Chapter 1: The Kid

I can hear the “whack whack” of Deacon’s shoes on the slick wood stairs outside the door. He needs to get the left shoe of his faux-leather wing tips resoled, something I’ve mentioned at least twice. I probably also muttered something about being too cheap to buy a pair of decent work shoes. He has to know what a “tell” that is, wearing the same crappy shoes every day. A person in custody could use it to her advantage. But, to be honest, I haven’t thought about breaking out in a while.

The door unlocks and light floods in. I’m ready, my eyes barely open so I don’t get blinded. I wiggle my fingers to figure out how long I’ve been sitting here. Four fingers numb—probably eight hours, maybe a little more. The smell wafting off Deacon is grease, so I’m guessing it’s after lunch, but before dinner. That puts me at about nine hours, which is about right.

Deacon clears his throat and drags a chair over from the wall. It’s a chair I didn’t see earlier. I’m losing my edge a little, as I’ve become accustomed to this basement. It’s musty and windowless, with those gray, institutional cement bricks. You can smell the water leeching through them.

Deacon positions the chair across from me and sits down. He opens and starts to thumb through a well-worn file—mine—stopping to look at what I’m figuring is a set of statistics on my current condition.

“Did you sleep?” he asks, keeping his eyes on the file. He pulls a pen from the breast pocket and clicks it a couple of times. Three times, actually. One of his tics.

“I slept about half the time,” I say, a little hoarse. There’s a specific needs requirement for people in my position. I could use water and a proper meal, but I’m beginning to get the sense that protocol isn’t the first thing on Deacon’s mind at the moment.

“You’re here early,” I say, opening my eyes now that I’ve adjusted to the light. I get a really good look at Deacon’s face and posture. He’s sitting low—he’s tired, too, I can tell—and he hasn’t taken the time to have a proper shave. The first time I saw Deacon, I couldn’t stop staring at the skin on his face. Shaves like a man possessed. Moisturizes, too. Face like a silk scarf. Right now he has lines at the corners of his eyes and dark fuzz around his jaw line.

“We found a better window, so the timeline has changed.” Three more pen clicks, then scribbling. I read what he’s writing before I respond. I know it’s best not to take chances just waiting for news, so I ask him outright.

“Does this mean Phase 3 is moving up?” I shift in the chair, trying for a slightly less uncomfortable position in the handcuffs. “If I’d known that I would have tried to sleep a little more.”

“Don’t get mouthy,” he says.

“I’m not getting mouthy,” I shoot back, “nor am I ‘exhibiting delayed cognitive function due to stress positions and sleep deprivation.’” I watch him glance down at the sentence he just wrote in my file. He clicks his pen, sighs, and puts it back in his pocket.

“Your little parlor trick is always handy, isn’t it?” he asks as he stands. Deacon can’t sit or stand still for longer than twenty minutes, start to end.

“I’m being moved to a new location this afternoon as part of the final prep before we go into Phase 3,” Deacon says, standing behind his chair. “You’ll have a new agent keeping an eye on you. You can call him Charlie.” He puts the chair back against the wall and heads toward the door.

“Is that his name?” I ask, watching Deacon stop and turn in the doorway, one foot out already.

“Is Deacon mine?” he asks, smiling. I smile back and sit up a little straighter. The zip ties around my ankles are starting to chafe.

Chapter 2: Deacon

28-June-2014, 0822 hrs: Case #SA 46E-323
Interview with Agent: Code Name Deacon

Obstinate. That’s one word I’d use to describe her. Cagey is another. There’s a lot that the Bureau and I don’t know about the Kid’s history, and I imagine we never will. It’s a surprise she gave me as much information as she did, though you wonder how much of it is actually true. She’s able to form incredibly believable lies, lies that have to have a nugget of truth in them somewhere. But with her you’re never completely sure.

As for our relationship during the investigation, I would say it was a battle: the Kid working her skills to gather more information and me attempting to keep it from her. If you give her too much information to work with, she’ll exploit you. If you don’t give her enough, she doesn’t perform at her best. So most of Phase 1 and 2 were attempts to walk that line. Sometimes I failed, but for the most part I succeeded, I think.

