Page 97 of Artifice

Unless he’d wanted everything to come down to this moment. Unless he planned on getting rid of Olive.

It was the only thing that made sense.

Olive glared at him. “The entire time we’ve been in town, you’ve been watching us.”

“I must protect what’s valuable.” Henry checked his watch. “But now, I believe it’s time for a demonstration of our most successful application. We’ve prepared someone special for you.”

A door swung open, and a familiar figure stepped through.

Colin Andrews.

He was alive!

But . . . something wasn’t right, she realized as she soaked in his measured, almost mechanical movements.

Her heart sank.

His eyes appeared vacant.

And . . . he held a knife.

“Colin?” she called. “Colin, you’ve never met me, but I know your parents.”

But there was no recognition in his eyes—only emptiness where a person had once been.

“What have you done to him?” Olive demanded, pulling against her restraints as Colin stepped farther into the chamber, still gripping that knife.

Henry’s smile widened. “Perfection. That’s what we’ve achieved. The boy who once defied us at every turn now follows orders without question. No hesitation. No morality to get in the way. Just perfect compliance.”

Colin moved with unnatural stillness, his gaze fixed forward as if looking through them rather than at them.

Olive had to somehow think of a way to get through to him.

“Colin, your parents miss you,” she started. “They want you to come home.”

Not even a flicker of recognition crossed Colin’s face.

“He prefers to go by P-18,” Margaret informed them.

“P-18?”

Henry smirked. “It may have sounded like Peyton to you. To us, it’s Patient 18.”

Patient 18? P-18? Peyton?

Wait . . . on the very first day of Olive’s assignment, she’d actually seen Colin. He’d been the one staring from the Quiet Room at her?

“That means I saw him when I first arrived. He was in the Quiet Room.”

Something glimmered in Henry’s eyes. “We had to use him on occasion as an example for other students. We didn’t want the entire student body to know, of course. We were selective.”

Her thoughts continued to whir. “What about Ms. Strickland? You killed her, didn’t you? And made it look like she took her own life.”

The smirk remained. “All we had to do was mutter a codeword on the radio, and she did exactly what we wanted her to.”

Olive looked toward Margaret. “Why did you put me in her class?”

“We never really wanted you here—but Principal Denarau and some other board members did. So I put you in Ms. Strickland’s class to dissuade you. It didn’t work.”