"The senator says my father is getting back to work," Rachel told me, after a minute or two. "I guess he's fully recovered. He's jump-starting his company. ARIES. A private military corporation."

"Like mercenaries?"

"That’s one department. Mostly research and development. Some analysis, some black column items. Our national budget for private black-ops is three times larger than the CIA and FBI combined, did you know that?"

I shook my head, slicing the mushrooms.

"Yeah, well, Boone thinks the Seventeen Seconds opened the door to new kind of threat. He thinks he's the only one who can stop it." Rachel’s phone rang and she glanced at the screen briefly. "So he poured all his money into lobbying for a defense against hostile actives, and put himself in charge of research and response. Give me a second?"

"Sure."

I grabbed three eggs from the carton and cracked them into a mixing bowl while Rachel lifted her phone.

"Me," she said, instead of ‘hello.’ "Yeah, a hammock. I don’t know. A new one, I'm guessing she's sensitive to anything that's been touched." She paused. "I don't know. Sensitive. And keep people away from her." She swiped the phone off. "Where was I?"

"Your father put himself in charge."

"Yeah. He started researching actives." She watched me whip the eggs like she’d never seen anyone cook before. "Did you get those marks on your chest during the Seventeen Seconds?"

I shook my head. "They came later."

"From where?"

"The deep blue sea," I told her, sliding two plates onto the table. "He really thinks a 'solar event' did all this? Me and him and all the rest?"

"During the Seventeen Seconds, fifty thousand satellites went on the fritz and started transmitting gobbledygook. Frog mutation accelerated to crazy levels--we had the tsunami flu and the geomagnetic shift. Sinkholes, religious epiphanies, mass suicides. So no, he doesn't think it was a solar event."

"Then what was it?"

She shrugged. "Boone doesn't care about the origin, he only cares about the results. Longshots. Some of you grow into powers, and some of you crack under the pressure. Some of you catch power like a disease. With Boone, he didn't realize for years what he could do. That he’s a catalyst."

"An active who makes actives."

"Like a zombie making more zombies."

"That--" I shook my head. "That’s impossible."

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"Unlike a guy orbited by his own personal solar system. Or a woman who dissolves into slime. Boone is obsessed with stopping threats before they snowball. That's his mission. Defuse the bomb before it explodes. And there's no bigger bomb than an active with the wrong powers."

"How's that?"

"Someone wakes up one day with the ability to ignite nitrogen and in a chain reaction burns the entire atmosphere nothing. Or starts a plague or--I don't know. Nobody knows. That's the problem."

"Okay." I filled a pitcher with water and put it on the table. "So he makes actives, then trains them to take out other actives who are too active?"

"That's my guess. Except from what I read on the plane, what the senator gave me, it looks like he doesn't makes them anymore. He just trains them now."

"Why? What changed?"

"Maybe getting shot in the head slowed him down." She poured two glasses of water. "PJ’s one of the first people he changed--at least on purpose."

"Changed into what?"

She explained PJ’s narcotic breath. "He’s getting stronger, too. I don’t know why."

"How about you?" I asked, tossing veggies into the hot pan. "I mean, how old are you?"

"I’m twenty-one."

"Oh!" I said, because I thought she was mid-twenties.

"If you tell me I look twenty-five, I'll start crying."

I doubted that she ever cried, but I said, "You don't look a day over twenty-four. Um, but aren't you too young, and too ... criminal-y, for them to be putting you in charge?"

"Criminal-y?"

"Uh. Ex-con-ic?"

She shot me a look. "Well, I don't know how charge I am, but the senator wants me to contact people like you. To stop people like PJ."

"And Boone?"

A sad smile. "He’s at the top my list."

"Because he's your father?"

She didn't say anything.

I sautéed the veggies and didn’t meet her gaze. "What happened with, uh, y'know. Shooting him."

"He made me choose between him and my sister. So I did."

"I’m sorry."

She shrugged. "I don't understand why he hasn't come after me or Audrey. That's not like him." She straightened the forks. "When are you going to tell me what you're doing here? You can start with your name."

"I'm Lark."

"Sure you are."

I smiled. "No, really. Lark Larson."

"Wow, now I’m sorry."

"Do you want to hear the story or not?"

"'Lark Larson'." She shook her head in disbelief. "Yeah, tell me."

I added the eggs, stirring to get a custardy consistency, then sprinkled the cheese on top and covered the pan. I wiped the counter and rinsed the bowl and told her the abbreviated version: PJ and Spandle kidnapped Dewitt, and Shandra and I tracked them to the New Park. I mentioned a little about the orbs, but nothing about the Rock.

"Who’s the girl?" she asked, as I served her half of the omelet .

"Shandra?"

"No, the one with the wrench."

"Oh. Maddie."

She prodded her omelet with a fork "Another friend of yours?"

"Dewitt’s sister. She lives here. In the city, I mean."

"What’s her full name?"

And Maddie’s last words came rushing back to me: Try not to ruin everything.

"Lark," Rachel said. "What’s her full name?"

"I don’t know if I want to get her involved."

"Because she’s not involved already," Rachel said, her tone flat.

"I just--I don’t know."

"Okay." She ate a bite of egg. "This is amazing."

"You should try my cornflake-fried chicken."

She took another bite. "The thing about PJ is, at some point the effect is irreversible."

"What does that mean?"

"Leave Maddie with PJ long enough and she’ll never break free." She grabbed the pepper. "She’ll be his creature forever."

"That’s what this is about," I said, suddenly realizing. "Dragging me to a hotel, playing nurse. You don’t have any leads, so you ask me to cook breakfast, we’ll sit around and chat. And now you think I’ll give you Maddie’s last name."

"And address," she said, with a nod.

That's what I mean about Rachel. Did she sound like an twenty-one-year-old who'd just left prison? Did she sound like a kid lost in the city, like a person without any powers hunted by monsters like PJ and Mrs. Spandle?

No. She didn't sound like anything except herself.