I will say this, though, if you haven’t put her in a room yet. Don’t let her see your pen when you write. She has this little trick where she can read what you’re writing from the way the top of your pen moves. It’s incredibly irritating.

As you know, we went through three agents before I got the Kid’s file. All three had been bounced back to DC for basically the same reason. It’s hard to explain, even now. In the simplest sense, I needed someone who wasn’t afraid to break the rules. The FBI turns out a lot of good agents, and they definitely have the ability to train good undercover agents. But there was a natural subversiveness that I needed, and each one of the agents sent to me couldn’t handle the pressure of effortless rule breaking, particularly under the rigor of what I needed to put them through. But when I saw the Kid’s file, I knew she was perfect.

The file itself was suspiciously basic. It’s impressive, actually, that no one picked out the large holes in her background check before I flagged them. There’s that entire three-year period in which her elementary school transcripts put her in New York, but she was picked up twice, once in St. Louis and once in Dallas. I’m convinced she never actually attended public school until her teens.

Then there’s the matter of her arrest record. Even though she was eventually only charged with possession of explosives without a license, only a seasoned professional would’ve been able to access the type of explosive material that she’d been found with. Eventually something must have snapped, because she never slipped back into whatever she was doing before the incident in Pittsburgh. After her stint in a halfway house outside Philadelphia, she finished high school, then community college, and ended up at Quantico. I can only begin to imagine how she gamed the system to get in there.

Agent Roberts was the initial point of contact, and her notes from that meeting told quite a story. You can find them in the back of the Kid’s file. Roberts had pulled the Kid into a conference room two months after she’d started at Quantico. Roberts was most struck by the Kid’s stubbornness, particularly as the Bureau was offering the Kid a field mission that new agents would kill each other to get. Roberts had used the Kid’s record as leverage to get her to agree. But even with the threat, the Kid still countered the first deal. She’s a shrewd negotiator, and she wanted her record expunged. It was Roberts who went the extra step and got the Marshalls involved. By the time the Bureau put the Kid on the plane to Los Angeles, she didn’t exist anymore. We’d given her an entirely new identity.

Chapter 3: The Kid

After sitting tied up in a chair for days at a stretch, you do anything anyone tells you to be up and moving around. After Deacon shuts and locks the door, I sit and stew for another hour or so before I hear footsteps on the stairs. When the door opens it’s one of the nameless agents. The few guys I’ve seen here all look the same: white, mid-30s, short-cropped hair. They’re cute, but in a bland sort of way. This one is a shorter, squatter version. They only acknowledge me when I’m right in front of them. Almost always it’s just Deacon and me.

The agent uncuffs me from the chair and cuts the zip ties from around each ankle. I stand up, stretch, and then follow him up the basement stairs to the prep room on the main floor of the guesthouse. The FBI gets lucky sometimes with the sweet digs. The safe house we’re using is nestled in one of the more affluent areas of LA. The big gates and the fences make it a perfect place to run the first part of the mission; the neighbors are just as eager to keep out of our way as we are to keep out of theirs.

I’ve spent the last few months in the guesthouse at the rear of the property. It’s a glorified pool house, honestly—one big room with a kitchen area; a big desk and whiteboard; and my bed. It does, however, have the interesting feature of a basement panic room. The previous owners were really covering their bases on the safety features.

The agent leaves without a word, and I rummage around in the fridge for the pizza I know is waiting for me. I eat my cold slice in three bites on my walk to the bathroom.

I turn on the shower and stand at the mirror to assess the situation. The two bruises off my left cheekbone are yellow, rather than purple, and there’s a welt on the backside of my right arm. I can also feel, but can’t see, a scrape on my shoulder from where the chair started rubbing.

