“It’s okay,mäi léift,” I whispered rapidly, desperately brushing her long curls back from her ear, not sure she could even hear me and definitely sure I didn’t believe it. “I’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
“Look, man,” Wheatley spoke up, “you deserve better than this. You really do. Botched con aside, you obviously have a gift—maybe a few gifts.”
Keith broke in, clearly tired of being the bad guy when, for once, he was tryingnotto be. “Itoldyou if I?—”
“I understand, Mr. Wainwright-Phillips. Really,” Wheatley said, holding up a hand and addressing me again. “Actually, I suspected all along this would be the situation, which brings me to the whole reason I’m here.”
“Which is?” I asked.Please, no more reversals. Peace was all I prayed for as I clung to Louisa, the peace to keep my arms wrapped as protectively around her as I could get them, for as long as I could keep them there. As if I’d never get another chance. Which I might not.
“The truth is that your case has gained some attention,” Arlo—no, Agent Wheatley—said carefully. “There were… interested parties at the federal level.”
I stared at him. “Interested parties?”
He hesitated. “Your involvement in the mine collapse has raised a lot of questions. Not just about you, but about how you managed to slip through the cracks. The lack of a chip. Your intelligence. Your connections. And, well,” he said after a long pause, “partially to get them to quit asking questions, I suggested we repurpose you. Well, ‘hire’ was the word I used. ‘Repurpose’ was theirs.”
“What?” I looked at Louisa, then her father, but they looked as confused as I was. “Paid?”
“Well, a stipend. Your real payment will be your freedom, once your contract is up,” said Wheatley.
The words didn’t hit the way he probably thought they would.Freedom.The idea was so foreign, so distant, it may as well have been another language. One of the ones I didn’t speak.
“Mr. Wainwright-Phillips, rest assured you’ll be compensated by the government for our use of the boy,” he continued. “And I should mention that this is a one-time offer, one that not everyone gets. Frankly, it was a pretty hard sell on my part to get the top brass to let me offer it to you at all, given your… well, history.”
My head was spinning. No more reversals, I’d said, but this… “So I’d be a cop?”
“Not a cop. Regulations prevent us from accepting slaves or former slaves as cops. You’d be a consultant. On forensics, foreign intelligence, that kind of thing. Maybe even some undercover work, eventually. And after some training, naturally. In any case, I promise we’d find a way to use you that takes advantage of your gifts. However.” Wheatley paused, and even before he said the next part, my stomach fluttered. “You’d have to agree to have no contact with your owners, former owners and their families, or anyone from your past life, as long as you’re in this job. For security purposes, we need to ensure that you’re loyal to no one but us. It’s nonnegotiable. Break the rules, the deal is off, and then God knows where you end up. Simple as that.”
Louisa’s face, unsurprisingly, went sheet-white.
“Andmyfamily?” I asked weakly as the understanding that this wasn’t a joke started to sink in, little by little.
“Your family, too.”
I blinked. Maybe I was even shaking a little, too, because I hadn’t felt like this since Max Langer had sauntered into the garden past a herd of ravenous javelinas. A group of free people—authority figures—mymaster—were talkingtome, not about me. About choice. About freedomitself. And I didn’t have the first goddamn clue how to respond.
All I knew was that when this was over, fuck. Could I please relax with some bourbon and a good research paper on molecular orbital theory?
In the end, I did the only thing I could think of. I looked at Louisa.
“We’ll—we’ll take care of Maeve,” she said, her voice somehow both shaky and full of conviction, though she must have known that she might be helping kiss goodbye the verything she’d been hoping for. “Between me and Erica and Milagros and Ivy, she’ll have the best support system anyone could possibly ask for.
“It’ll be dangerous,” Louisa said. It wasn’t a question.
Wheatley swallowed. He wasn’t fooling anyone. I’d heard stories. I knew what “repurposing” meant. It meant I’d be sent to places where my “skills” could be put to better use. Places I might not come back from.
A tool by another name.
“So what?” My voice was hoarse, like I’d been shouting for hours when I hadn’t said much of anything at all. “I get handed a mission and sent off to do the dirty work nobody else wants to do? Disposable as ever, just with a new uniform?”
Wheatley didn’t deny it. “You’d be given proper training,” he said instead as if that changed anything. “You’d be protected. I’ll personally ensure you’ll be just another member of the team and treated as free to the extent the law allows. You’ll live in approved housing owned by us. You can come and go as you please, within certain limits.”
Briefly, I gazed down at the chains he’d shed. “So from slavery to jail to a… nicer jail?”
Louisa elbowed me, right in my bad arm—well, my worse arm.
“For how—how long?” I asked Wheatley. My heart was pounding again, and the goddamn room, of course, was utterly silent. I was convinced everyone could hear it.
“Three years.” Wheatley coughed. “But after that, you’re free. Completely and permanently.”
