Burn Read Free Page B

for me to come. I pad down the stairs to the lab and stare at the entry mechanism. A fingerprint scanner. On impulse, I press my thumb to it.
    And to my shock, the screen flashes green and says:
Welcome, Tate. Password?
    â€œI have no idea what the password is,” I mumble. But . . . my dad
wanted
me to get in here. He programmed it to accept my thumbprint, and not just his own. And then it occurs to me—what if I wasn’t the only one who could hack? He had no idea I’d invaded his systems, but what if he’d been invading mine? With shaky eagerness, I punch in the last password I used to access my server at home. It works. “You wily asshole,” I whisper, chuckling to myself. “You must think you’re pretty clever.” It comes out strained. I never could have anticipated missing him this much.
    The cool interior of the lab raises goose bumps on my arms for more reasons than the temperature. Once again, it’s a replica of my father’s lab in New York. Some of the same weaponry lines the walls. It’s chillingly familiar—right down to the screen across the room, black with three numbers in the center:
    2,943,287,999
    4,122,239,861
    12 (?)
    That bottom number . . . It used to read: 14. Two fewer anomalies now. Once again, I think back to George and how he flashed orange. Everyone else had flashed either red for H2 or blue for human. Was he one of the two who are gone now? Does my dad have some satellite orbiting Earth, scanning the population? I’m betting he does. I just don’t know why he wanted to do that. Population numbers aren’t that interesting. It only told him what he already knew, that the H2 outnumber us by more every day. But most H2 think they’re human, and the Core want to keep it that way. My dad seemed pretty eager to keep this technology a secret, too. So why was he scanning everyone? And what do those anomalies represent? It can’t be hybrids, because when humans and H2s reproduce, the result is another H2, which is why the population numbers are the way they are. So . . . is it some next step in our evolution?
    â€œI thought I might find you down here,” Christina says as she peeks through the door I left open. Her hair spills over her shoulders. She looks amazing in my clothes. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s here at all.
    â€œMorning,” I say, pulling my gaze from her body and peering around the room. And as soon as I do, I see it, something that wasn’t in the lab at home. On the desk in the corner is a notebook. I stride over to it, swallowing back hope. It’s a simple Steno, full of scrawled calculations and diagrams, none of which make sense to me. That’s saying something, since I was studying some pretty advanced mathematics before everything went to hell. I turn page after page, looking for something familiar and finding nothing. And finally, I get to the last page with writing on it—the rest of the pages are blank. But on that page, it says
Find it in 20204
scribbled in unusually sloppy handwriting, like my dad was in a hurry. And at the bottom of the page, it says
Race: “Sicarii.”
    â€œWhat’s a Sicarii?” Christina asks, appearing at my shoulder.
    â€œIt’s Latin for ‘assassin,’” I say, thinking back to my language lessons. “Probably the perfect word to describe Race Lavin.” He was, after all, responsible for my dad’s death.
    â€œAnd the number?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe it’s a zip code?” I punch it into my dad’s GPS, and sure enough—20204 is a zip code located within Washington, DC, containing a few major government departments. “I wonder if this is where the Core is headquartered or something.”
    â€œPlease don’t tell me you want to go there.” She sounds frightened.
    â€œYeah, you and I are going to wage an assault on the US Department of