Chapter 7

“What I don’t understand is how somebody like you became a handler to somebody like me.”

“I don’t know why it happened. They’d told me I was being reassigned to a highly classified project one morning. Less than an hour later, I met you. Their briefing was vague, to say the least, but they made it clear that you were their most valuable resource. And they made it very clear that nothing good would happen for me if something bad happened to you.”

“I figured as much. There’s no way you were a part of the program.” He offered a lopsided grin that took several years off his face. I felt a strange ache for him—a combination of desire and regret and fascination. “You’re an actual human.”