As the shower is heating up, I yank a brush through my thick hair. I used to be a dark blond, with gold streaks that came in the summer. After all these months inside the prep room, though, my hair is almost brown. And because Deacon won’t let me at a pair of scissors, my hair is now halfway down my back. At Quantico I had kept it only long enough to pull back into a short ponytail. The steam fogs up the mirror and I strip down and step in, wincing as the hot water touches my skin. If there’s one thing Deacon is good at, it’s making it look real.

There’s a scribbled description of me in the margins of my file somewhere. I’d watched this lackey agent write it during my first, and only, meeting at the Bureau before they shipped me off to Deacon. Mind you, I didn’t see the paper, only the pen. He looped his Gs real low, like a girl, if I remember correctly. I watched him ink “angelic features” into the margin. I guess the description isn’t wrong, per se. A more accurate word might be “youthful.” Even now, at twenty-five, I look the same as I did at fifteen.

Once the steam is so thick I can’t breathe, I get out, wrap myself in a towel, and put my hair up in a loose bun. Back in the prep room I put on a set of clean clothes—yoga pants and a sweatshirt—and sit cross-legged on the bed, working my way through a bottle of water and reviewing my note cards. If we’re moving to Phase 3 this soon, I’m going to have to make sure I can keep my information straight. If I slip up in Phase 3, I’m pretty sure I’ll end up a body they drag out of the ocean.

Just as I’m flipping through the note cards on my background story, the door to the prep room opens. A guy in a navy suit with a blue-striped tie stops in the doorway, talking on a cell phone. If this is Charlie, he’s nothing like Deacon. He’s stock-still, for one. He barely gestures. After eighteen hours a day running intel in the prep room with Deacon, I get sick if I watch him for more than a few minutes at a time, he paces so much. Even when he stands still, he rocks. This guy is also older, or looks older, and is average in every way: height, weight, skin and hair color.

If I had to guess, I bet this guy is a chameleon. He’s who you put in a crowd when you need to get close to someone that can’t be mic’d, or you need somebody to hang out in the lobby of a building. If there are more than two people in that lobby, he’s one of those guys who you’d swear up and down wasn’t there bumming a cigarette off one of them. The man just blends.

“You Charlie?” I ask when he hangs up the phone.

“Yeah.” He waits, and I stop flipping through my cards.

“I’m going to make this quick,” he says, not moving. “Our original drop date moved up three weeks. This means next Thursday, nine days from now, we shift into Phase 3. It doesn’t make things easy for the team, but we have to make it work. I have the welder coming tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll sort out the specifics when we sit down with him. The team is in the main house working on transportation, recon, and finalizing any issues with the videos Deacon put together. Your job is to keep up what you and Deacon have been doing in here for Phase 1 and 2. Keep out of the main house and off the grounds. You’re here to work.”

He heads off toward the door, and I notice an agent standing out in front.

“Now that Deacon can’t babysit you,” Charlie says, “I’m putting an agent outside the door. Just to keep tabs on you. And I’m sending the medic over. You look like shit.”

Chapter 4: Deacon

28-June-2014, 0822 hrs: Case #SA 46E-323
Interview with Agent: Code Name Deacon

I called a “go” for the mission the night after I first met the Kid. It was a gut instinct. The photo on file didn’t do her justice. She was a perfect match for what I was after. Small and scrawny, with even features. At first glance, she looked like nothing special. But, if you waited a moment, you started to see it. She held herself with authority, which completely unnerved me sometimes. It was really her eyes. They held you. They were deeper than the age of the young face holding them. That was the sort of stare that I needed.

Agent Roberts packed up the Kid and shipped her over on the first red eye. Roberts tried to make her blend in with the crowd at LAX, so she showed up in a black, bobbed wig and huge sunglasses. She had on one-size-too-big Juicy sweats and a matching, bedazzled hoodie, too, which only made her seem more slight. The two agents who’d flown with the Kid from Virginia dumped her in the back of a limo I’d hired for the day. She took off the sunglasses and glowered at me from across the limo as she pulled off her wig.

As the limo started off, she released her hair from the tight bun she’d had it in. Her real hair was a mess of brown and blond, and as she worked through it with her fingers she stared me down, waiting. I took a beat, cleared my throat, and dove right in.

