“The pyrokinetic,” I went on, brushing past the fact that I’d just revealed who I was here with. But I hadn’t heard any noise from the shadows behind me at this point, so I barreled forward. “The one who Dr. Sharpe is experimenting on.”

“Rose, how do you—” He took a step back, genuine surprise on his face. He looked at me for a moment, like he didn’t recognize me, before sighing heavily.

“Alex Chen.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Dr. Sharpe isn’t experimenting on him. I mean, she is—”

I scoffed.

“But she has his full consent,” Owen insisted, putting his glasses back on. “Alex is very, very sick and Dr. Sharpe has been helping him.”

“So you say—”

“We all are helping him. We’re building a custom space, just for him, somewhere he can be safe while we figure out how to fix him, how to stop his pain. When he gets here next month, he’s going to be coming into a state-of-the-art—”

“Wait, next month?” I asked. “Alex isn’t here yet?”

“No.” He shook his head, confused. “We don’t have a reinforced space for him yet, he’d burn the whole building down.”

“But Damien—”

Suddenly an alarm started blaring. We both spun around, looking for the source of the sound, and that was when I realized that Damien was gone. The shadows he had slunk into turned out to lead to an emergency exit stairway and he must have snuck down while Owen and I had been talking.

Owen looked between me and the shadows and he must have realized the same thing and that was when I realized he had known Damien was here all along.

“That must be Damien doing something incredibly foolish.” He grumbled at the empty doorway before turning back to me. “Listen, if someone else finds you here, I don’t know that I’ll be able to explain your presence away—”

“I thought you were the director now,” I hissed.

“Of this division, I am,” he said. “There are still people I have to answer to.”

“But Damien—”

“You need to get yourself out of here, let me worry about Damien.”

Given that I had just discovered that Damien had lied to me AGAIN and I had fallen for it AGAIN, I barely hesitated to follow Owen’s advice.

But just as I had turned on my heel, Owen called out to me.

“Rose!” I turned to look at him. He looked … so sad.

“That file you’re holding…” He gestured to it. “It doesn’t hold the answers you want. Not yet. We’re working on it and, when we have something, I will tell you. We’ll try whatever we can to help your father. You have my word.”

Another alarm started to sound then, so Owen didn’t say anything more, just nodded and waved me away with his hand. I ran.