“I just want us to be prepared,” I said.

“Yeah—prepared to die,” said Iggy.

“We’re not going to die!” I snapped. “Not now, not anytime soon!”

“What about our expiration dates?” Gazzy asked. “They could show up any second. And what about stupid Angel, turning on us?”

There was a lot I wanted to say to him about that, but now wasn’t the time.

I opened my mouth to spout some reassuring lies, but the door opened.

We tensed, turning quickly to see a whitecoat coming at us, armed with a clipboard. He checked his notes and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“Okay,” he said briskly. “I need the blind one and the one that can mimic voices.” He looked up expectantly as we stared at him.

“Are you on drugs?” I asked in disbelief.

“Me? No,” he said, looking confused. He tapped his pen against his clipboard. “We need to run some last tests.”

I crossed my arms over my chest as Fang and I instinctively moved between the whitecoat and the rest of the flock.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

The whitecoat looked surprised at my noncompliance—obviously he hadn’t read all of our case notes. “No, come along now,” he said, striving for authoritative and achieving only weenie.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “Unless you’re packing a submachine gun, you’re flat out of luck, buddy.”

He frowned. “Look, how about they just come along peacefully, and there won’t be any trouble.”

“Uh...how about, no?”

“What kind of trouble?” Gazzy asked from behind me. “I mean, anything to break the boredom.”

The whitecoat tried to look stern. “Look, we’re trying to explore other options to your retirement,” he said. “You might be useful to us in other ways. Only people who are useful will survive the By-Half Plan. Actually, it’s really more like the One-in-a-Thousand Plan. Only people with useful skills will be necessary in the new order, the Re-Evolution. You should want to help us find out if you’re at all useful to us alive.”

“Because we’re probably not that useful dead,” Nudge said thoughtfully.

“No,” I agreed. “Well, maybe as doorstops.”

The whitecoat made an “eew” expression.

“Or like those things in a parking lot that show where the cars should stop,” suggested Iggy. He closed his eyes and went stiff, to demonstrate what it would look like.

“Also an option,” I conceded, while the whitecoat looked horrified.

“No,” he said, scrambling for composure. “But China is interested in using you as weapons.”

That was interesting. “Well, you tell China to bite us,” I said. “Now, skedaddle on out of here, before we turn you into a doorstop.”

“Come for testing,” he tried firmly one last time.

“Come back to reality,” I said, just as firmly.