turning around so that she might get a better look. He sensed her presence directly behind him, and a moment later felt her kidskin glove press against his skin, not on the wound but near it.

  “This is second-degree. He’s going to scar.”

  “Do you see him?” Dimitri asked snidely. “It will be a drop in the bucket compared to everything else.”

  “I don’t appreciate your tongue,” Francine said. “Though you have been with us for five years now, you are still a newcomer to the Project, and perhaps your position has given you a false sense of security. Regardless of what you might call yourself when you’re with your subjects, you are not at the top of the pantheon, Zeus.”

  “Speaking of the pantheon, I think it’s time we discuss why we’ve gathered here,” John said, finishing the rest of his rum and slamming the tumbler on the table’s felt liner. “Charles Warren needs to go. He’s led the Academy for long enough, and it has stagnated under his command. We continue to get violent, unruly children like this”—he gestured toward Hades—“when we need children who can become capable and obedient leaders.”

  “Finally, a voice of reason,” Christian said merrily, taking a sip of his martini.

  “He won’t step down willingly,” Francine said. “We would need to get rid of his followers, too.”

  “I realize that,” John said. “That’s why we need—”

  Suddenly, John collapsed to the floor and began convulsing. Bloody foam bulged from his pallid lips, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Gurgling, agonized moans tore from his throat as his entire body twisted in torturous contortions.

  Francine stood over John. As his writhing weakened into jerky shudders, she squatted down and clasped his chin in her hand, looking into his eyes. Ruddy foam drizzled down the sides of his face, flecking on her black kidskin glove.

  “Drinking kills, Johnny,” she said aloofly, cigarette smoke wafting from her lips. “‘A woman will never survive in this organization.’ Isn’t that what you told me once? But you seem to have forgotten something. I am the Project.”

  Christian sipped his martini as John gave one last shudder then went still. The man with the bulging eyes simply sat there, staring at John’s body the way a frog would observe a tasty fly.

  Dimitri’s reaction was by far the most severe. Mouth agape, he pressed a hand against his chest, looking halfway to a heart attack.

  Hades didn’t feel much of anything. He wondered if he might be dead, too.

  Releasing John’s chin, Francine straightened her legs and nudged his body with the toe of her stiletto heel. She flicked cigarette ashes in his wide, unblinking eyes, then glanced at Dimitri to witness his shocked expression. “This is why I called this meeting an intervention. Now, I’ll let you take care of the mess while I get A-02 cleaned up.” Her voice was cool and authoritarian. Her cold demeanor demanded respect and complete and utter submission.

  “Understood,” Dimitri said, with none of his former snark. His thin lips puckered into a strange grimace unlike any expression that Hades had ever seen twist his face before. Cool.

  Francine gave a flippant wave of her cigarette holder, ushering Hades to follow. As they walked out of the game room and down the hall, he saw a familiar bulge under the woman’s blazer. She was wearing a holster.

  “Has he done this to you before?” she asked, glancing in his direction.

  “Do you know that you have a run in your tights, ma’am?” he asked. It had been annoying him ever since he had noticed it.

  “Excuse me?” Francine glanced downward and scowled, then looked back at him. “Thank you for pointing that out, but is this your way of avoiding the question?”

  “No, it was just distracting me,” he said. “To answer your question, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Not for sure. I have scars that I don’t know how I’ve gotten. But pain...pain is something that I have become very intimate with during my stay here. And this? It’s nothing at all.”

  “I see.”

  Francine took him to the catering kitchen and removed a first aid kit from the pantry. After washing her hands and donning a pair of latex gloves, she cleaned the ash from the wound.

  As she worked, Hades rested his hands on the counter and stared through the window at the dark sky. The Orionid meteor shower was at its peak tonight, but the city lights blocked it out. He would have liked to take Elizabeth up north, far from D.C.’s light pollution, to watch the meteors with him. He thought she would like them. Maybe another time.

  After sanitizing the burn, Francine applied an antibacterial ointment. Then she bandaged it with a square of gauze.

  “Are you a doctor?” he asked, finding it curious that she seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

  “I once was, but not like Dimitri. I used to be an obstetrician, a doctor who delivers babies, but then I found a…different calling in synthetic biology.”

  “I don’t know what that is, ma’am,” he said, turning around to look at her.

  “It’s you.”

  Case Notes 8:

  Artemis

  Sitting at her desk, Shannon tried to complete her homework but couldn’t focus. Her mind kept running off. Her thoughts floated away like smoke.

  Her gaze wandered from her mathematics worksheet to the rock band posters on the wall, then drifted to the window. Staring at the brick row houses on the other side of the street, she found herself thinking about Tyler Bennett. His stunning amber eyes filled her mind. She thought about the sparse dusting of hairs on his muscular arms, the way the sunlight caught them and made them gleam like gold shavings.

  Aside from being drop-dead gorgeous, there was just something so intriguing about him. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he had many secre
ts, and that underneath his calm, friendly exterior, a whole other layer of him was just waiting to be uncovered.

  She wondered what he was doing on a Friday night like this. Were his foster parents nice like hers were? Did he have a girlfriend?

  Taking out her smartphone, she perused the texts they had sent each other since the party at Alan’s house. She read over their latest conversation.

  Shannon: This is going to sound really weird, but I dreamed about you last night.

  Tyler: Oh really? Was it at least a good one? ;)

  Shannon: LOL. Not that kind of dream.

  Tyler: But not a nightmare, right?

  Shannon: Nope. We were just driving, and then you started apologizing for some reason.

  Tyler: Hmm.

  Shannon: What?

  Tyler: I want to take you on a drive now. ;)

  Shannon:  I have an English paper due tomorrow, but maybe another day.

  Tyler hadn’t replied after that. Worried that her response had come across as dismissive, she dialed the number he had given her.

  As she listened to the phone ring, her courage fled her. Before she could end the call, someone picked up.

  “Hello?” Tyler’s voice sounded slightly hoarse, as if he had just woken up. She liked its roughness.

  “It’s me,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Shannon Evans.”

  “Oh, how’s it going?”

  “Good. Just working on the Chaucer essay for Mr. Prickton’s class. Hopefully I’ll finish it tonight.” As soon as Shannon said it, she winced. Why couldn’t she have come up with a wittier response?

  “Mr. Prickton?” he asked, sounding baffled.

  Realizing that their teacher’s notorious nickname hadn’t spread to him yet, she cleared her throat. “Mr. Preston, I mean.”

  “What are you doing it on?”

  “‘Wife of Bath,’” she said. “What about you?”

  “‘The Miller’s Tale.’”

  “By the way, thank you for texting me the study questions,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

  “It’s no problem at all.”