Monday, May 28

  Portsmouth, New Hampshire

  Mission:

  - Secret YMPA Base

  - Gasoline

  7:57

  We’d pulled into town about thirty minutes ago, and only now—after circling what felt like every block in existence—did we finally find a gas station.

  There was a built-in GPS like every other car made after 2010, except this one was wrapped in layers of encryption so thick September swore no one could track it. I decided to trust the girl who just pulled me out of a flaming death convoy.

  September parked at the pump closest to the exit.

  “Stay inside,” she said, unbuckling. “Just in case they’re still searching.”

  “They’d just see the car and you and immediately know I’m here,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t really change much.”

  “They don’t know I rescued you. They don’t know I used this car.” She glanced at the rearview, scanning the lot. “You never made it to their objective location. As far as they know, you’re lost in transit. The second they see you on a camera, though? They backtrack the footage, find the car, find me, find this route.”

  “Fair enough,” I muttered.

  She headed to the little glass booth where the cashier sat, peeled off some cash, talked for a moment, then came back to start pumping gas.

  It honestly shocked me how intently I watched her doing something as boring as standing at a pump. But every second she existed in my line of sight, my brain decided to get weird and sentimental. That obviously led me to make a questionable life decision.

  “How do you feel about Malachi?” I blurted.

  Instant regret.

  She turned, gave me a long, blank stare through the windshield. I tried to recover with a nervous laugh, which did not help.

  “You’ve suddenly got a different impression of him?” she asked, one brow slightly raised. “I guess it’s… nice that he helped you and didn’t automatically assume you were the mole.”

  “It’s not like he’s dumb,” I said. “He’s just lazy—sometimes.”

  She cracked a small smile. “He’s like that a lot of the time. I don’t know if he’s playing a character or if that’s just what people like to see him as. A lot of people think he’s arrogant, all brawn no brains, womanizer, some kind of specimen straight from the Garden of Eden but…” She shrugged lightly. “He’s not really. He’s just confident. Takes care of himself. And yeah, sometimes he’s lazy.”

  “You think you see a better person in him?” I asked.

  “No. Just the real person,” she said. “Which I guess isn’t too different, but… let’s say he’s a lot more relatable than people think. I think that’s a fair way to put it.”

  “Is that what you like?” I asked, suddenly fascinated by my own bad decisions. “Someone who’s relatable?”

  “That’s what everybody wants, no?” she said. “We relate in some areas, we’re totally different in others, but that doesn’t stop us from working together.” She finished pumping and slid the nozzle back into place. “So I mean, it’s just…”

  “It’s just… what?”

  She never finished.

  Her eyes locked on something ahead of us. I followed her gaze and saw about seven cars rolling by the station—wide, loud muscle cars. Chargers, probably. The kind of cars that look like they come with a “committing federal crimes” starter pack.

  “I thought you said they couldn’t track us,” I said quietly.

  “They didn’t,” she replied. “See how they’re driving past? They’re sweeping the area, probably following the route they expected the convoy to take. But that means they got the message much sooner than I thought.”

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  “Shoot,” she added under her breath.

  She climbed back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. We pulled out and headed back onto the road.

  “We need to make it to that base as quickly as possible,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to reach that ‘D’ guy soon.”

  “Agent D7,” I corrected automatically. “He’s actually a pretty nice guy.”

  “It doesn’t matter much if our comms are compromised,” she said. “If anything happens, at least we’ll have the base.”

  Two hours later…

  We were in the heart of Maine.

  There was nothing redeemable about being in the city right now. Every pedestrian looked like they could secretly be MSTO or TSA. Every alley felt like it had a sniper in it. Every stoplight felt like a trap.

  And we were five minutes away from wherever this “secret base” was supposed to be.

  “September?”

  “Yes?”

  “I feel like something isn’t adding up,” I said. “You said a secret YMPA base, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  “What exactly is secret about this?” I gestured out the window. “We’re in the middle of the city. Not, like, a huge one, but still. This is the opposite of secret.”

