Burn Read Free Page A

for the kitchen. And sure enough, when I pull open the refrigerator, I see several Meal Number Tens. Eight ounces pinto bean soup with lean ham. Four wheat crackers. Two ounces dried pineapple, banana, and mango. Two ounces mixed nuts. “Hungry?” I say to Christina, pulling two of them out.
    â€œThanks,” she says, taking them. “Are you going to tell me how you’re doing with this? It’s so strange.”
    I shrug. “Not for my dad. If I’m right, he’ll have a lab here, too. I need to go take a look at it, but let’s eat first. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
    We sit at the table, and as I take my usual seat, I think of the last time I did. The last time I saw my dad as he was supposed to be, combed and pressed and ticked off at me. We’d been eating breakfast with George, and they’d been talking about population estimates, and how my dad’s calculations showed the numbers shifting more quickly than anticipated. Now I know he meant there are more H2 every day, and fewer humans. But there were also anomalies—fourteen of them. And, thinking about how George’s skin flashed orange under the light of the scanner instead of red or blue like everyone else, I have to wonder if he was one of those anomalies. I wish I knew what that meant.
    After we’re finished, I try to call my mom, but her phone goes straight to voicemail. I send her a text:
SAFE. Call soon?
I hope she’ll understand my meaning. And if she got Dad’s message, too, she might even know where we are. Still, I really want to hear her voice right now, and I need to know she’s okay. I can only hope she’s safe in the hospital, sleeping off the anesthesia, and not in the hands of the Core. Maybe Angus McClaren flew from Chicago to help her out. She said they were friends. I don’t like thinking of her alone and vulnerable—especially because I left her that way. After a few minutes of waiting for a response, I start to poke around the apartment. It’s precisely like my home in New York, but there’s no sign my dad was ever here, save the fact that the fridge is stocked.
    Finally, we make our way down yet another set of stairs and find a door that looks exactly like the one leading to my dad’s lab. Except: I don’t have my dad’s fingerprint. It’s sitting in a plastic case in my room in New York. Exhausted, I lean against the wall. Another freaking puzzle to solve.
    â€œTate, it feels late,” Christina murmurs.
    I’m about to argue when I notice the shadows beneath her eyes. I pull out my dad’s phone. It’s only eight, though it feels way past midnight. “I know what you mean. This can wait until tomorrow. Let’s go get some sleep.” We’ve been up since four, and I barely got two hours of rest last night.
    We take showers, and I find some clothes for us in the drawers of the bedroom—clothes that fit me, like he knew I’d come. With wet hair and heavy limbs, we settle onto my bed. I’m relieved that Christina doesn’t ask to sleep somewhere else, because I need her here beside me. She rests her head in the crook of my shoulder, slides her arm over my chest, and settles in. “Thank you,” I whisper.
For so many things. For being all I have in the world right now. For sticking by me.
    She squeezes me like she hears every thought, and then we drift into sleep.
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    I awake with a gasp, yanking myself out of a dream of my dad tossing ice water on my face. I grab for his phone and see that it’s four in the morning—the time he usually woke me up to work out. Wincing at the memory, I inch out from under Christina, resting her head on the pillow and allowing myself to stroke her cheek before tiptoeing out of the room. I need to get into his lab. Maybe he left something for me. He had food in the fridge, clothes for me in the drawers. He was prepared