Page 88 of Crazy House (Crazy House 1)

“I’m sure you’ve wondered why you were taken. Basically, we try to take anyone who has shown curiosity or a willingness to break the rules. Cassie, you were put into a terrible situation—both parents gone, a farm to keep up. But you made perfect grades and never missed a day of school. You were holding it together in the face of great adversity, and that’s the kind of people we need.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d always thought of myself as really ordinary.

“Becca, we were planning to take Cassie first and you later,” Ms. Strepp said. “We were thrown by you using the truck.”

I turned and gave Becca the stink eye.

“But in you we found someone with a rebellious spirit. Someone willing to take risks. Someone who wasn’t totally under the United’s thumb.”

This was the first time that those qualities had been seen as positive, I thought.

“You two have shown great—exceptional—potential. You escaped—the first prisoners out of thousands to do so. My job is to find the very best and to train them. This has been going on for almost twenty years. We take just a few kids from each cell. The cells don’t communicate with each other, which works to our advantage. I was taken. Now I have taken you. You, in your turn, will someday take other kids.”

“What?” Becca exclaimed.

“Yes,” Ms. Strepp said. “Everything we’ve done, everything you’ve gone through has been calculated to make you stronger, tougher, smarter, and more likely to survive. Your training will continue here. You will learn how to use weapons, efficient ways to kill or disable someone, how to break into buildings, how to hack computer systems. Skills you’ll need to take down the United.”

I needed time to think all this through. I remembered telling Becca that they had trained us to be heroes. Now it sounded like they would train us to be assassins. Maybe in this case, those were the same thing.

Suddenly Ms. Strepp jumped up and slammed her hands on her desk.

“There’s no time for dithering!” she shouted, seeming much more familiar. “It’s time to act! With everything I’ve told you, shown you, do you know what the point of all this is?” She waved one arm as if to encompass all of creation.

“Do you know the most important thing that you’ve learned?” Her voice was loud and harsh. “Do you know what your real value is to us? It isn’t your decision making! I don’t care if you can make sense of all this! I don’t care if you have feelings or thoughts you want to share! You!” she pointed one long finger at me. “What is your value?”

My brain raced, unable to formulate a coherent thought. Then suddenly it was there. The one thing I’d gotten out of everything we’d been through. I remembered that when they’d opened the van, Becca and I had been laughing.

I looked right into Strepp’s icy eyes. “I’m not afraid to die.”

“We’re not afraid to die,” Becca repeated. “That is our value.”

Ms. Strepp sat back as if struck, an odd, cold glint of triumph crossing her face.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Exactly.”