  September tilted her head side-to-side, eyes flicking between the road and the buildings, which did nothing to calm my nerves.

  “Look at it this way,” she said. “Is it easier to hide a base in the countryside where there’s nothing around, or in the middle of a bunch of buildings and people?”

  “When you say it like that,” I said slowly, “the countryside sounds better.”

  She huffed a tiny laugh. “Yeah, that’s fair. But hiding in plain sight works better. Everyone passes by, never suspects a thing. And if someone did try to attack it, with this many people around, it would look like a terrorist incident. No organization wants that attention on their name.”

  We turned into a neighborhood where all the houses looked like they were built on the same copy-paste template: rust-colored siding, white trim, manicured lawns. It felt more like a movie set than a real place.

  September parked in front of a house that looked exactly like the two on either side.

  “Alright,” she said. “Walk beside me and don’t look back at anything, alright? You never know where TSA might have eyes.”

  I nodded and climbed out, legs still sore but functional.

  We walked up to the front door—a heavy wooden door carved with curling dragons and swirls. There was a doorbell, but she ignored it. Instead, she knocked five times in a pattern: one-two-three… pause… four-five.

  A small panel near the top of the door slid aside and transformed into a retinal scanner.

  She leaned forward and let it scan her eye. When it was done, she stepped aside.

  “Alright,” she said. “Your turn.”

  “But you already did the scan,” I protested. “Doesn’t that open it?”

  “See the porch?” she asked. “It’s sensor-embedded. It knows there are two people standing here. If I were forced to open the door at wand-point, they wouldn’t just unlock the base for my kidnappers. They’d force every body present to scan. And as you can imagine, the wrong set of eyes doesn’t get past this door.”

  “How many times have you been to this base?” I asked.

  She paused for a beat. “…That’s actually a good question.”

  I huffed a small laugh and leaned toward the scanner. It felt like tiny bugs crawling over my eyeball for a second, then the lock clicked and the door swung inward.

  The inside looked like a regular house. Stairs, couches, art on the walls, a kitchen, a TV—if you squinted, this could’ve been your average suburban family’s place.

  September headed to the staircase. In the middle of the steps, she repeated the same knock pattern.

  One-two-three… pause… four-five.

  A narrow section of the wall slid aside, revealing a hidden door and a long metal hallway stretching out in front of us. Our footsteps echoed down the corridor as we walked in.

  Behind us, the entrance hissed shut on its own.

  I turned back around. At the far end of the hallway was another heavy door. A loud unlatching sound echoed—locks disengaging.

  I glanced at September for confirmation.

  “It heard us,” she said simply, and pulled the door open.

  Behind it was an elevator.

  She hit the button for “-4.”

  The elevator shuddered to life, descending with a low mechanical rumble. The hum of electricity vibrated through the tiny space.

  I watched the floor numbers flicker down, then glanced at September.

  She caught me looking and smirked. “You look scared.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Just… interested. I didn’t know places like this even existed. It’s interesting.”

  “Well, the YMPA doesn’t really reveal these kinds of bases until you’re an established agent,” she replied. “You kind of get the idea they might exist, but…”

  “Your world is really just the academy,” I finished.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open.

  We stepped out into what looked like the love child of an office and a mission control center. A giant screen dominated the far wall, filled with maps and data. Rows of desks were lined with monitors, phones, stacks of paper. Men and women in shirts and ties talked over each other in a constant hum of noise.

  On the far left, I spotted cubicles and, in the corner, a lonely printer that looked like it had seen some things.

  “Jesus,” I breathed. “This looks…”

  “Dreadful?” she offered.

  “No—I mean—uh—I was going to say cool,” I corrected. “But yeah, it’s kind of… office-y.”

  She smirked. “It’s like they always say. Lots of paperwork. Especially for these guys. They’re dispatchers. If you ever decide the field’s not for you, this is one of the places you can end up.”

  “So this is what Agent D7 is then?” I asked.

  “The way you describe him?” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  Before I could answer, stiff footsteps approached from our left.

  We both turned.

  “September and Connor, correct?” a voice asked.