“We’ll be using code names for this operation, though I see you’re not really sticking to a name at the moment.” She looked evenly at me and didn’t say anything.

“We’ll probably call you ‘the Kid’ out of habit,” I said. “You’re the fourth agent they’ve assigned me. The other three were kicked back to DC because they couldn’t hack it. Your background was what our division head thought we needed in this situation. While you’re here, you can call me Mike.”

“But that’s not your name,” she said, finally, her voice level as a ruler. She grabbed a bottle of water from the door and glanced back at me.

“Right,” I said.

“Mike’s a horrible name. I think I’ll call you Deacon.”

“Let’s stick with Mike. This mission has been in the works for six months now, and at this point it’s a lot of paperwork to go ahead and change my alias.” A faint smile crossed her lips.

“I guess we’ll see what we end up calling you…Deacon.” She slipped out of the Uggs and folded herself up on the seat.

I paused, clicked my pen open, and wrote in her file. I could feel her watching me intently.

“You write like the woman who taught you cursive,” she said after a moment. “Was she a nun?” I looked up, confused, and her smile broadened.

“And I don’t have a ‘problem with authority,’” she continued, “I just can’t stand the name Mike. Deacon’s a much more interesting name, don’t you think?”

I glanced down at what I’d written and then back up at her. There was no way she could have read what I’d wrote from three feet away. She’d been watching my pen. How do you learn to read handwriting from watching someone’s pen move? I didn’t say anything for a minute and just let us rock in unison as the limo drove down the highway.

“That’s something I picked up in my…what did you call it…background,” she said finally, turning her head toward the window to watch the traffic on the 405.

“Right, okay,” I said, soldiering on. “We’ll be running this operation in three phases. Phase 1 and 2 are background and intel. The 3rd, embedding, will be the hardest for you. Take a look outside, because this is the last you’ll see of it for a while. One we get to our secure location, you won’t be allowed to leave. No one will know you exist until you seemingly drop from the sky.”

She gave me a withering expression and went back to the window. I looked out the window, too. I hated traffic. It felt like sitting in a long line to purgatory.

Chapter 5: The Kid

Sitting on the bed in the prep room, I watch a rare rainy LA day unfold outside. Our resident medic is working on my shoulder, scraping off the mess of skin where the chair rubbed. There’s a faceless agent with her, observing her work from the doorway while he sips on a cup of coffee. The bruises will be gone in a week or so, she tells me, as she applies a thick layer of something cold and burning to my open wound. It’s the scrape she’s worried about.

“Deacon wasn’t as careful as he should have been,” she chides to the back of my head as I flip through a stack of index cards. Institution Conversion Techniques.

“Yeah, well the shoulder was more me than him. I was trying to wriggle around in my chair. My elbow hurt.” I move to another set of cards. Goldenrod Iconography.

“Well you’re not going to do anyone any good if this scrape gets infected,” she counters, taping a gauze bandage on my back. “Charlie might consider giving you a couple of days off to heal up properly.” The agent perks up.

“Hey, Doc,” he says, “she doesn’t have to be perfect. She just has to be alive.” I shoot him a disgusted look and go back to my cards. She sighs and stands to pack up her bag.

“Fine. I’ll come back tomorrow and check on the wound,” she says, more to the agent than to me. “But I’m telling you right now, Charlie can’t leave her in the chair anymore. The joints in her arms are going to show serious wear if she doesn’t take it easy for the next couple of days. And you better feed her regular, with lots of fluids. And let her get a decent night’s rest. Otherwise, she’s bound to develop an infection on her shoulder that’s really going to slow her down. I’m passing all this directly on to Charlie, by the way. Deacon will have your job if she’s too broken to be embedded.”

She picks up her bag and pushes past the agent and into the rain, running down the gravel path toward the main house. The agent looks at me and grabs the door handle.

“You heard the good doctor, Kid,” he sneers. “No more time in the chair for now. You better sleep while you can, though.”

