Mr. F grumbles something under his breath, almost in a dialect, mostly unintelligible. I catch enough to know that he’s annoyed with the waiting, but then, he seems to be pretty much annoyed with everything.

A light flips on, and they squint against the brightness over the table, looking away.

“He’s here! Welcome, Locke!”

A man strides across the room and holds his hand out to me. “I’m Carver.” I stumble to my feet and reach my hand out to him. His handshake is firm and I note that detail in the same way my father would have. He’s well-groomed, not rumpled like so many Non-pacts are. His clothes are cheap but laundered and curiously pressed like he’s meticulous about his appearance. He looks directly into my eyes. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I didn’t know exactly when you’d arrive. I see you’ve already met your team.”

I look at the three still sitting around the table and then back to Carver. “My team? Uh, no, we haven’t met yet.”

“No?” Carver looks at Mr. F.

Mr. F shrugs.

Introductions are made. Livvy, Jake, and Xavier. Xavier? I offer the tiniest smirk to Mr. F on hearing his name.

I turn to Carver. “I don’t know what you mean by team. To be honest, I don’t know anything about this Favor. Father Andre only said—”

“Please, sit down. We’ll tell you all the details soon, but first we need to know everything about you. And I mean everything. If you haven’t guessed already, this is no ordinary Favor. A lot’s riding on it, and we don’t have much time. We need to know all about you and everything you can do—and everything you can’t. Then we can begin your training for—”

“Hold on just a minute. No one said anything about training. I can’t be here that long. I need to get to Manchester.”

“Please.” Carver leans across the table. “Whatever you need in Manchester we’ll have others take care of it. Jake here, for instance. He’s my behind-the-scenes man. Good at details like that.”

Right. I already witnessed how good he was in a dark corner with a bat.

Carver straightens, rubbing his palms together. “Please,” he says again. “You have my word we’ll take care of it. But we need you here now.”

His eyes are as desperate as Mr. F’s were earlier. I sit back down.

“Everything,” Carver repeats. “No detail is too small.”

I look them over. Perfect strangers, and sketchy ones at that. How much detail is really safe in their hands? I glance at Mr. F. Petty criminal or not, he did hide Kara and me in a basement and give us new IDs that allowed us to escape.

I remember what I’m here for. My friends, Dot, Bone, Kara—and me—each of us trying to escape from a world where we have no value or rights. Kara and Dot will never get that chance for Escape now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make it happen for myself, Bone, and others like us. I don’t want to be hiding and running for the rest of my life, and I have a very long life ahead of me. If I live the full six hundred years that Gatsbro predicted, I’m not going to spend it on the fringes like a stray dog. I don’t even want to wait ninety years for change the way Jenna had to wait. I want it now. I’m just not sure these people are the ones to make it happen.

I lean back in my chair. “Okay, you asked for it.” They have no idea how much detail I’ve held on to. I tell them everything, and I start at the beginning because I don’t know where else to start.

I tell them how I grew up just a few blocks from here. I tell them about my parents and their high expectations for me because I was the only good student in the family. I tell them about my brother and sister and the trouble they got into. I tell them about meeting Kara and Jenna and how they changed my life. I tell them how I even memorized poetry to impress them both. Mr. F snorts at this information. Livvy smiles.

“So you knew the Fox from the very beginning?” Carver asks.

“The Fox?”

“Sorry, I thought you would have known. That’s what Jenna and her branch of the Network was called. The Fox connection. That is, back when she was active.”

“Right,” I say, like I did know. I guess now I’m part of that connection. “Yes, we knew each other from the very beginning.”

“Please, continue.”

I tell them how close we all were, the accident that stole away our lives, and the BioPerfect that gave it back.

Carver leans forward. “But you didn’t get your life back right away, did you?”

If he knows this detail, I’m sure he knows a lot more. I have no doubt that Father Andre culled every bit of information from Jenna and Allys that he could.

“No,” I answer. “I didn’t get it back right away. Jenna’s dad built a new body around what was left of her, but my mind and Kara’s were scanned and uploaded into six-inch cubes and then forgotten on a storage shelf for a long time.”

“A long time? Just how long would that be?” His lips are parted, feigned surprise, anticipation, timing, waiting.

Click. Now I know why he’s probing these details. He wants to see how fragile I am. How sensitive. Am I really up for this task? This is no ordinary Favor. How much pushing can I take? Will I blow? A year ago, I might have.

I look directly into his eyes. “Two hundred sixty years,” I say. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t blink, not even when Livvy muffles a groan.

“That’s a very long time,” he says. “That kind of wait could make almost anyone go insane.”