Samuel either wasn’t nervous—yet—or he was hiding it well. Then again, he was wearing a set of oversized aviator sunglasses, like a shield of anonymity obscuring the upper half of his face. Sunlight glinted off one corner of the gold rim, reminding me of the cross of light that appears in anime after a character has been knocked into the sky.

It was the first time I’d been outside in five days, judging by my schedule of meals. Two per day, it seemed like, with ten meals total. Steaming, freshly microwaved TV dinner trays, covered in a tarp of wilting plastic cover. But I was hungry enough to partake. I had had the feeling that I would need to keep my energy up, and I trusted that feeling.

At one point, a doctor came in to remove the stitches on my arm. My forearm still hurt from the surgery, but it seemed like it was finally starting to heal up. And my captors wanted to make sure it did. They wanted me in good health.

It had either taken my Stoolman a long time to get a hold of Samuel, or he had just been stalling. In the meantime, between meals, I had been escorted out of my dingy, square-shaped cell and moved to one of the upper floors so that Stoolman could run some tests. None of which had yielded any result that Stoolman seemed to like.

During these tests, which usually seemed to involve watching strange videos or listening to recorded phrases with neurotransmitters stuck to the side of my head, I thought about Jackie.

If what Samuel had said was true, this organization—whatever it was—no longer had any reason to hold on to her. They had set her free, long before they dragged me into that strange facility. Where had they dropped her? How was she? Was it possible that she could be with her family, right now?

This thought, this possibility, gave me such a sense of relief and consolation that the idea of spending the rest of my life imprisoned hardly phased me. It was as if my purpose had finally been fulfilled. I’d done what I needed to do.

And yet.

I thought about my friends. The most important people in my life. Tanya, and Mason, and Sater.

They hadn’t deserved what had happened—in the case of Mason, I still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened, but I had a bad feeling about it—and I found myself resenting the idea that it had been for nothing. And not just because of the Darts. Somehow, some way. I needed to know if they had made it out okay.

Though I had begun to feel I would find out soon enough.

Either they had run out of tests or Samuel had run out of patience.

I was cuffed and escorted into the elevator.

The first thing I saw when the elevator door slid open was the sun and sky.

I had stepped out onto a wide patio with a waist-high wall of clear glass that served as a railing. That was when I noticed Samuel, seated on the other side of a small circular table, like one you might see outside a cafe, perhaps with a shade umbrella planted in its center.

One of my jailors removed my handcuffs and stood idly in front of the elevator, which signaled to me that there wasn’t any particular means of escaping from here.

I didn’t head over to Samuel directly, though I could tell he was waiting for me. I had no way of knowing the next time I would get a view like this.

Before me was a sweeping view of a hilly, wooded property. Tall, thick pines swayed gently, cutting into the skyline.

There was no sign of civilization beyond the facility itself, though I did spot a watchtower propped on a rocky outcropping, with a guard standing watch inside. Visibility was pretty spotty, even with all the zones surrounding the facility that had obviously been cleared and logged. Maybe that was part of the point.

“What do you think?” Samuel said.

Somewhat hesitantly, I turned toward him. “About what?” The sky was clear, and I had to squint to look at him.

“Our nifty little corner of the world.” Samuel said. He didn’t smile, or shrug, or cross his legs. He was motionless, his gaze fixed on me behind those immutable shades.

A curtain of silence fell between us. I didn’t mind.

I turned back toward the property. Though I had no way of knowing where we were, it reminded me of Evelyn’s property in Montana.

“The staff tells me you’re being...uncooperative.”

It had occurred to me during my long hours of solitary confinement that I was close to being completely disposable to these people.

Using Jackie or some other form of blackmail had never been a viable option, not in the long term. Not if the brainwashing didn’t work, and they could conclusively prove it. I would always find a way to try and foil their plans. They knew that.

Perhaps the next step was torture. They’d wring what they could out of me before dropping me into an incineration chute. Or something. Do those exist? They do in the movies. Surely a place like this had to have one, right?

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“You know,” I said, turning back to face Samuel, “I’ve had some time to think about what happened back there. I think I’ve more or less pieced it together.”

The moment sat for a couple seconds, as if Samuel was considering whether or not he liked the fact that I was controlling the flow of the conversation.

“Downstairs, during your processing?” He said, his posture relaxing somewhat as he reached for his mug of coffee on the table.

“Before that. During the operation.” I walked over to the table, pulled back one of the chairs, and sat in it. “This wasn’t just you and the Police, obviously. There was a third party. Someone you strung along. A gang leader, most likely. Someone bold. Someone you knew would already be inclined to make a bid for the Dart. You knew there was more than one Dart involved. There were two. You told him that if he cooperated, he could have one of them.”

“An interesting theory.” Samuel said, and took a sip of his coffee.

“Things went south, though. The Feds were more prepared than you thought they would be. Maybe your intel was wrong. Maybe there were two vans instead of one. Who knows. The whole thing was chaos. I’m not really clear on how it all went down.”