He slams the door behind him before taking off for the main house. I feel a sudden wave of exhaustion. I lay on my stomach on top of the covers and shut my eyes, but all I can see are my flashcards rolling past: my concocted backstory, names of Jacob’s friends and enemies, locations and descriptions of buildings. Deacon warned me not to think about Phase 3 until it was happening, to focus on my cards. Keep your mind in the present, he repeated over and over for weeks. I hear this speech in my head as I drift off to sleep, the rocking motion of Deacon’s voice lulling me into a sort of peace. Even in my head he paces.

Chapter 6: Deacon

28-June-2014, 0915 hrs: Case #SA 46E-323
Interview with Agent: Code Name Deacon

There’s a passage from the Bible that I read once: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” That’s what you need going into a mission like this one. You have to hope for success, and you have to believe that there’s something you don’t see in the people you pick to put in danger. You put your faith in them.

The Kid didn’t take to this mission easily. In fact, our first night in Phase 1 I thought she might break out and run off. But, like I said, you have to have a little faith.

I’d lucked out in LA and had secured a large, sprawling Spanish-style mansion in the Hills from Facilities and Logistics Services. If you’re not careful, you can end up in the worst office buildings. But the manpower alone on this mission was going to attract attention, and I needed a private space to keep the Kid, too. I knew the sight of construction guys and maintenance workers for a house renovation in LA wouldn’t turn any heads, particularly when the previous owners were Colombian drug runners. And the guesthouse was perfect to keep the Kid sequestered from the rest of the team.

As the limo rolled up the long driveway, a few agents, dressed as repairmen and gardeners, watched as we pass them. They knew who was showing up.”

Are you renovating?” The Kid asked sarcastically, pointing at a slightly visible holster under one of the gardener’s shirts. I made a note of the agent. Inconspicuous holsters were consistently an issue.

The Kid and I made our way past the main house to the guesthouse on the edge of the property. The Kid immediately dropped down on the bed, and I pulled up a chair. I took a beat, and then I ripped off the metaphorical Band-Aid.

“Okay, here’s a little background. The FBI has been investigating the Goldenrod Institution of Learning for the past eighteen months for child labor violations and various white-collar crimes. Each operation to retrieve files or detain possible witnesses was either aborted or compromised. Then, about twelve months ago, I commissioned for an undercover operation, and we started working on the plans about a month later. Our goal was to embed an operative close enough to the High Council—the group who run all aspects of Goldenrod—so that we could gain access to the details of their money operation and to discern if there were any child-related crimes going on. This isn’t easy; only people born into the organization works closely with them. They are almost impossible to get close to.”

“Wait,” she said, putting up a hand. “I don’t know what this Goldenrod thing is. Is it a business or a school or something?”

I stood up. I hate to sit still. At Quantico they called me Metronome. I have a tendency to rock.

“The Goldenrod Institution of Learning is, on the surface, a mainstream, New-Age religion focused on the teachings of their prophet, Jacob Stravini.” I started to pace, just to keep the energy going. “Followers believe that by educating their inner soul with Jacob’s teachings they can awaken a ‘Golden Path’ that will lead them to a pure happiness. In his teachings, Jacob used a gold cane to illustrate the path. He would hold it up and run his finger along the straight line of the cane. That’s where the name of the religion comes from. A golden rod.”

I stopped for a second to collect myself. I wanted her to have the important pieces without going into too much detail too soon.

“There are Education Centers across the country, focused mostly in big cities, but they’re growing. From the outside, they look like any developing self-help religion. Under the surface, however, is a complicated business venture. The materials, classes, and retreats all come with a steep price tag. Followers are asked to donate to the up-keep of the Centers and to volunteer extensively to ‘build an enlightened community.’ Followers are tight-lipped about what, exactly, goes on inside the classes and retreats. In addition to the money they have to spend to find their ‘Golden’ path, devout followers leave property and goods to the Centers in wills and trusts. Donating money and property to Goldenrod is one of their main tenets. In fact, there are five.”

