I race to the foyer, toward a pair of wooden doors to the outside, and burst through. This place isn't a fortress, it's a mansion, and they can't keep me in. Correction: They can't keep us in.

Daniel and I can escape and get the rest of the Deathless, and then come back for Jane and the other girls. We can do that. What are they going to do with Daniel's contract if we're gone? No Isla to kill then. They have no power without me.

The yard is dark. I can barely see a thing. Daniel's yelling after me, but I don't turn back. I don't want him to see me cry. The tears cloud my vision, but I start to make out a barrier ahead of me—a wall—and I think I see a door.

In my excitement, I lose track of my steps, and trip over the fabric of my stupid dress, sending myself into the mud. That's when I hear them, and I'm brought back to when they were chasing me away from my home: the Prowlers. Real Prowlers.

Their lasers light up the yard in red and focus directly on me. As they circle me, all sounds stop but a familiar mechanical hum. A drone hovers into the center of the circle of Prowlers, and waits suspended for a few moments in front of my face. Then a claw from beneath the drone's body springs out and grabs my wrist.

It starts, "Comforter 1-0-3, Isla Blume, reassignment—"

"—What?—"

"—to Carrier ranks. You will be escorted there now."

"No, Stop!" Daniel yells, breaking into the circle. He pulls me up by my waist to stand, while the drone still grips my wrist.

"Override reassignment," Daniel pants.

"Enter passcode."

"0-7-1-4," he says. That's my birthday. July 14th.

"Override accepted."

The drone releases my hand and hovers away. Soon after, the Prowlers' red lights turn off and the machines disperse to resume their dark patrol.

Daniel turns to me, still panting. "Isla, you can't do that again. What if I hadn't been here?"

It reminds me of being underestimated back home, and of people promising to protect me on the Immortal, and I can't take it anymore. I let myself cry. "I can't...," I stutter. "I can't help anyone. I'm not a hero." Daniel takes my hand and guides me back inside. Everything inside me screams for us not to come back in the estate with all of its disgusting opulence blurring around me as I walk mindlessly through the foyer and up the staircase toward Daniel's room, but the Prowlers melted my confidence. I grip my wrist where the cold, metal claw of the drone grabbed me. I am still no match for machines, I think.

When we get to Daniel's room, I collapse on the floor in a mess of muddy tulle and tears. Jane, who had been munching on candies in bed, hurries to my side.

"What happened?" she asks. Daniel closes the door, and joins us on the floor. "Would you like me to leave?"

"No," I say, lifting my head from my hands. "Stay. You're safer here. Jane, listen..." I start, about to tell her I can't help her, that I'm not the girl she thought I was. Here, I'm powerless.

"We're going to make a plan," Daniel interrupts. "Don't worry."

Jane looks between us in confusion before asking, "Would your necklace help? The one with the green stone?"

"Yes," I say, wiping the tears from my face. "Jane, where is it? I need it."

"The soldiers took it. They probably gave it to one of the leaders, but I clean their rooms. I can check for it. I want to help."

"If you found it, we could use it to signal the rest of the Deathless. Gunther said it's in a safe place, but we have to find it. Have you seen it, Daniel?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Remember? I was knocked out. They're expecting me in the lab in the morning, I can't help look for it after." He rubs my back, but my mind is too shaken to feel comforted. Still, my heart warms. Daniel has always helped me, but Jane... she's offering to risk her life to help and she doesn't even know me.

"But Isla, if we want any of this to work, we can't just run out of here. We can't make a scene," Daniel says, and I must make a face so fierce that Jane stands and begins tidying up the candy wrappers off the bed. I know he doesn't really mean we can't make a scene. He means I can't.

"What I'm saying is," Daniel continues in a much gentler tone, "Cooper has everyone here believing they deserve it. You took a stand for those people tonight, and for that I'm proud. I am. But it was also stupid, you have to know that. If we want to slip out of here, we have to be invisible. We have to play it their way."

"I don't want to do that," I say, steadying me voice. I remember how much I hated playing into the Deathless' game. I don't want to play anymore.

"You know," Jane says, "the other Comforters might be able to help. They meet some nights to talk about things, to make sure everyone is okay. They might want to be a part of any planning that happens."

"Nina told me to meet them tonight."

"Do the Caregivers ever talk about escaping?" Daniel asks.

"We don't have the time."

"Any word from the Carriers or any of the men?"

"None from the Carriers, they are separated from all of us," Jane says. "I don't know about the men."

There's a loud knock at the door, and Daniel motions for Jane to hide in the bathroom. He helps me up, and I take a seat at the foot of the bed while he makes his way to answer the door.

"Gunther," he greets our visitor.

I sit up straight on the bed and quickly wipe any evidence of tears from my cheeks. Daniel steps aside, and I see Gunther standing alone in the doorway. He looks straight at me, his head cocked to the side, and his mouth turned into a pouted grin.

"Poor girl," he says.

"Is there something you need, Gunther?" Daniel asks.

