My chest tightens at the mention of Aunt Jo and tears sting my eyes. “I’ll kill you!” I blurt out.

“Right. Right. That would be an excellent idea,” Conner says, and he has the same amused expression he wore when he thought he was catching me in a lie. “Now that you’ve said your piece, let’s get back to the question at hand.”

I’ve never wanted to hurt someone so much in my life. My skin is practically crawling with the need to strike out at him. But Conner isn’t the only one who can read people. The more pain he thinks he’s causing me, the happier he gets. So losing myself to anger is going to get me exactly nowhere. If there is one thing I’ve learned here, it’s that you can’t think your way out of a situation when you’re overrun by emotion. I take a calming breath. He doesn’t know where Dad is, I reassure myself. He doesn’t know about Pembrook.

“Silence? Is that your choice?” he asks.

I’m too far from the fireplace to burn these zip ties off. And even if I could somehow get over there, I would seriously burn myself before I could melt the ties.

Conner strokes his beard and paces in front of me, seemingly relaxed. “I knew when I offered you those two chairs during our first assessment that you didn’t like having your back to the door—you don’t like being vulnerable to the unknown. You prefer details, information. You gauge your surroundings and exits, like you’re doing here right now,” he says. “But you also didn’t want the chair that I was standing behind—you don’t like being pushed by other people or dominated in any way. So you made your own seat.”

I swallow. It reminds me of what Dad told me about thinking differently. He knew I would go up against other Strategia eventually—and the only real advantage he could give me was to not think like them, not fight like them.

I want you to think of unusual and creative solutions. And I want you to see the world in your own unique way. If you learn to hit a certain way in boxing or to jump a certain way in wushu, your brain will immediately default to them as an answer. I don’t want you to rely on the same answers every other person does. I want you to make up your own. If you learn how to approach a fight from an unexpected angle, you will become the weapon your opponent can’t predict.

“Again I will give you two choices,” Conner says, and watches me. “Only this time you will not have the simple luxury of choosing your own seat.”

“You know, it’s weird,” I say, stalling for time. “You tell me I’m a weak opponent, and yet you’ve failed three times to kill me. And yes, I figured out you were behind all of those attacks before you got me in this chair. So if I’m bad, you must really suck.”