“This was creepy stuff about the AM,” I said and Sam looked embarrassed. “They did stuff to him. That’s why I brought him to Dr. Bright. I found him as we were being discharged and I got the whole story about what happened to him and I thought it was important that she know. He never told me anything about how he used to be your patient or about any of you.”

That wasn’t a lie, was it? I mean, Damien didn’t tell me about Mark, not really, even if I feel like I already knew a lot about the guy from a few dreams. But something in Mark’s tightly wound posture told me he probably wasn’t in a place to hear about Damien dreaming about his death.

“What did he tell you?” Mark demanded.

“He said he was brought to the AM because another Atypical attacked him—”

“Bullshit!” Adam cried. “He wasn’t attacked, it was self-defense!”

The whole room went silent as every single person in it exchanged a series of significant looks. My head was spinning.

“I’m guessing you guys know something about this?” I asked eventually, stating the obvious.

“It was me,” Caleb said quietly. “I’m the one who hurt him.”

I took a long look at Caleb, trying to imagine it. He was young, yes, but broad-shouldered and bulky, someone who looks like he definitely plays sports and maybe also beats up nerds and stuffs them into lockers. But the way that he said it … it didn’t seem like he was happy about the fact that he’d hurt someone.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he threatened to kidnap me?” Adam said.

“What?”

“Why don’t we all sit down,” Dr. Bright said, putting on her best therapist voice.

So we did, and Dr. Bright explained the whole thing. Well, actually, Mark explained a lot of it.

“I’m a mimic,” Mark started off.

“Okay…” I said, because it felt like he wanted a response.

“Have you ever met a mimic before?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m not even sure what that is, if I’m honest.”

“I’m not surprised,” he snorted. “The rarity of the thing is kind of the whole problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can share people’s powers,” he explained. “That’s my Atypical ability.”

“Whoa.” I breathed.

“Yeah.”

“That’s … cool,” I tried, though I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around the logistics of it. “But what does that have to do with…”

“The AM likes rare abilities,” he said, unknowingly echoing what Damien had told me.

Turns out, Mark had been kidnapped by the AM a few years back—that much was true, that the AM kidnaps Atypicals and experiments on them. He glossed over that whole part, his hand reaching to hold onto Sam’s as he casually talked about years of experimentation before falling into a coma.