“Garrett did say I’d show everyone what I’ve got…” My heart skips a beat when I say his name. “But even I’m not sure I belong here.”

“I am. Yesterday at the welcome assembly…the bird…you knew it was going to fly before it did.”

“Don’t remind me.” My cheeks burn. “Nobody should be threatened because I speak bird.”

She laughs and then sobers. “I’m being serious. You have superior intuition.”

“I don’t think so.” I shake my head.

“It’s true. I’ve been studying your DNA and brain scans for months, trying to make sense of it all.” She takes a scroll out of her backpack and unrolls it. “This is a map of the connections in your brain. These are the parts that lit up with activity when I showed you flashcards and you guessed the image on the other side.” She traces her finger over the bright red-and-yellow network on the right side of my brain. “Look at your locus coeruleus—that’s a center for gut feeling—it’s a fireball. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What does it mean?” I ask, the brain map making zero sense to me.

“I’d dare to say—as we suspected when we brought you here—it means you possess ‘quantum cognition’ in the intuitive parts of your brain. In other words, you can perceive correct information about a person or situation and react with lightning speed. Babies are born with trillions of connections between their neurons, but the ones that don’t get used are eventually eliminated. You seem to have retained all the connections related to intuition…”

“But how? Why?”

“Well, it might have something to do with your birth. Were you aware you’re the product of three parents?”

My heart stalls. “No.”

She nods, the facts spilling from her lips, her eyes glinting with excitement. “Your donor-father was Romanian, and one of your donor-mothers was Brazilian—like your ‘parents’—but you also have a Lebanese donor-mother. I’m not sure if your intuition is a result of the genes that were so carefully selected at your creation—it’s possible everyone is born with this power or could learn what is innate in you—but I’m telling you, you have quantum cognition. It’s science.”

I stare at her in a fog, my head spinning from information overload. “My parents always told me my DNA scans said I was meant to be an actress…”

“They weren’t wrong… Acting is deception. That’s a useful skill for a thief.”

“But I believed everything they told me. My intuition was to trust them.”

“Until something changed your mind,” she reminds me. “Intuition is complicated. Maybe in the beginning your parents were looking out for your best interests—but then circumstances changed—and when they did, you fled.”

Three parents? I can’t wrap my head around it. “This is a lot to take in,” I whisper.

“I’m sorry to dump it on you.” She softens, placing her hand over her heart. “I know I can be a little clinical sometimes, but I thought you should know the truth. Your life is here, now, and I hope you can carve out an existence that makes you happy.”