He breaks his focus on me, and returns it to Daniel. "Yes, actually, I just wanted to check in on Ms. Blume here. I think she might need a talking to. But before we do, would the Caregiver in your bathroom please reveal herself?"

Jane walks forward, her head down in either shame or intimidation, I can't tell with this place.

"Please bring Ms. Blume her night clothes. Then go straight to your cell. You've had enough socializing for the day."

She bows her head, and this time I know it's from shame. "Yes, Dr. Quail," she says before slinking out of the room.

Gunther returns his stare to me and smiles. "Let's go to my office. Daniel, you may join us, of course."

I follow Gunther out of the room, and hear the celebration continuing downstairs. "Noisy, isn't it?" Gunther jokes, but neither Daniel nor I laugh.

He leads us down the hall and to the top of the stairs, where we turn into his office. Gunther walks to a light at the end of the room and flips the switch so that it illuminates the office in a golden hue. In the shadows, the stained glass sheep look monstrous as they devour seemingly rotting grass from the dark pasture.

Gunther sits at the U-shaped table and motions for me to take the seat in front of him, where I sat earlier. Daniel sits in one of the chairs at the end of the U, and I think how fitting it is that he is both seated at the leaders' desk and at my side.

"You look tense, Isla," Gunther says.

"It's probably from the burns. I was in a pretty serious explosion, you know." I'm not lying, my skin still pulls at my bones, but I have bigger problems at the moment.

Gunther chuckles at my comment and turns to Daniel. "She has a lot of spunk. I can see why you're so smitten." Then, he looks back at me, and says, "About the explosion. You understand that it was nothing personal. It's all part of this world domination thing we have going on here at Cooper's Estate."

He's trying to be comical, but I don't find it funny. You can't joke about people's lives.

"Anyway, I'm sure you have questions about our new models."

"New models?"

"Of the cyborgs, yes. Do you know what that means? Well, you are an incredibly smart young girl, of course you know what that means, but do you know what we do to convert people into cyborgs?" he asks.

"With brain implants, like you tried on Victor."

He leans back in memory. "Victor, yes, the capuchin. Wow, he's still alive?" He laughs. "Good old Declan. So you are aware that with Nathan we attached an implant to his motor cortex and hippocampus?"

I nod, even though it's a lie. I didn't know the details of his condition.

Gunther continues, "This helped us to control his movement, and access his stored memories, like a computer hardware system. We didn't touch the rest of his frontal lobe, because we wanted him to be able to navigate freely through the Immortal. We didn't want anyone to suspect, but we also didn't want him to have too much freewill. Unfortunately, he did. He was never supposed to fall in love with you," he says, and my body tenses in both embarrassment and sadness. "He shouldn't have wanted to help you at all. That's why we had to send Gabriela in, to manually control him. So now, when we create cyborgs, we still implant our devices on the motor cortex and hippocampus, but we also take care of the frontal lobe. That way we won't make the same mistake twice. So go ahead and ask me: What did I do to Phoebe?"

When I say nothing he continues, as if revealing it is like unwrapping a present, "I only placed the implant on her frontal lobe, so that she's essentially mindless now. I gave her an implanted lobotomy." He chuckles to himself.

"What's the point, Gunther? You and I both know she'd rather be dead."

"Exactly. Winston will be helping Daniel here set up his gamma ray detectors, and then he'll be helping me with whatever I need. Phoebe is leverage."

"Why would you do that? They were your friends."

"They were, yes. But that was a lifetime ago. That was the old world. This is a new age, and they couldn't adapt. So they'll have to be dragged into it, and if you cannot adapt either, Ms. Blume, you'll have to be dragged too." He grins. "We all have jobs here, Ms. Blume, and you need to do yours."

"Which is?"

"To shut your mouth and look pretty. Can you handle that?"

"I guess I'll have to. That's the point of Comforters, right?"

He smiles. "Right. I knew you'd pick up on that, and since you are a Comforter, you can sleep in Mitchell's room or you can choose to sleep in the Comforter's quarters. Most choose the latter, but some actually fall for their placements. Either that or they develop Stockholm syndrome. Who knows," he laughs, but again, it's not funny.

"I'll be staying in the Comforter's quarters."

"Thought so. Well then, I guess we're done here. Unless you have any more questions or outbursts you'd like to get out of your system." He raises his brows in anticipation, like he's waiting for me to fight back. But I don't.

"No," I say.

Daniel stands. "C'mon," he mumbles to me. I stand up and start toward the exit.

"Oh, and Ms. Blume," Gunther calls. I look back over my shoulder. "How's the book?"

I ignore the question and follow Daniel out of the office. As soon as I close the door, drones buzz to our sides. They accompany us for the short walk to Daniel's room, where we collapse on the bed. While the party rages on beneath us, Daniel holds me, and I let myself forget my anger for the moment and cry in his arms.

***

If you have any questions so far about the world (specifically at Cooper's Estate) or the characters in it, please leave them below. :-)

https://youtu.be/xiBNH2L4vlU