I stopped doing laps around the room and closed my eyes. I must have looked ridiculous.

“‘On the path of life, know that five branches will unfold in front of you. They are Fear, Truth, Worth, Love, and Life. Choose the right path and see your life as this cane: a Golden Path toward perfection.’”

I glanced down at The Kid, briefly. She was still as a stone, staring at me with a seriousness I couldn’t quite place. But she didn’t stop me, so I continued on.

“The Bureau started the investigation when we got a lead from a disenchanted member that Goldenrod’s financial dealings weren’t as legitimate as they were publicly claiming. The intel we received was good enough to start a very quiet investigation. About a year ago we received additional information from an unlikely source: two kids who had been brought up in the religion. Their parents had died, and they were living with relatives who weren’t a part of the religion. A social worker was keeping tabs on them, and in one of her check-ins these kids relayed some very interesting information about what goes on below the surface. We couldn’t get anything concrete enough for a warrant, but we are looking, in part, at child labor law violations and neglect that stems directly from the High Council. That information was enough for my superiors. They stepped up the investigation and threw additional resources at me for an undercover misison. You are going to be the keystone in that investigation.”

I could feel the fury in the Kid’s stare. She slowly got off the bed like she might make a break for the door.

“My job is to infiltrate a cult? Are you out of your mind? Do you realize how insane that sounds?” She put up a hand. “Wait, no, don’t answer that. Answer me this. How am I supposed to get close to this Council if they’re so hard to touch? And how are you going to make sure they don’t brainwash me like I assume they did to your other agents?”

She crossed her arms and glared at me, waiting. I was ready. I had already done this with three other agents.

“None of them were brainwashed,” I answered, calmly. “They never made it past this door. They proved to be too ‘morally flexible,’ and we couldn’t risk them in the field. I picked you, in part, because of your attitude problem, what your social workers called a ‘distrust of authority.’ That’s a temperament we need in this situation.”

“Fine, great,” she said, sitting back down on the bed. “So I’m not corruptible. Lucky me. I still don’t see how me and my attitude are going to get close to this High Council. I can’t just waltz in the door and be elected Secretary.”

“You’re right,” I said with a grin. She definitely had a mouth on her. “Just walking in off the street will get you nothing. But the Council has a weakness. Their ability to manipulate others revolves around the teachings of their prophet. Jacob Stravini was, in the most basic sense, just a hustler who got a really good idea. He died sixteen years ago this summer of a heart attack, due to a long-term drinking habit. People were afraid of this man, of his methods and his ‘visions.’ Even the High Council members, who have their hands in everything, are particularly devout.”

“But if, like you said, they know it’s just a bunch of crap, they probably don’t really believe all the stuff they’re preaching, right?”

“Actually, from what we’ve been able to gather so far, the Council has their own particular faith in Jacob’s teachings. Of what we know about Jacob, he taught a set of principles to his Council that kept them very faithful to the idea that he was a prophet, principles that deviated from what they filter down to their members.”

I had been pacing again, and I stopped in front of the Kid. I had to tell her the one thing I knew she wasn’t ready to hear about the mission, about who I was asking her to become. I cleared my throat and just took a leap of faith.

“In fact, one of Jacob’s final teachings is the basis for our entire mission: ‘Throughout time we are all reborn with a different face. My words will continue.’”

Chapter 7: The Kid

It’s Charlie who wakes me up. He’s in my room, talking on his cell phone. The heat of a beautiful, sunny day is filtering through the window, which means I’ve slept for more than five hours. That’s a personal best since Deacon and I moved into the later parts of Phase 2. Most days, Deacon and I would work until one of us couldn’t take it anymore, usually me, and then he’d head off for three or four hours of sleep while I collapsed on the bed. In the early part of the morning, as the sun was breaking through the trees, Deacon would bring coffee and whatever take-out was left over in the main house from the night before, and the smell of grease and coffee would wake me up. I don’t smell any coffee. Charlie is a monster.