“Does it matter?” Samuel said. “I was there to pick up the pieces.”

I nodded. “That you were. Most of those gang members didn’t make it out. But your team was completely unscathed. And you walked away with both Darts. Worked out nicely.”

“You’re too kind.” Samuel said, cracking a smile for the first time.

“You’ve made yourself some new enemies. This group you manipulated are down a few men and without their due recompense.”

“That’s what happens when you botch a job.” Samuel said, smile fading.

“Think they’ll see it that way?” I said. “Part of why people like you and the Feds have been able to operate like this is because groups like the Wolves and the Bannerets have been busy dealing with each other. But what happens when they have the same enemy?”

Samuel set down his coffee cup. “Look around you. This place is remote. It’s secure. No one knows where we are. And even if they did—”

I stood suddenly. I had just looked out at the watchtower and noticed that the guard was no longer standing there.

At that time, I couldn’t have possibly known—for certain, at least—that there was a squad of well-trained killers out there, who had coordinated in stealthily dispatching the guard in that watchtower. I also couldn’t have known that a man named Diren the Wolf was hiding in the hills, looking at me through a sniper rifle scope. At the time, I didn’t even know he existed.

But I had a hunch. A strong one.

I stepped closer to Samuel, adjacent to him, leaning against the table.

Samuel stiffened in his chair, nervous at how close I was but too invested in his ‘badass’ front to react by moving himself. “What is it you think you’re doing?”

“Giving you a choice.” I said, looking down at him. “It’s kind of a thing I’m into, now.”

Samuel just looked up at me. “...what?”

“The Darts.” I said. “We’re going to show the world the truth. The irrefutable proof. We’re going to blow this thing wide open. But for that, I need my Dart.”

Samuel snorted. “You’re not wrong. You would need it.”

“You were so busy weaving your own web of manipulation. So used to being in control. You thought you knew everything. Every step of the process worked out. Every detail jotted. But you never imagined that the machinations used to control me might be used against you. It’s a blind spot, really. A big one.”

“It’s time to negotiate—that’s the nice way of putting it, anyway—and you’ve never been the best at bluffing, Winter.” Samuel said, straightening the front of his suit jacket, brushing away some invisible bit of dust in the process. “You have nothing.”

I took a couple steps backward, away from Samuel. I rapped on the table, pointed at Samuel’s mug in the center of it, and gave a thumbs up. I took a few more steps away from the table.

Just when Samuel stood, impatient, the mug in the center of the table exploded.

Ceramic shrapnel shot outward in every direction.

Samuel fell backward on his ass, arms flailing, knocking over both his chair and the table in the process.

I stood there, hands in my jean pockets.

I heard the scuffling of the elevator guard’s boots behind me, followed by another distant crack of a gunshot, and a FFFFFFFFT sound, and the thump of his body collapsing.

Hands still in my pockets, I took a few careful, ginger steps over to the fallen henchmen. There was a pool of bright blood quickly forming underneath him, like a bubble surrounding his body.

I bent over and picked up his handgun, which was still in his hip holster. It was loaded. The safety was off.

I walked toward Samuel, stopping to pick up his dropped aviators. I wiped a layer of chalky dust off of the lens with my shirt. I slid one of the temples into the neck of my shirt, causing the shades to hang there. The sun-heated metal was almost uncomfortably hot against my chest.

I came to a stop just a few paces away from Samuel, who was still on his back. His elbows dug into the roof, elevating his heaving, hyperventilating torso.

I crouched down so my face was closer to being level with his, though there was still a slight angle.

I wrenched the tracking chip out of my jean pocket—the one that had been surgically removed from my arm—and chucked it. It skidded, coming to a stop within arm’s reach of Samuel.

“I half assumed I would have to get creative, hide it somewhere, like under my tongue. Or, you know, other areas. But by the time I thought of it, I realized, you hadn’t had me searched. It was never part of the plan. You hadn’t even conceived of it.”

I leveled the gun at him.

He was twitching a little, perhaps from the effort of holding himself at that angle. Upright, but not so much as to maybe get the attention of the sniper, give them the wrong idea.

Whoever was out there, they had been watching, waiting for a moment like this one, even if they hadn’t expected things to happen in precisely this way.

“Pull out your phone.” I said. With my free hand, I pulled the shades off my shirt collar and put them on. “Give the order.”

“What- what order?” Samuel said. His body had reacted quickly to the gunshots. His brain seemed to be in shock and hadn’t yet caught up.

“I only need one Dart.” I said. “Preferably mine. The one with the data on it.”

“If- if I do that,” Samuel said, stammering, “It won’t matter, anyway. They’ll shut us down-”

“You’ll cross that bridge when you come to it, I’m sure.” I said. “In the meantime...”

“Do...do you seriously believe they’ll just let you leave?” Samuel said. “After all-”

“The brainwashing worked. This is all part of your plan to infiltrate the Bannerets. No one dares to stand in the way of that.”

“Will...will they believe that?”

I stood, gun pointed down at him. “Guess we’ll just have to give it a shot.”