I open my eyes and roll my head to stare up at him on his phone, a note card wedged between my cheek and the bed. Jacob’s Rap Sheet. Charlie glances down at me, pauses, and puts his hand over the bottom of the phone.

“I cleared the welder early,” he says, “but after the holy hell the medic gave me about your shoulder, I let you sleep in a few hours. Get dressed. We think we figured out a solution to our metallurgical issue.”

Charlie walks outside, still on the phone, while I get up to find a clean hoodie and a pair of sneakers. While I’m running a brush through my hair, he finishes up his call and motions to me. I throw my hair up into a high ponytail, grab a bottle of water, and go out to meet him. It’s the first time I’ve been out of the prep room in a while. I’m almost giddy.

“The welder is set up in the garage,” he says. “You’re getting your bracelet this morning.”

“Don’t you mean shackle?” Charlie snorts a laugh as he walks me around the side of the house.

In the detached, four-car garage there’s a smell of sulfur and heat. Apparently the welder has been here for a while: a self-sufficient blacksmithing operation takes up half the garage, including a burning hot forge with a small, smoking pot of yellow-orange metal. Charlie and I join four agents gathered around a guy who looks like a member of Hells Angels. He’s holding up two strips of metal and lecturing like a quiet shop teacher. His blond beard, long and unkempt, waves back and forth a little while he’s talking.

“It took me awhile to find a metal composition that fit your requirements, but I think we’ve got it,” he says. “To the outside world, even to the best smelter, these two metal strips are identical. But unlike this strip here, when you run it through a detector…”

He waves the second strip in front of an agent with a bug wand.

“…you can’t pic up the mic. Plus, this blend is basically indestructible once cooled. It’s strong enough that it will take serious heat to get it off, but porous enough that the chip we’ve put in it will be able to pick up nearby dialogue. They’ll have to know the precise metallurgical composition to take it off without burning her arm off. And that I’m not going to share.”

Charlie watches the guy wave the two strips by the bug wand again and nods.

“Okay,” he says, “that’s great. Who has the final list of symbols?”

An agent is right there handing him a file. Charlie rifles through it, bringing out a page of symbols, under each one a little blurb with background. I know all the Communicator Symbols by heart. Each one of them means something important to Goldenrod members. There’s Jacob’s personal mark and the symbols for each of the branches. But under the obvious symbols are what the High Council calls Tiles—five vertical lines connected together by a varying number of horizontal wavy lines. They describe people, places, and important characteristics. Knowing the Tiles distinguishes the inner circle from those on the outside. Deacon had spent a lot of time, and money, confirming all the symbols. One of them would be etched onto my bracelet. The right one would help to legitimize my story.

Charlie takes a moment and glances through the list, reading Deacon’s notes in the margins. His eyes stop on a symbol, and I can guess what it is. Charlie circles one and thrusts the paper at the welder.

“Once you get it on,” Charlie says to the welder as he starts towards the house, his cell phone already at his ear, “get this symbol on the outside. It needs to look professional.”

The welder sits me down on a stool and pulls my arm over the workbench. To protect my wrist he pulls on a wide leather band, pulling it so tight I start to lose feeling in my fingers. He goes to work near the fire, pouring the glowing liquid metal into a clay mold. I can’t see what he’s doing, but his movements are quick and precise. He turns, and his giant hands grasp a pair of thick pliers, which daintily hold the thin, perfect bracelet. It’s still hot enough to almost glow, and as he lays it on the leather band around my wrist he’s watching me to make sure I don’t flinch.

I watch the two ends of the bracelet meld into each other as he works to shape it. He smoothes out the seam, sealing it to me. A perfect ring. The welder picks up a tiny chisel, and while the metal cools against the leather around my wrist he marks in the Tile.

The other agents look on, uninterested. This is just another thing on their checklist. But this is the most important moment. With this bracelet now permanently sealed around my wrist, everything I say will become important to the Bureau in taking down Goldenrod. What I say will be held as legitimate. In fact, the Tile being carved into my new appendage means exactly that. It’s the symbol Jacob would use to declare a thing as holy as his word.

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